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senses are incredibly acute. Fred was aware the team was there long before they saw him. For another, we learned how violent these giants can be. Fred attacked the team with a vengeance, before they had a chance to settle in. He clawed or bit every member. There were eighteen people. Fortunately, one of them was a Ranger, armed with a pistol. Despite being severely injured, the Ranger managed to shoot Fred in the arm, making him retreat. The team made it back here and received medical treatment. Everybody survived.”
    He sighed again, looked around at others in the room.
    “Subsequent expeditions met with similar fates. They’d encounter Fred, he’d attack, they’d fend him off while suffering bites and other injuries. Despite his large size (he’s about ten feet tall), our weapons seemed to scare him. Fred could be always be scared away with a gunshot or two. But we haven’t been able to kill him. There were times we thought he’d been killed by gunfire, but he continues to survive somehow.
    “Time marched on. Scientists and Professors involved in early efforts returned home to report their findings. New people came in. We started pulling back on expeditions into the forest, because they all seemed to end in disaster when Fred attacked the parties. We scouted out and found other primate colonies deeper in the forest, but these had their own recluse monkeys who also attacked us.
    “Then we started hearing about … issues … with early party members who’d left Redwood and moved on to other assignments. One Scientist snapped and assaulted a lab assistant, killing him. Another bit her mother-in-law in the neck. There were disturbing reports of drinking blood. Several months passed, more reports came in, and eventually a pattern started becoming evident.
    “The last straw occurred when a Professor named Sven Gottfrid attracted the attention of Agents on New France. Evidently he’d been attacking people late at night, killing them in gruesome fashion and drinking their blood. Once captured, Agents figured out Gottfrid actually needed to drink blood in order to survive. He’d try to control himself, but after going without for a long time, he’d turn violent and resort to murder to get his fix. The story that came back, heavily censored by the State, was that he died in his jail cell trying to drink his own blood.
    “The Agents investigated his background and history, and somebody noticed a pattern associated with other Scientists who’d visited Redwood. Anybody who’d been on a deep woods expedition, specifically, anybody who had physical contact with Fred or one of the other recluse monkeys, had a high probability of turning … bloodthirsty.”
    He started pacing again.
    “The State reacted about as you’d expect. Anybody who’d been to Redwood was quarantined, if they could find them, and questioned. Travel was restricted. All planetside personnel had to abandon their stations and work. Existing personnel were confined to Redwood City. Agents of the State figured out who most of the infected team members were, and those people all disappeared. Eventually, restrictions loosened slightly, and a small contingent of Rangers was allowed to return here, to keep an eye on things. We still provide a monthly report to Agents in Redwood City. I think the State is mostly concerned about ‘vampire monkeys’ leaving their habitat and contaminating other planets, so this station was meant to be a coal mine canary of sorts.
    “Scientists and others who worked here but didn’t go on expeditions did not disappear, thankfully. But all our findings were suppressed. Our papers went unpublished. We were told not to discuss anything about Redwood, on penalty of internment. In fact, no one, not just us, is allowed to discuss exobiological conditions on Redwood. Even innocent Internet queries are closely monitored.”
    I nodded. I knew about that from direct experience.
    “Low-key agricultural experiments at the AES