The ship is a bubble of rock with space for the flock of harpies inside, along with the goatseer, one catfolk, and one frogold. A couple of tiny windows all the way around, and they'll leave a small hole at the top. Catfolk huddle around the outside getting the walls as hot as is comfortable to touch.

"All aboard!"

"Fuzzer! I can't believe I have to say this. We can't afford to lose you."

"It's completely safe. If anything goes wrong, the flock will gently set us down and we'll wait for rescue."

"And if it all shatters?"

"That would be even safer. There are two harpies for each of the rest, so they'll just grab us and fly directly into shelter."

"Oh, alright then, you've got it figured out. We still need you on the ground to coordinate, but I'll feel completely safe taking your place, thanks."

The crew boards, the cap is sealed into the entry hole, the harpies grab on and float...

The goatseer does nothing yet.

The catfolk, who is neither Fuzzer nor Calsa, stays in the center, away from everyone else, and burns.

The ship now weighs almost nothing, so all it takes to push it upwards is to compress the air in her mouth, swap it with uncompressed air below, gulp more air, repeat. Fresh air hisses in though the hole in the top. Gulp, swap. Again.

After half an hour, the goatseer reports that there is a mountain range in front of them. Light colored but dirty, with sharp curls worn into it by the wind. Also, there's another piece of alien debris about a deci-klick left of the tube's heading, thirty klicks forward, and it's small enough for one person to carry back.

After an hour, one of the harpies comments that the air is feeling the way it does when they go high up and there's not enough air and non-harpies start getting weak and ditzy. How is everyone feeling?

She is feeling fine just her mouth is hurting. How about they rotate the ship upside-down and she sucks air in from above, and then the exhaust will blow downwards.

Before they rotate the ship, the goatseer wants to watch outside more, since the windows have a very narrow field of view and who knows where they'll be pointing afterward.

There's a big plume of cloud coming from the direction of the crash site!

Well that they have to get a better look at. Get ready to tumble!

Actually, rotating the ship goes pretty smoothly. The three non-harpies just walk up the spherical wall and it gently rolls over.

Well, the catfolk trips over a handle and chills just in time to avoid setting the goatseer burning hungry, and gashes his arm on the goatseer's horn, but still.

Suck, swap, repeat. The ship goes up a bit more, but that just gets a slightly better view of the foot of the cloud.

After ten minutes of this, a blood vessel in Lin's nose bursts, and she's still fine, she could power through it, but if she keeps sucking air like this she might lose enough blood to be useless if there's an emergency later, so maybe it's time to go down?

"What on Ansaf is - right, aliens."

The new piece of debris is a disk of metal around a spherical piece of metal, with a big hole through the sphere and a bunch of small holes on the edge of the disk, and a sort of blob off to the side. Well, it probably wasn't a blob before the crash.

"More writing. Do you have any idea how it was written?"

Siki gets a tiny cursor from a box in his pocket and takes a veeery close look.

"Nope! But it looks the same as the writing on the door!"

"An alien species magic?"

"I guess. The writing has a sort of scratched or burnt or puckered texture that is not on the rest of the metal. So it's not metal-werewolves, it's something else."

There is so much writing all over.

30mm ANSI 150

WARNING - Do not remove bolts while system is under pressure - WARNING

NOT FOR OXIDIZER

WARNING - Check stem pressure before actuating valve - rated for 30 bar - WARNING

Hitachi 687601696339

PATENT PENDING

Do not tighten beyond 140 ft lbs

24VAC

"Alphabet confirmed, good call Tolesli! We've got some repeated words here. I wonder what that big one that goes at both ends of the line is."

*The phrases in Larian's analysis have been put through a ROT13 transform, and the numbers replaced with Arabic numerals. This is to promote verisimilitude.

The annoying human is serving a useful purpose, interfacing with the annoying elph, so she won't mind if he cribs her notes. It's an interesting puzzle. Everything written on here was probably written for a purpose; It looks expensive. What are the holes for?

What you do with something mysterious is you transform it into new shapes.

٣٠zz NAFV ١٥٠

JNEAVAT - Qb abg erzbir obygf juvyr flfgrz vf haqre cerffher - JNEAVAT

ABG SBE BKVQVMRE

JNEAVAT - Purpx fgrz cerffher orsber npghngvat inyir  engrq sbe ٣٠ one - JNEAVAT

Uvgnpuv ٦٨٧٦٠١٦٩٦٣٣٩

CNGRAG CRAQVAT

Qb abg gvtugra orlbaq ١٤٠ sg yof

٢٤INP

And from last time:

G. Pbbcre

It looks like a load of gibberish for the most part. One can start assuming various things-

JNEAVAT is loud and repeated, so it must be important somehow.

And it's an alphabet, and some of the big ones look similar to corresponding small ones - 'p' and 'P'. Furthermore, the first letter in each line is always a big one.

But- Ugh. Ugh! No, assumptions blind you to the truth sometimes. Just the facts.

Here are phrases that appear multiple times:

JNEAVAT - 4 times.
abg - 3 times.
qb - 2 times, both times before an instance of 'abg'.
cerffher - 2 times, both times between JNEAVAT.
sbe - 2 times. One time big.

Plus '١/something/٠' appearing twice, with two different characters in between. Words that sound similar aside from one sound aren't unheard of, but something about that set of characters is different, too. Some of these are obviously using fewer line strokes than others. And for the letters... Some of those are obviously the same, big and small versions... And they don't really have enough of a sample size for this to be very useful.

r: 18
V/v: 14
A: 13
g: 12
b: 11
e: 11
f/F: 11
N: 7
T/t: 7
E: 6
a: 6
n: 6
P/p: 6
٠: 5
z: 5
o: 5
c/C: 5
J/j: 5
u/U: 5
٣: 4
-: 4
Q: 4
y: 4
h: 4
G: 4
٦: 4
i/I: 4
s/S: 4
١: 3
q: 3
B: 3
R: 3
l: 2
٩: 2
٤: 2
٥: 1
K: 1
M: 1
x: 1
٨: 1
٧: 1
٢: 1
.: 1

"We're missing some of the small-large correspondences, obviously," she muses aloud. "And really, it's just very hard to confidently conclude anything here. Maybe the big letters are special somehow. Maybe the writing is - instructions - if this is an expensive, specialized piece of something larger. Which might make the long lines a pair of instructions or warnings, both to do with something spelled like this-"

cerffher

"...A machine, yes. That's the impression I'm getting. Like a mirrorkite or turbine. This one might be associated with warnings, too..." 

abg / Qb abg

"But, ugh, that's multiple assumptions one after another. This whole table is probably useless, just because of a lack of enough to analyze, and no context..."

Is CNGRAG CRAQVAT a maker's mark? It's displayed prominently. What is cerffher? What is this thing's purpose, anyway? It's a hole that can be opened and closed... Is it for water to pass through?

"Are the short words the most common ones? Nobody wants to spend five seconds saying 'yes'..."

...Useless. Bah. She continues to puzzle over it while idly shedding water anyway.