Hungry Animalistic Monsters!

He had hardly taken ten steps when a massive earthquake shook the ground. His shuttle launched vertically with no command from him. He dropped to all fours. He had never experienced an earthquake and thought the motion would have been up and down. He was surprised to learn that it was a side to side alternating tug of the ground from under his feet. It stopped as suddenly as it had started.

With his face to the ground, he found the snow was just a light powdering on top of rock and dirt. He pushed up to a kneeling crouch and set his mop to read the chemical constituents.

Earthquake!

It could almost have been called soil. The snowflakes were nearly all the water detected, but there were enough biological components in the minerals to sustain desert life. That meant that the expedition should have been able to manufacture food. Of course, they eventually would have adapted to the limited oxygen, hopefully. That only left the scarce water as their possible downfall. If snow here was like he had heard of snow, then higher elevations, particularly steep mountains, might harbor enough snow for them to leave the ship and set up a home nearby.

He would have to see if they left a message onboard.

Checking for clues to the lost expedition

Well, that was a bust.

The old ship was dead-cold regarding the electricity. One could deduce that the AI onboard would have activated a distress signal instead of the locator beacon if it had detected any sign that the crew were in danger or dead, so it must have expected them to return safely when it powered itself down. Now, twenty years later, the crew still had not returned, and there was not enough power to fire up the AI now that someone (Snipher) finally homed in on the beacon.

He would have to wait for the shuttle to return to be able to provide the kind of power the ship needed.

But there was another clue to investigate, a set of tracks leading to the higher elevations. The expedition must have brought one large vehicle, a land rover. His gut told him these tracks had seen no animal activity in 20 years, but a light dusting of snow (which melted after a while) was a routine event. at least, that was what he imagined, looking at the tracks.

Although any tantric nudist would prefer to walk barefoot to his destination, this situation was time sensitive (with only seven days to complete per the Captain's orders), which justified the use of technology. Snipher looked up and was glad to see the MEMS cannister floating like a zeppelin overhead.

He waved his hand in the air to signal it. A thin rope of MEMS material descended. Snipher took hold of it with one hand and pointed his destination with his mop. The blimp obediently swam forward, lifting him slightly above the ground, allowing him to clear nearly the length of a football field with each footfall.

The most fun way to travel on a low gravity planetoid.

Though the views were amazing, they got a bit monotonous, leaving his mind time to think about Sonic and Kimo and her husband. (What was her husband's name? He couldn't remember.) If the Captain had not sent him on this errand... If he had stayed... If he were sexy... If Kimo had any interest in him for his physical body, she would have tied him up among the other men. He'd be bound and placed on a pedestal as a sex object to be ogled and photographed. The binding ropes could have rubbed against his hard phallus as he begged for release. The attention alone could have been enough to make him shoot his semen out as joyful orgasm rushed through his body. He would have been so grateful.

If things had gone differently

But that was not his life. And he had better toss aside his regrets and keep his mind on the here and now.

He got a good arm workout within a half hour (swapping arms occasionally, of course) and covered a good distance before noticing the mechanical tracks ended with a badly damaged rover.

The cowlings and seat covers were scattered about, with plant life growing around and over most pieces. The electrical wires were badly damaged, cut, or chewed, or pulled out of their connections. It was something (or someone) much stronger than Mister Snipher. That was for certain.

Both at once, he rubbed his mop on the low growth of plants and smelled and listened for violent rover-eating creatures. The extremely thin air was not doing him any favors.

The rover had met a violent end in the verdant hills.

Wait. Plants? He checked his readout. The mop detected a new type of life, sort of a cross between a fungus and a plant. Some looked like plants of his home world, some looked like mushrooms, most looked like a cross between the two. Similar situations had been recorded on other worlds, but that didn't make this one any less of a scientific curiosity that could teach a few new lessons. The Captain should be happy if he brought back a few samples.

Now, if only he could find the crew's bodies and determine what attacked them.