The sudden load-bearing burst that seized Pip’s lower body was not an ordinary muscular cramp. It was a violent osteological eruption. Deep within the bird’s pelvic canal, beneath the fused lower-back and sacral spine bones of the synsacrum, a cluster of dormant old family bone nodes that had remained locked in genetic frozen stillness for two billion years began to wildly expand and differentiate.
Pip let out a sharp, choked gasp, his wings snapping outward to brace himself against the stainless-steel check table. The newly formed golden feathers along his main flight quills rattled like a quiver of hardened bronze arrows. His two existing talons dug deep into the metal surface. That left jagged, curling gouges in the heavy plate as his entire frame arched backward under the huge internal pressure. Tiny beads of golden, marrow-infused lymph began to cry from the mid-ventral seam between his thighs.
Arthur right away locked his magnifying glass onto the bird’s ventral midline. His aligned lenses pierced through the fine golden scales and belly muscle, mapping the explosive cellular proliferation occurring within the hip bones.
“Szabo, bring the high-thickness calcium-stone-glass solution!” Arthur barked over the intercom, his voice cutting through the surrounding hum of the ship’s sky scrubbers with total power. “Titus, get in here! We need your crushing weight to suppress the bone-shearing forces!”
