Slither - Edward Lee [75]
Loren's eye lowered to the scope. He went silent for several minutes. "There's no doubt. The pore scheme in the coelum is identical, and so are the mucoid ducts in the parapodal bands." He shook his head in studied amazement. "There's nothing else I've ever seen that's even remotely like this. This size? Good God."
"This is a species that the helminthology community is unawareof," Nora pointed out.
"We've discovered a new annelid." He took his eye away long enough to grin at her. "We get to name it ourselves."
"Yeah, but it's still a rip-off when you think about it."
"What do you mean a rip-off? It's every zoologist's dream to get credit for discovering a new species of animal life."
"Sure, Loren. But look at the fact of the matter. If a paleontologist discovers a new fossil, he makes a fortune. Somebody discovers a new enzyme, a new bacterium, a new friggin' fish-you name it-they make a fortune and they become famous in their field." Nora snorted. "We discover a new worm, and nobody will care."
"Yeah, and we won't make jack shit. But so what? We'll be the stars of the next issue of The American Journal of Worms ... for about a month."
All of a sudden the new find seemed almost more trouble than it was worth. But Nora could still retain some level of excitement in their next step. "This one's big enough to dissect. You want the honors?"
"Damn straight."
"Start cutting, Doctor."
Loren got up for the case of exam and dissection implements, as something occurred to Nora. "One thing," she said. "We can't tell the others anything about this."
"You're right. They'd overreact in a big way."
"We'll just tell them the worm is typical and nothing to worry about. Any other way would be-"
Loren laughed. "Can you imagine Annabelle's reaction if she thought there was an undiscovered parasitic worm out here---that doubled in size in twenty minutes? And that they were in her lobster! She'd have a cow!"
"I'd love for her to have a cow, and every other conceivable farm animal," Nora remarked. "But I'd be more worried about Trent. He'd have an army quarantine crew out here."
Loren sat back down and unzipped the dissection kit. With forceps he readjusted the body of the worm across the stage, then applied stage clips. The case contained cutting instruments called microscalpels, which looked nothing like typical scalpels. Honed needles composed the blades, some made of steel, some made of hard resins. The kit also contained intricate pipettes, probes, and section lifters. "Yeah, this one's plenty big enough," Loren muttered. "Let's see what's going on in here..."
Nora waited.
"Same mucoid ducts that we saw on the parapods of the ovum," Loren observed.
"Mucoid ducts in the coelum mean it's a skinbreather-like an earthworm," Nora said, cruxed.
Loren daintily cut some more. "Plus gill sacs connected to the secondary dorsomentral channels. So we were right again. It can breathe air and also process oxygen when it's in seawater. Like lungworms and snakeheads. And it's definitely not a Polychaeta." He pushed the microscope over to Nora, frustrated. "I can't even guess what the family is on this thing."
Nora changed the numerical aperture and upped the light field. With microshears and a teasing needle, she peeled back the layers of the worm's coelum-its outer musculature that served as skin as well as the main sensory organ carrier. "This looks like a roundworm but demonstrates features of other nematodes and an nelids. No evidence of triphasic rhythm fibers. Part land rover, part free-range seaworm, but the outer physicality smacks of what we thought last night. Roundworms. Pink from oxygen saturation-"
"The Trichinella family."
"Um-hmm, and that's impossible because no Trichinella, nor Trichina, exists without triphasic rhythm."
Loren laughed, if a bit nervously. "When we discover a