Take the most intact bird corpse and preform a dissection for any unknown organs or areas.
You head to the low temperature lab where the corpses currently are. The most intact corpse is black one only missing its head and is trapped within hardened net. Standard capturing type, disabled easily with small electric shock. After untangling the net you place the body on table and start dissecting it.
Hmm, its
keel is extended quite much, fully merged with ribs, creating bone shell around the torso. Interesting. You carefully saw and drill the bony shell into pieces and get into internal organs.
"Those are lungs... normal. Heart... four-chambered. Crop... is that a fish? Intestines are there, this is gizzard... and stones. Kidney... and these look like testes, I guess this bird is male." Dissecting the body provides you nothing unusual or unknown. Perfectly normal bird. Probably could live easily on Earth. Fantastic!
Now a study is not proper without studying full body so you find one corpse which has intact head and set out to study it. All actual differences seem to be here. It has second teethed mouth inside its beak, just front of throat. The second mouth has independently moving jaws with inwards pointing teeths, indicating that bird could forcibly pull its prey down into stomach. Four eyes are interesting as they provide the bird almost 330° vision in addition being able to detect infrared light! Very interesting!
The grey ones are identical to black bird, but appear to be females.
Set all my junk back in the armory, then get a cup of coffee.
You unload your weapons to armory, leave the enviro-suit into lockers and wear your usual uniform. That done you head to mess hall to get your cup of coffee and find there Theron drinking booze. You hear him calling military escort ship.
(This exchange happens through military channel and all security personel can hear it)
"This is Theron Drakosen, head of security of Biology Unit 2. I request a fucking orbital bombardment!"
"Copy that. State coordinates and a reason.""The fucking forest north of us. You don't need a reason, just burn it all into hell!"
"Negative. You have to provide a proper reason for bombing.""Fuck you! Did you stick a rod into your ass?! The aliens are probing us with a radar! Kill them before they kill us!"
"...Radar? You should be establishing first contact rather than killing them.""KILL THEM NOW OR I DO IT! DO I REALLY HAVE TO EVERYTHING BY MYSELF?"
Now new voice speaks:
"This is marshal Martin. Your request for bombing is denied. I have heard about your opinion about this planet. Due this and your open hostility you are hereby removed from your rank as a head of security and from security forces entirely. Cromwell Jackson, you are promoted to new head of security of Biology Unit 2. You first task is to arrest your ex-superior. Then investigate these radar signals he mentioned. Until it is solved, you have full authority on the base."Check both water samples and see if it's safe for human consumption. Check if the "ink" might be toxic. Finishing all that, work on the vaccine György requested.
György ignores all the commotion at the base and starts pestering the doc with text messages about a vaccine. He also takes a water sample (if there is any) and tries to look deeper into the various microorganisms that live in it, prioritizing on whether is it safe to drink.
Jonathan goes to laboratory and puts lakewater sample into tester while trying to ignore György's messages. The machine spits out analysis pretty quickly.
"UNKNOWN MICROORGANISMS DETECTED. UNSAFE AMOUNT OF SOIL DETECTED. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR DRINKING WITHOUT DISTILLING." This does not suprise him at all.
Since Jonathan ignores György's messages he stomps into Jonathan's lab and pesters him directly.
"YES! Er, ahem. I'm working on your bloo- er. Your vaccine. Give me a moment while I ensure we have drinking water first, and then you will have your vaccine!" Jonathan is very clearly struggling, and largely failing, at disguising his annoyance.
Satisfied with this György takes remaining water sample from river and puts it into another tester. A moment later he gets same result as Jonathan did earlier.
Jonathan places droplet of the "ink" into analyzer. This takes longer than water samples did but eventually results come out. It is just ink, almost completely identical to ones used by octopuses on Earth. You let out small sigh of relief.
Now then on the vaccine: You head to you own personal laboratory and prepare the machinery. The data and bacteria samples György provides you are very helpful, he basically did part of the job for you.
The vaccine should be ready by next morning.
Fire just one shot from my pistol at the dogs with aim to kill and holster it while taking off up the nearest Type-2 tree and climbing as high as I can.
(It seems my mind was totally elsewhere when I described the trees. When I wrote diameter I meant to write circumference. So the trees are not really that massive...)
You point your pistol towards larger one, shoot and turn to run away without checking results. You drop your bug jar, holster your pistol and run as fast as you can towards the tree covered with vines. You run up the roots and jump as high you possibly can, grab the vines and start climbing. You hear jaws snapping just below. Looks like the doggy missed you by width of hair. You almost make it up to first branch when vine breaks under your weight. Panic flares inside you as you try to get hold of another vine and just barely manage grab one. First branch is just a meter away.
Looking down you see the dog you shot laying where it was standing. The other one is backing away and gnarling at you. It stops after few meters and sprints towards the tree you are climbing. Looks like it is going to try a wallrun to get you.
((Hey guy about to get eaten did it cross your mind to call for help?))
Mark goes and gets in one of the flying craft to scout the incoming radio signals
By how it sounds on military channel it looks like you have a new boss. It doesn't really matter since you doing the right thing anyways. You head to the hangar to get single-person flyer and be promptly launched outside. You fly towards the coordinates Communications officer gave to you and upon arrival start looking for possible sources. There's really nothing in particular that cathces your eye, besides some creatures eating something red. Those creatures match the description Guni gave earlier. Speaking of her, you wonder where she is.
Inspect for above average variation in DNA implying incredible adaptability which could lead to such discrepancies.
Only DNA available currently are of those bacterias György examined earlier. Then there's few bird corpses, but nobody has done DNA reading on them yet. So you head to where the bodies are kepth and find Alex already dissecting them. You get sample from all seven bodies and have dna sequencer map them. Ten minutes later you have fully mapped genome in your disposal. You are quite thankful for advancements in technology, a century ago it would taken hours to map single chromosome, can you believe it? They must have had patience of mountains back then.
Now, best data on the planet is in your hands and you begin to inspect all it.
(To avoid stretching time too much you get results on next turn. Such analysis is not done fast.)
1: Guni Debres
2: Mark Redtail in flyer
3: Guni's flyer
Currently we have following samples on ship:
* Springy grass (Partially studied)
* Soil samples (Studied) - Awaiting reaction from Geo teams.
* Seven corpses of large four eyed birds (Studied)
** Two almost intact
* Living aquatic creature in a water tank. (Not studied)
Author
Topic: The Mind: Day 4 - Finale (Read 112717 times)