“Interiorly, the snout is odd too, in both species. That gentle swelling behind the nostril slits is a chamber filled with cilia. Hairlike projections, but flesh. And they’re rife with bloodvessels. So are the organs that seem to correspond to lungs. Filled with cilia. Like a nest of worms. They expel water when they come up from a dive: they sit on the shore and heave and it comes out the nostril slits. So they’re taking in water; and they’re getting oxygen out of it. Gills and lungs at once. They can handle river water and estuary water, but no one’s observed them diving at sea. They may have relatives that do. We’re a long way from knowing how many different varieties of lizards there are. But the present count is about fifty‑two species under the size of the ariels. And a lot are aquatic.

“There are flying lizards–for the naturalists among you that know what bats are–rather like bats and rather not; warmblooded, we reckon–the probe crew never caught any, but the photo stills” (Slide) “–rather well suggest bats; that’s a terrene form. Or Downbelow gliders, of which no one’s yet got a specimen. We don’t know a thing about them, but their agility in the air, along with the fact that calibans and ariels are warmblooded–suggest that they’re the world’s closest approach to a mammal. This is the item we’ve got a particular caution on. They’re fairly rare in the area, but they do swarm. The wingspan is half a meter, some larger. They could bite; could carry disease: could be venomous–we don’t know. Because they might be something like a mammal, we’re a little more concerned about contamination with them. There’s no good being scared of them. I’m talking about remote possibility precautions. Everything’s new here. You don’t find easy correspondences in lifeforms. All the can’ts and won’ts you ever heard can be revised on a new world. Nature’s really clever about engineering around can’ts. Insects can’t get above a certain size…except that insect is a terrene category term, covering things with chitin and certain kinds of internal structure; but what we meet in the Beyond can differ quite a bit. And our world has some oddities.” (slide) “Like the hoby mole. That’s a meter long, half a meter wide, engorges earth like a burrowing worm. That tiny annular segmentation is chitin, and they’re very soft. Yes, they are something like an insect, and if you put a spade through one by accident, don’t touch the remains. They exude an irritant that sent a member of the probe team to sickbay for two days. So there’s also a caution out on this one.

“There are snakes. They’re coldblooded and they’re constrictors. At least the samples were. We don’t rule out poison. Possibly we’re being alarmist in that regard: human prejudice. But poison in a legless structure seems to be a very efficient hunting mechanism and it’s proven so on two worlds besides Earth.

“And the fairy flitters.” (slide) “These little glider lizards are about fingersized, the wings are really rib extension, and if you set a lantern near the trees, you’ll get a halo of flitters. They don’t really fly, mind, they glide. The iridescence lasts as long as they live. You only see it in the photos, not in the lab specimens. They eat putative insects, they’re utterly harmless, and probably beneficial to the farming effort. They’ll cling to anything when they land, and you just disengage them gently and set them back on a branch. They’ll fly right back to the light. As long as there’s no trees near our camp lights, we won’t have trouble with flitters piling up there. But they’ll be all over you if you carry a light through the woods, and I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with vehicle headlights. It’s a shame to think of killing any of them. They’re far too beautiful. We’re going to try to devise something that might drive them off. Ideas are welcome.

“Fish–beyond counting. Saltwater and freshwater. No poisons yet detected. Edible. We’ll want to be sure to stick to varieties that have already been tested; and bio will run tests on new species as they’re brought in. You’ll learn to recognize the species so you know what to eat and what to bring us.”

“Microorganisms. We’re very fortunate in that regard. No one picked up a parasite. No one got sick. No one developed allergies, either. We don’t get careless, though. And particularly where you have mammal analogues, we don’t get careless. There’s a phenomenon we call biological resonance, for want of a better name. That’s when two worlds’ microorganisms set up housekeeping together and develop new traits over a period of years; when they cooperate. So–the medical staff is going to have a long lecture on this topic–you have to report every contact with a new lifeform, especially if you accidentally touch something, which is not a good idea. And you report every runny nose and every cough and every itch‑ We do have a biological isolation chamber we can set up. If someone turns out to be in really serious trouble and nothing else will work, we can put you in a bubble for three years until a ship comes back and lifts you off. Short of that we have antihistamines and all kinds of other alternatives, up to the autoimmune lot, so there’s no good becoming obsessive about the chance of contamination; but there’s no good being cavalier about things, either. If you drop down in a faint, it’s really helpful if you’ve already told us you got stung by something that morning or that you’d been digging down on the beach. You’re all going to have to keep your wits about you and be able to give a meticulous account of your whereabouts and your contacts with any and everything. The thing you forget to mention could be the key that we need to figure out what’s wrong with you. And that’s partly my business, because I have to form a picture of every ecosystem, so that if your contact with something harmful was on the beach, for instance, I have a good idea what to look for. And the faster I can answer questions, the safer you are. That’s why I have to ask everyone in the mission to be bio’s eyes and ears. Leave the hands and the touching to us, where you have any doubts. Humans can be compatible with all kinds of ecosystems; don’t kill anything, just move it over. This world doesn’t have any predators to argue with us; and we’ve got the construction sites planned so that eventually we’re going to intersperse urban development with wild areas and wildlife safeguards. The optimum development areas are also the optimum sites for some of the world’s most interesting inhabitants, and there’s no reason why protected habitat can’t exist side by side, theirs and ours. It has to do with attitude toward the wild. It has to do with knowledge and not fear. We’re not turning this world into Cyteen. We’re turning it into something uniquely its own. People who come here will be able to see the old world right along with the most modern development. Caliban habitat right in the middle of a city. Humans are very flexible. We can just extend a road a bit and locate a loading dock around a critical area; and that’s what we’ll do. That’s why there’s a land bank being set up. When you own land, you’ll have title to a certain value of land, but not any specific land, and that lets the governor’s office and the bio department create a preserve where needed, and it protects you and your descendants against any financial damage. You can’t own caliban habitat. That has to be left. On the other hand, to prevent their encroachment on us, there will be barrier zones, usually residential, surrounding any contact point–like, for instance, the caliban mounds near the landing site. In the theory that lifeforms get along better with each other than lifeforms get along with roads and factories, there’ll be housing built along the line that turns only windows in that direction, not doors, not accesses. Once we determine the actual boundary of an area, that’s where the permanent building will go. And you’ll be up against a protected zone, so your actual maintenance on that side will be handled through the bio department. City core will be industrial. All city growth will be handled through the creation of similar enclaves along roadways. This is the way it is in the charter. I think you understand it. I just want to explain how the bio section relates to the construction agency and to the governor’s office and why we’ll have some functions linked in with security and law enforcement. We have a constituency, which is the ecosystem we’re entering. We also represent the human ecosystem. We work out accommodations and bring those before other departments, who have to adjust to the facts as we present them. We don’t really have authority. Nature has that. We just find out the facts as they exist; the decision’s already made–that the two systems have to exist in balance. A world where humans come in at the top of the food chain is easily thrown out of balance. Those of you who are stationborn will appreciate that quite readily. It’s like a station, like Pell, for instance, where two biosystems exist in complement. Very tricky lifesupport setup, one looping into the other, and each benefitting the other. But when you start from the beginning you can do that, and make them balance. We look to have station manufacture for the really heavy and polluting industries. All the departments will be doing these seminars and we’ll go on doing them after we land, making tapes for the azi and for future generations. All of this is going to be priceless stuff. And mostly history’s going to make liars out of us, but, we sincerely hope, not in our hopes for the place.