Barrington Bayley - The Seed of Evil

“What d’you mean? It must be working.”

“Don’t be a damn fool, that thing out there’s got to have some mass! Anyway, we’re close enough now, let’s get outside and have a first-hand view.”

Well, it wasn’t an asteroid.

I supposed it was about half a mile long, and about a seventh of that across the beam. Overlapping strips of a dull substance covered it, running lengthwise. To say there was something funny about it would be a polite underestimation.

For one thing, I couldn’t seem to estimate its shape, except that it was longer than it was broad. Every time I cast my attention at it to make a visual assessment, it seemed to evade me by sliding away without moving. Slippery as a fish, as far as the mind goes. But dammit, every time I looked at that thing I felt I was looking up at it. I kept wanting to climb up it to see what was on top.

In fact, we both tried to. We coasted all round it on our suit jets, trying to work out what was wrong. But it was no good: from every angle it presented the same appearance, the same maddening impression that we were looking at it from below, that there was something else to see on the upper side.

Also, there was another funny thing. In space, you don’t have any sense of up or down. There’s only here and there.

Eventually we gave up and landed on the body itself. Flipping on my intercom, I heard Rim scratching himself inside his suit.

“Well,” he ventured, “it isn’t a natural object. It’s an artifact.”

“Oh, daddy,” I sniggered, “I would never have known if you hadn’t told me.”

“All right, shut up.” Sulkily he moved away, muttering to himself as he bent to examine the strange hull. A minute later his voice sounded again, loud and friendly now that he had found something else to divert him.

“Say, this material is queer stuff,” he said. “I can’t get any sound out of it.”

“Well, what sort of sound do you expect in space?”

“I mean I can’t get any conducted sound when I strike it with my glove. It doesn’t even feel as though it offers resistance to my hand—yet my hand stops short, as it should, when I press against it. Do you know something? I think our massometer was working after all. This thing hasn’t got any mass!”

“Big deal!” I offered sardonically.

He straightened up and came closer. “I’m out of beer,” he told me. “Got a bottle?”

Silently I handed him one and listened to his unsavoury gurglings as he squeezed the ale into his headpiece and straight down his throat.

The excitement must have given him a thirst. He finished the pint in forty seconds, slung the bottle into the void, and blinked, peering with his weak beery gaze at our discovery. I could practically see the stuff oozing out of his eyeballs.

“It’s a ship,” he said. “It can’t be anything else. If it’s a ship it must be hollow. I’d like to take a look inside.”

“I’d rather you stuck to nuclear particles.”

“Aah….” Rim went limp inside his suit, which in the absence of gravity is the equivalent of flinging oneself into an armchair. He gets very depressed at times, and I could see he had a mood coming on.

“Stay here,” he instructed after a while. “I’m going to get my tool kit.”

He nearly blew me into space with a fountain of poorly controlled propellant, and rocketed over to the research ship. I imagined him thumping around inside, cursing and turning the place upside down. Since he hadn’t entered the laboratory for six months he would have forgotten where everything was. However, he appeared twenty minutes later with a tool bag and auxiliary power pack swinging from his neck.

“Yippee, here I come!” he yelled as he came streaking across the ten-mile distance to the alien ship. By the time I got to where he landed he had clamped himself against the side and was fitting together a power drill.

“What are you going to do?” I queried.

“Drill a hole.”

“Are you crazy—” I began. Then I lowered my voice. “Look, if whatever’s inside there wanted to meet us he’d have come out by now. Where’s your tact? Besides, you can’t just go drilling a hole in somebody else’s ship! You might let all the air out.”

“No, they’ll be all right,” he answered casually. “If they’re smart enough for space travel they’re smart enough to take care of a little puncture. Anyway, I’m only drilling to find out what the hull’s made of.”

With that he made a connection, and crouching over the drill, applied it to the side of the ship.

For a few moments I watched the tip slide into the plank-like structure, but then a queasy feeling came over me and I didn’t feel like seeing any more.

I sauntered off and rounded the bend of the ship, idly contemplating its odd, belly-like curve. For some reason I kept looking for a keel—but of course there wasn’t any keel. It was only that strange fancy, the same one that insisted the ship floated upright.

Floated? Well, yes, I thought. I suppose things can be said to float in space.

I was about to go back to see how Rim was getting on, when a movement caught my eye. Something bright and pointed was emerging through the planking….

“Rim!” I squealed in fright. “Your drill’s coming through the other side!”

The drill-tip stopped moving. “How far away are you?” “About fifty yards!”

Rim gave an unbelieving curse, and came zooming round to join me. His eyes bulged when he saw the drill-tip. “That drill’s only eight inches long. How can it penetrate fifty yards? Go and see—no, stay here a minute!”

He put weight on his jets and galloped off round the bend. “I’m moving the drill now,” his voice informed. “Is that tip waggling?”

“Y-Yes,” I bleated, watching the tip move slowly in and out. “You’ve made two holes instead of one!”

“But it’s impossible. Here—grab the tip and move it about a bit, we’ve got to make sure.”

After hesitation, I firmly grasped the metal drill and pushed, then pulled, meeting a resistance I knew came from Rim. His voice yelped in my ears. “The handle! It’s moving in my hand!”

“I’m scared,” I admitted, by my tone of voice as well as by the statement.

“Then come round here with me, I’m scared too!”

I was surprised to hear that anything could frighten Rim, but the thought of that only urged me on the faster. However, when I came upon him he seemed to have regained his control, though he still crouched over the drill and held it in a tetanus grip.

“Do you know what I think?” he whispered, staring up at me. “There’s no space inside there!”

“What, you mean it’s solid all the way through?”

“No, no.” He shook his head with exasperation. “Listen, do you remember how much drill is protruding the other end?”

“About four inches.”

“And do you know how much I inserted this end? Four inches! The tip goes in here and instantly reappears fifty yards away. There’s no distance inside the ship. No distance means no space. The interior of this ship is void of space. ”

There was a long pause. “Let’s go back to quarters,” I said feebly.

Rim muttered to himself, shaking his head. But he pulled out the drill, disconnected it and made ready to leave.

And then the drill began to bend and waver, in a way no solid object could. That wasn’t all. The arm and hand with which Rim held the tool began to bend and waver too, to flow, as if it were made of smoke and being distorted by air currents. Rim gave a wild yell when he saw the impossible contortions of his arm.

Now part of his space armour began to behave in the same way. It was as if Rim were being sucked—sucked towards the hole he had drilled.