The team went after an EM creature, intact. Alex had tracked thousands of them with the big radio antenna. In a valley system near the Eye, the EM signals had begun to ebb away. Then one winked out.

“Dead?” Nigel asked him.

“Prob’ly. Didn’t move for ten days. Then we lost its signal. Weak, for sure.”

“Does its body heat show up in the infrared?”

“Did. Doesn’t now.”

It took a week to reach a shipwide consensus, then another to plan the raid. The all-volunteer party dropped down, grabbed the alien, and boosted up—all in less than two hours.

They brought the big polyflex sack into the sterilized bay. The EM creature lay in it like a Tinkertoy monster that had fallen on its side, legs at impossible angles. In the blazing uniform bay light the thing had no shadow. It did not move. The team of sixteen wheeled the specially made cart slowly, carefully, into position among the crowded banks of sensors and diagnostics and gleaming racks of surgical instruments.

Nigel watched intently through the big viewport. He could make out Nikka in a stark white sealsuit. She pulled at the roller platform on the cart and the thing inside slumped into a better position. They were all drilled and sure. They moved quickly to position the instruments around the EM creature. Then they sliced the bag.

As the scalpel went in, the sack exhaled a thin mist. The team drew back for an instant and then, sheepish, watched the dust settle to the deck. The bay air was Isis normal, but without the fine sulfur-rich haze. Nikka sawed away part of the sack and stepped back, handing the polyflex to an assistant behind her. I hope it doesn’t need that wind and dust to live, she said over General Comm.

This thing’s dead already, came from elsewhere in the bay. And the assembled specialists began. For years they had waited to see something like this, and now the waxy skin of the EM lay glistening under the piercing lights. A murmur came from them.

Nigel breathed deeply, not noticing the crowd around him. The air in this corridor was as flat and pure and dead as it was in the bay, BioSci had ordered a clean, positive-pressure balance all around the bay, just in case. He reached up and flicked the comm monitor perched on his ears, and tuned for all channels coming from the work zone.

Careful, careful there, Andreov, peel that back as though it were your daughter’s hymen.

thick-skinned isn’t the word look at that like shoe leather

X rays look good. Complicated bone structure I’d say.

Some kind of tripod spine running down into the underbelly see but what’s that big long thing up there, must be in the head

yeah that’s parabolic, Jeffreys said that on the boost-up, a longitudinal parabolic antenna fitted into the rectangular frame in the head, so it can pick up microwaves all along the long axis

must be what ’at bone’s for, housin’ the nerve endings for its radio sight, picks it all up an’ ’er’s a processor some’ere in ’ere to shape up the input for ’at funny-shaped brain

okay the spectral stuff is coming in on these tissues; nothing big so far pretty stringy stuff really

chem says the flash on that first sample is just plain ole oxy-binding iron hemoglobin wrapped up in a corpuscle blanket, same biochem patent the vertebrate line holds on Earth

this stuff’s chromatophores just like I said and McWilliams said was bullshit, remember but lookit it respond see

man look it jumps up like that from smooth to prickly must be papillae in the skin

maybe helps flick off the dust

it’s a reflex probably not conscious, just like shivering is for us

you keep ridin’ my ass ’bout that I’ll oh you think so huh look at that sked we don’t get to those incisions for half hour at least, so you can wait for your microspecs until Kovaldy makes his cut

I know we got to move fast can’t tell if this thing is clinically dead after all what’s it mean we’ve been through all that before only now looking at the goddamn thing jeezus it’s impressive so big the 3D doesn’t really make you feel it but still I think we ought to hold back until the superficial team is through we don’t know what sort of neural patterns we’re going to hit

hey that’s some kinda sac you’ve

sir there’s fluid over there on team A’s incision lots of it they say

caught it fine only can’t figure what

look at that pH

like nothing I ever saw it’s a metallic salt a whole big bag of it carried up under that

watchat

got the needle okay

standard tissues here high water-storage ability just as we expected

no, nobody touches the head or anything spinal yet didn’t you agree on that when we laid out the

hand me the other one I can’t cut see this stuffs like leather

flaps are all over the slit there, you can see on the low-E X ray, see sir I think that’s a mouth only the flaps are down over it, there are teeth back in there

awful damn sharp but what’s it eat

Avery, get those legs braced better no we don’t go in yet I don’t want it to move is all, tell Kajima we’re ’bout ready

clean at up ’fore you

get your lens on this I’m making a cut like so up and across

hold the bowl just in case

Nikka you got a hand I

something tough here I think I

Hey

Jesus

’at’s not living tissue at all Sam

little threads of it I thought we’d hit some nerves by this time but this stuff jeez get chemsamp over here

tough innit

grab that

you know what this is it’s silicon, right, strings of silicon with boron in it of all things

I don’t get it there are look it’s all laced through this living tissue here maybe some intrusion

like cancer maybe?

hey Singh we’re getting some weak electroneural noise from the head I think we oughta step down till we

it’s gangliated, that silicon, part of the bones maybe?

somethin’ like a belly here, let me see that scope shot yeah it’s empty see, just maintaining pressure and notice how it’s linked to that tangle of stuff, for sure that’s an intestine, all stacked funny how regular they are innit perfect design for getting max digestive surface for the space you want, concentric

yeah, spherical shells instead of the swarm of ropes we’ve got in our gut

a lot better engineering you ask me

no we must have separate samples of each, I know they’re coming fast now freeze-dry or vac-dry them every other one of them if you have to but don’t fall behind I told Ladunda we should have had more backup on that but would he of course not well do what you

low metabolic rate they got though listen with that low a blood O₂ you’d be a corpse

this one is already

well sure but not because of that there must’ve been something else

it stopped moving jess like the rest in the valley

shit now look just four centimeters away from that boron-silicon string there’s that look at the lines that’s phosphorus for sure, lots of it, all mixed in with the silicon

I think we oughtta stop right here until we get this straightened out

it must be rotting now already, you want to crack your suit and give it a whiff just go right ahead

come on

we’ll have to vac you afterward of course but for science y’know you should be proud

stop gawking Kafafahin and fix that

put a potential drop across it you get funny characteristics see

what are you doing, Jeffreys?

the electrical characteristics of these silicon threads they’re damn funny in fact you asked me I’d say it’s a transistor, a lot of ’em

yeah that’s what makes the thread flexible, see it’s made up of little platelets all strung together, just a couple millimeters long max and they have some give in ’em

don’t get it

it’s a transistorized neural net, that’s why you can’t find any nerves in those tissues, that’s not bone or anything it’s a bunch of goddamn chips carrying info back an’ forth