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a pencil across his lips and
nodded along to some tune in his head. We all knew what was at stake and what
the risks were. We had hauled ourselves out here to this slightly elevated
position, right under the detonation field. If the package failed to detonate,
it soon would when it hit us. That’s why the main hab-dome was so far away.
    As
a boy back home, I would lie in the sand and watch the blue sky, imagining
clouds scudding overhead the way they did in books. Sitting in this dome was
experimental meteorology for sure but it didn’t beat real weather. I told
myself that when I was outdoors in my Raincoat. As such, I always tried to
imagine the device dropping through the sky. Watching the countdown I did my
job but still pictured lying on those dunes back home.
    “Dome
Two, this is Platform One. Detonation, in three, two, one, mark.”
    And
far above us, in the troposphere, where the clouds reached up to space, the
package detonated. Triggered by an electronic command the exothermic reaction
blew a bubble of heat out, evaporating the moisture and opening a window to the
blue sky. Clouds parted, burned away in the explosion. I’ve never seen it for
real, only the computer models but it must have been spectacular. For a
precious few moments, the rain stopped and hot sun poured onto the jungle. Blue
sky would be seen from the surface of this incredible planet for the first time
in the longest time. We must have been changing the evolutionary path of the
fauna in this circle, exposing a rainforest to sunshine, but that was for
Cynthia and her team. We were the primary mission: the weather.
    I
remembered myself. “We getting all this?”
    “Affirmative,”
said George. “Everything is five by five.”
    “The
event is closing,” said Iris. “Data package is secure.”
    “Well
done, both of you.” I poured myself another coffe and watched the main screen.
A round blank space was being filled in by blues and greens while far above us
the clouds closed in, shutting off the jungle once more from sunshine and blue
sky.
     
    The
rest of the shift went okay. We had buggied about in the rain, picking up data
from the remote sensors unable to transmit to us because of line of sight
issues. Back at the hab dome, we had our evening meal in the canteen. I was
thirsty and took a long drink of water. When I do that, I think about our
families and friends, back home and far away from here. Rationing was hard for
them, as it had been for us, before we travelled to this planet.
    “Perhaps
it will end soon,” said Iris. She poked a fork into her dinner and stirred it
around. She indicated my glass of water. “The rationing will end someday.”
    “You
reading my mind?” I smiled. She smiled back.
    George
shifted in his seat. “Do you think we’ll be successful, Professor?”
    He
was being serious. I looked around the room as if for an answer. Cynthia’s crew
were at a round table at the far end of the room, beyond the serving counter.
They had one of the native plants in a little pot on the table between them.
Poking and discussing it, they were lost to everything else. The plant was
clearly dying though. No amount of watering indoors could ever keep it alive.
It looked like a sort of fern but its feathered leaves had turned brown.
    “We
have to, George,” I told him. “We need to find a way to interrupt the climate
back home and set the weather on a new path. Either that or we just move here.”
    George
opened his palms to me. “Are we thirsty enough for that?”
    Iris
sighed. “We’ll never get the seasons back. It’s wishful thinking.”
    Across
at the botanists’ table, one of them gently shook the pot and fern leaves fell
onto the table without any grace. They all laughed, brushing the plant pot to
the side of the table. Their casualness towards the plant appalled me. All I
had to do was step outside and find a million others like it, but that they’d
brought this one inside, killed it, and then found it amusing,