The early spring weather was pleasantly cool, the warming sun and the cooling breeze each taking their turn in the limelight with the passing of white fluffy clouds across the blue sky. The project plan had been to walk fifteen kilometers each day, roughly three to four hours' journey, then to spend the afternoons working the ground. The process of purifying a section of earth, then breaking it up, then mixing it with good soil was a chore that would involve all hands. The installation of the watering tower was expected to be less labor-intensive, but perhaps more stressful if things did not work as anticipated. Still, no one thought about these hurdles as they relished in the sun and the breeze, old friends to some and novel oddities to the others. 

Pacha crawled along at what was indeed a walking pace. Urchin occasionally hopped aboard when she began to veer off the straight path, watching Javier for guidance in his orientation of the behemoth. Their path was easy enough to follow: though the original plan had been a straight shot inland, one day's march to the south, and then a straight shot back to the shore, this new trajectory put them a day inland, a day south, another day inland, a day east, and so on. Alyssa had noticed, though she had said nothing at the time, that the assumption of eight days' return journey was predicated on the idea of traversing virtually the same distance on every day, whether they were spending the afternoon doing dirt work or not. As all the dirt would be offloaded by the time they reached the silo, there would be nothing stopping them from walking twice as far in a day and returning early. 

In fact, Alyssa thought to herself, there was not even a reason to walk. The crawler would have plenty of room for them to rest on the platform with all the dirt gone. 

Doc was the first to lose steam at the two-hour mark. He had run ahead with Maya and Urchin several times, and often run back with them instead of waiting on Pacha to catch up. Now, he flopped down on the hard ground and spread his arms and legs wide, as if to make a distorted impression of himself in the dust. 

"Oh, don't get your clothes dirty!" Alyssa shouted across the expanse. "We won't be able to wash them for a month!"

Javier chuckled, dashing ahead until he approached Doc, then himself flopped into the dust and flailed. Soon the other kids joined in and were laughing. Alyssa hid her scowl beneath the brim of her new hat, but mumbled something about adults setting bad examples. Mouse rolled his eyes at the childish actions of their guide, who so far had done nothing for the expedition but orient them either parallel or perpendicular to the passage of the sun overhead. Though the Unabled might have thought it a skill, to Mouse and Alyssa these were fundamental understandings they had long since taken for granted. 

"Just remember, we have a whole month with this guy. Let's try to keep the peace a little longer than two hours." Mouse cautioned. 

"I'm not washing their clothes," Alyssa declared with finality. 

Mouse chuckled. "I know you won't. You probably couldn't if you tried!"

Just under an hour later, Javier declared that they were at their stopping point for the day. The sun overhead was just shy of its zenith and promised another seven hours of daylight. This day, more than any other, he expected to be long. This was a first run of everything they would do, and every kink in the carefully laid plan, every faulty step and unrealized difficulty, would become apparent. He did not, however, voice this revelation.

"All right everyone," he began instead, "let's break for camp here. Adults will set up tents over there, Maya and Urchin will grab the shovels and stakes, and Doc, you can start tracing the circle. There's a length of twine already cut to two and a half meters. Make sure the edge of the circle is near Pacha's side."

The tents were erected with some difficulty as Mouse and Alyssa struggled to find the point in the mounds of fabric which opened up to accept the fluted tip of the foot pump. After unfolding, inverting, and generally dirtying the exterior of the bundle of layered cloth, they managed to find the conveniently color coded tip and began pressing the pump up and down with their feet, inflating the area between two layers of rubberized fabric. As the third tent slowly came to life alongside the two Javier had quickly erected, Mouse found the pump Javier had discarded and began to inflate the fourth and final of the dull green huts. 

Doc, too, had found difficulty in tracing the outline of the five meter circle they were to dig out. This was not because he had not found all the requisite tools, nor because he did not know what to do with them. The soil was simply too hard. He had even tried to stab at the soil with a brand new shovel, but had only cracked the surface a little. He helped Maya and Urchin move the tall pole out of the crawler and gratefully accepted the canteen Maya had begun to pass around. 

"What if I just step on the end?" Urchin asked. Dumbfounded, Doc looked at his vain attempts to score the ground with his shovel. Why had he been so insistent on driving a stake into it? Why had he not thought of something so simple and so obvious? He nodded silently at the proposition and passed the stake to his friend. 

Taking his position two steps from Pacha's side, Doc knelt down and pressed the tip of the twine into the dust. Urchin dutifully pulled the line taut and balanced the stake between the earth and his heel. The young Watcher shuffled sideways like a crab, low to the ground with his rear sticking out, as he traced a perfect circle in the dust. He tried to ignore Maya's laughter at his ridiculous posture, but managed to turn the situation to his advantage. As he shuffled near to where she stood, he bent even further down and let loose a volley of loud noise and pungent smell, accumulated from a hastily consumed breakfast and a day's long walk. Maya turned and ran, pinching her nose, while Urchin fell to his side, wheezing. Doc, still leveraging his weight against the string, fell back chortling with crude amusement. It took some minutes before the trio regained their footing and completed the outline. Though it had taken nearly an hour to set the stage for the afternoon's work, no one complained. Every action was new and fresh. 

As the early afternoon sun beat down on the team, most took refuge in the inflated tents. Javier passed each person a mask, which he explained might be uncomfortable but was very necessary when breaking ground. The masks were simple pouches attached to string, covering the wearer's nose and mouth with crushed charcoal encased in finely woven mesh. The radiation, Javier explained, did not attach itself well to air or water, but was highly concentrated in solids like dirt and stone. The charcoal would absorb the lambda radiation before it made its way into their bodies. 

Mouse donned his mask and took a step to the center of the circle. In his hand he held a chip of soil, the same one Doc had pried from the earth when trying to drive the stake. He hummed for what felt like some minutes until the chip in his palm dissolved into dust. Having been warned to keep his shoes on, Mouse awkwardly spread his feet in a stance intended for stability and thrummed a low note. The dust at his feet began to shake, but the earth did not crack. 

Mouse pondered the feeling in his feet for several minutes more. Though most of his audience had never held an interest, Javier seemed enthralled to watch the dust dance around the man's ankles. Armed with a new plan, Mouse redoubled his efforts and hummed the same note, quickly and sharply. 

The sound wave was visible as the dust bounced in a pulse moving away from his feet to the edges of the tents. He hummed again, every bit as short but louder. Then a third time, louder still. It was this third pulse that was met with the sound of dirt cracking. Though his face was covered in a mask, Javier saw a grin in the raised edges of Mouse's lips. The man had broken through. 

It took only another five minutes for the center of the camp to alter from an enclosure tiled with cracked earth to a sort of beach of tanned, crumbly dirt. Mouse stepped gingerly out of the pit of softened earth, leaving deep footprints in his wake. As instructed, he did not enter the tent with his contaminated, dusty shoes and pants. Instead, he tapped lightly on the door of the girls' tent which faced away from the camp. When Maya's head poked through, Mouse gestured over the tent to the circle of irradiated earth. "Your time to shine, girls."