“Yes, it’s bizarre. They’re bright orange, so Bralik nicknamed them ‘flaming idiot fish.’” They shared a laugh. It was nice to feel humor from Eviku, though it was all too brief.

“One small molluscoid with prehensile claws has been observed in contact with numerous small creatures,” he went on, “and it’s hard to say what they’re doing with them, since they’re not just eating them. Sometimes they just seem to movethings from one place to another. A few times we’ve seen a flying piscoid circling around, holding a smaller organism in its tentacles. In fact, we’ve seen them doing this not far from our own shuttles. It’s like they’re watching us—but if so, why bring other animals along for the flight?”

Deanna furrowed her brow. “Would you say these species are tool users? Like the way some animals use rocks to open shellfish and the like?”

“We’ve seen no evidence of that, or of nestbuilding behavior—none of the usual types of animal tool use. And these species don’t have nearly large enough brains for ab stract thought, not given the type of neurological structure found on Droplet.”

“Certainly they show no sign of language,” Y’lira added. “The sounds they make among themselves are basic—here I am, where are you, I’m large and dangerous, I’m small and submissive, food is here, danger is coming, I wish to mate, the usual.” Deanna chuckled at the cryptolinguist’s deadpan recital. “But some of them have been noted making odd vocal exchanges with the squales. Although the squales do most of the vocalizing.”

“Does it seem like a conversation, or like some sort of dispute—the squales warning the other forms off when their boundaries are violated?”

“Hard to say, since we can’t get close enough to see. But these species make sounds to the squales—and occasionally to the other animals they interact with—that they don’t make among themselves. So we have no referent for what they mean.”

“And does the same apply to the sounds the squales make to them?”

“The squales’ vocalizations are so complex that we really can’t say.” Y’lira gestured at the receiver in her ear as she mentioned the squale song.

Deanna perked up. “Are you analyzing them now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’d love to listen to some.” She put her hands on her belly. “Plus it’s good to expose a developing infant to music. It’s been fascinating to sense how her emotional state responds to different musical styles. I’d love to know how she responds to squale song. If it wouldn’t be a distraction, Eviku,” she added.

“No, Commander. I think I’d enjoy that.”

With a nod, Y’lira activated the speakers on her console. Flowing, echoing cries filled the lab, hypnotic in their complexity, uplifting in their beauty. Deanna drank them in, slowing her breathing to minimize the interference for little What’s-her-name, and striving to render herself passive so as not to impose her own impressions on the little one. She was just a receiver, open to the sounds from without and the emotions from within.

But before she could get a clear read from the baby, she was startled out of her meditative state by a new sound from behind her, a sharp, staccato twittering that clearly wasn’t from the speakers. Deanna opened her eyes to see Eviku and Y’lira staring at her with shock.

No, not at her—at the tank behind her. She turned. The “weather balloon” creature was not visibly more active, but there was no question that it was the source of the sounds.

“It hasn’t done that before,” Eviku said. He activated the tank’s scanners. “But its metabolism is rising. It’s coming out of its dormancy. Odd.”

“You think that’s odd?” Y’lira asked. “It’s speaking squale!”

“A sort of pidgin squale, actually,” Y’lira told the assembled department heads two hours later. “Like a very simplified version of the same catalogue of sounds.”

“Are you suggesting that it was actually answeringthe squales?” Ra-Havreii asked with skepticism. Aili Lavena, who had been down on the planet but had been summoned back to the ship for this urgent briefing, was annoyed by his tone at first. But she reminded herself of the perils of jumping to conclusions.

“We’re not just suggesting it,” Y’lira went on. “After it stopped, we played back the squale calls again. And at the exact same moment in the playback, it began making the exact same pattern of sounds. The sequence it emitted lasted nearly ten minutes, with no overall repetition.”

“And that’s not all,” Eviku put in. “The creature has suddenly begun to regenerate its flotation sac. And at the rate it’s regrowing, it should be airborne within two weeks at most. That’s after days of total inactivity, and from my analysis I’m convinced the creature could remain dormant for weeks and still do the same.”

“There’s only one explanation that fits what we’ve seen,” said Pazlar, who had shuttled up with Lavena. “When we nicknamed this creature a weather balloon, we were more right than we knew. Because that seems to be what it literally is. It drifts around the sky, taking measurements with its various senses, storing what it learns. Remembering it precisely, mechanically. Eviku’s scans of its neural activity—now that it has some—show its brain is tailor-made for that, almost like a digital computer.”

“It gathers data until struck by lightning,” Eviku said, “or maybe until some other factor causes it to descend. It floats atop the water until the squales find it. At their signal, it plays back its data encoded as sound patterns. Only then, when its data has been downloaded, does it begin to regrow its flotation sac.”

“What you’re saying,” Riker replied slowly, “is that the squales manufactured this creature.”

“That they bred it, yes.”

“And probably the other anomalous species we’ve observed,” Pazlar said. “It explains the strange behaviors that have no survival benefit. They’re performing tasks for the squales. Harvesting foodstuffs, carrying things around. Even swimming into the squales’ beaks when they’re called. Maybe even doing more complex work. The molluscoids with prehensile digits could give the squales the fine manipulative capability they lack, explaining how they were able to achieve a lot of this engineering.”