“Yes, sir?” the SEAL said.
“Has your mask been tested for fit?” the FEMA representative asked.
“I did a breath check,” the SEAL said.
“Not good enough,” the FEMA rep replied. “Come with me.”
From the trunk of his rent-a-car the FEMA rep produced a mask-fit tester. He plugged the nozzle into the mask, hooked up the breath pak, then spent a few minutes ensuring that it was a perfect seal. Then he helped Sanson get the hood on. The hood was integral to the suit and flopped down in front when removed. The zipper was up the back of the suit. They got the hood on, sealed it, then zipped up the back. The FEMA rep ensured the seal of the zipper, put on the breath-pak harness and then tapped him on the shoulder.
“That’s better,” the rep noted. “You had a fifteen-percent leakage before; if there’s anything harmful in the atmosphere on the far side you would have gone down in a heartbeat. Good luck.”
“Thank you, sir,” the SEAL said, his voice muffled. He kept his mask on as he went to the platform.
Glasser handed him an M-4 as he reached the platform and then buckled on a combat harness — which fortunately fit over the breath pak — and looped a video camera over his shoulder.
“Repeat your orders,” he said.
“Start camera. Step through in tactical posture. Ensure my footing. One spin to check security. Drop weapon, pick up camera. One slow spin with the video camera. Return.” Sanson dropped the magazine from the weapon, ensured it was clear, then locked and loaded and placed it on safe.
“If you don’t return, we won’t be going in after you for at least an hour,” Glasser noted. “If it’s due to being unable to reach the globe on the far side, assume a tactical posture and wait; we will send someone else through.”
“Yes, sir,” the SEAL answered, knowing he only had forty-five minutes of air. They’d been over that and as many other contingencies as they could imagine. “Can I go now?”
“Yep,” Glasser said, gesturing up the rickety scaffolding stairs.
James Thomas Sanson had wanted to be a SEAL since he was seven years old and saw a show about them on the Discovery Channel. As he got older he studied everything he could find on the SEALs and what he needed to know before he joined. In high school he had played football and been on the track and field team. His high school didn’t have a swim team but he went down to the river, winter and summer, and swam as much as he could. He would sometimes lie in the water in winter, training himself to ignore as much as possible the cold. He’d come near to dying one time from hypothermia but he considered that just “good training.”
He’d also been a good student and an avid reader. He had graduated high school with a 3.5 GPA after having read every book of military history and fiction in the library.
He thought that he had prepared as well as he could for the SEAL course and with one exception Hell Week, while bad, had not been as horrific as it was for many of the other new meat. The exception had been fatigue. He had ignored the fact that SEAL students were kept awake for the entire period of Hell Week and that had almost finished him. But he made it. And he’d kept his head down in Phase One and Two and done pretty well, finished near the top of his class. When he got to the Teams he knew he’d face some harassment, nothing personal, just making sure he was adequate SEAL material. When they sent him out for flight-line he came back with a roll of climbing rope. When they sent him out for prop-wash he came back with a bucket of same, a civilian brand of aircraft cleaning solvent. He’d prepared and thought that he was ready to face anything that the SEALs could throw at him.
Until this.
He realized, as he reached the top of the platform, that instead of reading military fiction he should have been reading science fiction. For all his briefing he realized he had no clue what they were talking about. Different atmosphere? Different sun? Different gravity? And then there were those stinking, unworldly, bugs.
This could really, really suck.
He started the damned video camera then prepared to step through. At the last moment he stopped. If there might be a drop he wanted his feet together. He placed them side by side, held his weapon at high port in tactical position, and then jumped into the globe.
There was a moment of disorientation, like being on a roller coaster upside down in the dark and then rather than falling his toes caught on something and he tripped. He automatically rolled on something soft, hit something hard and came up in a crouch with his weapon trained outward.
Orange was his first impression; most of the environment was orange. There wasn’t a lot of sunlight; it was cut off by overarching vegetation. The “trees” seemed to be giant vines that twisted together to reach upward for the light. It was something like triple canopy jungle. But instead of the vines and moss equivalent being green, they were orange. And they were everywhere. He’d hit a small patch of “soil” (orange) but it was a small patch. Most of the ground was covered by the roots of the vines.
He automatically stood up and did a slow turn, checking for anything hostile. There didn’t even seem to be any large bugs around although he saw a small beetle-thing in the “tree” behind him. He also saw what the globe looked like from this side. Instead of being a globe it was a mirrored circle. It was almost hard to spot, except that it was actually in the tree itself, like some sort of looking glass embedded in the bark. Half in, half out, he decided. And not perfectly straight to local gravity, either, more at an angle, lying partially on its side and tilted a bit.
Gravity. Heavier than earth’s. It hadn’t hit him at first; he just felt a little weak. But it was definitely the gravity. It felt like he was wearing a big pack but all over his body. He completed his first turn, then whipped up the video camera and did another. No hostiles, no signs of civilization just these big honkin’ trees.
It hit him, then, another wave of disorientation, not externally derived but internal. This wasn’t Earth. This wasn’t anything on or like Earth. This was an alien planet, completely and utterly different. For a moment he felt unbelievably frightened. This was like some hell; if the gate didn’t work he might be stuck here and he really didn’t want to stay here the rest of his life.
Training, again, saved him. He’d done his mission. One turn for security, one turn for video. And now…
“I am so fucking out of here,” he muttered. He turned off the camera, checked his weapon was on safe and then turned to the gate.
“Shit, which way did I come in?” He wasn’t right in front of the gate. If he went back at the wrong angle he might fall to his death. “Why couldn’t they have put up a safety net?” he muttered. Finally, he looked at the marks from where he came through, spread his arms wide in case he missed and might be able to grab the safety poles on the platform, and jumped.