Ani sank a wrist spur into the creature. It was even stranger inside than outside. Its cells made no sense at all, which was strange, since the corpse was very fresh. She should still be able to read its cells.

Ilto chittered quietly to get her attention. She looked up to see what he wanted.

“This one’s alive!” he said, the symbols flashing across his body almost too quickly to read. “Help us take this thing off its body!”

Puzzled, she helped them strip the covering from the second creature. This one was darker brbwn, with a finer, sparser covering of hair. It was smaller and more delicately built. Ilto lifted off the hard shell encasing its head. Underneath the masklike head-covering was a flat, uninteresting face with a fleshy nose like a bird’s beak, and a small mouth with fat, swollen lips. The hair on its head was thick and long.

Stripped, the creature was ugly and clumsy-looking. It was at least three hand-spans taller than any Tendu Ani had ever seen. Its thick, awkward feet had tiny, weak toes, useless for climbing. The creature’s blunt claws were as impractical as its absurd toes. It lay there, laboring for breath like a dying fish. How could such a poorly adapted animal manage to survive?

Wondering if its cells tasted as alien as those of its dead companion, Ani reached out to sample them with a wrist spur. Ilto caught her arm before she could pierce its skin.

“No,” he told her. “Let us make sure it’s safe first.”

“It’s going to die unless we stabilize it soon,” Kirito warned.

Ilto flickered agreement. “Which of us is going to do it?”