Chapter 29: The Report Continues

The President turned to me and said, "please continue, Admiral."

"As yet, we don't know how many people arrived at their new home. However many there were, they seem to have thrived. We gather that the colonists were derived from both sides of their final conflict. They were mostly young adults, with a few families thrown in for their depth of experience."

"How did you discover all this?" asked Professor Hodges.

"We explored a library on their home world, albeit briefly. We also chose a home to visit which happened to belong to one of the families chosen. Then on their new world, we found a small school that we could bug. We spent a week monitoring the output from the schoolroom, before moving on. The bug can record data for about a further year."

"But how did you interpret your data? There's no Rosetta Stone to give you a translation," asked Peter Davies.

"From the home world library, we acquired a set of encyclopedias, a set of dictionaries and a number of audio books. We learned more from our bug on their new world. You see we selected a school in a remote location so that it would be small enough to include a full range of students of all ages. The results of that showed us that the language had not radically departed from that of their home world."

"I think that the time has come," said the President, "to show us the display of your trips."

I directed Lieutenant-Commander White to give his report on the third planet of Epsilon Eridani. He started with the map of the planet showing where the Voyager had landed. For the first visit to the planet, there had been a rigid rule on the wearing of environmental suits outside the craft. This included the quarantine of anything brought into the vessel. We had equipped the Voyager with low-pressure laboratories so that no air would escape as people used the air locks.

There followed details of the geology, fauna, and flora of the planet, including a number of genomes. Finally, the report showed the planting and raising of terrestrial crops. In addition, a small number of volunteers had exposed themselves to the atmosphere of the planet.

Doctor Spencer took up the tale of how she had monitored the volunteers. Despite extensive testing, she had been unable to detect any harmful aspects of the planet.

Lieutenant Barry Thompson took over. He explained that they had discovered that life on the planet was constructed around DNA. This implied that the fauna could be directly compared with the life on earth. It also suggested that life found elsewhere among the stars would also be likely to be built on DNA. They had classified over five hundred animal species and had extracted genomes for ninety-eight species. They had achieved almost as much with the flora.

Lieutenant Shaw continued the report from Voyager. The geology held no surprises. It was too early to determine where the major tectonic plates were, as most of the volcanoes were dormant. However, the presence of tectonic plates was evident by numerous mountain ranges. The planet's magnetic field was stronger than earth's by a factor of about fifty per cent.

That completed the report on the Epsilon Eridani system. John White summed up and said that the next stage would require a colonists' support vessel.

The President thanked him and said, "Admiral, you visited some interesting planets that were not suitable for colonization. May we hear something more about those."

I nodded to Thomas Long. He stood and described the Dinosaur planet of Epsilon Indi. Doctor Ramin's eyes lit up while Thomas described the giant sauropod we had seen and its length.

He was interrupted by Doctor Gentry, "I suppose you measured the length using a tape measure?"

Thomas looked at me and waited for my nod. I gave it and Thomas continued, "No Doctor Gentry. We measured our distance from the creature using a range-finder, then measured the angle subtended by the ends of the creature. Knowing those figures, we then..."