Solbidyum Wars Saga 5: Desolation by Dale C. Musser Page A

Lunnie.  I entered our cabin and found Kala pacing back and forth carrying a screaming Reidecor.
    “Tibby, I don’t know what to do,” Kala cried… “He won’t stop crying.  The med unit says he’s fine, but he still keeps crying.
    I looked at Lunnie, who lay quietly on the bed with her head turned looking at me, as though she too, was waiting to see how I would answer her mother.
    “Ah, look, I’ve not had any experience with babies either.  I have no idea what to do.”  I said with a feeling of helplessness.
    “Here, you take him and see if you can figure it out,” She said as she handed Reidecor to me.
    Before I could answer she had thrust Reidecor into my arms.  I glanced over at Lunnie on the bed, and she still was staring at me and then abruptly she turned her head away and back again.  For some reason I can’t explain, I felt that she was trying to signal to me that I should turn Reidecor over.  I looked at him and then turned his body so his stomach lay along the length of my forearm with his head in the palm of my hand, his small arms and legs dangling over my arm.  Almost immediately, he stopped crying and squirming and relaxed.
    “What did you do?”  Kala asked in an amazed tone.
    “I’m not really sure.  I just felt that this is what I should do.”  I glanced over at Lunnie, who was still staring at me, and I swear she had a smile upon her face.  I glanced back at Reidecor and was surprised to see he had fallen asleep.
    “See Tib, you’re a natural at being a dad.”
    “Yeah, sure,” I responded as I glanced back at Lunnie again wondering if it was just a dumb lucky thing on my part that I had done the right thing, but in the back of my mind, I could not help feeling that somehow Lunnie had told me what to do.
    For the next two days, I was not able to exit the ship during the light as solar flares bathed the planet with radiation.  After the sun had set only the light side of the planet was exposed to the flares, and it was possible to be outside the ship.  On the first night of the flares, I exited the ship for about 20 minutes to look around. Looking at the sky, I could see vast visages of auroras that draped the heavens like giant curtains waving in a gentle breeze.  I had expected to hear the sound of the wind, so I was caught off guard when I heard a chorus of sounds of many life forms on the planet making whistling and buzzing sounds.  I realized that so far I had merely observed just one native life form on the planet, but it was obvious there were a number of life forms here.  I didn’t know what those might be, nor if any of them were threatening, and I decided I would be better advised if I stayed aboard the ALI and used the computer to study up on the planet and its flora and fauna for the time being.  The first thing I discovered was the good news, there was nothing life-threatening to humans on the planet, the bad news was that some of the life forms could make someone real sick, as it was possible to suffer allergic reactions from bites, stings, or reactions to touching them.  However, none of these were fatal. 
    I discovered that there were creatures that resembled trilobites from Earth’s ancient past that inhabited the planet.  These animals had hard carapaces that provided some protection from the solar radiation during solar flares, allowing them to move about in the daytime when most other life forms could not.  It was one of these creatures that I had seen on my first outing in the bottom of the canyon.  According to the ship's computer, it was called a boilatee, but unlike Earths  trilobites, boilatees didn’t have legs, and they could survive both on land and under water.  They had a soft-tissue underside that undulated in a way that provided motion across a surface.  If a boilatee got flipped over it was unable to right itself, and exposure of the underside to solar radiation was fatal to them.  The ship's computer also indicated that the