The object on PX-34 directs them to a sector within an ocean on the planet Panthalas. They've rented an aquacraft from a nearby beach resort, but they've been cruising for hours along the shallow coral reef and the detector hasn't even pinged once.

The only part of the sector they haven't investigated is the part where the reef drops off, where brilliant sun-dappled turquoise becomes empty blue water. There's no way the rental aquacraft can go further down without hull damage, and it's not like they have access to marine research equipment.

Flux stares into the vast depths and flexes her tentacles.

"You guys surface and I'll dive with the scanner," she says. "It's probably down there if it's anywhere."

"Are you sure?" Yuri asks, her hands hesitant on the depth controls. "At maximum depth--"

"Relax, I'll be fine," Flux says, forcing bravado. "The army built me for this."

As they ascend, Flux prepares herself for the dive. Her military training favoured usage over adaptation--mechanics didn't need to learn how to survive extreme environments when they could learn how to sprout enough tentacles to wield ten tools at once. Most of her knowledge about adapting her body comes from half-remembered briefings and a few practical experiences.

[You don't have to do this,] Rittenhouse says as they break the surface. The top hatch of the aquacraft slides open, and Flux reaches one of her tentacles out, stretching it into the water so she can grab the scanner. The water's slightly warm at this depth, but it'll get cold enough to require reconfiguration, and that should be done before immersion...

"Don't worry," Flux says, lowering the rest of her tentacles into the water. "I've survived worse."

She slips into the ocean.

Everything gives way to weightlessness. Her tentacles are free to reach in all directions with nothing weighing them down, and she feels the eddies and currents of water push against her skin, cradling her as she descends.

Little multicoloured fish flit around her as she scoots through the coral reef, and the light on the scanner flashes red as she hits the dropoff, going further down into the dark blue depths.

She jets around--she's never been in the ocean before, and she wants to experience as much as she can before she inevitably has to surface. She shifts her skin to neon pink dappled with cyan as she passes through a school of dull brown fish, waves a tentacle at a passing creature, and stirs up sand in her wake as she does loop-de-loops for the sheer joy of it, stretching and shifting her form as much as it can take--

The scanner flashes green.

Flux is tempted to ignore it in favour of staying down, but eventually duty calls. She winds a tentacle around the buried cylinder, shaking it free from where it's buried, dragging it to the surface.

They listen to the recording when they're heading back in Yuri's ship. It's a person's memory of Earth that seems to be half imagination, an account of a "marine conservation aquarium" with small striped fish hiding in fronded plants, gigantic flat fish that could only swim in circles, and how it felt when they reached their hand into a tank to touch a marine creature--the shock of the cold giving way to warmth, the pebbled feeling of the star-shaped animal against their skin.

Flux goes back to her bunk, half-lost in the world of the story, half-expecting her usual nightmares to jolt her back to reality.

That night, she only dreams of swimming.