frass

While the xenologists, Cherinet and Litskovic, had gone on ahead, the survey team exogeologists, Vinnu and Samaan, hunkered down in their autopods battered by one of the unpredictable cyclostorms that made collecting samples and readings challenging. Coms were mega glitchy during these dust ups, so Vinnu reviewed previously collected data.

The readings were puzzling. From space, the planet appeared to be a rock, a very dusty rock, so Vinnu expected to find high mineral concentration readings in the atmosphere, but it was just the opposite. Organic detritus topped the charts.

If that was the case, where was all the life? The place was bereft, a Saharan world, roiled by cyclonic winds. Anomalous data didn’t sit well with Vinnu, so she didn’t sit on it. She tight-beamed it to her fellow exogeologist and tried the com. “You there, Samaan?”

“Barely,” the voice crackled. “Our pods are almost touching but you sound like you’re at the bottom of a frozen ocean. It might be easier just to tap out some Morse Code. You know, bond over our shared trials on this grumpy planet.”

Vinnu felt a dit-dot ping on her pod. “Not that desperate to bond, Samaan. But I want your thoughts on the data I sent. Did you get it?”

It took a few buffered tries for the data to fully transmit.

While Vinnu waited for Samaan’s analysis, Cherinet’s amped voice broke into their coms, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Move, Litsko! Move! It’s frass! Fucking fraaaasss!”

Vinnu knew panic when she heard it, and for Cherinet to be that alarmed, things had to be bad. Cherinet was an expert on extremophiles, meaning she’d surveyed some of the harshest alien environments and most dangerous lifeforms in the core systems.

“Status?” Vinnu answered, trying to stay calm, trying to remember protocol. “Do you need evac?”

The coms crackled and popped for a long moment, and then Cherinet was there again, but not panicked, just resigned. “Save yourselves. There must be zillions of them. Everywhere, it’s all frass, the entire surface. Save yourselves!”

Then nothing but the rattling interference and the howl of the cyclostorm.

“Samaan, did you hear Cherinet?” Vinnu tight-beamed.

“Yes. We’re in some deep shit, Vinnu. Even worse, deep frass.”

“Frass? Cherinet was freaked by it. What’s frass?”

“It explains why our data seemed out-of-whack. We’ve been expecting mineral readings, yet getting mountains of organic readings. Cherinet found out why. Frass is…Frass is…” The cyclostorm chopped up Samaan’s dread explanation. “Frass is the term for insect detritus: excrement, molted skins and shells, limb sheddings. We thought this was a desert planet. All rock and sand, but it’s really a giant insect pile, a bug world.”

“Holy shit! What do we do?” Vinnu asked, and immediately felt the same resignation she heard in Cherinet’s final transmission, as the tenor of the raging winds changed into a chittering and buzzing that revealed the true nature of the storm they were trapped by.