Fred Hoyle - A for Andromeda

“And we’re not?”

“You can’t suddenly stop them in their tracks.”

“Your Cabinet would say we can.”

“Have you asked them?”

“No. But they would.”

“At least—” Osborne calmed down again—“at least let us finish this present project, if we give you certain guarantees.”

As soon as he was back in his own office he telephoned Reinhart.

“For heaven’s sake patch up some sort of a truce with Geers,” he told him.

Reinhart’s meeting with the Director was depressingly similar to Osborne’s with Vandenberg, but Reinhart was a better strategist than Geers. After two grinding hours they sent for Judy.

“We’ve got to strengthen the security here, Miss Adamson.”

“You don’t expect me—?” She broke off.

Geers glinted at her through his spectacles and she turned for understanding to Reinhart.

“My position here would be intolerable. Everyone trusted me, and now I turn out to be a security nark.”

“I always knew that,” said Reinhart gently. “And Professor Dawnay has guessed. She accepts it.”

“Dr. Fleming doesn’t.”

“He wasn’t meant to,” said Geers.

“He accepted me as something else.”

“Everyone knows you had a job to do,” Reinhart looked unhappily at his fingers. “And everyone respects it.”

“I don’t respect it.”

“I beg your pardon?” Geers took off his glasses and blinked at her as if she had gone out of focus. She was trembling.

“I’ve hated it from the start. It was perfectly clear that everyone here was perfectly trustworthy, except Bridger.”

“Even Fleming?”

“Dr. Fleming’s worth ten of anyone else I’ve met! He needs protecting from his own indiscretion, and I’ve tried to do that. But I will not go on spying on him.”

“What does Fleming say?” Reinhart asked.

“He doesn’t talk to me since...”

“Where is he?” asked Geers.

“Drinking, I suppose.”

“Still on that, is he?” Geers raised his eyes to display hopelessness, and the gesture made Judy suddenly, furiously angry.

“What do you expect him to take to, after what’s happened? Bingo?” She turned again, with faint hope, to Reinhart. “I’ve grown very fond of—of all of them. I admire them.”

“My dear girl, I’m in no position...” Reinhart avoided her eyes. “It’s probably as well it is out in the open.”

Judy found she was standing to attention. She faced Geers.

“Can I be relieved?”

“No.”

“Then may I have a different assignment?”

“No.”

“Then may I resign my commission?”

“Not during a state of National Emergency.” Geers’s eyes, she noticed, were set too close together. They stared straight at her, expressionless with authority. “If it weren’t for your very good record, I’d say you were immature for this job. As it is, I think you’re merely unsettled by exposure to the scientific mind, especially such an ebullient and irresponsible mind as Fleming’s.”

“He’s not irresponsible.”

“No?”

“Not about important things.”

“The important things at this establishment are the means of survival. We’re under very great pressure.”

“To the military, all things are military,” said Reinhart icily. He walked across the room and looked out of the window, his little hands clasped uneasily behind his back. “It’s a bleak place here, you know. We all feel the strain of it.”

For some time after this outburst Geers was unusually agreeable. He did everything he possibly could for Dawnay, rushing through new equipment to replace what Fleming had damaged and generally identifying himself with what she was doing. Reinhart fought hard to retain his foothold and Judy went back to her duty with a sort of glum despair. She even screwed up her courage to see Fleming, but his room was empty and so were the three whisky bottles by his bed. With one exception, he spoke to no-one in the days that followed Bridger’s death.

Dawnay had gone straight back to work, with Christine to help her with the relatively simple calculations needed from the computer. Within a week they had another successful synthesis, and they were watching it, late in the evening, in the repaired microscope, when the door of the laboratory was pushed open and Fleming stood unsteadily inside.

Dawnay straightened up and looked at him. He wore no jacket or tie, his shirt was crumpled and dirty and he had seven days’ growth of stubble round his jaw. He might have been on the verge of delirium tremens .

“What do you want?”

He gave her a glazed stare and swayed a step forward into the room.

“Keep out of here, please.”

“I see you’ve new equipment,” he said thickly, with a fatuous twitching smile.

“That’s right. Now will you leave us?”

“Bridger’s dead.” He smiled stupidly at her.

“I know.”

“You go on as though nothing had happened.” It was difficult to understand what he said. “But he’s dead. He won’t come back any more.”

“We’ve all heard, Dr. Fleming.”

He swayed another pace into the room. “What you doing here?”

“This is private. Will you please go?” She got up and advanced grimly towards him. He stood blinking at her, the smile fading from his face.

“He was my oldest friend. He was a fool, but he was my—”

“Dr. Fleming,” she said quietly. “Will you go, or do I call the guards?”

He looked at her for a moment, as if trying to see her through mist, then shrugged and shuffled out. She followed him to the door and locked it behind him.

“We can do without that,” she said to Christine.

Fleming found his way back to his hut, took an unfinished bottle of whisky from his desk drawer and poured it down the sink. Then he fell on to his bed and slept for twenty-four hours. The following evening he shaved and bathed and started to pack.

The new experiment grew fantastically. Within a few hours Dawnay had to transfer it from its microscope slide to a small nutrient bath, and the following morning it had to be moved into a larger bath. It continued to double itself during the whole of the day that Fleming slept, and by the evening Dawnay was forced to appeal for help to Geers, who took over the problem with a proprietary air and caused his workshop wing to build a deep, electrically-heated tank with a drip-feed channel into its open top and an inspection window in the middle of its front panel. Towards dawn the new creature was lifted by four assistants from its outgrown bath and placed in the tank.

In its new environment it grew to about the size of a sheep and then stopped. It seemed perfectly healthy and harmless, but it was not pretty.

Reinhart came to a decision that morning and went to see Dawnay. She was in her laboratory still, checking the feed control at the top of the tank. He hovered around until she had finished.

“Is it still alive?”

“And kicking.” Apart from looking pale and taut around the eyes and mouth, she showed no sign of tiredness. “A day and a half since it was a smear on a slide: I told you there was no reason an organism shouldn’t grow as fast as you like if you can get enough food into it.”

“But it’s stopped growing now?” Reinhart peered respectfully into the inspection port, through which he could see a dark form moving in the murk of the tank.

“It seems to have a pre-determined size and shape,” Dawnay said, picking up a set of X-rays and handing them to him. “There’s nothing much to see from there. There’s no bone formation. It’s like a great jelly, but it’s got this eye and some sort of cortex—which looks like a very complicated nerve ganglia.”

“No other features?” Reinhart held up the X-rays and squinted at them.