"Have a look at this one! It seems as if it turned around its axis several times while growing!"

Andrej bends low over the sample, this one an entire slice of a younger tree.

"How can you be so sure about this, Mil?"

"I'm not sue, but look, here in the centre the rings are narrow one your side and perceptibly wider on mine. Probably the tree got more light from this side. Sometimes later, the pattern changes. Now, the rings become wider on your side. It looks as if the sunny and shadow side were exchanged. And then, here, I get the impression that suddenly, the tree was standing alone, enjoying a perfect light and nutrition situation while before, it was part of a dense forest. I know this sounds impossible, and I have no logical explanation."

Andrej stares thoughtfully at the tree slice. During the last days, they collected dozens of samples from fallen trees and Mil's studies advanced considerably. Her first suspicion about not all the different species being suitable for her ring counting analysis proved true though. So Carlos built a sophisticated core drill to take samples from living trees.

While Mil and Andrej work in the lab, the technician and Koshi are outside now, hunting for drill core samples. Mil knows there is no possibly to verify her observations on this last slice on simple cores. So maybe they will have to fell one or another tree anyway. She is strictly against it, but Koshi seems very interested in her results and is keen on the opportunity to understand the climate history of Emerald. In the meantime he ordered Dray to prepare the shuttle for a reconnoitring flight. Actually he even wanted to move the ship to another landing site, but Mil managed to explain to him she needed more time to build up a broad local database before being able to interpret samples from different climate zones in comparison.

Mil is convinced the region they currently survey enjoyed a very staple climate for centuries. There is one strange anomaly though. Periodically, she observes a cycle with two or three very cold summers. This seems to happen every 579 Emerald-years, equalling roughly 652 Earth-years. Then the climate turns back to normal very quickly. The summer wood of most of the sampled trees is hardly different from the winter wood during this incident. Now, with Andrej's help she is re-checking all the samples for a hint to the reason for this phenomenon.

"Mil, is it possible that we are looking at an astronomical cycle? You mentioned solar spots. I think it's a possibility we deal with a comet's passage or another celestial body taking influence on Emerald's orbit, maybe even with an interaction between the two moons."

"This is your field of expertise, not mine. But I'm sure a volcanic eruption or any other tectonic reason wouldn't occur so regular. The same goes for insect infestations and such. I think the rings show a climatic alteration, whatever the cause. I'm wondering if only a few species are able to survive such a drastic change. This might explain why the forest is so incredibly poor in species. We registered 53 of them up until now, including aquatic plants. I counted far more in a meadow of ten square meters back home on Earth, way back in a school project."

"On Earth, a forest like this would be home to thousands of insects as well."

Mil nods. Not only insects are missing, she couldn't find anything that she would classify as animal, not even snails, worms or something crawling under her microscope. Even the biodiversity among the plants is low. She registered 23 different trees, 6 liana-like species, 5 fungi, 7 aquatic plants and 12 mosses or lichens. Something with the vegetation on this planet is definitely wrong. With a sigh she turns back to her screen.

"Maybe you should check out the comet theory, Andrej. There is something shady about this forest. On Earth, we count several millions of species. It's impossible a paradise like Emerald developed only so very few. I'd really like to know if it is the same on the whole planet."

Carrying a big load of drill cores, Carlos enters the lab, followed by Koshi. The captain tiredly sets down his samples and lets himself fall into an empty chair.

"I hope you two can get some results out of this ones. Drilling proves to be quite heavy work. And there won't be anymore slices in the near future. Did you check out the edge of the forest today?"

Mil and Andrej turn towards the side-screen showing the external view. The astrophysicist starts swearing softly in Russian while Mil gasps in alarm. During the last days, the uprooted trees hanging in their neighbours dropped slowly deeper as the dying branches broke one after the other. Now the giant trunks are gone.