Metzler theorized that the females felt no attachment to their spawn, only bonding with successful newborn. They were predisposed to abandon their eggs.
Nature seemed to have compensated. If the gene smithing of the sunfishes’ hormones was correct, their females laid spawn as often as six times in an Earth year. That was a staggering birth rate. It could have meant disastrously high population pressures, except most of the eggs never became adults. Maybe they ate their failed spawn or performed infanticide to weed out their weaker offspring.
That doesn’t mean they’re not affectionate, Vonnie told herself. The sunfish huddled for warmth, cared for each other’s wounds and infections, and there was poetry in the fluid, detailed ruffling of their arms and bodies.
Did they know joy?
They seemed well-suited for a love of life. They moved like birds or dolphins. They built and succeeded. But they were short-lived. Their telomeres indicated an average lifespan of no more than twenty years.
By now, ESA and NASA biologists owned samples from seventeen different sunfish, dozens of bugs, and any number of bacterial mats and fungi. Most of the blood and tissue had been gathered from Vonnie’s suit. Five more blood pricks had been secured by NASA’s probes during the past week, and it was a toss-up which set of samples had caused the loudest uproar.
The botanists, entomologists, exobiologists, and gene smiths each had different arguments that their results were the most spectacular.
Europan DNA wasn’t wildly distinct from Earth DNA. The sunfish genome was composed of sequences using the same four nucleic acids as terrestrial lifeforms. The one difference was in their blast scores for hemoglobin. The sunfish had evolved with a remarkable concentration of iron atoms in this globular protein, which allowed them to carry extra oxygen through their bloodstream.
The sunfish also had little genetic variation from each other. They were nearly clones, like cheetahs, which was another species that had been reduced to a bare minimum of breeding pairs in its past.
“Tell me what happened with Tom,” Vonnie said.
“It was hours later,” Metzler said, forwarding through his sim. “The sunfish ran out of material for their wall. They sent scouts into the side channels, including his team. Tom seems to go farther than anyone else. They might consider him expendable because of his injuries. Maybe he’s earned a leadership role for being so resilient. I don’t think most of them would have survived losing part of an arm.”
“They’d eat him,” Ash said.
“Yeah.”
Metzler’s recording showed Tom leap into view at a steep angle from the tunnel floor to its ceiling. He flew with his arms spread, screeching at the space ahead of him. Then he landed on a crag in the rock and stuck to it, bunching his arms with his body poised like a rocket, ready to jump again.
He’d obviously sensed 112, which sat twenty meters away. In flight, Tom had wavered in a clockwise motion, bending back each of his arm tips, including his stub. Curling inward might have pantomimed grabbing at the probe or bringing an object to his beak. This motion was a gesture more like releasing something.
“That means ’Hello’ or ’Yes’ depending on the context,” Metzler said. “We found the same pose at the center of every wall of carvings. It’s a starting place. The sunfish don’t read in straight lines like we do. We think they read outward from the ’Hello’ stance.”
“I saw Pärnits’ report,” Vonnie said absently, staring at the display. Then she glanced at Metzler, wondering why she’d mentioned his friend’s name.
He knew she was also dating Pärnits. Was the instinct to test potential mates so innate that it had spoken for her? Vonnie wasn’t coy, and she wasn’t mean, and yet she’d just undermined Metzler by giving credit to Pärnits.
Awkwardly, she scrambled to make up for it. “These sims are amazing,” she said.
“Well, here’s where everything goes wrong,” Metzler said.
Was he annoyed with her?
Probe 112 repeated the ’Hello’ gesture, then showed the undersides of two arms, undulating its pedicellaria.
It didn’t have the effect they’d intended.
Tom lifted his underside to show his beak, a hostile gesture. He screeched into the catacombs behind him, alerting his companions. As soon as they answered, he turned and called in the probe’s direction. Most likely he was scanning for other strangers. Possibly he was shouting threats at the probe not to come any closer.
“What if we’re putting Tom in danger by talking to him?” Vonnie said. “The other sunfish might not like it.”
“Jesus, you’re strange,” Ash said. From the way her hazel eyes searched Vonnie’s face, she was only half kidding. “I know you have a huge crush on those monsters. Now you’re more on their side than ours?”
“None of us want him to get hurt.”
“It’s a chance we have to take,” Frerotte said. “If we’re going to talk to them, we have to start somewhere.”
Tom finished screeching into the dark. He leapt away from 112, escaping it but not the camouflaged spies, who recorded his flight. First he rejoined his quartet. Then they formed up with the rest of the pack.
At the same time, Probes 112 and 113 fled.
When the sunfish returned in force, the probes were gone. The sunfish clung to the rock. They did not pursue. Instead, they screamed at the empty tunnel.
“What are they doing?” Ash said.
“That looks territorial,” Vonnie said. “They’re claiming this space.”
“We thought so, too,” Metzler said. “Their sonar would carry after the probes for a long way, maybe as far as three kilometers. Watch what they do next.”
The sunfish quit screeching. They returned to the tunnel where they’d built their wall. Then they assembled in a pack and began screeching again, using the rock to amplify their shrill voices back on themselves.
Ash put her hands over her ears. “They’ll go deaf!”
“They’re worried the probes will try to flank them,” Vonnie said. “Remember, they’re always exposed on all sides, up and down. So they’re repeating the warning.”
“It seems more intense than that,” Metzler said. “What if it’s an affirmation ritual? They could be promising each other to defend the colony or memorizing a new voice key. Look at their modulation. They’re not just screaming. There’s a carefully refined harmony.”
“Why did Tom run from the probe?”
“We’re not sure. They must find loners or survivors from other packs sometimes.”
“They probably eat them, too,” Ash said.
“Maybe not. Survivors from another area could lead them to new food supplies or thermals. There’s also a biological imperative. Accepting newcomers into the pack would be good genetics. They need the diversity.”
“Maybe the probe said the wrong thing,” Ash said.
“I don’t think so. It was docile. It responded to Tom’s overture.”
“You did great,” Vonnie said, bumping his shoulder.
“Pärnits programmed its secondary movements,” Metzler said. “Maybe something in those gestures was too abrupt or he used the wrong arms.”
The subtext of that comment wasn’t difficult to interpret. Metzler had undercut his rival for Vonnie’s affections, opening a divide between the two men, which was exactly what she didn’t want.
“This encounter went better than anything else we’ve done,” she said. “You guys are spectacular.”
“We probably should have told the probe to stay,” Metzler said. “The sunfish would never accept a loner without assessing him as a group. That would also reduce their odds of sustaining casualties. If it’s a trap, if he’s sick or feeble, they’d smash him.”
“Are we sure the probe had the right sound?” Ash said.