"Richard, sorry for this inconvenience. I know you've had a couple of hard days, but as you know we learn from everything that we do on this new colony. Earth Control wants a hard record on the tragedy that took place Monday, from the source. Are you ready to begin?"

"Yeah. Where do I start?" Richard Caspian says with closed eyes as he opens them and releases a deep breath, presumably preparing him for the next hour or so.

"Start with the morning of the 3rd." Commander Rice says as he leans back in his cushioned chair, trying to make his long time coworker and friend feel at ease in this situation that neither would like to be involved.

"I had been working on the water problem. As you know the water supplies here had unreasonably high levels of toxic elements. I was sent to figure a way to filter or change the toxicity naturally so that it could be consumed by humans. It was a delicate problem that could have large ramifications on the environment of Argus if it wasn't taken care of properly and with an open mind to the effects to the present habitat."

"We have a complete history of your qualifications and specific purpose for being present on this colony Caspian. I don't mean to be rude but I don't want to drag this out any longer than it has to be. You do not have to add this if it isn't needed," interrupted Rice.

"Well, yeah it is needed. I was just going to explain my reasons for going on the gathering with Alec and his Wife."

"Excuse me. Please continue."

"That is quite all right. Where was I? Well, I had found two ways to filter the ammonium fluorite and magnesium metal out of the water, but they were very costly and would take some time to build and process daily. I had found a plant on Earth, Kalmia patiffolias, that counteracted the affects of ammonia and magnesium and I went to Alec, Doctor Winslow, to see if he had found a similar species. He was in charge of plant life on Argus. He had made an extensive library of new species. He was using the mimic taxonomy from Earth. Similar plant structure and function were put into similar family, genus, species and so on, to make comparison and study of the plants easier and similar to home. If I could find a similar plant here, a supplement to the diet could be added to the daily diet to make the toxicity of the water minimal or negligible in the population."

Alec had found nothing as of yet, similar to the Kalmia, but every week he went on expeditions in the surrounding area and collected and categorized his findings. He always went into class 3 or below areas. These areas are virtually harmless. Still, they have been scanned and manned since the colony arrived. The risk is, supposedly, like walking in a park at home.

As you know, this colony is made of 120 families, over 500 people. The only reason Alec was here, was because he could be with his family and work at the same time in his chosen profession and with Alec, botany was his life. This project would make him a name and a legend in science. He knew everything from a dandelion to a Sequoia and he knew their closest similarities on this planet. This was his dream. He had been here a year and his family had gone on picnics frequently, while he had taken video, specimens and observed the general, local plant life. He never went into any area over a class 3 rating. He had never run into anything that was remotely dangerous to him or his family. That is why he had done so well in making his library Alec had a way to work and be with his loved ones every day.

I had gone on 3 or 4 outings before the 3rd and they were some of the most enjoyable times. Alec was a stickler for regulations. He never touched a plant unprotected even if Prime teams had deemed it harmless. As you know the Prime teams make a quick survey, very quick survey, of the area and it's inhabitants and vegetation and rate the findings.

He picked a clearing on the rock and put the mini lab up and his wife put up the portable shelters and began to prepare some food and entertain the children. He began by setting up some video of the movements of the 'Aloe trees' as he called them. He then began collecting some samples around the area and bringing them back to examine and test for toxicity. Even though the preliminary crews found no residual toxins in the plant life, he chose to do the chemo assays and I helped.

Now as you know the ground level of most of the planet is rock with patches of earth, excuse me, argus, where most of the plants grow, as on Earth. Argus vegetation has adapted to the rock and they have many plants that grow into the rock, but my point is that the ground we walk on here, is mostly rock."

"Sorry to interrupt, but where exactly was your camp set up?"

"10 miles south of the main colony. Close to the supply warehouse. People were in view most of the day, but we never talked to them. We had scanned the area for movement of wildlife and found none. Although we did find droppings later that day of a Fadder, a harmless herbivore. We know of only 13 different rodent species and only 2 are dangerous and these have been cutoff with the perimeter fences at Waver Bay and surround the colony with a 20 mile safety area."

"What about airborne species?"

"None have been found, this planet is in the beginnings of evolutionary birth. The largest terrestrial organism with a brain is the size of a rat and all except 2 are harmless. We had yet to find any large carnivores or herbivores, but that didn't mean there weren't any."

"Before we go on Dr. Caspian, I would like to tell you that we are just asking for this information to verify that everything was done in normal colonization protocol. We both know that it was an accident that couldn't be helped," said Ellen Aspy. She had just landed a week ago and brought her family to her husband who had been here from the start. He had pushed the colonization and was considered an important man by some. If the colony worked out he would be a millionaire back home and his name would be praised by all. Ellen loved the Argus landscape and atmosphere and didn't want to believe that something like this could happen. She had also lost 8 years of hibernation time from her spouse and was not about to let that go in vain. She had made a home and wanted to keep it and see it grow and hopefully see the profits flow like water.

"It couldn't be helped?" said Alec questioningly, with a cringed face at Ellen.

"Well, yes. We know you were just doing your job and we don't want to bring guilt where absolutely none is needed. We want to make this a wonderful world where we can raise our new generations. I didn't want to miscommunicate that, but I think I did," Ellen said with a chuckle that no one else seemed to mimic.

"Continue with your flawless show of obedience to colony regulation." Again Ellen said this with kind of a courtesy chuckle that no one laughed to or acknowledged.

Caspian turned his head and thought about what she had just said and what he was saying. He wondered why he was sitting here explaining what happened. His mind wandered to what Alec had said about this planet that had been here for millions of years before any Human was. Millions of years to develop its own species that have their own defense mechanisms. Mechanisms that we had no way of knowing about or defending against because we were not in the evolutionary soup.

Caspian hoped to change their attitudes and ways with his story. He hoped to teach a generation of humans that they were not Gods in a place that they had no claim. He had learned that the hard way.

"For the record, I do believe we followed every law set by the Council and took every caution except one. Hopefully that will be evident after I am done."

The members of the committee all shifted in their seats. Some looked at Rice with an eye of concern as to where this, simple meeting, was actually going.

"Please Dr. Caspian, Richard. Continue with your story." Said the Oldest of the committee, Allen Dawson. Richard was put at ease with this because Dawson had lost his family in a previous catastrophe on a moon base. Feeling empathy with Dawson, Richard felt he should continue for this man's sake and the wisdom he had seemingly learned from life's little experiences.

"OK, I will continue. We had made a camp on a flat rock face that was seemingly and factually harmless, as far as the scanners could tell. Susan and I were eating and watching the children while Alec was testing and recording the 'Aloe Tree's' responses to tactile stimulation. He was off about 20 yards. We were all on the rock face and we could hear the children playing on the smooth slope of the side of the camp. We heard a scream from Sarah that was cut short and immediately Susan and I ran to investigate. The children were gone and there was no trace of abduction or injury."

"You say the children were on a slope. Like a slope you normally would not walk on everyday?"

"Yes, the camp was on flat surface but the children liked to slide down the smooth rock that slanted gently down to the next level. It wasn't steep enough to cause harm, just kid fun."

Susan and I frantically looked for the children and I told her to go get Alec. I then retrieved my pulse gun from the day pack. I began searching the area and saw absolutely no evidence that the children ever wandered off the rock face. I then noticed a small section of the rock move, or kind of resituate. It was right where the children were playing and with further investigation was seemingly a trap door about the size of a basketball. It was not rock but an organic, hard substance that for all intents and purposes was rock. I stood back and pushed down on the section and found that it gave to and kind of pushed down and to the side. It seemed to be about a half of an inch thick and the surrounding rock was about the same. Just then Alec arrived and frantically saw what I had found. He stood over the hole and pushed aside and down the fitting and yelled for his children."

"He yelled for his children? Was it a cave?"

"Well if you haven't inspected the findings of the 3rd, the substance in the rock was like a thick lattice work of web like substance. It was littered with what looked like a type of lawn mulch. We have analyzed it and it seems to be an organic substance like a spider web with dirt, roots and decaying carcasses clinging densely through out the inside of the room. From first sight, it was porous enough to tell that sound could travel through it.

Without thinking Alec reached his hand into the hole and probed around the inside looking for his children. The hole was big enough for a child to fit, but way too small for an adult. Frantically Alec looked at me and we decided that the children were definitely in there because the inside looked as if something had just been pulled through it. A trench was kind of made by something. Susan got on the transmitter and called for help. Alec told her to go to the storage facility and find some medical supplies, something more than a first aid kit. She was pretty hysterical and this would take her mind off the situation. I took the butt of my pulse gun and tried to break the periphery of the opening into a bigger opening. Upon hitting the surrounding rock, I found that it sounded hollow with about a 10 foot radius around the opening. Alec ran to his tool box and came back with two hammers, a chisel and a screw driver. The rock was pretty easy to puncture and we sort of perforated a section out so we could get a lever under it and pull up the remaining covering. After about five minutes of chiseling, we got a large enough section so that a person could get into easily. As we pealed the rock off, it was packed with the same, lattice mulch. At this point Alec was beginning to panic and his wife had returned with a large emergency kit and was doing the same."

"Had the ER teams been contacted and were they on route?"

"Yes, but they were in rovers and the terrain was unsuitable for fast travel it would be 10 minutes before they got there, we had to try to rescue them ourselves."

"Was Dr. Winslow armed at this time?"

"No, I was the only one armed. My weapon was to the side. I was standing on solid rock, continuously widening the opening by knocking off chunks with my hammer and chisel, hoping to find where the trail through the insides ended. At this point, Alec was inside the stuff and standing to his armpits trying to feel for his children. It was too soft to withhold his weight and he had to come out. He began knocking away sections also. We hit a thicker part of rock, where the cavern seemed to end, and the whole remaining 5 feet of section came up. We lifted it up and found the end of the trail, where it had seemed the children were wading through the stuff to their final destination."

Caspian paused and took a deep breath. The images of the children flashed through his brain and he felt chills run down his spine. He had reacted at that moment without thinking as if the children were his own. Caspian had read and heard of stories, horrors and fairy tales that he thought were just that, tales. Up until then he had had a peaceful, uneventful life that he had taken for granted. He never thought or hoped that he would be living a true horror story. But he had.

"Caspian, you have said enough. We don't need to tell the other details to Earth if it is too painful." Ellen Aspy said as she tried to convey her grief. Grief that could not be felt by Caspian.

"They need to hear this. They need to know what's out here that we can't begin to know about without these same kinds of occurrences."

"Yes, but please don't..."

"Mrs. Aspy! Please let Dr. Caspian finish his debriefing before you enter your opinion on the matter." Dawson chimed in with impatience and authority that only comes with old age and gray hair. With his hands folded respectfully, he nodded for Caspian to continue.

"Thank you Mr. Dawson. As we pulled the last section off, we saw the children. They were packed in, flush to the side of the wall that looked like it had been dug out by a jackhammer, with streaks running down the sides like claw marks. Until then I hadn't really smelt the lattice mulch, but in this new section it smelled of decay and death. I almost vomited from the smell and the site of the children. They had been down there about 10 minutes and we weren't sure how much oxygen they could filter through the lattice mulch. As Alec called there names and began to pull and drag them out they awoke from their slumber or paralysis and began to scream. Alec pulled out Sarah and set her on the side, I pulled her out the rest of the way. He began to pull Jonathan out when I realized there was a tentacle attached to Sarah's leg. I pulled harder and began to see blood from where it was attached. The tentacle had prickly things all over it that seemed to have a dual purpose. It seemed to grip her leg and by the skin color and groggy movement, it injected poison."

"Why did you not find your gun at this moment?"

"I saw my gun, but a pulse doesn't cut, it is a blunt attack that usually hits like an ancient cannonball. The gun was made to incapacitate, not kill. I knew it wouldn't help. I grabbed for the chisel to use the sharp edge to cut it when Susan panicked and began pulling Sarah out of her tomb. The next few moments were almost instantaneous. I had little time to think."

Caspian saw Ellen whisper to the man next to her and he nodded in approval. Caspian thought of the incident with Alec and his family and the boldness of man to colonize alien worlds. He had learned the hard way that he was, only human after all. Now, it seemed by her reaction to this whole debriefing, that Ellen was going take this as an isolated incident. She thought that she and hers were immune to these types of things because of protocol and technology of the modern man. If she didn't listen, hopefully someone on Earth would.

"As she pulled, the lattice mulch raised ever so slightly and began to pull back. I saw a look from Alec and we both knew that we had to hurry, unknown danger was sitting under our feet. I grabbed the hammer and centered the chisel on the tentacle and came down on it with a dead center hit. I cut the tentacle and about a foot of writhing tentacle fell to the ground. Susan yanked Sarah out and she fell on top of her. As the bloody stump retreated, we heard a low rustle, like a thousand leaves in the wind, only with the rustle came movement, Jonathan began to sink as something moved below him. Without thought of his own life, Alec stepped down close to Jonathan and sank towards the tentacles origin. I remember he gave me a look. A look of utter desperation and fear. As without asking, he said get my son out please, please.

As he stepped down and got a sure footing on whatever was down there, he kicked at it and stood up, his feet at the origin of the tentacles. I pulled Jonathan up and the tentacle let go, and bits and pieces of small bone and flesh of other creatures, clung to his body. The remnants of earlier meals. The ERs had just arrived and were working on Sarah as I pulled Jonathan out. I didn't realize it then, but I was exhausted and had actually, barely lifted him. As Jonathan was pulled up and the tentacle let go, it latched on to Alec around the waist. I heard him scream in pain as the small spines dug into his skin. I tried kicking the tentacle, but it just squeezed tighter. Then 3 more came out from beneath and latched on to Alec. He was screaming in terror.

He was being pulled down through the creature's webbing and waste . I jumped in after him and tried to get a foot hold and pull him up, but the creature pulling was stronger. The poison was working fast, on Alec and on me. I cut my hands as I grabbed and tugged at the tentacles. I heard the men coming for Alec and me. Susan was screaming. They jumped in and shot blind pulse blasts directly below Alec's feet. At this point Alec was calm and in a state of numbness. He had not struggled for the last few moments, which were only 15 seconds and I had failed to notice his seeming bliss. I, soon after, fell into a state of paralysis, but not before the struggling stopped and they cut the tentacles off to find that the beast had already begun to consume Alec. Alec died from loss of blood and a kind of morphine overdose. He died to save his children. He died in the seemingly harmless new world we want to now live."

There was a long pause as the committee waited for more and Caspian thought of what to say.

"Well thank you for your synopsis of the events. I hope it didn't inconvenience you, Dr. Caspian. If you are finished we have some forms that need a written sig..."

"I'm not finished." Caspian said with closed eyes as he went through all the facts the colony had learned in the last few days.

"These creatures that we have just discovered litter the so called, safe area, that we live. The only place they are not located is the area outside the safe fence. Outside the safe fence they tend to eat the highly poisonous rodents that we don't see here. Those creatures that do, die. So we either face poisonous rodents or large squid, crab like creatures. Our preliminary reports and scans, which now are directed to heat produced within the rock formations, have found the country for a 200 miles radius populated in 70% of the area with these creatures deemed, Argus Squid. Well my respectful committee for the people, by the people. Squid, don't eat people.

You now have a fatherless family and one screwed up chemist who thinks this whole terra forming operation need be looked at twice, three, four a hundred times over before we put a single helpless child with only protocol, with no real life testing, to protect them.

You can make this world into what you want, but if you want to live in it, it'll take a lot longer than a year to make it suitable for colonization. Earlier I said We followed every protocol and regulation except one. That one was, use common sense. We broke that the moment we came here with the attitude that we have from Earth.

I'm leaving with this message, and taking my friends family to the only place that is remotely safe, home."

The committee sat in utter silence while Caspian stood and walked out the door with gritted teeth. Ellen Aspy was the first to speak, only to be interrupted by Dawson.

"Well people. Until we hear from subspace from the Director and his crew, I advise we rethink our safe area and do our best till we hear from the big boys." Dawson said as he thought about what Caspian had said and what the future held for the colony. He wondered if this story would even make it to press on Earth and if the investors could put a nine hundred billion dollar operation on hold for a few more years because of one, sad, unthinkable incident.