Pa'an

O’Ran, a massive Pa’an with the compact strength of a heavy gravity dweller and handsome maroon eye markings, led his band of ten harvello, now three eightcycles out of their village, questing for the copper nodules they needed for tools, trade and defensive weapons. They had traveled across a resplendent Gara’un landscape in shades of yellow, green, red and infrared, under a pale yellow sky dominated by the enormous reddish orb of L’Ley, a small red star, but so close that its photosphere overlapped the upper atmosphere of Gara’un. The landscape was a rugged fractal of twisted tectonics and wind-blasted accidentals sculpted out of rocky strata. The band meandered among arches, spindles and mesas of gold and green, among giant tree-sized flora armored heavily against the elements and the gravity, some bearing good fruit, and encountered hoppers, buzzers and flitters in flocks and in hidden niches, some edible.

One always had to keep watch for predators, of course. Nature kept a precarious balance among the living forms on Gara’un. O’Ran and his band were heavily armed with footspurs, horned helmets and tube spears. Each harvello wore an expedition harness across their triple-thick, pebbled backs. O’Ran carried a pair of tube spears on either side of his harness, the elastic bands notched and the wicked short spears loaded and cocked, with the trigger cords in easy reach of his teeth. So far, they had two encounters with barrow wolves and, as leader, he felt caution was still necessary. He could feel that his band highly approved of his leadership through their flow of panor.

Now the land abruptly ended, and they lined up abreast on a cliff overlooking a deep and broad chasm. The cliff dropped to the bottom in a series of violet and blue plateaus. The forces that created this marvel had etched through several diverse geological strata. O’Ran knew what those forces were: explosive winds, flying rocks, and boiling water. On Gara’un, when the sun, L’Ley, stirred the atmosphere, the resulting storms were apocalyptic events that scoured the landscape and leveled mountains. Here, at the rim above Copper Canyon, was the evidence. And in the depths, he knew, were the almost pure nodules of copper, silver and gold left by those same elements.

O’Ran stood on his footarms and shaded his eyes with a handarm. The brown fairthers on his handarm fluttered in the dense breeze as he surveyed the defile that led below. It appeared to be intact, which was a major and unexpected piece of luck. The thick air blew the smell of sintered metal mingled with the edge-blooms that carpeted the first plateau. Beyond that plateau the canyon was still in shadow and would remain so until the light of L’Ley rose over the canyon rim.

The crew resumed their high-gravity six-footed stance and made their way down the defile into the canyon while L’Ley rose overhead. The heat and air pressure continued to build as they descended toward the dark red ribbon at the bottom.

Finally they were at the bottom, and the congealed river of molten rock and precious metal was a ribbon of red, copper, and purple at their feet, twisting away in the distance. Nodules of pure metal were scattered everywhere. The band spread out along the congealed magma, picking the larger fist-sized nodules and filling their pack nets as they went. The web of panor flowed with contentment and efficiency.

O’Ran explored further from the defile, hoping that he would find a chunk of green gemstone or even a diamond. He went on all sixes, head extended on his flexible neck, scanning for the cracks and discolorations that might reveal the kimberlite matrix, or even an exposed glitter lying on the surface. He was quite a ways down canyon when his electric sense organ, a series of fine hairs on the back of his head, began to tingle. L’ley was almost eclipsed by the far canyon wall now. Squinting against the glare he could see the dark finger of a solar prominence arcing down, down, down, from the ruddy disk of the star.

Plasma storm!

He galloped as fast as he could toward his crew, sending waves of alarm and receiving back signals of distress. He was hindered by his load of precious metal, but reluctant to drop it. When electrical discharges began arcing and crackling along the conductive ribbon of magma he changed his mind. He stashed his load under a formation he hoped would remain as a marker and picked the flattest, fastest route back to the defile.

Through the web of panor, he could tell that his crew was doing the same thing. He prayed that the plasma storm would be brief and not too terrible. He could not convey instructions via panor. He could only share a sense of general alarm. He was still too far away to see what his crew was doing.

His electric sense was trilling high ionization, not that he needed that sense any more. Lightning was booming along the canyon walls and blasting chinks from the conductive ribbon. He had to get to insulated ground!

He reached a widening of the canyon, where huge boulders had tumbled from the rim wall. A bolt of lightning knocked him over and nearly electrocuted him. The electrical gradients were intense. Streamers of argon, neon and xenon flowed down the canyon in a glowing free-range display. He was terrified and yet transfixed by the brilliant flux. It was so typical of Gara’un, this mixture of haunting beauty and catastrophe. Caught in the cascade of ionizing particles from L’Ley, wrapped in glowing filaments of ochre, vermillion, amber and pearl, O’Ran knew he was going to a glorious demise. He scrambled onto a narrow saddle of stone and wrapped all six limbs around it, extruded his hooks and held on for the hurricane he knew was coming.

There were sand-sized particles so heavily charged that they were now suspended in the air against Gara’un’s considerable gravity. The gale grew. Electrified particles pelted against O’Ran’s tough hide, sand and pebbles at first. Then the sand became nuggets and the pebbles became stones, and the gale multiplied into a vicious tornado of debris. His harness abraded and flew off, his skin flayed away in tatters, but he hung on and still had the grace to marvel at the storm.

There was an immense crackling sound, like metal sheets buckling in the hand of an unseen giant. O’Ran did not quite understand what made that sound, but he knew, from common lore, that it preceded the worst part of the worst kind of a plasma storm.

As the charged wind blew, it created a magnetic field around it. That field was growing, funneling the wind into a magnetic bottle. The bands of magnetic force were growing tighter, constricting the flow. The wind was feeding off itself by the funneling effect. It was a magnetic pinch. On no other planet was an intelligent organic species forced to evolve with such a dire experience of plasma dynamics. On Gara’un, the Pa’an were taught a hard lesson.

The pinch occurred just at the far bend of the canyon, upstream from O’Ran. The gale there reached hypersonic velocity in milliseconds. O’Ran could see the initial shock wave as a lens of explosive force propagating down the canyon before it pulverized his body. Behind the shock wave, the supersonic hurricane blew his shredded tissue fragments away, and the rock blast buried his remains. The plasma hurricane detached the massive stone escarpment he clung to, picked it up and hurled it far down the canyon, smashing it to pieces and leaving behind only the heavier metal nodules. As the ionizing stroke died, the floating metal nodules settled on top of the debris, waiting for another, perhaps more fortunate, troupe of brave explorers.

Yes, there would be other gatherers. For the Pa’an, life went on.

Virti turned off the viewer. She had so little time, and she had no idea why she selected that historical segment for viewing. Perhaps it reminded her of who she was and why she was here.

Her bed was a sculpted and padded surface, narrow as the ledge O’Ran had clung to. Its solidity and mass gave her comfort. She wrapped all six limbs around it, safe for the moment from plasma storms, and slept.