9-262: Pristine, Clement Basin
There seems to be a consensus that people aren’t hungry now, but are likely to become so a bit later, so after a stop at a general store for snacks (which has the clerk slightly wide-eyed at the Vizierate team in his shop) everyone returns to the Crawler and Alan again drives it up the winding road out of the basin and into the snowy hills.
Not long after leaving the basin, a twin line of moving ore transport buckets on an overhead cable joins the road from the direction of the spaceport and continues alongside the road for the remainder of the journey, buckets in various levels of fullness heading to the port and empty ones returning, travelling at about half the crawler’s speed. A row of lights, a red one atop each of the supporting pylons and yellow ones at the corner of the bucket strings out ahead of them on the snowy ground.
The night is clear, the stars are bright, and the road ahead is marked by reflectors on orange posts sticking up out of the ground that shine in the Crawler’s lights.
Alan actually seems in something approximating a good mood, Chris is reading something with a lot of pictures as he jerks his head up and down to music in his headphones and Fromm seems engaged in something on his PDA.
Unless Oliver wants to do anything, the mine lights will appear as they crest a low hill where the line of buckets leaves them and Alan will drive the Crawler down to the mine’s main gate, arriving at the BY Break as predicted.
Oliver will just read what he can of Argyle’s Journals from his PDA.
He will also get ready for the presumed meeting at the gate of the mine.