Giant Worms

Two Halpile crabs, Dram and Draam, walk through what was recently a forest. While a few smaller plants remain, there are no trees. Great holes remain where they were rooted. “What could do this much damage?” Dram asks.

“Probably the same thing that left these trails,” Draam says. They follow wide paths where the soil has been smoothed and compressed. Soon, they come across a pile of ash.

“Were the trees burned?” Dram asks.

“I don’t know,” Draam says.

They keep walking and eventually see something strange in the distance. Getting closer, they recognize the planet guardian of Halpile, the aracial adult that manages the planet. It is a crablike creature the size of a house, covered on top and sides by curved, telescoping spines. It is not moving. Wanting to keep a safe distance from any adult, the boys send over a drone to get a better look. The guardian is dead. It appears to be rotting apart. Several of its spines have fallen out. It is covered with black, burrowing worms the boys do not recognize. “Do you suppose what burned the trees killed the planet guardian?” Dram asks.

“We need to tell someone about this,” Draam says.

When the message delivery drone reaches the capitol city, Nathaniel and his crew are already there. Trees have gone missing all over the planet. They are being eaten by giant worms. Nobody knows where the worms came from, but they are as long as ten school busses and covered in a thick, black hide that absorbs bullets and basic lasers. The Halpile military has successfully cut a few worms apart with nuclear-powered lasers, but their regenerative abilities are so powerful that cutting them only increases the number of worms. “We are preparing to use explosives, next,” Colonel Drab says.

“Hold off on that idea,” Nathaniel says. “How big were the worms that were eating the guardian?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Colonel Drab asks.

“I’m smart; I see how everything fits together. Since cutting worms into smaller pieces creates more worms, blowing them up might do the same unless we can ensure that the pieces are too small to regenerate. Before we blow up anything, we should know how small the worms can get,” Nathaniel explains.

The colonel sends a response drone to make the inquiry. On Halpile, since any cable left unattended will be destroyed by local wildlife, and since radio emitters attract pests to the area, most messages are delivered by drones. These drones can reach supersonic speeds and round the planet in less than five hours.

The Halpile people are asymmetric crabs 1.5 meters wide. They move from right to left and have both eyes on the left. The trailing right edge of their shell is spiny. Their legs end in hooves and they are very fast runners. They hunt predators by acting as bait and luring them toward cliffs. Just as they near the edge, glands on the underside of the crabs will drop oil so that the chasing predator will slip over the cliff while the Halpile crab veers to the side.

“That sounds like fun. I might join one of your hunts when the worms are gone. I’ve always wondered what lionmane crabs would taste like,” Nathaniel says.

“Best freshly killed, raw, with lemon,” Colonel Drab says.

Halpile is high in biodiversity. This is because of its high oxygen levels. This is also because of its topography. Slopes are rare. Instead, there are several flat zones at different altitudes arranged in concentric shapes separated by tall, steep cliffs. This keeps most life forms from mixing much and the zones stretch through many latitudes, further subdividing them into smaller zones based on temperature. Thirty percent of Halpile is covered in water divided into two seas on opposite sides of the planet. The large sea is very salty and covers twenty percent of the surface. It is home to daggertails, jelly weeds, sea blobs, beach baskets, wicker domes, leathercrabs, and salt lizards. The small sea is mildly salty and covers ten percent of the surface. It is home to daggertails, sunning crabs, surfing crabs, and raisin seals.

Life on Halpile is highly interconnected within each zone. If the giant worms eat up all the trees, there will be nowhere for the birds to nest. Without birds, there are no animals with beaks strong enough to break the pond ice in winter. With no icebreakers, most small animals will die from lack of water. With no small animals to feed on, large predators will die. With no large predators, there are no animals that will chase the crab people off cliffs and they will starve too.

At last, the report comes in. The worms eating the guardian were ten centimeters long. “So we need explosives that will pulverize the worms to that scale or less,” Nathaniel says.

“We’ll get our scientists right on it,” Colonel Drab says.

“In the meantime, I’d like to see these worms myself,” Nathaniel says.

“Of course,” Colonel Drab says.

Nathaniel and his crew are flown to one of the many forests infested by the worms. They eat by suction, grabbing the trees in the middle, pulling up the roots and gobbling the branches at once. Ash is dumped out the other end. He and Doctor Bill scan them from the helicopter. “No scan penetrates them. They must have several layers of superconducting metal,” Doctor Bill says.

“We need a probe,” Nathaniel declares.

“How will you get one inside? Their hides are too strong,” Colonel Drab says.

“I want to fly a drone into one of their mouths and pick it up later when it passes. It will need to be packed with sensors and resistant to heat,” Nathaniel clarifies.

A drone is prepared. While waiting for it to complete its journey through the worm’s gut, the bombing campaign begins elsewhere on Halpile. Colonel Drab is constantly sending and receiving message drones. Nathaniel scratches an itch. I hate just waiting around,” Fred complains.

“Me too,” Nathaniel says.

“We don’t even know how long it takes its waste to pass,” Haticat says, vigorously rubbing his shoulders.

“Not long, judging by how fast they eat trees,” Nathaniel says.

Indeed, only fifteen minutes later the probe emerges in a pile of ash. Fred retrieves it and Doctor Bill downloads its data into his handheld scanner. He scratches his hand while waiting. A few seconds later, a picture appears. “Oh no, the worms have superconducting shielding on the inside too.”

“At least we can see the digestive tract,” Haticat says, scratching the rim of his soft shell.
Nathaniel points at the screen. “Those look like thermocouples. That’s likely how it derives energy from burning the trees.”

“I wonder how it stores so much energy. Batteries? Capacitors?” Doctor Bill comments.

“Aah!” Fred exclaims.

“What?” Haticat asks.

“My arms sting whenever I touch something,” Fred says.

“Did you touch any chemicals?” Nathaniel asks, scratching his sides with both claws.

“No,” Fred says.

“What about the probe? You touched that. Could it be contaminated?” Haticat asks, scratching his head.

Mojo scratches his chin with one paw and fishes out his magnifying glass with the other. “Let me see your arms.” Fred’s arms are covered in very tiny black worms. They burrow through the skin and eat his fur. He checks the others. The same worms are on Nathaniel, Haticat, Doctor Bill, and Mojo. “They must travel through the air as spores!”

“Stop the bombing!” Nathaniel shouts. Running towards the colonel, who scrapes his upper shell with one claw, he repeats, “Stop the bombing!”

After waiting for Colonel Drab to order a ceasefire, they helicopter off to the nearest laboratory for decontamination. They scrub with soap and water under ultraviolet lights for twenty minutes and while their clothes are baked in an oven.

While the probe yielded little usable information, the microscopic larvae of the worms turn out to be quite valuable. After dissection and experimentation, much is learned. The microscopic worms burrow into trees to predigest it for slightly larger worms to eat. The small worms burrow into trees to increase the surface area for the giant worms to burn. The giant worms are constantly exhaling spores that become microscopic worms that (if not eaten) grow into small worms and then giant worms.

Several poisons are developed that disrupt their cellular metabolism, but all have side effects. The first poison is airborne. It is toxic to all animals. It burns lungs and gills. The second poison can be trapped in droplets of oil, but it has a long life and will likely kill all fungi and other decomposers, destroying the ecosystem in time. The third poison can cause contagious runaway cell division in Halpile animals if just one molecule escapes. “What about number four?” Nathaniel asks.

“No, compound number four won’t work either. If it gets into the groundwater, it will eventually end up in the muscles of wall crabs, making it impossible for them to climb between different zones and transport the minerals they accumulate in their bodies from eating longfruit to the various predators that eat them,” ecological expert Doctor Darab says.

“What about compound number five?” Nathaniel asks.

“It’s too similar to a signaling molecule that some plants use to keep too many from growing in one place and using up all the water. It is likely that plants will not grow in affected areas,” Doctor Darab says.

“What about compound number six, then? It is much like number five, but breaks down in sunlight. So fast, in fact, that to be effective against the worms we’ll have to use a lot of it,” Nathaniel says.

“What does it break down into?” Doctor Darab asks. Nathaniel opens the computer file and shows him. “Oh no, anything with a triple-carboxyl group like that is extremely toxic to all Halpile life.”

“Well, we have to do something, or else the worms will end all Halpile life anyways!” Colonel Drab exclaims.

“What if instead of developing poisons and then checking them for environmental safety, we tested compounds already known safe to see how they affect the worms?” Nathaniel suggests.

“Why not? We have nothing to lose,” Colonel Drab says.

Twenty hours later, they learn that the worms are highly sensitive to sodium chloride. “Salt? You want to use salt?” Colonel Drab says.

“Yes. We can conscript every drone on Halpile to gather saltwater from the lower sea and drop it on the forests. It will kill the larval worms right away. Then you can blow up the giant worms all you want as long as you quickly douse the debris with saltwater,” Nate says.

“So long as we don’t oversalt the forests, life will recover,” Doctor Darab adds.

That is what they do. It takes three weeks, but the Halpile crabs ultimately prevail. Nathaniel joins a hunting party, studies the local biology and culture, and has some fun. Then Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, Doctor Bill, and Mojo pack up and prepare to blast off. “Where to next?” Haticat asks.

“I don’t know. I’m thinking of taking a vacation from fighting and doing some more exploring,” Nathaniel says.

“Sounds good to me,” Doctor Bill says.

“Me too,” Fred adds.

“Me too,” Mojo adds.

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