First Lieutenant Aloysius Shi did not like the look of the planet the moment he set eyes on it. He gave the mission's Chemist the look one gives a friend on entering a restaurant one does not feels sure of and shifted his weight on their ship’s landing ramp. At that moment a rhino, it could be nothing else, plunged out of the alien grassland -- to the Lieutenant (and Biologist’s) great surprise. (Every other quadruped on the world was a draconoides-analogue.) He raised his sidearm and shot the animal between its orbits when it was clear it heading straight towards them.
His oldest son, only five, believed every word. The world’s Geologist sighed and said in his polite Latin voice, “Lou, you mustn’t tell the children such stories.”
