Thalate's life is "quite alien", as the Macaria's survey expected. The creatures the Distress Signal party met there are silicon-based and use acid to dissolve minerals, so they eat metal, and were busy eating the hull of the downed Aquitaine. They range from insect-sized things up to house-cat-sized pack animals that are territorial and spit acid, and a one-metre predator that eats the smaller ones. Jahori's first sighting was an 18-inch creature somewhere between a mantis and a virus, camouflaged against the rock and leaving a low-pH residue behind it.

They are hard to crush but vulnerable to shooting, slashing and stabbing, and low-frequency sound makes them uneasy, so Rodger wrote a bass-thump emitter program to keep them back. Samples went home in cold pods.