Текст книги "Over a Torrent Sea "

Автор книги: Christopher Bennett

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To be sure, these were interesting times for the Federation and its neighbors. The Borg onslaught had shattered their political, economic, and social stability, and the consequences were just starting to be felt. Deanna regretted leaving that behind; not only could her skills as a diplomat prove useful in coping with those crises, but it would be fascinating from a sociological perspective to experience how the civilizations of known space adjusted to their new reality. Would they fragment still further, or come together as never before?

But in her heart of hearts, she was an explorer, and so was Will Riker. And she shared this vessel with three hundred and fifty other explorers, all ready to quest into the unknown. True, it would not be easy for many of them to shake off the baggage of the recent past. Most of them had suffered some loss in the invasion, or simply been wounded in their souls by the profound destruction and death. That would linger with them for a long time to come. But Titan’s crew was ready to face ahead once again.

No matter how much they’d lost…there was always something new to be found.

CHAPTER O

NE

U.S.S. TITAN, STARDATE 58497.1

“We call it Droplet.”

Melora Pazlar tried to rein in her enthusiasm about the small blue-white dot that was displayed behind her on the holographic viewer in Titan’s main briefing room, the best view the sensors could get so far of the fourth planet of UFC 86783. The rest of the command crew didn’t yet know what was so exceptional about this planet, so she didn’t want to go overboard. Of course, she was here to convince them that this world, out of all the current candidates, should be the vessel’s next destination. But it wasn’t in her nature to broadcast her emotions too openly, even among people she knew as well as this crew. As a fragile, low-gravity Elaysian living in a high-grav environment, she didn’t like to feel vulnerable.

Deanna Troi leaned forward, no doubt sensing the excitement Melora held in check. She couldn’t lean forward too easily, since she was huge now, looking as though she could give birth any day. She had long since eschewed a standard uniform for loose maternity dresses in the blue and green shades of her department. It suited her, Melora thought. She found it odd the way humans talked about pregnant women having a “glow” about them, but Troi did seem to have a certain radiance these days. “A water world?” the counselor asked.

“More than that,” Melora responded. “A classic Léger-type ocean planet, class O, subclass L1. About three times the mass of Earth, nearly half of it water ice. Slightly lower than Terrestrial gravity due to the low density.”

“So what makes it interesting?” asked Ranul Keru. “We’ve charted plenty of those.” The large, bearded Trill had been a stellar cartographer once, but his priorities had shifted since his move to security. At the moment, he was preoccupied with this morning’s update from Starfleet about the developing situation with the newly emerged Typhon Pact. As if the crew hadn’t felt guilty enough about flying off into the unknown while the rest of the Federation dealt with the aftermath of the Borg invasion, the existence of this new rival power had been revealed mere days after Titanhad crossed into uncharted space. Eight weeks later, it was still unclear what the rise of the Pact meant for the Federation’s future, and there was nothing the crew could do but watch and wait.

“Yes, but they’re usually not inhabited.”

Keru blinked. “And this one is?”

“Undoubtedly. We thought the oh-two levels might be from water vapor dissociation, but there’s a strong ozone line in its spectrum too, meaning the oxygen has to be biogenic. Plus there’s a substantial chlorophyll signature. It’s hard to get more detailed readings at this distance, due to the sensor interference.” As she’d mentioned at the start of the briefing, UFC 86783 had an unusually dense disk of asteroidal debris for a system of its age, one rich in exotic minerals and radioisotopes that interfered with scans. “But we’ve managed to cut through the interference enough to get dynoscanner readings suggesting abundant higher-order life.”

“On an L1? You’re certain?” Melora answered Keru’s question with a nod, smiling. He definitely wasn’t dwelling on the Typhon Pact anymore.

“Maybe you could remind the rest of us,” Captain Riker said, “why that’s so unusual.”

“Because an ocean is basically a desert,” Melora said. “Life needs water to survive, but it also needs mineral nutrients. On a class-M planet, life in the oceans is richest where there’s mineral runoff from the land masses, and fairly sparse elsewhere. A Léger-type class O has no land, no minerals anywhere near the surface.” She worked the controls to display a cross section, the trim antigrav suit she wore making it easier to lift her arms against an artificial gravity dozens of times that of her native world. She’d mostly given up the holopresence system that Xin Ra-Havreii had designed to let her interact with the crew from her microgravity haven in the stellar cartography lab, since it had been making her too isolated from the crew. But this antigrav suit—the latest gift from Xin, who gave out brilliant inventions as romantic gifts the way other men gave jewelry—was an improvement over the motor-assist armature she’d used for most of her Starfleet career, and over the cruder, bulkier antigrav suit she’d tried briefly last year. “Droplet, for instance, has a metal core thirty– seven hundred kilometers deep surrounded by nearly three thousand kilometers of silicate rock, and above that is a mantle of high-pressure allotropic ice over four thousand kilometers deep. The outermost ninety kilometers is liquid water, an ocean a hundred times greater in volume than Earth’s. But on most planets of this type, the ocean is virtually barren. Whatever minerals get delivered by meteor impacts are barely enough to sustain a limited microbial population, and the minerals tend to sink to the bottom of the ocean, where the pressure is too great for most forms of life to survive.”

“What’s more,” Keru added, “without deep-sea volcanic vents, there’s no mechanism for conventional life to arise in the first place.”

“Except seeding from space, whether by natural panspermic bombardment or alien intervention.”

Riker perked up. “Could the life on Droplet,” and he smiled a bit at the name, “be evidence of alien intervention?”

“Or perhaps a colony,” Commander Tuvok suggested. “Six years ago, on stardate 52179, Voyagerencountered an artificial ocean in space created by unknown builders. It had subsequently been colonized by travelers from elsewhere.”

“Monea, yes, I read about that,” Melora said. “But we’re picking up no signs of artificial power generation. At least, as far as we can tell. But we were able to get those biosigns on the dynoscanners. Power readings would most likely be easier to detect.”

“You said meteor impacts could deliver minerals to the ocean,” Christine Vale said. This month, the deceptively slight first officer’s hair was tinted a rich, deep blue with aquamarine highlights. Melora hoped that was a sign she’d be receptive to exploring this ocean world. “Could the bombardment rate here provide enough minerals to explain the life readings?”

Melora shook her head. “Not in these abundances.”

Riker’s smile widened. “Sounds like it might be worth checking out.”

“You sure you don’t want to follow up on the video broadcasts from the Oraco system?” Vale asked.

“We just surveyed a pre-warp industrial society last month, back at Lumbu,” the captain replied. “And another the month before at Knnischlinnaik. Aren’t you ready for a change of pace?”

“But this one seems more advanced. And those signals are thirty-four years old—the Oracoans could be in space by now.”

“Creating a greater risk of our accidental discovery,” Tuvok pointed out.

Riker nodded. “We can continue monitoring their broadcasts from a distance, send out a probe to intercept more recent signals.” He looked around the room. “Any negatives about Droplet?”

“The density of the asteroidal disk would pose a hazard to navigation,” Tuvok answered. “Once in the system, the sensor interference would be amplified, impeding our ability to chart the trajectories of potentially hazardous objects.”

“We’d still have optical imaging,” Melora replied. “It would take a lot longer to do a thorough survey, but we could see anything immediately dangerous soon enough to get out of the way.”

“It looks like the planet has a pretty strong magnetic field too,” Keru put in.

“That’s right. Its core is unusually hot; it probably contains many of the same radioactive elements we see in the system’s debris disk, like plutonium and pergium. That makes for an active magnetic dynamo with some unusual energy patterns.”

“And that field,” Keru said, “would interfere with sensors, communicators, and transporters.”

“We’d need to use shuttles anyway,” Vale said. “After all, where would we beam down to?”

“Indeed,” Tuvok said. “There would be many difficulties involved in surveying this planet.”

Riker was grinning widely now. “Come on now, people. The first generations of space explorers didn’t have transporters or subspace sensors, but that didn’t stop them. Personally I’d relish the chance to do some old-school exploring. And when has this crew ever backed down from a challenge?”

The rest of the senior staff was smiling now, catching their captain’s enthusiasm—all except Tuvok, who merely sat back with a stoic lift to his eyebrow, satisfied that his concerns had been voiced. Xin rewarded Melora with a more personal smile, congratulating his lover on her success in selling her case. She smiled back, and Xin turned to the captain. “Shall I begin converting our multipurpose shuttles to aquatic configuration, sir?” he asked.

“As many as you can by…what’s the travel time, Commander Pazlar?”

“Three days at warp five, Captain.”

“All right, then.” He hit his combadge. “Riker to Ensign Lavena.”

“Lavena here, sir,”came the response, the Selkie pilot’s voice filtered through the hydration suit she wore.

Riker’s grin grew even wider. “Set a new course, Aili. You’re gonna love this one.”

STARDATE 58506.3

Captain Riker had been right; Aili Lavena’s pulse was surging with excitement as she flew Titaninto the UFC 86783 system—or New Kaferia, as the stellar cartographers had dubbed it, for the star was a virtual twin of Kaferia’s sun Tau Ceti, a smallish yellow-orange dwarf with a dense debris disk around it. Except Tau Ceti’s disk was sparse compared to this one. Aili was as energized by the navigational challenge of reaching Droplet as by the prospect of getting to dive into its oceans. Although she was a pilot by training, she knew she’d be at the forefront of this survey, for her aquatic physiology would let her explore this planet’s depths in ways no other member of the crew could.

But the true depths of this planet, she reminded herself with a slight shudder, were far more profound than even she could plumb. Below ninety kilometers, the pressure became so great that water itself was crushed to solidity, forming exotic crystalline phases with names like ice-seven and ice-ten even at temperatures she would consider boiling hot. At best, she would be able to descend a tiny fraction of that depth before the pressure exceeded even a Selkie’s tolerances.

First things first, though. She brought Titaninto the system at a sharp angle to its ecliptic plane, coming “up from below” to avoid the worst of its debris disk and give the sensor techs a good overview of its asteroid distribution. Their estimates of the asteroids’ courses, a constantly updated file of which was tied into her nav computer, were necessarily inexact, limited as they were to optical imaging; more accurate orbit plots would require observing their motion for weeks, as early astronomers had needed to do in the days before subspace-displacement motion sensors. But the rough data she had were enough to let her skirt around the probability cones of any hazardous bodies.

Droplet was in an unusually wide orbit for a habitable planet around a star this cool. With an endless supply of water to vaporize, Droplet had a considerable greenhouse effect, plus the convection in its oceans brought some heat up from the planet’s interior; so the surface was balmy and tropical. Aili had been glad to hear that; though her body was well-insulated and able to adjust to a wide range of water temperatures, she liked it warm. And land-dwelling humanoids definitely liked it warm, which would be a plus if the away team included anyone she wanted to invite for a private skinny-dip. She smiled to herself at the thought.

As the ocean world loomed larger on the viewer, it looked almost like a Jovian; without land masses to break up the airflow, the weather patterns were very regular, with parallel bands of clouds circling the planet, most solidly concentrated around the equator. But as the angle changed, allowing the bridge crew to see around the curve of the large globe, the cloud bands around the equator broke and swirled around a more circular pattern—one which Aili soon realized was an enormous hurricane. “Don’t tell me,” Riker said. “Hurricanes break up when they hit land. No land means they can get…that big.”

Beside him, Troi’s eyes widened. “Some Jovians have standing storms that last for centuries.”

“Like Jupiter’s Red Spot or the Eye of Vetlhaq,” Vale said.

Riker was grinning now. “How long do you suppose this hurricane has been around?”

“There’s no way of knowing,” Pazlar answered. “I’d just recommend that we avoid getting too close in our shuttles. There’s some ferocious lightning in there.”

As the planet drew still nearer, more detail began to appear. The pole they could see was wreathed in a bright ring of auroras, lost in the blue of the lit hemisphere but vivid and alive against the night side—the visible evidence of the powerful magnetic energies emanating from this planet. Much of the ocean surface was hidden under the clouds, but in the exposed portions, shadings of green were visible. “Algae blooms,” reported Chamish, the Kazarite ecologist, from the secondary science station.

“But where are they getting their nutrients?” Pazlar wondered.

“Any sign of mineral concentrations?” Riker asked.

“With the sensor interference, the blooms themselves are the best sign we’re getting,” the Elaysian science officer replied.

“Wait,” Troi said, trying to lean forward with little success. “This can’t be right…but I could swear I’m seeing islands!”

Looking up from her board, Aili saw faint specks dotting the ocean surface. When Riker ordered magnification, they came into view more distinctly. The most prominent feature from this angle was a small polar icecap, but hundreds of other bright specks dotted the ocean surface around it. “They could be icebergs,” Vale suggested.

“Not bergs, ma’am,” Aili told her. “Those break off of glaciers, which need land masses to form on. Here, you’d only have flat ice sheets and floes. And they couldn’t survive very far from the poles, not if the ocean’s as warm as Commander Pazlar says.”

“She’s right,” Pazlar confirmed. “And some of them are too large anyway. Look here.” She magnified a portion of the screen, centering on what seemed to be a cluster of islands, each one either a single light-colored disk or a cluster of multiple disks of similar size.

“There’s no way you could’ve been wrong about there being land, is there?” Vale asked.

Pazlar shook her head, studying her readouts with a slightly dazed expression. “Those aren’t land. Not the way we think of it. They’re moving, sir. They’re drifting in the current.”

Riker was out of his chair, his hand on Aili’s seat back as he took a closer look at the main viewer. Glancing up, she saw he was grinning like a kid at his birthday party. “Floating islands? Tell me you’re not kidding!”

“I swear it. I wouldn’t care to speculate about what they are, though.”

Chuckling, Riker turned to Vale. “What was that you were saying about not having any place to land? I think we’ve just found our first touchdown site.”

Christine Vale looked on with a stern expression as Riker’s eyes roved over the shuttlecraft Gillespie, now refitted into a full aquashuttle configuration. Half of Titan’s eight shuttles were designed to be reconfigurable for multiple mission profiles, and Ra-Havreii’s engineering teams had managed to convert all four of them in time for planetfall. Gillespie’s nacelles had been lowered and modified to serve as pontoons, equipped with stabilizing fins and linear induction thrusters. Searchlights, undersea sensor suites, and extra structural integrity field generators had been added to allow the shuttle to function as a deep-sea submersible. In lieu of the manipulator arms of old submersibles, an undersea tractor-beam rig had been installed below the nose, with a pair of emitters that together would focus the tractor effect at the desired distance, with the individual, unfocused beams exerting minimal effect on the intervening water. All in all, it looked like one hell of a boat, and Vale was looking forward to taking it for a spin.

Assuming the gleam in her captain’s eye didn’t translate into action. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of going down yourself, Captain,” she said, hands on hips.

His eyes turned to her, the gleam giving way to wistfulness. “Don’t worry, Christine. Just an idle thought.” He sighed. “Time to put those days behind me now. I have to be a responsible captain anda responsible father. You won’t have to argue with me about who leads the away teams anymore.”

Vale studied him, knowing that he wasn’t too unhappy about it. He and Deanna had been through a rough time after deciding to conceive a child: first a long, unpleasant set of treatments to overcome their cross-species compatibility issues, then the miscarriage, then the near loss of their second unborn child. It had put a strain on their relationship, but they had come through it stronger and more committed to each other—and to their little girl—than ever. She knew that at this stage of his life, Will Riker was happier to be by his pregnant wife’s side than to go gallivanting around uncharted planets in souped-up shuttles. But there was still a part of him, she knew, that felt nostalgia for that freedom and excitement.

She laid a hand on his shoulder briefly. “Don’t worry. I promise to bring back plenty of holos.”

Most of the team was already present. Aili Lavena was running preflight checks, no doubt eager to get down to a new ocean. Melora Pazlar and Lieutenant Kekil, the Chelon biologist, were loading equipment and sample cases. That left only Ranul Keru, she thought—until she heard a familiar soft whirring sound and turned to see Ensign Torvig Bu-kar-nguv approaching. “Permission to join the away team, Captain?”

Vale did a double take, followed by Riker a second later. Both of them had long since grown accustomed to the appearance of the young Choblik: a meter-high mammalian with a cervine head, ostrichlike body, and long slender tail, but augmented with bionic implants. The surprise was that those implants had changed. The cowling that protected his skull and snout had been modified with a more streamlined prow, his deerlike ears swept back into recessed nooks. His robotic arms appeared to have been modified to fold up flush against his ventral plate, which had been also been reshaped for streamlining and even given a slight keel. His foot-claws had been replaced with paddlefeet, and the extra handlike manipulator at the tip of his tail had been replaced with a structure like a Japanese fan. A dorsal fin rising from his spinal armor completed the ensemble.

Riker finally found his voice. “Ensign. I see you’ve…dressed for the occasion. How, uh, how long did this take? You really should’ve consulted me before making any major modifications…”

“Oh, it didn’t take long, sir. I was due for a regular swap-out soon anyway, and I figured I might as well…Hm. I suppose it would be literally true to say I decided to make myself useful.” The little engineer seemed pleased by his wordplay, but more in the way he took quiet pleasure in any new discovery than out of full-fledged humor.

“And…how hard would it be to change back afterward?”

“It wouldn’t pose any difficulty, sir. I have the necessary equipment in my quarters.” He tilted his head, his mechanical irises widening in realization. “I apologize for not making a formal request, sir. I just got so interested in the project…”

“Say no more, Ensign.” By now, everyone knew how Torvig was when he got intrigued by a new project. Although he wasn’t highly emotional by humanoid standards, he was a creature of pure impulse when it came to intellectual curiosity and experimentation.

The captain turned to Vale. “Christine? It’s your mission.”

“Well, Vig, um…I wouldn’t want all that work to go to waste…but Droplet doesn’t seem like the kind of planet where we’d need an engineer along.”

“Oh, I’ve uploaded the xenobiology and planetary science databases into my memory buffer, Commander,” he said. Much of the Choblik’s intelligence was assisted by the bionic implants that some unknown benefactors had given them millennia in the past; without them, Torvig would be only a fairly bright woodland animal. He thus had the ability to upload new knowledge at will, though it took his organic brain some time and practice to process it. “Besides, the aquashuttle systems are largely untested, so it might be a good idea to have an engineer along. And I don’t take up much room, ma’am.”

Vale chuckled, conceding the point. “Okay, okay. If nothing else, you can keep us cool with your, umm, fan there.”

“Thank you, Commander. I ama fan of yours.”

“Oh, no,” Vale whispered to Riker as the Choblik clambered aboard the shuttle, stumbling a bit on his newly enlarged feet. “Now that he’s discovered puns, he’s going to be ‘experimenting’ with them for weeks and driving us all out of our minds.”

“Look on the bright side,” Riker replied. “Down there, he won’t take it badly if you tell him he’s all wet.”

CHAPTER T

WO

DROPLET

The away team’s first destination was a small cluster of floating islands at a high southern latitude, comfortably removed from the equatorial storm belt. The winds on an ocean planet built up swells that never broke against land and thus could grow to mountainous size. There was wind at these latitudes, of course, the same steady, predictable circulation patterns that could be found planetwide. But sensors showed no major swells heading toward this grouping. Swells of such size could be fairly gentle and would pose no risk to the aquashuttle; but until the nature and behavior of the disklike islets were determined, it was better not to take chances.

Melora Pazlar gazed out the forward ports with fascination as Aili Lavena brought the aquashuttle down to a flight trajectory just a few kilometers above the waves. “Astonishing,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much water at one time.” Since the planet was so large, more than half again the radius of a typical M-class world, the horizon was unusually distant, all but lost in atmospheric haze. It was easy to imagine the water stretching to infinity. It couldn’t have been more different from Gemworld, the artificial crystalline planet where her Elaysian species resided. But then, her world was different from any other world in the galaxy, so that wasn’t much of a standard of comparison.

“I know,” Lavena replied. “It’s gorgeous! I’m going for a swim first thing once we land.”

“Hold on there,” Commander Vale said. “Before you do that, I’d like to get a little sense of what the ocean’s like. With the interference, we should double-check our scans of its chemistry, make sure there’s nothing toxic. And there’s no telling what kind of sea monsters might be lurking down there.”

Pazlar threw her an amused look. “Do you suppose that’s what these islands are? Some kind of giant turtles or something?”

Torvig turned to Kekil. “Relatives of yours, perhaps?” The pale green Rigellian Chelon, so called because of his people’s somewhat turtlelike appearance, simply ignored him.

Soon, the cluster of islets was in naked-eye range. The sight left no doubt that they were floating atop the water, rising and falling with its slow swells. The larger clusters flexed and warped somewhat as they rode atop the changing surface, but their saucerlike components remained connected. They were a pale yellowish white around the edges, with darker soil and assorted vegetation covering them farther “inland.” The larger clusters had the most abundant vegetation.

“Set us down by the nearest single islet,” Vale ordered. “Let’s not complicate the variables.”

“By it, ma’am?” Lavena asked. “Not on it?”

“Just to be on the safe side. We’re not sure how buoyant those things are.”

“Aye, Commander,” Lavena said, looking happy to touch down in her native element.

Pazlar, aware of the Selkie pilot’s skill, was expecting a smooth landing. But the Gillespiehit Droplet’s surface with a bit of a jolt, rocking her in her seat. “A little overeager there, Ensign?” she asked.

“What? Oh, no, ma’am. I just eased back the inertial dampers a bit. We’re diving into a new ocean—it seemed right to feel the splash.”

“Just take us in to the nearest lone islet,” Vale ordered.

When the shuttle bumped against a solid surface, Lavena programmed it to keep station with the islet and popped the hatch. Vale led the way out of the shuttle, with Pazlar following. The air was warm and almost stiflingly humid, a shock after the controlled environment of the ship and shuttle; but there was a steady cooling breeze blowing from the west, carrying the fresh, wet tang of ocean air along with other exotic scents.

They waded across a few meters of shallow water—also unexpectedly warm—before climbing out onto the gently rising shoreline. Pazlar sized up the weight she felt, or what fraction of it was filtered through her antigrav suit’s field. She knew it was a few percent below standard, but she couldn’t feel the difference.

Once Torvig had clambered onto the shore, he jumped up and down a couple of times. “Well, it isn’t rocking,” he said with his usual straight face. “Commander Keru, maybe you should try it,” he said, looking up at his burly Trill friend, who outmassed him by about three to one.

Keru just rolled his eyes and bent down to examine the waterline. “No obvious edge. Looks like it extends several meters under the water before dropping off.”

“It looks like an island,” Vale observed. “Soil, plants, some treelike things…and I think I can hear insects, or something like them.”

A fuller survey of the islet revealed nothing particularly striking living here beyond what her eyes and ears had revealed. There was no sign of avian life, though Titan’s optical sensors had sighted flying creatures in Droplet’s skies. Though it seemed reasonably habitable, the islet was simply too small to support much of an ecosystem. Some of the larger clusters visible in the distance bore thicker vegetation, however, and Pazlar thought she could see birds or the local equivalent flying around their treetops.

Meanwhile, Kekil knelt and ran his tricorder over the soil, taking a handful and kneading it with his broad, webbed fingers. “Very rich. It’s mostly organic decay products; minimal silicate content, as you’d expect.”

“Ah,” Keru said. “A connoisseur.”

Everyone (save the solemn Kekil) seemed to be in a playful mood today. Perhaps it was just the enthusiasm at setting foot on an intriguing new planet, particularly a tropical paradise like this. Droplet’s star was of only moderate brightness and more distant than was typical for an M-class world, but that only served to soften the light, letting Pazlar gaze out at the sun reflections dancing on the waves without being blinded by glare, as she had been look ing out across San Francisco Bay in her Academy days. If anything, it made the warm, sunny scene even more inviting. But the oxygen content of the air, she reminded herself, was a little high; she was feeling a bit lightheaded from it. Something to watch out for. Fortunately, the high water vapor content of the air discouraged breathing it too deeply; Vale had tried a moment before, and was now coughing from the aspirated moisture.

“I’ll have to make a more thorough analysis to be sure, of course,” Kekil added as he placed some of the soil in a sample container.

“Dig down some,” Vale ordered. “I want to know what the island’s made of. Torvig can help you. Meanwhile, I want to check out the flora and fauna.”

“I could check out the underside,” Lavena called hopefully from the shuttle door.

“Not yet, Aili. Run a scan first.” The Selkie sulked her way back inside. No doubt she was eager to get out of her hydration suit when there was a whole planetful of water to flow across her gill crests and keep her skin moist. Melora could sympathize; she wouldn’t mind getting out of her tight antigrav suit and letting the water buoy her up. She was slender, but her bones and muscles had low density, so she figured she could float all right in the moderately saline water at these latitudes—though perhaps not nearer the equator, where the constant rainfall diluted the upper ocean with fresh water. But of course Vale was right to exercise caution.

“Commanders?” Torvig called, not having to shout too loudly, for they couldn’t get more than eighty meters apart. “I think you’ll want to see this!”

Pazlar followed at her best pace as Vale jogged over to him and Kekil. At the bottom of the hole they had dug was a hard, light-colored material that appeared porous and slightly sparkly. “It looks almost like seashells,” Vale said.

“Not dissimilar,” Torvig said. “It’s largely keratin. However, there are silicate spicules interwoven inside, increasing its strength, analogously to fiberglass. And there’s a fair amount of calcium carbonate as well. Odd to find heavier elements in such concentration in the native life.”