Chapter 55: Bob – July 2166 – Delta Eridani
The day finally arrived when we reached the area of the flint site. The former camp was at the top of a rise that stuck up out of the general forest level. On Earth, a castle would have been built there. From my earlier survey, I knew that it commanded a view of the forest for miles in every direction, right out to mountains and hills on the horizon. The site was rocky and bare but had a depression at the base of a rock shelf that formed a natural sheltered area. Several rock pools formed natural reservoirs, filled by the frequent rains. A central mesa rose from the shelf like the conning tower of a submarine.
It was in fact, such a naturally ideal site that conversations kept coming around to why it had been abandoned.
“Don’t know,” was all we got from most of the elders. Moses commented that he only remembered his parents being very scared. He thought—and it seemed likely—that the place had been overrun by gorilloids. One of the other elders, I noticed, didn’t seem comfortable with that explanation. I resolved to talk to him later.
I directed the drones to do a quick survey to a mile in radius, looking for gorilloids. The results were chilling. This appeared to be a gorilloid preserve or something. The damned things were everywhere. But why? With no Deltans to eat, this felt like a badly laid out D&D scenario.
The answer wasn’t long in coming. I hadn’t really done much in the way of biological analysis or investigation since I’d discovered the Deltans, and I guess this was my comeuppance for that oversight. The gorilloids were omnivores. The vegetation on this side included a tree with nutritious seedpods, the gorilloid’s primary staple. The pods were tough to get to and tough to open, which explained the size and strength of the animals.
And if the biochemistry of Eden followed that of Earth, the pods would be incomplete protein sources. So what has lots of protein? Deltans, of course.
That looked like the explanation. The seedpods were more than plentiful enough to supply a large population of gorilloids, but the beasts would be crazy attracted to protein sources. And I’d just marched a couple of hundred bundles of protein right into the middle of them. Great.
But there was still something about the gorilloid population that didn’t add up…
Without warning, a couple of loud booms reverberated through the forest.