But Aili set such thoughts aside after a moment, for it was such a pleasure to be swimming free and clear in the open ocean, unencumbered by clothing. The sense of freedom, of respite from the stifling hydration suit, was delicious. She rejoiced in it, pushing herself faster and faster with her powerful long limbs. She arched her spine back and forth, bouncing in and out of the water, gaining more energy with each bounce. Finally she drove herself down several meters, then angled up and kicked with all her might, adding speed to buoyancy, the ocean’s rippling ceiling plummeting to meet her. As she breached the surface at an angle, she slammed her arms down to her sides, webbed hands flat, for an extra boost.

And then she was free of the waves, a ballistic body in the empty air, sparkling droplets cascading from her flesh as she arced in free fall above the warm blue sea, twisting about her axis to take in the view in all directions. In the distance, she saw Riker in the gig, rising to his feet at the sight of her, no longer afraid to look. Reaching the zenith of her arc, she hovered for an endless instant above the sea, its surface stretching out beneath her, defining infinity…and then gravity had its way and the wet, welcoming blue engulfed her again, the exhilaration of flirting with the sky giving way to the joy of being once more hugged to the bosom of Mother Sea.

She made several more dives into the air as she swam, and not just for pleasure; her high, spinning leaps gave her an overhead view of the ocean, letting her see farther than she could from the surface or below. This was how Selkies hunted for fish or kept watch for predators—less of a concern now than it had once been, but still an issue, for even the Selkies had not tamed the majority of their near-global ocean, and the Federation presence was limited out of respect for their cultural autonomy. And here on Droplet, as Aili was painfully aware, the threat of predators was very real.

In the distance, to the southeast, she saw a hump of darkness in the water, a spume of turbulence. On her next leap, she saw the water settling but still foaming with a trail of bubbles. She recognized the signs: some massive predator had risen up, probably under a school of piscoids or similar creatures, its gaping mouth taking in dozens of them along with a great mass of water and air, the latter of which now drained from the edges of its maw in a torrent of bubbles. The creature would probably circle and rise again, taking several more bites from the sky before it was sated. Aili angled her course to give it a wide berth. Starfleet scientific curiosity was all well and good, but she was swimming alone and buck naked in an alien ocean, so for the moment she was perfectly happy not to learn about any more local predators.

Soon Aili began to hear familiar music echoing through the water, the successive repetitions of varying intensity indicating that the sound waves were oscillating around the deep sound channel, some waves following longer paths around the channel axis than others and taking longer to reach her ears. She swam down toward it, leaving the surface behind. She began her own tentative song; her laryngeal muscles could mimic more than humanoid speech, and now she gave her best approximation of a recurring pattern the translators had identified in the calls of the squales’ various probe creatures. The computer’s best guess was that it was a call for attention, a signal of readiness to communicate. But while she replicated the tones, she made sure to project it in her own voice, in hopes they would understand that her intent was to make contact rather than to deceive.

When she heard a call the computer had tentatively tagged as a response, she stopped swimming, still a hundred meters or so above the channel axis, and repeated her own declaration, waiting for the squales to come to her. But it was a bugeye piscoid that came first. She floated placidly as it swam around her, letting it see every bit of her. At the same time, she felt a series of sharp, loud clicks slicing through the water, sonar pulses taking acoustical images. Were the squales themselves generating them, or was it another species of sensor animal? Either way, she was glad she hadn’t followed Riker’s suggestion to hide a communicator. He was as open-minded as any human she’d ever met, but he still had his unconscious human biases, such as a tendency to think primarily in terms of sight. These sonar pulses, if the squales themselves produced them, would let them see right through her, leaving her far more naked to them than she had been to her crewmates’ eyes. She calmed herself, keeping her metabolism low so as not to appear threatening. Their sonar would detect a racing heart.

The bugeye retreated, no doubt returning to give its report. She felt a murmur of squale calls, not distant but quiet, like a huddled conversation. Then for a time there was only darkness and anticipatory silence. The white noise of the ocean, with tenuous hints of movement on the edge of her awareness, possibly only the ghosts of her hopes and fears.

A faint blue light glimmered before her. At first she thought it might be her mind playing tricks, but then it grew steadily brighter, clearer. It was some kind of bioluminescent creature, round and clear-shelled, with arcs of blue and green light chasing down the curves of its internal structure. A squale spotlight, perhaps, sent to give them a better look at her? Or maybe a beacon of some sort? Were its photophores flickering in some kind of meaningful pattern she was supposed to respond to? An intelligence test? She moved her feet gingerly, easing closer but trying not to scare it off. It continued its approach, thousands of tiny clear cilia shimmering as they caught the light, breaking it into a diffraction spectrum of blues and greens. (Red light was rarely found at these depths, since the water swallowed it up over any distance.) Now Aili could see the intricate helical twists in its internal structure, and she wondered if the squales had somehow bred that beauty into it or if it had been natural. They used bioengineering to make tools, but did they make art as well? She reached toward it, not wanting to risk damaging the fragile-seeming creature, but wanting to touch it ever so gently to ensure it was real….

Then something grabbed her from behind, not gently at all. Multiple, muscular somethings that gripped her tightly and clung to her skin with dozens of small suckers. Three of them pinned her legs together and her arms against her sides, hard enough to crush the breath from her if she still had any. The fourth wrapped around her head, wrenching it back and muffling her senses, and she didn’t doubt it was strong enough to snap her neck. As the tentacles dragged her downward, Aili realized the bioluminescent creature hadn’t been an intelligence test but a stupidity test, and she’d tested strongly positive. How could a Selkie not re member that enticing lights in the depths, if not intended as mating signals, were used to lure in prey?

Aili was being dragged down swiftly, which was fortunate, since the tight grip of the tentacles was smothering most of her gill surfaces and she needed the rapid flow of water across the rest to keep her conscious. She felt a broad, sharp beak jabbing into her back, probing her. It confirmed that she was in the grip of a squale. The four-meter chordates were capable of greater stealth than she’d anticipated—and possibly greater aggression. That beak could tear massive chunks from her flesh. She assumed, though, that if that had been their goal, it would have happened already. For now, they wanted her alive—but she got the message from that beak that was now nipping curiously at her backside. If she tried to resist them, she was lunch.