The boys woke up to the sound of Dr. Yu unlocking the door to his office. They’d each fallen asleep on one of the wooden waiting benches in the concrete hallway of the town hall.

They’d gotten back so early in the morning that it didn’t make sense for Rystole to go home. Especially since he wanted to come back first thing. Worried he’d miss something important.

The hospital wing of the town hall was big, but not nearly big enough now that people were being attacked by the slugs. Two of the patient rooms were overfilled with a half dozen people each. All of them on life monitoring equipment. Rystole’s mother being one of them.

Dr. Yu was clearly startled to see the boys. He likely feared the worst. Rystole tried to relax him, saying that everything was more than fine.

Rystole followed the doctor into the office. Bert lagged behind his greasy hair a mess from sleeping on the uncomfortable benches.

Dr. Yu’s office was smaller than Bert’s lab and significantly cleaner. A large wooden desk sat in the middle of the room with a radio sitting on the corner of it. The desktop was polished and looked as good, if not better, than the furniture Rystole’s father had carved for the house.

Wood was plentiful on this planet, and a lot of the residents considered themselves lucky to be able to use and work with it considering they’d grown up in the metal hallways of Feldman’s station. Yu seemed to be no exception to this.

Another desk sat behind the high-backed swivel chair that Yu took a seat in. That desk was the typical plastic kind that held an embedded terminal inside of it. It was the kind of easy-to-print model that filled Rystole’s school room.

A few wooden shelves held medical supplies. These were assembled with less care than the desk made out of necessity. A wooden coat rack, still rough and unsanded, held the white coat that Yu usually wore. Right now he had a knitted sweater pulled over a collared shirt and thin khaki pants.

There were two chairs in front of the desk, again plastic pre-designed models, and the doctor gestured for them to take a seat.

Rystole ignored the suggestion.

“What can I help you boys with?” Dr. Yu asked. His early morning voice was deeper than Rystole remembered hearing at the town hall meetings.

Rystole placed the backpack down on the wooden table. He slid the synwool-covered slug out and cut the cordage with the folding knife he kept in his pocket for chores around the farm.

“Be careful with that,” Bert said looming next to Rystole.

Rystole wasn’t worried and soon the blanket fell off of the slug.

The doctor gasped and stood up from his chair pointing to the door. He told the boys to escape. He reached for the radio on his desk to call for help.

“I’m pretty sure it’s dead, or at least incapacitated,” Rystole said giving the blanket a shake. It jiggled the slug a little but the beast didn’t move or fight back.

The blanket was cool to the touch and had a dampness about it that made Rystole uneasy.

He wiped his hand on his thick pants as he sat back in the plastic chair in front of the doctor’s desk.

“We were hoping you would take a look at it for us,” Bert asked meekly. Either from this being an interaction with his boss, or the early morning, Rystole wasn’t sure.

It took Dr. Yu a little bit of time to grow comfortable with the situation. He paced back and forth behind the desk hesitant to take a seat in case the slug came back to life.

As he paced back and forth he questioned the boys about how they came across a slug let alone brought it back here.

Rystole told the story, doing his best not to describe the device they used as a gun to avoid freaking out the doctor more. He made the whole thing sound simpler than it was, leaving out how far out of town they had to walk and how late they got back.

Bert wanted to fill in the details of how the device worked but it was clear Yu was less than interested in those details.

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Finally, Yu stopped his pacing and stood over the slug on his desk.

“You two should get some rest,” the doctor said. “I’ll take this to the operating room, dissect it, and record my notes. When you come back this afternoon I’ll give you an update. Rys, I’ll let your teacher know you won’t be at school because you were working on something for me. Bert, I guess I’ll give you the day off.”

“See I told you so,” Rystole commented to Bert with a sly grin.

“Does your father know where you are?” The doctor asked.

“I told him I was coming into town to hang out with Bert for the evening.”

“You two are damn lucky this worked out,” the doctor said without an ounce of pride in his voice. “If you ever get the idea to do something like this again at least keep an adult in the loop.”

Rystole gestured at Bert, who by the standards of the colony was effectively an adult.

“You know what I mean,” Dr. Yu said cutting Rystole’s protests off before they could start.

Rystole rolled his eyes and left. Arguing with the double standards of adults would be as difficult as arguing with Juniper. The pair napped at Bert’s house, took much-needed showers, and returned as soon as they could.

When the boys returned to the operating room they found Yu in a bright yellow hazmat suit leaning over a metal table with the slug on it. The doctor looked like he was prepared to take a spacewalk.

It was certainly more gear than Rystole expected considering he’d captured the slug in nothing more than pants and an old t-shirt.

The doctor’s paranoia looked ridiculous even if it was justified. But Rystole knew if the colony’s doctor was paralyzed there’d be a steep learning curve for the next person who took his place.

The boys were able to look into the operation room through a glass window. The room they waited in had a sink built into the wall but no seats.

A terminal was embedded in the wall and Bert read off Yu’s dictation notes as they came through.

There weren’t any earth-shattering discoveries documented in the notes, and most of them were just Yu’s theories on how things might work based on other biological structures he’d studied.

“Did you figure anything out?” Rystole asked as the doctor shed the protective gear he wore.

“Only that they have more in common with a rodent than bugs,” Yu replied as he pulled off his mask. “And even that would be a liberal classification.”

“Is there anything that you found that could help my mother? And the others who were attacked?”

Dr. Yu’s expression wasn’t encouraging. “I found a few glands that I think might have the toxin in them. I’ll need to do more analysis though.”

“It’s a real shame this one was dead,” Yu continued. The remark was contemplative, like when Rystole’s mother talked about what she wanted the buffcows to do even though they couldn’t understand her. “If it was alive I could have studied a lot more about how the inner workings work.”

“Bringing it back if it was alive wouldn’t have been easy,” Bert said.

“No, no, you’re right,” the doctor said. “I’m impressed you boys have brought back as much as you did.”

Rystole beamed with pride.

The doctor saw the smile. “However,” he added, “I’m certainly not encouraging you to go on another hunting expedition.”

“What if we made the device a little less powerful?” Rystole asked Bert. “Just powerful enough to stun it.”

His friend gave him an uneasy look.

“I’m not really interested in getting in the business of weapons manufacturing,” Bert said. “I did this because it was an interesting project. I didn’t think it’d work. Or that we’d use it.”

“Nonetheless, we’re going to want to document your design and send it off to the Central System so they can refine it and make more of them,” the doctor said.

“And how long will that take?” Rystole asked rhetorically. “There are people, families, being hurt here and now. You could have another four people crammed into your infirmary tonight.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” the doctor said half-heartedly. “But this is the protocol and it’s what we need to do.”

Rystole rolled his eyes.

Who knew how many more slugs would attack as they waited for the Central System to take action?

The Central System might send a weapon design to be printed. More likely they would send scientists and military experts to assess the threat. Who knew how it would hamper Dale Cannon’s ability to become a full-on settlement and trading center like it planned to be.

Not to mention there was a chance that the Central System abandoned the planet altogether, Rystole’d heard stories of them doing that if there was a sign that humans couldn’t inhabit the planet one way or another.

He’d spend years on Feldman’s station, cramped into a one-bedroom apartment with his parents. Central System was committed to providing housing for everyone, but it wasn’t good housing. Not the spacious two-bedroom cabin his family built together.

When he saw Dale Cannon from space all he could see was freedom. He wasn’t interested in waiting ten or fifteen years waiting to apply for another colony mission.

“I need to talk with Grisham about this,” the doctor said cutting Rystole’s thoughts short. “And we’ll see if we can present it at the weekly town hall meeting tonight. Bert, you should start documenting things because I suspect Grisham is going to want to get this out as soon as possible.”

Bert nodded in agreement.

“Rys, go see your family and make sure you’re back here by tonight,” the doctor said. “Grisham and I are going to want to give you two our appreciation at the meeting, so wear something nice.”

“What about finding a cure for my mom and everyone else?” Rystole asked.

“Trust me it’s my top priority,” Dr. Yu said. “But I suspect there will be a lot of long nights ahead of me figuring that out. I want those folks cured and awake as soon as anyone else. Doesn’t speak to my abilities as a doctor to have a sick bay full of comatose people.”

Rystole had no doubt the doctor wanted his mom cured, but he could think of a few people who wanted it more, himself included.