Warren Murphy: Air Raid

Another hiss and the main greenhouse doors whooshed open.

The first thing that hit Hubert St. Clair was the smell. It burned his nostrils and seared his eyes. "Sweet Georgia Brown, what is that?" St. Clair demanded, gagging on the fumes. His eyes watered. "Ammonia with a touch of methane," Schumar explained.

The burning air didn't seem to bother the young scientist. He had spent too many hours in the greenhouse to even notice it any longer. He ducked inside. Dr. St. Clair trailed reluctantly.

"Smells like my grandma's bathroom closet," St. Clair complained, pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of his corduroy coat. He stuffed the hankie over his nose and mouth.

"She stored cleaning materials there, I imagine," Schumar said. "The skylights and fans can clear most of the air in here in less than a minute, but the ammonia lingers. We might have made this greenhouse unusable for future projects."

St. Clair merely grunted beneath his handkerchief. The CCS greenhouse was colossal. Sunlight sparkled off the angled roof far above. Fans, sprinklers and sensory equipment were attached to the fat girders that spanned the massive structure. All helped to carefully control and maintain the artificial environment.

The skylights were all open, a necessity given the unique danger the greenhouse presented.

At the center of the huge greenhouse, hundreds of trees were lined up like patient soldiers. Schumar led St. Clair into the meticulously maintained forest.

The trees in the CCS greenhouse were unlike any seen in nature. Although the shapes of leaf and trunk were familiar, the color was all wrong.

The leaves were the thin blue of a cloudless lateafternoon summer sky. The trunks were a dark midnight blue.

"You haven't been here since before the most recent growth cycle, have you?" Dr. Schumar asked.

"No," St. Clair replied.

He hadn't been to the greenhouse in months. The trees stretched up from a series of squat rectangular boxes filled with chemically treated soil. The tallest was now almost thirty feet high. The last time St. Clair had seen them, the biggest was less than ten feet.

St. Clair was struck by the beauty of the trees. "Only God can make one of these, my ass," he said under his breath.

They were breathtaking. Absolutely breathtaking. The instant the word formed in his brain he realized how true it was. On every level.

"They're growing faster with each passing cycle," Schumar was saying. "Frankly, the growth spurts in a tree this age are incredible. And even a little disconcerting when you think about it." As he looked up at the soft blue leaves of the trees, his face was grave. "I'm glad we have them under lock and key. There's no telling what might-"

"Wait a minute," Hubert St. Clair interrupted all at once. "What the hell is that?"

Even as he pointed up under a tightly bundled knot of leaves, he was scrambling onto the edge of a planting box.

It became more difficult to breathe the closer he got to the trees. He had been told they needed to be spaced far apart in the beds. If they were any closer together, it would be impossible to breathe while standing between them.

Head tipped back, St. Clair examined the underside of the leaf cluster.

Some kind of blue growths had sprouted up on the branches. Hidden beneath the leaves, they looked almost like bumpy beehives. He didn't see any insects.

"Dammit, you've got some kind of infestation here," St. Clair snapped. "Get some DDT before we lose these blasted things altogether."

Brice Schumar didn't move. He just stood there on the greenhouse floor, an idiot's grin plastered across his face.

"Look closer," he suggested.

Nose crinkling, St. Clair peered more carefully at the cluster of abandoned hives clinging together on the underside of an overhanging branch. When he realized what he was looking at, he nearly fell off the raised plant bed.

It was the sheer number of them that had thrown him. But he saw now that they were all identical to the one he'd seen just a few minutes before in Schumar's lab. Seeds. Tons of them.

"Are these all seeds?" Hubert St. Clair croaked.

"They came with the latest growth spurt," Schumar said. "Thousands on each tree. It was in my report."

St. Clair slipped around the far side of the tree. Another cluster of seeds clutched a branch on the other side. Still others were visible higher up.

A second tree grew a few feet away in the same bed. St. Clair saw more of the teardrop-shaped blue seedlets clinging all over the branches.

Numbly, he climbed down from the bed. His mind was reeling.

"What about the seed coats?" St. Clair asked. "They look like leather."

"Not a problem," Schumar said excitedly. "They're tough-looking but easily penetrated by water. We had a lingering of some chemical inhibitors prior to germination, but that's been eliminated. Now the growth inhibitors are easily bleached away by the introduction of water."

"Just regular water?" St. Clair asked.

"Tap water, rainwater. It's all the same," Schumar said. "Of course, that's not going to be good enough for all alien climates. And at this point it wouldn't even work for some of Jupiter's moons or Mars, since we've got ice to contend with there. The next generations of the plants will have to be weaned from water."

"Weaned?" St. Clair asked, coming back around.

"Why?"

"Well, that was the whole point of growing them," Schumar said. "Eventually developing an oxygen-producing strain that could help terraform an alien world."

"Yes, yes. Of course," St. Clair said gruffly. He stabbed a finger at a seed cluster. "Get me a bunch of these. I want to dissect them in my office."

Schumar was surprised and relieved by St. Clair's sudden interest in legitimate scientific inquiry. Maybe with this one, great project the Congress of Concerned Scientists could return to its founding principles and finally put to eternal rest the destructive ghost of Sage Carlin.

"Yes, Doctor," Schumar said. He scurried obediently onto the nearest raised plant bed.

As he happily picked seeds, he saw Hubert St. Clair hurry out the open door of the greenhouse. Probably the ammonia smell. Most people couldn't take it for very long. Even the little seeds he was slipping into the pocket of his white lab coat smelled vaguely of the stuff.

His hand was snaking for another clutch of tiny seeds when he was startled by the sound of the overhead alarm.

Dr. Schumar thrust his face out through a bundle of blue leaves. The red light was flashing a warning even as the greenhouse doors were sliding slowly shut.

Of all the people on the face of the planet, Dr. Brice Schumar understood best what it meant to be on the wrong side of those closing doors.

The seeds in his hands slipped from his terrified fingers. Jumping down from the plant bed, he ran for the door, lungs burning from the ammonia in the air.

The thick plastic doors clicked shut just as he reached them. There was a hiss as the automatic seal inflated to prevent vapor from seeping out of the greenhouse to where Hubert St. Clair sat uncomfortably.

The warning alarm switched off.

"Dr. St. Clair!" Schumar shouted, pounding on the door.

There was an environmental control panel in the alcove between the two sets of double doors. As Schumar watched helplessly, Hubert St. Clair began picking at the buttons. The very act of touching them seemed to bring him pain.

Schumar heard a rumble from above. Spinning, wild-eyed, he saw the skylights begin to slide remorselessly shut. Like the thick greenhouse doors, they clicked then hissed, becoming airtight. Even as the skylights were sealing, St. Clair was switching on the interior speakers.

"You've done a good job," St. Clair said, his voice distorted by the speaker next to the door.