Transcription

[[Trish, Patty, and Dexter are with Colonel Barker in a chamber on a Physaric "ship", discussing with him his reference to "Scylla and Charybdis". Colonel Barker is continuing his background tale.]]
Colonel: [narrating off-panel, while we see him looking into the partially opened object from the previous strip] The science geeks speculated that the ship itself might have been a living creature, obviously now deceased. While they were paranoid about radiation and pathogens no signs of contamination were present.

Colonel: [narrating, we see him looking down into the object where a technician is drawing a sample of a "puddle" into a syringe.] At first, we were uncertain whether the single occupant was liquefied by the impact, or if its natural state was an amorphous, gelatinous mass. We got our answer soon enough.

Colonel: [narrating, we see him looking away from the object while leaving his hand over it.] The lab boys obtained a few samples, but the creature failed to react. We began to initiate standard autopsy procedures: If the thing was dead, it couldn't protest if we tried to figure out how it ticked.

Colonel: [narrating, we see something extending from the object and latching on to his hand.] It turned out our proclamation of death was a bit ... premature.