by Isaac Asimov
In fact, if you looked at the computer casually, you might swear it was intact.
Look closely, though, and some of the chips would be gone. The more closely you looked, the more you realized were gone. Worse, the stores that Computer-Two used in self-repair had dwindled to almost nothing. We kept looking and would discover something else missing.
Joe took the cylinder out of his pouch again and turned it end for end. He said, "I suspect it's after high-grade silicon in particular. I can't say for sure, of course, but my guess is that the sides are mostly aluminum and the flat end is mostly silicon."
I said, "Do you mean the thing is a solar battery?"
"Part of it is. That's how it gets it energy in space; energy to get to Computer-Two, energy to eat a hole into it, energy to-to-I don't know how else to put it. Energy to stay alive." "You call it alive?"
"Why not? Look, Computer-Two can repair itself. It can reject faulty bits of equipment and replace it with working ones, but it needs a supply of spares to work with. Given enough spares of all kinds, it could build a Computer just like itself, when properly programmed-but it needs the supply, so we don't think of it as alive. This object that entered Computer-Two is apparently collecting its own supplies. That's suspiciously lifelike."
"What you're saying," I said, "is that we have here a micro-computer advanced enough to be considered alive."
"I don't honestly know what I'm saying."
"Who on Earth could make such a thing?"
"Who on Earth?"
I made the next discovery. It looked like a stubby pen drifting through the air. I just caught it out of the corner of my eye and it registered as a pen.
In zero-gravity, things will drift out of pockets and float off. There's no way of keeping anything in place unless it is physically confined. You expect pens and coins and anything else that finds an opening to drift wherever the air currents and inertia lead it.
So my mind registered "Pen" and I groped for it absently and, of course, my fingers didn't close on it. Just reaching for something sets up an air current that pushes it away. You have to reach over and sneak behind it with one hand, and then reach for it with the other. Picking up any small object in mid-air is a two-hand operation.
I turned to look at the object and pay a little more attention to retrieval, then realized that my pen was safely in its pouch. I felt for it and it was there.
"Did you lose a pen, Joe?" I called out.
"No."
"Anything like that? Key? Cigarette?"
"I don't smoke. You know that."
A stupid answer. "Anything?" I said in exasperation.
"I'm seeing things here."
"No one ever said you were stable."
"Look, Joe. Over there. Over there.''
He lunged for it. I could have told him it would do no good.
By now, though, our poking around in the computer seemed to have stirred things up. We were seeing them wherever we looked. They were floating in the air-currents.
I stopped one at last. Or, rather, it stopped itself for it was on the elbow of Joe's suit. I snatched it off and shouted. Joe jumped in terror and nearly knocked it out of my hand.
I said, "Look!"
There was a shiny circle on Joe's suit, where I had taken the thing off. It had begun to eat its way through.
"Give it to me," said Joe. He took it gingerly and put it against the wall to hold it steady. Then he shelled it, gently lifting the paper-thin metal.
There was something inside that looked like a line of cigarette ash. It caught the light and glinted, though, like lightly woven metal.
There was a moistness about it, too. It wriggled slowly, one end seeming to seek blindly.
The end made contact with the wall and stuck. Joe's finger pushed it away. It seemed to require a small effort to do so. Joe rubbed his finger and thumb and said, "Feels oily."
The metal worm-I don't know what else to call itseemed limp now after Joe had touched it. It didn't move again.
I was twisting and turning, trying to look at myself.
"Joe," I said, "for Heaven's sake, have I got one of them on me anywhere?"
"I don't see one," he said.
"Well, look at me. You've got to watch me, Joe, and I'll watch you. If our suits are wrecked we might not be able to get back to the ship."
Joe said, "Keep moving, then."
It was a grisly feeling, being surrounded by things hungry to dissolve your suit wherever they could touch it. When any showed up, we tried to catch them and stay out of their way at the same time, which made things almost impossible. A rather long one drifted close to my leg and I kicked at it, which was stupid, for if I had hit it, it might have stuck. As it was, the air-current I set up brought it against the wall, where it stayed.
Joe reached hastily for it-too hastily. The rest of his body rebounded as he somersaulted, one booted foot struck the wall near the cylinder lightly. When he finally righted himself, it was still there. "I didn't smash it, did 1?"
"No, you didn't," I said. "You missed it by a decimeter. It won't get away."
I had a hand on either side of it. It was twice as long as the other cylinder had been. In fact, it was like two cylinders stuck together longways, with a construction at the point of joining.
"Act of reproducing," said Joe as he peeled away the metal. This time what was inside was a line of dust. Two lines. One on either side of the constriction.
"It doesn't take much to kill them," said Joe. He relaxed visiby. "I think we're safe."
"They do seem alive," I said reluctantly.
"I think they seem more than that. They're viruses-or the equivalent."
"What are you talking about?"
Joe said, "Granted I'm a computertechnologist and not a virologist-but it's my understanding that viruses on Earth, or `downstairs' as you would say, consist of a nucleic acid molecule coated in a protein shell.
"When a virus invades a cell, it manages to dissolve a hole in the cell wall or membrane by the use of some appropriate enzyme and the nucleic acid slips inside, leaving the protein coat outside. Inside the cell it finds the material to make a new protein coat for itself. In fact, it manages to form replicas of itself and produces a new protein coat for each replica. Once it has stripped the cell of all it has, the cell dissolves and in place of the one invading virus there are several hundred daughter-viruses. Sound familiar?"
"Yes. Very familiar. It's what's happening here. But where did it come from, Joe?"
"Not from Earth, obviously, or any Earth settlement. From somewhere else, I suppose. They drift through space till they find something appropriate in which they can multiply. They look for sizable objects ready-made of metal. I don't imagine they can smelt ores."
"But large metal objects with pure silicon components and a few other succulent matters like that are the products of intelligent life only," I said.
"Right," said Joe, "which means we have the best evidence yet that intelligent life is common in the universe, since objects like the one we're on must be quite common or it couldn't support these viruses. And it means that intelligent life is old, too, perhaps ten billion years old-long enough for a kind of metal evolution, forming a metal/silicon/oil life as we have formed a nucleic/protein/water life. Time to evolve a parasite on space-age artifacts."
I said, "You make it sound that every time some intelligent life-form develops a space-culture, it is subjected before long to parasitic infestation."
"Right. And it must be controlled. Fortunately, these things are easy to kill, especially now when they're forming. Later on, when ready to burrow out of Computer-Two, I suppose they will grow, thicken their shells, stabilize their interior and prepare, as the equivalent of spores, to drift a million years before they find another home. They might not be so easy to kill then."
"How are you going to kill them?"
"I already have. I just touched that first one when it instinctively sought out metal to begin manufacturing a new s
hell after I had broken open the first one-and that touch finished it. I didn't touch the second, but I kicked the wall near it and the sound vibration in the metal shook its interior apart into metal dust. So they can't get us-or any more of the computer-if we just shake them apart, now!"
He didn't have to explain further-or as much. He put on his gauntlets slowly, and banged at the wall with one. It pushed him away and he kicked at the wall where he next approached it.
"You do the same," he shouted.
I tried to, and for a while we both kept at it. You don't know how hard it is to hit a wall at zero-gravity; at least on purpose; and do it hard enough to make it clang. We missed as often as not or just struck a glancing blow that sent us whirling but made virtually no sound. We were panting with effort and aggravation in no time.
But we had acclimated ourselves. We kept it up and eventually gathered up more of the viruses. There was nothing inside but dust in every case. They were clearly adapted to empty, automated space objects which, like modern computers, were vibration-free. That's what made it possible, I suppose, to build up the exceedingly rickety-complex metallic structures that possessed sufficient instability to produce the properties of simple life.
I said, "Do you think we got them all?"
"How can I say? If there's one left, it will cannibalize the others for metal supplies and start all over. Let's bang around some more."
We did until we were sufficiently worn out not to care whether one was still left alive.
"Of course," I said, panting, "the Planetary Association for the Advancement of Science isn't going to be pleased with our killing them all."
Joe's suggestion as to what the P.A.A.A. could do with itself was forceful, but impractical. He said, "Look, our mission is to save Computer-Two, a few thousand lives and, as it turned out, our own lives, too. Now they can decide whether to renovate this computer or rebuild it from scratch. It's their baby.
"The P.A.A.S. can get what they can out of these dead objects and that should be something. If they want live ones, I suspect they'll find them floating about in these regions."
I said, "All right. My suggestion is we tell Computer Central we're going to jerry-rig this Computer and get it doing some work anyway, and we'll stay till a relief is up for main repairs or whatever in order to prevent any reinfestation. Meanwhile, they'd better get to each of the other Computers and set up a system that can set it to vibrating strongly as soon as the internal atmosphere shows a pressure drop." "Simple enough," said Joe, sardonically. "It's lucky we found them when we did."
"Wait a while," said Joe, and the look in his eye was one of deep trouble. We didn't find them. They found us. If metal-life has developed, do you suppose it's likely that this is the only form it takes?
"What if such life-forms communicate somehow and, across the vastness of space, others are now converging on us for the picking. Other species, too; all of them after the lush new fodder of an as-yet untouched space culture. Other species! Some that are sturdy enough to withstand vibration. Some that are large enough to be more versatile in their reactions to danger. Some that are equipped to invade our settlements in orbit. Some, for the sake of Univac, that may be able to invade the Earth for the metals of its cities.
"What I'm going to report, what I must report, is that we've been found!"
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-l1sirj2g-0xf2-qait-po38-b1shbstcpjmn
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 25.07.2008
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