“We found this bit of tooth, Dr. De Beer,” said Tremelo, holding an object out to her. “Imbedded in the bone and snapped off.”
She wasn’t surprised they’d found it. The tooth was the size of a fifty-cent piece. Tricuspid. Cruelly sharp. She turned it over in her hand. Hmmm. Not a fish tooth. She looked at the three rows of tooth marks. Widely spaced. Equisized.
“Why are you so sure that this is a shark bite?” she asked.
The physics professor squatting next to her shrugged. “I’m not, Dr. De Beer. I know the limits of my expertise. He was in salt water and he had for company these, and several others. They were all alive.” He produced a mayonnaise jar. It now contained his specimens.
“Call me Liz.” She fished about inside the huge shoulder bag, produced a pair of forceps, and started pulling out specimens. “I’m not too hot on seaweeds. It looks like plain old Laminaria . . . at a guess.” She peered closely at it. “There is a colonial bryozoan growing here.” She looked at the fish and the squid and smiled.
“What do you want to know about these? Why do you want to know?”
“The man disappeared in a violet flash. He reappeared in this state . . . Liz. I want any clues I can gather. Are these alien creatures?”
“Hmm. Right, Professor. Well, the fish is about as earthly as you can get. It’s an engraulid. What you would call an anchovy. You say there were several of them?”
“About ten.”
“And they were all this size?” She pointed to the seven-inch-long fish.
He nodded. “More or less.”
Liz pulled a wry face. “Ah. Well, I don’t know where on earth he’s been—but there are several hundred million dollars worth of fishing fleets that would also love to know. That’s a third-year-size class anchovy. I’ll swear to that. I’ve seen too many thousands of anchovy not to know what they look like. But not usually of that size. That’s unfished anchovy. I didn’t think an unfished stock still existed. I didn’t think one had for a couple of hundred years.”
She pulled the little cuttlefish out of the jar. Liz liked cuttlefish. Not as cute as Ockys, but still . . .
“I’m not familiar enough with these to swear to it, but I think this is Sepia rondeleti. Mediterranean species, if I’m not mistaken. This is a big one, too. You should keep some of the water if you can. That could be diagnostic. The water from the Med is more saline than ordinary seawater. Besides, the plankton in it can tell you a lot. And I’d freeze these specimens if you have no other way of preserving them. Gut contents could be revealing.”
She plopped the squid back, and wiped her forceps and her hands on her skirt. “I’d say that your man’s been on Earth—or at least someplace with the same fauna. The probability of such familiar species being found off Earth, by mere chance, ranges from ridiculous to absurd.”
Tremelo nodded. “And the bite?”
Liz pursed her lips and shook her head. “Now there you’ve got me. Except it isn’t a shark bite. That tooth looks more like a seal tooth . . . ”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said the doctor. “If you want any further examination you’ll have to do it later. He’s stabilized enough to be moved now. We want to get him into the hospital and get some whole blood into him.”
The drowned and bitten man groaned . . . and began muttering. “S’ha’ barsid Odisoos . . . ” Then he opened his eyes and screamed, before lapsing back into a restless unconsciousness. The medics grabbed the stretcher and moved off to the waiting ambulance.
The professor stood up and thrust his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. Hastily he pulled one hand back out. It dripped black goo. “Well, I wish I understood what he tried to say? ‘Barsid Odesoos’ . . . ?”
“Uh.” The heavyset, short, swarthy sergeant standing nearby spoke. “I can translate some of it, Professor Tremelo. He said it quite a lot. The first part is ‘It’s that bastard.’ I don’t know who ‘Odesoos’ is. I actually wrote down what he said, sir.” The sergeant produced a little green notebook and turned it to a page covered in fine scrawl. Liz looked at it. It would have gotten the sergeant into fourth-year medicine instantly.
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