David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Working with his gloved hands in an isolation box, he used sterilized forceps to tease apart a clump of red and green threads, lifting a few onto a microscope slide. The unit whirred as probes crept forward into position. This thing that couldn’t exist obviously did exist. It had to be examined.

Naturally, Malenkov would not be interested in looking at anything as macroscopic as this. As Shift-1 physician, Nick’s chief concern was the strange and terrifying illness that had appeared out of nowhere, killed their leader, and now had another victim prostrate in sick bay.

The “thawing” of Bethany Oakes and half-a-dozen more replacements had been delayed by discovery of brown slime in the warming bins, which had to be cleaned laboriously by hand. The resumed unslotting was now keeping the Russian medic too occupied to bother with anything so large—and therefore “harmless” —as threads blowing in a faraway tunnel.

Saul, exiled to his own lab, had little to do except analyze the tissue samples taken from poor Miguel Cruz and the new patient… and deal with queries from a worried Earth Control. Mostly, he had a broad-spectrum incubation program under way, from which he couldn’t expect results for at least another thirty-six hours.

“Have th’ tests told you anything at all about what killed th’ captain, Doc?”

Saul shrugged. “I’ve found signs of infection, all right, and foreign protein factors, out little more definite than that.” He had come to realize, at last, that he would probably never track down the pathogen, or pathogens, without a lot more data. He needed to know more in a basic sense about Halley lifeforms.

If Nick wouldn’t let him near the patients, then he should be looking elsewhere! What Saul wanted most was to get out into the halls and see for himself… to collect samples, build a data base, and find out what had killed his friend. But this damned quarantine…

He turned his head and lifted a tissue before sneezing. His ears rang and his vision swam for a moment.

Well, at least Jim Vidor didn’t seem to feel in much danger, visiting a presumed Typhoid Mary. He had backed away at the sudden eruption, but as soon as Saul’s composure returned, the spacer stepped back up to look over his shoulder.

“Got any idea what it is, Dr. Lintz? This new stuff was clustered all around the inlet pipes on B level, and I’m afraid it may turn into as big a problem as that green gunk, if it plugs up the dehumidifier.”

Nick and I are scared by the tiny things… microscopic lifeforms that kill from within. But spacers have other concerns. They worry about machines that get clogged, about valves that refuse to close or open, about air and heat and the sucking closeness of hard vacuum .

“I don’t know, Jim. But I think…”

The screen whirled and a tiny cluster of threads leaped into magnified view. Saul cleared his throat and mumbled a quick chain of key-word commands. Abruptly, a sharp beam of light lanced forth, evaporating a tiny, reddish segment into a brilliant burst of flame. One of the side displays rippled with spectra.

“Nope. I guess it can’t be a mutated form of something we brought with us, after all. It has to be native.” Saul rubbed his jaw as he read an isomer-distribution profile. “Nothing born of Mother Earth ever used a sugar complex like that .” He wondered if it even had a name in the archives of chemistry.

Vidor nodded, as if he had expected it all along. Innocence, sometimes, leaps to correct conclusions when knowledge makes one resist with all one’s might.

Saul, too, had suspected, on seeing the stuff for the first time. For it looked like nothing Earthly he had ever seen. But he had found it hard to really believe until now. Microorganisms were one thing he could rationalize that, particularly after seeing JonVon’s wonderful simulation of how cometary evolution could occur. Primitive prokaryotic microbes, yes. But how, in God’s perplexing universe, did there ever get to be something so complex… so very much like a lichen, deep under a primordial ball of ice?

I never really believed Carl Osborn’s story of macro-organisms out in the halls, he confessed to himself. I guess I just pushed it out of my mind, denigrating whatever he had to report, answering hostility with hostility. Instead I kept busy doing routine stuff, studying microbes, ignoring the evidence that something far larger was going on here.

Of course, Carl had not exactly cooperated, either. They had not seen each other since that fateful morning in the sleep slots. And Carl had never sent the samples Saul had asked for. Small wonder he had been so glad when Jim Vidor took the initiative.

“For want of a better word, Jim, I’d have to call this thing a lichenoid … something like an Earthy lichen. That means it’s an association creature, a combination of something autotrophic—or photosynthesizing—like algae, with some complex heterotroph like a fungus. I’ll admit it’s got me stumped. Though. Nothing this complicated ought to—”

“Do you know of any way to kill it?” Vidor blurted. His eyes darted quickly to the screen, where the fibers slowly moved under intense magnification.

Suddenly Saul understood.

Vidor is an emissary. Carl couldn’t get any useful help out of Malenkov. Of course he wouldn’t come right out and approach me. Not as angry as he is over Virginia.

Another wave of dizziness struck and Saul gripped the edge of the table, fighting to hide the symptoms.

Maybe Nicholas is right. Maybe this isn’t just another flu bug. Perhaps I’m already a goner. If so, isn’t Carl right too? What have I to offer Virginia, other than, maybe, a chance to get infected if I ever do get out of quarantine?

What right have I to stand in between Carl and her, if I’m doomed anyway?

Oddly, the idea that he might really be dying made Saul’s heart race. He had supposed himself free of any fear of death for at least ten years. But now the mere idea made his skin tense and his mouth go dry.

Incredible. Did you do this for me, Virginia? Did you give me back the ability to feel fear? Fear of losing you?

It was a wonder. Saul became aware again of Jim Vidor, eyes blinking down at him from above his mask, and smiled.

“Tell Carl I’ll make a deal with him. He gets me loose of this fershlugginner prison, so I can go out and see what’s happening in person. In return, I’ll do what I can to help keep gunk out of his pipes. Even if all I can do is swing a sponge with the rest of you.”

Vidor paused for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll tell ’im, Dr. Lintz. And thanks. Thanks a lot.”

The spacer spun about and whistled a quick code, so the door was open by the time he sailed through into the hallway. Saul watched the hatch close. Then he looked back up at the tangled bird’s nest of alien threads on the screen.

A part of him wondered if it was morally legitimate to go looking for ways to fight the indigenous lifeforms that were causing the spacers such grief. After all, Earthmen were the invaders here. They had arrived from a faraway world as much different from this one as Heaven supposedly was from Hell. Nobody had invited the humans. They had just come—as they always did.

As we have always meddled, eh, Simon?

Saul shrugged. The little moralist voice was easy to suppress, as was the fear that he was dying. He would fight, and he would live. Because for the first time in a decade he had someone to fight and live for.

That’s right , he thought ironically. Blame it on Virginia, you buck-passer.

He stopped to wipe his nose, then dropped the handkerchief into the sterilizer. Saul popped another cold pill into his mouth.