Astronomicon: Behemoth

Chapter 37 - Drizzle

"Well, Commander, I gave everyone who took part in the trial a pretty full medical this morning and am pleased to report no abnormalities whatsoever," reported Santiago.

Megan had just finished organising a mission to explore the crystal room again, this time with a larger team. This time they aimed to bring a couple of the smaller crystals back to the ship for further investigation.

"That's a relief," replied Megan.

"The only part which hasn't gone to plan is that Margaux is still refusing to take part."

"That's up to her. We're not going to force her to eat something she doesn't want to. We'll give it a few more days before I consider extending the trial group."

"How many days?" he asked.

"You're the doctor," she laughed. "How many do you think?"

Santiago thought for a moment before he replied, "Let's do four more days. That will bring the new trial group up to five and Walter to over a week. If everyone's still fine, I'll give it the all clear."

"Good. Aron's got a plan for accessing one of the supply modules, but he's worried it will leave it unspaceworthy. I'd prefer to avoid that risk if I can."

"If this gel checks out, we won't need Aron's help," Santiago replied with a confident smile.

"And if it doesn't, I could lose half my crew."

* * *

"It doesn't matter how much you try to make it sound appealing, I'm not going to eat that stuff," protested Margaux.

She, Santiago, Isa and Ekono were together in the briefing room, looking at another beaker of clear gel which had been harvested just an hour earlier.

"It's Megan's orders," replied Santiago calmly.

"She can't make me eat it," Margaux replied adamantly.

"No, but you may have no other choice if our food supplies run out," he said.

"You know I'm a vegan. Isa said that stuff has changed its chemical makeup at least once. Until we know what it is, I'm assuming it breaks my code of ethics."

Isa nodded in silent agreement.

Santiago kept pushing. "And if our food does run out, what are you going to do? Starve?!"

"I'd rather die than eat something more advanced than a vegetable. By all accounts, that stuff could be a lot more advanced."

"Die?" Santiago sounded incredulous.

"I'm experimenting with the fruit from the orchard," said Isa, joining in with the conversation in an obvious attempt to diffuse the situation. "Santiago needs to confirm my work so far, but I reckon that the fruit is edible and quite safe."

"Doesn't that seem weird to you?" asked Santiago.

"What?" asked Isa.

"The fruit. We travel billions of kilometres across space and the very first non-Terran fruit we experience is edible! Seems phenomenally unlikely."

"Not as unlikely as you seem to think, Doctor," replied Isa. "As you know chemistry isn't just random. Certain chemical reactions and compounds are favoured by nature. Most variations are not stable or simply won't work. So, most life will need to use a restricted range of chemical reactions. There's extensive research on exactly this subject. Statistically speaking, it's much more likely that we would be able to digest alien animals than plant life, but there's still going to be a lot of similar chemistry involved."