Starfish

Thirty-Six

Crashing through the laboratory doors, Ardus waved a fistful of wrinkled papers before him and bellowed "Nia! Nia, where is she?" Neglecting to even pull on a smock or gloves, he whirled as he looked for his colleague, calling her name. Laboratory assistants dodged out of his way, flashing orange and yellow about their throats and Ardus caught a few by their elbows and turned them to ask, wild-eyed, "Have you seen Nia?" Some shook their heads, sparkling with alarm, while others stammered and pointed towards her office. The commotion trailed Ardus like a wake, whispers and shaking heads tracing his progress. "What's the matter with him?" 

Nia startled at her desk as he wrenched her office door open with enough force to pop the doorknob from its setting. "Ardus! What in the name of Omi-"

Ardus shoved aside the chair she kept for guests and slammed down his handful of notes written in Nina's tiny-but-neat hand. "You keep biological samples here – I believe you have some of mine in cold storage – do you have any of Boda? Recent ones?" He watched Nia rock back in her chair, leaning as far away from him as she could, her throat neon yellow. At first he did not understand why his longtime colleague looked so frightened, until he found himself being watched from the laboratory by half a dozen anxious assistants. He looked down and realized he had scored Nia's desk with several deep gouges.

"Ardus..." Nia said quietly, almost sweetly. She looked as though she was about to contact the psychology department and request an impromptu demonstration of capture techniques for agitated Dreen. Perhaps with a net. 

Ardus straightened and made an effort to settle down. He pulled the chair he had so roughly pushed aside back to its place and took a seat. "Ahem..."

Nia eyed him suspiciously. "Are you done wrecking my office?"

"Yes." Ardus fought the urge to hang his head. "Nia, I need your help. Last night, the Federation sent an envoy to collect Nina and the others, but before they rounded them up Nina left me these." Ardus spread the papers on Nia's desk. "She has been researching the incident at the Port – the most recent one – and I believe she was close to determining what is causing the paralysis." He pulled one of the sheets out of the pile and turned it around for Nia. Amid the scribbles and crossed-out words, some of Nina's thoughts were printed in Dreen: Neurotoxicity – cyanobacteria – saxitoxin – sodium channel protein = paralysis? Per os LD50 5+ µg in humans – Dreen =?? "She wrote her doctoral thesis on algae, I believe this is what she meant when she said she was onto something."

Nia took the page from him. "But cyanobacteria are freshwater, and there's no freshwater source near the Port. I don't understand what she's getting at-"

"I do, I have been following her trail all night," Ardus explained, realizing he probably looked like it – he hadn't slept since the night before they took Nina. "Look here," he tapped a claw at a crudely drawn diagram of the tanks that equipped most land-to-orbit shuttles with fresh water to cool the landing shields. "On Earth, it is apparently a recommended practice to empty these tanks between landing, refueling, and launching. However, as these tanks are hermetically sealed for long flights in space water-loss is negligible, therefore it is common practice to simply let the tanks be – the water in some of these tanks is years old, sealed away until the internal sensors determine that enough has evaporated or leaked to warrant refilling. Or, in many cases, they are simply augmented with whatever water is available – sometimes from local water sources such as the retention ponds near the launch site."

Nia's eyes grew huge. "They've been filling their cooling tanks with pond water?" 

Ardus handed her a printed report translated from a human language publication into Dreen, the title of which read Contaminated Water Responsible For Dangerous Algae Bloom. "Nia, if Doctor Ma'atanoa is right – and I believe she may be – then the agent responsible for Boda's paralysis and that of the other affected Dreen is merely an algae bloom. Not an attack, but an accident caused by simple negligence."