Our rations, water, and batteries were limited, and the storm could have very well outlasted us. I had already wasted so much time, so many years, and I would not be stopped this early in the journey. I was, then, the first to don my environment suit and venture out into the open.

It was, as it turned out, nothing I could not handle. Though the winds were harsh and the temperatures bitter, my suit shrugged it off, and what remained was merely a light rain infused with unfamiliar but ultimately harmless acidic compounds. I ushered the other travelers into their suits and outside, and we began toward the ocean planet gate, a caravan braving alien tempests.

We camped that night behind a shield projected by our m-field generator, and recharged our equipment batteries using a makeshift lightning collector.

The next morning, we woke to the meadow coming alive, as the storm picked up to the cusp of what our suits could no longer handle. Blades of orange grass rose from the ground as though a time-lapse made real-time, trembling as they reached toward the swirling light above. Then we made a terrifying discovery.

The air had grown radioactive. Enough that twelve more hours of exposure would cause our bodies damage irreversible by our equipment. The cavern we had sheltered in was, by our reckoning, at best thirteen hours away. However, the second gate on this planet, the one no traveler had returned from, would take only seven hours to reach.