Fragment. Warren Fahy
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knew these primitive creatures were not, technically, crabs. They resembled giant Cambrian trilobites lined up in rows over the stainless steel shelves, a bizarre marriage of the primordial and the high tech. But, Geoffrey mused, which was which? This lowly life form was still more sophisticated than the most advanced technology known to man. Indeed, all the equipment and expertise gathered here was devoted to unlocking the secrets and utilizing the capabilities of this one seemingly primitive organism.
‘What’s the scientific name of this thing?’ he asked.
‘Limulus polyphemus. Which means “slanting one-eyed giant,” I think.’
‘Sure, Polyphemus, the monster Odysseus fought on the island of Cyclopes.’
‘Oh, cool!’
‘What’s their life span?’
‘About twenty years.’
‘Really? When do they reach sexual maturity?’
‘At about age eight or nine, we think.’
Geoffrey nodded, making a mental note.
‘This whole lab,’ the technician continued, ‘was built to extract crab blood and refine it into Limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL–a specialized protein that clots on contact with dangerous endotoxins, like E. coli.’
Geoffrey looked in a barrel where the crabs were clambering methodically over one another. He already knew most of what he was hearing, but he wanted to give the young lab tech an audience. ‘Endotoxins are common in the environment, aren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ answered the youngster. ‘They mostly consist of the fragments of certain bacteria floating in the air, and they’re only harmful if they enter animal bloodstreams. Tap water, for instance, while safe to drink, would kill most people if they injected it. Even distilled water left in a glass overnight would already be too lethal to inject.’
‘How do you extract the LAL?’
‘We centrifuge the blood to separate out the cells. We burst them open osmotically. Then we extract the protein that contains the clotting agent. It takes about four hundred pounds of cells to get a half ounce of the protein.’
‘So why do these guys have such a sophisticated defense against bacteria, I wonder?’
‘Well, they swim in muck,’ the technician said.
Geoffrey nodded. ‘Good point.’
‘Yeah, they never evolved an immune system, so if they get injured, they’d die pretty fast from infection without a pretty badass chemical defense of some sort.’ The technician removed the needle from one specimen and lifted it from its cradle, straightening its tail. He placed the living Roomba in a barrel. ‘Before we had horseshoe crabs we had to use the “rabbit test” to see if drugs and vaccines contained bacterial impurities.’ The technician grabbed a fresh donor and handed it to a colleague. ‘If the rabbit got a fever or died, we knew there were endotoxins present in the sample being tested. But since 1977, LAL from these guys has been used to test medical equipment, syringes, IV solutions, anything that comes in contact with human or animal bloodstreams. If the protein clots, we know there’s a problem. This stuff has saved millions of lives.’
‘Especially rabbits, I guess.’
The technician laughed. ‘Yeah. Especially rabbits.’
Geoffrey touched the hard reddish-green carapace of a crab. The shell had the smoothness and density of Tupperware. He laughed nervously as the technician handed him an upside-down crab.
Gingerly, he took the large specimen. Five pincered legs made piano-scale motions on each side of a central mouth on the creature’s underside. Geoffrey cupped its back carefully so as not to get nipped.
‘Don’t worry, these guys are actually pretty harmless. And they’re hardy as hell, too. I know a scientist here who says that back in the day he stored some in his refrigerator and forgot about them for two weeks. They were still kicking when he finally remembered to get them out.’
Geoffrey watched with childlike delight as the arthropod bent its spiked tail up and revealed the ‘book’ gills layered in sheaves near its tail spine. ‘Gads, what a beast!’
‘When I started working here I thought only aliens from space movies had ten eyes and blue blood.’ The technician laughed. ‘This guy’s even got a light-sensing eye on his tail.’
‘Nature’s produced a lot of different blood pigments.’ Geoffrey peered at the maw at the center of the crab, which reminded him of the mouth of an ancient Anomalocaris, the arthropod that ruled the seas during the first ‘Cambrian’ explosion of complex life half a billion years ago. He was struck by the color of this creature, which closely resembled the color of the reddish-green trilobite fossils he had collected at Marble Mountain in California as a boy: this crab was a living fossil–literally. ‘I’ve seen violet blood and green blood in polychaete worms,’ he said. ‘I’ve even seen yellow-green blood in sea cucumbers. Crabs, lobsters, octopus, squid, even pill-bugs, a relative of these guys here, all have blue copper-based pigment that serves the same function as the red iron-based pigment in our blood.’
The technician arched his eyebrows. ‘You’ve been humoring me a bit by letting me make my spiel, haven’t you, Dr Binswanger?’
‘Oh, call me Geoffrey. No, I’ve learned a lot I didn’t know, actually,’ Geoffrey assured him. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this beastie. Thanks for letting me check it out.’
The technician gave him a thumbs-up. ‘No problem. Did you see SeaLife last night?’
Geoffrey squirmed. This was the fourth time someone had asked him this today. First, his attractive neighbor, as he left his cottage. Then Sy Greenberg, an Oxford buddy researching the giant axons of squids at the Marine Biological Laboratory, had asked the same thing as they passed on the bike path near the Steamboat Authority. Then the dock manager at WHOI, while he was locking his bike outside the Water Street building where his office was located.
‘Um, no,’ Geoffrey answered. ‘Why?’
The technician shook his head. ‘Just wondering if you thought it was for real.’
That’s what the other three had said. Exactly.
Someone rapped on the window in the hall outside the clean room. On the other side of the glass stood Dr Lastikka, the lab director who had arranged his tour. Dr Lastikka made a telephone gesture with his hand to his ear.
‘Jeez, it’s my lunch hour. Oh well, OK, I’m done.’ Geoffrey handed the horseshoe crab carefully back to the technician and pantomimed to Dr Lastikka, Tell them to hold!
Dr Lastikka signaled OK.
‘Thanks, that was really cool,’ Geoffrey told the technician.
‘Doing your lecture tonight, Dr Binswanger? Er–Geoffrey?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘I’ll be there!’
‘I won’t be able to recognize you.’
‘I’ll wear the mask.’
Geoffrey nodded. ‘OK!’
This was why Geoffrey loved Woods Hole: everyone was fascinated by science, everyone was smart–and not just his fellow researchers. The general public, in fact, was usually smarter. Woods Hole, he confidently believed, was the most scientifically curious and informed population of any town on Earth. And it was one of the rare places, outside a few college campuses, where scientists were considered cool. Everyone showed up for the nighttime lectures. And then everyone adjourned to various taverns to talk about them.
Geoffrey exited the clean room through two sealed doors. As he tugged off his cap and mask, a lab assistant pointed him to a phone. The front desk patched him through. ‘This is Geoffrey.’
‘There you are, El Geoffe!’