Craig Chapter 3: Goop

Planet 2024XV871d was a disappointment for almost everyone on board because it was covered in water and that meant that getting at any of the minerals would be really fucking hard. Craig was in his element however. For the first time in his decade long career the call went out for “Exobiology Officer Henderson to come to the bridge” when they reached their destination. It was with some pleasure as he watched Captain Benson disgustedly tell him that preliminary scans had shown that 2024XV871d was absolutely swimming with organic material. Whilst all the geologists sat gloomily on the ship Craig was flying down to the planet practically every day. Even if most of it was cooped up a tiny submarine collecting samples the amount of time spent off the ship was liberating.

The only problem was that the underwater life was almost entirely gross. It might have been bias because he was one himself but Craig liked vertebrates. He especially liked frogs. Nothing on this planet had anything remotely similar to a backbone; instead the main form of life seemed to be sacks of goop. In fact saying they were sacks was quite frankly a misnomer because they were just formless lumps of goop and once he though that he had worked out which balls of goop were different animals they would just sort of flop into an entirely different type of goop. And then those balls would split off into different balls of goop.

At one point he found a thing that looked a bit like a tree but when he tried to take a sample it collapsed into a runny translucent slurry, full of flecks and veins like a cracked egg that hadn’t quite managed to become a bird, which slopped all over the submarine and into all the equipment. What had once been excitement about finding new life rapidly turned into a nightmare of constantly cleaning organic goo out of sensors, robotic joints, window seals, clothes, hair… everything. In the end he just started wiping what he could off the sub and into a bucket which he then poured into the sample chamber.