It had been true that it would be cold when we slept. When I woke up in the morning, my body was trembling.
Fortunately, it was not to the point where men had to sleep hugging each other.
After a short stretch, my stiff body loosened up.
Once I had warmed up and looked around, morning sunlight was streaming into the cave.
I went outside.
First, I narrowed my eyes and looked at the sun rising above the horizon.
“So even the sun being different is only natural, huh.”
Just as the moon was different, the sun was different from Earth’s as well.
Far off above the horizon, a star twice as large as Earth’s sun had risen.
If it was twice as big, it should have been more dazzling, but that sun was not as bright as Earth’s.
The sky was clear, yet the sunlight was dim, as if it were behind thin clouds.
“I don’t know whether it’s twice as big or just much closer than Earth’s sun. Still, the starlight reaching this place doesn’t seem all that different from Earth’s.”
A college student who had come out before me spoke to me.
He was the student who had been acting as if he knew something ever since before.
“They say this planet is in the Goldilocks zone, but as a science major, it’s really hard for me to understand how an environment where humans can live could have formed within forty light-years.”
A term I didn’t know popped out right away.
It seemed I had picked the wrong person to talk to. I immediately moved away.
I thought I had woken up early, but quite a few people had gotten up before me.
Though some of them looked as if they hadn’t slept at all.
Sergeant An was outside too, as was the girl who had been in front of me when we came to this planet.
The girl was continuously moving her body with a grave expression.
Was she adapting to this planet’s gravity?
Or perhaps she was feeling the strange sensation I had felt yesterday as well.
After watching the girl for a moment, I walked toward Sergeant An.
Sergeant An was also wearing a serious expression.
When I approached, he waved his hand.
“Come on over.”
“Did you get any sleep?”
“I nearly froze to death. We’ll have to find something to cover ourselves with. And we need to block the cave entrance too.”
I nodded at his words.
I didn’t know whether it was autumn or spring right now, but it had been far too cold inside the cave.
“That’s strange. The advance party must have been cold too…”
The cave where the advance party slept was right next to ours.
I had glanced at it while passing by, and it hadn’t looked much different from the place where I slept.
“There must have been something more urgent than keeping out the cold.”
“Surely nothing could be more important than sleeping arrangements.”
Shelter was the problem among food, clothing, and shelter, and there was an even bigger problem?
“The food situation doesn’t seem good. Looks like they’re going to use the combat rations we brought for breakfast.”
My brow furrowed on its own.
They were already using the combat rations we had brought?
Hadn’t the bags and backpacks been some kind of test?
“It must not have been a test, but a lifeline. The reason the advance party was so happy to see Corporal Hyeon was because of the food in his backpack.”
“If they start using combat rations already, we won’t last even a week.”
“Exactly. I have no idea what they’re thinking.”
I couldn’t understand what kind of operation they were running so sloppily.
The U.S. and Korean governments had sent non-specialists into a dangerous zone without proper preparation or training.
‘There’s no way they didn’t know…’
I wasn’t certain, but the two countries had started a war for the sake of this operation.
People like that couldn’t have drawn up such a plan without thinking.
‘Does that mean they had to move that urgently?’
What on earth was the reason for such urgency?
The advance party probably wouldn’t tell us that either.
Of course, they themselves might not know…
Breakfast was, as Sergeant An had said, the combat rations we had brought.
People sighed when they saw the combat rations.
Not only those who had served in the military, but the civilians as well had eaten combat rations nonstop for a week.
Of course they were sick of them.
Unlike us, who picked at the food, the advance party wolfed down the combat rations.
It was just as Sergeant An had said—food was in short supply.
After the meal, the schedule that followed was the same.
The very first thing we had to do was secure food.
“We will split the personnel in half. Half will go hunting, and the other half will maintain the base. Those whose names are called, come forward and receive a spear.”
After the meal ended, Team Leader Bak divided the personnel while holding the paper I had seen yesterday.
“I Ganghyeok, U Huimin, Jeong Chanseok…”
The people he called were those who had trained well for the past week, or sturdy men.
“…Hyeon Myeonghan.”
Sergeant An and I were included among them.
Most were men, but three women were included as well.
The girl who had been in front of me was also on the list.
Everyone whose name was called received a spear.
It was a long spear about as tall as I was.
The shaft looked as if it had been made by roughly trimming a branch, and the spearhead appeared to be animal bone.
‘Don’t tell me the advance party made these here.’
In the twenty-first century, when drones rained down bombs, I never imagined I would be holding a bone spear on a planet forty light-years away.
‘The fact that we can’t use guns or other weapons must mean there’s some kind of restriction on spatial transfer, right?’
If there were no restrictions, there would have been no reason to fill the backpacks and bags with combat rations.
Besides, if hunting was possible, they should have brought weapons instead of food.
In any case, I now understood why we had learned the spear during training.
After handing out the spears, Team Leader Bak opened his mouth again.
This time too, it was useless instructions and flattery.
“These are spears the advance party made by risking their lives to hunt beasts. For now, these spears are everything we have, so treat them as you would your own bodies.”
Each group was formed with two members of the advance party and five members of the follow-up group.
Four hunting groups were made that way.
The people leaving to hunt numbered ten from the advance party and twenty from the follow-up group.
Those remaining here were five from the advance party and the remaining half of the follow-up group.
The group I belonged to also had two from the advance party and five from the follow-up group.
The advance party members in our group were a slick-talking Latino American man and a Korean woman in her thirties,
and the follow-up group consisted of me, Sergeant An, the teenage girl who had been in front of me, the know-it-all college student, and a middle-aged man.
Once the groups were set, the hunting groups set out, following the advance party members.
The hunting groups scattered in all directions.
Our group headed toward the direction where the sun rose.
The Latino man at the front had no interest in us—no, in the men.
He merely tossed flirtatious remarks at the woman from the advance party and glanced at the teenage girl.
Instead, the woman from the advance party was kind.
“We need to hurry. A day on this planet is twenty-three hours. The sun sets faster than you’d think, so we have to move quickly.”
Even when she urged us along, she explained why.
“What kind of animal are we hunting? I’ve never hunted before. Can we even catch anything today?”
“You don’t need to worry. We’ll show you a demonstration first. Even if all of you fail to hunt anything today, don’t worry. The advance party members can fill the necessary amount.”
She answered even sharp questions properly.
The people who had been watching for a chance began asking her questions.
Sergeant An started.
“It was too cold last night. Was there no other way?”
She answered with an apologetic expression.
“We haven’t been here for even two weeks yet. We worked hard, but there was far too little time.”
If it hadn’t even been two weeks, that meant they had crossed over right before we arrived at Baekdusan.
While I was thinking, the questions continued.
“Please tell us your name.”
“I’m Kim Huiwon. I used to be a civil servant.”
“How did you become part of the advance party?”
“Civil servants were tested first. I was caught then, and that’s how I ended up coming here.”
She kindly answered even the college student’s questions about her personal background,
“Can we eat the beasts of this planet?”
“Yes. They’re tastier than you’d expect.”
“Are there things like fruit?”
“We still haven’t found any edible grasses or trees. The advance party kept searching, but as you can see, the area around the base is extremely barren.”
and she answered the middle-aged man’s questions about food properly as well.
I also asked her a question.
“Then is hunting, like on Earth, for obtaining meat, bones, and hide?”
“Mm… That’s part of it. There’s one other reason too. I’ll show you directly after the hunt.”
As expected.
They had hurriedly sent people to this planet, so there was no way they were moving solely for survival.
Various questions continued after mine.
However, she did not know much either, and there were some questions she could not answer.
One of them was the question I asked next.
“Is this planet the first place the advance party has gone outside Earth?”
At my question, she shook her head for the first time.
“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that. I signed a security pledge.”
I couldn’t hear the answer, but it was no different from having heard it.
This planet was not the advance party’s first.
The advance party—no, America—definitely had other planets they could reach through spatial transfer.
The place where the advance party trained must have been another planet as well.
Otherwise, they would not have been able to send people to this planet without mistakes.
It was after we had walked for about an hour that the advance party man at the front discovered prey.
Until then, the scenery around us had hardly changed.
Only the dried-up trees and the tumbleweed-like plants rolling about told us that this planet was still alive.
“Stop!”
At the sudden word, the people looked bewildered.
Unlike the follow-up group, Kim Huiwon immediately lowered her body and gestured to the others.
Following her gesture, the people quietly lowered their posture.
It seemed the week of training had been useful.
The people crouching low looked around diligently.
However, the men from the follow-up group found nothing.
The one who found the beast was the girl who had been in front of me.
She narrowed her eyes and stared in the direction the Latino man was looking.
Strangely, a peculiar force was flowing from her eyes.
That force was very similar to what I felt when I heightened my senses.
‘So those eyes were similar to my senses.’
Before the Latino man said anything, I could sense that there was a small beast there.
‘That’s strange. I can feel it much better than before.’
My senses were clearly different from when I had been on Earth.
It felt as if they had become nearly twice as sensitive.
A beast similar to a rabbit was hiding behind a tumbleweed.
The presence I sensed from it felt not like a rabbit, but like a carnivore.
I didn’t know how he had noticed, but it was certain that the Latino man had discovered that beast too.
‘Is this really some kind of supernatural power?’
Ever since I first learned of this sense, I had thought it might be a supernatural power.
And if it was a supernatural power, I had thought I probably wasn’t the only one who had it.
To think I would only confirm that fact after coming to another planet.
‘It’s still not certain yet.’
Including myself, I had confirmed four people with supernatural powers so far.
Me, the schoolgirl, the Latino man up ahead, and the American soldier who had jumped onto the altar yesterday.
There were surely more among the advance party, but the others were definitely still ordinary people.
That was when it happened.
Tap.
The Latino man shot forward.
It was a lightning-like movement I would have missed if not for my senses.
He crossed several dozen meters in an instant.
Papapap!
The next moment, he confronted the beast and thrust out his spear at the same time.
Kyak!
The beast’s sharp scream rang out, followed by the spear driving into its belly.
The man stepped on the struggling beast and continued thrusting his spear into it.
A short while later, the prey stopped moving.
Only then did the people who had been holding their breath manage to speak.
“Wow, I couldn’t even see him.”
“Did he catch it in one strike?”
“My God, how is that even possible?”
It was certainly astonishing.
For just an instant, he had seemed to surpass human limits.
On top of that, although the others didn’t know it, a faint light had dwelled in the spear he kept thrusting.
A light one could barely notice only by heightening one’s senses.
In the spear I was holding right now, a light stronger than that was flowing.