Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) by David Coy Page A

the kind of place you got a simple case of athlete’s foot.
    I knew it, she thought . This place is disease heaven .
. .”
    She held the jar up in the light from the magnifier and studied
the grubs. They were rolled up into nearly spherical shapes, like bizarre
fetuses. She could make out the immature head parts and the sharp, tiny forelegs
that tucked flat against the thorax. They all looked to be in the same stage of
development. That fact and the information she’d gotten from the patients about
when the “stings” were acquired suggested to her that the insects might have a
long and seasonal life cycle. Everyone who had been parasitized had gotten
impregnated within a few days of each other, and as far as she knew, no one had
been “stung” in days. With any luck, she might not see any more of that particular
infection until the next season, whenever that was.
    She’d been at it for six hours without a break. She made herself a
cup of coffee and sat down at one of the benches along the wall.
    This is just the beginning.
    There was no telling what horrors crept, crawled or buzzed through
the foliage, soil or air of this sodden planet. She thought about how much
valuable baseline data could have been in those inventories. Done properly,
they would have offered a wealth of information and would have been the
cornerstone of all the health and safety policies and procedures issued from
the clinic. As she mulled it over, her anger at Ed Smith grew. If she hadn’t
gotten there when she did, those things might have hatched out in a day or two,
or worse, might have migrated within the bodies of those people, sickening them
or, perhaps even killing them. Proper biological inventories might have
prevented it completely.
    Every experienced contractor who signed on for off-world duty knew
the first part of a project’s schedule: the site was surveyed so that the
biological dangers could be cataloged, gassed, whacked, powdered and poisoned.
It was one of the most tedious, important and time-consuming phases of the
project. The inventories were mandatory. It was illegal not to do them.
    She felt like shutting the entire project down right then and
there.
    Stupid bastard. He’s endangering lives.
    It wasn’t bad enough that children were made to do the work of
adults, but to put them in harm’s way through negligence was unthinkable. She
remembered how frightened Mike Kominski had looked when she told him she was
going to cut . . .
    Christ.
    She looked at the phone and pursed her lips. Aft whatshisname
hadn’t called back yet. She was fairly certain he wouldn’t. She’d have to force
the issue, and she was prepared to do just that, dammit. She’d give him a full
day just to be sure. After that, she was putting the pressure on.
     

 
    8
     
    After
dropping off the last contractor, John Soledad lifted off and put the shuttle in
a straight course down the jungle’s western-most edge, just above treetop
level, just like always.
    He set his jaw, and for a moment feigned resistance to the call.
    He wasn’t supposed to do it, but it wasn’t like he was breaking
any law or anything. Besides, he could get back in a matter of minutes if he
had to. It was just so damned boring sitting around with nothing to do for most
of the day.
    Nobody would mind anyway.
    He banked in a hard right turn, leaving the relative safety of the
clearing behind. In a matter of seconds he was half a kilometer into the
green.
    He set the ship’s guidance to pick up the route he’d followed
yesterday. He’d try to go a little farther this time, maybe far enough to get a
look at that valley over the range of hills to the northwest.
    How could they expect a pilot to sit all day anyway?
    He lit a smoke. He wasn’t supposed to do that either.
    Everybody he came in contact with complained about this project.
He heard the contractors bitching and moaning about it when they got on board
in the morning and when they left in the evening. They bitched about