“No. New ones on me.”
“Course, we sampled from the main oceans …” Most of the fliers had disappeared now and only the rejected specimens were left, to rot on the stone.
“Varian, look!” Bonnard, again at the screen, gestured urgently.
“I’ve got it lined up … look!”
Varian pushed his hand aside as he was so excited he was obscuring the view. One of the small fringers was moving, in that strange fashion, collapsing one side and flipping over. Then she saw what had excited Bonnard: unsupported by water, its natural element, the internal skeleton of the creature was outlined through its covering. She could plainly see the joints at each corner. It moved by a deformation of parallelograms. It moved once, twice more and then lay still, its fringes barely undulating, then not at all. How long had it survived without water, Varian wondered? Was it equipped with a dual set of lungs to have lived so long away from what was apparently its natural element? Was this creature on its way out of its aquatic phase, moving onto land?
“You got all that on tape, didn’t you?” Varian asked Bonnard.
“Sure, the moment it started moving. Can it breathe oxygen?”
“I hope it can’t,” said Cleidi. I wouldn’t want to meet that wet sheet in a dark dripping forest.” She shuddered with her eyes tightly shut.
“Neither would I,” said Varian, and meant it.
“Couldn’t it be friendly? If it wasn’t hungry all the time?” asked Terilla.
“Wet, slimy, wrapping its fringes around you and choking you to death,” said Bonnard, making movements like his horrifying image.
“It couldn’t wrap around me,” Terilla said, unmoved. “It can’t bend in the middle. Only on the edges.”
“It isn’t moving at all now,” Bonnard said, sounding disappointed and sad.
“Speaking of moving,” said Varian glancing toward the one bright spot in the grey skies, “that sun is going down.”
“How can you tell?” asked Bonnard sarcastically.
“I’m looking at the chrono.”
Cleiti and Terilla giggled.
“Couldn’t we land and see the fliers up close?” asked Bonnard, now wistful.
“Rule number one, never bother animals when feeding. Rule number two, never approach strange animals without first closely observing their habits. Just because the fliers haven’t attempted to take bites out of us doesn’t mean they aren’t as dangerous as those mindless predators.”
“Aren’t we ever going to observe them up close?” Bonnard was persistent.
“Sure, when I’ve applied rule number two, but not today. I’m to bring the sled back to the pitchblende site.”
“Can I come with you when you do come back?”
“That’s possible.”
“Promise?”
“No. I just said it was possible, Bonnard, and that’s what I mean.”
“I’m never going to learn anything on this trip if I don’t get out and do some field work, away from screens and …”
“If we brought you back to the ship with a part or parts missing, left in the maw of a fringe or a flier, your mother would give up the deep six. So be quiet.” Varian used a sharper tone than she normally employed with Bonnard but his insistence, his air that he had only to wheedle enough and his wish would be granted, annoyed her. She was sympathetic to his irritation with constant restrictions. To the ship-born, planets gave illusions of safety because ship-learned dangers were insulated from one by an atmosphere miles deep, whereas in space only thin metal shells prevented disaster and any broaching of that shell was lethal. No shell, no danger in simplistic terms.
“Would you run through that tape, Bonnard, and see if we have good takes on the fringies,” she asked him after a long pause, mutinous on his part, firm on hers. “There’s something I want to check out with Trizein when we get back to camp. Fardles, but I wish we had access to the EV’s data banks.”
After another long pause during which she heard the slight whir of rapidly spun tapes, Bonnard spoke. “You know, those fliers remind me of something I’ve seen before. I can almost see the printed label on the tape sleeve …”
“What about this tape?”
“Oh, clear pictures, Varian.”
“They’ve reminded me of something, too, Bonnard, but I can’t drag it out of storage either.”