“Dya would have loved this,” Kalico said softly. “I’m not even close to an expert, but I think Iji is going to see one land-based analog after another in the aquatic plants we’re observing here.”

“If they’re really plants.” Yoshimura pointed. “See that petal-shaped thing? Looks like a plant, but it’s moving, and I’d swear those are eyes. See? Right in the middle of each of the three leaves.”

Even as they watched, the three big spatulate leaves shifted, aligned, as if targeting, and faster than Kalico could see, a slim tendril shot out from what she’d thought was the stem. It speared a tube that had its attention fixed on the drone. As the hunter reeled the tube back, the nearest plants shifted, roots spurting sand; the plants extended feelers, leaves, and tentacles as they tried to snatch the prize. The spatulate-leafed creature artfully dodged and tucked its captured tube close, the broad leaves folding down around the prey like a tight wrapping.

“What’s that?” Shinwua asked. He hit reverse, then play, skilled fingers enlarging the image on the monitor. “Here, see. Where the sand is kicked up by the roots. Those things. What are they?”

“Look like invertebrates,” Kalico said. “But nothing like the ones on land. It’s just the colorful shells. These are, well . . .”

Some of the things looked more like impossible crosses between a beetle, a trilobite, and a crayfish. Others might have been three-sided hard-shelled cuttlefish kinds of things. Others defied category, being colorful composites of shells, flickering cilia, and fan-like wings. She couldn’t tell the scale, but the biggest of the creatures might have been a couple of centimeters long. And as quickly, they were hidden back in the shadows of the larger plants.

“A wealth,” Yoshimura said through a reverent breath. “Even if all we had was this one record, we’re going to be engrossed for years. I’ve got a—”

“Woah!” Shinwua called, his eyes on another of his monitors. “Sonar has something big headed our way from offshore.”

“The jellyfish have vanished,” Kalico noted. She tapped the replay, watching in fascination as the jellyfish lost all their myriad colors, turning completely transparent. Like they had just faded away and disappeared.

“See if the drone can get a look,” Yoshimura told Shinwua.

Shinwua’s skilled hands turned the drone, pointed it at the endless aqua of deepwater, and started it forward.

Kalico happened to be gazing at the sonar, seeing an elongated shape coming in from the side. And then it shot forward.

Switching her gaze to the drone’s camera, she caught a glimpse of something like three very broad swords, equally spaced at one-hundred-and-twenty-degree angles and attached to a cylindrical central body where triangular jaws . . .

This thing is huge!

The swords flashed down and in, meeting just out of the camera’s field of view. The image jerked, went black.