Chapter Eighteen

OUR ENCOUNTER WITH the mysterious, body snatching life-form by the river caused a fair measure of consternation among our party. But there was a sense of adventure and victory in the tale of our escape too.

The story reflected well on Kim for his courage and forbearance, and Kayleigh for her courage and steady nerves. But, without a doubt, Matt’s star shone the brightest. Despite my noting that not one but both of his shots had missed, Caspersen went so far as a “good work” and clap on the back. Not much from anyone else, but accolades from her. And everyone, in their own way, was effusive with praise.

Matt saved the day.

We’d all have been carried off to who knows what end, but for Matt.

Gosh, what luck that Matt heard it creeping around the camp—what luck!

It was more than a little hard to swallow, but I tried to be a good sport, mostly because there was some nugget of truth to it. If not for Frat Boy—Matt—noticing our unwelcome guest, Dr. Kimutai likely would have wound up some monster’s lunch. And even though Matt had missed—both times—he’d still eked out a victory.

One source of consolation, minor though it was, was that Kayleigh managed to work some sort of magic with my ankle wrap. It still hurt, of course, but I could almost forget about it as long as I applied no pressure.

Then, banishing Dr. Kim and me to sick bay, Kayleigh and Dr. Wu got to work analyzing the needle.

I took the opportunity to nap and woke to excited chatter sometime later. They’d figured out that the weapon our evening interloper had plunged into Isaac’s neck was a spine, like a rather larger-than-normal porcupine quill. It still carried a trace of the original owner’s tissue. But the excitement among the scientists was that the poison had been applied to the tip.

“There’s nothing in this quill to secrete or release toxins,” Kayleigh explained. “The sedative was absolutely added after the fact, deliberately, from some external source.”

“Incredible. The creature is not only using tools, but creating weapons,” Dr. Kimutai marveled.

“That it’s then putting in your neck,” I felt it necessary to remind him. Their delight at the idea of a tool-using, poison-wielding beast was downright ghoulish.

“Yes, but what intelligence. What ability. Intelligent alien life—we have discovered intelligent alien life.”

“More like it discovered us. And if it’s that smart, that means it’ll be that damned much harder to kill.”

They shook their heads at that. “True,” Dr. Wu agreed. “But think of what we’ll learn, simply observing it.”

“This may in fact be the most important discovery in human history,” Dr. Kimutai nodded.

*

IT WAS SOME hours later before our crew of suicidal researchers cleared Dr. Kim. The agent used was powerful, would have taken some time to take effect—no doubt, the reason for waiting until nightfall, when he was already asleep—and would wear off completely in a few days.

Which, somehow, added to their morbid fascination with the monster and its ability to choose a nonlethal weapon. And since Kim was in the sick ward with me, I had to endure the full nerd fest.

By time dinner rolled around, I was so sick of hearing about it that I was genuinely happy to see Matt. Even after he greeted me with, “How you holdin’ up, Cap?”

But Matt wasn’t alone in treating me as if I was some sort of invalid. Over the next week or so, I would suffer through more infuriatingly solicitous inquiries to my well-being than a person could reasonably be expected to tolerate.

It wasn’t only the concerned queries though. It was Lieutenant Cohen stopping by to talk shop, despite the fact that our careers, contacts, and experiences were separated by a good decade, and we barely knew each other. It was Caspersen popping in to give me status updates: Granges was still picking up the professor’s signal, Dr. Wu’s observation of the mole was going well, Dr. Kimutai had figured how to neutralize Plankton J, and so on and so forth. It was Kayleigh, stopping by to expound on every tedious detail of her and Dr. Wu’s research. It was Matt, bringing me water or a meal, and lingering to make some of the most awkward conversation that ever a mortal man had attempted.

The odd thing, though, was that while they damn near drove me crazy, I did appreciate their efforts. I was stuck in sick bay, now by myself after Dr. Kimutai got the last all clear. And for all the internal griping I’d done back at the river about the tedium of my day-to-day, being stuck in a sterile space cube put it all in perspective. I was damned lucky to be alive.

And their insistence on stopping by to chat illustrated another point. I was damned lucky to be with a crew like this. Even, I admitted in my lowest moments, Matt.

So although I really couldn’t say it interested me, I made an effort to remain engaged as Dr. Kimutai explained why Plankton J caused bowel irritation in humans. I made an effort to overlook the use of “Cap” in Matt’s conversation. And I tried my best to care about the mountain mole Kayleigh and Wu were monitoring.

Still, I was beyond glad when Kayleigh declared I could start venturing out of the ship, albeit with assistance. The first day, she helped me out to where Patel, Evans, and Robinson, the crew geologists, were working. Out in the sunlight on an open plateau, as near as I could tell, they were sifting rocks and rock dust. I’m sure there was more to it than that, but I couldn’t determine what.

Regardless, they were decent enough babysitters in their own way; after an exchange of pleasantries, they promptly ignored me. And, aside from the occasional joke, I did the same with them. I quickly learned two things—the first was that, somehow, it was less boring to sit around with nothing to do in the open air than inside. And the second, that geologists, if this sample was anything to go by, had no sense of humor. Even my “unearthing clues about Kepler” geology joke left them unfazed.

The next day, remarking that she’d heard I was “quite the joker,” Kayleigh left me with Kim. Unlike my geologist keepers, Dr. Kim seemed downright pleased to see me—and determined to keep me abreast of everything he was doing. I learned more about collecting rainwater that afternoon than I imagined possible. It was a long day.

But that was nothing compared to what fate had in store for me. The following day, it rained from dawn until dusk. Dr. Kimutai was thrilled because he’d wrapped up his preparations for capturing rainwater the day before, so the timing was perfect. I was less thrilled because that meant I was stuck with Kayleigh.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. Other than her bedside manner, I did. But Kayleigh was even more conversational than Dr. Kimutai had been. Which generally wouldn’t have been a bad thing either. But today, she was examining slides of mountain moleskin shavings. She’d already expounded at length on the leathery, long-lasting nature of the creature’s skin. Other than the ducts for cleaning, this outer coating was essentially dead skin. But it was also capable of healing from injury and expanding as the mole grew.

“That comes down to the blood,” she explained. “You know how we form scabs?”

I shrugged. I knew, of course, that we did. I was less clear on the how.

“Well, the process seems to be very similar for them. Here, you see this?”

She brought a sample of skin over for me to examine. I frowned at it and then her. It looked like nothing more than a rough patch of dark leather.

“See the scar tissue, here and here?” She indicated the rough patches I had noticed. “At some point, something damaged the mole’s skin. Unlike our skin, though, the mole’s is essentially dead. There is no regeneration, like how our skin heals. When it’s formed, it’s formed. But its blood acts almost exactly like ours does.”

“That’s…great.” I nodded. She seemed pretty excited about the revelation, so it seemed the right response. My attempt at feigned interest didn’t fool her though.

She eyed me curiously and finished with, “At any rate, the blood clots when exposed. My guess is the wound-healing process is the same, or similar, to ours. But instead of living tissue, it builds dead tissue.”

“Interesting.”

She laughed. “I hope you’re more convincing in the field than here.”

“What?”

“When you’re on a mission, undercover, or whatever. You lie as convincingly there as you are now, and you’re a dead man.”

“That’s a little more ‘spy’ than ‘Ranger.’ But I’m not lying, exactly.”

“Exactly?”

“Well, at all. It’s just…I mean, it’s interesting and all, but you know what you’re talking about, and I don’t, really. So it’s more interesting to you.”

“Right,” she said, bemused. “At any rate, you don’t have to stay, you know. You’re welcome to if you want. But if this is boring you, I can help you back to sick bay.”

“No,” I protested, as much because I was keen to avoid medical solitary confinement as anything else. “It’s not. I’m just…not really big on touching a dead thing’s skin, you know?”

She laughed again. “That’s right. I had forgotten what a wuss you were about that.”

I frowned, and for a moment, we both fell silent. “But, uh, what about when it’s growing? The mole, I mean. How does it keep from bursting its skin as it gets bigger?” If I was going to pretend to be interested, I was obviously going to have to put up a better show of it.

This seemed to do the trick. “That’s a good question, actually,” she responded. “When the creature is young, it’s in the egg pod, like the one we found. Its skin is thin, very thin, and still growing at this point.” She looked up from her equipment. “Here, I’ll show you. We bored a tiny hole into its pod and moved it under the overhang of Weidner’s room, so we could observe its development. Come on; it should be mostly out of the rain. We can take a look at it.”

I tried not to groan. Apparently, I had been too convincing because she was downright beaming with excitement. “Oh, yeah. I haven’t seen the baby mole yet.”

She beamed. “You’re going to love this. You know how the parent is so dark? The baby is a wan pinkish-gray. The color must develop later—whether it’s all at once, or if it continues to darken as the creature ages, is one of the things I’m trying to figure out. And, here, let me help you. There. At any rate, one thing to notice…”