She spun around to see Superintendent Cantrell standing on the catwalk with two guards. Each of the guards held a pulse rifle pointed at the crustaceans.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
He barked a laugh. “What? You thought you had the ship to yourselves? You and these…” He waved a hand toward the creatures on the catwalk. “These oversized roaches.”
“They’re intelligent beings,” Liz said. “They were created by the Anunnaki.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cantrell said. “They’re vermin.”
“And that gives you just the excuse you need, doesn’t it?” Tobias said.
“What excuse?” Liz said. “What are you talking about?”
Tobias grunted cynically. “The truth is, Superintendent Cantrell never intended to take the worms to Paradise. It was far too expensive a proposition. Now he has exactly the excuse he needs to—” He turned toward the superintendent. “To what, Superintendent? To flush them into space? Is that what you were planning?”
Cantrell laughed and turned to the guards. “Get them out of here,” he ordered, gesturing toward Liz and Tobias. “Confine them to their quarters.”
“Wait,” Liz protested. “You can’t do that. You have no right!” She backed toward the crustaceans, her hands held away from her sides as if to shield them from Cantrell and the guards.
“This is a Consortium ship,” Cantrell said. “I can do whatever I want.”
“Actually, you can’t,” Tobias said.
Cantrell’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean—I can’t?”
Tobias smiled. “What you fail to realize, Superintendent, is that these creatures had contact with the Anunnaki. They have knowledge of the Anunnaki we know nothing about. Knowledge of their technology, of the direction they were headed—knowledge of all sorts of things that I don’t think your Consortium bosses would want you to throw away.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Cantrell said. “If these things had any contact with the Anunnaki, it was generations ago. How are they going to remember something like that? Based on what I’ve seen, they can’t even remember their names.”
“You forget I had a chance to examine them down on Slag,” Tobias said. “It turns out that the Anunnaki modified their DNA in a way that allows them to pass memories from one generation to the next—in the introns between their genes. That’s how the worms knew which colonies to join. The chances are, when those intron sequences fully express themselves, as they now appear to be doing, these creatures are going to remember a great deal about the Anunnaki. If you decide to flush all that knowledge into space, I think the Consortium may decide to flush you along with it.”
Cantrell tugged uncomfortably at the collar of his tunic.
“Of course, it’s your career,” Tobias continued with a disinterested shrug. “You know what your bosses want better than I do.”
Cantrell’s jaw tightened, but Liz could see the wheels turning in his head. He wanted the crustaceans gone, but he also knew that if he threw away a chance to learn anything at all about the Anunnaki’s technology, his Consortium bosses would have his head.
“Keep an eye on them,” he snapped, turning to the two guards. “Make sure neither of them leaves the hold.”
The two guards saluted smartly, whereupon the superintendent turned and stamped out through the hatch, slamming the door behind him.
“Do you really think Glimmer and the others will remember their contact with the Anunnaki?” Liz whispered. She kept her back to the guards so they couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” Tobias whispered back.
“But you told Cantrell they would.”
Tobias shrugged. “We needed time to figure out a plan. I told him the first thing that came to mind.”
“This is terrible,” Liz said, biting her lip. “We left so many of the worms behind on Slag, and now Cantrell wants to destroy Glimmer and others we brought with us.”
“There’s no doubt about his intentions, but I’m not so sure we left anyone behind.”
“But you saw the way the worms were loaded. We saw thousands of them die.”
Tobias turned toward Glimmer. The large crustacean’s body was arched slightly forward as a pastel blue wave slid slowly along his pliant exoskeleton. “Do you know how many of you there should be?” Tobias asked.
Glimmer’s feathered antennae slowly swirled, angling toward the water beyond the catwalk. “Not sure. I’m…” The waves of color washing down his body quickened. After a moment, the colors were echoed by the two creatures standing further along the catwalk, as well as by a dozen more that were still under the water in front of them. “All are here,” he said, turning back to Tobias. “None is missing.”
“But you can’t all be here,” Liz said. “When they cut through the ice, they only reached a small part of you, a fraction of a percent. I mean, you weren’t all there in that one spot.”
“I think he’s right,” Tobias whispered.
“That’s impossible,” she said.
“I’ll explain later,” Tobias said. “Right now we have to find a way out of here. Even if the Consortium believes what I said, we can’t assume they’ll want to keep Glimmer and the others around. We need some way to neutralize the guards.”
“Neutralize…?” Glimmer repeated as the meaning of the word slowly dawned on him. He straightened, his antennae again moving toward the crustaceans in the water. At the same time, the waves of color moving down his body intensified, becoming brighter and more clearly defined.
Tobias watched him for a moment, then turned back to Liz. “We need to reach someone on the Council, someone we can trust, before Cantrell and his cronies get their act together.”
Liz glanced past his shoulder at the guards who stood just in front of the hatch leading back into the ship. “I don’t think they’re going to let us go anywhere,” she said.
“We will help…” Glimmer whispered. “We will neutralize…”
He sounded more alert now, and his antennae seemed to be moving with more authority. When Liz looked out at the water, she saw that all the crustaceans were now flashing signals to each other. Unfortunately, the guards had also noticed. Their expressions had shifted from bored to wary, and their grips had tightened on their weapons.
Suddenly, two of the crustaceans surfaced at the edge of the catwalk just beside the guards. As the guards swung their rifles around, the crustaceans opened their beaks and hissed. One of the crustaceans’ tongues shot out. An instant later, the second crustacean’s tongue snapped from its beak. The creatures’ tongues reminded Liz of the pink chewing gum she’d stretched from her mouth as a child. But the crustaceans’ tongues stretched all the way to the guards’ faces, which they each hit with a sharp thwack. Both guards released their rifles and reached for their faces, but their knees were already giving way beneath them. By the time they hit the catwalk, both were unconscious.
“Injuries are not serious,” Glimmer rasped. His voice sounded stronger now, sharper. “Guards will wake when toxin runs its course.”
Glimmer’s body had straightened, his exoskeleton apparently stiffening so that he now stood taller than Liz and Tobias. His movements also appeared crisper, more in control, giving Liz the impression that his metamorphosis was nearing completion.
“We need to get out of here,” Tobias said. “We need to find a communications console.”
The signals between the crustaceans were now so intense that the waves of color glinted off the damp walls of the hold. The creatures were all swimming toward the catwalk, their bodies dripping as they pulled themselves up out of the water with their multiple segmented arms.
“You need do nothing,” Glimmer said. “Best we take charge from here.”