Now, though, he had science to talk about, so that kept him engaged. “There isn’t enough calcium in the ecosystem to allow for full bony skeletons,” Eviku explained to her in his slow, thoughtful voice. “The highest life forms, including the piscoids, are chordates with cartilaginous pseudovertebrae. The majority of forms are invertebrates of various types, though. Even many of the chordates have tentacles or chitinous exoskeletons of the sort generally seen in invertebrate species.”

“What about the floating islets?” Bralik asked. “They’re made partly of calcium carbonate, aren’t they?”

“Yes. We’ve also detected small concentrations of calcium in some other creatures, usually in cutting or grinding mouthparts.”

“Teeth?”

“Hard to call them that exactly, since they’re not set in jaws and not made of dentin. More like chitinous beaks or plates strengthened with calcium.”

“But the floaters have the highest calcium levels we’ve found in any organism here,” Melora Pazlar put in. Eviku turned to face her politely, his gaze not lingering on Bralik. She took it in stride and simply appreciated the elegant taper of his cranial lobes. “We’re pretty sure it’s for the reason Torvig proposed, that they collect and concentrate decayed matter from the other life that lives on them.”

Ensign Vennoss, a Kriosian female from stellar cartography, asked, “What have you learned from the sample you collected?” Bralik grinned, recalling the amusing account of how the sample had been obtained. In all her years as a geologist, she’d never sunk an island.

“Well, first off,” Pazlar said, “after collecting the sample, we took a look at the insides of the, uh, wounded islet. It was made up of polyp shells all the way through, but the interior ones were empty except for air. It seems the living creatures’ bodies form an airtight seal that’s lacking in the dead shells further inward.”

“Except there are some airtight walls,” Eviku added, “dividing the interior into about a dozen air chambers. We believe that evolved so the islets don’t sink fully when there’s a breach in the outer layer of live polyps.”

“So how did the air get there in the first place?” asked Zurin Dakal. The young Cardassian ensign had been a regular at the Blue Table from the start, even though he had spent most of his tour aboard Titanin operations. He had been included as the protégé of Jaza Najem, Titan’s now-departed science officer. Jaza had been lost to a time warp over a year ago, and Dakal had subsequently decided to honor Jaza’s wish that he switch his specialty to the sciences. After months of study aboard Titanand a post-invasion leave spent taking crash courses at Starfleet Academy, Dakal was now a sensor analyst.

“Same way it gets into Lavena’s swim bladder,” Eviku told him. “It’s extracted from the water by the gills. It then gets pumped into the shells of the dead inner creatures and keeps the whole thing afloat.”

“But there are still gaps in what we know,” Pazlar said. “For instance, we observed some smaller floater colonies living beneath the surface, more active and motile than the large ones. So why do the large ones rise to the surface, when it kills off all the polyps that end up out of the water?”

“What we’re trying to do in the lab is to recreate the conditions of their spawning season in hopes of accelerating our sample’s growth,” Eviku said. “It’s a challenge figuring out what those conditions are.” Bralik enjoyed the smile he gave, even though it was directed at the exciting mystery rather than the exciting Ferengi female seated across from him.

“Sounds like you’re in the same boat I am,” Bralik said, undaunted. “So to speak. This whole system is a mystery.”

“How so?” Chamish asked.

She kept her gaze on Eviku as she replied, though. “All this clutter of asteroids. Normally in a system of this age, most of it would’ve been cleared out by now, condensed into planets or flung away by their gravity.”

“That’s if there were large Jovians in the system,” Pazlar replied. “New Kaferia only has a couple of Neptune-sized ice giants.”

“Which is part of the mystery. This system is loaded with heavy elements, including all those stable or semi-stable transuranics—yurium, celebium, rodinium, timonium. Most systems with that much heavy stuff produce big, heavy planets, superterrestrials and superjovians. The planets in this system just don’t fit its mineralogical profile.”

“Could the abundance of water in the system be a factor?” Dakal asked.

Bralik shook her head. “Water’s common in any system. Beyond the snow line, out where the star’s heat doesn’t dissipate it, ice is one of the most abundant minerals you’ll find.”

“She’s right,” Pazlar told him. “Droplet must have formed in the outer system as another ice giant, then migrated inward, losing its hydrogen and helium. It’s not uncommon. But,” she went on, nodding in Bralik’s direction, “that kind of migration should have cleared out some of the asteroidal debris.”

“Any evidence of past artificial intervention?” Dakal suggested. “Could there have been a planet that was blown apart?”

Bralik shook her head. “The geology of the asteroids we’ve been able to scan isn’t consistent with that. If they’d been part of a planet, they would’ve differentiated—they’d show the signatures of the different planetary strata they’d been part of, like some being pure metal and others pure rock. At most, some of these asteroids were parts of bigger asteroids.”

“You look disappointed, Ensign,” Pazlar said to the Cardassian youth.

“No, it’s just…it would have been interesting to find signs of intelligence.”

“We can’t find intelligent life everywhere we look. And we’ve got enough interesting puzzles to solve here even without intelligence being involved.”

“Besides,” Chamish said, “we haven’t ruled out intelligent life on Droplet. Our shuttles’ audio sensors have recorded some intriguingly complex calls, though nothing the translators have been able to interpret yet. Ensign Lavena suspects they come from the large tentacled animals she detected on her initial dive.”