No Life On Wayland

A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTER SIX.

Wayland, a moon of the gas giant, Regin, in the system of Mimir, has a thin atmosphere but a sterile surface of craters and maria. There should be no life on Wayland because:

the planet is too cold;

its air is too thin;

its environment is too metallic;

radiation is too high;

the system is too young for life to have evolved.

However, Flandry is attacked by twenty plus "bugs":

 

30 centimeters long;

10-legged;

clawed feet;

double-spiked tail;

multiply antennaed head;

armored purple body;

jaws that eat his spacesuit;

quickly immobilized by low-intensity blaster needle beams.

Flandry does not seem to get the message yet that these must be mechanisms, not organisms.