Raleigh’s letting us use the fast floater for one day, three days from now, so we can try a couple of hundred kilometers north of here. The drones show a concentration of them up there. Meanwhile, we’ll keep practicing our capture technique, throwing a weighted net and then pulling the trailing cords together fast. It works fine on a soccer ball.

Age 57.32 (27 Galileo 431)—It was almost too easy. There were two of them floating together on a helium pond only five kilometers away. They had somehow eluded the killing patrols, but didn’t detect us sneaking up behind them. We got both on one sweep of the net; they didn’t resist after an initial startled reaction. They didn’t eject all their ballast water in an attempt to fly away, which was the usual response. Maybe they understood the net’s function and saw that the tactic wouldn’t work.

The dome was in a cleared field well away from Lakeside. Its floor was weeds and water; we’d borrowed a watering trough from the goat ranch and sunk it level with the ground. Dan’s enthusiasm for the project was limited, but he helped us rig a pipe from a helium tank with a valve so we could bubble the gas up through the “pond” whenever we wanted.

We put the creatures in the cage and freed them from the net, then hastily retreated. Both of them did the same thing, one after the other: drain out just enough ballast water to rise slowly, then at the top of the dome, spin around once, and then let out just enough helium to slowly descend. Then they both spread out as flat as they could and, over the course of an hour, turned bluish-green. It was as if they had seen that they weren’t going anywhere, so might as well photosynthesize.

It was a transformation nobody had documented before, but the only times we had seen the creatures at rest were when they were floating on the helium ponds, presumably ready to flee at any sign of danger. Perhaps they were slower, or not mobile at all, while absorbing sunshine for energy.

Maybe this was their normal state. If so, they had to be a lot more common than we thought. Certainly they would be hard to spot from orbit; indeed, you could probably walk right by one and miss it, if it was resting on a bed of grass.

Samples taken hour by hour did show that photosynthesis was going on. By nightfall their jail had the most oxygen-rich atmosphere on the planet.

We left Katia Paz in charge overnight. She’s going to let the helium bubble for an hour or so; see whether they move over to it. See how they respond to light, and so forth.

I have an odd feeling about the creatures. This has all been too easy.

FINAL EXAM

PRIME