Chapter Twelve

THE SCIENTISTS WERE thrilled by my find, but no one matched Kayleigh’s excitement. The pod had been constructed of organic materials, but definitely constructed, she told me.

“It’s an egg sac, from the creature Connor shot last night.”

“Wow. Cool.” Matt whistled.

Kayleigh flashed a grin that seemed wildly out of place considering the topic of discussion. “Yeah. We haven’t confirmed it yet, but I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts it’s an egg sac!”

“A safe bet,” I remarked, “as we have neither dollars nor doughnuts here.”

“Ohh, doughnuts.” Law groaned wistfully. He’d accompanied the rest of the crew to the location, although I wasn’t sure why. “I wish we had doughnuts.”

Kayleigh paused to look back at us. “Jelly-filled, with a nice cup of coffee…”

“Or smultringer,” Caspersen sighed.

“Smultringer?” I repeated. It sounded like something cleaned out of old chimneys. Not something you ate.

“They’re a Norwegian doughnut,” she explained. “My mom used to make them at Christmas.”

“You’re Norwegian, then, Tracie?” This was Law.

I couldn’t resist answering, “No kidding? I thought ‘Caspersen’ was French.”

The comment got a few snickers from the rest of the group at Law’s expense, but Caspersen seemed to have missed it. Instead, she answered, “Fifth generation. With some Swedish and Danish in there too.”

“Cool,” Law returned. “Fifth generation? That’s pretty cool.”

I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t sure if his vocabulary really was as limited as he let on, or if the issue lay with his conversational skills. Either way, I had no interest in figuring it out.

Caspersen’s crooked smile appeared. “Which apparently wasn’t how my Norwegian great-grandpa saw it, but I wouldn’t be here otherwise, so I’m pretty happy about it.”

“He didn’t like Swedes, then, or…?”

She shrugged. “You know. Everybody has their grudges. Scandinavia’s no different.”

Law was nodding dubiously, and I was pretty sure he didn’t know. “Oh…sure.”

“And from all accounts, the Norwegian side of my family took them pretty personally. Until the Caspersens met the Ingerssons, that is. And the rest is, as they say, history.”

I frowned as I listened. This—the family histories and Tracie—was a side of Caspersen I’d never seen before. Hell, I’d never guessed at it. From what I knew of her, the mission—the job—was everything. Obviously, she’d had a family. She hadn’t spawned in a military laboratory. But I realized, listening to her, that I’d simply assumed she never talked about hers for the same reason I didn’t talk about mine—they were absent. I had no idea she’d come from the kind of tight-knit group she was describing or had an interesting background and family life.

“That’s cool,” Law repeated.

I grimaced. “All right, ‘coolness’ aside…what about this egg sac?”

“We don’t know if it contains eggs,” Dr. Wu cautioned as she examined the green-black exterior of the pod, her features screwed up in a frown of concentration.

“Michelle’s right,” Kayleigh said. “We don’t know it. Yet. But I’ll bet you—”

“I know. Dollars to doughnuts.” I grinned.

“Dollars to smultringer,” Law said.

A growling sound emanated from Caspersen’s stomach, loud enough for all of us to hear. The group turned, as of one mind, toward her, laughing.

She laughed too. “All right, new rule. No more talking about doughnuts. Especially smultringer.”

*

WU AND KAYLEIGH decided against dismantling the pod. They were quite sure it was an egg sac, and further, that it had been created by the rat creature in the lab. “This is the same plant material we found in its stomach,” Michelle had explained, gesturing to the fibrous textile matter that made up the sac.

“It’s probably food, for its offspring,” Kayleigh added. “So when it hatches, it has something to eat.”

“They’re herbivores, then?” Dr. Kim wondered.

“Yes, definitely,” Kayleigh said. “We found nothing but plant matter in its stomach and intestines, and its teeth are essentially hypsodont molars—very similar to what you’d find in a cow.”

“Well, that’s good,” Law put in. His relief mirrored the rest of the party’s. “Are they edible? I mean, they’re made of meat, right?”

I snorted at the characterization, but Kayleigh only shrugged. “Basically, yes. But I’m not sure they are edible. I’m finding a high presence of trimethylamine oxide.” My eyes glazed over almost as much as Law’s, and she explained, “Basically, it’s full of neurotoxins. It’s poisonous. Possibly as a defense against predators.”

“Damn. Looks like we’re stuck with MREs, then.”

“Not necessarily,” Kayleigh shook her head.

“I thought you said it was poisonous?”

“It is—as is. But there are certain Earth animals that contain the same toxin. Somniosus microcephalus—the Greenland shark—among others.”

“And they’re consumed by the indigenous peoples of the area,” Michelle finished. “With the right preparations, the meat can be usable.”

“It’s even a delicacy in some cultures,” Kayleigh put in.

“Hákarl?” This was Caspersen. “Are you talking about hákarl?”

We turned to her. Her expression indicated some skepticism, but Kayleigh had lost none of her enthusiasm.

“Yeah,” she said. “In Iceland, they…”

“I know. My cousins used to bring it with them to the States.”

“Oh.” Michelle smiled. “That was nice.”

Caspersen’s eyebrow crept upward. “Have you ever tasted hákarl?”

“Me? Well, no. I’ve heard it’s an acquired taste.”

“Which is a euphemism for ‘tastes like chewing on the devil’s asshole.’”

“Really?” Law asked. “I heard shark was pretty good.”

“Putrefied shark?” Caspersen prodded.

“Wait, putrefied?”

She nodded. “Cut the head off, cut the shark open, empty the stomach cavity, bury it in gravel for months until it’s reached the right degree of, well, basically rot… Then, scrape the outer layers off and eat up.”

We were all cringing at the description, except Kayleigh and Wu.

“Well,” Kayleigh said with a shrug, “obviously, it’s not a first choice. But where these methods of preparation originated, their choices were pretty limited. Like ours.”

“You can also boil it,” Michelle noted. “Depending on the levels of toxins, cycles of boiling in clean water can achieve the same result.”

Law grimaced. “On second thought, MREs aren’t so bad.”

“Yes, they are,” Kayleigh contradicted. “And worse, they’re limited. We’re going to need to find a source of food. I’m not saying we have to eat Kepler rat now, but we should figure out if we can, in case we have to.”

“Kepler rat?” I repeated. “Is that what you’re calling it?”

“What? No, we haven’t classified it yet. It just…looks like a rat.”

“Speaking of!” Kayleigh interjected. “You’re the first one to discover an animal on Kepler.”

“You mean, the Thing?”

“Yes. So you get to pick the name.”

“I do?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a rule?” I wondered. I’d never heard anything of the sort.

“Well, no, not a rule. Just…” She shrugged. “You know, since you were the first one to find life, you should name it. Like an explorer or something, naming a new island.”

“This island tried to eat me,” I reminded her.

She grinned. “Well, you should have discovered an herbivore. But, seriously, what do you want to call it? Part of our mission is to classify the life-forms we find…so, start us out, Johnson.”

I hemmed and hawed for a long second. “Well…I don’t know.” The Thing wasn’t simply a remorseless predator; it was a bug-ugly amorphous blob that reeked to high heaven. It wasn’t the sort of thing you tribute-named after your favorite uncle or pet dog. It wasn’t the sort of thing that inspired awe and respect. It was just a loathsome terror. And what do you name a loathsome terror?

“Maybe play on a characteristic that really stood out to you?” Michelle suggested.

“Or where you first saw it,” Kayleigh put in.

I hesitated. “Sky Blob?”

They laughed—until they realized I was serious.

“Sky Blob?” Kayleigh repeated quizzically. “Well…”

Their expressions had been critique enough, so I waved the suggestion aside with, “I’m joking. But really, there’s not much to say about it…it was just a sort of shapeless, winged monster.”

“Monster might do,” Law offered.

“It’s kind of pejorative,” Michelle said.

“And juvenile.” I sniffed. The Thing was my monster, and if anyone was going to give it a ridiculous name, it was going to be me. Not Frat Boy.

“Yeah, unlike ‘Space Blob’…’cause that’s mature.”

I frowned at Law, correcting, “Sky.”

“At any rate,” Caspersen said, “you need to pick a name, Johnson, so you and Kim can get to work.”

This work, I supposed, must have been the reason Dr. Kimutai had wanted to speak with me earlier, although I’d not yet heard the details. “Oh. Well, hell, I can’t think of anything.”

“Just describe it,” Kayleigh suggested. “I mean, what would you call it, if someone asked you?”

This naming business was supposed to be an honor, but at the moment, it was feeling somewhat like a chore. “I don’t know,” I repeated. “I mean, it’s just a…a Thing.”

Law rolled his eyes, but Kayleigh and Michelle exchanged glances, and then shrugged.

“What the hell,” Kayleigh said. “’Thing’ it is.”

“Thing?” I murmured. It was the name I’d picked since the beginning, but I hardly expected it to stick.

“Yeah, it’s what we’ve all been calling it since you came back anyway,” Dr. Wu shrugged.

“Cool.” This isn’t so hard after all. “Maybe we could, you know, Latin-ize it?” If high school biology had taught me anything, it was that everything had a Latin name. “Thingus? Thingus Mortem?” My Latin was pretty much nonexistent, but I seemed to recall mortem was death. I had the idea that Thing of Death would be a pretty good name.

Kayleigh cringed, and Dr. Wu, though slightly more diplomatic, suggested simply, “Let’s go with Thing.”

“Okay.” Then, another thought occurred to me. “Hey, you know what? I saw the first vegetation too—back on the Thing’s mountain—the trees down in the valley? Maybe I can name them too?”

A collective groan sounded from the assemblage, and Kayleigh hastened to dissuade me.

“Actually, I don’t think you did. The lichens we found on the mountain? George discovered those right after we woke up.” George was George Robinson, one of the geologists.

“Oh,” I said with a touch more disappointment in my tone than I’d intended. “When did he find them?”

“Early,” Dr. Wu assured me. “Before you would have been able to see the trees.”

I fell silent, trying to wrap my head around the timeline.

“Anyway,” Caspersen said, “to business. Kim, have you had a chance to tell Johnson your plan yet?”