The Karakarn was a multi-stage, medium-class cave-dweller that tended to nest in damp locations; between temperatures of about twenty-six to thirty-three degrees Celsius to allow for maximum gestation of its amber-coated cocoons. It was very rare to come across, given that it sealed the caves it nested in with rapidly-hardening globs of spit that looked like natural rock.
Dr. Daniel Poje, who knew all this, found himself feeling giddy like a schoolboy as he climbed down the crumbling high walls of the sinkhole that spiralled downwards into one’s nesting site.
He’d chanced upon it almost suddenly, in that kind of way that felt like a godsend, or a gift - he wasn’t a religious man and yet it overwhelmingly felt like that. For the past few months he’d carved out a life for himself tagging along with the nomadic caravans of one clan or the other as a general-purpose exobiologist and science officer, all the way from the Scillian Wastes to the nameless dead plains that extended right until the hulking mass of Nuclear-Titan 117. It wasn’t satisfying work; simply something functional to let himself scrounge up enough for himself till he could settle in one of the Titan-Cities. This, down here, wasn’t the kind of life for him.
