Which meant she would have to overcome her fear of him. A shudder ran up her spine. In a panicked thought, she again considered going after her suit. But if she left him now, he might move to some place where she would never find him before she had to leave OceanLab. It was now or never.
He drew back as her extended finger approached him, but he was in a cul-de-sac. She hesitated for a moment, a heartbeat away from contact, and then clenched her jaw tight and stroked Oscar’s face. With one quivering finger she lightly traced the furrow between his bulging eyes. To her surprise, it was not as bad as she had anticipated. He was not at all slimy; his skin had the texture of fine leather, soft yet firm. She kept cooing to him, mouthing inanities in a tone that would put a baby to sleep or inspire playful thoughts in a grown man.
Oscar seemed to relax, just a bit at first. His skin seemed less firm, less tense. She stroked behind his brow ridges. He seemed to enjoy this, moved forward a bit. Eventually he slid a tentacle out from his hiding place and touched her hand. Jeanette winced inwardly, but tried not to let her revulsion show. His suckers pulsed against the skin on the back of her hand, but didn’t cling. The tentacle moved along her forearm and encircled it, gently exploring, latching on briefly and then releasing. Then to Jeanette’s horror he suddenly shot out of his hole and grabbed on to her arm with all eight tentacles.
This time she instinctively recoiled, trying to push herself away from the animal, but there was nothing to push against. Her heart pounded, raising the throbbing ache she felt in the wounds she had received from the sea urchin spines. The lab rotated around her, but her concentration was on the small dark cephalopod attached to her arm. Oscar’s golden eyes locked on to her gaze, alive with interest, pupils so dilated they were almost round. Often she had noticed Oscar’s eyes tracked independently, giving him the goofy appearance of a half-wit, but for a moment, she felt she was looking into the eyes of an old wizened man. The classic painting of Albert Einstein came to her mind, eyes that hinted of intelligence almost beyond human imagining. Then just as quickly he was again Oscar, her octopus friend, looking around and exploring his environment with his eyes the way he always did.
He was a very young octopus, and as yet not very large. His head seemed disproportionately large compared to photographs she’d seen of terrestrial octopi, but when he fanned himself out he was not much more than two meters across, tentacle tip to tentacle tip. Nevertheless, once Jeanette had convinced herself she could cope with having the sea creature clinging to her arm, she became nervous about his strength. She had seen him rip apart lobsters and huge Australian crayfish; he could just as easily do the same to her forearm. In a vain attempt to coax him away from her without losing him, she again offered her sighting tube as an alternative home. The octopus looked over the defunct water lock, but he either didn’t understand why she was showing it to him or just was not interested. He remained affixed to her arm, busily examining the function of her elbow and finger joints with gentle tugs.
She endured her terror when he stroked her nose. Perhaps he was just mimicking the way she had stroked his face. But when he tried to insert a tentacle into her mouth, she frantically slapped the appendage away. While he was exploring her rib cage, she noticed his breathing tube. He was actually out of the water, but Oscar seemed to have no difficulty breathing the humidity-laden air. Her brief surprise at this was dispelled by recalling the many hours he had spent lolling about in air bubbles. Jeanette wanted to log this observation—perhaps even fish might be able to breathe humid air in zero gravity conditions—but was reluctant to raise her voice loud enough for her helmet recorder to hear.
She was prepared when Oscar reached inquisitively for her breast; she had been expecting him to notice them eventually. Gently, she pushed the exploring tentacle away with one finger. The octopus reacted to this by desisting from his explorations, apparently content with the reassurance he found in simply holding on to her forearm.
When she was convinced Oscar was not going to leave her, she decided to use her remaining time gathering more life specimens. He didn’t seem to mind being dragged around as she worked her way along the handrails, scooping up tiny fish. The way he twisted his body around to follow her movements, his eyes intently tracking her fingers, was a bit disconcerting. When he shifted his grip on her arm, she saw tiny reddish circles where his suckers had been. The discoloration worried her at first, but the marks quickly faded. She took some comfort from observing that at least he wasn’t covering her with tiny hickies.
She was just getting used to having him on her arm when, after a few minutes of watching her collect samples, Oscar suddenly released his grip on her and darted off with a squeak and a blatt. She stared after him, mouth agape. It was the same odd series of sounds she had heard before—the sound of the octopus’s jet propulsion system, in air.
“Oscar! Come back!” she called in dismay. She tried to kept her voice was low and gentle despite her intense fear that she had lost him.
His jet fired a few more times, somewhere off in the fog. She tried to figure out what direction she should take to pursue him, but he was moving too quickly to follow. All she could do was to call for him to come back, and wait. The pain of waiting was compounded by the throbbing pain from her wounds and her apprehension that she might not find him again.
She had time enough to become seriously worried. She was already out of condition from her previous tour and exhausted from this one. Brief moments of disorientation began to plague her mind. Disorientation was not uncommon at the end of a long tour, especially one where she had been working as hard as she had been that day; but these bouts of dizziness were more severe and more frequent than she had experienced before. She began to wonder if they were more than just the end-of-tour willies, and thought of the venom in sea urchin spines.
After several excruciating minutes, Oscar came sailing back through the mist. Three tentacles grabbed her arm just as before; in each of the other five was coiled a sample tube. He held the tubes in front of him, looking intently at her eyes. Bands of color ran along his tentacles, this time a definite shade of olive among the mottled gray. She obediently examined sample tubes and found that each contained exactly one tiny fish immersed in water, all identical, baby kingfish as best she could tell. The caps were all screwed on tight.
Jeanette was flabbergasted. The octopus had figured out what she was doing, and was trying to help! She found herself smiling at Oscar, and wondered if a smile meant anything to a creature whose mouth was a beak, and usually kept well out of sight.
“Why, thank you, Oscar!” He couldn’t possibly understand her, but she hoped her tone would carry the message. She continued the same tone with a more private thought. “It’s not much help since I already have more than enough kingfish samples, but I do appreciate your effort.” She accepted the samples from him, one by one, and inserted the tubes into her cargo net. Again, Oscar followed her every motion. Then, with a quickness she was just beginning to get used to, darted to the net and clung to it. He snaked two tentacles into the net and started manipulating the sample tubes, moving them close to his eyes as if carefully examining each one. To her dismay, he again blasted off into the murk.