He eases himself through the tight gap in the rocks, careful not to scrape his suit or damage his tank on their sharp edges. Inside he can turn off his torch. Soft lights pulse gently inside the cave. Blues and pinks and greens. It comes from the coral that lines the walls and the bacteria that grows on them. It comes from the little schools of fish and shrimps, and from the little sea slugs and sponges. All life glows down here. A delicate ebb that appears uniform and coordinated, for reasons that escape researchers.
Deeper and deeper he goes. The bubbles from his rebreather rise and catch on the ceiling of the cave before going scampering off to higher ground. He extends a hand to pull himself along and watch as the colours, diffused by the water, dance across the back of his hand.
He finds a central chamber and the prize he is after. Tiny, crystalline spheres, a few millimeters across, bunched together in a neat pile in the centre of the space. There are thousands of them in a single clutch. He takes a scoop, specially waxed as to make for less friction, and carefully removes some of the eggs from their resting place to put them in a locking container. The membrane that surrounds them is delicate and easily broken. On earth, it would be prone to infection. Here, that never seems to have been a problem for the fauna.
A flash of colour. The dragon is here. She rises up, bringing her great, frilled head level with his. She clicks and squeaks, the sound wobbling across the water. Her serpentine body could easily crush the life from him. But he knows he is no danger. Despite their ferocious and beautiful appearance, the dragons are incredibly docile, much like most of the life on this planet. She just watches him take her eggs.
Below the first scoop, he can see some of the eggs have rotted. They don’t know why this is happening. He takes a sample of those as well, to compare with the healthy ones. He strongly suspects it is to do with the egg poaching that’s ravaging the planet.
Not only delicious, the dragon eggs can also help a person to recall long lost memories, or erase them. A single egg is worth more than what most people earn in a year. There’s a fortune to be made here, and many have already made theirs. But now the eggs are rotting, the dragons disappearing, and no one knows why. He intends to find out.
As he leaves, taking his small sample of eggs with him, he listens to the call of the dragon. A long and eerie note, one in a great deal of pain.
Paddy Dobson
25th March 2021