Nathan Mitra was on his last leg in his career. He had spent five scientific years of researching, experimenting, and traveling, though he had not turned up, in the lovely governing words of the colony, “any useful products for the fleet”. It was complete and utter nonsense to Nathan. He had brought forth countless new reports of bacterial life forms on other planets, and even some leads on other possible, more intelligent lifeforms—and yet the committee had denied every request to further investigate. In other words, the fleet was only interested in finding information on planet resources. That was all the fleet was ever interested in, unless Nathan's life form studies could cure every disease in outer space.
There was one last planet he was assigned to see if it obtained any useful substances, it was boring, but Nathan had to do it or else the government took away the funding to everything...and that included his ship, his supplies, and lab. Not to mention his job, of course.
Nathan arrived at the planet, which had a name that just consisted of numbers, with the proper gear and equipment for testing in his backpack. It was mostly surrounded by water so Nathan landed in what looked like a mountain, which the radar signaled was a cave. Nathan had been walking for about an hour, taking some samples along the way, when he finally noticed the sound of running water. Though he really shouldn't be doing it, he wanted to take a sample of the water in this planet and check for any bacterial life, though the entire cave was fairly dark. He held a flashlight up to his bag in order to make sure he could see his equipment and make sure he didn't fall into the water. Nathan settled by a small stream and prepared to take some samples, completely unaware of any other surroundings besides the water.
