Monroe

Chapter Three Hundred and Seven. Good enough.

The thing about trees was that they are supposed to have branches, twigs, and leaves. Or pine needles, but the general concept remained.

The tree in front of Bob had apparently disagreed with that rule.

The trunk appeared to be a mass of vines, twisted together. They had a bark-like appearance, so it hadn't been apparent that the trunks were abnormal until they'd gotten rather close. The branches were formed by vines intertwined together, with some ending before they reached the end of the branch, and others persisting. Leaves protruded directly from the branches with stems of varying lengths as they reached towards the fiery light of the sun.

Clustered beneath the tree were cast off sections of vine that had withered.

"Well, it's a good thing we aren't going to be relying on local timber," Jack said as he nudged a section of dead vine with his foot.

"Be a lot harder to work with," Jessica agreed.

"Honestly? The tree isn't attacking us, which inclines me to appreciate it," Amanda added.

"Something we haven't considered," Dave began, "is that we don't know if we can actually grow plants from Earth in the soil here."

"Doesn't matter," Wayna shook her head.

"There are a lot of microbial and bacterial factors that go into soil composition," Dave continued. "Soil that works for one plant may not work for another, and we don't know if we can digest the local plants." He shook his head and frowned. "We should have thought of this. We might not have the proteins and enzymes to break it down."

"Doesn't matter," Wayna repeated. "Magic will fix whatever isn't quite right with the dirt here."

"You're both right," Bob interjected. "Growing our own food won't be a problem, because as Wayna said, magic will cover it. Dave is also correct in that we need to find out if we can stomach the local flora and fauna. If someone were to end up getting lost on this huge planet, knowing what we can eat is important." He raised a hand to forestall further arguments. "Yes, we all have inventories where we have food and water. All of you have indicated that you want to bring other people here, eventually. We need to assume that not everyone will be as well prepared as we are. So while we don't need to worry about it right now, it is something we'll have to address."

"So," he tried to redirect the conversation, "we have vine-trees. We'll take a chunk and run some tests to see if the sap is poisonous or anything."

"I'm not cutting into the tentacle tree," Jessica shook her head as she backed up. "Bugger that."

"I'm pretty sure I watched a hentai that started like this," Jack offered with a grin.

"And I'm out," Amanda backed up.

Elli jumped, his sword flashing out, and a two foot section of vine, with another foot worth stems and leaves, fell to the ground.

The group tensed for a moment, but the vine-tree remained unmoving.

Elli nudged it with his foot, and it disappeared.

"Sample obtained," he grinned. "It looks like the forest is made up of these vine-trees, so we'll figure this one out and then look for different species."

"I've been having Jake pile up the bodies of the local wildlife he's managed to hunt down," Bob gestured along the treeline to the north. "Let's go see what he's found."

It turned out that the forest and grasslands were teeming with life, based on the variety of animals Jake had located. While they were different, in some cases vastly so, from the animals you'd find on Earth, it wasn't hard to determine what ecological niche the fit into. Field mice had four legs, not six, although the front pair of this small creature appeared to work more like arms. Nor did they have scales. The remarkably foxlike predator that likely ate them was also scaled.

"Are they dinosaurs?" Eddi asked eagerly. "Oh that would be awesome if we found a planet with dinosaurs!"

Bob looked at Jake and suppressed a shudder. He had absolutely no desire to ever be hunted by a pack of UtahRaptors.

"I didn't see any large predators when I flew the drones, even when I used thermal vision," Dave replied.

"Shit," Bob muttered quietly. "Let's get back to the Freedom."

"Why?" Bailli asked.

"Because if these things are ectothermic, the thermal scan wouldn't necessarily have picked them up," Bob replied as he continued to cast his portal spell.

"Fuck," Dave said quietly.

"I second that," Jack agreed, looking around warily.

"So, the wild life could be an issue," Harv said, looking around the table.

Despite the vast gulf in scientific knowledge that existed between Earth and Thayland, Harv's research toward his successful cancer cure had given him a better grounding in biology than anyone else on the Freedom.

"It appears that they are not ectothermic, but their scales are much thicker than what we would normally see for creatures of this size," Harv continued. "That means that they are quite a bit more resilient, although the predators don't appear to have any trouble with their prey." He tapped his armband and glanced at the screen for a moment before continuing.

"The scales are both refractive and insulative, so looking for them with thermal vision isn't going to be as effective, however it will pick up any of them that are in engaged in strenous activities, as their dermis, which is also thicker than you'd expect, can shift the scales to allow for more direct access to the air, or water I suppose, to vent heat."

"Any good news?" Dave asked.

"Yeah, they're gorgeous," Harv replied, holding up a scale. It had likely come from the fox-like predator, and was nearly an inch long by a third of an inch wide. It flashed opalescent in the sunlight that streamed into the cabin.

"That's not what they looked like," Eddi muttered.

Bob agreed. The scales had appeared to be a dull molted orangish/red. They'd blended nearly perfectly into the grass. He paused for a moment. "The light," he mused.

"Oh," Amanda breathed, nodding.

"What about the light?" Elli asked.

Bob nodded to Amanda.

"The difference is the sunlight," Amanda explained. "This star radiates a different spectrum of radiation, including visible light, which is why everything down there looked different." She shook her head. "I bet that's also why the scales and skin are thicker. If we take into consideration the atmosphere and the magnetic field, how much radiation is reaching the ground on this planet, as opposed to Earth?"

"About three times as much," Bob replied.

Dave looked at him, eyebrows raised.

"I may not be an astrophysicist, but even I know that K type stars put out more x-ray and far ultra violet radiation," he said dryly. "One of the things I was looking for, besides natural Dungeons, was to find out if we could handle the surface of the planet. Yes, by the way, we can. I'm not sure I'd want a tier five level zero human exposed to that sunlight for a prolonged period of time, but the reinforcement the System provides means that with just a few levels, or being tier eight, there isn't an issue."

"So the scales are a natural adaptation to the increased radiation, which makes sense, but at the same time doesn't," Harv said. "Everything I've read suggests that scales are the least effective method for an endothermic creature to regulate its body temperature."

"Keep in mind we are dealing with a incredibly small sample size," Bob replied. "This planet is thirty percent larger than Earth, which makes it almost forty percent larger than Thayland, both numbers being deceptive, as the total land not covered by water is twice that of either planet. What we find in this tiny corner of a small biome is not necessarily indicative of what the rest of the planet looks like. The important take away, is that if anything the size of a UtahRaptor or a T-rex comes charging towards the Freedom when we are on the ground, we'll know about it."

"Well, that explains the vine," Elli sighed. "Remember how the leaves looked really dark green with an almost purple tint, with the veins being even darker? Well, when I looked at it here, they looked perfectly normal, green with slightly darker green veins. The only difference between that vine and one I'd find back home was how much thicker the the leaf was."

"So the flora and fauna have, presumably, evolved to accommodate the radiation from the sun," Harv surmised.

"Except that they haven't," Amanda disagreed.

Bob nodded slowly. "Twenty million years," he agreed.

"Exactly," Amanda flashed him a brilliant smile. "This planet has only been here for twenty million years. In terms of evolution, that's barely the blink of an eye. Even with the increased radiation, which results in mutation, twenty million years isn't enough time for life to have evolved on this planet, assuming everything we know about evolution isn't specific to Earth."

"It isn't," Harv interjected. "Some of the folks who were helping with manufacturing the cure for cancer were biologists, and a few of them were deeply interested in the evolutionary differences between Thayland and Earth. The evolutionary patterns on Thayland matched those of Earth within a standard deviation."

"Another mystery," Bob grumbled.

"Does it matter?" Jack asked. "I mean, I get that it's an intellectual conundrum, and I'd like to dig into it myself, but ultimately, the planet is here, we're here, it's habitable, isn't this something we can figure out later, if at all?"

"I agree with Jack," Erick added. "We've run out of road, or crystals if you prefer, and we've found a place to setup camp. Let's not quibble over the history of the place when it offers what we need. There is no evidence of any active civilizations, right?"

"None that we could find from the air," Jack agreed. "If there was a collection of twenty or more buildings more than two meters cubed, the computer would have flagged them. It's currently running the data again, looking for half the buildings at half the size, but all it's found so far a couple of dozen boulder fields."

"Let's stop mucking about," Bailli said firmly. "Let's land the Freedom, so we can stop hemmoraging mana crystals."

Bob looked around the table, and while Dave, Amanda, and Harv were a bit hesitant, they were nodding their agreement.

"Down we go," he said as he stood up and headed out of the Garden.

The trick to landing the Freedom, Bob had discovered, was to plant her like a post in the ground. Twenty feet of the ship was buried in dirt. The middle mast was deployed on each side, and guylines were run out. This provided the ship with stability in the event of heavy winds, and also allowed provided sensors.

By common, unspoken consensus the entire crew had setup camp at the base of the of the Freedom. Everyone wanted to be off the ship, although they'd still be relying on the Garden for their food.

Harv had transmuted an earthern barricade, providing fifteen foot walls that they hoped would keep any wild life away, while Wayna had stretched a metal mesh net over the top, to prevent any flying predators out.

Setting the ship down, securing the guylines, and building the camp had taken the rest of the day, and the sun was beginning to set as they gathered around their tents and swags.

"I swear the air just smells cleaner," Wayna said, releasing a deep breath.

"I know that our air was magically cleaned and recycled, but I swear I can taste the difference," Bailli agreed.

Bob nodded. One of the reasons people had tended to gather in the Garden was that the air hadn't had the same sterile, clinical property that the rest of the ship imparted.

"Tomorrow, we'll test the Dungeon," Bob said.

All eyes turned to the east, where the Dungeon was located, on the far side of the nearby river.

"Everyone get some rest, I suspect we'll have a long day tomorrow," he suggested.

There were assorted groans and grumbles from the crew, with good reason. The planet's days were thirty-one hours and twenty-two minutes long, which were definitely going to take a bit of adjusting to. In that regard, Thayland being nearly identical to Earth had been an unappreciated blessing.

The years were also longer, nearly six hundred days, by Earth measurements, or four hundred and fifty days by local measurement. That also meant longer seasons, although the longer days helped to make up for that.

As the sun sank behind the mountains to the west, shading the clouds above in a hue of reds, oranges and purples, he settled down into his swag. As the rest of his friends retired as well, the sounds of the planets nocturnal wildlife became audible. The sounds were familiar, insects chirping, the occasional call of a predator or maybe a bird, but they were also alien enough to reinforce the fact that they were on a completely unfamiliar world.

With one hand dangling out of his swag and resing on Monroe's back, Bob fell asleep under the alien sky for the first time.

Bob woke up gradually, his bladder informing him that while there wasn't an emergency, sooner would be preferable to later.

It was still night, although the moon above provided enough light to see. Stretching, and being careful to maneuver over the slumbering Monroe, Bob portaled back onto the Freedom and headed to his bathroom.

They'd decided that with the ship right there, there was no reason to build any sort of latrine. It was much more sanitary to just portal onto the ship.

When he portaled back to the camp, he took a moment. The moon was larger than Earth's by fifty percent, and closer as well. According to the software they'd stolen from NASA, it was not tidally locked, and the lunar cycle was forty-five days long, which split rather nicely into ten lunar cycles per year. It was also blood red, and according to the computer, that was the normal color they could expect to see.

He checked his armband, which he'd configured to show two times - the smaller being the date and time for Earth, and the larger showing the time for this planet.

They still hadn't named the planet. Eddi had suggested Eden, while Jessica had favored Paradise, with Dave, Amanda, and Jack objecting that in sci-fi whenever planets were named that, they inevitably turned out to be death traps, and why tempt fate.

Elli had slyly suggested the name it Reef, but had been shouted down by everyone except Bailli, who thought it was a hilarious idea.

He was willing to call it Haven, or Paradise, or Eden, or New Earth, or whatever. He'd been reluctant to give it a name until they set the ship down. Now it felt like they were committed, and naming it felt appropriate.

"Trebor," he murmured, "is there anything you can tell me about this planet now that we are down on the surface?"

The mirror protocol had been unable to provide any information while in transit, a limitation they'd discovered on their previous trip to what they were calling the Hentai Planet. Trebor had been designed to acclimate a completely new user to their local environment, which apparently extended to the local planet. Trebor's knowledge of the rest of the Thayland solar system had come from the inhabitatants of Thayland.

'I seem to be more limited in this universe, or possibly in this solar system, than I was on Thayland,' Trebor replied. 'This may be part of the System update, as they did eliminate the protocol that created my process, but I haven't been made aware of any reduction in my access to data. Of course, if I did lose access to any data, would I even notice?'

Bob nodded. He'd hoped that being on the surface of the planet would enable Trebor to query the System for data, but that didn't appear to be the case. After their visit to the Hentai planet, Trebor had been able to query the System and retrieve quite a bit of environmental data, although the planet-covering organism had explained why he hadn't been able to get a read on the vegetation.

The number of mysteries surrounding this planet were piling up.