Bennett Rainsford (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
usfuzzies) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
resort_link2014-08-11 08:30 am
usfuzzies) wrote in resort_link2014-08-11 08:30 am
Video: PSA
Someone wasn't doing inventory on liftoff--
[Ben's red whiskers bristle irascibly. This is careless stuff. It happens, but he doesn't have to like it.]
Everyone who goes outside the fence should already be counting their gear, but if you needed a reason, these props are it. Adaptive little critters like this can wreak havoc on an ecosystem, and this ecosystem is plenty problematic already.
The largest 'predators' on Quadratus, the spiders, won't eat props. Hounds may be able to detect them and hopefully the pseudofelinoids-- the beasts or the cats depending on your parlance-- will think they're tasty. But the upshot is that there may not be a control if these things get a foothold in the wild.
We all know what bullfrogs did to Australia on Terra, right? And terran brown rats on Shesha?
Double-check your gear before you go out. Even if you don't care about the ecosystem, the last thing you want is to reach for your last bottle of water and have it run off.
[Ben's red whiskers bristle irascibly. This is careless stuff. It happens, but he doesn't have to like it.]
Everyone who goes outside the fence should already be counting their gear, but if you needed a reason, these props are it. Adaptive little critters like this can wreak havoc on an ecosystem, and this ecosystem is plenty problematic already.
The largest 'predators' on Quadratus, the spiders, won't eat props. Hounds may be able to detect them and hopefully the pseudofelinoids-- the beasts or the cats depending on your parlance-- will think they're tasty. But the upshot is that there may not be a control if these things get a foothold in the wild.
We all know what bullfrogs did to Australia on Terra, right? And terran brown rats on Shesha?
Double-check your gear before you go out. Even if you don't care about the ecosystem, the last thing you want is to reach for your last bottle of water and have it run off.
Video
He does have one question to ask, though.]
Excuse me, sir, but I never heard of Terra or Shesha. What happened there?
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Well, Terra's my planet. In the first century pre-atomic, some cane farmers on a large island continent introduced a species of toad to try to control the sugar-beetles. That was bad-- the toads were poisonous and the local predators wouldn't eat them, and they turned on local, smaller amphibians and snakes because they were easier than beetles. But there were bullfrogs in the mix, and that was worse; a bullfrog will eat anything it can fit in its mouth. Within a few decades, a couple dozen species of native frog were in danger.
Similar thing happened on Shesha; the rats weren't introduced deliberately. They came in the cargo holds of ships like the props. They decimated the spidermoth population by destroying the nests of the birds the spidermoths preyed on and driving several insect species to the verge of extinction. The companies that had been farming mothsilk failed, catastrophically, and the rats are still there.
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Got it, sir! I promise to make sure t'check for props! Don't carry much on me, anyway.
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That's the best thing you can do. [Ben nods approvingly.] Prevention's much better than cure in this case.
I'm Ben, by the way, Ben Rainsford from the Terran Institute of Xenosciences. I don't think we've met.
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Pleasure to meet you.
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I bet you came here to study all the animals, right?
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And the ecology around them, yes.
[The little fellow's mannerisms remind him of a prospector he met on Nifflheim-- Holloway. Man must be sixty some-odd now. He had the same laid back traveller's way.]
What brings you here?
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I had to leave my best friend behind, though, but she says she'll be okay. She's probably relaxin' right now, but it'd be nice if she also came here.
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[Emilia spits somewhere off to the side, equal parts apotropaism and disdain.]
If you're worried, catch them before they get a foothold. Poisons are easy enough to make. I'll help.
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Poisons that will kill a prop but not us might be more difficult. We'll have to run trials.
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What eats them where they're from? What's native to here that's benign to the locals but would kill anything that hadn't co-evolved? What's their prey, and can it be spiked so the poison would accumulate without harming lower rungs on the ladder?
[She shouts to someone, muffled by her hand over the communicator's microphone:]
Gale! Get the jar, we're milking a spider again.
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[He could be offended or he could do science. It's not that much of a decision.]
In order; I don't know, they seem to scavenge organic detritus like Terran cockroaches but I haven't had time to make a study, I'll call some people back in the institute and see if I can find out, but I expect given their average size that if they're predatory they'd be competing for food with the cats. I'm hoping the cats will eat them, so whatever poison should hopefully be less severe on mammals.
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More accurately, they have me. I'm a researcher for them.
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Xenoecology in general-- Quadratus is my current assignment.
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Unless you're going to talk around that, too, in which case have a blast but do it without me, will you?
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I'm not talking around it, but pay depends on seniority and the job varies from planet to planet. I'm here to study the ecosystem, try to map the food chain and get a sense for the important links in it, and now I've got a mystery on my hands with these 'creepers'.
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How are you with soil samples?
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I can probably judge the magic, but not the alchemistry.
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[Niko's not as environmentally aware but he knows that.]
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The alternative is that something local will think they're appetizing and wipe them out so that they never get a foothold outside of human habitation-- it's possible, but I never count on it.
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Spiders probably won't eat 'em since they don't seem to attack anything but us, but maybe if we're lucky they'll register as outsiders too.
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[Even if she did not understand half of them, or the references used. She at least understands that Props getting out are dangerous, especially if they end up on other worlds not capable of handling them.]
Do you wish me to catch some... pseudofelinoids to test this theory?
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Uh... sorry, I just got here, but-- can you explain what's problematic about this ecosystem? [He's a micro level scientist but he's still a scientist, and he naturally gravitates toward data collecting.]
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It's already comprised of a lot of animals that were domesticated by whatever culture was here first, gone feral when they disappeared. There are the spiders, which don't function like predators at all; they don't eat their prey, they just kill it, and they focus entirely on off-planet life.
Then they found the creepers. Green things, look like nothing more than oversized viruses wrapped in molting skin. They have some kind of biological detonation system that goes off like old terran dynamite. They target anything that attacks them specifically and extraplanetary visitors in general, approach, and self destruct.
And if they're killed, they dissolve into the soil so far untraceably, but once I get some samples to a decent lab....
[The little naturalist looks a bit tired, but his eyes are bright with life. It's as fascinating as it is irritating and he likes a biological mystery.]
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It’s all pretty morbid and concerning. Nonetheless he has a mild note of wry humor as he says,] You must be Ben. I met Narvin, and Agent K said you two were the current… visiting researchers. [Bruce has put his pencil down and finally thinks to introduce himself, for the first time since he’s gotten here.]
I’m Bruce Banner. I have some biochem training. I’d be willing to help you take a look at those samples once we get them.
[A beat.] Kind of curious about samples of the spiders, too.
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Doctor Bennet Rainsford-- I'm with the Terran Institute of Xenosciences. [Since he can't shake Bruce's hand, he defaults automatically to view screen formality, clasping his hands together and giving a brief distracted bow over them.]
This prop infestation's taken over my current research, but we have plenty of spider samples-- I'll give you the lot numbers from cold storage and the notes on what conditions they were taken in.
How are you with soil analysis-?
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Thanks, I'd appreciate it. And-- not great, but I can learn? It can't be that different from every other kind of chemical analysis I've run. In the meantime I was going to try to make a scanner for finding props.
[This is the sort of thing Bruce can put together when he sets his mind to it, much more his strength than the biological end of things.]