The next morning Joe was again sitting at her console. With the ship in a stable orbit around a planet there was little to do, so she checked the reports from the last expedition on what she had missed.
She quickly found that Sarah had been right, the ecosystem was tightly knit and interesting. The planet could easily become the prime farming colony for humanity – an intergalactic breadbasket in no time.
With even more interest she read the report on her hospitalization. Initially it had seemed like no big deal, lots of people where allergic to something. But the report went into great detail on how low the likelihood of that happening on an alien world really was. Joe had naturally spent her youth growing up between worlds long inhabited by humans – traveling between them on her families freighter precisely and nothing like that had ever happened to her or anyone she knew before.
She still could not help feeling a bit embarrassed about the incident.
She tried to distract herself by reviewing what was already known about the planet they where now orbiting. It was beautiful. The swirling white clouds made it look a lot like earth from orbit on first glance. Its surface was covered by just 50% of water, a lot less than earth. The poles where covered by large masses of ice. The landmasses where also quite different. The northern hemisphere held two large continents that where almost on opposite sides of the globe. Right between them but on the southern hemisphere was a third continent located, almost the size of the other two combined.
Learning from experience they took their time in making sure it was safe to land on the planet. The atmospheric analysis was a lot more comprehensive than before. The network of cube sats had been deployed and was doing a very detailed scan of the whole planet. This scan was already underway for the last 20 hours and would still need at least one day to finish.
From what the scan was showing already the planet was rich in sea life. All kinds of creatures swam, glided, skittered or moved otherwise in and below the ocean. Creatures larger than earths whales of old could be seen, large schools of fish-analogues and a plethora of smaller critters.
The east-most landmass was already scanned so Joe decided to have a look at the preliminary findings. The composition of the soil did not tell her much, although it did look vaguely similar to what she remembered from school about earth. On land the animals seemed to be smaller than on earth, the scan showed nothing larger than a bear. No signs of intelligent life was visible in the scans to Joe, but they'd need to be filtered and reviewed by specialists – which was undoubtedly already happening.
So far there where no signs of anything artificial, no refined metals, no energy signatures, no signals. That was to be expected, anything artificial should have stood out even on an initial surface scan.
As the scan was still commencing and would need to be properly interpreted anyway, Joe shifted her attention to her console. Checking the readings and making sure everything was as it should be her attention again drifted to the files with the most recent reports. Browsing them she found something interesting.
They had salvaged a lot of stuff from the destroyed space station orbiting the presumably squids home planet. They had also salvaged several bodies. Obviously they had been analyzed.
Like the previous reports Joe stuck with reading the summary at the beginning as the reports themselves would naturally go into a lot of detail that she would most likely not understand.
The report started describing the three recovered bodies and compared them. Two of them where organic nature while the third one was something very different. The report continued to describe the organic bodies as something similar to earth squids but with some major differences. The report came to the conclusion that the differences far outweighed the similarities. The brain was much larger, making it at least as smart as humans, if not smarter. The tentacles would give it superior flexibility. They where covered with suction cups that did not have any teeth. They had something very similar to gills to breath under water but nothing that indicated that they where able to breath outside of it. The summary gave a short overview, it was basically what you could expect from an earth-squid that evolved as the dominant species on a water world. It also went into a short statement on how unlikely that would be, contrary to the evidence.
The second part of the summary described the other body found. Apparently it was a cyborg, something that was fantasized over on earth for centuries but had never materialized. The extend of the mechanical parts brought up the question if it had started out as an organic being that was modified or started as a purely artificial being.
As Joe was immersed in the report she did not notice that here shift was approaching its end. Her replacement startled her lightly. She blushed a bit and handed over her console. Normally the navigation would not need to be manned in a stable orbit. But as they where not in orbit of a known planet the Captain had decided that it might be a good idea to be ready, just in case.
As Joe was still restricted from her usual workout regiment she decided on some light cardio. She changed in her room into her workout gear and took a towel and a pad with the latest reports on it to the gym.
The gym was more crowded than expected, most likely owed to the fact that they where all waiting for the scan to finish so they could go down to the planet and explore it. All this excess energy needed a release which the gym provided. Luckily one of the workout bikes was available so Joe got on it. After adjusting it for her and securing the pad on the handle she started on a low setting to warm up.
Reading the report she paddled on, slowly increasing resistance. Having finished the summary of the report Joe increased the resistance and settled into her pace. She opened the report on the ship that was salvaged from the moon base. Looking over the specifications and the description of the systems an idea began to form in her mind.
Joe returned to her quarters for a quick shower and set down at her desk to write down her idea. She was so engrossed in it that she spent several hours at her workstation. After she saved her draft she leaned back and noticed how hungry she was. Checking the time Joe was shocked to discover that she had spent more than three hours at her workstation.
She went to the mess to get something to eat. As it was late during the ships day the mess was empty with subdued lighting. Only some covered plates where still available to choose from. After a quick look around she choose a ham and cheese sandwich and a water and sat down to eat. She managed to almost finish her sandwich before she fell asleep.
Joe snapped awake from the gentle touch on her arm. Looking up she found the chief standing next to her. "You all right, Ensign?" He asked carefully.
"Yes, Chief. Thanks." Joe mumbled back.
"You're supposed to take it easy, you know that, don't you?" He asked.
"I know, I did take it easy. It's just a bit late."
"Fair enough, let's get you back to your quarters." He started by helping her up.
"Don't worry, I can do it on my own." Joe stood up, her head clearing. "I'm good, thanks for waking me."
Joe made her way back to her quarters and barely managed to get in her bed before falling asleep.
It had taken three more days to finish and analyze the scan.
The meeting to discuss the exploration of the planet had been postponed several times but finally all the preparations where done.
Joe was again early for the meeting, this time feeling good and exited – not tired at all.
One after another the others filed into the small room, each of them asking Joe if she was ok.
After everybody had settled in the Captain started the meeting.
"Good morning. Thank you all for coming. As you all know we had a scare on the last planetary excursion. Luckily no lasting harm was done." She looked at Joe who nodded back. "I'm not very keen on having a repetition of this incident so I decided to try a different approach." She switched the screen to display an image of the planet below. "For the last days we did extensive scans of the planet without setting a foot on it. This will help us to plan our expedition more carefully and hopefully even prevent another accident. Dr., if you would?" She pointed to Dr. Schmitz and took her seat.
The screen switched on to display an orbital image of the planet below.
"Yes, thank you Captain. The planet is so far the most earth-like planet that we have discovered. Atmospheric composition, gravity, radiation, the existence of large bodies of water, the scans even show the existence of plant and animal live that seems roughly comparable with what we know. This all indicates that this planet went through a comparable development than earth.
The differences are also quit large. First there are the land masses. Almost all land is represented by three large continents. Two are situated on the northern hemisphere, one in the southern hemisphere.
Starting with the west one on the northern hemisphere."
The screen switched to center on the east-most continent.
"The geography of this continent is comparable to central Europe on earth. The terrain has several moderate hills forming a chain in the middle of it, going from north to south. These sprout several large rivers which provide amble irrigation to the plains that stretch right to the coast. These provide space for numerous flora and fauna."
The screen switched to display the graphics of different plant-life.
"As you can see the flora is pretty divers, starting from grass-analogue up to tree-analogues that grow up to 50 meters. The color indicates that something very close to chlorophyll is being utilized, which is quite interesting."
The screen switched showing some kind of blobs.
"The fauna is completely different to anything we have seen so far and it comes in all different sizes and compositions. We have yet to see anything that uses legs, at least from orbit."
The screen switched to a detailed view of one of the creatures.
"Please keep in mind that all of this data is still unconfirmed and preliminary. To verify anything of it we need to get planetside and get samples.
The closest equivalent we have to compare it to would be the family of Heterobranchia
or the common slug, as lopsided as the comparison is. We where able to observe them on land and in freshwater.
We have not so far observed lifeforms that seem to be unrelated to it."
"That seems a bit odd, doesn't it?" Joe asked.
"There is no real way to tell until we commence a detailed analysis of the biosphere. From what we know of earth all life is to some degree related. On earth the fauna is quite divers, much more than what we can observe here from orbit. But that can easily be attributed to earth having wildly different biomes. Something we don't really see here. All three continents offer basically the same environment conditions."
The screen switched, showing data on all of the three continents side by side.
"Their makeup and climate is quite uniform, two of them show identical fauna and flora."
"What's with the third one?" The Captain asked.
"The third one is very interesting. The flora we have observed is the same as the other two. The fauna is a bit different."
"Different in what way?"
"We see the same kind of specimens. But overall they are smaller and less numerous. Normally this is due to stress being inflicted on the population. Limited food supply or presence of a predator or other competition."
"Anything else about the third continent?"
"We have identified what seem to be very primitive structures."
Everybody set up at this.
"Structures?"
"Indeed."
The screen switched to an image of a plain on the third continent. The plain was covered in vegetation, mostly grass, some larger plants with some tree-analogues between them. The image moved to the side.
"What is that?" The Captain asked.
"It looks like a pen for herding animals to me." Smyke said.
"That is our conclusion as well. There are some other structures near this one. It almost looks like some sort of very primitive village."
While Dr. Schmitz explained this images slowly rolled over the screen showing something very similar to what Joe had seen from ancient documentary about primitive people living in the Amazon forest.
"If that is a village, where are the people?" Joe asked.
Wordlessly Dr. Schmitz worked the controls, highlighting creatures moving between the structures.
"Seriously?" The Captain asked.
Keep in mind that I'm neither a professional author nor an English native.
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