By the time help arrives, those that did not die in the crash are in very bad shape. Dangerously thin, even their Gyiik friend. What was the problem? Poisonous plants? Yes and no. Large plants were edible, but to get to them, one had to traverse the equivalent of a field full of miniature gympie-gympie, and they were right in the center of a massive meadow of them. Native animals were immune, humans and others? Not so much.
https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-04298-k280-suspected-supply-issue -- Anon Guest
To be fair, they tried everything. Humans were ingenious when it came to solving problems. When confronted with the fact that the good food was on the other side of incredibly toxic plants, they got inspired by desperation. They tried using the hides of the native creatures. They tried jury-rigging equipment to excavate a path or at least kill the barrier into harmlessness.
They tried setting the offending plants on fire.
In desperation, after each attempt resulted in injury, toxins, or damage to important equipment, they tried using stilts to cross.
If it's dumb and it works, it's not as dumb as initially conceived. The only problem, once the initial mastery of moving at all in stilts was conquered, was how to bring back the harvests they accomplished. They could only move so much with extreme effort and a lot of dexterous stability attempts.
The ultimate solution involved a true kludge involving strapping the stilts to surviving livesuits with a few spare straps and at least one elastic band. Then using a third tall pole to help keep them steady. Well. Them and the one person they carried to the harvesting meadow. For the twenty minutes they could stand to be out there.
Which was honestly a good thing since the one on stilts couldn't carry much more than one person and what they could gather in twenty minutes. Which was not a lot.
Not enough to feed all of them, even with Gyiik magic working in their favour. Printed food and molecular reassembly could only do so much. Especially with the base material they had to work with. At least they had plenty of fibre in their diets. Plenty of paper to make things with, if need be.
Experiments with pulling up the blighty-blighty plants[1] with cellulose-fabric protective gear were... not giving the best results. Three people could pull up one toxic blighty-blighty per day, with a day of rest to recover from the toxins that managed to find their way in regardless of their efforts to prevent them.
The good news was that some of the toxins could be manipulated into some pretty decent painkillers. Which they tore through owing to complications with the blighty-blighty. Some was always reserved for Gyiik Hypp, who they really needed to make the food they could get into something palatable.
When the rescue teams finally came, they'd almost created a path to the edible plants. It was the proximity to nearly having an easier supply that annoyed the survivors more than anything.
At least the payoff from the planet might help them feel better about making it out alive.
[1] This common name has been HEAVILY bowdlerised.
[Photo by Paul Morley on Unsplash]
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