Free Spider Legs by Piers Anthony Page A

filled with parasitic isopods, zebra striped amphipods, bulbous anemones with foot-long tentacles, sea fleas, football-shaped ctenophores, sea snails with iridescent shells, tiny isopods resembling daddy long legs with long, fragile forelegs to walk on silty bottoms and paddle-shaped rear legs to propel them through the water. Some of the most interesting species looked more like plants than animals: Violet holothurians—sea cucumbers—thrust out branching tentacles in search of animal prey.
    She shook her head, bemused. There was just so much there, but humans knew so little. It seemed that the northernmost continental shelf of Canada covered almost a million square miles, but scientists had seen less than a few of those miles of this vast maritime estate.
    As closing time loomed, Natalie had found what she was looking for in the scientific journals. She photocopied five articles, folded them, and stuck them in her purse. Then she fetched a paper cup, went to the window, and used a sheet of paper to catch the wasp in the cup. She carried it out with her, and freed it outside. The wasp hesitated for a moment on the rim of the cup as if considering how to thank her, then flew away. There was her good deed for the day.
    Cheered, she walked to the car.

CHAPTER 12
    Pilot
    A T THE SAME time Natalie Sheppard was leaving the library, June Holland was piloting a low-flying Hercules HC-130B above a monstrous hook of ice which protruded from an iceberg floating in the sea. In the distance she saw a vast herd of caribou thunder past the shoreline. After a few minutes, she brought the plane lower and cut two of the four engines. 700 feet . . . 600 . . . 500 . . . ever closer to the ceiling of the mammoth iceberg below. Holland radioed that she was descending to 300 feet.
    “OK, drop it,” she shouted to her crewman.
    On her signal, a young ensign hurled a soft-drink-can-sized jar full of dye down on the ice. “Got it!” he screamed to Holland.
    The jar hit silently. Looking back she saw a crimson stain spreading down the canyons of the berg. To June Holland this was just another routine operation by the United States Coast Guard. They were marking the icebergs for rapid identification in studies of their drifting patterns. The dye, a mixture of calcium chloride for penetration and rhodamine-B for the crimson hue, spread a swath of color several yards in diameter across the cliffs of the ice.
    Reports of all the icebergs’ positions were radioed to nearby vessels at sea to help prevent collisions. Ice patrols like this dated back to 1912.The United States and 16 other maritime nationsshared the cost of the ice patrol. The United Kingdom paid the largest share, but the responsibility for carrying out the assignment rested with the U.S. Coast Guard alone.
    “Let's get back,” Holland said. “Our fuel is low.” Her gazed shifted to a small stereo system resting on the short-nap gray carpet of the cockpit's floor where there were stacks of Suzanne Vega and Peter Gabriel CDs, just the right mix of background music for a pilot flying over the sparkling ice landscapes. As she gazed out of her cockpit window at the sea and ice, her eye was caught by a motion on the windshield: a tiny brown spider crawled along the bottom of the glass and began to spin a web.
    The ensign offered her a cup of hot chocolate, and she gulped down its warming contents. “Thanks,” she said. “Do we have anything to eat?”
    “How about a hot dog?”
    “OK, slip it into the microwave oven.” The small brown spider stopped for a few seconds and then began to crawl all the way to the top of the cockpit window. It raised its front legs as a thin, shiny web strand poured from the spider's bulbous abdomen. Holland saw that the spider's legs had dozens of fine hairs and that its multiple eyes never winked. It gave her the creeps.
    A minute later the ensign returned with a hot dog with the works—relish, onions, mustard, ketchup, and chili. She wolfed it