Free Spider Legs by Piers Anthony

have encountered the sea spiders.
    Deep water species of the sea spider could be huge although tropical shallow water species could be as small as an ant. The pycnogonid's digestive and reproductive system had many branches that penetrated deeply into the creature's many legs. Most species had eight legs but some with ten or more legs were not uncommon in Antarctic regions.
    The librarian came up from behind her. “I found somethingelse,” she said to Natalie, and handed her Lockwood's Biology of the Invertebrates and a computer printout.
    Tap, tap, tap, went the wasp on the glass.
    “Thanks.”
    The scariest part of the creature was its proboscis, or sucking appendage, which was longer than the rest of the creature's body. The mouth looked like a triangle at the end of the long trunk of the proboscis. Natalie found very few pictures of the adult creature, but she did find several diagrams of the baby larval forms which looked nothing like the adult.

    Natalie heard some high-pitched voices and looked up. Some nursery school children were leaving a room with an adult volunteer. They had just finished listening to the children's story Ants Can't Dance.
    “How did you like it, Terrie?” one mother asked.
    A beautiful little girl wearing a sweater with a golden phoenix on it replied, “Great. Can ants dance?” The girl shook her blond pony-tail with excitement.
    Natalie smiled and thought that maybe someday she would get married and have a little Terrie running around her condo. Someday. She tried to return to her reading. Unfortunately the overhead bright fluorescent lights were just turned on and the white Formica surfaces of her table were a little hard on her

    eyes, like looking into an icy arctic lake shimmering under a bright winter sun. The room was getting chillier—perhaps the librarian had reduced the heat because it was near closing time.
    Tap. Tap. Tap. She really ought to get a cup and catch that wasp and take it outside.
    As she read, some of the gorgeous Chinese bowls and vases that decorated the library shelves were being stored in locked cabinets for the night by a member of the custodial staff. It was almost time for her to go meet Nathan. She gazed down at her book on the table, and tried to wrap up her reading.
    In some species of pycnogonid the young larvae invaded the interior of jellyfish where they lived parasitically until they emerged as sea spiders. The larval stages of Nymphonella tapetis, a Japanese species, lived parasitically inside the cavity of clams. But these were small spiders; what about the big ones? Surely an elephant-sized creature couldn't live in a clam, not even in larval stage.
    Natalie continued to search for information on the larger species in an effort to find some clues to help them in the present predicament. Unfortunately the life cycle of the huge deep-sea species, especially members of the genus Colossendeis, were unknown.
    This lack of knowledge by scientists was not too surprising. There was still much to learn about the marine life off the coast of Newfoundland. The submerged ice structures, the chemical and geological structure of the ocean floor, the extent and affect of pollution . . . Unfortunately, recent dumping of heavy metals and souvenir hunting had caused some depletion of fish and invertebrates off the Newfoundland coast. So not only was much of the story unknown, it might become impossible for it ever to be known, because of inadvertent extinctions.
    The wasp at the window had ceased its relentless tapping on the glass and slowly crawled along the base of the window as if defeated. Its stinger undulated. Natalie was beginning to feel a little like the wasp—nervous and tired.
    As she finished her reading, Natalie, like most people, wasamazed to learn of the vast marine zoo that lived beneath the ice in the Arctic. She had thought it would be a virtual desert. But marine life was plentiful. Her books and magazines showed photos of bright red shrimps