He started eating his own scallops, wishing there were more than just three. Ship assignments had finally come through last week, and the Morgan was going to be carrying Dellian and his squad out into the galaxy. He was desperate to know if Yirella was going to be on board with them, but too terrified to ask. If she wasn’t, then that was it; the end. Relativistic time dilation would ensure their parting would be final. Though perhaps one day in a few thousand years, one of them might read of the other in a history file, when the human race was finally reunited.

He opened his mouth to ask, but heard himself say: “How’s the lure coming?”

Yirella’s smile was bright and genuine. “Really good. The enemy won’t be able to resist investigating this civilization when they start broadcasting radio signals. We’re calling them the Vayan. They’ll be quadruped, with a double-section body, like two doughnuts one on top of the other, with legs on the lower section, and arms and mouths on the second, then on the top they’ll have a prehensile sensor neck. They can move in any direction without having to turn around.”

Dellian frowned as he tried to picture that. “Really? I thought animals evolved to go in one direction. There’s always a front and back.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not an absolute. Wilant had an animal genus that possessed quintuple directionality.”

“Where’s Wilant?”

“It’s a cryoplanet, over seven thousand light-years away. A traveler generation starship found it a long time ago. They stopped there for fifty years to study the indigenous species. There was some interesting biochemistry involved.”

“A cryoplanet?”

“Yes.”

“I thought everything moves slowly on a cryoplanet.”

“Their metabolism energy levels are lower, so generally mobile life there isn’t as fast as a standard world. But the species on Wilant had a chemical reserve, so they could move faster if they were threatened. Sort of like us with an adrenaline rush.”

“Okay, and they had—what? Five heads?”

“No, they used sound waves to examine their environment. They could process the echo in every direction at once. They had a unique neurology to give them that ability.”

“So these things were predators, like the morox?”

She shook her head in amusement and sipped some of the wine. “Not quite. More like starfish. They moved through seas of methane, clogged up with a lot of hydrocarbon slush—hence the sonar.”

“You’re kidding. You’re dreaming up a sentient species based on blind starfish?”

“It’s an extrapolation exercise. The Wilant neurology gives us a logical progression to make sentient Vayans appear realistic. We’re already growing full-scale Vayan biologics in molecular initiators. They need refining, but they’re valid. It’s really interesting work, Dellian; very challenging. I love it.”

He paused as remotes cleared the starter dishes away. “And that’s what you do? Make the actual aliens?”

“The biochemistry is fascinating, but no. I’m on the worldbuilding team. We’re fashioning their entire culture based on the physiology we created, along with their history, language, art. Deciding how territorial and aggressive they are, and why.”