Andy heads home, anxious to make sure that we both get some sleep and are fresh for the first full day of exploration on Verus. I’m keen to make a flying start. I know that Argus has unshipped the two buggies, but we will need to give them a second, human once-over before we drive any distance and I’ve asked Andy to meet me at the gateway before nine.

He actually arrives at my office door just as I’m picking up the last of my notes for the day. I’ve never felt comfortable with using my AI for work notes. I’m happy to let my words be recorded, but I still like to have a bit of paper and a pencil when I’m in the field. Andy is now my luxury item for the trip. I was fully expecting to have to drive myself and also share vehicle time with Nicki, but now I have a driver and we have plans to bring another buggy through the gateway in component form and assemble it as a priority. They are actually designed to be transported like this. You can load three gateway-sized pods with the three sections and simply wheel them across. One of the technicians from Earth will come through with the parts and, with a little bit of help from the team, they should be able to put one together in about a day.

I’ve assigned one of the vehicles to Toby and the rest of the mineralogy team for the first few days and Andy and myself will use the other one. That means Nicki and the rest of the biology/zoology team will have to stay close to the ship, but they will need days – if not weeks or months – to even begin to catalogue the microbes, nematodes, insects and other small creatures in the soil and the surrounding vegetation.

Andy glances at the paper in my hand and looks a little confused. “What, not even a writing tablet?”

“No, I like paper lists. It makes me concentrate. You’re early. Good morning!”

“Good morning to you too.” Andy looks a little uncertain, so I close the gap between us and give him a slight touch of my lips to his cheek. “I did want to ask how we are going to handle… this?” He asks with a smile and the hint of a blush.

“Well, I’m the boss, so I hope we can manage it openly yet professionally. Word will get around pretty quickly and I’m resigned to letting it do just that. I don’t feel the need to make an announcement, but I’m not going to hide anything either.”

Andy nods in agreement. “Fine. I guess we can go and make a start, then?”

“Oh, water,” I mutter, turning back to my desk and grabbing my water cannister. “You have one?”

“Erm… No, Can I get one from the canteen on the way?”

“Yes, they have them. It’s another thing I forgot to mention over the last few days. It wasn’t on my checklist!”

“I should have thought of it myself anyway. I’ll dash on ahead and meet you at the gateway?”

I head through the gateway after waiting for about a minute. I’m sure Andy will see me when he approaches and come right through. Mary is at her seat when I arrive. The plan is that she is going to be base commander today, freeing Argus up to manage data from the satellites and our hopefully quickly growing mesh network.

“Good morning boss,” she calls as I drop my stuff in my seat to wait for Andy. “You seem far too happy for someone going to work all day in higher-than-normal gravity.”

“Am I not allowed to have a bit of a spring in my step, then?”

“It depends on how you got the spring, or more importantly who put it there for you?”

“Yeah, yeah, you were right. The feelings were mutual. Don’t rub my obliviousness and awkwardness in too deeply, please.”

“No, no need to do that more than I did yesterday. So, are the two of you…”

“Seeing each other, yes.”

“I hope that he knows…”

“You hope that I know what?” Andy asks as he appears beside me and rests a hand on my shoulder.

“That you’ll be made to work even harder now to compensate,” she finishes.

“And after how hard I worked last night. For shame,” Andy mutters.

“Bordering on too much information, guys,” Mary laughs. “Get out there and get to work, both of you. The buggy is in the way. We need the space to start assembling the next one.”

“We’re on it. Are the mesh units outside as well?”

“Yes. We’ve packed twenty into the buggy, I think. There are plenty more available. If you get that much done before lunch, then you really are working too fast.”

“Okay, we’re going. Is Nicki already outside?”

“Yes, she is already digging soil samples. She mentioned having the gun for you.”

“Yes, that’s what I wanted to talk to her about. I’ll see you later, Mary,” I tell her and lead Andy to the airlock.

“Gun?” He asks as we wait for the atmosphere to cycle.

“Yes, a dart gun. We need to quickly find a drug that will drop some of these bigger mammals – preferably without killing them. That’s our primary job for the morning. Well, that and fitting as many mesh units as we might need.”

“We’re actually going to get up close, then?”

“Oh, yes. We need blood, hair and tissue samples from anything that we find. I’m not doing that with something that’s running around and trying to hurt me. I just hope that we find a good option quickly.”

“I see. I understand why we don’t really want to kill anything.”

“Yes, but there’s always a chance that a given tranquiliser will have the opposite effect and act as a stimulant. We really don’t want to end up with a big herbivore that we’ve pissed off by shooting in the arse with a stimulant. You’ll need all your bloody driving skills then.”

“Okay. Officially a bit worried now.”

“Don’t be. It’s highly unlikely. Actually, it is more likely that we’ll kill something by accident. We start off with small doses in the darts and if they are too slow or ineffective, we ramp the dose up a bit at a time.”

“Well, you are the boss. I’m trusting you to tell me what to do and where you need to be,” Andy mutters as we approach the vehicle and begin our checks.

“Don’t worry. I’ve had plenty of practice and am a pretty good shot. I’ve done lions, elephants and buffalo in Africa twice now for training purposes.”

“Just remember, I’m a racing driver, not a pursuit specialist,” Andy tells me with a smile.

“No, from what I’ve heard, you were out in front for the majority of the time, anyway.”

I let Andy get on with the checks as Nicki approaches with my rifle and a large case of darts. “Morning, boss. Ready to start?”

“Yes. What is the situation with the darts?” I ask her as she drops them onto my seat.

“Well, we think these should work. We have tried tiny doses on some mouse-like little critters we caught overnight and it works very well on them. I’ve made four dose levels that should work for a range of body masses.”

“What mass ranges are we looking at, then?”

“I’ve worked on upper limits of 50, 150, 300 and 1000kg. You find anything the size of an elephant and you might need two hits to get a fast drop. Those big herbivores looked to be around 800kg or so, so you should be fine. Drop time will vary a little, but around thirty seconds or so at the upper end of the mass scale.”

“Colour coded darts as usual?”

“Yes, red, green, blue and black banded in ascending order. The sampling kit is in the back as well.”

“Andy?” I ask as he comes around from the back of the buggy.

“Morning, Nicki. Yes, boss. All ready to go I think.”

“Excellent. Let’s get the show on the road.” I hop over the low sill of the buggy and into the passenger seat, taking care to fasten my harness and tighten down. Andy jumps into the driving seat and similarly straps down. He presses the power button and waits for the displays to come to life.

<Morning, Andy,> Argus voice comes out of the onboard speaker as the system boots. <I’ve pre-programmed a map and grid for you. If you can try and put mesh units on the grid points, please>

“Of course. Do you need them in any particular order?”

<No, and anywhere within about 100m of the targets should be fine. We’re building in a fairly good overlap. Just don’t go too far out of range of the last ones, though. You’ll drop out of recorder contact.>

“Understood.”

 

The morning is clear and dry with a temperature around twenty degrees. I suppose it will get a bit hotter as the day goes on, but it’s slightly cooler than what we left behind in Florida this morning. Even this early, there seems to be a slight breeze blowing in from the sea, despite that being probably thirty kilometres south-west of us.

We’re in an area that most resembles the broken woodland of the African transition zones. There are woods and thickets that are separated by more open grassland – I know it’s not grass, but the analogue is very similar – that mostly seems to be well grazed. I tell Andy to head south-west and begin the grid that Argus has set out for us. We head off at about thirty kph, bouncing only lightly on the generally flat ground.

“We’re approaching a potential mesh site,” Andy tells me after a couple of minutes.

“Okay, try and find a tree that’s not in a thicket.”

“How about this one? Nice straight trunk and plenty big enough?”

“Yes. Can you drive right up to it and we’ll use the buggy as a ladder.” As Andy makes his approach, I unstrap and reach around into the back of the buggy to retrieve a mesh unit. I hand it to Andy as he unstraps and hops up onto the sill of the buggy, leaning against the trunk of the tree.

He holds the mesh unit against the trunk and presses the button to activate it. There’s a soft whirring noise for just a few seconds as the unit activates its tethers and locks onto the plant. As soon as the noise stops, Andy lets go and the small solar array panels slide out of the top of the unit and rotate into position. The light on the screen of the buggy changes from white to green to indicate that it is working almost instantly.

“One down, millions to go,” Andy tells me with a grin.

“That’s the spirit. Let’s continue in this general direction for three or four more installations and then we’ll begin to quarter back through the pattern. I want to get far enough away from the ship that we might start to see some of the wildlife.”

“There are already some birds, bats, flyers, whatever they are. Do you need to try and dart one of them?”

“Well, I’d like to, but on Earth, flyers have too fast a metabolism to be safely darted and they are normally too small. I think that’s mostly going to be true here as well. We will have to rig nets or traps for the smaller stuff. Add in the fact that I’m a good shot, but not that good,” I tell him with a grin. “Shooting isn’t exactly something that most of us ever do, these days.”

Andy starts the vehicle again and we continue our slow, steady progress. We’re probably more than a kilometre from the southern bank of the river, but I plan to stick to this south-west path and deal with the riverbank when Andy is a little more settled into the job. The woodland is sure to be denser nearer to water and there will probably be more to deal with on the animal front.

“I should have asked this earlier,” Andy says as we drive along. “It just never occurred to me until now. Do we have other weapons available? I mean, can we stop a stampede or an attacking predator?”

“Well, initially, no. We do have contingency for just about every eventuality, but I didn’t feel that we needed to have military-grade hardware on the planet from the get-go.”

“So, we have to drive ourselves out of danger for now?”

“Yes. I’d hope that I can drop a predator before we become prey in most circumstances, but the buggy will help a lot. On Earth, at least, most big predators ignore a human in a vehicle. They simply don’t see it as a living thing and therefore they ignore it. It’s a moving rock.”

“Okay. So, we’re assuming that things will be much the same here?”

“I don’t think we have any choice.”

Andy has pulled us up against another tree and is already getting out of his seat. I quickly pass him another mesh unit and we wait a few seconds for it to connect and show up on our screen.

As he drops back into the driver’s seat and starts us forward again, he points to something in a tree about 100m ahead of us. “Look, that’s something like a monkey!”

Sure enough, on one of the branches of the plant, there is a small animal that really does look like a typical monkey. It has long arms and legs, a slim body and a clearly prehensile tail. It’s sitting on the branch with the tail wrapped tightly around it.

“Well, I can’t dart it, but we can get as close as it will let us and try the camera,” I tell Andy as he approaches the tree.

“Can I assume that the dedicated camera is much better quality than an implant feed will be?”

“Yes. There are four of them on the buggy, one on each corner. They normally record us driving along, in case we miss anything exciting, but the front ones can be remotely controlled and have quite a good telephoto zoom range. Creep towards the tree for me.”

“Is there a particular reason to not dart the creature?”

“Yes. It’ll fall out of the tree and, once we have examined it, we can’t leave it in a safe place to come round. If I leave a drugged tree-dweller on the ground, it will probably get eaten. I’d like a little more testing on how well our antidote to the tranquiliser works before using it in the field.”

Up close and with the camera view being fed into my implant, it is clearly even more primate-like. It’s a lot more lemur-like than a monkey. It has a longer muzzle and more teeth than I’d see on most monkeys on Earth. It’s front-facing eyes are a golden-orange colour and very large. It’s quite content to sit on the branch and watch us while it scratches at its dense brown fur.

I tell Andy to access the same camera feed so he can have a closer look as well. I zoom in on one of the front limbs, getting a good look at the hand. It seems to be equipped with two long central digits and what appear to be two opposable thumbs, oddly symmetrical and very different from on Earth.

The other thing that is impossible to ignore is that it appears to be very obviously male. “Did you know,” I ask Andy, “That on Earth, humans are the odd-one-out amongst the primates?”

“Oh, how so? Lack of hair?”

“Well, yes, but also in penis size. Humans are, in general, very well endowed in proportion to body size. Doesn’t seem to be the case here.”

“Dominant male social groupings?”

“Very good. A reasonable explanation, but then I’d not expect this one to be on his own. Maybe they have a defined mating season, like many species on Earth. There’s so much to study and so little time.”

I’m about ready to tell Andy that we can move on when our tree-dwelling friend decides he has had enough of our company anyway. He moves rapidly along the branch and into the heart of the tree. His movement is smooth and co-ordinated, but clearly makes full use of all four limbs and the tail to maintain balance and gain speed.