Fragment

SEPTEMBER 3
2:30 P.M.

About 1,400 miles south-southeast of Pitcairn Island, the two-mile-wide speck of rock was too inconsequential to be marked on most globes, maps, and charts. That speck was now surrounded by the U.S.S. Enterprise, the U.S.S. Gettysburg, the U.S.S. Philippine Sea, two destroyers, three guided-missile destroyers, a guided-missile frigate, one logistics ship, two Sea Wolf anti-sub attack subs, two submarine tenders, and three replenishment vessels. The Enterprise Joint Task Group had been en route to the Sea of Japan when the President gave orders to blockade the tiny island. In the middle of the biggest expanse of nowhere on Earth, a floating city of over 13,000 men and women had suddenly materialized three days after the final broadcast of SeaLife.

Eight days had passed since the U.S. Navy had quarantined the area and a stream of helicopters started bringing back strange and secretive rumors from the island to the surrounding ships. All hands were forbidden any communication with the outside world, under order of a total media blackout, but the ships buzzed with rumors from those who had seen the original SeaLife broadcast.

The crew of the Enterprise now watched as the last section of StatLab, a modular lab developed by NASA for dropping into disease hot zones, was hoisted off the deck by an MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter.

The thundering Sea Dragon’s heavy rotors thwapped as it tilted at the island, dangling the white octagonal tube on a tether as it rose toward its seven-hundred-foot cliff.

To the men and women on the great carrier deck, the section of the mobile lab looked like a rocket stage or a space station module. They had no idea why the lab had been airlifted by NASA to three high-speed hydrofoil transports that traveled from San Diego to get here, or where it was now headed on the island, or why. All they knew was that a potential biohazard had been discovered there.

None of the thousands of men and women of the carrier group could imagine what must be on the other side of the cliffs to justify all of this, and some of them preferred not to know.

Nell removed her Mets cap and absently smoothed back her hair as she leaned forward to look with fierce intensity through the observation bubble.

A broken ring of thick jungle wreathed the bottom of Henders Island’s deep, bowl-shaped interior. This section of the experimental lab was designated Section One and had been placed on a scorched patch of earth near the jungle’s edge.

A phalanx of saguaro cactus-like tree trunks rose thirty to forty feet at the edge of the jungle. Nell could see their wide green fronds bristling overhead through the northern hemisphere of the window.

She suspected these “trees” were no more plants than the first lavender spears she had touched on the beach thirteen days ago. Warily, she eyed their movements in the wind. Zero had warned her that in the crevasse he had seen trees moving. Actually, he’d sworn they were attacking.

When Nell learned NASA was to lead the investigation of the island and that Wayne Cato, her old professor from Caltech, was in charge of the ground team, she had begged him to let her participate. Without hesitation, Dr. Cato had put her in charge of the on-site observation team aboard the mobile lab.

Hydraulic risers had leveled and aligned two new sections of the lab on the slope behind Section One. Extendable tubes of virus-impervious plastic connected the subway car-sized sections like train vestibules.

Florescent lights lined the quarter-inch-thick steel ceiling. Two-inch-thick polycarbonate windows spanned the upper side of the octagonal hull and reached halfway down its perpendicular sides. To prevent the outside atmosphere from leaking into the lab in the event of a breach, “positive” air pressure, slightly higher than the pressure outside, was maintained inside the lab.

The scientists gathered now before the large viewing bubble at the end of Section One. They were preparing to set out the first specimen trap at the edge of the jungle.

They all knew that Nell had been a member of the first landing party. All of them had seen the amazing final episode of SeaLife by now, if only on YouTube. They looked at her with some awe, and not a little skepticism. She had shown them her sketches of what she called a “spiger”-the creature that she claimed had chased her on the beach. But what she had seen on the island had not been photographed, which caused doubt. The scientists knew that eleven human beings were said to have been lost by something that had happened on this island, however, and they could see the evidence of that loss in this young woman’s obsessive focus.

But apart from the extraordinary flora, they had yet to encounter anything remarkable in their two days setting up the lab. They certainly had not encountered anything dangerous. The few small creatures they had spotted emerging from Henders’s jungle had moved too swiftly to be seen clearly or filmed with the limited equipment the half-dozen scientists and dozen technicians had been able to set up at the time.

Six scientists and three lab technicians now watched the lab’s robotic arm lower the first specimen trap-a cylindrical chamber of clear acrylic about the size and shape of a hatbox.

“Dinner is served,” Otto announced as he operated the arm and maneuvered the trap closer to the jungle’s edge.

Otto Inman was a moon-faced, ponytailed NASA exobiologist the Navy had flown in from Kennedy. A turbo-nerd since elementary school, he’d found himself in geek heaven after scoring a job on a NASA research team fresh out of grad school. Although he had also been offered a job at Disney Imagineering in Orlando, it was not even a decision for him. After three years at NASA, Otto still could not imagine being blase about going to work in the morning.

This, however, was the first time any urgency had been attached to the exobiologist’s job. This would be the first field test for many of the toys he’d had a hand in designing, including the lab’s Specimen Retrieval and Remote Operated Vehicle Deployment systems, and Otto was thrilled to see his theoretical systems given a trial by fire.

He maneuvered the robotic arm with a motion-capture glove, skillfully positioning the specimen trap on the scorched earth at the forest’s edge. The trap was baited with one hot dog, courtesy of the U.S. Navy.

“A hot dog?” asked Andy Beasley.

“Hey, we had to improvise, all right?” Otto replied. “Besides, all life forms love hot dogs.”

Nell had made sure to include Andy in the on-site crew. The marine biologist could not have been more delighted, but she worried that he didn’t take the danger seriously enough. When she’d told the NASA staff and Andy about the lunging creature on the beach, they’d mostly responded with polite silence and skeptical looks, which only increased her determination to discover what was really happening on Henders Island.

Otto raised the door on the side of the trap. He disengaged the motion-capture to lock the arm in place.

They waited.

Nell barely breathed.

After three seconds, a disk-ant the size of a half-dollar rolled out between two trees. It proceeded slowly on a straight line directly toward the trap. About eighteen inches from the open door, it stopped.

“There’s one of your critters, Nell,” Otto whispered. “You were right!”

Suddenly, a dozen disk-ants rolled out of the forest behind the scout. As they rolled they tilted in different directions and launched themselves like Frisbees at the hot dog inside the trap.

“Jesus,” Otto breathed.

“Close it!” Nell ordered.

When Otto hesitated for a moment, two reddish-brown animals the size of squirrels rocketed from the jungle into the box. They were followed by two flying bugs that zipped through the air and wriggled under the door before it closed and sealed.

“Great work, Otto.” Nell patted his back.

“Looks like you bagged a couple island rats, too. Look!” Andy Beasley pointed out the window.

The cylindrical trap was thrashing on the end of the robotic arm.

“Yikes.” Otto stopped retracting the arm as the trap shook violently. Its transparent walls were spattered and smeared with swirling blue gore.

“Oh dear,” Andy said.

“Blue Slurpee. My favorite,” Otto said.

When the trap finally stopped shaking it looked like a blueberry smoothie had been frapped inside.

“OK, retrieve that and let’s dissect whatever’s left,” Nell told them. “Then we’ll set another trap. You better shut the door a little sooner next time, Otto.”

“Yeah, guess so.” The biologist nodded.

He maneuvered the trap into an airlock, where conveyor belts transported it through a second hatch into the specimen dock, which they had informally dubbed the “trough,” an observation chamber that spanned the length of Section One.

This section of StatLab had been designed as an experimental Mars specimen collection station, but it doubled as a mobile medical lab that could be dropped into disease hot zones. The lab was part of a pilot program that focused NASA’s unique expertise on Earth-bound applications. Additional funding earmarked for “Dual-Planet Technologies” had provided NASA with the resources that had made the program possible. But no one thought StatLab would ever be called into action, and NASA technicians now crawled nervously over every inch of the lab to ensure that it met all system requirements by at least a twofold safety margin. Nothing freaked out NASA technicians more than planning for unknown contingencies.

Six high-resolution screens hung over the long “trough.” Under the top surface of the trough, six video cameras no bigger than breath mints slid along silver threads on X and Y axes, each covering a sixth of the long viewing chamber.

The robotic arm deposited the trap on the conveyor belt, and the airtight hatch closed behind it, sealing with a backwards hiss. The conveyer slid the trap to the center of the trough, where the six scientists had gathered.

“Let’s hope this soup is chunky,” murmured Quentin Brancato, another biologist flown in by NASA. He stuck his hands into two butyl rubber gloves that extended on accordioned Kevlar arms into the observation chamber. He opened the door of the trap manually.

“Careful,” Nell warned.

“Don’t worry,” Quentin replied. “These gloves are pretty tough, Nell.”

Several other scientists stood at the controls of a number of smaller traps. Each trap contained a different bait: a piece of hot dog, a spoonful of vegetable succotash, a potted Venus flytrap, a cup of sugar, a pile of salt, a bowl of freshwater, all supplied by the galley of the Enterprise. Except for the Venus flytrap, which was a pet Quentin had smuggled onto the flight over. As punishment for breaking the rules, he’d had to sacrifice “Audrey” to science.

Inspired by the idea, Nell had requested that dozens of plant species be shipped in. These included flats of crabgrass, potted pines, wheat, and cactus. All would be exposed to the island around the lab for observation.

Other scientists, spread out along the trough, controlled the cameras, aiming them in the direction of the specimen retrieval trap.

Quentin released the seal mechanism at the top of the cylinder. As he lifted the lid, two flying creatures that looked like whirligigs escaped the hatch.

The pair rose like helicopters, hovering without spinning inside the trough. Their five wings shook off a blue mist. Their abdomens curled beneath them like scorpion tails as they dove straight for the hot-dog-baited trap.

Their heads kept a lookout with a ring of eyes as their legs grabbed the meat and stuffed it into an abdominal maw. Their bodies immediately thickened.

After a stunned moment, the scientist controlling the hot-dog trap remembered to seal the two creatures inside.

“Got ’em!”

“Good work!” Nell breathed.

Quentin inverted the specimen retrieval capsule and dumped the contents onto the illuminated white floor of the trough. Several distinguishable bodies tumbled out in the blue slurry.

He drew a nozzle on a spring-loaded hose from the side of the trough and rinsed the mangled specimens with a jet of water. The blue blood and water sluiced into drains spaced two feet apart in the trough.

Three large disk-ants crawled out of the gore, leaving a trail of blue}}}}}}} behind them as they rolled. Then they flopped on their sides and crawled like pill-bugs, their upper arms flicking off droplets of blood, which spattered around them like ink from a fountain pen. They flipped over and did the same thing on the other side before tipping onto their edges and getting a rolling start, hurling themselves like discuses into the air, at the faces of the mesmerized scientists.

Some caromed off the sides of the trough, their legs retracting into white, diamond-hard tips that visibly gouged and nicked the acrylic. As they banged against the chamber walls they threw off dozens of smaller disk-ants. These rolled down the walls, trailing threads of light blue liquid.

The scientists controlling the cameras zoomed in to watch these juvenile ants wheel toward the baited traps. The rolling bugs hurled themselves onto the sugar and vegetables and even the Venus flytrap. This they devoured from the inside out as its traps triggered one after another.

“Bye, Audrey,” Quentin muttered mournfully and Nell patted his shoulder, staring openmouthed beside him.

One large disk-ant rolled to the trap baited with a pile of salt. It turned on its side to feed, but then, before the trap could be sprung, it reared back abruptly on its edge and rolled away, and others in its vicinity scattered.

“Trap the juveniles by themselves, if you can,” Nell instructed. “And we need to get tissue samples from the other specimens, Otto, so we can do bacterial cultures and HPLC and Mass Spec GC profiles. We need to dissect these things to see if they have any venom sacs we should know about.”

Several scientists sprang their traps at her urging and isolated a few dozen specimens. Reaching their hands into the extendable gloves, they placed the sprung traps into airlocks spaced inside the trough. In the close-up view from the cameras above, they could see the tiny creatures leaping onto their gloves.

“They seem to attack anything that moves,” Nell observed.

“Yeah, no matter how big it is,” Andy said.

“Don’t worry, there’s no way they can get through butyl rubber,” Quentin said.

“Ever seen The Andromeda Strain?”

“Or Alien?” Andy said.

“Come on, guys.”

The scientists placed their traps in the airlocks, where the outside of the traps were sterilized with a chlorine dioxide bath. They opened the hatches and transferred the traps to individual observation chambers, where the live specimens inside could be released.

The other specimens from the original trap seemed dead, victims of a frenzied carnage. The original hot dog was nowhere to be found.

The two largest animals they had captured were about the size of tailless muskrats or squirrels. Both had eight legs. Though its side was ravaged by its rival, one specimen was clearly more complete. It had bitten off its rival’s head and seemed to have died choking on it.

“What… is that?” stuttered Quentin.

“Jesus, I’ve never seen anything like that,” one scientist whispered.

“God,” Andy giggled.

“OK, let’s settle down.” Otto was clearly rattled himself. “I’ll dissect. Quentin, you operate the camera.”

“Gladly.” Quentin quickly relinquished the glove box to Otto.

Otto reached in and cleared away the other animal parts, which included a few half-bitten disk-ants; a half-eaten two-legged thing that looked like a grasshopper fused with a toad; a headless island “rat,” as Andy had called it; and, surprisingly, a few chunks of a mouse-sized species.

Each partial specimen was passed down the trough to be rinsed and prepared for preservation. The strangeness of the body parts sent a chill down the assembly line of scientists.

“What are we looking at here?” one said.

“I don’t fucking believe this,” another muttered, uneasily.

“Let’s take this one step at a time,” Otto told them. “All right, people, we’re about to conduct the first dissection of a Henders specimen.”

Otto spread the largest intact animal out on its belly. He washed the blue gore from its velvetlike fur, which turned out to be coffee-ground brown with black and white stripes on its haunches. Strips of iridescent fur radiated over its softball-sized head. The head of the second rat made a bulge in its throat the size of a baseball.

As the last blue liquid was rinsed off, everyone gasped at the impossible specimen.

“OK, let’s see what we’re dealing with here.” Otto’s voice cracked. His hands were shaking.

“Steady now,” Nell said.

Quentin moved the video camera across the top of the chamber until it was directly over the subject, and then zoomed in, providing an enlarged view on the plasma screens above the trough.

Otto placed his gloved left hand over the specimen’s head and blocked throat.

Nell perched on one of the high stools next to Otto and opened her sketchpad. “Just take it easy now,” she said calmly. She started to sketch a diagram. “The fur coloration on its haunches looks like an okapi.”

“Yeah.” Andy nodded, frowning at the captured specimen. “People thought okapis were a hoax when they were first discovered. They thought they were giraffes, zebras, and buffalo stitched together…”

“They’d never believe this freaking thing.” Quentin gawped at the red-furred chimera.

“The stripes must confuse predators,” Nell theorized.

“Come on, this thing is a predator,” Otto said.

“I think it’s probably both-predator and prey,” she said. “The front looks fierce and the back says ‘I better hide my ass with camouflage while I run the hell out of here.’”

“Hunters that are hunted?”

“That hunt each other,” said Andy.

“Check out that tail.”

“Are we sure it’s dead?”

“Let’s find out,” Otto said. “Beginning narration of dissection at…” He consulted his watch. “… three twenty-two p.m. This is the first dissection of a Henders specimen. It is a fur-bearing, eight-legged animal, about thirty-five centimeters long, with okapi-like zebra stripes on its haunches, reddish-brown fur of the texture of really plush velvet or velour on its back, and bright stripes of fur around its face that change color at different angles.”

He twisted its round head. They could see iridescent stripes radiating around its toothy mouth.

“Good God,” Andy said. “It has crab claws on its face!”

“The specimen appears to have four front legs that may function more like arms,” Otto continued. “The first pair is connected to its lower jaw and is furless. These seem to be chelate appendages with slender pincers that are white in color…very strange. They emerge from a wide lower jaw of an almost frog-or birdlike hinged mouth with long teeth that are packed close together and seem to be rather sharp. The teeth are extremely hard and dark gray. The mouth has dark blue lips drawn back that can apparently close over the teeth.”

“What is that, a skullcap?” Nell’s pencil flew as she sketched the outlines of the animal. “On top of its head?”

“The subject appears to have a light brown, furless cranial cap of some sort,” Otto said.

“Jesus,” Quentin said. “Either I’m dreaming or we are making history here, folks.”

“You aren’t dreaming,” Nell told him.

The scientists clapped and whooped, finally releasing their anxiety and exhilaration.

Nell quickly penciled in the snaggle-toothed mouth in the creature’s round head, her face frozen with grim concentration.

Henders Rat

Rodentocaris hendersi (after Echevarria et al, Proceedings of the Woods Hole Scientific Meetings, vol. 92: 87-93)

This animal looked like a miniature version of the deadly lunging animals she had seen on the beach, except that its jaws were horizontal instead of vertical like the ones that came from the crevasse.

“It looks like a deep-sea angler,” Andy said.

“Like a cat crossed with a spider.” Nell carved its outline deep into the sheet of paper with her pencil.

“Right, like the spigers you mentioned,” Quentin said.

“Right.” Nell nodded.

“The specimen has a pair of large green-red-and-blue eyes with three optical hemispheres,” Otto narrated, and he tested the flexibility of the creature’s eyes with a poking index finger. “The eyes are mounted on short stalks that pivot or swivel inside a socket in its head. They also toggle in a socket at the end of the stalks, apparently, having a very ingenious mechanism.”

“I sure hope that thing’s dead,” Andy said.

Otto ignored him and wiggled the forelegs behind the head to see how they bent. “The large legs behind the head are very muscular and have spines at the end. They are fur-bearing, but the heavy spikelike spines are hairless, hard black exoskeleton or horn, and they seem to have a very sharp edge.”

“They look like praying mantis arms.”

“Yeah, that’s how they fold,” Otto agreed. “They may be able to act as shears or vises, too.”

“Or spears,” Nell suggested, shivering as she thought of what the others must have faced inside the crevasse. “The spigers speared the sand in front of them to back away from the water.”

Otto continued. “These mantislike subchelate arms are articulated to a bony ring under the skin, from which the neck musculature also extends. The next pair of limbs appears to be true legs. They resemble a quadruped’s forelegs…with one extra joint… and they seem to be attached to a broad central ring of bone that can be felt under the dermis and which forms a medial hump on the dorsal surface of the animal.”

“Those are eyes!” Nell exclaimed.

“Huh? Where?” Andy said.

“See, on top of that hump on its back, Otto?”

“Oh,” Andy said.

“There are eyes on the medial hump,” Otto confirmed, rinsing off more blue blood. “Which are similar to the eyes on the head.”

“Do you think it has a second set of optic lobes in its back?” Nell asked. “I mean, look, they’re image-forming eyes, not just light-intensity receptors.”

“Either there’s a brain under there or they have ridiculously long optic nerves,” Andy continued.

Otto continued his description. “There are three eyes on the central hump, reminiscent of the eyes on a jumping spider. One eye looks directly behind and one to each side. They each toggle inside a socket. I think you’re right, Nell. There could be some kind of ganglion structure under this hump. There’s a cranial cap on top of it similar to the one on the head of the animal.” As Andy winced, Otto tapped the brown chitinous cap on the hump between the eyes, testing to see if there was any reflex action left in the animal. There wasn’t.

Otto picked up a pair of dissection scissors and cut carefully along the mid-line of the cranial cap. He pulled each half apart with forceps. “Yep, it’s got a second brain.” He looked up at Nell. “This isn’t just some enlarged ganglion.”

“It’s got eyes in the back of its head,” Quentin said.

“And a head in the back of its eyes,” added Andy.

“See that pair of nerve cords running forward to the head?” Nell pointed at the close-up on the drop-down screen.

“Yeah, and here’s another pair that run toward the posterior of the animal. See there?” Quentin pointed. Two white twines of fine string stretched from the brain to the posterior of the animal like jumper cables.

“It may control the locomotion of its hind legs remotely with the second brain,” Nell theorized.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Otto disagreed. “Not fucking possible!”

“Maybe it has specialized ganglia for speeding up its attack or evasive reflexes, or to help with digestion like some arthropods do,” Andy offered.

“Well, we won’t be able to determine that from a dissection.” Otto frowned. “We would have to do a detailed neurological study of live specimens. But we’ll see if we can follow the nerves later. Moving toward the posterior of the animal we see very powerful, kangaroo-like hind legs, with an extra joint where the tibia would be. These limbs are connected to a wide subcutaneous pelvic girdle that is ring-or tube-shaped like the other rings. The tail-”

“I don’t think that’s a tail,” Quentin said.

“It’s a leg,” Nell said.

Otto scowled.

“Pull it out from under the body,” Nell suggested.

“OK. The tail has a wide base. It is very stiff. It is long and broad, folding more than halfway under the animal to the chest area between the forelegs. The dorsal surface of the tail, which is the bottom when under the animal, is covered with ridged plates and spines in a geometric pattern.”

“Traction pads.” Nell indicated the bottom of the “tail.” “And cleats-like the bottom of a running shoe!”

“Whoa,” Quentin exclaimed. “It must rip that tail backwards under it to get air!”

“The taillike appendage appears to be a sort of ninth leg.” Otto shook his head in amazement. “This leg might be used to propel the animal higher or faster during leaps.”

“It kind of seems like an arthropod that turned into a mammal. Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “I was just thinking that. Spiders are furry crabs, or at least chelicerates.”

“This is no arthropod,” Otto scoffed. “With a mouth and jaws like that? And this is fur, not tarantula hair!”

“It’s bleeding again.” Nell pointed.

“The subject is leaking some light blue fluid that may be blood.”

“They must have hemocyanin. Copper-based blood, like marine arthropods. See? You can see it turning bluer as the liquid hits the air.”

“I’m extracting a blood specimen for analysis.” Otto took a hypodermic needle from a dissection kit affixed to the inside wall of the trough.

“Copper-based blood?” Nell looked at Andy.

“Maybe hemoglobin, too,” he said. “Some iron-based blood pigments are purple.”

“That’s blue,” Quentin said. “Are you color-blind?”

“No, I’m not color-blind!” Andy glared at Quentin.

“Could have fooled me.” Quentin was looking at Andy’s pink, yellow, and blue Hawaiian shirt.

Nell patted Quentin on the shoulder. “Let’s get a look inside this thing.”

“I’m now sealing the blood sample,” Otto narrated.

“Cut a little tissue sample, too, Otto,” Quentin told him. “That’ll make it easier to get a nucleic acid sample in case the blood doesn’t have any circulating cells.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Otto expelled the hypo full of blue liquid into a tube and capped it. Then he placed the sample into the specimen cradle, along with a small slice of tissue that he placed in a quarter-sized petri dish. After covering the petri dish, he pushed the cradle into the airlock. “OK, Quentin, let’s get a genetic analysis on this thing.”

Quentin sprayed the outside of the containers with isopropyl alcohol and then flooded the mini-airlock with yellow-green chlorine dioxide gas. When the gas was vacuumed out he retrieved the specimens through the airlock and handed them to the lab technicians, who immediately prepared blood agar cultures. One started grinding tissue samples in what resembled a test tube-sized blender. Attached to a high-speed tissue homogenizer, this glass chamber prevented the dispersal of any potentially harmful aerosol from the specimen into the air of the lab.

“We could be getting parasite DNA in the sample,” Nell told them. “Can you tell the difference?”

“Yep, we can distinguish samples,” one of the technicians answered.

Working in biological safety hoods along the other side of Section One, the technicians processed the samples, pipetting the blood and tissue and homogenizing them, adding reagents, mixing, centrifuging, decanting, heating, cooling, and finally pipetting the processed material onto other plates or into specimen tubes.

“My God, this is heaven, Otto,” Nell said, admiring the array of machines on the other side of the lab. “Do you know how many weeks it would have taken me to do this work as an undergrad at Caltech?”

“Yeah, this baby’s got more toys than a lab geek’s wet dream.” Quentin smiled proudly.

“I can still remember when I had to pour my own electrophoretic gels for molecular samples. Now it’s as easy as putting a piece of bread in a toaster.”

“Well, more like making cinnamon toast,” a technician remarked drily.

Nell laughed. “We even had to generate our own taq polymerase.”

“Give me a break,” Andy pleaded.

“I’m with you, Nell,” Quentin said. “You youngsters don’t appreciate how amazing these instruments are. God, Andy, when are you going to learn some molecular biology, dude? You’re more of a dinosaur than I am. PCR didn’t even exist when I was in college, but I saw where things were heading, and learned this stuff before I got left behind.”

“Well, somebody has to keep their feet in the mud,” Andy snapped, defensively.

“Bravo,” Nell said. “We need both right now, Andy-field naturalists and gene jocks. That machine Steve is using-hi, Steve!- is a Bioanalyzer. It will tell us in a few seconds how pure our RNA extractions are and how much RNA we got in each sample. It’s a microscopic electrophoresis unit and gel scanner that examines all the samples on those little chips that look like dominoes.

Each one of those dots is equivalent to a whole electrophoretic gel from the old days, when I was in my teens.” She pointed. “And when an RNA sample is put into the thermocycler right there, it gets reverse transcribed, making our cDNA library, and in the same tube it does the PCR. That amplifies the cDNA into thousands of copies so we can sequence the genes in this auto-sequencer right there, or test it in that micro-array machine over there.”

“You lost me at Parcheesi,” Andy grumbled.

“Dominoes,” Quentin teased.

“It’s actually pretty simple, Andy,” Nell told him. Her eyes glowed with excitement. “All living cells have RNA, which is a message transcribed from the genes in the DNA. So when we run the reactions backwards with an enzyme called reverse transcriptase, we make clones of the DNA-the cDNA-from the RNA! Then, to tell what these critters are related to, we can either run the cDNA on micro-array chips, which is really fast, sequence the DNA, or else isolate, clone, and sequence the actual genes from the cell’s DNA, which takes a little longer. You could do any of this yourself after a couple hours of training, Andy.”

“I learned the theory in my Bio courses,” he said. “I never used all these machines. I didn’t think normal people could work these things.”

“Who said you’re normal?” Quentin taunted.

“Andy,” Nell said, preempting his umbrage, “these guys in the lab coats wouldn’t know an arthropod from an anthropoid unless you handed them a gene sequence. No offense, guys.”

Otto cleared his throat. “Can we get back to the dissection while the gene jocks do their thing?”

“Carve that turkey!” Quentin commanded in agreement.

Nell swiveled on her stool and put her pencil to a fresh page on her sketchpad as Otto turned the animal onto its back and rinsed it again.

“The fur on the ventral surface of the specimen is light tan in color. The specimen appears to have an orifice on the central underbelly, probably for waste excretion, between the central legs.

Between the hind legs there appear to be sexual organs…both a penislike structure and what may be a vaginal opening.”

“Hermaphrodites?” Nell said.

“If so, there goes the arthropod theory,” Otto said. “No arthropods are hermaphroditic-”

“Right,” Quentin interrupted. “But many phyla of animals have at least a few groups that are hermaphrodites. Worms and snails, for example.”

“Barnacles are hermaphrodites,” Andy said. “They’re arthropods.”

“Barnacles are arthropods?” Otto asked.

“Yep.”

“Damn. That’s weird.”

“How do we know how long this ecosystem’s been isolated?” Nell intervened. “It’s at least theoretically possible that it’s had a very long time to evolve. I would say it’s probable, given what we are looking at, guys. I mean, come on.”

“Is this island radioactive?” Andy asked.

“Nope.” Quentin shook his head. “These aren’t just mutants.”

“Something like this must have diverged a long time ago, then,” Otto agreed. “Hell, that’s a given. But not from arthropods.”

“Well, how the hell else do you explain it, then, Otto?” Quentin was scowling again. “You think this thing came from Mars?”

“I don’t know where this thing came from, Quentin!” Otto retorted sharply. “And neither do you right now, OK?”

“Let’s take a look at the internal organs,” Nell interposed gently.

“OK.” Otto looked back up at the screen and lowered his shaking scalpel. “I’m starting the incision from the central orifice and cutting back toward the specimen’s tail.”

“God, I hope it’s dead,” Andy said.

“Stop saying that!” Otto snapped as he sliced through the thin but tough skin and laid open the animal’s belly.

“Hey!” someone shouted.

Everyone jumped and glared at the technician, who was pointing to the bubble window at the end of the lab.

But all they could see was the edge of the forest.

“Sorry! I could swear I just saw something looking at us out there. Big as a man, hanging right on that tree there. Fuck, it must have been a reflection or something. It had lots of arms and it looked like it was spying on us. Sorry. But I swear! It was there. Really.”

“Christ, Todd!” Quentin groaned. “Lay off the caffeine, OK?”

“I said I was sorry! But, Jesus, I saw it plain as day and never took my eyes off it and then it was just gone, man.”

Otto sighed and turned back to his work. “OK. Continuing the incision, there is an outer sheath or integument that is translucent grayish white, tinged blue. Making an incision through this sheath…it seems to be made of micro-hydrostatic tubes that release clear liquid when severed. Under this are distinct muscle bands running to various points throughout the body… they are especially dense at the bases of the appendages. And look at this here…we’ve got branching tracheal tubes extending into all the muscles.” He cleared his throat. “And each of them does connect with the integument.”

“It’s just like the gas exchange system of insects and spiders,” Andy intoned.

Otto nodded. “And, yes… there is a spiracle on the outer body surface for each trachea. The fur must have covered them.”

“Wow, so those trachea deliver the oxygen directly to the muscles from the outside,” Andy said. “If they’re that extensive it may be what allows such big animals to be so active.”

“Look how the spiracles line the sides of the body in neat rows.” Quentin pointed at the close-up on the screen over the specimen chamber. “And those rows extend right up along the legs…”

“Providing oxygen directly to the muscles.” Andy finished his sentence.

Otto cleared his throat again. “And, OK-immediately underneath the layers of muscles and tracheae are two green glands, each with a bladder that is light gray in color-”

“Looks like it has a urethra,” Andy said, thankful to see something familiar.

“Yes. These glands appear to empty at the joint at the base of the legs.” Otto attached retractors to hold open the incision. He suctioned some pooling, syrupy blood.

“Coxal glands, just like king crabs,” Andy sang.

“Spiders have coxal glands, too,” Quentin chimed.

“OK,” Otto said, irritated. “I’m now cutting anteriad from the central orifice. I’m exposing the rest of a wide, thin bone ring or cylinder that has an aperture in the ventral side. The spiked foreleglike appendages are attached to socketlike shoulders in each side of this bony structure.”

“Looks like a segment of a lobster tail.”

“But internal?” Otto scoffed. “An internal exoskeleton? It doesn’t make sense…”

“Does anything here make sense?” Nell said. “We’re segmented creatures, too, Otto, just a few steps removed from arthropods. Do we make sense?”

“It’s a lot of steps.” Otto shook his head stubbornly. “How could it molt?”

“Maybe the old shell dissolves or is absorbed internally as the new one hardens,” Nell suggested. “Surgeons use dissolving sutures that melt internally. Maybe they have a similar solution.”

“A lot of marine crustaceans eat their own shed shells to reuse the minerals,” Andy concurred.

“All right, noted,” Otto said. But he still didn’t sound as if he agreed with them. “Continuing the incision down the belly from the mantislike arms and the forelegs. OK, there’s a lot of fluid here! Suctioning that away…we see a series of six branching stomachs filled with what appear to be freshly eaten pieces of prey. Each stomach is segmented by a kind of bony grinding mechanism, like a bird’s gizzard-”

“Or a crustacean’s gastric mill,” Andy said.

“-which must masticate the food into finer consistency as it is passed along. Each of these stomachs is connected to a glandular mass-”

“That looks like a crustacean hepatopancreas,” said Andy.

“-and each also is connected to its own short intestine,” finished Otto.

“If any one of its digestive tracts is damaged it could shut it down and use the other five.” Nell had stopped sketching and was staring in fascination at the creature.

“Yeah, it would seem so.” Otto nodded, skeptically.

“All of the intestines empty into what appears to be a cloaca,” Quentin murmured.

“Crustaceans don’t have cloacae,” Otto said.

“Yeah,” Andy agreed. “Technically.”

“And look, the urethra from each kidney empties into the cloaca, too. And what’s that mass that looks like angel hair pasta there?” Quentin said.

“It looks like Malpighian tubules like insects and spiders have. Look how they all connect to the same region of the cloaca,” said Andy.

“That’s impossible, crustaceans don’t have Malpighian tubules,” said Quentin.

“Exactly,” Otto said.

“Both of you have to start thinking outside your comfort zone,” Nell said as she filled in a sketch. “These creatures would have had to have diverged from other crustaceans hundreds of millions of years ago, remember.”

Otto shook his head and continued. “OK, the cloaca appears to extend through a hole in the bony ring and discharge waste through the anus in the middle of the ventral side of the body. Upon cutting open the cloaca, it appears to contain solid white waste, which we will collect momentarily for analysis.”

“It must crap in mid-leap when the tail is extended back, or else things would get pretty messy.” Andy grinned.

“Maybe it uses the muscular contraction of leaping to expel the waste,” Quentin said. “Projectile crap.”

“Looks like uric acid crystals.” Otto probed the material with his scalpel. “Bird poop.”

“You mean bird pee,” Quentin said.

“Yuck,” Andy said.

“Hey, guys! We got our first RNA results,” one of the technicians called out.

All turned to the technician. He pointed to a series of peaks in what looked like an EKG readout on a monitor over the molecular toasters.

“Oh shit,” Steve muttered as he scanned the graph. “Uh, sorry, folks. Looks like we’ll have to run it again. False alarm.”

“Why?” Otto asked.

“These results don’t make any sense.”

“There must be some sort of contamination in the system,” the lead technician confirmed.

“Why don’t they make sense?” Nell wanted to know.

Steve shrugged apologetically. “Because it’s showing three ri-bosomal RNA peaks.”

“What makes you think it’s contaminated?” Andy asked the technician.

“Nothing on Earth has three ribosomal peaks, my friend.”

“Except for crustaceans,” Andy said.

“Whoa-really?”

Andy rolled his eyes. He looked at Nell. “I guess you gene jocks do need a few folks who still know their animals.”

“I’ll be damned. I didn’t know that.” Steve looked back at the graph. “Guess we’re reading crustaceans, then, guys.”

“Bravo, Andy.” Nell winked at Andy, and he smiled.

“Looks like we’re back to arthropods, Otto,” Quentin said.

Otto shook his head, resigned now. “Unless it is from Mars.”

Quentin shrugged. “Hell, maybe crustaceans are from Mars, with three ribosomal peaks and all.”

Andy said, “Cut the other direction again, Otto.”

“All right. Continuing the incision down the abdomen from the original point of entry now-what seems like more lobes of the hepatopancreas, with multiple blind-ending tubules-”

“Wow, this thing is set up to digest massive amounts of food very rapidly,” Quentin said.

“This sure looks like a crustacean gut.”

“Yes, Andy,” Otto said, “it does. Continuing toward the hind quarters. Uh-OK…”

There was a spasm in the animal’s lower belly as Otto drew the scalpel near the rear pelvic ring.

“Back out, Otto,” Nell whispered.

Small legs tore at the edges of Otto’s incision.

“Something it ate didn’t agree with it,” Quentin said.

“No,” Nell breathed. “It’s a mommy!”

“Yeah, and she’s live-bearing,” Andy warned.

“Back out now,” Nell said again, her voice suddenly urgent.

Otto pulled his hands back as a mouse-sized miniature crawled out and snipped a chunk of its mother’s flesh with its foreclaws. It fed the bite into its serrated grin. Then it shook its head and shivered off blue blood.

“Don’t reach for it, Otto,” Nell warned in a whisper. “Just pull out of the gloves.”

Another baby thrashed its way out of the womb, crawling out of Otto’s incision.

“Those things are fully active,” Quentin said.

“Yeah, and we just gave them a cesarean birth!”

“They’re protecting the corpse, Otto,” Nell said.

“Don’t stick your hand too close,” Quentin said.

“Pull out, Otto!” Nell said again.

“I’m just trying to scare them so we can see how they move-”

“Back off, man,” Andy said.

Otto laughed in excitement. “They’re using their back four legs to locomote and raising their arms like a praying mantis! See?”

“They’re fast,” Quentin said.

Otto grinned at Quentin. “Ever hear of a live-bearing arthropod, Quentin?”

“Actually, some do have marsupial pouches in which they brood their young,” Andy said.

“They won’t scare off-they’re just getting more aggressive,” Nell said. “Pull out!”

“There.” Otto pointed as one of the juveniles reared back on its under-curled tail.

A gunshot sound made them all jump back as the juvenile struck Otto’s hand in a blur.

“Jesus God damn it!” Otto screamed.

He yanked his hands out of the gloves.

“My God-damned-motherfucking thumb!”

“Close the glove hatches, Quentin.” Nell moved fast as the others froze.

“That little shit split my fucking thumb! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuck!”

“OK, narration ended,” Andy said.

Quentin gaped at Otto’s hand in shock, so Nell reached forward and sealed the glove hatches, banging the button with the side of her fist.

“They’re eating their mom,” Andy muttered, leaning forward over the trough.

“Quentin!” Nell snapped, giving him a hard shake of the shoulder. “Radio Section Three! Call the Enterprise. Tell them we have a medical emergency and need a transport immediately! We won’t be able to tell from the blood agar cultures if these things carry hemolytic bacteria for another six hours, at least. So ask them if they have gentamicin, vancomycin, and ceftriaxone. I think we need to treat this as if it were MRSA, until we know for sure what bacteria are in these creatures. GO!”

“Oh my God!” Andy shouted at the sight of Otto’s thumb-it looked like it had been clipped down the middle by a pair of bolt cutters.

“Andy, give me your tie,” Nell said.

“What?”

Nell flipped up Andy’s collar, removed his leather tie with her left hand, and looped it over Otto’s hand. She slid it up his arm and cinched it tight above his elbow. “Quentin, what did they say?”

“They’re sending some guys down here and calling Enterprise for a transport!”

“Good work. OK, Otto, let’s sit down, honey.”

Otto’s eyes glazed over. He slumped on a bench, muttering a string of obscenities. Bright red blood pooled on the white floor between his splattered sneakers.

“Andy, get some towels,” Nell said. “And the first aid kit. Quentin, sterilize the trough.”

Quentin balked. “Why should we sterilize the trough?”

Nell swung around and yelled at him, “DO IT!”

“All right, all right.” He pushed a button.

The chamber flooded with a yellow-green cloud of gas.