“Okay, everybody, settle down, please!” I call loudly once I’m sure that the whole crew have made it into the conference room and the door is closing gently behind the last of them. “I just need to go over a few things before we finish the fence this morning and get back to our proper work.”

The last couple of people take their seats and all face me out front. I don’t exactly find this difficult, but I’m not entirely comfortable either. I’ve already had an early morning pep-talk from Andy about it. It was pretty obvious that I was a bit on edge, I guess.

“Well, as I’m sure you all realize, we are having to take more safety and security precautions than we originally envisaged for Verus. I trust you have all seen the footage of the predator that Andy and myself encountered?”

There are a smattering of murmurs and a few heads nod in agreement. It’s clear that everybody knows what we’re up to and why.

“I just want to make a couple of points in person,” I continue. “More to make it sure that we are all on the same page of rules than anything else.”

“Firstly, we finish the fence before we do anything else today. I want the fence and the gates working well before lunch if possible.”

“Secondly, Once the fence is complete, nobody gets outside of it without approval from Argus. He will be in control of the locks and will manage all departures and returns.”

“Thirdly, if anybody does go outside the fence, then they must always be in a group of at least two. One of the group members has to be trained with the dart guns and must be carrying one. Blue-ringed darts or stronger only.”

A hand is raised at this point, one of the members of the climate team.

“Yes, James?”

“What if the thing that attacks is smaller than one of those big predators?”

“That’s just too bad for the attacker. I don’t see us ever coming close to going on a killing spree, but our lives are more important than a potentially overdosed predator. Shoot first and worry about doses of tranquiliser later. Everyone clear on that?”

Again there are murmurs of agreement.

“Honestly, I don’t even know if we are sure they are the biggest predators we might encounter. Bear that in mind.”

“Finally, we don’t let the wildlife get in the way of our work. Of course, we have to try our best to leave the locals undisturbed, but we have a job to do.”

“We trained for a long time to be ready for this mission and I know that the rules seem to be changing day-by-day, but it isn’t exactly something that we can’t handle. I know that we’re a great team and we can get the results. Let’s just make sure that we do it as safely and efficiently as possible under these changing circumstances.”

I pause and take a slow look around, waiting to see if anybody has anything to add. When it seems that everyone is happy, I nod my head. “Good, Let’s get out there and get that fence completed so we can get back to doing some actual work.”

 

Once we make it back through the gateway, I tell Andy to go ahead, as I need to check the logs with Argus.

“Morning, Argus. Anything to report overnight?”

<Yes, Boss, a few minor items.>

“Well, minor seems like a victory right now!”

<Indeed. Nothing serious at all. Mainly the appearance of some of the smaller animals in the night. The new cameras having infra-red capability makes them pretty easy to spot as they approach.> Argus brings up a series of images of varying quality from both low-light and infra-red cameras on the fence posts. <Pretty much what we’d expect, I suppose. Some are very mouse-like indeed and then there’s this one that looks a bit like a weasel or otter.>

“Well, that’s actually a bit of a relief. I’m pleased to see animals in all the expected environmental niches and a range of sizes. It all looks like normal evolutionary processes at work. Nothing bigger close by?”

<No. I was just able to make out the infra-red signatures of some of the smaller herbivores at the edge of detection range, but nothing to worry about otherwise.>

“Well, let’s make sure that the fence is wired in logarithmic fashion and that should stop most things.”

We always had two options for the wiring layout on the posts. Option one was to have the wires a fixed distance apart for the full height. Option two, the one that we tend to call the logarithmic one, starts with wires very close together near the ground and slowly increases the gaps as they go up.

This seems like the best compromise and we can vary the power of the pulse from bottom to top to make it even more effective against larger animals. The wire positions are actually controlled by Argus. He can tell each pole to adjust the position of the through-holes individually to some limited degree and this means that we can tweak the layout once we see what visitors we need to repel.

It's actually pretty ancient technology. We fire a high-voltage low-current pulse through the wires periodically. If you grab one of the wires, or brush against it, you get a pretty fair jolt. With Argus at the controls, you get the ability to vary the power levels and change the pulse timing as needed. If something makes a concerted attempt to break a wire – and they are a braided graphene tube monofilament wrapped with copper – then we can push enough power through to drop an elephant onto its arse, doubtless with a very strange expression on its face.

“Anything else I need to be aware of, Argus?”

<Only that the surveillance drones have been authorised and they will be arriving the day after tomorrow. We are being allocated three of them and that will leave one free for use by the squad if necessary.>

“Excellent. Are you going to fly the other two above the compound, as originally planned?”

<Yes, unless you need to do something different. They will fly all day and I’ll land them at dusk each evening.>

“Fine. I may want one to do some surveys later in the week – well, Nicki might. I’m going to go outside and lend a hand with the fence. Andy and I will continue our normal routine this afternoon.”

By the time I get outside and join Andy, everyone is working on running wires between the fence posts and it’s going along at a really good pace. We’ve now almost too many people on the job and some of them are getting in one another’s way. Still, we can manage a case of too many hands easily enough. It does mean that we are finished by mid-morning and I can let everybody get back to their schedules.

We head back to our buggy and get to work refilling our supply of mesh units and making sure that we have more darts and a replenished sampling pack. Andy seems to slip into the role of assistant without any fuss and looks competent and confident as he checks the dart gun over and loads a blue-band dart.

We actually forgot to charge the buggy, so I show Andy how to hook it up to the ship’s power and we leave it to recharge while we head back to Earth for a slightly early lunch.

That’s another thing that we should soon not need to do. I’m hoping that we can have a couple of extra tents set-up before the end of the day and then one of them can serve as a makeshift canteen. It’s much easier to bring a couple of coolers of food and drinks through each morning than it is to send two dozen people back and forth through the gateway.

Honestly, if I thought that it was safe enough, I’d let people stay overnight. However good the fence might be, I can’t quite bring myself to trust it completely and I’m prepared to lose an hour out of each day to satisfy my nagging insecurity about it.

With the buggy recharged and ourselves refuelled, we set out right away. Argus opens the south gate for us and we drive quickly off into the bush. I’m keen to continue our pattern from the previous morning, glad that we have only actually lost a single day of exploration.

“So,” Andy asks as we head south on the next potential track. “What are we doing today?”

“The same as yesterday. Let’s try and get some more of these mesh repeaters installed and see if we can actually manage to complete what we started. If we get that far before we start to lose the daylight, we can maybe then go a few kilometres further out.”

“We’re still darting and sampling?”

“We sure are, but only new species as we come across them. We shouldn’t need any more samples of species we have already encountered.”

Andy starts to drive us out along the next radial track and we settle into our installation and tagging routine pretty easily. There’s not really anything much to report, but the local wildlife does seem to be returning to the area in greater numbers. I actually catch a glimpse of what might be a smaller carnivore, but it disappears into the long grass before I can even tell Andy to stop for a better look. The body shape was far from the same, but I’ve seen a caracal in the wild and this had the same tufted ears and tall slender look about it.

“Do you want to circle around and try to spot it?” Andy asks me as soon as I tell him what I saw.

“No, it might have gone to ground and, having seen one, we may get lucky and see another in the next few days. Predators, at least, don’t seem to be particularly afraid of us. We’re not small enough to be prey for that one, but it’s not bothered or intimidated by our presence.”

“You really know how to put a guy at ease,” Andy mutters as he drives towards the next possible mesh installation location. “Do try and prevent me from being eaten, won’t you?”

I’m beginning to think that the afternoon will be totally uneventful and we seem to be making good progress. Andy spots a small group of the monkey-like specimens that we had seen just the one of yesterday and, as some of them are on the ground and already foraging, we decide to see if we can sample one of them. This looks like a family group with one male and several adult females, juveniles and infants.

“I’ve no idea how the others will react,” I tell Andy as he tries to get us close. “Being a family group might make them more protective. I’m going to try and take the male down. Let’s hang back until he actually goes down and see what they do?”

“No problem. I’ll be ready.”

By now, we have moved close enough for me to take a shot, but also close enough for us to be of interest to our targets. They appear to have stopped foraging and the couple of fairly small youngsters have sought out the safety of their parents. “There seems to be a hierarchy, a bit like baboons or chimps on Earth,” I tell Andy casually as I take aim.

My shot, from about 25m, is a clean one, taking the male high on the back, just beneath the shoulder blade, my favoured target point for most animals. He jumps and makes a surprisingly high-pitched squeal, but then his rapid metabolism kicks in and he appears to become immediately groggy. The rest of the group initially don’t know what to do, becoming very vocal – the same high-pitched range, but a variety of sounds – and milling about the already slumping male.

There’s a degree of concern from one or two of the females as he slumps to the ground, but there are no obvious signs of aggression towards us. I’m not really sure that they have even associated us with the collapse. Within just a few seconds, he is out for the count and after a few failed attempts to rouse him, the group seem uncertain about how to proceed. There is more chattering, but they have become visibly less agitated in just a short time.

“Andy, drive me closer, but slowly.”

The vehicle creeps forward under Andys expert control and as we approach, the whole group seems to make the reluctant decision to maintain the distance between us. The level of chattering increases, but they move away a short distance as a group and settle to watch us.

Like many earthly mammals, they become more agitated when I step out of the vehicle. They now recognise me as a living creature and not some strange moving part of the landscape. They simply don’t know what I am and seem uncertain how to react, beyond being agitated. Andy has automatically reached for the rifle and reloaded as I prepared the sampling kit.

Apart from the usual blood and tissue samples, I’m keen to get a closer look at their hands and feet. Like many monkeys on Earth, they have grasping feet with the same digital layout as their fore-limbs. That’s what seems to be an opposable digit on either side of the two central ones. I hadn’t noticed the others in the group using tools of any kind, but they did seem very dextrous. Lifting limbs to take a few measurements, I can sense just how strong this specimen might be. He masses maybe forty kilos, but is easily stronger than I am.

“We may be about to get company,” Andy murmurs as I’m about to finish up.

“What sort of company?”

“Something new. Looks like some sort of pack predator. The family seem to be retreating towards the trees.”

“Are the new pack heading this way?”

“Not exactly, but they do seem interested. About the size of a large dog and there appear to be maybe a dozen of them if we count the juveniles.”

“Okay. I think I need to give this guy an antidote shot then. I’m a little more confident that it’ll work as planned than I was yesterday. I don’t want them to get him while he’s groggy and on the ground. Doesn’t seem fair to use one patient to feed another. We’ll have to move away quickly when I do. It’ll probably act in just a few seconds.”

I’ve always felt that the antidote to the tranquiliser is almost more impressive than the actual drug itself. Within just a few seconds of me injecting the specimen, he’s already beginning to show signs of coming round. I grab my kit and make a very hasty retreat to the vehicle and Andy backs us away from him at some speed.

By the time we are maybe fifteen metres away he is already getting into a sitting position. He shakes his head a couple of times and, with a combination of calls from his family and his own senses, recognises that there is a threat in just a few moments more. Looking around, he spots the rest of the group and, apparently completely awake and functional, heads across the grass at a good speed to join them.

His swinging climb, up to join them, is impressive and the level of chattering and calling intensifies as they greet one another. This attracts the attention of the pack predators who move to surround the tree with equally impressive speed and co-ordination.

“Do you want to try and dart one of them?” Andy asks as we watch their behaviour. “Doesn’t look like an easy proposition. They really are acting like a pack of wild dogs or wolves.”

“No, I agree. They will be very difficult to isolate and probably very protective of an injured member of the pack. I think we’ll leave them be.”

“There aren’t many more hours of daylight anyway,” Andy continues. “Should we head back and complete the mesh pattern?”

“Good idea. We’ve had a busy day and I think I need to see what everybody else has been up to this afternoon. Maybe we can also think about some different territory for tomorrow.”