Still so tempting to be a troll and put up "Book CIII" above this chapter . . .
New chapter.
CHAPTER FIVE:
Cloak Played "Infinite Explanations"!
Back at the forum, Cloak still felt restless, worried that maybe he didn't check hard enough, that he had missed a Thread burrow. The anxiety and uncertainty ate him up, though he knew, deep down, that he covered every square inch of the place.
Then he started to wonder if the city was the only place that was affected. If it was, then they were exceedingly lucky. If not, then they should start scouring the world. The oceans and lakes and ponds would not be a real concern, of course, nor the more arid and frigid areas of the planet perhaps.
But Cloak couldn't escape the feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, he wasn't doing enough to stop the Thread.
Naturally, a meeting was called in the auditorium, to discuss this new threat.
"If Cloak hadn't been so quick to act," Blaze said, "as well as the RAFian dragons and myself, the string things would have hit the ground. Cloak seemed emphatic that they should not do that."
"They shouldn't," Cloak said.
"Why?" Sakki said. "Why was it so important? And how do you know about these stringy things?"
"They are identical to a creature that I observed from another realm," Cloak said. "They are called Thread."
"Well, given what we call our quarters, that could be a bit confusing," Saffa said, before Cloak launched into a lecture about these creatures.
"Thread are thin, silvery, filaments of a space-borne spore that devours all organic matter that it touches. A planet in the Rukbar system, I think it was, called Pern or something experiences this deadly organism rains down from their sky periodically. They remain dormant in inner-system space as a small, icy ovoid, but are reactivated by passage through the atmosphere, by heat and atmospheric friction. This burns off the outer shell and releases thread-like strings which float down to the surface in sheets, tangles and clumps. And while they feed, Thread grows visibly."
"Oh, this sounds pleasant," GH said, in a sarcastic aside, before Cloak continued the lecture.
"Structurally, they are composed of a lot of thin, tightly-wound filaments within a very fine outer shell, or film, if you prefer. I think it's complex proteins that allow Thread to consume any substance -- er, carbon-based substance, that is -- through direct physical contact, as well as providing wriggling mobility. Contact with Thread results in something the natives of that other realm dubbed "Threadscore", which looked similar to a chemical burn."
"Interesting," Yarin said.
"Don't even think about it," Abby said, at once.
"What?"
"You aren't collecting some for study."
"But . . . it can be useful," the Nyac protested.
Almost as if in response, Cloak said, "A small clump of Thread can devour a fully-grown cow in mere moments. Feeding Thread grow rapidly, pulsating with sickly grey and green colors as it does. The exterior shell thickens with growth, and Thread dies from the inside out -- which might suggest that the Thread's explosive consumption may interfere with its metabolism. The shell thickens and hardens in death, while the interior undergoes a sort of unravelling or melting process that leaves a foul stench that I'll never forget. Water drowns Thread quickly, however, leaving behind nothing but a soggy, bubbling mess."
". . . How do you know all this?" GH asked. "You are starting to sound like a Wikipedia article."
Cloak glared at him a bit, then sighed before pressing on.
"They have no brain and are not sentient. The majority of Thread tends dies after landing, starving to death. However, if Thread survives to begin its feeding cycle on the organic component of soil, the result is a burrow that multiplies alarming rapidity. Think of how the Heinlin spread. A single burrow, from what I can remember, can devastate multiple square miles of land before perishing."
"Now I understand why you punched me," Demos said. "I still think it was a bit unnecessary though."
"I disagree," Sakki teased.
"Close examination, from the examiners of that realm, of Thread ovoids under inert conditions -- that is, near-vacuum pressures and subzero temperatures -- revealled an ice shell embedded with cometary matter (you know, rocks and dirt), requiring specialized glass tools to cut. Their dissection revealed a mass of tightly wound fibers, tubes, and yellow goo (possibly, liquid helium). The captured Thread ovoids, when exposed to warm laboratory conditions, exploded into a writhing, devouring mass that later melts into a dead puddle after a short time without sufficient food."
"Well," Saffa said, "that was a rather large info dump, wasn't it?"
"Hilarious," Cloak said dryly.
