?
The aliens eagerly got to work pulling water to the surface and then testing it with a leaf from one of the won's packs.
"The leaf turns bright red if it cos into contact with any liquid that isn't water. We use them for testing our drinking water every day to make sure that it is still safe to drink. One ti, after so of the vines overgrew a piece of grassland inside, the water turned bad for a while, so now we check all the ti." She explained.
"It is a good idea, especially up here. You never know what is in the water or what has happened to it. But if the leaf says that it is safe to drink, we will verify with our scanners, and then you can wash everything to take inside and feed your friends." The Team Leader agreed.
The water was actually very pure, and she had already scanned it when she found the well, but there was no harm in double-checking.
Once the water was determined to be safe, the roots and berries were quickly washed and carefully placed on the sheet, along with all of the berries and seeds that they had determined were edible.
The mound of food must have weighed hundreds of kilos, and it was nearly as tall as the diminutive aliens when they finished, but there were still many more plants of most of the types in the area.
They had been careful not to harvest all of the fruits or seeds from any plant and not to damage the plants themselves, except in the case where they were pulling up root vegetables.
They had centuries of practice doing things that way to ensure that they didn't lose a vital crop species, and even at that, they had still lost most of them to the low light conditions.
"Do you think that we could bring even more light into the do eventually?" One of the n asked.
"You certainly could. Just open the cavern that we created even wider, and you will get more light. But rember that everything in there right now is adapted to growing in very little light, so if you do it too soon, you might kill a lot of the plant life before it can be replaced or adapted." The Team Leader reminded him.
The man bopped himself on the head three tis, which seed to be their version of 'I stand corrected' and then gave a little bow.
"We will keep that in mind. Inside and outside plants. Who would have thought that we would be the ones to see the outside world, and not the ones who had to tell their children that we were moving rations down below subsistence?" The group leader replied happily.
"We will carry this back in for you, and then we need to go. Our shuttle is finishing with its tasks here, and our work is done. We will keep an eye on your species from a distance, though, so we hope you do well, even though we won't be here to help." The Team Leader inford him.
"You have done more than we could have ever hoped for. I am certain that our people will make you proud now that you have given us a new lease on life.
We still have construction plans to restart what the first generation called farms, so we will begin one near here, where the food products end. Harvesting them intentionally is said to grow much more than just picking the wild ones, and then we will have more than we could ever need." He agreed.
"Alright, let's see the look on everyone's faces when we co back with a huge bag of food. They have been waiting inside to find out if you all died on contact with the outside air or if you all got sick, rember?"
That sobered up the mood. Indeed, they had forgotten that there were people waiting to find out if the outside was liveable. They had just been so caught up in what they found that they forgot that nobody else knew yet.
"We need to tell them right away. But first, everyone repeat back the process so that there are no mistakes returning." The first man who had made contact with the Hunters demanded.
"To return, go back through the hidden hatch and then close it behind you. Enter the bottom chamber and seal the door before you open the door into the tunnels. Seal that door behind you. Turn right at the second intersection, then make your third left to get to the topside." They repeated in unison.
"Good work. Now, let's go."
The group carefully repeated the actions as if they were a holy ritual, but it did ensure that the safe procedures for returning to the biodo were followed and that there was no breach of environntal integrity.
They made their way through the tunnels and found that the entire population was waiting for them at the last set of doors into the biodo, the ones that they had left open to cleanse the air in the lower tunnels so they could move around.
"Welco back, brave explorers. Tell us, how is the pollution? Can we survive out there? Is there anything left?" The leader asked.
"Indeed, there is sothing left. We found that the area around the entrance was covered in wild food, just waiting for us to co outside. The air is clean and breathable, and there is a well with water that the water leaves say is safe to drink.
We used it to clean a small bag of food that our benefactors say should be safe for us to eat. It looks like the food that the old pictures say we had inside, so it should be safe for our stomachs, but we waited until we got back so that none were tempted to eat more than their share."
The Team Leader sent her mbers forward with the massive sheet filled with food, and the whole group gasped in awe, falling to their knees and bowing down to the food.
Or possibly the Hunters, but the Team Leader suspected that it was the food.
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