"Hmm… Well… Do you think we can do a round trip?" Laurel asked. "We definitely couldn't bring all of them in one go."
After another day of work, Shingo managed to detach the AMS and the EVA station, but they needed to completely break the lifepod's wall if they ever wanted to bring it outside.
They had the life-support system from the lifepod, solar panels, the AMS, and the EVA suit and its charging station. The solar panels were compact and easy to carry, but the AMS, life support, and EVA suit station weren't. The submarine could only carry one of them.
"We probably could do it if we had enough food. But who knows how many monsters would be there? I suggest bringing the AMS and solar panels." Xiaolang said.
"What about the power cell? We need those as well, right? Its charging station is in the ruins." Shingo raised his hand.
"Can you carry them?" Laurel raised an eyebrow. She hadn't forgotten about it, but she hadn't mentioned it because she thought they couldn't remove it from the ruins. If they couldn't bring it, there was little reason to even mention it here.
"Well. I think we could try with Auscella's help." Shingo said. Unfortunately, the all-purpose screwdriver he had was incompatible with how the charging station was attached to its base.
"But what is its power source? It couldn't create power from nothing, right? Is it even useful to bring it?" Lazarus tilted her head.
"Ah… Well…"
"We have solar panels, right? Why can't we use those?" Lexus said.
"It doesn't have the right plug. Even if we could somehow connect them, we don't know if it's the right voltage." Laurel said. Even inside the USF, where everything was standardized, there were machines with different voltages that required special transformers to recharge. The smartbox was one of them. You can't plug everything into a wall socket and hope it will run without problems.
"Ugh…" Lexus frowned. Without the charging port from the ruins, they only had a limited number of power cells. Twelve cells, to be exact. They needed eight for the guns. That left them with only four. They didn't know whether that would be enough. The map Auscella gave them didn't include a scale.
Then something cold landed on Lazarus's head. At first, she ignored it. But when she saw a drop of white fall from the sky, only then did she look up.
"What is that?" Lazarus's question made the children look at the sky, following her gaze. White flakes fell from the sky. It reminded Lazarus of party poppers because of the way they fell, but they were completely white.
"Oh! That's snow! Amazing! It's actually real!" Lexus said.
"Amazing! I have never seen it outside VR! It's actually cold!" Shingo said.
"I have only read about it on the internet. So it does exist." Laurel nodded.
"I have seen fake snow in movie props, but I have never seen it falling from the sky like this. So this is snow." Anna gazed at the falling snow.
More and more snow fell from the sky, and the verdant forest soon turned white. While everyone admired the changing scenery, Xiaolang frowned.
"Mistral, how cold is it? Snow is supposed to happen when water freezes below zero degrees, right?" Xiaolang said.
[Yes. That is correct. On old Earth, when the temperature dropped enough, water vapor could freeze into ice crystals in clouds. As the crystals grew and became heavy enough, they fell as snow. ]
"At this temperature, can it freeze the lake?"
"Yes. The surface water will most likely freeze during a snowy day. But as the pressure increases the deeper you go, the colder it needs to be for water to freeze. So, usually only the surface of the lake will freeze, even during snowy and cold days in winter."
"Does this mean this planet is in winter?" Laurel said.
"Winter? What's that?"
"I read in a museum that Earth has four seasons. One of them was winter, the one in which snow falls." Laurel said.
[That's correct. But I must correct one thing. Not all of Earth has four seasons. Areas near the equator, or the middle of Earth, do not have the same seasonal changes as areas farther from the equator because there are barely any temperature changes. And not every winter has snow. Areas nearer to the equator have less or no snow at all.]
"I was relying on my childhood memory, alright?" Laurel sighed.
"Let's go inside. I'm starting to feel cold here." Lexus said.
Inside the lifepod, they continued their discussion, thanks to the AC from the life-support system. Warm air filled the room.
"Au…" Auscella hugged the ventilation shaft where the warm air blew.
"It's decided. We must bring the life-support system." Lexus said.
"Who decided that?" Laurel sighed.
"We are going to freeze to death without it. Do you want that?"
"Humans survived winter just fine on Earth five hundred years ago without a life-support system." Xiaolang said. "I think the AMS was more important."
"Thank goodness we already did our water duty." Laurel sighed.
Then came a beep.
[I have detected a ninety percent drop in our solar panel output during snowfall. The sun has also given out less light compared to when the lifepod first landed.]
"It's just like a cloudy day, right?" Laurel said.
"But it's still bright outside. It shouldn't drop by more than fifty percent like this." Lazarus muttered.
"Ah, the solar panel was covered in snow." Shingo said.
"Well, that's another job for us." Laurel sighed as she added solar-panel cleaning to the list of daily duties.
As the day turned to night, the snow still fell.
"Whoo! That's cold!" Shingo climbed down from the hatch. He and Auscella had gone to the ruins, while Bob, Lexus, and Xiaolang had gone out for night duty.
"We have enough food already! Why the heck do we still need to go out in this blizzard?" Lexus complained as he approached the fireplace Anna had set up.
"We don't know when it might stop." Xiaolang said. "And we can now eat three times instead of two. Don't you miss lunch?"
"What about our farm? Can't we just harvest it from there?"
"We need to expand it more." Xiaolang shut him up. "We should get our first harvest in two days."
"Here. Please eat. I have cooked the metallic onions for you all." Anna said, offering a stew.
"Hah…" Lexus sighed.
"You know, this winter thing might be good. Those rhinos didn't react when I went harvesting the onions."
"They might be frozen, for all we know." Lexus cursed.
"Unlikely. But I heard many animals sleep to pass the winter. Snow is seasonal. If they froze, then they should have been extinct a long time ago." Xiaolang turned to the sea. The sea didn't freeze. He hadn't seen any monsters yet. He hoped it would stay that way, out of sight.
[Yes. Many animals sleep, or 'hibernate,' during winter.]
"Why would they do that?" Lazarus asked.
[During winter, food was harder to come by. Thus, animals often ate a lot during autumn and slept a lot during winter, reducing their activity and nutrient consumption.]
"Do we do it too?" Shingo asked.
[No. Humans didn't hibernate during winter, even prehistoric humans tens of thousands of years ago. They simply ate more, either by hunting or storing food during autumn.]
"I think something was missing. Oh yeah. The purple amoeba was missing." Anna turned around, finally sensing that something was different.
"The forest didn't glow either." Xiaolang nodded. It was an enigma. The forest, which usually glowed purple, didn't glow tonight. The forest gave off an eerie darkness instead of its usual alien colors. Fear gnawed at them even though nothing was there. Fear of the unknown.
"Anyway. What are we going to do now? When do we leave? We must bring life support." Lexus said.
"Don't decide on your own." Laurel said.
Bob then raised his hand. "Um… I think we should bring a container for water."
"Huh? Water?"
"We only had water for one day. Two at most." Bob explained. "I think we should bring more. At least until we find a good spot on the new land."
"How? We only have several dozen of those plastic bottles." Laurel said. She had considered bringing more supplies. The calculation had already accounted for the food and all the water they could bring.
"It doesn't have to be PET water bottles. I think we could find some airtight containers in the new ruins." Bob said.
"And you think bringing more food and water is more important than life support, the AMS, the EVA suit, or the charging port from the ruins?" Lexus said. "Just leave the thinking to the smart scholarship students like Shingo, Lazarus, or our class rep."
"Bob, ignore him. Just say what you think." Laurel said.
"Erm… Yes. I think so. If we bring more food and water, we could stay there longer, and we could possibly return." Bob said.
"His reasoning makes sense. I agree." Xiaolang said. "Right now, if we don't find water or firewood there to boil our water, we have to return here after traveling there for a day. But if we could load more water, we could stay there for three days before returning."
"Hmm… I see. I suppose you are right." Laurel nodded.
They wanted to bring all the high-tech equipment they couldn't possibly find on the other side. They had forgotten that the most basic necessities were often the most important.
So, at noon the following day, they rode the submarine back to the launchpad ruins.
"Wah… Winter is horrible. Water duty took twice as long. Thank God the river hadn't frozen over." Shingo sighed. He had adored winter in games as a kid, but now he hated it.
"Erm… You know, snow is technically water, right? Couldn't we just boil the snow instead? That way, we don't have to travel to the lake." Lazarus said.
"..." Everyone was silent.
"You should have said so in the morning! Why didn't you say anything?" Lexus yelled. "Do you want to bully me? Is it because I often called you orphans? I walked there and picked firewood, and I was almost killed by the snapping tree!"
"Well… Sorry. I just thought of it."
"You too, Shingo! You are supposed to be the scholarship student, right? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't think about it, alright? It skipped my mind. I was thinking about whether we could detach the charging port in the tower ruins."
"Geez." Lexus scowled.
"We have arrived. Au!" Auscella said, piloting the submarine.
"It was surprisingly comfortable." Shingo said.
"I don't like it. It's dark…" Anna commented.
And so, they had returned to the ruins.
Arghh! First monsters, and now the weather. This sucks. I hope we can get to the other place soon. I am sick of this place. ~Lexus