When Earth was Mushrooming

Long before trees overtook the land, earth was covered by giant mushrooms 24 feet tall and three feet wide, these giant spires dotted the ancient landscape. These gigantic fungi existed here on earth approximately 420-370 million years ago. Dinosaurs, on the other hand did not arrive here until around 230.5 million years ago. In other words, the mushrooms were here up to 190 million years before the dinosaurs. Don’t try to count that on your fingers and toes unless you are a gazillopede.

Not many Earthlings are aware of this but intelligent beings from far-away star systems used to travel here to harvest those mushrooms which were unlike anything else known in the universe. These other beings would fell these 20-24 feet tall treelike fungi, load them onto specially designed carriers, each of which could hold thousands of these plants, keep them alive, make medicines from them and transport them back to their own planetary systems.

Let me take you aboard one of these spaceships. It was a huge vessel - not unlike a modern day cruise ship with multiple decks – storage below for thousands of giant mushrooms; one deck for a laboratory, another two for manufacturing, and of course decks of cabins, meeting areas, hospital, fitness and other amenities for the crew of 700 or so but, of course, it was shaped somewhat differently for riding the waves of space.

I have taken the liberty of translating speech from Syddyck – the language of the Sydd beings. Sydds are much larger than humans. They have a bluish tinge to their skin and move rather slowly. Their language is more a series of clicks, grunts and whistles. I will also translate measurements and anything else you may need to understand.

If you were to stack three humans of average size atop one another, the result would somewhat resemble a Sydd – 17-18 feet tall and about 300 pounds - say 200 kilos. Needless to say, their ships were built to accommodate such sizes.

“Captain Vlaa, sir, we have reached our destination. That is Urdd on your screen, sir.”

“Somebody please clean the screen for me. I can’t see anything. Are there any creatures down there?”

“That is not your screen, sir. Urdd is covered by a misty atmosphere. With the size of our ship, we must dock above the atmosphere otherwise we would be sucked down and crash because of their gravity. As for creatures, no – at least none that we know of, sir, although there is life in plant form and our sensors have picked up indications of movement in the oceans that suggest life capable of moving about. We will take a precautionary force with us in the landing party, just in case.”

“Good thinking, Devas. How long before we touch down?

“Approximately an hour, sir.”

“Excellent. I am ready to stretch my tentacles.”

“You may be wondering if we will be able to breathe when we are on Urdd. Yes, the atmosphere is Oxygen, Carbon and Nitrogen in fairly close percentages to what we are used to, but we will each wear a compensator to automatically adjust the percentages to our preference.

“You will also notice an odor in the air that is rather strong. It is a musty smell and emanates from the fungi that you will see everywhere. Our landing craft operators must be very cautious because these mushrooms are taller than we are and they spring up out of the ground in a matter of seconds, reaching full height immediately.

Should a landing craft happen to drop down onto an open spot and a mushroom spore opens beneath them, the craft will be hurled into the air. Our sensors are usually able to detect these underground spores but not always and they erupt with a huge force.”

Finally, an exploratory landing party of three vessels safely touched down on the strange new world called Urdd. The crews immediately adjusted their compensators, checked their weapons, instruments, and whatever else they were carrying and set out to explore Urdd. On all sides, giant dark mushrooms seemed to be watching them.

BANG! A spore opened, surface dirt, plants and debris blanketed the surrounding area and nearby crew. Where there was nothing a second ago, that space was suddenly occupied thanks to the birthing of an odorific fungus that peered down at them from a height that was several feet taller than they were.

“This is going to be an interesting mission, Captain.”

743 words.

©March 2021 Robert W. F. Taylor