Ell Donsaii 12: Impact! by Laurence E Dahners Page B

where they had found life. Ell was thinking of it as kind of an “Earth analog” and felt pretty excited to find out what it was going to be like down on the surface.
    As she reached the living room she saw the green expanse of the landmass she had told Allan to direct the rocket towards. The huge island was north of the equator, but relatively small compared to some of the gigantic continents elsewhere on the planet. Ell had been focused on the biggest section of the screen which showed the view from the downward facing camera. For a moment she glanced at one of the screens showing a side view out of the rocket to look at the atmosphere. It looked very thick compared to Earth’s atmosphere. Really thick!
    Ell’s spirits fell. Her hope of an Earth analog looked like it was going to be dashed again. No matter how much like Earth this planet might turn out to be, if it had an extremely dense atmosphere, people wouldn’t be able to breathe there without some special apparatus. People could theoretically live on TC3, but with a density of seven atmospheres, it would require that they breathe a heliox mixture like deepsea divers did to prevent nitrogen narcosis. This atmosphere though, looked much thicker than TC3’s. Even breathing heliox wouldn’t safely get you beyond 10 to 12 atmospheres of pressure.
    Because of the thick air, as the rocket descended, it got harder and harder to see very far towards the horizon. Looking straight down, she could still see pretty well. The world she saw looked lush and green like TC3. She had Allan throw up the atmospheric pressure on the screen to see if she was right about it being high.
    Even at her present high altitude, the readout said 80 atmospheres and it was still rapidly rolling upwards!
    Ell sighed, there would be no way humans could live unencumbered on this planet either.
    The rocket continued to descend and Ell had Allan guide it towards what appeared to be an opening in treelike vegetation. When she got down far enough she developed the impression that the surface it was landing on was swampy mud. She lifted back up and flew to a different opening in the tree analogues. This time there was a large boulder in the clearing so she aimed the rocket to land on it.
    Right before the rocket touched down, the boulder moved. Rather vigorously in fact! It appeared that her “boulder” in fact was some kind of enormous animal. After it had moved off, Ell dropped the rocket down and landed on the area where the immense creature had been standing, and where it had cropped the vegetation short.
    Ell’s eyes went to the corner of the screen where the planet’s vital statistics were displayed. The gravity was 0.78G. Oxygen was 16%, nitrogen 75%, Argon 5% and carbon dioxide 4%.
    Atmospheric pressure was 188 times that on earth! A little more than double the air pressure on Venus!
    Ell snorted, calculating that the air pressure on BC4 was about the same as if you were 6200 feet underwater here on earth!
    She looked at the large herbivore that had moved out from under her rocket. Greenish gray in color with some faint vertical stripes, it looked something like a six legged, headless hippo. Allan put up some dimensions. It appeared that it would be a Triceratops-sized headless hippo!
    The trees had tall straight trunks with enormous leaves that appeared to be tilted towards the sun. A riotous tangle of vegetation immediately surrounded the rocket. Ell could see fern analogues, vine analogues, and an abundance of small bushes and grass analogues.
    Small flyers flitted through the air though “flitted” wasn’t quite right. Their motions seemed a little bit more like swimming, presumably related to the dense medium they were traversing.
    Harald Wheat was going to love this place!
    Ell looked at her watch. It was time to go to bed. “Allan, make sure that behemoth doesn’t step on the rocket. If you’re able to recognize that there’s anything especially unusual about any of the