Ell Donsaii 13: DNA by Laurence Dahners Page B

not have means for detecting it, I suspect this planet has a weak magnetosphere and that much of this radiation is from their star. The thick atmosphere is probably providing some protection because radiation levels aren’t quite as high as they are on Mars in our solar system, however it still wouldn’t be a very safe place to live long term.”
    Maybe radiation wiped out their civilization? Ell wondered as she walked along as Virgwald. Before she made it to the next turn in the path, an animal came around that bend toward her. A moment later, another one stepped out from amongst the vegetation along the right side. Though Ell initially thought they were animals, she quickly got the impression that they looked excited to see her. Then they began pointing. Damn! she thought , They sure look intelligent. Then a third alien flew in over the vegetation bordering the path and landed next to the first two.
    She wasn’t surprised that they were gesticulating toward her—after all, they’d probably heard the waldo’s jets bringing it down and had come around specifically to see what had made the noise. What surprised her was that the three aliens all looked quite different, as if they were separate species, yet they appeared to be communicating with one another. Could this world have several different intelligent species?!
    One had a splotchy fuzzy surface and was quite a bit larger than the other two. It had several large bundles of vegetation on its back and was walking on four limbs. Though the four legs appeared slender to Ell, they were significantly thicker and heavier than the legs on the other two aliens. Remembering that the gravity on this planet was less than one fifth that of Earth’s, Ell realized that this animal/alien fit in the “heavyset” category. If she hadn’t already decided that it was intelligent, the thick legs would have fit with her initial impression that it was a beast of burden, transporting the bundles of vegetation from one location to another. It had six limbs total, with two large limbs up front which reminded Ell somewhat of the tines on a forklift—except these tines ended in large graspers. Ell had the impression that those big limbs could have loaded the bundles of vegetation on its own back. Eyes—a structure that seemed fairly universal in appearance because of the physics of optics—were set on stubby stalks at the front of the body. She couldn’t see a mouth or breathing orifice.
    Although the other two animals seemed to be similar in size to one another, they still didn’t look like they were members of the same species. One of them had a wrinkly pale blue surface with a white geometric pattern on it. The pattern certainly didn’t look natural, so Ell thought it must be something like a tattoo. It was ambulating on two very slender legs and had four more limbs which looked like they were for manipulation. There were two small wings which had folded up so neatly as to become nearly invisible. It had two heavier outer arms and two very lightweight and delicate central arms with tiny digits. Even the thicker outer arms would have looked slender on earth. It also had three eyes, one of which was quite large and centrally located directly on the body; two more were delicate and widely mounted on long stalks.
    The second of the smaller animals had a smooth orangey brown skin without decorations. It reminded Ell of an ostrich with two long slender legs on a relatively small body and two small wings set high on its back. Though the wings were even smaller in proportion to its body than the wings on a flightless ostrich, the alien had flown quite well with them in this low gravity. It didn’t have the ostrich’s long neck, just two eyes on short stubby stalks. It had two arms for a total of four limbs. These arms were intermediate in size as compared to the blue alien, neither heavy-duty nor delicate.
    Could they all be mutants due to the radiation levels here? she wondered. After a