Tylen faces Shui with a look of dread and urgency. "Yasmine just found something in the hold....something alive and...shes afraid of touching it. Its in something at the moment but we need some sort of sealable biocontainer to move it in. Anything like that handy?"

The situation was alarming to Tylen to say the least, but its connection to the powdery dust remained a mystery, or if any connection was even present. The fact that it had escaped their notice until now was even more alarming. Perhaps he would take responsibility for the searching of luggage himself in the future. There was little to be done now and admonishing himself would only serve to delay action. He'd heard stories of other infested Scout parties and he had always had a fear of such things in the back of his mind.

Shui stares blankly back at Tylen for a long moment as she struggles to process what he says, shifting gears in her head.  It's a rare occurance for her.  Then she blinks, and her eyes focus.  "Yes.  Quickly."  She spun away, moving across the room with surprising alacrity.  One hand snatches up a hard plastic container, wide-mouthed with a screw-top; returning, Shui slaps it down into Tylen's hand.  "Go.  Be on the lookout for an arthropod, about so big."  Her hands encompass something about six inches in diameter.  "The one in the...sphere? is likely harmless now, but take no chances."

Her dark eyes urge Tylen to hurry.

"Captain," Shui states, turning back toward Jago, "we should warn the passangers.  There is an adult female on board, and it will bite if disturbed."  Shui considers.  "Probably in the ventilation system, as the eggs were easily gathered up by the filters."

Tylen nods to her, "Thanks, your a lifesaver doc," he flashes a grin already propelling himself forward.

As he does so, he snags ahold of the containter and his boots squeak on the floor as he turns to sprint back to the hold. He rounds the corner and zips past Conrad. He comes to sliding stop a few feet from Yasmine. Catching a breath, he sets down the container carefully. He unscrews the lid and holds it open for her to drop in the sphere. "So whaddaya think, you making cocoa or what?" his smile widening as he carefully watches the situation.

"I don't know, that was at least 32 seconds, you know," Yasmine replies with a grin and then shakes her head.  "Oh no, I am not lifting this up like this!  There's a hole underneath, and if I life it now I bet something will make a point of showing how irritated it is!"

"Find something to slide under this thing first.  Then we lift it and place it on that sphere and pulls the sheet or whatever away - the nest drops and we slam the container shut.  Either that, or you can pick it up after I go lock myself in the airlock and wait for you all to be eaten alive or something," she chuckles and winks at Tylen.

Tylen seems to considers that for moment. Then he shakes his head with a chuckle, and goes to the cleaning supply closet and pulls out the dustpan and returns. "Okay, on three I'm gonna slide this in and then we'll dump this thing into the box, alright?....Conrad we could use your help, if you wanna shut the lid on this container as soon as we get this, whatever-it-is in there. Doc called it an arthuropod..."

He carefully moved the dustpan up to the sphere in preparation to slide it underneath. Then looked to Yasmine.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 22:10, Tue 11 Apr 2006.

"Go!" Yas says as she tilts the nest up just enough to let Tylen slide the dustpan under the thing she found.  All the time she keeps a couple of fingers on top of it, not wishing to grab it too hard or anything.  Never know if whatever that is inside might bite or stick something nasty through the walls of the nest.

Once the pan was under there she coordinates it with him to lift it up to the container, ignoring any noises from inside.  In her experience as a Marine it is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to bugs.

Then she nods to Tylen and Conrad to pull away the duster again, ready to pull her hand away as soon as the thing is down inside the sphere.  "Ready."

The transfer goes smoothly, handled like the most delicate of bomb disposal operations, and the strange papery sphere, complete with its now silent contents is soon safely sealed within the sample container.  Everybody can breathe again, as the whole lot is carried through to the ship's small medbay for Shui to examine.

Saskia checks her inventory log.  She has several litres of the cleaning solvent which had worked so effectively at dissolving the dust, and calls Jago to let him know that she can clean the filters, as long as somebody can stop them clogging up again.

"Now, we had better make a sweep again, in case they come in pairs, just like all good things," Yas says to before the container is taken away.  "Preferbly without snatding on your head and what not, though.  Hey, Tylen, you mentioned something about scanners before, no?  Maybe that'll work?"

Tylen paused for a moment. "Shui did say that there was a female arthuropod. She said it would be about six inches long and most likely in the ventilation system all by her lonesome. Is there a way to get up in there and check it out by hand if not by scanners?"

In the medical bay, Shui stares at the huge bottle before her, studying it with a jaundiced eye.  She then finds a large, blunt object, placing it on the workbench, and pulls on a pair of gloves.  Rigging an isolation curtain around the bottle, she pulls over a ventillation tube, attaching it to the top.  Some searching yields a small bottle of extremely strong, organic fluid, used to clean off wounds.  It vapourizes, quickly, this liquid, creating fumes.  Pouring a fair amount into a beaker, Shui slowly unscrews the top of the bottle, then swiftly opens it up, drops in the beakerful of liquid (not caring if it spills or not) and closes the top, half screwing it on.

Then she closes off the isolation curtain and waits.  If there are noises, she waits until they cease, and then waits another ten minutes.  If not, she merely waits the ten minutes.

Hopefully the creature inside will either be dopey, unconcious, or dead.

Then, gloves on, heavy object at hand, she slowly unscrews the lid, and peers inside.  Hopefully the nest will be partially dissolved by the alcohol-like liquid.  She certainly doesn't take the lid off all the way, and does make sure to turn on the ventilation tube.

It wouldn't do for HER to pass out.

“Leave that for now Shui,” Jago says, eyeing the container curiously, “as it’s isolated it’s not the main problem for the moment. I’d like you to look into insectacides, find us something we can use to flush out the system but preferably, without slaughtering the passengers.”

Tylen, your idea is good, but it’s Saskia who will know all the access pints, if she’s not busy, have a word with here and see if you can come up with strategy between you.

“I suppose that I’d better have a word with the passengers.”

Jago doesn’t look particularly enamoured with the idea but climes to his feet and heads fro the door.

Just one thing Shuie, if this thing is a native of Saurus, how come it’s on our ship, did it just walk in because they also occur on Vilis, perhaps Corlan bought it ion on his moon flower, see what you cn find out on that as well please.”

With a sigh Jago turns again and heads over to the passenger quarters.

"Certainly, Captain Lanza."  The top goes back on the isolation tube, screwed tightly.  The liquid won't melt the tube, and the creature hasn't bored its way out.  Yet.  Carefully fitting the tube into a metal locker (emptied of various medical tools and supplies), Shui goes back to her research, hunting for further information on the invetebrate.

"The possibilities," Shui states quietly, "are endless.  Mr. DeSant grew the flower from a seed - that is unlikely."  One finger stabs a control, moves to the next record.  "Eggs could have come on board from any number of locations."  She checks the lifespan and growth rate of the creature.  "I will try to find the most likely match, assuming it came aboard as one of a set of eggs.  At least that will give us the maxiumum amount of days to backtrack."
This message was last edited by the player at 18:46, Thu 13 Apr 2006.

Catching the medics reply, Jago stops just long enough to point out that, ”the femails leave the nest to lay their eggs, so if there is one is still in there Shui, then goodness knows how many others on the loose, apart from the 40 thousand eggs that we know are hatching all over the ship right now.”

"Author pod?  What is that supposed to be?  Some bad novel or something?  Good thing you explained the six inches, though, or I'd been wondering what you were talking about," Yasmine chuckles at Tylen and continues her search while waiting to see if they could tweak the scanners.

"I'm not going to crawl in after some little bug, though, but you're welcome to try if you want," she adds after a moment.

Everybody hurries about their business...

He chuckled a bit at Yas' need for clarification, and gave her a sly face. Then Tylen had a sinsister vision of him crawling through the ventilation system with a flamethrower in hand. It was a satisfying thought. "I may just do that Chief," he said with a grin as he made his way to the engineering area.

---

He worked his way through the ship moving silently through the corridors. For all the excitement, there were still areas of the ship which were relatively quiet. Maybe thats why Saskia enjoyed staying back here. He tapped at the door to Engineering and stepped in.  "Saskia," he called out, "Skipper wants me to work with you on getting the sensor display of the ventilation system if possible or the entire ship, and make it callibrated for the nasty bugs we found. What do ya say?"

Jago pulls his jacket straight as he crosses the hold on his way to the passenger lounge, it remains slightly grubby and reassuringly comfortable, but straighter.

Stepping through the iris valve, the captain finds the adults all in the forward lounge. From the rattle of pulse lasers and scream of incoming missiles, he judges the kids to be in the rear lounge and can’t help but smile.

“I’m glad you are all here, I’m afraid we picked up a stowaway on Vilis,” he says when he has the adults attention. “There is a large insect on board, a Harper's termite, which could give some one a nasty nip if they weren’t careful. We are doing our best to track it down and remove it, but while it’s still on the lose I’d advise you to check your bedding before you turn in, shake out you cloths before you put them on and just generally keep an eye out. I’ll get Miss Tiesi to bring over some holos and if you do see it, just call me or any on the crew and we’ll be straight over.”

Jago looks at the gathered faces to see if anyone has a question, before he goes on.

Shui taps a command on her dataglove.  ++ Miss Blake, I think it would be a good thing to continue your cleaning of the filters.  Possibly on a regular basis.  Additionally, the solvent of which you spoke will continue to be effective upon any other concentrations of the 'dust' you discover.  Please be careful - the dust is actually the eggs of an arthropod.  They can grow to be the size of your hand, or slightly larger, and have a painful bite. ++

Another key - this time she types a message out to Captian Lanza, and sends it text-only.  Captain Lanza - the termites are vulnerable to common pesticides.  Do we have any aboard?  If not, how much longer will it be until we stop?  In either case, I believe we can keep the infestation to a minimal level, at the very least, until we can bring aboard the necessary chemicals to destroy the creatures.

It is very difficult for me to determine where these creatures may have come aboard.  They take three to six months to reach sexual maturity.  The mating chamber is normally occupied for seven to ten days.  However, the male would be dead, and the female gone.  I am going to investigate the chamber now.

Having sent the 'email' to the Captain, she returns to the isolation area, and begins her work on the container.  Once again - gloves.  Isolation.  Light.  Unscrew the cap, and shine the light into the crack (the entire chamber will not be opened).  Then Shui takes a tiny, fibreoptic camera from her surgical equipment and threads it in through the crack to have a look and see if anything has come out of the mating chamber.

She isn't opening the whole thing more than a centimeter, though.

Saskia looks around the Engineering Compartment nervously.  She doesn't usually get visitors, and always worries that they might spot something out of place, and get the wrong idea about her.  Sure, it's untidy, but that's usually because they caught her in the middle of something.  She looks at Tylen's heavy boots, which for some reasom have the word "sandals" stencilled on them.  Must be Darrian humor.  Without looking up, she answers him, speaking quietly, "Well, we have no sesors that can detect anything like that, except the ones built into the filter array, and they only detect whatever's in the vent system.  I think, um, Conrad, yes, Conrad had a hand unit, I might be able to strip that down and rig something up if - oh, excuse me."

She takes the call from Shui, "Miss Blake, I think it would be a good thing to continue your cleaning of the filters.  Possibly on a regular basis.  Additionally, the solvent of which you spoke will continue to be effective upon any other concentrations of the 'dust' you discover.  Please be careful - the dust is actually the eggs of an arthropod.  They can grow to be the size of your hand, or slightly larger, and have a painful bite."

"Right you are, Shui.  I can do that cleaning, no problem, and I'll watch out for the biting.  I never trust anything that doesn't look friendly anyway, and bugs aren't exactly on my fluffy'n'cuddly list."  As she closes the link, Saskia's voice drops back to her previous nervous murmur, "Sorry about that.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, like I was saying, I might be able to strip a sniffer down for parts and rig something, but I think they're it'd probably be more useful as a hand unit.  I mean we have a sensor in the vent system, and another fixed unit wouldn't be as useful as a mobile one.  I think."

Tylen blushes slightly at her response to him coming in. Almost half turning as if she were getting dressed. When she spoke she seemed to relax and that made Tylen relax a bit as well. He listened to what she could do and the plan. hopefully Conrad would allow the dismantling of his sniffers, of course he'd have to take it up with him. He nodded seeing what she was getting at, "Then would there be a way to roll it through the ventilation system or maybe increase the capacity of the ones in place? I suppose I should just ask you, whats the best way to locate something in the ventilation ducts? And could I fit up there?"

Conrad decides that the safest place to be, under the circumstances, considering that there's a dangerous animal aboard, is probably near a trained killer who isn't aiming to kill him.  At least, not yet.

He goes looking for Yas, and finds her still searching.

From what seems like a safe distance, he asks her, "Hey there, Yas, any sign of our new playmate yet?"

"Playmate?" Yas almost snaps, peeking up at him for a moment, thinking of Ridge and his type of "playmates" - the kind that comes in centrefolds and gets pinned up all over mostly men's lockers and what not.

Then she realises what Conrad is talking about and chuckles, ducking down again to look under the containers.  "Oh, the bug?  No, luckily.  But I haven't crawled in the vent intake near the spot that I found the nest at, though.  I've learnt enough about bugs in the Marines to not go crawling into places they are likely to nest.  They tend not to like it, and a bug bite can be really nasty if it is the right bu...g," she explained, ending up going quiet rather abruptly where she stood on all four peering under yet another container.

Shui works on the paper-light ball, and soon turns up a somewhat... grisly... discovery.  One of the creatures is still inside.  Or at least some of it is.  Careful comparison with the library data shows it to be the remains of a male.  Pretty much just the front half of it, minus the jaws.


The passengers seem surprisingly unconcerned by Jago's announcement, except Corlan.  For the most part they seem moderately familiar with the insect in question.  Miles Janur almost laughs when Jago mentions it.  "Oh, those things.  We get them at home from time to time, mostly near the port when they get shipments in from Saurus.  Luckily they don't seem to do well on Vilis, I suspect there's something in the atmosphere that they don't like much.  We'll watch out for it Captain, and the children know avoid them."

He smiles, "I'm just glad you didn't tell us we had a whiptail aboard.  At least the termite isn't venomous."


Yas and Conrad continue their search of the hold.


In Engineering, Saskia and Tylen go through the possibilities with the detection of foreign particles in the vents systems.

Shui leans back in her seat for a long moment.  Then she stands, and carefully checks the bottle, then the area around the table.  Finally, she taps her dataglove, activating the line to Yasmine.

++ Ms Crow, I have a question for you.  When Mr. Ogresh brought me the sample, he indicated that you had found something alive. ++  She glances back at the bottle for a hearbeat, then looks around her room.  ++ If I might ask, what prompted that conclusion?  That whatever lay within the sphere was still living? ++

Hearing the ship's intercom crackle to life, Yasmine does not bother to answer at the moment.

"Conrad.  Tell her I got a live one for her.  A bug, that is.  Six long antennae, bright colours.  Thanks," she says to Conrad and does not move at all where she stands on all four.

"Maybe I can blast it with my gun and have her scrape some DNA samples off the walls, eh?" she wonders out loud as she reaches for the gun that never leaves her, except in the shower, unlike her personal com link.