Hi, everyone.  Sorry to have been out of touch for a while, but we broke camp unexpectedly after a hunter-drone attack.  The loggers are learning, more quickly than I would've hoped, about the danger from my fellow humans and their machines.  They may not directly grasp the concept that our location was surely being beamed to the authorities even as the drones attacked; but they've learned that when the drones find them, they have to move, and fast.

It took longer for the resupply team and myself to find each other, what with the obvious complications.  I want to thank, once again, all of you who've volunteered your effort and resources to keep me and my scattered colleagues resupplied and to keep Cybele informed about our work out here.  And thanks to all of you who've offered your moral support... which is just as valuable to me, believe me.  There are times when I feel we're all alone out here, and it strengthens me so much to know so many of you are with us in spirit.  Keep pressuring the council, folks.

During today's foraging, the loggers ran afoul of a group of burrowers gathering their own foliage.  I've been expecting this since I discovered the burrowers using ferns to camouflage their warren entrances.  I didn't really see them; since they don't need air and can dig through most anything, they rarely come up from underground.  The first sign of their presence was when we noticed some redferns and polegrass stalks being sucked into the ground.  I wonder if they use the polegrass to brace their tunnels.  Anyway, it made me laugh, because it looked just like those cartoons of gophers yanking garden vegetables underground.

 The loggers weren't amused, though, since they need the polegrass too, and the redferns contain high concentrations of some useful trace elements.  There was a brief tussle, with the loggers trying to use their cutting arms to dig out their subterranean relatives; but the burrowers got away clean.  Well, as clean as you can get when you live in dirt and stone.  Don't tell the loggers, but I was rooting for... um, pardon the pun... for the burrowers to escape.  It bodes well for their ability to survive the hunter-drones.

 Meanwhile, the forest continues to offer new surprises.  This place really drives home how short-sighted I was to assume that two-limbed species would be stuck on the ground; there are plenty of arboreal vertebrates here.  Several tail-draggers here can rear up on their strong tails, freeing their legs for grasping the bamboo-fern stalks.  One sprightly little hopper I saw this morning made a mighty leap and grasped a lateral stalk with a prehensile proboscis.  From there on it depended as much on its trunk and tail for propulsion as on its spindly legs.

 Sadly, though, my deft-nosed friend had the misfortune of climbing onto a crabtree.  It was a grisly but fascinating sight: the chitinous fruit-lure waving ever so subtly, enough to catch the prey's interest without revealing the presence of the puppeteer; then the fern-stalks snapping shut like a Venus's flytrap around the poor thing.  I didn't believe they could hold it -- they looked so fragile.  So real, and the perfect shade of phytorhodopsin purple.  And yet they're strong enough to confine a monkey-sized animal and crush it slowly but surely to death.  All these months in the wilds of a planet so rich in arthropods, and I'm still surprised by the versatility of chitin.

 Yes, of course I wanted to help the poor creature.  I'm not the caricatured heartless scientist that some of my critics make me out to be.  But predators have as much right to live as prey.  You can't fault an animal for surviving.

 Cold morning today.  My kingdom for a hotspring to bathe in, instead of that frigid stream.  And it's still early autumn!  Ohh, sometimes I really miss Earth's hot summers... sometimes I wish Cybele had a stronger greenhouse effect.  (chuckles)  Then again, I remember some summer days back home in Kenya when I wished Earth had less of one.  Well, at least I got my wish for a planet with gentler gravity.  And I should count myself lucky -- a few hundred million years from now, things will be getting plenty hot indeed.

Sad, to see such a young, fresh biosphere and know it has such a short future.  To know that it has almost no chance of evolving native sapient forms.  But then, it's a prejudice to assume that a biosphere without sapience is a failure.  And who knows -- the auxons evolve so much faster that they might very well evolve sapience someday -- if there's a survival need for it, of course.  Personally, I'd rather study species that simply follow Darwin's theories than ones that can formulate them.  There's a purity to their lives, no matter how long they last.

Still, I could do with the impurity of a heated bath.  That stream can be damn cold sometimes.  At least I have company to keep me warm.  Some of the loggers always come to watch me when I bathe.  They're curious, of course; it's in their nature.  But they prefer to keep a comfortable distance from the water.  Some of them have seen better days, and maybe their circuits aren't as well-insulated as they could be.  Also, maybe they're still getting used to the idea that I'm the same person naked that they've learned to recognize with clothes on.  Though frankly, I've known some men who never quite caught onto that.  Still, I hope this broadening of their recognition parameters doesn't undermine my efforts to teach them wariness of humans in general.  It's not easy to convince them to avoid humans but accept me, when I'm the only example of a human around.  Well, at least until tomorrow when Marc gets here.  Hopefully someday I'll get a monograph out of my technique, but for now it needs to remain a trade secret.

Hmm... once Marc arrives, my morning bath should get a lot more interesting.  He always had such an endearing puppy-dog crush on me, and such an endearing pair of buns too... but I would've felt like a cradle-robber!  He's a man now, though, and that's the one thing I miss more than a hot bath.  I can't wait to... well, that's not the sort of thing to talk about in this forum.  I might just make the details available in certain other fora, if they're as impressive as I expect.

Well.  Right now, I'm back with the loggers inside their stockade, now that it's warm enough for the arthropods to be active.  And it didn't take long for them to show up.  Even as I speak, there's a pack of pincer-hounds snapping at the bamboo -- you can hear them stridulating behind me, that washboard growl of frustration.  They can sense the magnetic fields of dozens of loggers, and they're eager for prey.  They haven't yet learned there's nothing edible for them here.  Well, except me.

 I'm not concerned, though.  The loggers have built a remarkably strong structure, a simple but solid network of stalks made even more durable by the coating they secrete.  It's even more remarkable when you consider that the loggers are descended from survey probes, not builders.  Their building skills arose purely as a defense mechanism, another example of the marvels evolution can achieve without human guidance.

Wait a minute -- there's a new sound now, a low buzzing or humming sound.  Uh-oh!  Hang on, I'll... I'll be back....

[recording paused]

Had a bit of a scare there.  The pincer-hounds' activity attracted the attention of a... a really big heliraptor.  Never seen one that size.  Anyway, the stockade wasn't designed to keep out flying creatures.  The heliraptors have scared off most of the airborne arthropods in this region, and they haven't tended to prey on their own relatives before.  This one must be a new subspecies, either recently evolved or new to the area -- since it definitely wanted some loggers for lunch.  Interestingly, it ignored me completely.  Despite generations of wild existence, despite their evolution into predators, their First-Law programming appears intact.  Although if the hunting continues to escalate, some auxons might evolve their way out of that programming for survival's sake.  Something the hunters and their supporters should chew on, I think.

Well.  The 'raptor attacked the loggers with great vigor, snatching with fierce talons that appeared diamond-tipped, and firing at them with some kind of laser, which I'd guess mutated from an altimeter beam.  But the loggers fought back, with cutter-blades, with bamboo clubs in their grippers, and with rocks which they hurled into the air.  They rallied together to protect their weaker members -- some of them formed a defensive line around me, bless their sweet neural nets, even though it wasn't necessary.
 I saw some loggers hastily fashioning polegrass stalks into crude spears which they hurled awkwardly at the heliraptor.  Two of the spears managed to snarl its left rotor somewhat, getting caught between the blade and the cowling, and it went into a spin.  But auxons react quickly, of course, and it managed to adjust its airfoils before it could crash.  It limped away over the stockade wall, and it sounds like it's settled for a rhinostrich as its prey.  They don't provide as good a supply of replication material as another auxon would have, but on the other hand they can't put up as effective a fight.  It should be able to repair its rotor damage before long.  I wonder if the loggers have scared it off for good?  Anyway, it looks as if they're already beginning some new activity -- I'd bet it's a roof-raising.

Meanwhile, Galadriel is making the rounds, checking on the injured.  Naturally it's Bunyan who's suffered the most, bold and reckless as always, only his sheer bulk and solid construction keeping him alive.  The heliraptor's laser cut his middle right leg clear off, the poor lug.  Gala's starting to digest the leg now; I guess it's too badly damaged to reattach, so it has to be rebuilt.  Yes, Babe is moving in and detaching the leg stump at the socket.  Perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing, but Bunyan seems unhappy; he doesn't like being cheated out of another battle scar.

cn\sitm\safira.kimenye\journal: 13/13/04 AC (8 Nov 2250 SED) 17:43 CMT

I was wrong -- it isn't a roof they've built, but a series of tall, sharpened poles.  They're spaced widely enough to allow free movement within the stockade, but theoretically they should impede an aerial attack.  I don't know, though... heliraptors can hover and maneuver quite well.  They should be able to work their way around this simple barrier.  And then the loggers will develop a more elaborate barrier.  Auxons can't anticipate, but they learn quickly from experience.  In that way, at least, they're still true to their original design.

During today's foraging, the loggers were attacked by a fandancer.  They must have intruded onto its territory; the vertebrates don't hunt by magnetic fields, so it couldn't have found them appetizing.  This was a large species of fandancer, with sharp tusks and a bony club at the end of its tail.  It inflicted some damage -- mainly on Bunyan, ever the bold and reckless one.  Galadriel called a retreat -- I picked up the signal on my earphone -- but the biped hounded us relentlessly.  Perhaps its terror at the alienness of the loggers drove it to such violence.

So the loggers lured it onto a compass rose.  With my more limited senses, I couldn't detect the sedentary arthropod; its chitin camouflage blended perfectly with the grass.  I saw them luring the 'dancer toward a particular patch of ground, but I was startled when that patch snapped shut, leaving a bare starburst pattern in the grass and trapping the fandancer inside a nearly solid, spherical cage of segmented limbs.

As we left, I could still hear the 'dancer fighting to break free from the compass rose.  I can't help hoping it succeeds.  It was only defending its territory -- maybe even defending young.  And dying slowly of thirst is a nasty way to go.  But as I keep reminding myself, it's not my place or anyone else's to referee nature's battles.

Well.  I'll be glad when Marc gets here.  His enthusiasm always lifted my spirits.  And having his support in this difficult cause will make the work easier.

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