From: elf@halcyon.com (Elf Sternberg)
Newsgroups: alt.sex,alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.furry
Subject: Journal Entry 091 / 1025  [ Planetfall: First Mound ]
Date: 15 Jun 1996 15:42:46 GMT
Organization: Pendor, UnLtd.
Lines: 432
Message-ID: <4pullm$4lb@news1.halcyon.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: chinook.halcyon.com

Elenya, Virta 18, 1025

    As a species, Pendorians tend to be very easy-going, very slow 
to change.  Unlikely to jump to conclusions.  And more given to 
recreation than your standard work-ethic species that pulled itself 
up by its bootstraps.  Our supremacy is assured merely by our 
existence; it has long been known that a sentient being can compose 
it's own superiors.  We call that evolution.

    The expedition had gone on five months thus far.  We had landed 
in winter and now winter had gone without much in the way of a 
change for us, courtesy of our placing our camp at the equator, 
although this change of the seasons had given us plenty of data 
about a phenomenon we had guessed early on.  This planet was about 
to have one major ice-age.

    The organic network slowly unraveled on our computer screens.  
What had once seemed an improbably complicated task had transformed 
itself into an impossibly complicated task.  No matter how we 
looked, the reasons behind the network's existence just became 
harder and harder to fathom.  The plants supporting it didn't seem 
to benefit from it.  

    The zoologists had all become either entomologists or 
ichthyologists; there were no mammals, reptiles, or birds.  No 
animal life of any kind above the eight-legged exoskeletal insect 
variety that leaped, hopped, walked, flew, buzzed, and swam 
everywhere we went.  Walking out among the camp on a hot day with 
the sun overhead was a murderous proposition at times.  The field, 
though, was big enough to encourage good wind, and a stiff breeze 
kept most of the bugs under covers.  And the schedule literally had 
made some people physically ill.

    The dolphins, of all people, had discovered six or seven weird 
dish-shaped locales, all along the beach but immediately connected 
to the sea, that had at their centers a huge lump of some clay-like 
substance.  I had decided to join several people on an 
investigation of one of them; we started early in the morning.

    Not a cloud had crossed the sky since dawn where we stood, 
spreading out around this eleven-kilometer-wide hole in the beach, 
the edge of which was just barely tangential with the high-tide 
mark of the ocean that washed up against it.  The sun bore down, 
encasing me in an atmosphere of oppressive heat like a laser beam a 
man's-width wide.  I couldn't begin to imagine how the furries were 
taking it, although it was obvious in Niaro's case that quarts of 
water handled part of the problem.  "It's hot," I said, finding a 
fallen log and sitting down.

    "It is," he agreed.  "And we aren't getting anywhere with this 
dig.  Did you get the information from the divers?"

    "I was one of the divers this morning, with Prio and Ahned," I 
pointed out, looking up into the sky and wishing for a single cloud 
to give me a moment of coolness.  "This basin is eleven kilometers 
wide, with the same clump of clay at the center.  The sands 
covering the rest of the basin appear to have been washed in off 
the ocean or the beach over the past couple of decades."

    It's stranger than that," Niaro said.  "The clay at the center 
isn't clay matter at all."

    "No?"

    "Not entirely.  It's ground sand and such, yes, but it appears 
to be mixed in with an organic residue that the labs back at MC say 
were probably once part of an adhesive."

    "A glue?  Are we talking an insect product, or signs of 
intelligent life?"

    "Looks like the first.  But here's the weird part.  The 
adhesive wouldn't hold together very long against sea water.  A few 
months, maybe; the chemical action is very slow.  But loose 
chlorine ions, as we get in this kind of environment, would tear 
apart any insect construction in well under a year."

    "Weird," I agreed.  

    "Weirder than that," Olivia, the short Mustela Frenata who was 
part of Aaden's core team, and someone who had become a fast 
friend, agreed as she walked over to grab a drink from the water 
supply.  "Are you familiar at all with the Yampret species back on 
Pendor, Niaro?  Ken?"

    I shook my head, as did Niaro.

    "It's a plant that builds islands.  There are three varieties.  
It's found mostly in the Uncia Climate Zones and surrounding 
climate bands, and what it does is... The first variety gets 
dropped by a bird, or by a wave, onto a sand bar that has 
temporarily grown high enough that the seeds will get activated by 
sunlight.  When these grow, they grow almost like a grass, keeping 
the sandbar in place, and when waves with sand in them wash against 
them, they buffer the returning wave, encouraging the sand to stay 
among the branches, thus building the island.

    "The other two varieties grow on more solid ground, and are 
more dependent upon ground-based nutrients.  But each grows more 
dense than the previous kind, so the island builds further and 
further outwards with this core of D3-type Yampret, this ring of D2 
Yampret that extends to where the islands drops back into the sea, 
and this outer ring of D1 that grows in the water and encourages 
the island to grow.  It has an upper limit dependent on the kind of 
nutrients each kind needs, so the islands don't grow completely out 
of control."

    "So what does that have to do with this?" Niaro asked.

    "I think if we looked further inland, we'd find more of these."

    "How so?" I asked.

    "Well, most dense around the clay center, but spreading out to 
the lip of the bowl," she gestured wide, indicating the wide and 
beautiful tropical jungle beach we sat on, "we found this."  She 
held up what looked like a seed.  "They're everywhere.  We seem to 
have a digging species of plant here."

    "Digging?"

    "I'm not sure about this; have you noticed, though, that the 
water in the basin is lower in salinity then the ocean?"

    "No, I hadn't," I said.

    "Yes, and we found out why; there's a very tiny stream rolling 
down out of the jungle into the basin."

    "Coincidence?"

    "Could be," Niaro said, smiling.  "Or we could just have a 
species of plant with a bad sense of locale."

    "I would disagree, Niaro.  I'd want Zunni to look it over, but 
I think we've got a species of insect encouraging the growth of our 
plant here."

    "The clay core?"

    She nodded.  "I bet they're the ones with the bad sense of 
locale."

    I put it all together.  "Even though the spring would encourage 
lateral growth, once the structure had more still water, it would 
start to look circular, eventually reaching the ocean and..."

    "Destroying the insect colony.  Yes," she finished.

    "Wow," Niaro said.

    "This is all just theory," I said.  "We haven't seen a single 
insect of the kind you're describing, a single living version of 
this... thing.  We don't even have a living plant.  This hole goes 
eleven klicks deep into that tangle of trees and grasses, and 
nothing that lives along the edge or is encroaching into the hole 
even resembles anything like what we're discussing.  What kind of 
plant digs?  What kind of insect needs an eleven-kilometer spread?"

    "Well, there are species that dig.  For this kind of process, 
though, I would say we're looking for a plant that has moderately 
thick roots and digs deep for nutrients.  As it digs deeper, the 
older hair-like roots that it uses for absorption would probably 
wither, leaving the soil loose and ready to be washed away," Niaro 
said.  "As for the insects, Ken, bees need a spread that large 
sometimes."

    "More for the theory books," Olivia sighed, tossing her head in 
frustration.  I was sitting down, she standing, and we were almost 
eye to eye; she was just a little taller.  She stood barely 110 cms 
tall.  Pretty, though, with glittery black eyes and trimmed red 
fur.  Cuddly.  And an absolute four-magi fire in bed besides.  
Memories made me smile.

    I made a decision.  "Olivia, are you ready for a dive?"

    "Surely, Ken.  What are we looking for?"

    "Bugs."

    She smiled and we donned breathing filters and masks.  I 
decided not to muck with the nanotech respirator; getting out of 
one was an uncomfortable business that far too often put its users 
into shock.  After pulling the typical big, rubber fins over our 
feet, we dove into the basin and began swimming.  Our destination 
was clearly marked by a buoy, two klicks away.  After the hot sun 
overhead, the water gave cool and welcome relief.

    As we swam, I glanced over at Olivia.  A shapely Mustela, 
weasel- variant, with a graceful glide to her body as she swam 
through the water.  She looked over at me and smiled around her 
respirator.  Then she pulled out her PADD and began writing 
something on it.  WHY ARE YOU WEARING CLOTHES?

    I looked down and realized I was still wearing my trunks.  
MODESTY, I wrote back.  AND I DON'T WANT SOME FISH THINKING OF MY 
DANGLY PARTS AS  BAIT.  LECHER.

    She giggled, the bubbles rising from around her face.  I swam 
over to her and, pulling my mask up, kissed her chin softly.  Then 
I pulled the mask back on and purged the water.  She giggled.  
YOURE SILLY.

    I signaled with my finger for us to swim on, and she nodded.  
Fish, or what passed for fish on this planet, swam around us 
languidly.  We reached the buoy rope and followed it down to the 
clump over which two other members of our crew were looking, 
carefully.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a clicker, a 
small device that made a regular, noisy clicking sound to signal 
other divers that I wanted their attention.  They both looked up 
and waved.

    WHAT? Ahned wrote to me on his board.

    BUGS.  WE THINK THIS WAS AN INSECT MOUND.

    He nodded, the fur waving slowly in the water.  There wasn't 
even a single look of surprise.  DO YOU WANT CROSS SECTIONALS, OR 
EYEBALL?

    BOTH.  He nodded, shrugging.

    I tapped him on the shoulder, not at all surprised to find most 
of the people in the water with me to be either Humans or Mustela.  
Most of the feline races, despite their sentience, are typically 
disdainful of water.  And some of the Mustela, like the Lutra and 
Onyx, are really made for water.  He was an Onyx.  HOW LONG HAVE 
YOU BEEN DOWN HERE?

    SINCE 1.

    Three hours?  I blinked and wrote, ARENT YOU COLD?

    NOPE.

    I shrugged and helped them dig into the mound.  We were almost 
sixteen meters downwards, and I suddenly realized that the two who 
had been down here the longest would probably want to decompress at 
least a little.  Maybe even a twenty-minute delay at five meters.

    The digging took a long time.  Ahned and I spent our time 
sifting silt, bagging samples of ground muck and in general not 
doing a whole lot.  I settled down onto the sand and looked around, 
realizing just why Ahned and Prio weren't cold.  It had nothing to 
do with being water-based species; it was just hard work to be down 
here.  I was more hungry than anything else.

    Olivia swam over to me at one point, while Ahned and Prio swam 
back towards the surface.  WHAT? I wrote.

    THEY WERE TIRED, she wrote back.  WE SHOULD HEAD UP SOON.

    I nodded to her, smiling through the faceplate.  She was such a 
lovely creature.  She sat down opposite me on the sand and looked 
up at me.  WHENEVER YOURE READY.

    I gestured for her to come closer, and she did easily.  Her 
grace through the water shamed me; compared to her, I really was an 
awkward monster under the sea.  She came within arms' length, and I 
grabbed her and pulled her into my lap, her back to my chest, my 
arms around her chest.  I picked up my PADD and wrote I WANTED TO 
THANK YOU AGAIN FOR LAST TIME.

    She shook her head, her hands seizing the PADD and writing, NO 
I ADMIRE WHAT YOUVE DONE I WANTED TO GIVE YOU SOMETHING BACK.  

    I hugged her tightly, my hands straying along her soft, furry 
chest and belly.  She squirmed gently under my grasp.  She tapped 
my leg with her claw to get my attention.  YOU WANT?

    I began stroking her fur more insistently, and her body 
squirmed more.  She dropped the PADD onto the sand and it settled, 
sending a soft dust plume everywhere.  The only sounds that reached 
my ears were the sounds of our respirators, and I could tell that 
just my light stroking along her fur was making her breathe a 
little faster.  She reached back behind her and began stroking my 
erection through my shorts.  I was pleasantly surprised to find 
that I was erect; usually, my cock only responds to direct 
stimulus, but the idea of being inside Olivia again seemed to 
inspire me.

    She kicked off the sand and away from me.  Her body seemed to 
hover just above me in the crystalline clear water as she twisted 
around, then settled back down into my lap, facing me this time.  I 
helped her back into place by holding her hips.

    She tugged at my shorts.  I realized she wanted them off, as 
well as my shirt.  I pulled the shirt up over my head, being 
careful not to dislodge the facegear in the process, and then 
kicked up, with her still in my lap, and helped remove the shorts 
as well.  My erection popped up in slow motion against my belly.

    Olivia took it in her small paws again, stroking it.  The water 
was cool, but not uncomfortably so, and she was expertly stroking 
my erection towards climax.  I grinned and returned the favor; 
she's very responsive to having her cunt stroked with the fingers, 
and I reached down to see if that was true even when underwater.  
Sure enough, the second my palm cupped her mons veneris her legs 
kicked slightly, and she 
grinned.  I blew her a kiss she could see, and she returned the 
gesture.

    Her cunny was flowing slightly with her juices; I thanked 
whatever fates there were that she had a tendency to lubricate a 
lot, because water tends to wash lubricant away most of the time.  
I slipped a finger inside her, and then two.  It wasn't easy going, 
really, because of all the water, but I wanted to make sure she was 
ready for me.

    She was already pulling me towards her, gesturing like she 
wanted me inside her.  I smiled and complied, grabbing her buttocks 
and bringing us closer together.  Slowly my very passionate little 
"weasel" settled down over my erection and she began squirming, 
trying to get me inside her.  I held my hand in front of her face, 
and then put both on her shoulders.  She nodded, grabbed my sides 
about the ribs and began sliding up and down.  At first her cunny 
wouldn't give way; the thing trying to get inside her, my dick, 
wasn't lubricated at all, but after a while we managed to get the 
head in.  After that it was just a matter of patience and pressure.

    We worked together to make love, to fuck, underwater.  It's not 
entirely unlike making love in zero-g.  The buoyancy is there, but 
there's also the inertia of the water that doesn't want to flow 
around bodies in motion.  It slowed us down, and the tightness of 
her beautifully small cunt around my cock made the sensations all 
the more maddening.

    We tried to speed up, but didn't have the energy to go any 
faster.  Which was a bit of a shame, considering how utterly lovely 
she is when she's worked up.  We were stuck at the same, slow speed 
as we made love, and the ache in my balls seemed to be no closer to 
relief as my strength ebbed away into the cool water.  My cock 
seemed impossibly hard.  But soon I began to feel that ache 
building, and I nodded to her.  She smiled, her mouth and eyes wide 
opened.  I wasn't breathing to easily myself.

    A tone sounded in my ear as my orgasm rushed upon me.  It was 
some warning tone, but I ignored it.  I stroked her cunt patiently, 
feeling the caresses along the head of my cock as it slid along the 
soft insides of her body.  And then I came, silently, gripping her 
shoulders tightly as I trembled and felt my cock pulse semen into 
her sweetness.

    And then I recognized the warning tone.  *Oxygen Depleted In 
Locale*.  I grabbed her and swam, fast, for a spot a dozen yards 
away.  She gasped and looked up at me, her face clearing.  I held 
up my fingers.  OK?

    OK, she signed back.  The respirators work wonderfully well, 
but when someone exerts themselves too much in one place, not 
enough replacement oxygen exists in the local area to keep going 
for long, and the user has to move or run out of air.  That 
explained why I felt more dizzy than usual.  WAIT, I signed.

    I swam back to where I had left my clothing and the PADD, and 
then back to her quickly.  DID YOU PASS OUT?

    NO, she wrote back.  WE SHOULD HEAD UP.

    I nodded.

    The sky had darkened since we had left for the clay mound, and 
on our return I found Niaro had stretched out a blanket and taken a 
nap.  "Hey, sleepyhead.  I thought you were here to do some work."

    "I was.  It's hard to do work when the rest of your team is 
five klicks away and underwater.  Prio and Ahned are napping in the 
shuttle."  He yawned wide, showing me an impressive collection of 
teeth.  "I was just taking a nap myself."

    "And how long have you been 'just napping?'"

    "I probably went to sleep about an hour after you left."

    "We were gone for... " I looked at my watch.  "Two hours?"

    "And your two friends were down all day," he said.  "Not that 
days are very long around here."

    A small chill ran my spine.  "Prio!  Ahned!  Come here!"

    Gods, I love having Lance around.  He made sure they heard me, 
and minutes later the other two males on our team, one Satryl and 
the other the Mustela Onyx I had talked to earlier, wandered over.  
"You guys were at 15 meters for almost four hours.  Are you sure 
you don't want to head back and check into decompression?"

    "I'm a little stiff," Ahned said in that rich, rounded accent 
of his.  "But otherwise I'm feeling fine."

    "You're sure?"

    "Absolutely.  Couldn't feel better."

    I shook my head.  "Okay, but one moment of discomfort and I 
want you to report to infirmary, immediately.  Got that?"  They 
nodded.  "Olivia!  Are we ready to go?"

    "I've got most of my gear packed away.  All that's left is the 
blanket Niaro's laying on."

    The Pamthreat roused himself, stretching out forelegs and 
rearlegs and yawning again.  "Roar, fuckin' roar," he said cheerily 
in Felinzi.  "I'm ready to go."

    I picked up the towel once he had padded off it and shook it 
out.  "Want to fly it, Prio?  Or should I?"

    The Satryl shrugged tiredly, stretching and yawning as well.  
Must be catching; we all had had a long day.  Prio and Ahned hadn't 
had lunch, for that matter.  "'Liv, lovely weasel, stuff some 
sandwiches into their faces while I do preflight, would you?  The 
basket's in the back there."

    She nodded and got out of her seat while I checked the 
helicopter's six control thrusters.  Each checked out to 104% so I 
announced that we were ready to fly.  There was no disagreement, 
and after making sure that we were all strapped in comfortably we 
took off, heading for the camp.

--
"Journal Entry 091 / 1025  [ Planetfall: First Mound ]"
The Journal Entries of Kennet R'yal Shardik, et. al., and Related Tales
are copyright (C) 1989-1995 Elf Mathieu Sternberg.  Redistribution of
this work for profit is reserved to the author.  Redistribution by
portable media (CD-ROM, floppy, paper, etc.) is expressly forbidden.
Any redistribution must include this copyright notice intact.
--
Elf Sternberg               Here we have clueless, well-armed people
elf@halcyon.com             wandering around in an environment they
Public key available        don't understand, and it scares them.
http://www.halcyon.com/elf  So they try to control what they cannot