Except in the original ‘Star Trek,’ where people tended to be pretty sanguine and ‘Cower, primitive aliens’ about things, there’s always a moment in sci-fi where the heroes look around in total horror at their new planet (on which they have generally crashed and therefore need to get adapted to in a hurry). You know the scene. They’re wearing spacesuits because they don’t know about the air yet. There’s a white woman, a black man, a youngster, a genius, a bully, and a strange cool individual of uncertain background who tends to save the day. And they straighten up from the hatch of their disabled ship and look around, wordless with amazement, fear, dislocation.

And that’s me, here, every day. Still! I keep saying ‘Still!’ every time the plant freaks me out. Still! Because it seems it will never quit resembling an alien planet – the dead landscapes, the crumbled cities, ruins peopled entirely by xenomorphs. The other day I had to get from my office to a monitoring well about 600 yards away. It took almost twenty minutes and it went like this:

2:10: Put on hardhat, steeltoed boots, safety glasses, and hook respirator loosely around neck. Forget visi-vest. It doesn’t help.

2:12: Actually leave office.

2:13: Jump nineteen feet in the air when face gets blasted by vapours coming from unlabelled pipe just outside office door. Attempt to calm down.

2:14: Almost fall down set of rusty-doily metal stairs built in 1958 to provide passage over pipes carrying enough hydrogen sulphide to kill Godzilla. Attempt to calm down.

2:19: Dodge forklift travelling at Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift speed, driven by guy in full coveralls and facemask with no peripheral vision whatsoever. (This happens so often I don’t even blink.)

2:22: Almost at my destination, discover construction area in most direct route. Try to detour.

2:23: Navigate minefield of just-poured concrete, old soil, bluish dustpiles visibly exhaling poison, pits full of fresh asphalt, stacks of screws, bales of wire. Come a cropper in an evil-smelling puddle. Swear at the top of my lungs, realize I can’t hear myself swear, because:

2:26: Have reached loudest building in the world. Move with exquisite stealth and wariness past corrugated sides, because the walls shift and will hit passersby unexpectedly. Hop a thickening dome, slide down side, swear again.

2:27: Climb a four-foot concrete berm. What happened to the stairs? Drop down side into pile of rubble next to trembling five-storey tank full of compressed death. There’s a date written on a sticker peeling off the side: LAST INSPECTION. I refuse to look. I already know it was when disco was king. Attempt to calm down.

2:28: Reach well. Put on respirator. Take measurement.

2:31: Start return journey.

This is my reward for saying “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a lab,” for the gods have an excellent sense of humour and when you say things like this they cannot resist filling in the punchline. Next time I shall keep my big mouth shut.

Tomorrow I’m headed out with some consultants to the tailings pond. It’s supposed to be thirty-four degrees, not including humidity effects. Pray for me. But pick a literal-minded god please.