A journey into the unknown. Planet Argan. Training flight. Part 4

Greetings, dear readers!

Continuation. The beginning read: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40.

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Greetings, dear readers!

Continuation. The beginning read:

Pete and I made reagents before midnight, examined the samples we had, but the work proceeded slowly, its results did not please us. We were not able to determine which class should be attributed to this poison. Yes, and it put us into a dead end.

In the end, after going through about fifty options, we decided to take a break and take a little NAP in the morning on a fresh head again to get to work.

But the event that took place the following morning radically changed our plans.

The detachment sent for the protection of the village, returned with bad news: in a battle with spider creatures killed one of the soldiers. To my shame, I didn't even know his name...

The body of the deceased was taken to the ship and placed in quarantine Bay, the entrance to which was open only for me and Pete.

All who came into contact with the unfortunate, had with him at least some contact, subjected to severe sanitary and epidemiological treatment.

Pete and I were instructed to urgently conduct a survey of the astronaut's body, identify which organs are primarily affected by poison and try to find a way to protect our people from accidental infection.

Having pulled on the special suits, we looked like space aliens from planets that are somewhat different from us in appearance. I was even a little ridiculous seemed our appearance. Although..."we would look approximately the same in the most common spacesuits. But the reason to "dress up" was not happy at all.

We walked in sanitary box, tightly closed the door and approached the table on which lay the body of our comrade.

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• Do you know his name? I asked.

Pete shook his head and offered to do an autopsy instead of talking. I have to say, I was a little excited. Turns out Pete doesn't have anything sacred. Any one of us could have died, but it's just a study...

As we prepared the embalming solution and laid out the tools for the autopsy, I devoted myself to philosophical reasoning about the impermanence of life, how fleeting life is and how thin the line between it and death.

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But for a long time I didn't have to think about it, Pete soon returned me to reality. We have begun to survey...

We started with the fact that drew attention to the fact that the track bite was in the region of the navel, sloping diverging rays, like spider limbs.

Pete took a picture of this drawing on camera, and we started further inspection. The threads of these rays stretched through almost the entire abdomen and abruptly, creating at the end of some small lumps the size of a pea.

Clicking on one of them, I suddenly felt a kind of pulsating and involuntarily jerked his hand back.

Pete looked at me questioningly.

• What's the matter? How did you feel?

• I don't know, I thought that mound was alive. I know it sounds weird, at least, but it does. You should try it.

Pete shrugged and put a finger to the nearby hillock, held a little, and then said with a puzzled:

• I think you're right. So can be kid our still alive? and with these words he tried to feel the pulse on the neck of the victim.

Pulse was absent...

Pete again in perplexity shrugged his shoulders, picked up the laser scalpel and thoughtfully bent over the body.

He still did not dare to autopsy, and then I suddenly noticed that bumps started to throb already so that it became visible to the naked eye.

At the same time, connecting them to the site of the bite, the rays also began to increase in size...

We unwittingly took a step back from the table and stopped, looking up in wonderment at what is happening.

Meanwhile, the bumps became bigger and continued to grow. Inside them something stirred, trying to get out.

Unexpectedly joined the speakerphone, and the voice of the captain ordered us to flee quarantine section, but we stood silently, unable to move, paralyzed...

Meanwhile, the skin over one of the bumps cracked in the middle, and in the resulting hole appeared a thin spider foot.

I suddenly came out of her daze, grabbed to rest on the preparation table a small bottle and covered it this mound, which almost immediately burst, into the flask was a small spider - young those evil creatures, the poison which killed our comrade.

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Closing the bottle tightly with the lid, I looked back at Pete, who had already managed to catch another baby. But we would hardly be able to catch the entire brood, so quickly left the room, tightly sealed and as soon as the last of the brood was born, let poison gas.

For a few minutes it was over, but we didn't go into this compartment for a long time, waiting for the ventilation system to cope with air purification.

Anyway, we got the most valuable material for research and information on how these creatures breed. Using previously extracted from the body of an adult individual particles of poison, extract from the flesh of the dead animal from him, with the help of newborns "spider", I hoped to achieve any significant results.

In addition, we were hoping to get answers to our questions after opening the body of our deceased friend, but so far we had to wait at least until the morning.

To be continued...