Fragment

SEPTEMBER 5
5:10 P.M.

The entire bubble window at the end of Section One was now covered with green, yellow, and purple splotches of growth.

Emanating from the jungle, similar vegetation had already spread over one-fourth of the section’s side windows as well.

But outside the rest of the windows could still be seen flats of common plants and potted trees that Nell had requested be flown in and set down on the sloping field, each accompanied by an ROV to record their fate.

Quentin congratulated Andy as they looked into the trough at the live Henders rat. It was the first living adult rat they had been able to trap for observation.

“What do those eye movements remind you of?” Quentin brought the camera overhead as close as possible without spooking the animal.

Andy nodded. “Yeah, wow!”

“What?” Nell asked. The grinning face of the creature chilled her. Its cockeyed eyeballs seemed to be staring right at her no matter where she moved.

“Most animals on the island seem to have eyes like mantis shrimp,” Quentin told her.

“So?”

“So mantis shrimp have compound eyes, with three optical hemispheres.”

“Trinocular depth perception.”

“We have binocular depth perception,” Andy said.

“Yes, I know, Andy,” Nell said.

“These things can see the same object three times with each eye. So they perceive three dimensions better with one eye than we do with two.”

Quentin pointed up at the eye of the creature magnified on the monitor, making a side-to-side gesture with his index finger. “See how each eye is slowly scanning now?”

“One of them sideways and one of them up and down? Wow!” Andy laughed in awe.

“They’re ‘painting’ polarization and color data like a friggin’ Mars Rover, only a lot faster,” Quentin said. “Oh yeah, that rat can see us all right, right through the glare of this acrylic.”

“Their eyes also have saccadic motion,” Andy said, looking at Nell. “That’s what lets us read without the small eye movements blurring our vision.”

“And they see five times the number of colors we see-at least,” Quentin said.

“They do?” Nell looked at Andy grimly.

“Humans have three classes of color receptors: green, blue, and red. These things may have up to ten classes of color receptors!”

“There goes the Christmas tree.” Quentin pointed out the window as the gnawed remnant of a Norfolk pine, one of their test specimens, collapsed amid a swarm of fluttering bugs.

The hatch at the far end of the lab beeped a loud alarm as it opened, and Chief NASA Technician Jedediah Briggs stepped through and closed the hatch behind him.

“This section of the lab is caked with crap three feet deep on the outside,” Briggs informed them. He was a tall, athletic man with a Kirk Douglas chin protruding over his helmetless blue cleansuit. Everyone had pretty much grown to dread him. “And we just started to detect a slow drop in pressure. So it’s time to evacuate Section One, boys and girls!”

“Hey, Otto, how many ROVs do we have left?” Nell asked.

“We have sixty-eight left of the ninety-four stored under StatLab-One.”

“Can you control them from any of the lab’s sections?”

Otto thought for a second. “Yes!”

“OK, let’s relocate our base of operations to Section Four,” Nell said, glancing at Briggs. “And, in the meantime, we’ll use sections Two and Three as long as possible. How’s that, Briggs?”

“That works for me.” Briggs nodded. “Now, if you would all get your asses out of here as fast as possible, that would be, well, mandatory!” he shouted.

Everyone scrambled to gather up laptops and as many specimens as possible as they exited the hatch and climbed the stairs to Section Two.

“Sterilize the trough, Otto,” Nell said sternly. “You know we can’t keep a specimen that size safely.”

Otto frowned. “OK, OK.”

On board the Trident, dinner was served: canned potatoes, mandarin salad, and a batch of deep-fried mantis shrimp the chef had trapped right off the starboard bow last night.

Zero chewed a succulent morsel of the crustacean as he studied the brilliantly starred sky, lying on a lounge on the mezzanine deck, the empty plate of food resting on his crotch.

“You know you want to,” a voice coaxed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cynthea.” He sighed, and stretched back in the lounge chair.

“You can’t pass up an opportunity like this.”

“Maybe,” Zero said.

“I’ve offered you half of the money, damn it. What else could you possibly want?”

Zero grinned. “Keep talking, darlin’.”

Dante smirked at the loafing Zero and stalked off to go below.