Page 23 of Experimental Voyage
“I trained with them for data gathering,” I replied.
“Excellent. You’ll register species, and I’ll put you in charge of plant sample collections. Plant parts I don’t mind putting into stasis, especially if you can gather seeds of the various species.”
Seed gathering I could do; my first year, we’d spent days upon days upon days practicing gathering seeds of all types, and once we’d gathered them, we’d been expected to store them and grow them the following year. “I can do that. I know how to store them safely outside of stasis, and I’m trained on gathering the appropriate soil samples for testing.”
Alban cooed. “Such a useful little human. Then the plants shall be your domain, and the animals shall be ours. Waldren shall pretend he is lord over this domain while we ignore most of his posturing.”
“He has a very important job to do,” I reminded the Veloc. “He must pet Palta and convince her she is the most loved being in the universe.”
Waldren sighed. “While you’re not wrong, could you at least pretend I am useful?”
“You can fly the ship. I can’t. As the sole person on board truly qualified to fly the ship, you must assign the dirty work to the expendable.” I snickered at his perplexed expression. “You’re plenty useful, especially to Palta. We can’t risk breaking her precious little heart should the planet have adverse opinions to our presence.”
The Veloc hooted their laughter and bobbed their heads.
“All right. Camellia, you’re in charge of evaluating the plant life to determine if it’ll generally be safe for us to leave the beach. The Veloc will serve as giant guard birds.”
“I’d rather have a giant guard bird than a guard dog right now,” I admitted, pointing at Alban’s capped claws. “I’m fairly confident those can tear through metal. And while dogs can bite, I’m pretty sure most dog breeds can’t compare to a Veloc in the biting department.”
Waldren chuckled. “You would be correct.”
“Palta is only better than a Veloc because she’s cuter, her fur is soft, and she likes when I pet her.”
Waldren nodded. “Those factors do make Palta the reigning champion of predators on board this vessel.”
“Exactly. So your job is the most important. Palta must be kept happy and comfortable for her stay on this planet. We should name the planet after her, and don’t forget the numeric designations so it’s validated.”
He raised a brow a me. “I see you have undergone some training regarding exploratory sciences and regulations.”
“I don’t know if there’s a planet named Palta, but if there isn’t, there should be. And this one should be it.”
After a moment, Waldren eyed the nearest monitor. “There are no planets named Palta, so we’ll dub this one Palta 001. We’ll name the moons, after we get a count of them, Andean after her originating home. This is now the planet of the cats.”
Alban cleared his throat. “You forget something, little ones.”
“What have we forgotten?” Waldren demanded.
“What if there are sentients on this world?”
Waldren deflated. “We’ll do the sentient checks and hope for the best. New worlds with sentients on them are so complicated.”
“Why don’t we do a flyby of the planet and check for cities and organized civilization by air?” the Veloc suggested. “Then we will be less likely to be surprised. We can mark this location on our charts and return to it.”
“Without knowing the precise size and orientation of the planet, we’d have to drop a beacon, and I don’t know if the beacon will be strong enough. Let’s start our investigation here. The beach is likely the safest place for us to begin an exploratory endeavor. We have no idea what is in those trees. We have no idea what’s beneath the sand, but I’d rather try my luck with the sand and the ocean than dropping us on the ground. That’s a quick way to die. We’ll do the flyby after we determine if this region is safe.”
Herserael cleared his throat. “It is not much of a plan, but it is a better one than I have. I think he has the right idea. Let us check the location we know before exploring further. Once we know more about the world in this location, then we can see what else it has to offer.”
Waldren owned a modern analyzer,the kind my teachers spoke about in longing whispers. We’d gotten to look over the manuals of such machines, but we’d been at least a decade behind on the style he held. In good news for me, having read the manuals and done comparatives against the ones we had used, I was able to isolate the best way to collect samples, record findings, and retrieve the data, the three primary tools I needed to do my job. I pouted and regarded Waldren with wide eyes. “You’re better equipped than my school.”
Alban hooted, came over, and gave the back of my head a thorough scratching with his capped claws. While I couldn’t perceive the itching, the sense of relief and enjoyment remained. “She likes your toys, Waldren. This is the expression of a woman who will be surely stricken with heartbreak if you take her new toy from her.”
“I mean, I’m glad that damned thing bringssomeonejoy on this ship, because all it does is cause me pain and suffering,” the man replied, and after a moment, he burst into laughter. “Her medications are going to be wearing off within the next half an hour, and her reaction to having her itches scratched is all the warning I need. Get the medications before she bites us.”
Still hooting his amusement, Alban left to do as Waldren asked. Once the Veloc departed, he said, “I had worried the school was behind on tech, but you seem comfortable enough with that.”
“We had access to the instruction manuals of the good models, and we compared them to our models. The idea is the same, there is just more buttons, better functionality, and it’sgenerally easier to use.” I flipped the device over to examine the sensors. “This even has an insert probe. What do we use to clean it?”
“It will clean itself. Part of the probe’s test is to monitor any substances on it while it superheats to sterilize it. Once it has charred anything on the probe, it uses some vibrations and a burst of air to remove the leftover matter. I’ll give you sterilization cloths, but it does seem to work. I don’t know if I really understand how, but it’s self-cleaning, and I haven’t seen any evidence yet of contaminated samples.”
