But there were other sounds down here, Aili realized—not echoing from afar, but nearby, in the direction the piscoid was swimming. Whistles and creaks and low, guttural groans, coming from multiple sources. She slowed her descent and checked her tricorder. Its sensors had limited ability to penetrate the water, but it was able to register a number of large shapes, maybe four meters long. What were they doing here? There was nothing to eat, save the lone bugeye.

And a lone Selkie.

She decided to change strategy, halting her pursuit and instead trying to boost her tricorder gain. The picture on its tiny screen couldn’t give her nearly as much informa tion down here as her full suite of senses could, but a later analysis of the data could be informative. From what she could tell, the creatures had fairly streamlined, torpedo-shaped bodies, but with several tentacles extending from the front, or what seemed to be the front. Their calls were growing closer now, and seemed to intensify in response to the bugeye’s keening—perhaps a hue and cry after prey, but it almost seemed like…

A new reading caught her eye. In her preoccupation with the large creatures ahead, she had been slow to notice the faint life reading registering behind her. That was puzzling, but such a weak reading was probably distant enough not to require her immediate attention, at least until she’d gotten a full scan of the creatures ahead.

Or so she thought until a tendril of fire tore across her thigh and she began to pass out….

“Aili? Wake up.”

She found herself deaf again, back in the confines of a tiny sheath of water with only the dead dryness of air around it. Weight pressed her against a hard surface. She was back in her hydration suit, back in the aquashuttle. Her vision focused on the burly figure above her—Ranul Keru, who was packing up a medkit. As chief of security, he was a trained medic.

“What happened?”

“Something stung you,” Vale told her. “When you suddenly swam off, we submerged and came after you. We saw you get attacked by some kind of jellyfish.”

“Jellyfish?”

“More or less,” Kekil said. “A large spherical scyphomedusan form with tendrils extending in all directions.” Now that the details of her last moments of consciousness were coming back, Aili realized that the weak life signs behind her had been due to the tenuousness of the creature, not its distance. The tricorders would have to be recalibrated.

“Venomous?” Aili asked.

“Not to worry,” Ranul Keru said. “Thanks to differences in biochemistry, the venom wasn’t as harmful to you as it probably is to the native life forms. And it only stung you a few times.”

“You stopped it?”

“We didn’t have to,” he replied, looking a bit nonplussed.

At her puzzled look, Vale elaborated. “We were trying to get to you, readying the tractor beams to pull it away, when a large, very fast fish of some sort dashed in straight as an arrow and gobbled the jellyfish thing right up.”

“And didn’t get stung?”

“There are aquatic species that are immune to jellyfish stings,” Kekil said. “Even some which take the stinging barbs and integrate them into their own anatomy as a defense. Obviously this fish was a natural predator of the medusans. It’s just lucky for us it came in at just that moment.”

Aili noticed Vale’s uncertain expression. “Commander?”

“Call me a cynic, but I’m not one to believe in luck. It’s an anomaly, like the presence of so many life forms around here where there’s nothing to feed on, nothing to draw them.”

“Except us,” Lavena said. “The fish with the large eyes certainly seemed curious.”

“Maybe,” Vale replied. “Anyway, Ensign, you should rest. Not enough you had to be the first person to go swimming in Droplet’s oceans, you had to be the first one to get attacked by a native critter too. Try to stop hogging all the excitement in the future, okay?”

CHAPTER T

HREE

U.S.S. TITAN, STARDATE 58513.8

“So how’s the fishing?” Chief Bralik asked as she settled down at the Blue Table with a drink and a bowl of tube grubs. Naturally the science department’s weekly informal gathering was filled with chatter about the discoveries on Droplet over the past few days, but Bralik had been kept busy surveying the rest of the system. The Blue Table gatherings were a great chance to take a break from one’s own, often insular work and connect with other points of view on the universe. Bralik was thus a regular member of the sessions, always keeping her ears open for new knowledge that could profit her and her fellow Ferengi.

“They aren’t fish,” Lieutenant Eviku told her. “There are no true vertebrates on this world.”

“Really?” Bralik leaned forward curiously. The Arkenite exobiologist’s bald, tapering skull and large, backswept pinnae appealed to her sense of aesthetics, so she enjoyed flirting with him, though he remained completely unaware of it. She wasn’t sure whether it was because Arkenite and Ferengi sexual cues were mutually unintelligible or if it was simply that Eviku was charmingly naive. But she chose not to press the issue. Like many in the crew, he had borne a deep sadness since the Borg invasion. He spoke of it to no one, but no doubt he had lost loved ones and would need time to heal.