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“Oh!” Ash cried.

Tom’s sunfish fell on 112 and 113 like rain. Most of the ESA crew shouted as if the probes were their own bodies.

Beaks and arms filled their displays. The sunfish tore through the probes’ false skin, cutting relays and sensors. Tom’s beak scraped the metal beneath. The noise was a grating squeal until Frerotte dimmed the volume.

“Don’t fight them!” Koebsch yelled. “Don’t fight!”

The sunfish destroyed both probes. They were unable to crack or dent the mecha’s alumalloy bodies, but they wrenched several arms loose, then dug into the open sockets with their arm tips. They yanked at the machinery inside even when it cut and tore  their pedicellaria.

Did they intend to keep the ravaged metal and plastic? Before the last signals from 113 went dead, the sunfish hooked their arms around the squashed gears and fragments of alumalloy.

“What’s happening with our spies?” Metzler asked as Vonnie scrolled through her display.

She couldn’t let herself feel anything more than tight concentration. She was discouraged, but the real surprise was that the sunfish had interacted with the probes for eighty-one seconds. Now they shocked her again.

“Their colony must be larger than we thought,” she said.

Near the cavern where the sunfish had built their retaining wall, Sue led a new horde within range of the spies’ sensors. There were sixteen of them. Twelve hugged rock clubs against their bodies.

“How can there be so many sunfish?” Koebsch said. “I thought there isn’t enough food.”

“We need to send mecha down to the ocean,” Vonnie said. “What if it’s loaded with fish like those eels NASA found? They might get most of their food there.”

“The ocean’s too far away,” Koebsch said. “They’d need days to transport eels or fish back to the colony.”

“If they freeze their food, that wouldn’t matter.”

“Yes, it would,” Koebsch said. “They’d spend more calories than they’d gain dragging their prey through the ice, and they’d probably have to fight other tribes for it. They’re too high for the ocean to matter.”

“Not if there were geysers and churn in the area,” Metzler said. “There might be sea life frozen in the ice around the colony. Maybe they’re mining for it.”

“An eel mine,” Vonnie said appreciatively.

That could be the missing factor, she thought. Eruptions and rip tides might push sea creatures into the frozen sky, where they’re preserved. If the sunfish located an area where storms seeded the ice with bodies, they’d have a natural food source. It might be enough to last for years or generations.

Sue’s group entered the cavern in a familiar wave formation. Half flew high. Half flew low. They rebounded from the ceiling and floor, colliding in the middle.

Then they sprang away from each other in individual trajectories. The four sunfish who weren’t carrying rocks used themselves as a centering mass. Kicking, bouncing, slamming, spinning, they propelled the others outward.

They crushed the spies with stunning precision, terminating eleven of the tiny mecha in a coordinated strike. Vonnie thought they’d turn on the rest, but they were done. They killed eleven spies without effort, then paused, leaving the majority untouched.

“That’s weird,” Frerotte said. “If they can tell our spies are there—”

“They memorized the walls!” Metzler said. “That’s what they were doing with their group song. They memorized the walls, then came back and spotted the differences. Look. They killed every spy that’s moved since they left. 4071 only changed its position by five centimeters, but they got it, too.”

Sue’s group picked at the remnants of the spies. They ate a few specks, then cinched their arms around the rest. Later, they might compare these bits of ceramic armor and nanocircuitry to the junk Tom’s pack had salvaged from the larger probes. For the moment, Sue’s pack gathered on the cavern floor.

They screeched and screeched. They were memorizing the cavern again. The group ritual also served as a warning to everything that could hear them — a cry of possessiveness and defiance. Then they fled into the dark.

“They must have noticed a spy earlier,” Vonnie said. “They were suspicious, and they wanted to make sure nothing bothered their retaining wall.”

“How are they processing so much detail in the rock?” Koebsch said. “We couldn’t do it without AI.”

“They’re wired differently.”

“They might not be as smart as you think, Von,” Dawson said.

“What?”

“They used to be intelligent,” Dawson said. “I can’t deny the carvings we’ve found. Those are written histories. But the carvings are ten thousand years old. These sunfish are just animals. We’re wasting our time trying to talk to them.”

33.

“Bullshit,” Vonnie said. “Are you looking at the same transcripts I am?”

“Yes indeed.” William Dawson was in his seventies and their oldest crew member. Wrinkles spread from the corners of his eyes through his paper-fine skin, but his hair remained black, and he was spry and elflike.

Vonnie hadn’t spoken with him much. She felt blindsided by his announcement. “How can you think we should leave them down there to die?” she said.

“I don’t. Not at all. Perhaps our approach should change. We’ve spent five weeks pussyfooting around in hopes of talking to them. I submit that this is like attempting to chat with porpoises or seals.”

“Seals!”

“Porpoises may be a better comparison. I don’t know if you’ve seen the mem files on attempts to communicate with cetaceans in the twentieth century.”

“I have.” Vonnie had watched everything she could find on interspecies communication.

“Some marine biologists were convinced the whales were intelligent,” Dawson said. “The complexity of their songs was bewitching. Other people were obsessed with dolphins. They frittered away their careers proving themselves wrong.”

“They learned more than you think. Their work is part of the database we’re using now, but the whales never said anything like this.” Vonnie brought an excerpt from the newest sunfish translations onto the group feed and played it.

TOM: Hello.

PROBE 112: Hello / Yes.

TOM: I am Top Clan Two-Four, Pod Four.

ALL SUNFISH: I am Top Clan Two-Four, Pod Four.

ALL SUNFISH: Close / Too close.

TOM: You are too close / Hello.

“This supports my theory,” Dawson said. “The sunfish are pack animals, not individuals. Look at the group response. It’s imitative.”

“Hold on,” Pärnits said. “Repetition is a natural function of the way they communicate. They can only hear the shapes they detect in any given sonar pulse. Of course they repeat the same information. It’s like a circle or a chain. They confirm and reconfirm until every member in the group acknowledges the message. Their speech patterns are more fluid than human conversation.”

“It’s obviously language,” Vonnie said. “They use numbers and names.”

Dawson’s smile was condescending. “You’re the one who’s given them names,” he said. “All I’ve seen is the same limited repertoire of shapes repeated over and over.”

Vonnie glared. It was true that she and Metzler had tried to personalize the sunfish, but she refused to concede the point. “The sunfish always begin with the same shapes because they’re at war with each other,” she said. “Their priority is to announce their claim to their area.”

“Indeed. It’s a territorial response.”

“He said ’I’m Top Clan Two-Four, Pod Four.’”