Searching Science - An Octonauts Story Book 3 (complete)

Chapter Six - Quiz

"... and give me three differences between a crab and a lobster."

"Lobsters live in the ocean, whereas crabs can live in both sea and freshwater conditions, as well as out of water. Lobsters are usually larger than crabs, and..." Dashi paused as she thought it through. "And... ooh, crabs walk sideways whereas lobsters move backwards and forwards!"

Tweak nodded, shutting the third and final textbook with a papery slam. "I honestly don't know what you're stressing about, Dash'. You could recite this stuff in your sleep."

"I think I actually was sleeptalking it last night," Dashi admitted, somewhat shamefaced. "My throat felt sore when I woke up, anyway."

The bunny rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "That's because you psyched yourself out about it, silly. You just needed to sleep on it."

Dashi giggled. "Thanks, Tweak. I think it's finally all gone in, thanks to this."

Tweak yawned, stealing another of Dashi's cushions from her bed and hugging it to her chest, having propped herself up with about four of them against her desk chair some time ago. As promised, Tweak had come into Dashi's room around eight this morning, not looking too happy about the early rising but determined to stop her friend stressing out. They had spent the next hour and a half cutting cue cards out of some of Tweak's near unlimited stock of coloured paper, and Tweak giving Dashi a pop quiz throughout to drum the knowledge back into her head. So far, it seemed to have worked. 

Dashi collected up the cue cards and scanned them, making a fan out of them and gazing over the different reef creatures that she had spent the evening and morning studying. "I hope the test isn't too hard."

Her best friend groaned for probably the hundredth time this morning alone. Dashi cut her off before she could continue. "Yes, I know Shelly's not setting me up for failure, and he would never judge me even if I didn't do that well, and I should just shut up and take the test."

"Thank you," Tweak sighed. "It's nearly ten now, by the way, weren't you planning on meeting Shel soon for your little pop quiz?"

"Oh yeah! I was so busy stressing about it I nearly forgot I actually had to do it," Dashi laughed, tidying her bed and smoothing over the place where she had squatted on it for over an hour.

"You're just nuts, my friend."

"Oh yes. Bananas."

"Round the bend."

"Up the walls."

Tweak rolled her eyes and batted the dachshund towards the Octo-Chute, pushing her until she nearly fell into it. "Go on. Stop stalling and go make your boyfriend proud."

"Yes Tweak. Sorry Tweak." Dashi stuck her tongue playfully out at the engineer and quickly hopped into the tube before she could retaliate.

The rabbit chuckled to herself, looking out at the shallow waters outside the Octopod, the rocky surface leading off into a group of caves with the entrance to a river gushing out between the murky entrances. The nerdy couple were just far too cute for words sometimes.

* * *

"Corrrrect!" Shellington drew out the consonant with a Scottish roll.

The Vegimals chirped excitedly as it was Barrot's turn to run around to the other side of the lab desk clutching a quiz card, exchanging it for the one Dashi held. The other six creatures in the room did a drumroll with stamping of tiny feet against the floor. Dashi guessed the other members of the crew would suspect some kind of earthquake at the amount of noise they seemed to be making.

"Next up!" the scientist announced, adjusting the high-intensity lamp on his desk so his girlfriend's face was ever-more dramatically lit, reminiscent of some sort of gameshow. As usual, the Vegimals had got way too into it, and cheered every few seconds, only pausing and dropping into silence when Dashi was somewhat nervously reciting a fact. "And last up, I believe."

Tunip led the disappointed sigh at the news, and Dashi couldn't help but giggle. To her own surprise, she had got many of the questions right, and Shellington was looking pretty impressed.

The Vegimals chirped their new Science Test theme tune™ and settled down to earnestly listen to the final question.

The sea otter smiled encouragingly as he read off his homemade quiz card. "This is sort of a challenge question for our grand finale, and not really to do with the reef, but... Can you give me three differences between a manta ray and a sting ray?"

Dashi's thoughts snowballed. This wasn't on any of the pages she had devoured last night, this wasn't the title of any of her meticulously written cue cards, she didn't know this...! 

Then she looked at the scientist's shining eyes, so trusting of her, and remembered that she did. She had programmed in hundreds of profiles of sea creatures into the ship's OctoWeb, and even if she hadn't, she had been on an entire mission with a manta ray and of course she knew this. Tweak was right, she needed to chill out about this. 

"Manta rays don't have stingers on their tail while - clue's in the name, really - sting rays do," she chuckled, feeling the stress seep away. "Manta rays are larger and wider, while sting rays are much smaller and longer than they are wide. And -" No hesitation needed, they had found themselves in an entire feeding frenzy due to this exact fact. "Manta rays are filter feeders, they only eat plankton! Sting rays are bottom feeders and eat crabs and little fish."

Her voice had accelerated up to the end of her rambling sentence and she began to understand the appeal of Shellington's speed talking as he relayed facts in his daily job. Dashi smiled radiantly. "I got it!"

"You got it," confirmed Shellington with equal excitement, jumping up and promptly dropping all his quiz cards. 

The lab was filled with Vegimals running around and chirping for a few moments as both scientists tried to calm them down. Professor Inkling was probably wondering what on earth they were doing up here.

Before Shellington could make himself heard over the din of Vegimals trampling quiz cards, the screen on the wall beeped and the Captain's face popped into view. "Come in, Shellington," Barnacles alerted.

"Shellington here, Captain!" the scientist immediately responded, hurrying to the camera as Dashi succeeded in catching up with an overexcited Tominnow and Codish and tickling them mercilessly, making them chirp and squirm away from her expert paws.

Her crewmates talked for a minute or so until the mission team signed off and Shellington turned back to her.

"I've got to head out for a bit," he explained. "The Captain and Kwazii think they've found a new species of sea urchin that doesn't match up to any stored on the Octopod computer on the Captain's OctoCompass, and I need to go and meet them to find out."

"Will you be okay driving all the way there?" Dashi asked, only half-teasing.

Shellington grinned. "You made sure of that, Dashi. Plus, it's only a little way over there, at the entrance to that river."

"Have fun," she waved, spinning on the lab stool as her boyfriend collected up his notebook and magnifying glass from the side and stowed them in swinging satchel, along with a thin textbook which Dashi guessed was probably the complete anthology of a sea urchin or something.

Shellington pressed a light kiss to her forehead as he hurried towards the corridor, not even tripping over the leg of her stool or his own feet, for a change. "Well done, by the way. See you in a wee bit, sunshine."

"Bye," Dashi called after him, smiling as he blew her a hasty kiss and jumped into the OctoChute leading down to the Launch Bay, where she guessed that Tweak would be less than delighted that her clumsy friend was planning on taking out a Gup all on his own, whatever lessons she may or may not have given him before. She did admit that she felt a little silly for having made such a huge deal out of what had turned out to be a fairly fun quiz in the end. Tweak would never let her forget it, of course.