Margo put her mouth next to Sergeant Zappy’s ear. “Do you remember the egg sacks we collected on Terra during our second recon?”

“That’s a hard thing to forget, Colonel,” said Zappy. We must have brought back a thousand of them. The lab people had a field day. They incubated a couple dozen sacks. About a week later, the lab was crawling with Terra newborn. It was weird, Colonel. Going in the lab after that was like stepping through a time portal into Aranea’s past. Felt like I was walking into the middle of a lesson on evolution.”

“Do you know if the lab still has any egg sacks left?”

“I’d say about a million live specimens, and the Ancients only know how many new egg sacks. It’s been kind of a hobby for the lab gals. You should be here on race day, Colonel. The Terran’s are fast little buggers.”