Jacques Recon and Resupply - Day 4
08 Jul 2016James Hussar
Steady progress today. 70 jumps and nearly 1kly covered, a number of interesting systems along the way, but only scanning the valuable objects when I can help it. I did encounter something I haven't seen, or maybe just something I hadn't noticed, before. Gas giants with primitive algae life in the atmosphere. A little ways below the planetary surface at the gas/liquid boundary, certain compositions of gasses support life. Surely it did not evolve here but is rather brought on comets that strike the giants. In most cases these comets are lost in the hostile environments of their captors, but when the chemistry is right, life finds a way.
The giants are known for their powerful magnetic fields, and between the EM flux and light from local stars, the energy needed by life is made available. I'm unfamiliar with these life forms but I recall reading some involved research about them. Both Palin and Canonn have research units dedicated to them as do the Fed and Imperial military scientists, but I haven't heard of many revelations coming out of those think-tanks. Either they haven't found anything of use, or they found something of great value and are not willing to share.
Fortunately I've brought an isolab on this trip, and with the upcoming downtime for maintenance, I'll have plenty of time to run some tests. Firstly, I'll want to learn how isolated these creatures are in the atmosphere - what are the pressure and temperature ranges in which they live, how deep of a column of atmo do they inhabit, and how susceptible they are to their climate. Then I'll get the isolab to simulate a favorable environment and get a few samples. I should be able to run nearly full panels on their genetics an metabolic systems.
The chemical compositions of the planets where I have detected this sort of life are all similar, but not identical. There's some variance there, so I'll be collecting samples and storing them in stasis until I can shut down for a while and run some comparative analysis. I have no idea what I'm looking for, but I haven't been this intrigued about microbes since that cruise I wen on where half the passangers came down with some nasty bug. These things are potent and deserve some respect and understanding. Usually microbes are a nuisance at worst and a useful tool for materials synthesis when harnessed. Some can be manipulated into industrial and biomedical agents, so I'm very curious. Given I have an ample supply of meta-alloy on board I'll be sure to include that in my testing. I'm sure both Palin and Canonn's people have already done this, and their laboratories are orders of magnitude better than mine - never mind their being experts in the field and me being a rank amateur - but still. I'm deeply curious, and the travel is tedious, so I think I'll indulge.
I'll need to move the isolab to the cargo area and relocate some cargo into the interior of the ship, just in case. If any of the experiments go haywire, the last thing I need is for some unknown microbes to infest the ship. So I'll void the hold, flame it, chem it. Hell, maybe I'll just scuttle the small cargo hold if I have to, though rigging that up outside a dock is, well, problematic. In any case, I'll take precautions.
Anyhow, a few more days of travel and sample collection, and then a week of maintenance and playing with microscopic pets sounds just like the sort of break I need from the trip itself.
Current location: "NGC 6664 SECTOR JH-V C2-32". 1,8203.03 LY from Jacques, 3,799.08 from Sol. To the best of my ability to tell from the charts, I'm the first one ever to see this star up close - and that's all that's here, just the lone, scoopable M-class a bit less than half the size of Sol itself. Completely unremarkable, and a perfect place to camp for a rest.