Yoli shook her head. “Only you would describe the bond like that. Does she know you lack any semblance of romance?”
“I took her to a meal at theAtriamain the second quadrant leisure space.” He frowned. “She seemed to enjoy herself.” He closed his mouth, recalling that Ash enjoyed herself very much in the secluded spot afterwards.
“You could have told us,” she said, looking back to Ash with a softness to her face. “We could have helped you care for her.”
“I was not prepared for the force of the bond,” Zade admitted. “I could not bear the thought of another touching her.”
Yoli smiled. “You cannot know how strange it is to see you this way.”
“Strange,” Pruk put in. “But a relief. None of us could live up to your perfection in all things.” The young Baylan male looked at Zade. “You are Baylan, not a machine, after all.”
“No,” said Zade quietly. “Not a machine.” Is that what they thought of him: a machine in flesh form? A sudden thought hit him. With a deep breath, he stepped back. “I must…” He didn’t finish his sentence as he bolted to his workstation and opened a link to Malak Drak-Nix, who was still on Earth tracking the creature.
The Baylan tracker sounded out of breath when he replied. “Yes?”
“What if the Gylbala-3R is not mutated or mechanical, but presents as it does because of the conditions on Earth?”
“What?” Malak replied. “These beings are supposed to be small. Even smaller than an annoying human child.” Zade heard a burst of laughter on the other end of the connection before all background sounds suddenly muted.
“Where are you?” Zade asked.
“They call it the middle of nowhere,” he replied. “I agree with the assessment.”
Zade shook his head and went back to the issue at hand. Whatever the tracker was doing was his business. “The research vessel Poli-4 has conducted experiments in which certain species have extraordinarily fluid development. They can grow drastically different traits depending on environmental conditions.”
“So you believe that the creature your mate encountered is, in fact, a natural Gylbala-3R, but it grew to a great size because of conditions on Earth?”
“It is the most likely explanation,” said Zade. “What little we know of Gylbala4 is that it is a planet of extremely hostile conditions. There is little air, very intense gravity and few food sources, so the Gylbala-3R’s development is limited. Earth provides the opposite of those things. With so much abundance, even an organism as tiny as this one is in its newborn form could, in theory, grow huge.”
“And voracious,” the tracker growled back. “It has killed a herd of cattle.”
“I believe you may stop looking for a Zelopian contingent on Earth. Nothing is controlling this creature aside from its own survival needs.”
There was a pause on the other end of the link. “I am curious,” said Malak. “What made you come to this conclusion?”
“A comment made by one of my assistants,” replied Zade. “Apparently they joked among themselves thatIwas a machine and the life change of acquiring a mate had transformed me into a different creature. It made me think of our Gylbala-3R problem and the solution presented itself.”
There was silence for a moment. “Understood.”
The link closed and Zade stood. He returned to Ash’sreju.She still lay there, pale and still. He did not need to look at her monitors to see that she was not improving.
The grave look from Yoli confirmed it. “She is deteriorating rapidly,” said his assistant. “The toxin has taken hold. Our efforts are only slowing its progress.”
If the creature developed differently on Earth, why not the venom, too? He turned to Yoli, his senior and more experienced assistant. She was about to get an abrupt promotion. “I need you at my lab. Pruk!”
The male whipped around from his spot at the monitor wall. “Yes?”
“Stay with her. Do not leave her, and inform me of any change in status. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
He pulled Yoli into his chamber and to his large bank of machines and interfaces. There, he filled her in on his theory about the Gylbala-3R and the toxins in its venom. She listened, nodding, then leaned toward him. “Zade, I think you may be right.” She dipped her hands in theM-Clomachine and rubbed them together. “It would explain why none of the previous antidote attempts were effective. But in order to find the correct antidote, we need to know exactly how the conditions on Earth influenced this species’ development. It’s an extraordinaryamount of work.” She began inputting information into the machine, pulling up variables and statistics on the planet.
“Assemble a team,” he told her. “Find an antidote.”
She turned wide eyes to him. “You are not taking lead?”
“I cannot,” he confessed with a weary smile. “I will assist. This time, you are the lead physician.”
