Professor Brown had been so excited to get all the data from Gordon's trip to New Zealand. And the discovery of a new octopus was the pinnacle of his research. She was going to make sure that he was credited with that. Included in the data he had managed to send her a sample of the venomous saliva. She had immediately set about analysing a portion of it.
The data was both exciting and slightly frightening. The congregation of octopuses at the point where the meteor crashed was beginning to alarm marine biologists around the world. WASP had been in touch with her and her colleagues, some of the underwater kingdoms were very worried and had been alerting WASP to some kind of forthcoming danger to both Earth and Sea.
The coincidence of the octopuses' gathering and the new species was too much to take for granted. However, that was not her concern. She was there to collate the data and translate as much as possible in as short a time as possible. The GDF, WASP, SPECTRUM – they all wanted assurances that nothing was going on. She would do her best, but proper analysis took time – time she did not really have.
She'd taken some of the venom and began to run a PCR test to decipher the DNA/RNA, and started a spectral analysis, but these would take quite a while, so she began to plow through the data on the extraordinary unnatural spectacle of hundreds of octopuses gathering off the north of New Zealand and Australia.
She thought that Gordon may have retrieved the meteor, if he had found it, but he'd said nothing about it and WASP had asked her if their flagship Stingray could make it through the steadily increasing swirling mass of octopus bodies without causing much damage. She'd spent the first week alone watching the footage that Gordon had taken, and she'd told them that, as long as they were slow and careful they could probably make it through.
Whether WASP had retrieved it or not, they had not informed her, nor did she expect them to, but after the third week of research and harassment by the combined authorities their contact had suddenly died down to only once or twice a day.
This had given her time to get on with breaking down the venom. After a slight mishap the first time, when the vial she was using had broken and she'd got some on her cut hand, she had managed not only to work out all the component chemicals and how they fit together, she'd also successfully managed to synthesise some.
These past two weeks she'd made tons of the stuff, she wasn't sure why she had, but it seemed the right thing to do, and today she'd closed a contract on a bigger warehouse to store everything in.
The day before his meeting at Tracy Industries Gordon answered the phone and was pleased to find Professor Brown. It was a simple call. Two words only. 'It's ready.' Gordon put the phone down.