Chapter 7 - Seafood Bukkake

"Wait, what?" Kirk looked up at this unexpected statement. Lily-Lee was getting up from her front-lemur seat and went down to the water's edge. The cliff was sloping and the surface was slick and black from something thriving in the wave splash area. She walked back, came round to the other side, tried to climb between two rocks, came back again, and tried another spot. She was careful not to have a bad fall here. When she found a better place, she went further down and put her toes down in the shaggy brown stuff that grew where the water was shallow.

"It's not algae like I know it, but it's photosynthetic organisms at least. I don't know what lives here, but there should be filtraters, grazers and crawlers. Maybe also some top predators to live off them. I'll pick up what I can reach and we'll have a taste."

"You do the tasting, and we'll follow your lead, okay? You know what we can manage by now." Kirk felt that Spock was warm enough now, warmer than he was himself, but if he wasn't saying stop, then Kirk sure wasn't going to say it either. They kept sitting. Lily-Lee used her dress as a bag and picked a little of everything within reach, which turned out to be rather a lot of things. She came back up to the sitting men and poured it out. They politely declined to join in the testing but watched her with interest. Sniffing, breaking open shells, trying drops on the tongue, discarding, saving for further testing, and sorting into piles.

"Okay, I'm not testing all of them for every possible thing because I'm getting exhausted. Most of them do not contain enough energy by far, so I won't consider them. Some are too rough on our digestive systems, some are poisonous. Many of them have accumulated large amounts of trace elements, probably from the volcanic activity. We COULD eat them, but we'd get way to much selenium. But this is promising."

Lily-Lee held up some fist-sized life form with a shell on one side, like a large limpet. Inside the shell was a wiggling mass of articulated legs like on a pillbug. Lily-Lee pinched all the legs together and showed the men a pale yellow heart-shaped sack that lay protected inside the shell.

"These thingies have mature egg sacks. The whole population is waiting for mating season, whenever that is. Can't be far off, they've had them ready since before the gas eruptions because the eggs are not polluted. It could be that the eruptions are delaying the mating."

"And you think this is good food?"

"Yes. I'm going to try some more. They're easy to find, just sitting there and can be pried off the rock with another shell." Lily-Lee ate one whole egg sack and looked pleased. "A bit heavy on the iodine, but nice. I'd describe it as cottage cheese with raw caviar in it. Try some? I'll go get some more." Lily-Lee went back down to the water to pick a whole dress-bag full. Meanwhile, Kirk sat looking a bit doubtful with a shell in his hand, trying to get hold of all the legs at once. When he got all the spindly legs gathered in a bunch, he poked the sack with a finger and promptly got his face covered in the grainy yellow goo.

"Hey, captain, that's great! How did you do that?" Lily-Lee came back to them and put the full bag down.

"Pppfft. Did what? Help me get it off, I can't see!"

"You made it release the eggs without hurting it, that's perfect. You sure know how to tickle alien creatures in the right places! We can make them squirt and then toss them back alive." Lily-Lee made Kirk show her just how he did it and promptly got an ear full.

"Ha-ha-ha. I need to work on my aim. Or I'll just hold it up to my mouth and mmphh, mmm, yes that works. This is really good!"

Lily-Lee ate almost the whole bag. Kirk ate some just to get back at the creatures. Spock declined politely but watched the captain closely. When he caught the shot in his mouth Spock almost flinched and closed his eyes. Kirk couldn't understand why. Was it so disgusting? While they were eating the clouds parted and the sun came out. It was close to the horizon, and Spock informed them that due to the latitude, it was going to be a midnight sun. Since she was yawning, Kirk suggested that Lily-Lee should get some sleep. She stuffed her dress with the shaggy brown stuff from the water's edge and put it down behind the largest boulder to us it as a pillow. Comfortable rather than decent. Kirk had lost his pleasant hold of Spock when he got his face egged and cleaned.

"I suppose you don't need me warming you anymore?"

"No, captain, unfortunately not."

Kirk gazed out over the now calm and glittering sea. Lily-Lee is out of danger, Spock is out of danger, it's time to start thinking about the rest of the crew and how to get in touch with the ship and hey wait a minute did he just say UNFORTUNATELY?

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