As the person selected from the Freedom Democracy for the purpose of analyzing alien artifacts and leading the introductions with possible live aliens, Hestlierre is obviously going to be on the rescue crew.

They need a second catfolk, and a person from Lei.

They'll need a werewolf if the barge breaks, or to change the shape of it to accommodate the alien.

"I think maybe it should not be you," says another werewolf and grabs onto the barge to start enervating it.

"We're not limited by the amount of weight it can carry, like a normal ship. We're limited by the amount of sail capacity it doesn't have; the size and shape of the shelter. So it's not as tight as it seems."

...That might actually be a tighter constant than weight.

"Lei werewolves are smaller."

That's two from Lei, and they need a backup catfolk.

Are they going to be walking on the ground?

Can he come, for unspecified reasons?

How are they going to communicate with the rest of the expedition?

With all the harpies, including Audron, there's not going to be space for anyone else.

They will have to not step on the ground at all - they'll float really low and push on the ground with rods. They will communicate back with a simple system of waving flames around.

Audron is from the Freedom Democracy, and they're not taking Chime, so Mofil needs to stay to keep the FD and Lei numbers equal, replaced with one of the neutral catfolk.

Catfolk: Hestlierre, Tolesli, Cambert.

Werewolf: Mirana.

Harpy: Audron, Kyn, Lenyet, Voluda, Jordesk, Eira, Wanarka.

So do they have a plan to stop- Okay, they do. Rods poking the ground. Not ideal but she can't think of anything better in five seconds. The catfire signaling system is clear? And written down? The plan for rescuing the rescuers if necessary (catfolk & chime hike) is in place? The expedition edge not having a barge isn't great but as long as they're aware of it it's not an active emergency either. Just makes help further away.

Okay. She's definitely not going, but this plan seems as un-doomed as it's going to get in the next hour.

They have another barge! It's made of ice and it's miserable to sit on it if you're not a boark or catfolk, but they have one!

A light is moving. As it gets closer, a horrible shrieking noise comes to him, against the wind.

It's a narrow wingless blob, with two jet engines leaking an alarming (i.e. non-zero) amount of fire. Too high for a ground-effect vehicle. It coasts down toward him and walks on tripod leg landing gear.

A black-and-white furry humanoid with pointy ears sticks his head out a porthole and looks at Miguel. The humanoid is covered with fire. He holds out one (five-fingered!) hand, which is suddenly not burning anymore, and then the flames come back in pulses - three short, three long, three short - and then come back and stay.

Whatthefuck.

Yeah, okay, here come the hallucinations. Take him away to see the wizard, hee hee hoo hoo! He can still turn his helmet lights on and off. The gaze tracking works and there's a physical switch as a backup. S.O.S. indeed.

(Miguel is a humanoid, human-sized shape under a thick orange EVA suit, huddled into a compact shape and shivering. Several additional EVA suits torn apart and roughly stitched back together form a thick blanket or cloak wrapped around him. The front of his helmet is rimed over with ice, showing a distorted but visible human face with beard stubble underneath. He is sitting on some sort of sled, possibly made from a door like the one they found earlier, and also sitting on the sled are various sealed bags and box-like objects.

He doesn't stand up.)

"The alien is humanoid, werewolf-sized, and alive! The light is coming from a head-mounted object. The alien is wearing extremely fluffy clothing, supporting our assumption that this is a harmfully-cold environment, and is on top of a flat piece of metal, along with some other objects. 

I think we should pull the entire piece of metal aboard, without touching anything on it, and gently return to warmth before doing anything else."

The vehicle rotates to face away from Miguel. At the back, there is a wider opening. The same furry person reaches out and gingerly touches the metal sled with a non-burning fingertip, and then pulls, joined by similar person with all black fur.

It takes a few minutes of grunting, but they get his sled aboard. The vehicle rises up, catching the cold wind, and then the turbines howl, at a lower pitch than before, and the wind eases off.

The furry people's fire is the only source of light. They're not doing much, just lying down and occasionally adjusting a lever on the wall. In front, there is a huddle of people wearing a lot more clothing than the furry people, and they're more feathery than furry.

A while later (about one and a half Earth hours, if Miguel has a way to measure it) the vehicle descends and the turbines stop. A crowd of furry, fiery people push it into a long igloo-tunnel. They pick up his sled and gently set it on the floor. 

The feathery people, who have whole entire wings, file out of the vehicle, followed by another fire person and a furry person without fire.

Maybe this is some kind of genetic modification fuckery, someone's special project and colony. Winged people and furry people. There are some folks on the internet who are into that. Maybe some really rich ones did the medical work to make it reality? How would he know!

It's warm in here. They're not speaking English.

And he's not gonna die! Hahaha!

A little while into the flight he'll shed the improvised coat, and eventually even open his helmet. This reminds him of some of the worse plane rides he's ever had...

He'll... Turn the helmet lights off. To save suit power. He huddles to himself, and listens, and, eventually, opens up a ration bar, shiny plastic crinkling, and eats it.

It would be pretty challenging to try and talk over the engine noise. And he's not sure he's not completely out of it. (He's more sure than he was an hour and a half ago.)

...Well, they appear to still be on the ice. And these people definitely aren't from the UNSS Exodus. But. PEOPLE! He might be tearing up, here.

When it's time to disembark he tries to mime appropriate thankfulness and confusion.

So many neat alien artifacts!

The 'thankfulness' body language is clear enough, but the meaning of the other gestures escapes Hestlierre. They'll have to start with simpler concepts and work up to that. Establishing a shared understanding of the basic situation first, with the planet and ship, which will be needed anyway if it was (his best guess) a question about some alien species magic.

He stops all the flames above his waist to make his signing easier to see, and then: shows the surface of a sphere. Left fist; left fist briefly on fire while right finger points at the fire; no more fire but right hand sits on top of it, loosely curled, palm up, with fingers wiggling. Repeat to make this totally clear: here's his left elbow on fire and then with the wiggling fingers on it too. Now, here's the sphere again. One side gets wiggling fingers and one side doesn't - point at it, wiggling fingers? and shake head firmly and push the wiggling fingers away with his other hand.

A small object comes from far away and lands in the no-flames part of the sphere. Hestlierre points to himself and traces a line along the sphere towards the impact site, and points to Miguel and traces a line away from the impact site. Now the big question: point at Miguel, trace line back towards the ship and then trace a line continuing away. Point at him again, keep finger extended to trace, look at Miguel and wait?

A fire person offers a piece of dense bread to Miguel, and a bowl of water.

A giant moth walking on its hind legs sits down nearby and waves its antennae through Miguel. A small winged person without feathers stares at him a moment in silence. A person covered with leaves - with branching antlers sticking out from their head covered in more leaves - kneels next to him and slowly reaches a finger towards the exposed skin on his face.

He actually has no fucking clue what the wiggling is supposed to be? Is it about the fire? How are they doing that, some kind of implant? Fucking Magic? ...Is it - he - miming about the crash, maybe? Go towards or go away from it?

This is freaking him out. It's probably - actual doctors, or whatever, and he's just too out of it. Insane in the membrane. He will endure scrutiny and try to understand what is being signed.

(Miguel Hernandez is: Human, with some mild genetic modification and general tune-ups. The biggest ones, metabolically, are a telomere extension, a fat-reduction mod that speeds up metabolism when higher body fat is present, and a treatment to address a genetic predisposition to heart disease. Also, the cryo-compatibility treatment that EVERYONE on the mission got for free.)

Sum total of alien artifacts:

Miguel and his EVA suit, filthy. (There appear to toilet mechanics built into it.)

EVA suit helmet, x1.

Cryosuspension pod door, aluminum and glass and the electronics inside it.

Rubber-coated 8-strand copper wires with a plastic core and more sheathing over the individual strands.

Shredded-EVA-suit coat, 'sewn' together with electrical wires.

5 small batteries and 2 large ones.

2 PDAs. Charging cords.

19 water rations and 16 food ration bars.

Firestarting kit. Fat lot of good that did him.

First aid kit, x2. The antiseptic froze but it's melting again now.

Survival knife.

His personal luggage, which was sitting intact at the side of his pod. Tiny little plumbing and electronics toolkit and a crucifix and his ID card and some physical photos in a little binder, all in a small plastic case.

Anyway, back to: Whatthefuckwhatthefuck.

God.

-Does the PDA work? Tap tap. Hold button. No, it doesn't. Electronics die when they get too cold, right?

He takes it and - there, that one's still at 4% charge technically - and tries to holds them both near a flame for a minute. Fusses with the charge cord.

Seems like the alien is confused and overwhelmed. (Hestlierre was prepared to painstakingly learn how to interact with a bizarre entity, but since the alien is humanoid and even seems mammal-derived, he's comfortable trusting his instincts for its body language. And its smell, once the alien is cleaned up enough to not immediately overpower the noses of everyone around.) He'll take a break for now, then.

...and hold still so the alien can hold the gadgets near his flame, sure.

To the wroth, the alien seems normal enough. Exhausted and stressed. (The outside of the alien's body is fine, it's still less gross than the inside.)

To Chime, also, the alien's body seems normal and acceptably undamaged. No places where the blood is flowing wrong or not at all. No foreign objects. Digestive tract looks human, not catfolk or gnomunk or equartier.

To the liefling... Lieflings target a creature with a goal in mind. They receive feedback on the feasibility of the goal, how many leaves it would require the target to eat, and a complicated sense of the function of each leaf in terms that are detailed but abstract. With practice, lieflings learn patterns in these impressions and associate them with other observable phenomena, just like how anyone learns to combine their sensory data from different modalities. For example, there are commonalities when seeking to suppress the growth of lumps.

A Liefling may have a goal which would not actually be healthy for the patient - the feedback comes even with no intention of actually growing leaves and feeding them to the target. They may seek to suppress the growth of everything, and for this, many leaves would be required. When targeting a patient who has a growing lump, with the goal of suppressing everything, an extra leaf is required. And an extra leaf is also required for some patients who don't have a lump yet, or who don't ever have a lump but later mysteriously die, except they don't die if the extra affordance is used to suppress the unknown growing thing.

And so, lieflings have learned to diagnose cancer, and cure it in almost all cases, without much biological understanding. The medical science of Ansaf knows about macronutrients, micronutrients, amino acids, genes, enzymes, and hormones, without any idea of what these things actually look like - with a few partial exceptions: nutritionally-important metals, fat, protein, things made of protein...

Telomere extension? The liefling isn't expecting the alien to die of old age and doesn't check. Similarly with heart disease, and she doesn't even have the concepts to check cryo-compatibility. But she does look very closely at his metabolism: How hard would it be to make him metabolize various food categories she knows about? How hard would it be to make him waste away? How hard would it be to prevent wasting, given a diet with various nutrients?

The next foods offered to Miguel are nuts and cooked strips of fatty meat.