Then he moved on to the descriptions of plants marked edible ones with a special color. By color-coding like this, he would be able to supplement his diet with local plants. Generally, plants consisted of tissues, which looked like cellulose of earthly species, but still there were a few differences in their content. Sometimes Jack's stomach swelled and ached, but to his own delight, such pains were soon gone.
The solution to fruit and vegetable needs was already a matter of habit, but he needed to deal with his protein needs. Jack was hesitant to kill herbivores as he was unaccustomed to eating the meat of killed creatures. On Earth, no one had killed animals for nutrition in a long time. Protein was synthesized in factories, but on Nereus, no such equipment that could produce protein existed. It had been deemed too bulky. More importantly, perhaps, no one expected the mission would experience the hardships that occurred. Only one avenue was left to Jack.
He had to acquire protein the hard way.
As a result, he found himself morally preparing for the day he would need to take up his weapon and hunt.
28
Like the animals he had tried to describe, he would become a predator. Primitive behavior patterns would get the upper hand in his mind, and he would cease being different from those wild animals that were eager to taste flesh and blood. Jack felt dizzy from such scary thoughts, and sometimes it seemed to him that he was about to go crazy because of loneliness. In order not to let that happen, he had to do some intellectual labor, which he could do by exploring and classifying the planet's life. Fortunately, his mind was rational enough to see predators as wild animals, not fellow pack members or rivals competing for food.
Eventually, he summoned up enough willpower to examine the predator that had terrorized the local area for so long. Picking carefully through the frozen remains that had already begun to decompose under the burning sun, he figured out the structure of its paws, wings, and parts of its muzzle and tail. It turned out to be a male.
Jack could not make up his mind whether to call it a beaksnout or a beakosaur. He preferred the latter more. And although the beast's skin wasn't rough, but smooth like a fish's once the scales were scraped off, its claws reminded him of the feet of dinosaurs that inhabited Earth millions of years ago. Jack called the dangerous creature a beaksaur, by analogy, even thinking of the Latin name Сornimanus rostrorhynchus, what was translated as "pterygoid beaksnout".
Generally speaking, Jack wasn't good at Latin. He simply copied famous pioneers like Carl Linnaeus and Georg Ossian Sars, both of whom had described a wide variety of species.
More often than not, the days seemed slow and sticky, causing Jack to realize he needed to train his mind in some way. The most interesting thing he could do, in his opinion, was to think of something new. This suited incredibly well the creation of extraordinary names. There were moments when the research officer was so absorbed in his task he didn't notice when he laughed uncontrollably when some newly created names sounded too funny in translation.
Once he howled with laughter so loud and long that when stopped, he was covered in tiny, prickly goosebumps. He felt apprehensive at his own laughter as it seemed like that of a person who was slowly going out of his mind due to isolation. He stood up from the table and slowly wiped away sweat with his sleeve. It was as if all the liquid in his body was pouring out of his body into some parallel universe, leaving nothing left for him. He stretched his necked, trying to ease the tension in his muscles, yet his heart continued pounding and his entire body shivered.
"Am I going crazy?" he thought, his eyes wide open.
His eyes showed signs of sleep deprivation as tiny red strings wove their way around.
"No, I'm still in control... or am I lying to myself?" he continued to wonder.
Suddenly, miraculously, his head seemed to clear and his body calmed down. His heart began to beat normally.
Walking around the room, he gazed out the panoramic window before shifting his attention to the soulless frame of the teleport, which stood silently on the table. Unconsciously, Jack's hands reached out to grab it. A sharp push sent the device off the table. The lieutenant waited until the teleport stopped its slide along the floor before he pounced on it. Jack was beside himself in fury. He threw it from one corner to the next, before kicking and hitting it, his teeth clenched. His tantrum lasted more than ten minutes. He only regained his senses due to exhaustion. Returning the teleport back to its position, he examined it. Luckily, he didn't seem to cause any visible damage to the device. Convinced all was well, he suited up for a trip outside.
There were some delights about being absolutely alone, such as complete freedom and independence from the desires and opinions of others. He didn't need to care for his looks or watch his diet. He could eat what he liked and do what he wanted. Another advantage was that no one distracted him, which gave him a chance to reflect on life, himself, and his future plans. It was a hermit's paradise where a person eager to isolate himself from the annoying fuss of civilization could do so. To be honest, it wasn't Jack's paradise as he dreamed of returning home to his loving girlfriend and his parents.
In the beginning, he had tried his best to repress memories of Earth, friends, and Gladys, but it was getting harder each day. The tasks of the Avant Light were generic and absolutely exhausting from its monotony. Taking samples and putting them in test tubes was not the most interesting task. To the lieutenant's great despair, he couldn't even thoroughly observe the animals as he was too high up in the air.
The Avant Light's computer, which was the sole leader of the mission, didn't allocate any time for him to observe things from up close nor let him on the ground using the airbike's wheels. Annoyed by this situation, Jack ultimately explained it to himself as a precautionary measure. Over the last several days, he carried out all orders like a robot. He had no wish to start a pointless confrontation with the computer which would never lead to any results. Deep in thought during his long flights, Jack felt he would spend the rest of his life on this planet and no one would come to his rescue. The mission itself and its rationale seemed ridiculous and incoherent.
"Once the food's gone... What's next?" he wondered, scratching the back of his head. "Water I can handle. Condense and boil. I can get energy from the solar batteries... There's even a container with energy resources... But where can I find food? Protein... Animal protein?... Do I need to kill herbivores? Do I really need to eat the meat of some local fauna?”
But what if they're inedible?
29
Understanding that vegetables didn't possess much protein, Jack stopped thinking about if he should hunt and started considering what he'd hunt and how he'd be able to track them.
Sometimes Lieutenant Sallenge had found the remains of dead animals that were slowly rotting away under the rays of the local sun. They didn't smell like the nasty rotten stuff one could feel near a dead cat or dog. On the contrary, it smelled like some marsh water with some burned material nearby.
Jack had noticed that the alien animals had strange skeletons that almost had no whole bones. Their skeletons were formed from many tiny dark bones that created hollow tunnels along their limbs. Such a structure significantly lowered their weight. Then due to low gravitation, their bones became hollow and thin. Water from the few streams and small lakes were stored in thick layers of flesh. Their tendons, which held their bones together, faced inwards. Jack theorized this permitted constant lubrication to preserve elasticity. Many of the bigger creatures had traces of wings. Evolution must have transformed the wings of a few species into something resembling forelegs.
The outward appearance covered a wide range of colors from marsh green to blueish-purple with red lines, but the majority possessed gray, black, or brown tones. Creatures who didn't have red blood like humans or animals on Earth showed a semitranspent green lymph that cycled through their blood vessels instead. Not only did it supply oxygen to tissue, but it provided the animals with a natural immunity. Upon examination of the
chemical make-up of the green lymph, Jack discovered there was coboglobin[1] instead of hemoglobin in the liquid, along with a compound that resembled the molecule chlorophyll, which was what made earthly plants green.
Even the most basic of knowledge about the biochemistry of local lifeforms surprised the lieutenant due to the implication of the universality of how evolutionary decisions are made. Despite being billions of kilometers away from his home planet, there were chemical compounds that resembled those on Earth. Evolution had acted as elegantly as possible, replacing the iron atom that colored human blood red with a similar-looking atom of magnesium. Although it created a different substance, it held the same properties with only a difference in color!
Molecules like hemoglobin supplied oxygen to the body of animals. The plants and animals of Nereus possessed a similar breathing mechanism. At first, Jack theorized that animals were simply moving evolutions of plants that had green blood, but after a closer look, he learned that coboglobin was the primary method of supplying oxygen. In turn, the chlorophyll allowed creatures to synthesize additional energy ATP molecules. It provided them an obvious advantage in terms of energy production.
Jack also managed to find out that in contrast to plants, local animals experienced no biochemical Calvin cycle or Hatch–Slack pathway. This meant they couldn't store glucose at night. The entire structure of life forms was dedicated to the maintenance of inner liquid reserves.
"If both animals and plants can produce oxygen," Jack thought, sitting at the table. "It means that there must be quite a lot in the atmosphere... And yet it's still lower than on Earth. It means oxygen is being compounded with something, of oxidizing something..."
There were dozens of thoughts in his head. He recalled images of tectonic plate fractures from his brief courses on historical geology, and the huge columns that were constructed as chemical equation chairs such as bright points of a star's life cycle. He attempted to draw a conclusion on all these factors that would describe a new chemical equation - the Nereus equation. Jack understood that nothing appeared out of thin air just as nothing completely vanished. Oxygen had to be transforming into something. Its levels were lower than they should be. This meant the task of finding an explanation fell to him. To switch topics, he began thinking about the water reserves again.
A few big plants had an opening to take in water and nutrients. Jack decided to use them to acquire moisture, minerals, and vitamins. The supply of water from Earth was still sufficient for his needs, but the lieutenant knew he would soon have to find potable water somehow. What worried him the most over the last few days was his upcoming animal hunt. Just for that reason, he sampled different types of meat beforehand to assess its nutritional value. Fortunately, nature provided him this opportunity.
30
As he flew about the thick stems of a small deciduous bush, Jack identified a small park of herbivores that slightly resembled rhinos who were under attack from several orange predators. The pack managed to fight back, but one animal received a serious injury and was bleeding.
Jack understood that the creature would either die from its wounds in the near future or be torn apart by scavengers, such as the ones he had seen that looked like four-legged spiders. They always hid in deep holes, but once they caught the scent of lymphs, they would immediately waddle on their short, stubby towards the wounded creature. Their bodies were almost perfect squares that were protected by a hard shell, and their triangular snout ended in a sharp beak with needle-like teeth, such as those of a venomous snake on Earth. First, they would tear their victim apart before drinking the remaining fluids. Jack witnessed this scene once, and for the next two nights, he was plagued by nightmares.
Jack envisioned an ideal picture of this meal, so he quickly descended to capture the animal before the scavengers arrived. As he approached, Jack noticed that the creature was still breathing, but it was in a terrible, almost death-like state. Its tail was partially torn off while its belly gashed. In its current state, the creature could hardly move. The most likely fate that awaited it was to be torn apart and eaten within a couple hours. Jack carefully aimed and shot the "rhino" in its head.
The young officer then sliced a piece of meat from the back and severed a leg. Climbing into his airbike, the officer activated a probe so that it would drag the pieces of raw meat into the lower cargo compartment. Jack was unhappy at having to shoot an innocent creature not in self-defense but for hunting, yet the laws of survival in the wild dictated its own rules.
Returning home, Lieutenant Sallenge spotted the wartstone rounding about the cliff where the pavilion stood. It was a bit odd that the wartstone chose that evening to visit him. Jack dug out some fruit and began feeding the animal, watching how the nutritious juice trailed up the thin tube of the tongue.
As he looked into the two tiny, narrow eyes of the kind creature who trusted him like a friend, Jack reflected on how vile a person he had to be. He would need to kill animals who were as kind as this wartstone just to feed himself until he found an alternative. At that moment, a piece of fresh meat sat in quarantine. The lieutenant felt depressed thinking such thoughts, especially with the realization that it was paradoxical stupidity to be feeding one animal only to kill another in the future. From his virtual history lessons, Jack had learned about the times when people bred cattle only to eat the cows later, but such a concept was revolting to the lieutenant. When he finished feeding the wartstone, he pet its warm snout just above the nose somewhere between its eyes before walking to the pavilion. The wartstone followed him.
"Amigo, I've got nothing more for you today. Just some water," Jack called out in a friendly voice, turning back towards the doors. "Although there's not much left," the officer half-heartedly added.
He unpacked a small transparent vacuum container and extended it towards the wartstone's snout. Amigo slid its tongue into the container and then pulled it out. It went up to Jack and bumped his chest with its nose. Jack figured this gesture was either a friendly greeting or acknowledgment. In response, Jack pushed against the wartstone's side with his shoulder. Amigo obviously wanted to play, but the lieutenant had no time for games. He petted Amigo's snout, tapped its back where there were no warts, and went back home. For some time, the wartstone stood next to the closed door before it turned around and scampered away from the pavilion.
Later than evening, Jack saw green waves dancing on the lid of the container he had placed the meat in. That meant the quarantine period was finished and no dangerous substances or microbes had been found. Slicing off a piece of meat, Jack placed it on a platform between three ball-shaped devices. These were high-powered microwave generators. They quickly warmed up food, providing near instantaneous food preparation. This time, Jack decided to warm the slice of meat a little extra. Once the meat was cooked well done, in Jack's opinion it shrank nearly three times its original size, leaving one sad, shriveled piece of something strange and shapeless.
Lieutenant Sallenge carefully took the warm piece of meat and tried to bite into it. He couldn't do it immediately as the piece of meat was too tough and rubbery for his teeth. It seemed like forever before he finally managed to take a bite, which he had to chew for a long while until he could swallow.
Jack took more than forty minutes trying to choke down the rest of the dish. With no previous examples to compare with, it was difficult to say what the meat tasted like. On Earth, all necessary proteins, fats, and carbohydrates had been synthesized and sold in special containers for eons. The era when people used to hunt game or harvest crops was perceived by modern people as a bygone age almost as ancient as the dinosaurs.
Having choked down the last bite, Jack was lost in his thoughts. His brain was analyzing the rationale for procuring such food. "Did people really hunt animals in the forest only to cook and eat them?" he pondered, considering the sad past when people wandered around. "They didn't even have normal weapons. Some sticks, spears, arrows, and... what did they call them?... hunting rifles. Damn
, most of humanity from the 21st century ate meat. They were already civilized and yet they still are meat," the officer reasoned.
Continuing along this train of thought for another half an hour, Jack suddenly recalled that someone could still rescue him. And if he managed to establish a connection with Earth, they might provide him with some necessary water and provisions. Jack calmed down slightly at this realization. Yet one glance at the lifeless teleport next to him was enough to trigger a wave of concern. In the end, he decided to search more actively for edible proteins, including those founds in plants. During his analysis of plant tissues and cells, Jack uncovered that most were similar to some earthly plants. The most important discovery was that life forms of Nereus possessed the same amino acids as life forms on Earth. This gave him a shred of hope that people would be able to settle on Nereus in time. Certainly, they'd need to eat some of the local flora and fauna, but Jack was certain that in time, the settlers would find a solution.
Jack resolved to ask permission from the Avant Light's computer to collect some additional samples from plants and mushrooms he had previously seen.
The next day, Jack woke up earlier than usual. The vibrant yellowish-red disk of fire with green running along its edges was rising above the horizon. The bright rays that streamed through the pavilion windows lit up the whole pavilion. The morning's cool dampness gently grazed Jack's skin. He was wearing a sleeveless uniform and boots that were designed for running across rough terrain. Jogging along a ledge, Jack looked out over the plain and spotted a small pack of herbivores on the horizon who were walking along a dry hedge.
"Careless animals. Now I'm another potential predator. But this time I'm more hideous and sly than those before me," Jack reflected.
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