The sergeant and the corporal looked at each other.

  The major turned at the door. "I realize that may sound like an unorthodox measure, but it's all in the interests of the mission's ultimate success. Will that be a problem, Sergeant?"

  "No, sir. No problem at all."

  (III)

  "I thought you were going for another swim with Annabelle," Nora posed when Loren ducked into the head shack.

  "Yeah, but not till later in the afternoon." He walked in, then looked enthused. "Wow, where'd you get that?"

  "Your pretentious blond friend almost stepped on it in the shower earlier."

  "Hey, just because I worship her body doesn't mean she's my friend."

  .You a betting man?"

  "Sure."

  "Okay, I'll bet you that before this shoot is over, she's putting overt moves on you."

  "You're high," Loren said. "And I'll tell you something. I'm pretty sure she and Lieutenant Trent have something going on."

  Nora laughed at the worktable. "You're so perceptive, Loren. What a bright light you are."

  "Why do I detect unremitting sarcasm?"

  "She and Trent have been doing the naked pretzel since the first night."

  The surety of her words stunned him. "Really?"

  "Yeah, and she wants to make Trent jealous-she loves games. She has no identity unless she's the center of male attention. That's why she'll be coming on heavy to you soon. Accept it. And don't be a dope. Don't feed her atrocious ego and utter lack of character by responding like a -horny mutt."

  Loren's head rose in an arrogant pose. "Hey, just because I'm a few years younger than you doesn't mean that you know more about human romantic behavior."

  "No, but the fact that I'm a woman does. I'm betting that she puts hard moves on you and you fall like a house of cards. You'll be absolutely convinced that she's crazy about you. Too chicken to bet?"

  "You're on," he said, grinning. "Loser buys dinner at the winner's choice of restaurants."

  Nora shook on it. "Now let's stop yacking about that ultraboobed peabrain and take -a look at this."

  Loren sat down at the worktable, eyeing the footand-a-half-long worm. "You killed it?"

  "No, it was already dead from the seepage at the bottom of the shower stall. Trent sprays it down with bug spray every day since we found those first motile ova." She slid the microscope over to Loren. "And I'm pretty sure we were right last night. This worm here is the same species as the tiny ones from the lobster. Which means we weren't seeing things last night. It's a species that grows at an exponential rate."

  Loren's eye lowered to the scope. He went silent for several minutes. "There's no doubt. The pore scheme in the coelum is identical, and so are the mucoid ducts in the parapodal bands." He shook his head in studied amazement. "There's nothing else I've ever seen that's even remotely like this. This size? Good God."

  "This is a species that the helminthology community is unawareof," Nora pointed out.

  "We've discovered a new annelid." He took his eye away long enough to grin at her. "We get to name it ourselves."

  "Yeah, but it's still a rip-off when you think about it."

  "What do you mean a rip-off? It's every zoologist's dream to get credit for discovering a new species of animal life."

  "Sure, Loren. But look at the fact of the matter. If a paleontologist discovers a new fossil, he makes a fortune. Somebody discovers a new enzyme, a new bacterium, a new friggin' fish-you name it-they make a fortune and they become famous in their field." Nora snorted. "We discover a new worm, and nobody will care."

  "Yeah, and we won't make jack shit. But so what? We'll be the stars of the next issue of The American Journal of Worms ... for about a month."

  All of a sudden the new find seemed almost more trouble than it was worth. But Nora could still retain some level of excitement in their next step. "This one's big enough to dissect. You want the honors?"

  "Damn straight."

  "Start cutting, Doctor."

  Loren got up for the case of exam and dissection implements, as something occurred to Nora. "One thing," she said. "We can't tell the others anything about this."

  "You're right. They'd overreact in a big way."

  "We'll just tell them the worm is typical and nothing to worry about. Any other way would be-"

  Loren laughed. "Can you imagine Annabelle's reaction if she thought there was an undiscovered parasitic worm out here---that doubled in size in twenty minutes? And that they were in her lobster! She'd have a cow!"

  "I'd love for her to have a cow, and every other conceivable farm animal," Nora remarked. "But I'd be more worried about Trent. He'd have an army quarantine crew out here."

  Loren sat back down and unzipped the dissection kit. With forceps he readjusted the body of the worm across the stage, then applied stage clips. The case contained cutting instruments called microscalpels, which looked nothing like typical scalpels. Honed needles composed the blades, some made of steel, some made of hard resins. The kit also contained intricate pipettes, probes, and section lifters. "Yeah, this one's plenty big enough," Loren muttered. "Let's see what's going on in here..."

  Nora waited.

  "Same mucoid ducts that we saw on the parapods of the ovum," Loren observed.

  "Mucoid ducts in the coelum mean it's a skinbreather-like an earthworm," Nora said, cruxed.

  Loren daintily cut some more. "Plus gill sacs connected to the secondary dorsomentral channels. So we were right again. It can breathe air and also process oxygen when it's in seawater. Like lungworms and snakeheads. And it's definitely not a Polychaeta." He pushed the microscope over to Nora, frustrated. "I can't even guess what the family is on this thing."

  Nora changed the numerical aperture and upped the light field. With microshears and a teasing needle, she peeled back the layers of the worm's coelum-its outer musculature that served as skin as well as the main sensory organ carrier. "This looks like a roundworm but demonstrates features of other nematodes and an nelids. No evidence of triphasic rhythm fibers. Part land rover, part free-range seaworm, but the outer physicality smacks of what we thought last night. Roundworms. Pink from oxygen saturation-"

  "The Trichinella family."

  "Um-hmm, and that's impossible because no Trichinella, nor Trichina, exists without triphasic rhythm."

  Loren laughed, if a bit nervously. "When we discover a new species of worm, we sure do pick doozies."

  Nora wasn't laughing. "Plus motile ova, plus chitinpenetrating digestive enzymes." She didn't say anything more, but jacked the microscope to its full 400x magnification. "Damn, what I wouldn't give for an SEM, or even just a scope that cranked to a thousand or fifteen hundred."

  "Tell me about it."

  Nora went silent again, then slid the scope back to Loren. "Tell me what you see."

  Loren looked. "Muscular symmetry that looks both radial and spiral," he declared.

  They both sat a minute, saying nothing. Only experts of their kind knew the ramifications. "This can only mean its motile ova are bifunctional. A mutator. Like-"

  "Like a fair share of Trichinosis species. And if we're right, then these things can easily infect humans ... I'm going to check the midlevel striations now." He cut some more, then said, "My hands are full. Get something to gently raise the stage clip, will you?"

  The kit lay on the other side of Loren, so Nora looked around for a pen or something small to lift the clip. Damn ... There was nothing near her. She slipped her finger in the key pocket of her swimsuit, but the only thing in it was that small, corded metal strip she'd found the other day. This'll have to do, she thought, and used it to raise the stage clip.

  "What's that thing?" Loren asked, obviously seeing it under magnification.

  "Something I stepped on in the woods. Not sure what it is. Trent said he thinks it's a calibration tool for an old army radio."

  "It's got some funny markings on it," Loren told her. "Okay, thanks. Lower the clip now."

  Funny markings? She took the metal strip away and decided to look at it under the other microscope. "You're right," she said, focusing. "What are those markings?"

  "They're raised, like Braille almost," Loren said back while still concentrating on the next incision. "Reminded me more of a bar code or something. Trent said it was a radio tool?"

  "Yeah. But he wasn't certain."

  "Looks more like a key to me."

  "That's what I thought too," she murmured, and looked more closely at the object beneath the magnifier.

  The markings looked like this:

  "Forget about that thing," Loren said next. "I just found the stomach process and the enzymatic sac."

  "Did you puncture it?"

  "Yeah, and guess what? The fluid is sizzling. It's even smoking a little."

  The chitin penetrator," Nora said.

  Then Loren said, "Holy shit. It's not burning the glass slide, but the stuff melted the tip of my probe."

  "Is the probe tip made of resin?"

  "No. Stainless steel."

  "Strong stuff," Nora commented. But this wasn't terribly surprising. There were a number of invertebrates that possessed highly corrosive stomach enzymes: to burn through the shells of animals they were attacking, and to even burn burrows into coral. "Remember that article we read about the Norwegian lugworm? It released its enzymes all at once and burned a hole through the aquarium's slate floor."

  "Yeah, slate, but not steel. This is really tough stuff, Nora."

  She could see threads of smoke rising up from Loren's microscope slide. "Can you drip some onto the floor?"

  With larger forceps, he kept the dead worm crimped to the slide, then lifted it all off the stage. Careful not to dribble any on his fingers, he tipped the slide. Several drops of the brownish fluid plipped onto the concrete floor.

  Threads of smoke began to rise.

  "Jesus," Nora said. She grabbed another probe and ran it across the smoking drops. "This stuff is really tough. It's burned some small indentations into the cement."

  "We'll have to be very careful getting some more of these things to take back to the college," Loren said.

  "I wonder what the preferred habitat is. Water or land?"

  "Probably water. Something that gets this big isn't going to settle for beetles and bugs to eat. It'll go after larger crustaceans, the bigger meal ticket."

  Like the lobster, she recalled. "When you're out looking for more bristleworms with Annabelle, keep an eye out for more of these. It'd be great to get some live ones to take back."

  "I'll find some." Loren felt sure. "And speaking of that, I better start getting ready. Annabelle will probably want to start the next shoot soon."

  `See Spot run," Nora said. "And don't forget our bet."

  "Oh, I won't. You'll drop big money when you lose that one," Loren said. Then he winked and left.

  Poor fool, Nora thought. The ignorance of youth.

  She continued dissecting the worm ... and continued to find physical features that seemed to borrow from several different species: epidermal pores to draw in oxygen from the air-like an earthworm-but also gill filters for water breathing-around intercoelic channels that stored seawater-like free-ranging Polychaetes. Ovaries that produced independent motile ova were possessed of many roundworm species-like the Trichinella classes-while the worm's physical appearance, too, looked like some of the nonmarine orders of Trichinella and Trichina.

  On its own, though, Nora knew that the specimen could not be any of those.

  Almost like a genetic hybrid, her mind whispered.

  When she'd dissected all she could, she jarred the worm in preservatives and spent the next hour inputting notes into her laptop. That's when Trent walked in.

  "Going for a swim?" Nora asked, for the lieutenant was wearing trunks and an olive-drab army T-shirt.

  "Yeah, I might as well," he replied. "I've been stationed in Florida for the last ten years, but I don't think I've even been to the beach more than a few times. I thought I'd tag along with Annabelle and Loren, while they're looking for their scarlet bristleworms."

  "Have fun."

  "But I wanted to show you this first." He approached the table and handed her something. "Is that like the thing you mentioned?"

  Nora placed it in her palm and knew at once. "The little camera lens, yeah. The one I saw was stuck in a tree, almost like it had been nailed into the bark."

  "Same thing here, but I pried this one out. Originally I thought it must've been an electric-eye sensor, or maybe an infrared perimeter alarm, but I don't see any terminals on it."

  "I didn't see any on the one I saw either. No connection posts or anything to hook wires to. When the army was using these things, how did they establish a circuit?"

  "Beats me. But there does seem to be glass in the head, like a lens."

  "I know," she said next. "Let me take a closer look ..."

  She placed the cigarette-butt-sized object on the microscope stage, then focused down.

  "Yes, it's definitely rounded, polished glass. A bulb, maybe, an indicator light?"

  "Can't imagine that. In the woods? And what would the power source be? See any terminals on it, or anything like a hole for wires to go in?"

  Nora studied the odd cylinder more closely. "Nothing on the sides or on the butt end."

  "See if there's any markings on it. I'll bet there's a defense contractor's name on it somewhere, or an army property line," Trent said.

  Nora slowly revolved the object on the stage with forceps. "Wait a minute." She paused. "There is something."

  "What's it say?"

  Nora rubbed her eyes and got up. She bid Trent to sit. "Tell me if you've ever seen that before."

  Trent sat down and put his eye to the scope.

  What Nora had seen was oddly familiar. Etched along the object's side were markings like this:

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  (I)

  Annabelle stretched her bare legs to the sun. The tan was deepening, made more prominent by a blazing white thong bikini. She glanced down at herself and immediately thought, Lookin' good, Annabelle-as always.

  She wanted to catch a few more rays before she and Loren went back in the water for the last of the bristleworm photos. He'll be here soon, she figured, so she took off her top, to let herself be "caught." The sudden sun seemed to lick her nipples, raising them in the heat. She wanted to keep Loren stoked: Sexual anxiety among the men in her range always kept things interesting. Poor little Loren. He'll have blue balls for years....

  -Her bare breasts looked like fresh white fruit atop the nougat tan of her belly. She lounged back on her towel. The narrow beach extended off, gentle waves flapping over each other as seagulls glided silently overhead.

  Her snorkeling and photo gear lay beside her. The sun was heating her up. Might as well make some calls while I'm just lying around. She couldn't wait to tell her friends about this little expedition. When she opened her cell phone she noticed that her fianck had left several messages. Better to let him wait, she decided. She liked to let him stew; it kept him wondering. He needs to appreciate me more .. .

  She called her best girlfriend in New York and got to chatting. "The funniest thing of all is how dumb these people are," she was saying. "None of them know I'm a newbie; I've got them believing I'm the magazine's premier nature photographer-they don't know this is only my third assigrunent. The idiots think I've been all over the world!"

  More chatter.

  "Well, of course! There's this army guy here, nothing to write home about but he's good for some diversion. I wouldn't pay him the time of day back home, but on this island? Why not? And, no, I don't consider it cheating at all-strictly recreational. What I do is my business. Shit, my fianck's the lucky one. What he doesn't know won't hurt him." Then she giggled. "But I better never catch him cheating on me! What I'd do to him would make Lorena Bobbit look like Shirley Fucking Temple."

  Still more chick-thing chatter.

  "Oh, and you wouldn't believe the damn professorshe's a worm professor, can you believe it?-this skinny frizz-head cunt with permanent PMS. Looks like Olive Oil on Popeye. I'm playing so many head games with her, it's actually fun, and I'll bet she's never been laid in her life! She's so jealous of my bod that you can see steam coming out her ears. Oh, and she's got this dork assistant named Loren-nerd and a half. I'm always giving him an eyeful to keep him riled. That poor kid probably plays with himself ten times a day! When I'm bored, I tease the shit out of him. It's so much fun!"

  Suddenly the line fell silent, and after a moment, all she could hear was fuzz.

  I knew I shouldn't have changed my service. She leaned up, frowning, and redialed.

  Nothing but fuzz over the line.

  Then she dialed her fiance.

  Fuzz.

  "Goddamn cell phones," she muttered and put it away.

  (II)

  "Are those numbers that have just worn away from age?" Nora suggested.

  .No, I don't think so," Trent said. He still had his eye pressed to the microscope, focusing down on the tiny lens or element or whatever it was. They were trying to figure out the ..-::markings. "They don't look like they're worn or eroded at all. It must be some kind of a microbar code. The military uses nomenclature codes to mark security equipment. Same thing as a model number, only coded."

  "Security equipment," Nora said, "which makes sense on a camera lens that small. So that other thing I found on the cord-it must be a security key."

  Trent looked back at her. "Thing on the cord?"

  "The thing you said was a radio calibrator," Nora reminded him.

  "It had the same markings?"

  "See for yourself." She placed the object on the stage.

  "The configuration is different but it's the same style," Trent observed now.

  "And you said you've seen them before?"

  "I've seen the same sort of thing, but nothing exactly like these. Usually they're numbers or letters."