Kel pointed to the forlorn UUV where it rested on its cradle at the side of the room. “Remember the jellyfish that almost ate the UUV? I’ve got a theory about that after talking to Vik.” He glanced at the microbiologist for assurance. “Donovanian life, like that tube the kids cut up in Vik’s lab, has polymer structures that serve the same purpose bones do for life on Earth. Am I right?”

“You are. I haven’t had the time to look into the histology, but polymer is just carbon chemistry.” Vik glanced around. “I was telling Kel that I thought that Donovanian life had figured out a way to digest the polymer that makes up the internal structure of prey species. Or at least denature it to the point it will pass through the digestive net that serves advanced life-forms here for a stomach and intestines.”

“So, the slime is either eating or denaturing our support pilings?” Michaela put the pieces together. “What the hell, people? Why didn’t we see this coming?”

“Because we were looking the wrong way!” Kevina cried. “We were so fixated on BMTs, scimitars, lobster monsters, and flying terror, we sure as hell didn’t care about a little algae!”

“It’s not algae,” Vik reminded. “That’s the kind of thinking that got us in trouble in the first place.” She paused. “And there’s something else. I caught Sheena standing in front of the tube hatch, her head cocked and her eyes vacant. I asked what she was doing. When she came to, she said, ‘Don’t you hear it?’ When I asked, ‘Hear what?’ she said, ‘It’s the Song. It’s trying to tell me something.’”

“What does that mean?” Michaela wondered. “What Song?”

Vik rubbed a nervous hand over her face. “Call me paranoid, but anything happening with the children bears investigation. I used one of the high-sensitivity microphones. It’s too faint for human hearing, but the entire Underwater Bay is, I guess you’d call it, singing. It’s like a sounding chamber for low- and ultra-high-frequency sound. I got readings from thirty hertz up to almost one hundred and eighty kilohertz. Nor is it random, but patterned. Tonal. Who knows? But whatever it is, Sheena said she could hear it.”

“That’s impossible.” Kel muttered.

“Is it?” Michaela asked. “TriNA changes human bodies. But it’s easy enough to give Sheena a hearing test.”

Kevina straightened. “Felix keeps talking about what he calls the Voice. Do you think that’s it? He’s hearing the slime? Thinks whatever this sound is, it’s giving him orders?”

“How can slime give orders?” Kel crossed his arms, expression strained.