Chapter 15: Dark Dreams

Five hours later...

Time: February 9, 9570 11:30 AM UCT

Eliana was alone on Level-B, the first sub-level below the CAT's Level-A garage. Like Level-C below it, Level-B was a large work and storage area, 8 meters by 16 meters with a 4-meter ceiling. Along the length of an 8-meter wall were several isolation chambers with numerous diagnostics for bio-analysis. Eliana and Basel had placed their specimen in Chamber-#1, their most secure repository.

The large corpse was frozen solid. Once its transfer was complete, they decided that Basel would work in the station's Level-2 control room and start the processing of the raw holographic data they had collected, while Eliana monitored the slow thawing of the corpse with low-level microwaves.

The work time passed without incident. A bit later than she expected, she heard Basel entering the CAT garage above her from the main station's connecting tunnel. He then climbed down to meet her.

"Hi. Sorry I'm late. I felt the urge to head up to Observation and take a quick look around."

"No problem. That was a good idea. See anything?"

"Not much in the visuals. Twilight ended an hour ago. Everything looked quiet in the infrared and UV. Amazingly long stretch of clear weather we've been having. Typically we would have had a number of storms by now." Basel stretched and noticed for the first time the temperature of the room. "Nice and warm down here," he commented.

Eliana nodded. "I have the room heated to 21C."

"Ah. To help with the thawing?" He turned to the specimen chamber.

"No. I just felt cold I guess. I found out a few things about the hippo."

Basel was staring at their hippo. "Hmm?" He looked back to Eliana. "Did you start the autopsy without me?"

"No. Well, maybe a little, just the surface analysis, once the skin area had thawed. All those spots, I know what they are now. They're not fur color. They're stains, blood stains, all over the body, almost a thousand of them. I've got everything recorded."

"Show me?"

Eliana nodded and went to a control station. "Running the hologram now. This is a typical spot. Here we are moving down into the fur. Notice how the fur is cut?"

"Yes, very clean, a sharp scissoring. The fur hasn't been pulled at all."

"No. And I agree it's a very clean cut. I don't know about the scissoring. I think a razor-sharp hook might be able to make the same cut."

"Really? That clean? A knife perhaps. Hmm... Yeah, maybe..."

Eliana continued to manipulate the holographic display controls. "Here's why I think it was a hook. We're down at the skin level now. See that slit? Here's what the wound looks like with a side-scan from the NMR."

Basel stared for a moment at the nuclear magnetic resonance image. "It's in the shape of a thorn. Looks like a wickedly sharp point too."

"I suspect the inside edge of that thorn is also wickedly sharp. There's no stretching at the edges of the cut tissue at all. It's a surgically clean slice."

Basel nodded. "Did you run a bio-comparison?"

"Yes, very broad sweep. The closest we have for this type of attack pattern would be from cephalopods. Some species of octopi have hooks along their tentacles, used both for seizing prey and for defense."

"Ah. And do you see any patterns of tentacle strikes with these marks, patterns of linear strikes?"

"No, quite the opposite in fact. There's a complex 2-D pattern of marks over the entire body, almost as if a rug woven with a geometric pattern of hooks were wrapped tightly around the hippo." She typed for a moment at her console. "Here's a model of an unfolded rug that would make the punctures if wrapped around this hippo."

Basel stared at the 2-D pattern. "It reminds me of a sunflower. Look at the two Fibonacci sequences. There are repeating patterns of thirteen hooks spiraling clockwise, and patterns of eight hooks spiraling counter-clockwise."

"Yes, and with close to a thousand hooks on the poor hippo, the gripping power must have been close to absolute. My guess is that the hippo was completely immobilized, and then its head was pulled back to expose its throat to some sort of mouth or beak. See how most of the neck has been severed? The cut starts at the throat and goes in and upward, all the way back to the top of the spinal column."

Basel studied Eliana's analysis. "Very impressive," he said quietly. "The neck and shoulder muscles of an adult wooly hippo are extremely strong. The power to pull the head back like that would be extraordinary." He paused for a moment and gestured at the diagrams of the rug pattern and its mapping to the hippo's body. "All the spirals converge to the hippo's throat area. That's where the center of the attacking creature's body is."

Eliana nodded. "The beak area."

Basel stared at the corpse for a moment and then asked, "Is the interior completely thawed now?"

"Yes. Just barely, but yes."

They spent the next several hours continuing the autopsy. To both their relief, there were no signs of parasitic implants, no trace of any foreign material whatsoever. That puzzled them both. Normally after such a close and intense struggle, there would be skin or hair or saliva traces of the attacking creature, but they found absolutely nothing. They did find one thing unusual, and logged it as a second cause of death. In addition to the near decapitation, over 85% of the hippo's blood had been drained from its body.

They sealed the specimen chamber and retired to their living quarters about 2:30 PM, climbing up a level to the CAT's garage and then leaving the annex through the secure tunnel to the circular chamber of Level-3 in the main station. Eliana asked if she could take a shower first, even though it was her turn to make dinner, and Basel agreed without hesitation and offered to make the meal himself. They had a very quiet evening, neither wanting to talk. They both retired early, Basel taking his own shower just before bed. They were both in their own private rooms by 3:30 PM.

Three hours later...

Basel opened his eyes in the darkness, slowly drifting up from an uneasy sleep. He felt tired and nervous, and lay for a moment wondering what woke him up. He had a vague memory of... of something, but thought it was probably part of a bad dream.

"No, wait, what was that? Some sort of scratching sound?" thought Basel. "What did I just hear?" His eyes were now wide open in the pitch blackness of his bedroom. He lay there without moving, trying to decide whether to turn on a light. He shook his head in disbelief at his growing fear. "Oh hell, am I just imagining this?"

No, there it was again, a faint scratching sound by his door. "Eli?" he called out softly.

"Yes," a small voice replied. "May I come in?"

Basel gave a huge sigh of relief. "Of course."

The door slid open, revealing the dim lights of their living area and the silhouette of Eliana's body. She was barefoot and in her pajamas, shivering slightly. She came over and sat tentatively on the edge of his bed.

Basel cocked his head. "You didn't want to use the door chime?"