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Book 3: Chapter 45: Pav Arrival
Book 3: Chapter 45: Pav Arrival
Book 3: Chapter 45: Pav Arrival
Jacques
May 2247
HIP 84051
I settled into an orbit around HIP 84051-2. It was a young planet of a young star, according to the survey. Native plant life hadn’t reached the angiosperm stage, and animal life hadn’t figured out endothermia yet. I hoped that Phineas and Ferb had managed to pick up a lot of genetic samples on Pav before the Others arrived. According to updates from Bill over the last few decades, re-creating plants and animals from samples was getting a lot easier. Of course, that comment was based on Earth life, with which we were very familiar. Extraterrestrial stuff would take some more work.
Mind you, we didn’t have to decant the Pav right away. Life forms didn’t suffer degradation in a stasis pod. We could take our time, figure out the Pav biology, get the process working, then wake up the refugees. I’d like that.
I checked the notes on HIP 84051. The Bob that explored and reported this system was named Steve. There was no indication where his name came from. Maybe Steve Dallas from Bloom County? As good a guess as any. It wasn’t worth pinging him just to ask, even assuming he was connected to BobNet at the moment.
I spent a month going over his notes while I waited for Phineas and Ferb to arrive. Steve went into considerable detail about climate, ecology, geology and such. He seemed to be a bit of a keener.
Despite the fact that I was in a new star system, I found myself just going through the motions. I had no energy, no enthusiasm. It took me a while to realize what was wrong. I finally figured out that there was no joy here. This wasn’t expansion. This wasn’t a new colony, whether for humans or, in this case, Pav. This was being chased out—this was fleeing from a home that had been perfectly suited to them, to take refuge somewhere else that was nothing more than the best alternative available.
The thought was dangerously depressing. I had to get out of this funk or I’d be no good to anyone.
I waited until the colony ships were close enough, then popped in to visit.“Hi, Phineas.”
“Hello, Jacques. Pull up a chair. Survey okay?”
I settled into an overstuffed easy chair. “No surprises. Not the greatest. Kind of a Devonian level of ecosystem. They can live there…”
“Right.” Phineas looked at me searchingly. “You’ve got a bit of the Dickie Downer thing going, I think.”
I laughed. “Guilty as charged. There’s nothing about this whole situation that doesn’t suck donkey balls. I guess it’s just gotten to me.”
“Mmm. Well, I have been following Bill’s blog on Somatic Regeneration from Genetic Material—”
“Wow, that’s really good, Phineas. I could hear the capitals.”
“Nyuk nyuk. Anyway, Ferb and I batted it back and forth during the voyage, and we took a look at the samples we have in stasis, and we think we could get Bill’s techniques to work on Pav biology.”
“Huh. Okay, so we hold off on decanting them for a while so you can try out your ideas?”
“I think so. The delay won’t harm them, and I’d like to hand them something a little better than this raw planet.”
I nodded. “Good. Let’s do that.”
I already felt better.