"I figured you probably hadn't looked at them very closely before," Acton says. "I thought you might be interested."

"We don't have time for this, Acton."

His hands reach down into the light and lock onto one of the starfish. They peel it slowly from the rock; there are filaments of some kind along the creature's underside, anchoring it to the substrate. Acton's efforts tear them free, a few at a time.

He holds the animal up for Clarke's inspection. Its upper surface is colored stone, encrusted with calcareous spicules. Acton flips it over. The underside writhes with hundreds of thick squirming threads, jammed into dense rows along the length of each arm. Each thread has a tiny sucker at its tip.

"A starfish," Acton tells her, "is the ultimate democracy."

Clarke stares, quietly repelled.

"This is how they move," Acton is saying. "They walk along on all these tube feet. But the weird thing is, they have no brains at all. Not surprising for a democracy."

Rows of squirming maggots. A forest of translucent leeches, groping blindly into the water.

"So there's nothing to coordinate the tube feet, they all move independently. Usually that's not a problem; they all tend to go towards food, for example. But it's not unusual for a third of these feet to be pulling in some other direction entirely. The whole animal's a living tug-o-war. Sometimes, some really stubborn tube feet just don't give up, and they literally get torn out at the roots when the others move the body someplace they don't want to go. But hey: majority rules, right?"

Clarke extends a tentative finger. Half a dozen tube feet latch onto it. She can't feel them through her 'skin. Anchored, they look almost delicate, like filaments of milky glass.

"But that's nothing," Acton says. "Watch this."

He rips the starfish in half.

Clarke pulls back, shocked and angry. But there's something in Acton's posture, in that barely visible outline behind his lamp, that makes her pause.

"Don't worry, Lenie," he says. "I haven't killed it. I've bred it."

He drops the torn halves. They flutter like leaves to the seabed, trailing bits of bloodless entrail.

"They regenerate. Didn't you know that? You can tear them into pieces and each piece grows back the missing parts. It takes time, but they recover. Only you end up with more of them. Damn hard to kill these guys.

"Understand, Lenie? Tear them to pieces, they come back stronger."

"How do you know all this?" she asks in a metallic whisper. "Where do you come from?"

He lays an icy black hand on her arm. "Right here. This is where I was born."

She doesn't think it absurd. In fact, she barely hears him. Her mind is somewhere else entirely, terrified by a sudden realization.

Acton is touching her, and she doesn't mind.

* * *