DAY 19

From the diary of Dr Hugo Baal

June 40th

We cut down many trees, and at the end of the day I had my first Number 2 in the new latrine. It is really quite an elegant construction: a series of hardplastic benches with holes in their middle leading to a central cesspit, viz, the great big hole I dug.

However, the undergrowth is already growing back, and Rat-Insects are poking up through the earth. So I cauterised the soil with sulphuric acid, and put up a big sign: DO NOT STAND NEAR THIS AFTER DEFECATING. Dr Hugo Baal, MSc, PhD, FRS.

I saw many creatures in the course of my work on the latrine — flying insects, mammalian octopods, birds with horns and suchlike — but my mood was so bleak that I made no notes about them. I am so fucking tired. The highlight of my day was having a shit in the new latrine, and not having my arse burned off by acid.

And I —

Octopods?

Did I really see octopods?

Surely not. So far all the terrestrial animals we’ve seen have been tetrapods.

It’s dark, I’m tired, I need to sleep.

I am so fucking tired. I have lost my will to live. My will to —

Octopods? Yes, they were! Yes, I’m definitely right.

Hmm. I wonder if —

No. Forget it. Sleep. Tomorrow is a —

This is puzzling me. Why didn’t I take a photograph? Why didn’t I look closer? Birds with horns, who gives a damn, but land animals with eight limbs not four means —

I have to know more. But I can’t —

Sergeant Anderson won’t —

Hold on — he doesn’t need to know. I could —

Yes.

That’s it. I can —

After all, I have a torch. I have a plasma gun. I have body armour. Perhaps . . .

I’m back.

It is 5 a.m. I have just returned after four hours in the jungle in the dark. It’s a wholly different experience, you know. The jungle is a gentler and more wonderful place, once the sun has set.

And this was a good time to go hunting for eight-limbed things. It turns out that the octopods are mainly nocturnal — there are thousands of them out there! — and they are also bioluminescent. So I played a hunch, and laid a trail of sulphuric acid, which they followed and ate. The acid made them glow more brightly. Sweet, n’est-ce pas?

The octopods are endlessly varied. Some are furry, some have scales, some have pale soft skin like a small baby. Some glide from tree trunk to tree trunk. Some scurry through the undergrowth. I must have seen more than a hundred different species — different species, nay, different genuses! They are playful, and they wholly dominate the night life of the jungle. But you have to be patient. I spent an hour waiting for the first octopod to appear. And then it flipped in front of me, rolling cartwheels, like a hamster in a wheel, glowing scarlet and silver.

This of course represents a wholly different evolutionary line. This planet is no dull Earth, with its relentless catalogue of terrestrial tetrapods — for dinosaurs, humans, birds, dolphins, they are tetrapods all! All descended from the same lobe-finned bony fish that took to the land and miraculously conquered the world.

But here, the octopods and the tetrapods survive side by side, one occupying the daytime, the other the night.

Perhaps the octopods were once arboreal lungfish, clambering along branches into the midst of the jungle for food then retreating to a watery home — until slowly the jungle became their home. While the tetrapods echoed the classic evolutionary line of Earth and so many other planets,¹ of being swamp-dwelling fish with adapted fins and lungs that, one day, discovered the joys of the land.

Perhaps too the octopods were once deep-sea dwellers — hence the bioluminescence — and then found that the ability to light up the jungle darkness secured them an evolutionary niche??? (!) ?

We have been two years on this planet and I have just discovered — single-handed! — an entirely new Superclass of animal life.

This has been a ghastly period. Many of my friends are dead. We face, I believe, certain death on this godforsaken planet, pursued by monsters, led by fools. I am fatigued beyond all measure, my arse stings because I just accidentally kicked over a carton of sulphuric acid near the toilet hole just as I was voiding myself, and I am bored and angry and frustrated.

But none of this matters. I am the first to find the New Amazonian octopod.

And I can hardly speak for joy.