The younger Sallenge knew a lot and had many useful skills before his university education started. For him, it felt easy and exciting to reveal the genomes of different organisms, mixing nucleotide DNA blocks to create animals with new, extraordinary features. But Jack completely stopped doubting his choice when he met Gladys.
Her green eyes enchanted the young Academy student. Her long dark silky hair had the beautiful fragrance of meadow flowers. Jack had never met any other woman like her. Her proud posture made him involuntarily stop and gape.
Standing in the middle of the silent steppe plain and smelling the cold air, the first lieutenant felt the memories of his sweetheart overwhelming him again. His eyes teared up, his forehead wrinkled, and his lips spasmed. He was about to weep when suddenly, as though he was summoned by his iron will, he pulled himself together and waved these melancholic thoughts off, realizing that he'd never have enough spiritual resources to fight off his own self if he let it. Jack walked back home, always looking up with a secret glance to peer at the Sun in the night sky.
33
Reaching his pavilion, Jack noticed a green light on the cover of the quarantine container.
"I can work with it now," he thought.
The rest of the night he spent sitting at the laboratory table, examining the samples.
Once he reached the rock-like cocoons, the research officer became thoughtful, wondering what he should do with the life form inside. He took a scanner and decided to build a 3D-model first. By matching the newly acquired information with the data file on creatures of Nereus and Earth, the computer concluded the object was like an egg where a larva of an animal formed.
But this answer didn't satisfy Jack. Placing the rocky egg under the protective glass, he started unwrapping it carefully. Jack used manipulators under the glass in case the life form turned out to be aggressive. Scales protected the thin and fragile semitransparent membrane. Making a few circular movements inside the egg, the larva suddenly froze and dropped to the bottom. He was carefully cutting through the membrane and poured some sticky yellowish-brown liquid into a test tube. Then he placed the egg to the side and started studying the makeup of the liquid. To his surprise, the larva suddenly began moving its paws towards the top of the egg. Steam drifted from the egg's surface where the larva was. Jack immediately jumped up, uncertain how to react.
His eyes shot open in surprise before he returning his focus to the table to see what would happen. He watched the creature for a moment until he realized what it was. The larva wasn't an infant, but it was a mature life form. The liquid inside its egg was its habitat. The steam glued molecules on the liquid's surface, turning them into the new outer membrane. Jack couldn't contain his delight at learning the sticky fluid of the egg resembled the whites of a chicken leg somehow. The next moment, he came up with the name for the specimen - the albuminous larval.
Nereus biological objects (Code: Nero-8). Xenobiology manual.
Research shows that albuminous larvals have microspheres that sunk into the mucus, which contains the embryos of small larvae. Presumably, the egg is thought to be a form of reproduction, like a zoospore. Other, mostly predatory, organisms drink the liquid from the egg, spreading the lavral's embryos through their feces across the steppe, thereby enlarging the territory of this life form. Once reaching a favorable environment, the larva digests the organic materials from fecal matter to build elements that create long bands in a thick layer of the sand's or soil's surface. Using groundwater and soil nutrients, as well as partly acquiring energy through photosynthesis, the new organism produces a colony of larvals. Usually, many larvae gather in one place, and they're able to actively propagate, expanding the colony's territory. Over time (from a few months to a couple years), the colony splits into smaller ones. When the biomass reaches critical size, large rocky eggs appear. The larva always mixes the egg whites to prevent it from hardening under the sun. Predatory oropharyngeal often eat the whole contents of the egg, including the larva itself. The larva's body is broken down in the digestive tract of oropharyngeas, while embryos that are surrounded by protective cover of the microsphere leave through fecal matter.
The larva itself, no matter how he looked at it, seemed inedible to Jack. Then he resolved to find a way how to extract the creature from the egg so that it stayed alive. The next few days, every evening, after returning from the Avant Light's tasks, Jack analyzed the larva's behavior. Being able to extract the whites might address his upcoming food shortage. Once, he poured all the liquid from the egg to see what happened. The larva started curling up, moving its gooey paws. It looked absolutely helpless without the liquid. Between just five or seven centimeters long, it looked less like a crab and more like a soaked dragon with a flat belly.
Looking at the creature's torment, Jack poured some water into the egg followed by some juice from his favorite fruit. The larva started moving its limbs more intensively. A few moments later, it calmed down, dropping to the bottom of the egg. The next morning Jack discovered that instead of water and juice, there were egg whites inside again! Jack wouldn't forget the delight he felt for a very long time. There were no small larvae swimming in the whites, which only played into Lieutenant Sallenge's hands.
Jack quickly learned how to extract the egg whites before giving the larval fruit juice and water. Over the course of the next week, he tried feeding the life form with different types of juice, finding out that the larval was fairly open to anything. With that, the questions regarding protein and amino acids were solved. Jack learned to filter the egg whites using the food dispenser to cook along with meat or other boiled proteins. Occasionally, he just drank raw liquid. At the same time, he stopped consuming the protein stored in containers brought from Earth. Jack eventually returned to the same place he had crushed the rocky cocoon to collect a few more eggs to organize a small protein production line back home.
From time to time, Jack surprised even himself at what the human brain was capable of when placed under unusual circumstances.
34
It was another typical morning when Jack climbed onto his airbike, ready to carry out new tasks for the Nereus mission. The officer had familiarized himself so well with the local area surrounding the pavilion that sometimes it seemed to him as if he hadn't left Earth at all. After switching on the screen, a list of tasks was displayed along with map coordinates. To his surprise, there was only one task for the day. Task number 284. Jack looked at the screen and gulped, feeling his mouth going dry.
"Damn, that's all... Just the one task?" This thought seemed to send his mind into a swamp of doubts, drowning him in its viscosity. The final task seemed to be at first a lifesaver before a fearful thought struck him.
"What's next?"
Then the inevitable question that followed.
"What will I do?"
Clenching his teeth, Jack activated the aircraft's flight control systems, switched to manual control, grabbed the wheel, and rushed off to sector GF-318. This location was unfamiliar to Jack, who was becoming more curious to find out what exactly could be of interest to the Space Agency. The officer had to cover a distance of over four thousand kilometers. Jack hadn't gone such distances so quickly before. The adrenaline slowly began to get pumping in his blood.
There was no hint of clouds in the sky that day, but the local sun hadn't started to burn in full. The morning made Jack feel more cheerful, leading his thoughts towards undiscovered areas. At first, he was flying at the speed of 300 kilometers per hour, glancing at the landscape below from time to time. He saw familiar streams, hills, and rocky mountain chains. But eventually he realized that if he continued at the current speed, he'd be returning in the evening. This caused Jack to step up his pace. 400 kilometers per hour, then 600, and then 900. Lieutenant Sallenge could almost feel the wind whipping by him in spite of the airbike's protective forcefield. His ears seemed to clog, and he stopped hearing the engine roar, but this didn't make him slow down.
When he surpasse
d 1,150 kilometers per hour, there was a boom and the airbike shifted back before being propelled through the airflow. Jack overcame the local atmosphere's speed of sound barrier. He could feel a nasty ringing in his ears, his chest seemed to flatten, and he was pressed into the seat. Finally, his speed reached 4,000 kilometers per hour. At that moment, manual control switched off, and Jack had nothing left to do but observe the work of the autopilot. He yowled from the excitement and adrenaline boiling in his blood. He felt the sudden urge to lower the frontal part of the forcefield to experience the power of the airflow, but the autopilot had already blocked this function.
The next moment the airbike tilted down sharply and to the side. It was like something big and black was running alongside the airbike at top speed. It was impossible to discern anything around him. Only the blurred lines of the landscape. A few minutes later, the aircraft shot downwards, making Jack think he would be turned inside out. He arrived at the arranged sector in less than an hour and a half. He had never experienced so many Gs before in simulators back on Earth, most of which had been created for zero gravity conditions.
A column of dark smoke a couple kilometers high drifted upwards. The aircraft smoothly and rapidly descended towards the ignescent crater of a gigantic volcano, which was overflowing with boiling magma. The base of the volcano had a diameter of a couple dozen kilometers, and its height had to be at least 750 meters. The orangish-red crater looked like a gigantic eye from afar, but after looking at it up close, one could see that it looked more like a pot with rough edges, like where burnt oatmeal had overflown. While approaching, one could see the volcano quickly getting larger. Jack felt the airbike was on the verge of diving down to the thick, hot burning lava. Absolutely lost, he suddenly thought the autopilot was off, but a quick check reassured him it was still on. This made Lieutenant Sallenge shift in his seat and lean back.
A few minutes later, to his ecstasy, the aircraft summited the peak of the volcano and then descended to the mountain's base. On the way, the probe snatched a piece of hot but cooling lava, confidently putting the trophy in the cargo compartment.
Being next to a terrifying volcano that lived and breathed heat and ash, Jack was simultaneously overcome with shock and awe. Any moment, several dozen tons of incandescent magma could be shot out the top, destroying everything in its path. Jack sat up in his seat a little and pressed his palms to the airbike's forcefield. The energy shield was warm to the touch. That meant the temperature near the volcano was so high that even the aircraft's forcefield, which had excellent heat dispersion properties, couldn't entirely accomplish its job.
Ten minutes later, the airbike, controlled by the autopilot, gradually lowered, flying along the base of the mountain, moving away from the dangerous crater and its scalding-hot ancient rocks. Jack shifted around in his pilot's seat. This volcano hadn't been marked on the map that Captain Graham had shown them long ago. Otherwise, Jack thought he would have definitely memorized such a natural landmark.
"Perhaps it's not usually active," he thought. Moving away from the base of the volcano, Jack saw sophisticated trails of lava spreading out. They formed islands and channels in the most intricate ways imaginable. The channels twisted about like snakes while hard bumps swelled above the surface. Occasionally, sharp columns seemed to rise up somehow. After a while, the layer of absolutely dry and deeply cracked lava gradually stopped as if merging into a single layer with the dark soil.
It was real soil, similar to that found in parks and forests on Earth. Thin, leafless grassy plants could be seen on the fertile layer. They looked like an undersized forest that divided the volcano's territory with plant territory. It was impossible to say whether the landscape and its diversity of flora pleased Jack, but in comparison to the sandy steppe desert, what he saw looked like a huge, thriving ecological system. On the plain next to the volcano, the soil was rich in nutrients, allowing different bushes, grasses and small trees to grow. Unusual creatures resembling small rodents wandered to and fro. Jack assumed that the lava hadn't reached here for many centuries, allowing the plain to be covered in plants.
He noticed a couple of strange, flat creatures on thin legs in the distance. They leapt vertically and moved their flat bodies forward in an indescribable manner. Always vaulting in pairs, they rose a meter and a half above the ground almost in sync. These jumps made the lieutenant laugh and smile at those creatures, even though they couldn't care less about him. Flying for a few meters, Jack lowered the front deflector in order to breathe in the smell of the local air. A slight burning smell was present, a reminder that the volcano was still there, although it was bearable. He could sense a more intense grassy smell, emitted by nearby bushes and trees. From somewhere, he could sniff the incredibly delicate fragrance of apricot and honey. It seemed to be coming from the top of some grassy stem.
The smell of burning volcano mixed with gentle, fragrant herbs created an atmosphere like some ancient kitchen where a fruit cake had been slightly scorched. Jack turned towards the volcano to compare the sights he was witnessing. Gorgeous, even by earthly standards, plants grew up the huge mountain. A column of thick black smoke billowed from the base, climbing into the clouds where it became dark gray. Hot fertile soil became a real shelter for many plant and animal specimens.
Jack switched to manual control again and tried to fly slowly and smoothly so that he wouldn't miss any detail of the landscape. From time to time, the Avant Light's computer corrected his route so the airbike could collect another sample of some plant or mineral. The landscape appealed to the lieutenant, and for a moment he felt he was at some distant place on Earth. He had discovered the territory where people typically didn't reach. At school, they were told there had been absolutely wild and untouched areas of nature before the cataclysms on Earth.
Research of the ecosystem at the volcano's base continued for about an hour and a half. The airbike hovered above a small pool when, ten meters away from it, a rustle was heard in a tall bush between two dwarf trees. The sounds intensified, and a small animal leapt out of the bush. It looked like a small wild boar with colorful luminescent spots. It quickly halted when it saw Jack's airbike. Its legs were sinking into the rich fertile soil, and its brain seemed to begin a danger assessment of the never before seen aircraft. The animal was staring at the Earthling with its single eye.
Jack couldn't make it out clearly in the distance, but the creature seemed to turn its head 360 degrees before rushing to the side towards a small bunch of brown grass. Silence fell for a few moments as Jack slowly moved towards those bushes. A couple moments later, he heard a thump coming from nowhere, and the branches of bushes started being pushed aside something huge and massive. An instant later, huge, long narrow claws stretched from the grass, followed by the blackish-gray body of a predator that stretched almost three and a half meters. The claws, which resembled scissors, clacked together. Moving on four limbs,
The predator stopped two meters away from the airbike. Rising up on its hind legs with lightning speed, it roared fiercely, accompanied by a terrifyingly loud whistle. It looked even more ferocious in that pose.
Suddenly the beast snapped its claws and lunged forward towards the officer. The airbike hovered no more than four meters above the ground. Sluggish, Jack's hands seemed to go numb as they gripped the controls. With a single jump, the beast struck the lower part of the aircraft's forcefield, rocking the airbike. Jack regretted that he had allowed himself to relax and forget he wasn't on Earth but on a planet where he's an absolute stranger.
Unable to maintain his sitting position, the unexpected movement caused Jack to slide from his seat until he was wedged between the axial part of the craft and the side deflector. Unfortunately for Jack, his leg was now exposed as it hung outside the protection of the shield. As the airbike began drifting to the side, Jack felt a something sharp pierce his leg, followed by intense pain.
"I've become someone's lunch," Jack thought, feeling the warmth of his blood flowing out from the
wound in his leg.
Earth gets in contact
35
"Sam, I'm sorry that mom and I didn't have time to get to know your beautiful girlfriend," Herbert Norwell said, skillfully manipulating an old-fashioned fork and shifting his gaze from his wife to a smiling girl with beautiful almond-shaped eyes.
He felt guilty towards Sam because he still hadn't found an opportunity to get to know his son's new girlfriend. Although there was an incredible amount of work with his new position and new colleagues, Herbert discovered it much easier to find some free time. Yet Norwell also felt guilty about another issue, a much more important one, and he hesitated to tell his son about it. That afternoon, after dining out for dinner, served with old-fashioned forks and knives, he convinced himself it was time to tell Sam the truth.
"Yeah, we thought you'd only want to meet Janet on your deathbed," Sam tried to joke.
Any other moment, Herbert would be angry at these words, even to the point of giving his son a stern lecture. But today's feelings of guilt and worry weighed on his heart, suppressing all other emotions. He barely smiled, then looked at his wife before deciding to change the subject to something more positive, as if he hadn't heard anything.
"Let's have dinner and raise our glasses of wine to the new future Norwells," he suddenly said in a cheerful tone.
Sam choked. Sally, his mom, gave her son a worried look.
"It's okay, mom," Sam said, coughing. "Dad flips from one extreme to the other. We haven't gotten engaged."
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