extremophiles

The Ones That Thrive at the Edge

The XTREMOsensor reads in under four minutes. I've been crouched next to this thermal vent for forty of them. Not because the instrument needs it. It doesn't need me at all, honestly — Marcus would say I have a bad habit of supervising machines that don't require supervision, and he would be right. But I am here because there is something in the thermal spring of Site 7 that glows faintly blue at 73 degrees Celsius, and I do not yet have a word for it, and I find that I cannot look away. My fi