Page 43 of Alien on the Moon

She grabbed one of the leaf samples and headed to the lab with Rylan following close behind. As expected, when she looked atit under a microscope, she saw fewer chloroplasts than on bral grown on Thryal. The same applied to the vreben as well.

It wasn’t that they were dying. The plants were simply being overfed by the sunlight, so they were producing fewer chloroplasts. “Come and look,” she said, gesturing for him to stare down the microscope.

Picking up his head, he grinned. “They’re not sick. They’re just getting too much light.” But then his face fell, and he sobered. “What about the squigs, though? If the soil is fine—more than fine, actually, it’s better than ever—why are they dying?”

That was a good question, one she didn’t have an immediate answer for. But it was close. So close. It was there at the tips of her fingers. She just needed to reach out and grab the thought.

Then his words about the night before came back to her. “You said they were eating the compost again?” she asked.

He nodded. “I thought it was strange because you would have thought they’d all be dead after going for so long without food.”

“What species of squig is this?” she asked. “I couldn’t find much about them when doing research.”

“They’re splices,” he said.

“Splices?”

He shrugged as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. “We didn’t think a normal Thryal squig could survive on the moon, so we had that group genetically engineered. They’re a mixture of several different but genetically compatible species we created to make them hardier.”

Her blue eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It’s standard practice for introducing fauna to terraformed land,” he said, furrowing his brows. “It didn’t seem important.”

“Didn’t seem important? It explains everything.”

He stared in naked confusion. “How so?”

How could henotsee it? “Rylan, I’ve been looking at databases of naturally occurring species on my and your planet in order to get an idea of their basic traits. But I’ve obviously been looking in the wrong place, so nothing matched. What are the species that contributed to their gene pool?”

“Upper and lowland squigs. Plus Thrac’s squig and Galan’s squig.” He scratched his chin, which had grown stubble over the past few days.

“Perfect!” She jumped onto her comms and began searching up the species he mentioned. They looked like the upper land squig but carried internal traits more similar to Galen’s Squig and the Thrac’s Squig. Like the Galac’s Squig, they could survive in extreme temperatures, and like the lowland squig, they ate a lot and needed very little oxygen or water to survive.

“The slime inside the one that burst on me…” she said, pulling up a slide. “I thought that it was filled with parasites, but really—”

“It’s eggs!” Rylan exclaimed. His eyes bright with excitement, he began typing into his comms so quickly his fingers were a blur. “So, if we look up the life cycle of all four species…there. Thrac’s squig lives and dies in broods. All in the brood hatch at roughly the same time. And then they live, mate, and then all die off together.”

“And they’re intersex, capable of mating and being mated with,” Elena read.

Her face twisted in disgust. “It says here that once they’ve fertilized their eggs, their whole bodies focus entirely on growing the brood in its earlier stages, using all internal organs and processes for fuel to keep them alive until the skin splits and the eggs burst out. Ugh, and I thought human childbirth was bad.”

“The reproductive cycle seems to be unique to the species. It looks as though the nutrients in the slime also enrich the soil for the newborn squigs.” He turned to her. “Elena, can I say it?”

Smirking, she inclined her head. “By all means.”

“Eureka!” He picked her up and twirled her before pulling her into a kiss. “Eureka!”

“Oh, good, you’re back together,” Jaku said, poking his head in the doorway. “What’s going on?”

Elena stepped aside with a laugh, letting Rylan take the floor. “Don’t tell anyone until we’ve confirmed it,” he said. “But we think we’ve figured out what’s going on. And it’s all good news.”

His eyes widened. “Really? What is it?”

They explained their theory about how the fact that the light was stronger than usual on Kheros caused the plants to produce fewer chloroplasts and that it wasn’t a disease killing the squigs but rather that they had a unique life cycle and were nearing the end of it. The new brood already seemed to be hatching.

“So, that means all we have to do is stagger the introduction of squigs into our compost areas and make sure there are always a couple of living broods while the others are dying,” Rylan said. “As for the bral and the vreben, they both appear to be nutritionally identical to the crops we grow on Thryal. The only difference is the color.”

Elena nodded to the door. “We were just about to head out to the new compost pile to see if we could find any young squigs. Do you want to come?”

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