Zone 3:


Set out onto the ocean from the continents southernmost point. Excursion in sea cruiser and hovercraft.

Water is thicker that Terran oceans, containing greater concentration of minerals. Little wind, ocean surface very calm and in many places glass like. Waves seldom crest but rise up and down in an undulating motion.

Under the surface an impenetrable mass of sea life surges. Life seems invertebrate. Shrimps, worms and trilobites. Bio-luminescence. Anywhere from microscopic to half a meter in length.

Something tangling the propellers of the cruiser and banging rhythmically on the hull. Cannot see what, since everything is obscured by the cloud of living creatures.

Heading out to deeper water. Water about 20-50 meters deep (at 400 k south of land mass.) Bottom covered with luminous multi-colored anemones of prodigious size. Tentacles reach up easily to the cruiser, and get tangled in the propellers. Rhythmic banging on the hull is unnerving.

Anemones are eaten by immense grazing gastropods (slugs) that plow along the ocean floor, clearing paths through the anemones as they feed on them. Surprisingly the slugs breathe air and must rise to the surface, like whales. The path followed by the slugs over the sea floor seems to follow the same kind of pattern observed elsewhere. Somehow the arrangement of the anemones by color does not seem to be random either.

Slug overturns cruiser, which has already been rendered inoperative by the anemones. Degradation of hull integrity severe. Fortunately anemones had no interest in survey team members. All were lifted to safety by hovercraft.