There was always something eerie about the final moments before the doors opened.  I had done this countless times, but I could never place exactly where the eeriness stemmed from, and I hadn’t managed to shake it yet. This would be my 452nd visit to the surface, yet the feeling had remained the same every time. Perhaps it was the sense of fear that this might be the last time I ever pass through the doors, or worse—that I may be the only one to return through them in a few short hours. And I still hadn’t been able to decide if it would be worse to die, or live and be completely alone for the remainder of my life. Regardless, it wasn’t good to dwell on such matters for too long. We had work to do, and work of this kind can become dangerous when one’s mind is focused elsewhere.

Although it had been over a year of searching the seemingly barren land of Triton with little to no substantial discovery, my remaining partner and I knew that we had no other option than to continue. We couldn’t simply throw our hands up and return to Earth. Even though The Darkening had stopped the orbit of the planets in our solar system, traveling between Earth and Triton was still quite a task. We didn’t have to account for the various trajectories of passing planets since they were no longer in a constant motion, but the journey still took over seven years. Two point seven billion miles is a long distance to travel regardless of how you try to analyze it. If we did decide to quit and return to Earth, there may not be much of a home left by the time we arrived.

The red light came on and the hydraulic doors of The Hyperion hissed open once again. “Day 452. This is it Abram, I can feel it,” Alexa said with a fading smile. She had said that everyday since our attempt on day 237. Even though it had become more of a habit than actual encouragement, I was always thankful for her words. Alexa seldom spoke more than she had to and there wasn’t much joy left in our day to day life after Parker went missing on day 236. We presumed him to be dead at this point, but we hadn’t been able to locate his body or any real proof that he had even been here at all other than the belongings left in his now vacant living quarters. And honestly, a few days after giving up on the idea of finding his remains we had more or less forgotten about him altogether. We had plenty more important things to focus on.

A few days after Parker’s disappearance, SouthPoint had offered to send us someone in his stead. However, he or she wouldn’t be able to get to Triton for seven years, so we opted to simply adjust our daily protocols to suit two people rather than three. Our days had already been incredibly structured and it became taxing to spend any more time outside The Hyperion than necessary, so initially our newly regimented days were difficult. For that reason, it was easy to get caught up in the busyness of the day to day routine and forget that there were originally three people to do the work. We simply worked quietly and time, in return, helped us to forget.

Triton was the biggest moon of the planet Neptune, and so far, it had proven itself to really only be two things: cold and dark. Not the normal kind of cold that can be described to someone who has lived on Earth their entire life, even after the sun burned out. This cold was something more—the kind of disposition that can only be understood through personal experience.

We stepped out of The Hyperion, just as we did every day. “I’ll take the west today and you can take the east. We’ll reconvene at the Northern base of Galatia at 14:00 as usual,” I said as I shifted my gaze towards the eastern horizon. This too, other than the occasional change of directional preference, was a phrase we had become all too accustomed to-- both hearing as well as reciting. She signaled her leave with a quick hand gesture and turned to begin her journey. The east had much easier terrain to travel on, but the long distance still made any sort of search a difficult task. We had covered more than half of the moon’s surface, each day going a little farther, but had still found no entrance to any sort of underground chambers. A massive frozen lake had been found early on, but after a few days investigating it, the lake proved to be nothing noteworthy. So, we simply named it Galatia and used it as a point of reference for the days to come.

If after 500 days we were unable to find any entrance that would lead farther into Triton’s surface, we would have to contact The Order and decide if we should move forward to begin the drilling process. Drilling into the surface of Triton would be exceedingly dangerous, but at that point we would essentially be left with no other option unless otherwise informed by The Order’s officials. Triton is made up largely of ice, so drilling into the wrong part of it could cause a severe fissure or, if things went really poorly, could potentially detach an entire portion the moon’s surface. With less than fifty days left until the decision would have to be made, tensions were beginning to rise between SouthPoint and ourselves. They had chosen us out of everyone on Earth because we showed promise, but promise or not we needed to at least find proof that the Luminescence was in fact here, and we needed to find it fast.