"Time," Jessica whispered, and put a capacitor dart just behind its head. It spasmed once, and then again, and sank.
"Move it!" Justin was already clambering into the water. "We don't want this thing to drown!"
Coleen McAndrews was right after him. "It humped its way over rocks—we saw it out of the water for more than thirty seconds. I think we can make it." The tarp was around the eel in a moment. The children started to plunge in with them. Jessica waved them back. "Watch out for the egg sac!" she yelled. "Stay ashore."
They rolled it out of the pond. Its skin was surprisingly spongy, and oozed water. It was the work of a moment to attach the eel and its roll of protective sheeting to one of the dolphin slings beneath Skeeter VI. Jessica clambered aboard.
"We'll get another skeeter up here," she yelled above the growing whine of the turbines. "Get us an egg sample and meet me at Aquatics."
"There in ten minutes," Justin promised. She whooped and raised her hand, and he slapped it hard. Their eyes shone.
"Got one, dammit," Jessica said.
Ten seconds later Skeeter VI was up in the air, and plunging toward Avalon Town.
Chapter 2
MOTHER EEL
How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
LEWIS CARROLL, Alice in Wonderland
The skeeter soared. Evan's sure hands took it up so rapidly it seemed the world deflated beneath them. The acceleration was a little much for Jessica, but then, that was Evan. Damned if she'd let him know he'd upset her. She grabbed the horizontal hand bar set above the instrument panel, and hoped he wouldn't notice her white knuckles.
She patched through to Biomed, down at Avalon town. "Chaka. Got something for you. Get Hipshot and Quanda out of pen number three soonest."
"Is that the eel that everyone's talking about?"
"Betcha."
"I expected something like this. We're draining the salt water out of the tank, and flooding it with the Miskatonic. "
"I want to have your child. Can we have full diagnostics in five minutes?"
"We aim to please."
The skeeter dove, nearing free fall as it plunged toward the camp. The arc of Avalon Town, twice its original size, spread out below them. All of its corrals and lodgings, shops and quilted fields screamed up at them at gut-wrenching speed.
And there, near the Biomed dome, were the three saltwater tanks. Luckily, there were no sick animals at the moment, but Dr. Mubutu had flown Quanda and Hipshot in from the Surf's Up lagoon, giving them some privacy in hopes that they might breed. Someone tall and black—it had to be Little Chaka—was below them at the pens, but she didn't really have time to think. Evan was whooping as he dove in, thoroughly enjoying her no doubt pasty-faced reaction to his aerobatics.
Just wait, Evan, she swore silently. I'll get you for this.
The saltwater tanks were raised five feet above the ground and sunk six feet beneath it. The pen was drained, and the Miskatonic was pumping in at the rate of three hundred liters a minute. Skeeter VI came to a hovering halt, its tail rotors foaming the water.
Little Chaka waited on the white-tiled lip of the tanks. Jessica untied the cargo line. The roll of foaming sheeting loosened, and twelve feet of eel splashed into the shallow water. She jumped down to stand beside Chaka and waved the skeeter away.
The eel lay at the bottom of the tank, barely covered as the water level slowly climbed. "I think it's just stunned," Little Chaka yelled. He knelt next to the pen to examine the dark eel. "Looks to be moving water through the gills. Let's add a little oxygen." He whispered to his comm card. There were more bubbles from the air inputs at the bottom of the tank. "That ought to take care of her."
Little Chaka Mubutu was almost six and a half feet tall, dark-skinned but with the narrow features more often found in whites. He looked quite unlike his adopted father. Dr. Mubutu—Big Chaka. Together they were the colony's premier biologists. Dr. Mubutu was still at home, at the marine research facility west of Surf's Up.
"Nothing else to do," he said. "We don't know enough to help."
"I hope she lives," Jessica said.
"So do I. She looks tough. Leave it to Mother Nature. I'm going in.
Coming?"
"Let me get my kit." Skeeter VI buzzed down to a hexagonal concrete landing pad next to Biomed. Jessica grabbed her belt pouch as it shut down. The still turning rotors fluttered her hair in all directions, but she didn't notice. She hurried into the building.
Little Chaka had the holos up and running by the time she entered Aquatics. The station's west wall disappeared as the cameras and tank sensors displayed data from the churning, foaming tank. Chaka sat in an oversized swivel chair, the keyboard on his lap. He waved toward a more normal sized chair. "What do we have here?" Chaka asked.
"You should know better than me."
"File name?"
"Mother Eel."
"Cassandra?" Chaka said softly. "Let's see what we know about Mother Eel."
"Integrating files. Done. Records now available," the computer's cool, familiar voice answered. Chaka's version of Cassandra's neutral voice had been given a lyrical New Guinea lilt.
The holo divided into two images. One remained with the eel, and the other replayed the skeeter's-eye view of its heroic spawning odyssey.
"What do we have... ?" Chaka whispered. He watched the tail drop off, and chuckled.
"What happened there?" Jessica asked.
"The Amazon is glacier water, poor in minerals. Mama Eel is making sure her babies have food."
"Cannibals?"
"No, this is a salmon trick, Jessica. The salmon of Earth swam upstream and died. Mama here only leaves her tail, but it's the same trick. Tail will rot. Parasites in the tail will multiply drastically as tissue decomposes. Insects come to dine. Water boils with insects and worms and such. Hatchlings have their dinner, won't they, Mama?"
Outside, the clouded sky cleared for a moment, and Tau Ceti glared through the Aquatics building's domed ceiling, dimming the holos. The ceiling polarized, and the holos brightened.
Slowly, the eel began to twitch again.
"Let's get a closer look," Little Chaka murmured.
The eel ballooned up before them. Its skin disappeared as Cassandra obligingly bounced ultrasound through the water, and then adjusted the scans. "Ah ha—"
The door burst open, and Zack Moskowitz stormed in.
Avalon's chairman was about fifty-five Earth years old, thirty-eight Avalon, and a slightly heavier gravity hadn't been kind to him. His shoulders stooped, and his face was deeply lined. The mustache and eyebrows that gave him an unfortunate resemblance to Groucho Marx were thinner now, speckled with white. Care and woe, stress and responsibility had bent him as if physical burdens.
"Jessica!" he roared. "I gave you a direct order to kill that thing."
"Why?" she asked mildly. "And by the way: hi, Zack."
"Standing Order Municipal Rule One-four-two. ‘Until adjudged otherwise, all new species are to be considered hostile.' This is the first time something this large has returned to the island. It has pronounced amphibious tendencies."
"So does my niece, but that doesn't make her a grendel."
"Look at this." Chaka slid into a swivel chair, lacing his thick dark fingers behind his head. The eel's head became orca-sized, revealing a mouthful of tiny, even, sharp-looking teeth. "Mama eats small fish. She might take a chomp out of your leg if you tromped on her. Sorry to disillusion you, Zack, but you wouldn't be her idea of lunch."