"Why's that?"

"I'm told that the giant basically-pterodactyls* there are carnivorous when sufficiently hungry - the ones outside of that region are obligate herbivores and harmless - locals interact with them all the time."

*Translated in whatever way makes the most sense to Isabella.

"Goodness. I would like to see one of the friendly ones but I'll stay out of the mountains."

Off she goes.

It's a nice day for flying! There are lots of beautiful arches she can fly through if she'd like, and a few friendly basically-pterodactyls are milling around higher up (they'll let her get close if she'd like) - they are much bigger than she was expecting.

Both of those are excitingly novel experiences to stretch her wings with.

Meanwhile, Lucien continues to meet with the locals and then huddles in private with the away team who give him a mixed report. The impressively fast population growth projections the Palelle were bragging about were apparently accurate, and far higher than the Amaliens prior projections for the planet. Something with the micronutrients of their native crops were off and some variants provided by Amaliens had dramatically improved outcomes for younger Palelle in the six years since the Amaliens landed. 

The bad news was that this had outpaced the planets technological development in other respects and had apparently lead to a significantly increased rate of celebrations with their accompanying sacrifices, which at this point the away team was pretty confident was encouraged by social pressure that made the consent less than obviously enthusiastic in at least some cases.

Lucien glances at some figures before informing the away team that this is upsetting but probably still not worth focusing on unless the numbers keep rising past this threshold - probably they are based on relative progress, not absolute, so they should level off. 

More importantly they need a better industrial base, ideally paired with widespread contraception. This planet isn't in immediate danger from the Borg but there's a tail risk of a Borg incursion breaching the front lines, or the Borg finding another wormhole, and if that happened in thirty years with this rate of population growth and inability to defend themselves or run it would be quite bad. Uh, thinking about that um.

Probably they should also push for more urbanization - the current setup makes it really hard to torch the major population centers in the event of there not being enough time for evacuations. Can't risk this many people getting assimilated. 

The away team operatives are used to amaliens and so are not surprised when a few tears slide down Lucien's face as he talks. He doesn't get choked up or pause - he's used to this sort of conversation by now.

Hopefully Isabella is having a good break though. She seemed in need of one.

It's so nice to be up in the air, flying with weird space bat-things.

She comes back when she is expected and alights by the rest of the contingent.

"I hope you enjoyed your flight?"

"Yes! Those batlizards are tremendous."

Lucien smiles wanly.

"I'm glad to hear it! One of the away team is determined to figure out how to ride one of them - he swears it should be possible with the right harness."

"They do look big enough. I could carry him if he'd like, as an interim measure."

"Probably best to save it for another trip - the plan is to leave within the hour."

"Next time."

"Mm. You'd probably have to go pretty far out of your way to return in a reasonable amount of time. We only stopped here because it's on the way and I figured the crew could use a break. It's been three years since anyone else stopped here I think."

"Are they doing well? I don't know what it was like before."

"A lot more food - some of which turned out to be filling nutritionally niches that weren't being filled before so the populations growing quite fast."

What's the correct level of 'she just got a break' and 'the Borg are terrible and that is just how reality is' to say here....

"A lot of what I was talking to the away team about was that this planet's population is growing too fast relative to their ability to defend against or escape assimilation by the Borg."

"I uh, don't want to get in the way of your having a nice break here but also don't want to hide things."

"How long have you been at this? I'd expect a population response to there suddenly being - more nutritious food - to take some time."

"It's been 7 years since we landed here - turns out there were some fairly extreme nutritional issues in early childhood that the recent crops have been addressing - some underlying condition that increases mortality and sterility. Most of the time parents would have a cluster of 3 to 5 kids every couple of years and only one or two would go on to have kids of their own - now most of them will. The population growth is largely a forecast of the future, it's only just started to show up in the actual figures."

"Huh. Why were they so poorly nourished?"

"Agriculture can often result in some amount of it early on, and my guess is that in this case it was helpful in preventing their population from outpacing their food supply - some places have a cycle of famines for a while as a result."

"Their level of malnutrition is still unusually high - I'm not sure why."

"Are they from here originally?"

Some datapad clicks later - "Yeah, seems like it. Most people are native to their planets when they are at this level of tech."

"I guess that stands to reason. Odd that the food would be bad for them then."