Titan 5 - Over a Torrent Sea (6 page)

“Naturally,” Kekil said. “These floating colonies would be some of the few sources of shelter in this ocean, the few places where life could concentrate and have solid support.”

Torvig looked up, his ears flicking forward the way they did when he had an epiphany. “That could be why the polyps have so much calcium and silicon. As numerous other organisms live and die on them, minerals and other nutrients would tend to accumulate on them in greater concentration than anywhere else.”

“Good call,” Pazlar said. His ears perked up happily, and she resisted the urge to give him an approving pat on the head. “I wonder how it gets its buoyancy. Not to mention how they get into this form, how they start out, their whole life cycle.”

“Take a sample,” Vale suggested. “A living polyp for study.”

“Aye, Commander.” She reached for the tractor beam controls. “But considering that they live in this collective form, maybe I’d better take five or six of them.”

“Agreed.”

Pazlar focused the beams and delicately worked a small cluster of the polyps free of the mass. Sensing the disturbance, the polyps in and around the cluster yanked their tendrils back inside. But she ended up dislodging a
chunk a good three times larger than she expected. As soon as she pulled it free, a stream of large bubbles erupted out and upward. “Whoa,” she cried, staring as the outrush of air continued unabated.

Vale gently tapped her shoulder. “Umm…Melora…” She pointed upward. Pazlar raised her eyes—and saw that the islet was starting to list to one side.

“Uh-oh.”

“Ensign?”

But Lavena was already spinning the craft around. Pazlar barely managed to retain her tractor grip on the sample as the aquashuttle shot away from beneath the sinking islet. Once they had resurfaced, Lavena turned the shuttle so they could watch. Soon the bubbles stopped rising and the islet began to stabilize—but about half its previous surface was now below the waves. Much of its soil was already washing away, staining the surrounding water.

Pazlar gave Vale a sheepish look. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Don’t feel bad. It was almost a galactic first.”

“How do you mean?”

“A wrecked island setting down on a ship.”

“
Now
can I go in?” Aili Lavena asked, trying with little success not to sound like an impatient child. Her scans had shown the water chemistry to be safe, and at Pazlar’s suggestion, Vale had allowed her to pilot the aquashuttle to a fairly empty region of the ocean, one which the interplay of currents had left essentially devoid of dissolved iron, without which there was little phytoplankton and thus hardly any of
the higher life forms that would be sustained by it—or by each other. It was as safe a spot for a first swim as any.

Vale threw her a look, amused at her tone. “You remembered to wait an hour after eating, right?”

“That’s a myth, ma’am. Especially for a Selkie.”

Finally, Vale grinned, letting her off the hook—so to speak. “Okay, Aili. But don’t swim too far from the shuttle.”

“Thank you, ma’am!” Aili was already out the door, standing on the short platform that extended from its base (which Keru had dubbed “the plank,” for some reason). She was eager to get out of her hydration suit, but had to wait until it had drawn its water supply back inside its storage capillaries, for she would need that water once she donned the suit again. Once that was done, she hastened to shed it. She could survive in the open air for a few minutes at a time, as long as enough moisture remained in her gill crests. She couldn’t take in a breath of it the way she could have back in her amphibious days, since her lung had now closed off and become a flotation bladder, but she opened her mouth to taste the breeze. Its flavor was strange and alien in many ways, yet there was the familiar salty tang, the fresh, wet flavor of ocean air.
Oh, how I’ve missed that.

Once out of the suit, she transferred her combadge to the front of the brief, backless undergarment she wore before tossing the suit into the shuttle. Her preference right now would be to strip fully nude, but Starfleet had its standards of decorum. This would have to do for now.

A sense of ceremony made her pause briefly, but eagerness overcame her. She dove into the water as though it pulled her into itself. For several moments, Aili remained
completely immersed, her nictitating membranes shut, reveling in the too-long-missed sensation of diving in the open ocean. The confines of the glorified fishtank she called her quarters were nothing compared to this. Here, currents wafted across her smooth blue-green flesh like cooling breezes, carrying exotic, information-filled flavors to her tongue and scents to the receptors in her gill crests. Distant sounds shivered through the water, resonating through her body—the low ostinato of wind playing percussion on the waves, the chirp and chatter of distant schools of fish, a hint of distant moans and creaks that could be larger life forms. Land-dwellers had the bizarre notion that the sea was silent; in reality, being out of the ocean was like being deaf for her. Out there, sound was a thing of the ears, a tenuous disturbance in the air; down here, it was a tangible thing that permeated one’s whole being. She was made mostly of seawater, closely matching its density and chemistry, and sound waves passed through her as though she were part of the sea, her flesh resounding in tune with the rest of this great instrument.

She opened her eyes now for the complete experience, for up here near the surface, the sea was alive with light as well. She bathed in the rain of gentle yellow-orange sunlight as it danced across her limbs, adding its own intricate marbling to the mottled blues and greens of her flesh. She observed the shifting patterns of the light as it illuminated the water, her practiced eye discerning information about the wind, currents, and purity of the sea around her. As expected, this stretch of ocean was largely barren of algae or plankton, giving her a clear view for hundreds of meters around and below her.

But what was this? Near the limits of visibility, she saw a glint of movement. She tapped her combadge and spoke softly, needing no breath, for muscles vibrated her larynx. “Lavena to
Gillespie
. I think I see something swimming nearby. At your five o’clock low,” she added, checking the position of the aquashuttle above her. “I’ll try to get closer.”

“Acknowledged. But be careful.”

“Don’t worry, it looks small.”

She began swimming slowly at an oblique angle toward it. As she drew closer, she began to discern its appearance. It was another of the tentacled fishlike creatures, but its head seemed to consist mostly of an enormous pair of forward-facing eyes, its tiny mouth tentacles barely visible below them. Eyes that seemed to be watching her. Soon she had no doubt: the grandocular piscoid was gazing directly at her as she approached, yet not fleeing. Was it simply unsure what to make of a form as alien as hers?

Taking a chance, she kept coming closer, but slowly, doing her best to appear unaggressive. She halted her approach a few meters away from it, letting it get a good look at her. It swam around her, scooting sideways as it kept its gaze locked upon her, surveying her from all sides.

Belatedly, Aili remembered her wrist-mounted tricorder, and deciding that turnabout was fair play, she switched it on. But no sooner did she begin the scan than the piscoid abruptly darted away, heading for deeper waters. Determined to get the scan data she should have collected already, she impulsively swam in pursuit.

Her combadge soon crackled.
“Ensign, you’re ge…ng too f…ay. Los…gnal…”

“I’ll be fine,” she called back. Vale could be such a worrywart sometimes. She was enjoying the chase, enjoying the freedom of this vast ocean, and there was certainly nothing dangerous about the little bugeye fish she was pursuing, nor was there likely to be much of anything else inhabiting this barren stretch of ocean. The bugeye must have wandered off from its school and lost its way. It was probably half-starved.

Though it did seem to have plenty of energy for swimming, she realized after a while. They were getting deeper now, not too deep for her body to adjust quickly, but enough for the light to begin to fade, along with the susurrus of the wind upon the ocean’s roof. She began to notice a high-pitched piping coming from the bugeye piscoid, almost beyond her auditory range, and probably beyond that of most humanoids.
A distress call?
she wondered. She was no expert, but that suggested some sort of social structure. But what could it be calling to?

But there were other sounds down here, Aili realized—not echoing from afar, but nearby, in the direction the piscoid was swimming. Whistles and creaks and low, guttural groans, coming from multiple sources. She slowed her descent and checked her tricorder. Its sensors had limited ability to penetrate the water, but it was able to register a number of large shapes, maybe four meters long. What were they doing here? There was nothing to eat, save the lone bugeye.

And a lone Selkie.

She decided to change strategy, halting her pursuit and instead trying to boost her tricorder gain. The picture on its tiny screen couldn’t give her nearly as much informa
tion down here as her full suite of senses could, but a later analysis of the data could be informative. From what she could tell, the creatures had fairly streamlined, torpedo-shaped bodies, but with several tentacles extending from the front, or what seemed to be the front. Their calls were growing closer now, and seemed to intensify in response to the bugeye’s keening—perhaps a hue and cry after prey, but it almost seemed like…

A new reading caught her eye. In her preoccupation with the large creatures ahead, she had been slow to notice the faint life reading registering behind her. That was puzzling, but such a weak reading was probably distant enough not to require her immediate attention, at least until she’d gotten a full scan of the creatures ahead.

Or so she thought until a tendril of fire tore across her thigh and she began to pass out….

“Aili? Wake up.”

She found herself deaf again, back in the confines of a tiny sheath of water with only the dead dryness of air around it. Weight pressed her against a hard surface. She was back in her hydration suit, back in the aquashuttle. Her vision focused on the burly figure above her—Ranul Keru, who was packing up a medkit. As chief of security, he was a trained medic.

“What happened?”

“Something stung you,” Vale told her. “When you suddenly swam off, we submerged and came after you. We saw you get attacked by some kind of jellyfish.”

“Jellyfish?”

“More or less,” Kekil said. “A large spherical scyphomedusan form with tendrils extending in all directions.” Now that the details of her last moments of consciousness were coming back, Aili realized that the weak life signs behind her had been due to the tenuousness of the creature, not its distance. The tricorders would have to be recalibrated.

“Venomous?” Aili asked.

“Not to worry,” Ranul Keru said. “Thanks to differences in biochemistry, the venom wasn’t as harmful to you as it probably is to the native life forms. And it only stung you a few times.”

“You stopped it?”

“We didn’t have to,” he replied, looking a bit nonplussed.

At her puzzled look, Vale elaborated. “We were trying to get to you, readying the tractor beams to pull it away, when a large, very fast fish of some sort dashed in straight as an arrow and gobbled the jellyfish thing right up.”

“And didn’t get stung?”

“There are aquatic species that are immune to jellyfish stings,” Kekil said. “Even some which take the stinging barbs and integrate them into their own anatomy as a defense. Obviously this fish was a natural predator of the medusans. It’s just lucky for us it came in at just that moment.”

Aili noticed Vale’s uncertain expression. “Commander?”

“Call me a cynic, but I’m not one to believe in luck. It’s an anomaly, like the presence of so many life forms around here where there’s nothing to feed on, nothing to draw them.”

“Except us,” Lavena said. “The fish with the large eyes certainly seemed curious.”

“Maybe,” Vale replied. “Anyway, Ensign, you should rest. Not enough you had to be the first person to go swimming in Droplet’s oceans, you had to be the first one to get attacked by a native critter too. Try to stop hogging all the excitement in the future, okay?”

U.S.S. TITAN, STARDATE 58513.8

“S
o how’s the fishing?” Chief Bralik asked as she settled down at the Blue Table with a drink and a bowl of tube grubs. Naturally the science department’s weekly informal gathering was filled with chatter about the discoveries on Droplet over the past few days, but Bralik had been kept busy surveying the rest of the system. The Blue Table gatherings were a great chance to take a break from one’s own, often insular work and connect with other points of view on the universe. Bralik was thus a regular member of the sessions, always keeping her ears open for new knowledge that could profit her and her fellow Ferengi.

“They aren’t fish,” Lieutenant Eviku told her. “There are no true vertebrates on this world.”

“Really?” Bralik leaned forward curiously. The Arkenite exobiologist’s bald, tapering skull and large, backswept pinnae appealed to her sense of aesthetics, so she enjoyed flirting with him, though he remained completely unaware
of it. She wasn’t sure whether it was because Arkenite and Ferengi sexual cues were mutually unintelligible or if it was simply that Eviku was charmingly naive. But she chose not to press the issue. Like many in the crew, he had borne a deep sadness since the Borg invasion. He spoke of it to no one, but no doubt he had lost loved ones and would need time to heal.

Now, though, he had science to talk about, so that kept him engaged. “There isn’t enough calcium in the ecosystem to allow for full bony skeletons,” Eviku explained to her in his slow, thoughtful voice. “The highest life forms, including the piscoids, are chordates with cartilaginous pseudovertebrae. The majority of forms are invertebrates of various types, though. Even many of the chordates have tentacles or chitinous exoskeletons of the sort generally seen in invertebrate species.”