Ammit

The underground of Mars, sheltering its inhabitants from the harmful radiation and aridity on the surface, has become a refuge to many organisms. Some of which have no counterpart on the surface anymore, being relics of ages long past.

Ammit (Duatsuchus caecus) is one such relic, perhaps one of the oldest “living fossils” known from the planet. A relatively large carnivore at about one and a half metres long, it is assumed to be the last known member of a clade called Cancrisuchia, colloquially referred to as “crocstaceans”, archaic onychognaths that used their specialized raptorial arms for feeding. Some have compared them to Earth’s eurypterid “sea scorpions” in ecology and functional morphology.

In the fossil record, Cancrisuchia appears an unimaginably long time ago, in the Thermozoic Era, in the Argyrian, when Mars was still a semi-tropical ocean world and plant life was first starting to colonize the few strips of dry land. Cancrisuchians were among the earliest onychognaths to become amphibious, though unlike their later relatives, they mostly stayed at the boundary between water and land. Generally, they are thought to have been exclusively aquatic ambush predators, much as crocodylians and temnospondyl amphibians on Earth, and, once established in that role, dominated that niche for many millions of years. The key to their success lied, of course, in their raptorial arms. All archaeognaths lack teeth, their chelicere-like mouthparts functioning more like double-beaks. This limits their adaptability to carnivorous niches, especially compared to the toothed periostracans, which were at the same time taking over many marine niches. Cancrisuchians solved this problem by turning their first limb pair into another set of jaws, deriving from their shark-like scales projections which can for all intents and purposes be called teeth. Functionally these impressive “hands” can be settled somewhere between the claws of a lobster and the jaws of a crocodile, making for very effective weapons in grabbing and holding prey, possibly even further processing the food through careful manipulation by both hands.

Still, success does not last forever. The first major radiation of the Cancrisuchia, the Magnastracia, which included such impressive forms as the 7 metres long Deinoastacus, went extinct already in the Early Isidian, following climate changes. Their smaller cousins, the Microchelia, followed in their steps and over the course of the Thermozoic re-evolved comparably large sizes again. But these vanished too, at the end of the Cydonian, together with the large, reptilian thagmasaurs and various other lifeforms, in a massive extinction event whose cause(s) still remain mysterious. In the following Hylozoic, the role of aquatic ambush predator on Mars was largely filled by the so-called mangalasaurs, derived cuneocephalians unrelated to the cancrisuchians.

With that, it was long thought that Cancrisuchia is completely extinct. But the discovery of the ammit (made quite dramatically after it attacked a speleodrone) has seriously called that into question. While it is technically possible that it represents merely a case of convergent evolution from some unrelated lineage of archaeognath, the anatomical similarities between it and the fossils is too startling to accept that easily. If accepted as a genuine late-surviving microchelian cancrisuchian, on the other hand, it would open up the problem of there being a ghost lineage of these organisms that skipped the fossil record for two entire eras. Like in that old children’s story, it would be like finding a trilobite in your backyard today out of the blue.

One possible clue towards unravelling this conundrum is the fact that the ammit has (so far) only been found in flooded cave systems formed by the ancient lava tubes beneath Elysium Mons. If current palaeogeographical hypotheses are correct, then Elysium formed a slowly growing island continent throughout the Late Thermozoic and into the Hylozoic. We know for a fact (as far as facts go in astropalaeontology) that Elysium formed a refuge for other onychognath taxa during this time, such as the deltadactylians, which otherwise went extinct on the main southern continent. It could very well be then that some cancrisuchians could have survived on the former island as well. And perhaps these survivors adapted very early on to underground habitats, leaving little opportunity for them to fossilize.

Very little is known about the ammit in life, due to the inaccessibility of its habitat. Anatomically, its biggest difference compared to ancient cancrisuchians is the complete lack of eyes, attesting to a very long time adapting to the underground. Completely blind, its main sense organs are the long and specialized nasal and aural antennae. Like its ancestors, it probably is still an ambush predator, lying in wait beneath the surface of underground grottoes and lakes and waiting for prey, such as netchu, hekubus or medjed, to walk or swim by and be grasped by the raptorial hands. Any other behavioural or biological traits, including reproduction and activity, remain unknown.

Despite its fearsome appearance, due to a lack of resources underground, it must be leading an extremely slow, energy-efficient life, probably not moving for days, weeks or even months at a time and can probably go for years between feedings. A dim existence, living in darkness and a watery nothingness, unimaginable to the human mind. Though at the same time there must be some comfort, being all safe and cozy down there, unaware of the world slowly dying outside its shelter. Some may sympathize.

Does it even know that the oceans are gone?

Vampire Khaldane

If the name “Cephalopoda” were not already taken up by Earth’s molluscs, it would perhaps be more deserving of Mars’ khaldanes, who instead received the scientific designation Cranioraptora (Stuhlinger’s alternative name “Cephalothoraces” has been ruled an invalid junior synonym, but may still appear in some publications). As these musings imply, these cuneocephalians are mostly just heads with legs. 80 – 90% of the main body is made up of the cranium, the rest is miniaturized and tucked beneath the head like a crab’s tail. Some of the organs that are well-developed in other onychognaths, especially those which aid in digestion, have become highly simplified, if not vestigial.

Unlike any other living onychognaths, the khaldanes have eight unfused limbs, which each end in one-toed (monodactyl) feet. The ancestral condition of all other onychognath groups is to have only six legs, each didactyl. For a long time, it was thought that this was a unique genetic quirk in the khaldanes, a random freak mutation creating an additional limb pair, perhaps at the cost of a digit. Alternatively, it has been proposed (mainly by Simoes et al. 2166 and subsequent publications by ibid.) that cranioraptorans actually lie outside the crown-group Onychognatha and may actually descend from stem-onychognaths of the Lyotian period, which could have up to ten or even twelve monodactyl legs. The mysterious Urocephali, who likewise have unfused, monodactyl legs (though only four), have also been linked by these authors to the Cranioraptora, potentially forming a larger clade together. which they named Paraonychognatha. This has been met with heavy opposition, both on anatomical and molecular basis (Schmidt 2168), because there are many characteristics that show the khaldanes being cuneocephalians, chiefly the fact that they have a fused jaw instead of mandibles, a condition which evolved only once and fairly late in onychognath history. 

Recent analyses comparing the skeleton of khaldanes to other archaic cuneocephalians, such as the ifrit, have disproven the freak genetics and the Paraonychognatha hypotheses and shown a surprise: Khaldanes have actually lost limbs in the course of their evolution. Vestigial remains of humeri and tibias inside the thorax show that the animals’ "legs" are actually hypertrophied fingers! The ancestral khaldane must have been an archaic cuneocephalian that lost a limb pair and then further reduced its remaining four arms and hands, while elongating the two digits per hand. The loss of a whole pair of limbs may potentially place the khaldanes closer to the deltadacytlians than anyone would have previously expected. The discovery that khaldanes are “dactylopodous” has spurned further interest in the possibility that the aforementioned stem-onychognaths and urocephalians were also secondarily dactylopodous, though these would then be cases of convergent evolution.

Now, what exactly would drive these creatures to such an extreme deviation from the original cuneocephalian bauplan? The answer seems to be parasitism. The majority of khaldanes are very small, with hooked hairs and keratinous spikes on their fingertips, attaching themselves to the skin of larger creatures and sucking their blood with a syringe-like proboscis. As happens often in parasites, some organs start to atrophy, in this case the arms and the guts, until all that remains are the head and fingers. There is not much need for a digestive system if your food is liquid and already full with free nutrients and there is neither much need to move around when you live most of your life clinging to someone’s skin.

The largest species, the vampire khaldane (Cranioraptor hansruedii) represents then an interesting deviation from the deviation. It has apparently given up its parasitic roots and become instead a deadly predator of small game. While it has on occasion been observed picking at solid foods with its bird-like beak, it still prefers a liquid diet, having gone even further than the simple bloodsucking of its smaller relatives. Just like a spider, it will pump its poor prey full with an acidic venom, which will both pacify the victim as well as liquefy them from the inside. Once fully dissolved, the khaldane will then suck the body dry, until only a shrinkwrapped mummy remains. About the height of a badger, the khaldane is one of the largest predators of the shrublands, though it is restricted to the eastern plains of Tharsis, and mostly found hiding inside rocky crags during the day. They also aestivate there for the whole dry season. Due to their big eyes, it is hypothesized that they are mostly active at night. Mostly.

Vampire khaldanes have surprisingly large brains, at least for Martians, and have been observed communicating with each other through gestures and hissing vocalizations. Some of these communication attempts have on occasion also been directed at astronauts, the creatures showing a general curiosity towards humans. The reasons for this may however be sinister, as a preferred prey of the khaldanes seem to be the rokyrs, small species of shrubland ushabtis, aka humanoids.

The great irony in the khaldane’s ascendancy to the predator guild is that it has itself become victim to parasites. Parasites far worse than itself or its relatives. For reasons that remain uninvestigated for now, C. hansruedii seems to be the preferred host of the neuroparasite Infernoproductus horriblis, the korus silian, a unique species of brachioboid. A young silian will attach itself to the head of its host and, with its pedicle, slowly push one of the silicon eye-disk out of its socket, to then connect its pedicle to the eye’s nerve-canal. Once this is achieved, the parasite will completely take over the nervous system of its host and live its life vicariously through the victim, until either the host body becomes unusable or gnawed to death by the silian’s offspring. If the original khaldane is still aware or alive after the takeover is hard to say and I do not think anyone really wants to know.

References:

• Schmidt, Zeblorb: Pseudognathan traits firmly place Cranioraptora within Cuneocephali, in: Martian Advances, 167, 2168, p. 69 – 89.
• Simoes, Joel; Schmidt, Zeblorb; Smith, John: New Hierakonpolis fossil supports linking the Urocephalia to the Cephalothoraces, in: Journal of Astropaleontology, 77, 2166, p. 34 – 56.

Europan artefacts

I have argued long and hard with myself about whether I should mention this, as I am technically not allowed to talk about it. But I am close to croaking anyway, so what is the worst they can do? Kill me twice? No, they will just claim this is a hoax I made up, the sceptics will continue to label it as such and only the crazies will believe me. That is how they have always handled these things, ever since the Majestic 12 documents under Truman. Due to my work on Mars, I was originally planned to go to Europa for Minos-3, before that mission was cancelled due to M-2’s failure. We were shown highly classified information during the briefings. I already talked about the satellite images, but we were also able to read reports in which the astronauts of M-2 reported finding strange objects frozen in the ice or ejected from geysers. They did not look biological, but neither did they look like they could have come from us or the Soviets. I was unable to take a photograph, but I was able to sketch the most distinctive object they directly showed us from memory:

Sketch of putative Europan artefact inscribed with unknown writing.

Our superiors were themselves unsure about the authenticity of the object. It was allegedly recovered by one of the surviving M-2 astronauts and brought to Earth, but he himself kept it secret at the time. After returning to Earth, he became a member of the Church of Synthology and paraded the piece around in private congregations as an affirmation of the cult’s beliefs. It only came under government possession after his house was raided, following the aftermath of what happened on the International Lunar Station. It therefore seems highly likely that the piece could have just been a forgery, which the person used to further his position in the church while leveraging his reputation as a former astronaut.

The Last Writings of the Dawn-Thinker

A huge Moon loomed above the sky as a faint, young Sun touched the horizon. Waves crashed against the beach, strange, gelatinous trees were gently rocking in the wind. High up in the sky floated triradial polyp-like creatures, preyed on by flying disks. Their wings were made of feather-like growths that were actually fleshy in nature. “Fleathers” if you will. The ground was covered in a dense mesh of purple rhizomes, forming an everchanging, evershifting “spongeland” instead of grassland. Embedded in the spongeland was even stranger vegetation, cones connected by strings like pearl-necklaces, spirally algae, long stalks that ended in egg-like “flowers” and large transparent orbs that were suckled on by asymmetrical worms. Only here and there was the spongeland broken up by gigantic, three-sided pyramids and extravagant houses built out of bricks and large stone blocks. Their ornamentation was exquisitely extravagant, quite byzantine one might say, with gilded arches and little frescos depicting history and mythology at every corner. On one of the roofs sat a slug-like creature, its belly armed with hundreds of tiny stubby legs. Its head was an elongated tube, adorned by one huge eye made of a silicate disk. With its tendrils and tentacles it played a baroque tune on a concertina-like instrument, singing to the people below the roofs like a muezzin, telling them to pray to their gods.

This was not an alien planet, but Earth itself, approximately 1.7 billion years before the modern day, deep in the Proterozoic. Except for the algae, none of the creatures here were of the multicellular life we are familiar with. The polyps, worms and the musician were not animals, the trees and cones were not plants, the rhizomes were not fungi. They were all stem-eukaryotes or even multicellular bacteria, descending from experiments in multicellularity that long predate the fauna and flora that would arise in the Cambrian. 400 million years earlier, their evolution was boosted during a quick oxygenation event, leading to a first fauna of macroscopic slime-mold-like flowers and polyps, which greatly diversified in the course of evolution into the wide biodiversity seen here on display. But today only that very first primitive generation, known as the Franceville biota of Gabon, would be preserved as enigmatic fossils, continuing to puzzle humans but ultimately being overlooked in the grand history of life as little more than curiosities.

Out of his window, Ptahhatp watched the serene scene. But whereas it used to fill his being with calm, he now watched the horizon with melancholy in his hearts. Ptahhatp spent a lot of time thinking about the world, about philosophy. He was a scribe of the Society of Sohon, one of many intellectual gentlemen’s clubs. Ptahhatp’s civilization had many ups and downs, a history even longer than humanity’s. But it had already hit a ceiling millennia ago. The long line of gelatinous trees, with their leathery skin instead of solid bark, did not turn into coal upon fossilization. Algae had simply not existed for long enough or in great numbers yet for their remains to turn into sizeable deposits of petroleum. Living trees were sacred to the dawn-creatures, one needed to make a prayer each time one wanted to fell one. So, all in all, there simply was not enough with which to fuel an industrial revolution. For the better part of a millennium now, Ptahhatp’s society was stuck in an elongated equivalent of the early 18^th century. The height of technology were pocket-watches and elaborate crank-operated automata, imitating people and the fleathery flying disks. They served as little more than entertainment and luxury for the high society.

With no real vision towards the future, Ptahhatp’s society became expert antiquarians, obsessed with the past, “new” movements, be it in art, philosophy, politics or religion, simply being cyclical renaissances of old ideas being brought back in new ways. His Society of Sohon, named in honour of a famous archaeologist, was one of many orders of antiquarians, which met each month to discuss their findings and share and reproduce their texts, much like the royal societies of Enlightenment Scotland. It was one of his favourite hobbies during retirement, now that he no longer had the capacity to go on his adventures. Ptahhatp used to be a polymath, like some sort of Precambrian Shen Kuo, having experienced many different things during his political career under the Emperor. He built canals, oversaw trade and taxes, worked as a royal astrologer and mathematician, drew maps of the realm, led armies into war… it would be easier to list the things he did not do. But now he was living a calm life in his big, old mansion, writing poetry. Until now.

The previous night, he was plagued by a strange dream, a nightmare even. Everything he knew, all the world, was encroached by a veil, not of darkness but of blinding white. Huge walls of ice, thrice as tall as the tallest pyramids, relentlessly marched towards the equator, burying all beneath them until the whole globe appeared like a ball of snow. Drifting solemnly through the emptiness of space. Ptahhatp’s disembodied mind floated atop the ice-sheets, seeing all of history beneath him. Eventually the ice melted and returned to the poles, but when it did, nothing beneath remained. The mighty glaciers carved away the entire world, not just the surface, but also all the rock formations holding eons of life’s history inside them. All the buildings were gone. All the flora and fauna were gone. All the mighty monuments and ruins were gone. All the fossils were gone. It was as if his entire world had never existed. Eroded away by the abyss of time.

Dreams held great meaning to Ptahhatp. Ironically for a person obsessed with the past, he felt as if he had been cursed with visions of the future. But he had never dreamt this far in time before. What was he to make of it? He looked around his chamber, onto the shelf with all the little antiquities, reliquaries and fossils and contemplated the likelihood of them having been preserved, found and brought here. Each one, even the most mundane piece of fossil plankton, is nothing short of a small miracle. The odds of them surviving into the modern day against all the destructive forces of time were astronomically low and now they are just sitting there on his shelf. But they will not survive forever. No matter how good he and his descendants take care of them, they will be destroyed one day. Everything will be destroyed one day, fading into oblivion. Even Earth will one day be gone, with perhaps nobody else in the universe ever knowing that it existed. All the life, all the cultures, all the works of this little pale blue dot… gone forever.

As he looked at his collection, Ptahhatp slowly went through a crisis of faith. What is the point of him preserving history if none of it can be preserved forever? For whom is he doing all of this? Just for himself? He, who cannot take any of this with him into oblivion? Not far from where he lived there was a crimson pyramid, so old that no carving on or in it survived into his time. Nobody knew who built it anymore, what ancient king may have been buried inside. Only the red sandstone blocks remained and in a few thousand years they would be gone too. If even the mighty works of god-kings will fade, what chance does he as a mere historian have that any of his works will be preserved across time?

And he looks out the window again. Into the Sun on the horizon, the lush spongeland, the undulating gelatine trees, the merry musicians on the house roofs. The joy and laughter of the people. This is the present. This is what he actually lives in. There is no past and there is no future for him to experience, only the now. In a flurry of inspiration, his tendrils pick up an ink-tipped fleather and he writes down a poem, unusually for him written in prosaic rhyme:

“What is better?

To have lived and left no letter?

To have legend and no life?

Living but an endless strife?

To become a memory,

Known but for mortality?

Burn my works, smash my bones!

What worth they are once I am gone?

All these things are but loans.

Death is all I own. 

 

I am but sole witness

Of my life in stress.

There is no reason and no rhyme,

Everything just flows with time.

 

If a Beyond there is,

With my goods I cannot depart.

And so these I should not miss,

But one thought I will impart:

 

Mourn me, do not.

Cry for me, do not.

Search for me, do not.

 

Beyond death, you need not plan.

To be happy is all you can.”

 

He goes out to play with the musicians in the street. He does not make history today, but he does make his day.

Floating Forests of Venus

The surface of Venus is a hellscape, akin to a superheated, gloomy, dry deep sea, where only the strangest of extremophiles manage to carve out an almost impossible existence. But high up in the clouds it is as if one flies through a wondrous dreamscape of another world entirely. Instead of just succumbing to the deterioration of their homeworld and quietly go into extinction, the ancient lifeforms of our twin planet did the impossible and colonised the skies.

Click to enlarge

Aided by a superdense atmosphere, which makes floating and flying easy even within an Earth-like gravity, giant aerial reefs float here, sometimes forming complex systems large enough to be seen from orbit, maybe even Earth-based telescopes. Some of these floating islands can almost grow to the size of Madagascar. On their backs grow then entire forests and jungles, inhabited by grotesque primordial beasts, strangely evoking still Svante Arrhenius’ failed prediction of Venus as a planet stuck in the Carboniferous period.

How do these floating islands form? The main reef builders are obviously buoyant animals and plants, which make use of the planet’s unique atmosphere to feed on the abundant aeroplankton. The most prominent of these are worms of the family Pulmoserpulidae, which resemble an unmineralized fusion of an ammonite and a crinoid. These serpulids begin life as larvae floating in the air, held up by an air sac in the tail-base. While maturing, two small tentacles at said base secrete a chitinous membrane, which, similarly to Earth’s paper-nautilus, eventually develops into a coiled shell filled with additional air chambers that help hold the growing organism afloat. From such a base then hangs a long tube with feathery tentacles at the end, with which the serpulids filter-feed the air for plankton. What makes these worms essential ecosystem engineers is that they are colonial and encrusting. As larvae they will cling to any surface and cement themselves with their shells on there like barnacles. Usually, the first thing they cling to are their siblings, thus forming large floating balls of shells and tentacles. Onto these then graft more serpulids and other floaters, which widens the ball’s surface, thus allowing even more floaters to encrust themselves onto it. Eventually the base of a floating island is formed. Often, these will break up again due to violent storms, acid rains, reef-breaking carnivores or lightning strikes, but some islands do grow large enough that they can remain stable in the air even during adverse weather conditions and reproduce fast enough to fix holes and gaps.

Once such bases have been formed, airborne spores will settle upon them, eventually growing into lichenous, fungal growths and low, moss-like coverings. Some of these subsist solely on aerial detritus and rain settling on the islands from above, some form endosymbiotic relationships with the floaters they grow on. Some are also parasitic, boring through the shells of the serpulids to tap into their water and nutrients. Some of these parasitic fungoids can thus cause damage to the reef’s gas balance, causing it to sink into the inferno below. But such parasitic outbreaks are rare, likely due to the natural selection of such a self-destruction. Very crucial during the first phase of colonization are also flying animals which form nesting colonies on the barren islands. During their roost, they defecate and leave plenty of guano behind, providing an important source of nutrients for the nascent ecosystem. Over time, guano, aerial detritus and the decaying biomass of dead moss and fungi will accrue so much that the island gains its first proper soil layer. Alerted by statocysts inside their bodies, the floaters below will usually compensate for the added weight by just growing more air chambers.

With the formation of a proper soil, seeds can now settle and grow into small plants, which in turn offer cover, habitat and food for small, insectoid aerial organisms, who in turn become food for other animals. With this secondary ecosystem accumulates eventually enough detritus that the whole island will become covered in a rich layer of soil thick and firm enough that one could believe they are standing on solid ground. At this stage the seeds of larger plants will now begin to take root, growing into tall trees and eventually forming a forest cover. A beautiful one at that. One cannot help but stand here mesmerized by this natural wonder, listening as the gentle wind caressing the foliage composes a magnificent stickerbush symphony.

At this stage larger animals will begin to make their homes here, often by flying or gliding over from other islands. Sometimes two or more islands will also simply bump into each other, allowing for easy dispersal. Here we see one such fellow, a dyrokong, clambering even through the thick forest of vines beneath his island. With four long limbs and grasping arms it is easy to compare this creature to an ape, like a gibbon or orang, though like a flying squirrel it also bears a pair of gliding membranes between its extremities. In such an environment, where one slip may mean hellfire, it makes sense to not rely on climbing skills alone. Kongs are part of a major Venusian phylum, the Sclerocephala, which superficially resemble vertebrates. Except for the head, that is. Their eyes are mineralized and are made up of heavily ossified scleral rings, visible even in the living animal. Perhaps an adaptation towards high pressure? Their fleshy jaws also open horizontally, sometimes assisted by a dextrous tongue. Little is known about the behaviour of dyrokongs, so one wonders if they are maybe also up to jungle hijinks like their Earth-pendants.

As he brachiates from worm to worm, he needs to watch out, for not all is as it may seem. Among the floaters can also hide carnivorous plants(?) like the Medean clam, which disguise their grasping tentacle as a serpulid. Should climbing or flying animals grab it, they will become ensnared in the mucus and slowly lifted up into the mighty jaw, where they will be slowly digested alive.

Other dangers lurk here too, for the skies are filled with plenty of aerial predators ready to snatch an unwary islander off their home. Like this Sphyraenops, which resembles a flying deep-sea fish. It is a member of another major phylum, Eurypharynxia. These resemble terrestrial vertebrates even more, though they tend to have a multitude of eyes and their jaw-hinges extend in almost all forms far behind the actual skull, giving them the nickname gulperfish or, in the more derived forms, gulpersaurs. Another distinction is that they breathe and smell not through nostrils but through a sort of blowhole at the back of the skull, which in some derived forms extends into a hadrosaur-like crest. Due to some of their paradoxically aquatic characteristics, it has been hypothesized that the gulpers may ultimately descend from actual deep sea organisms, which, as Venus slowly lost its oceans, likely were among the last animals living on the surface with enough time to adapt to the dramatic changes.

In the flying fish’s ravenous sight is a little, unassuming furball. This is a therorb. Not much is known about these animals beyond that they are small, have a single eye, a beak, thin, bird-like legs and are covered in fur. They hold the unique distinction of being among the few Venusian organisms known to be homeothermic. Almost all other larger lifeforms are poikilotherms, not needing a stable, high metabolism thanks to the high temperatures of Venus even far up in its atmosphere. Its role in these surreal ecosystems could perhaps be compared to that of the archaic mammals of Earth’s Mesozoic. In its own, twisted way, our twin planet still seems to be firmly in the grips of its own Age of Reptiles.

For the ruling class in these forests are strange beasts such as this. Phalacromimus is a more derived member of the eurypharyngians, specifically from the fearsome order of the Ornithosauria. Likely descending from bird-like, leathery-winged creatures, many of the ornithosaurs indeed resemble bizarro-versions of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs of ancient Earth. And not the lethargic and cumbersome ones of your old picture books, rather the newer, agile and dangerous ones. Ornithosaurs are still technically poikilotherms, due to not having a consistent body temperature, but can heighten their metabolism when needed, creating a flexible middle ground between warm- and cold-bloodedness. Phalacromimus is a fairly unassuming fellow, flying and nesting between the islands and snatching up small prey like the therorb much in the manner of a pelican. Compared to its fearsome cousins it seems downright adorable. From larger “landmasses” some cosmonauts have reported terrifying beasts, as large as shuttles, some of which have even given up the extraneous ability to fly in order to live permanently in their floating jungles. Among these reports is a creature called the “Lacerodactyl”. While officially a “cryptid”, due to still awaiting official scientific documentation, it does have a confirmed kill-count of 14 unlucky spacefarers. Descriptions make it seem like a featherless Deinonychus, agile and intelligent, with the oversized head of a barracuda. Footprints, scattered bones and lidar-scans also attest to the possible existence of carnosaur-sized beasts somewhere within the larger jungles.

Most numerous, yet also most enigmatic among the Venusian fauna are the millions of small flying insectoid creatures. Some of them hide elegantly among the vegetation like stick-insects. Others are mesmerizing little flyers resembling airborne millipedes.

Even more mysterious are organisms which seem to have never had airborne ancestors, such as this hammerolm, a serpentine eurypharyngian with vestigial hindlegs. Did it maybe have wings once, but lost them so long ago that all traces have been lost? Or was there a window of time where aerial islands already existed when the surface was still habitable, maybe allowing some animals from mountains or high trees to hop on? We can only speculate.

Next to gulperfish, other flying predators abound. Patrolling here is an angaros, part of the sclerocephalian order of the Aerolamnii or “windsharks”. Giving live birth, these can spend their entire lives in the air, having no functional legs anymore and only coming to rest on the islands when sick or injured. Some are solitary, but a few species have proven quite intelligent, able to attack in packs on the titanic aerial filter-feeders which sometimes pierce through the clouds. How they coordinate amongst each other remains to be researched, though our sonar equipment sometimes becomes disturbed by strange signals that may stem from these creatures.

The upper atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like of any of our neighbouring planets, far more so than the one on Mars. A human may in theory survive here with only a gasmask on. Some have thus speculated that these floating islands may indeed be the next step of human space colonisation instead of the barren wastes of the red planet. What further facilitates this is the surprising fact that the biospheres of Earth and Venus are compatible. Unlike the decidedly alien lifeforms of Mars, Venusians are made of the same stuff as us, encode their genes in DNA and their microorganisms have an undeniable resemblance to Earth’s Archaea. The chance that this is due to a mere cosmic coincidence is astronomically unlikely. Instead, somewhen during the deepest Precambrian eons, one or maybe even more panspermia events must have taken place which seeded one planet with life from the other. Which planet originated life first is a question for the ages that we can debate at a later date. While for now this means that humans run the risk of potentially being infected by Venusian pathogens (or vice versa), one can imagine that with enough time and genetic engineering, a man from Earth may indeed one day enjoy the fruits of Venus or maybe even plant his own crops in the aerosoils. If he is also capable of managing the acid rains and prehistoric monsters, that is…

The Soviets have indeed already attempted to build bases on the islands, claiming they are solely there for research into exobiology and colonisation. As is now well-known, however, the main purpose of these bases was to develop and build potential superweapons away from the prying eyes of the global community. Back in my younger years, when I was still working for the MI6, I had some… direct experiences with these facilities. But if I told you those stories, I would have to kill you. And I still have the license for that.

King Mauk

Most of the northern hemisphere of Mars used to be an ocean. Geological and paleontological evidence agrees on that. But is this sea completely gone or can the northern polar cap the planet be seen as the last shield of a lost waterworld? The more this habitat is studied, the more it reveals that this huge glacial shield indeed still houses great bodies of saltwater beneath it. Though some of these are so salty as to be toxic to most life. A few lakes interconnect with each other and possibly underground chambers, creating enough circulation for more complex ecosystems to exist. Standing atop these, with the creaking ice beneath your feet and peering down into the briny blue, one can almost deceive themselves into thinking they’re standing somewhere in Greenland in the winter. But that illusion is broken as one goes beyond the horizon, being greeted by a dry tundra and beyond that the red wasteland.

One of the few Martian animals here which add a certain marine vibe are the king mauks (Areoalca bonomii). These aliens have become quite popular among Earthmen, as they quite adorably resemble penguins, loons and similar waterbirds. The common name mauk is even a contraction of “mars auk”, referring to the extinct auk birds of our planet’s Arctic. That such an alien could come about through convergent evolution is not quite surprising, considering that Nothornitha already have a general likeness to flightless birds. Unlike a penguin and indeed unlike any other nothornithes, mauks cannot actually stand up on their legs. When they are out of the water, they instead always slide on their bellies, with their legs cumbersomely pushing them forward. It is an aspect that makes them resemble seals more than penguins. In some ways this is also an atavism back to the locomotion found in more archaic periostracans.

Mauks live their entire lives upon the great ice shield, exploiting the subglacial lakes opened by seasonal cracks. Should they ever accidentally slide the glacier fringes down into the tundra, they will become forever lost and easy pickings for predators, as they are too slow and clumsy to survive in any other environment. No, these animals, uniquely among remaining higher life of Mars, feel most at home in the water. Here they can be elegant and swift, gently gliding through the brine with the gently paddling kicks of their flippered toes. Most of their diet consists of soft-bodied prey such as selpies, as well as onychognaths. They have also been recorded diving all the way to the deep bottoms of the lakes and raking the soil for worms and sortaxes. It is a glimpse into a world that may have once been. Ironically though, there is no evidence that the mauks are some ancient relic from the oceanic times of Mars, as there is no known fossil record of such nothornithes. Combined with molecular studies on their relationships with the ptannus of the surrounding tundra, this suggests that mauks are, geologically speaking, relatively recent creatures that evolved in response to the new realities of life on the red planet.

It perhaps goes without saying that mauks, living in perhaps the most extreme environment on Mars, are the most cold-adapted of all periostracans. Their skin is covered with a dense, water-repellent fur, similar to some Arctic seals, while their internal carapace is covered both in- and outside by layers of fat. The carapace itself is uniquely honeycombed by small, air-filled pneumatic chambers, which acts as an extra layer of insulation. Using the bone shell as a form of insulation is indeed unique not just among periostracans but among Antitremata as a whole. During the long winter months, when the ice is too thick to go fishing for food, the small colonies of mauks will collectively dig deep burrows into snowhills and hibernate there, tightly cuddled to each other, not unlike the extinct polar bears of yore. In spring, when the ice begins to thaw and starbursts erupt out of the glacier, they become active again and begin diving down into the subglacial lakes in search of food. Once they have restocked their winter fat, they begin to breed.

Uniquely among nothornithes, mauks give “live birth”, though instead of true viviparity they do so through ovoviviparity. This means that the leathery eggs are not laid but are simply kept inside the body inside a well-circulated ovary until they hatch. This is undoubtedly another adaptation towards the cold, as there would be no way in the white desolation of building a nest and mauks do not have the protective skin-pouches of penguins. Mauk hatchlings are highly precocial and already able to swim and slide. The parents encourage their young to forage for food on their own at a very young age, though are still watchful over them. In the water, young mauks may fall prey to rhosons and chelicerous onychognaths, while on the ice they can become easy pickings for flying predators. As adults, they have nothing to fear but the forces of nature themselves.

Mauks have only small brains and their social behaviour seems somewhat stunted in comparison to their Earth counterparts. Their colonies are small and have no organization. As each parent is able to forage for food by themselves when carrying eggs, they also have no need to build nests or form monogamous breeding pairs, which also removes the need for elaborate displays or pebbling behaviour. Sometimes mauks will fight, quite violently in fact, over access to diving spots. During very harsh winters, cannibalism has been reported.

It is a life out in the desolate, white wastes, though evolution does not particularly care if it is a pleasant one. A dull mind is a blessing in these conditions.