For years the Lifesiders had planned a series of massive disasters for the inorganic. It would start with algae. They had already bred forms that could survive in the peculiar mix of salts and sulfurs native to European seas. The algae could cluster around fresh cracks where light seeped through, feasting on the strands of heavy hydrocarbons bobbing aimlessly within the sterile sea. Fish would be next; small ones at first, bred from the half-dozen species of commercial fish mankind had brought into space. Ocean arthropods such as "crabs" and "shrimp," known only from ancient textbooks, could be mimicked through skilled manipulation of the genes of insects.