((So it will be a one year mission. Huh.))
9 months of it may be just sitting around waiting for the ship to get back. Because I'm not gonna force too strict a time table or anything. When I said I year I just wanted to impress upon people it would be a long mission, where as most are a day or a few at most.
Team Blue"What the hell are those? Let's take it a bit slow from here in case those things are hostile..."
Take a closer look at those things with the zoom function, then keep mapping the distortions. Keep a good distance from the blobs.
The blobs are big things, probably 10 feet tall in their largest sections, and spread out like marmalade across the land. You can make out vague things within them; like strands of shimmering thread that refract with a rainbow of colors, like the shine on spilt oil.
((I am great indeed.))
((Don't push your luck. In Flint's home world they burn witches. Now that the obligatory "burn the witch" joke is done with...))
Keep on mapping. Shoot small pebbles at Vich while he isn't looking, while muttering "Enemy of progress". Consider what would be the best way for testing whether or not he is a witch.
((EDIT: Too bad I didn't have my exosuit with me. I could have used the mapping drones I had on it to prove that the corridor is safe and that I should continue exploring...))
((EDIT2: Notes updated. Gave Anton a roboarms acknowledgment. And gave Morul a dangerous alien shit warning. And fixed some bad image links. And we have mapped ~8% of the planetoid in one real life month, so assuming a linear progression we get that we will have mapped the planet in 12 real life months from now.))
You spend the next hour or two of mapping pelting the back of Vich's helmet with stones and screaming about the need for a good old fashioned inquisition.
((I am great indeed.))
Continue exploration
Team Blue continues wandering the edge of the distortion. Though it extends into the neighboring area, it doesn't seem to go terribly far.
Team greenclean suit, especially boots
Head to the lab and try to perform a metallurgical analysis on my samples to discern iron purity and trace elements.
Eat, sleep and be merry stuck on an alien insane asylum.
Well, the lab doesn't have a mass spectrometer or anything like that, so how do you want to handle the whole identification thing? You've got some basic tools and instruments, but remember this lab is more for identification and broad labeling of samples then real scientific work.
Labeling, by the way, being one thing that no one has done with their samples so far.
"...Owww. My legs."
Rest, clean, sleep and then wait for team while having a small bite to eat.
"Whew. Fuck me, that was close. Annnd now I have to get back to home base with only one eye. Know what, fuck that."
You continue mapping for a while but you are quite tired, hungry and most of all dehydrated. And you've got no food or water that didn't melt or vaporize.
Continue mapping zone.
Brother Lars nods at his team. "Brothers, we will rest here for the night, then finish our mapping of the zone in the morning. May Steve watch over you all."
The digital copy of the book was on your datapad. Which melted.
Eat drink sleep. Read god entry of Hal-mon, Father of the Engineer's Pantheon before bed.
Green team, minus their resident pirate, gets some food, some water-or stronger beverage of their choice-and heads to bed after a shower, since they're collectively stinking of sweat and sulfur.
Team redKeep truckin' ( AKA keep mapping edge of anomaloy, while Lucas throws rocks around).
Follow the leader
Keep up with the group, mapping as needed.
Red team finishes up mapping the area. The rest of the anomalies they find are similarly vision, or maybe light?, based and seem benign, or at least not overtly dangerous.
Team BaseMesk takes a step back and admires his work as Anton uses his new hands.
"You wouldn't even know it was me, huh? Wanna do your feet next? Uh, never mind. Go ahead, I'll keep cleaning up around here."
Take inventory of the infirmary again. Check radiation levels in and around it, especially where the radioactive rock was.
Seems like your supplies are holding out just fine. This was only the first injury, after all.
Radiation levels are normal, or at least only slightly above background in the infirmary and it's hall. Although the slight elevation might have something to do with the container full of blue bead like things you're still carrying.
Anton gets back into his suit, and chuckles as he flicks his suit radio onto the general frequency. "Anton Chernozorov of Base Team reporting to anyone interested - the base infirmary has completed its first on-site operation, and the recent case of radiation injury has been handily resolved. Barring any more surprises from you explorers, we now have a firm grasp on the situation, but let me point out that we got off lightly, and advise that any future experiments around dangerous objects be coordinated with XO Simus, lest things start getting out of hand here." He turns off the comms and chuckles some more, finaly setting down onto a nearby bench.
Impress nobody with a series of terrible puns. Re-gather belongings and find a place to rest. Download to the pad, and watch some footage of another previous crewmember to pass the time, see what they had been up to besides what we already know. Had they actually encountered a zone storm to be afraid of one? They referred to a "next time" - look for a "first time".
You scan through the data in bed and find only one other good shot of what might be the first zone storm. It coincides with the odd cut off from the team leader's camera. It's from someone out in the infirmary: For a few seconds before the camera distorts and cuts out, you can see saint elmo's fire on some of the metal tools in the room.
Map:
http://i.imgur.com/Mb5rRPE.png