Starfish

Seventeen

"Whoops!" Nina turned her head just in time and missed a splash of slimy water, though a few drops still made it onto her mask and goggles. "Hey, that wasn't necessary," she said to the worm in her hands. The red worms were beginning to recover from their illness, as evidenced by the return of their energy and enthusiasm for wiggling. Behind her, Meem snickered as she wiped down the inside of a freshly scrubbed tank. Still, four days had passed and Nina was getting tired of cleaning and disinfecting the same six filters. She could smell the disinfectant in her dreams. The worm squirmed and splashed again. "All right, all right, you're clean." Nina climbed down from the metal crate that stood in for a step-stool and released the worm into a tank of fresh water.

"They are lively today," Doctor Ardus commented, wrestling with a much larger worm as he fed it. He jerked his head to the side, its spined tail narrowly missing his cheek.

"They're definitely feeling better," Meem said, "See how that one you have is darker than the others?" She pointed to the worm's spine end. "They're getting closer to breeding season."

"Should we expect more worms soon?" Nina asked, cleaning her goggles.

"Not this year, I won't be breeding them. I only lost two worms, I still have enough for venom collection." She had resumed collecting the day before, and a large worm as long as Nina's arm lay flaccid in a tray before her. Nina collected the last worm to be bathed, tucking the spine end under one arm. The one in Ardus's hands spat out the feeding tube and spewed formula on his smock. "Drown you," he muttered, "you are wasting perfectly good food." Nina chuckled as she passed him, and he gave her a sidelong look. "Glad to see you are enjoying yourself."

"Excessively," Nina tossed back. She grinned under her mask and caught the corners of his eyes crinkling and his flat nose-bridge wrinkling in return. In the flurry of caring for Meem's worms as well as helping with the other tasks in the specimen lab, they hadn't had much time to talk. On top of that, Ardus was frequently in meetings with either the financial department, acquisitions, or with Dean Reda discussing his plans for the upcoming fieldwork trip to the north. Their encounters were few and far between, but moments like these made her smile.

Nina spent most of her free time reading about the creatures she could expect to see up on the point. With all these new animals and environments, so different and yet similar to the ones she knew on Earth, Nina felt like she was back in undergrad studying for the first time. There were dozens of new names to learn, patterns to recognize, tracks to identify. Looking over the photographs and drawings, the sheer number of species and incredible diversity seemed like it would overwhelm her. On Earth the situation was just beginning to recover from the abuse dealt by her own people, with several thousand species lost to time forever. Nina had been two when the last tiger died, rendering the entire genus extinct. There seemed to be no such problem on Dreenai, save for the rare creatures that often went years without a sighting. The enormous creature that she shared a name with, the massive starfish that lived thousands of feet below sea-level, hadn't been seen in years, but the occasional gnawed carcasses of smaller sea animals like eastern grey screamers evidenced that the starfish were doing well.

Cleaning up after the worm feeding and bathing, Ardus and Nina washed up and started back towards the office they shared. "I have another meeting with Baru in a few minutes, so you will be on your own for an hour or so."

"I can handle that, I need to finish today's report and get back to reading about ungulates. I hope we see a rusty strider, they look interesting."

"If we are lucky," Ardus said, toweling his hands, "we should see the same herd I have seen before on the trail cameras. Last year a new bull joined the herd and I am interested to see how the herd has grown."