H. M. Hoover

by The Rains of Eridan

  "Nothing,” Theo was going to say and then did not; that was too hopeless an answer. "They can at least comfort each other.” She gave Karen’s shoulders a little squeeze. "Come on. Let’s go join our fellow animals. I’m sure they need a little comforting too.” She opened the curtains into the hall.

  "Attention. Attention,” ordered the Commander’s voice on the intercom. "We have had some excitement outside. No one has been hurt. In the fog animals ran into the security wires and tripped off the lasers. One animal was wounded, but it has gone. I repeat, none of our staff was hurt. So please, relax. Go back to what you were doing.”

  "Did he see what happened?” Karen said.

  "He doesn’t want to frighten people.”

  "There they are,” someone called, "coming out of the dining room.”

  The hall was suddenly full of staff.

  "They were in there?” Evelyn came running out of Theo's room and saw them. "How could you go in there?” And without waiting to be answered, "Did you see anything? Is this dome being attacked? I was afraid you went outside. I was looking—”

  "Shhh!” hissed Theo, and grinned at her. "Shush! Yes, we saw something. We saw mostly fog and the laser beams cutting through it. They hit what we think was one of the cave bears. But we couldn’t be sure.” She looked at the faces around her, all worried, all seeking reassurance, and understood Tairas's attitude.

  "Do you think there are others, Theo?” The speaker was the staff cartographer.

  "Yes.” She would not lie. "But I also think the lasers will kill any animal that crosses the line. No more will try tonight.”

  "How can you be sure?” asked Philip.

  "I can’t be. But they . . . animals quickly learn to avoid things that cause death to a fellow animal. As we quickly learned, these animals were dangerous to us, and we took steps to avoid direct contact with them.”

  "In a minute she’s going to give us her famous ‘they would eat you with no malice’ speech,” said Evelyn, who had obviously recovered some semblance of composure. "I have never found it comforting.”

  "But it’s true!” said Karen in defense of her friend.

  “Possibly, but still not comforting, O True Believer,” said Evelyn. “I can see you two are going to get along.”

  “Yes,” agreed Theo, “we do. And will. But as I was saying, don’t waste sleep waiting for the alarm to go off again. I think we’re safe. Besides, half of us have guard duty in some form or other and we need our rest.” Although, considering their state of mind, what good some of them would be on guard duty was debatable.

  When, an hour or so later, she left them in the lounge and she and Karen went off to bed, she asked Control to “waken A-7 at seven a.m.”

  “How come we have to get up so early?” yawned Karen.

  “You don’t. I’m going to follow any tracks I can find as soon as it’s daylight.”

  “Can I go along?”

  “Might not be worth getting up for,” said Theo.

  It surprised neither of them when Karen was awake before the bell tone the next morning. It was barely light outside. They met Tairas having breakfast in the lounge. He looked bleary-eyed, but he was clean-shaven. “To celebrate,” he said. “I wasn’t sure our line of defense would hold against those things. It was such a relief to know it does.”

  “Did they find a body?” Theo asked.

  “Just tracks. I think the thing walked away. But to survive a blast like . .He saw Karen shaking her head. “What?”

  “The other two dragged it off,” she whispered so that the other staff could not hear and be frightened. “We saw them.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “Yes,” Theo said. “We’re going out and track them.”

  "l’m going with you,” he said.

  They drove a land cruiser, the surface equivalent of the utility craft. It was a sturdy car with fat tires and inadequate suspension for a world without roads. Every crew who ever used them immediately referred to them as "bouncers.”

  The ground was so torn up at the spot where the animal had hit the wire that the rain had washed away all tracks. Water filled a long depression leading away from the base. Theo rode with her head out the open door, watching the ground. At several spots along the drag path she saw sets of deep claw indentations.

  The trail led up through the trees and out into the rolling foothills that lay between sea and mountains. Where grass grew, the track was easy to follow. When it reached a lumpy hillside of rock outcropping, they lost it. They circled back and forth for half an hour. The trail ended on the loose rock. Tairas stopped the car and they sat there, at a loss about where to look next.

  Karen jumped out to look at some flowers growing among the rocks. A child of new worlds, she looked but did not touch, admired color but did not sniff their scent. A flower could be harmless, or cause a mild rash, or induce death. One rule held: the more color, the more danger. These looked like bright orange artichokes with red bristles.

  Something else caught her attention. Theo watched the girl splash up over the rocks, head down, hands clasped behind her yellow slicker. She stopped midway on the slope and stood looking at the ground, then turned and waved for them to join her. "What is it?” Tairas called. "Did you find a track?”

  Karen just pointed. The two adults got out and walked up the slope in the rain. Once they reached her, it took a little time for them to see what she was pointing at. Then Theo noticed that the surface of the rocks appeared to be moving. She stepped closer. It was a swarm of meat pudding creatures.

  "What are those?” Tairas’s lip curled.

  "Scavengers,” Theo said. "I saw one before, up where you met us. They evidently come out with the rain.”

  "Revolting!”

  "I thought so.”

  The rocks were covered with them, all active, all scuttling about. Wet brown bags of skin and legs, going under the rocks and emerging again endlessly.

  "What are they feeding on?” said Tairas, and as he said it, they all could guess.

  "It’s there!” they chorused together and then laughed. Theo’s laugh broke off. "Who buried it? Who covered it with stone?”

  "Its friends?” suggested Karen, and Theo believed her.

  XXII

  RAIN. DAY AFTER NIGHT AFTER DAY OF RAIN. THE DOMES DEVELOPED LEAKS IN ODD PLACES AND HAD TO BE REPAIRED. A HEATING AND DE-HUMIDIFYING SYSTEM HAD TO BE DEVISED. DRAINAGE DITCHES WERE DUG AROUND THE DOMES. THE MONOTONY OF THE RAIN WAS EQUALED ONLY BY THE WORK IT CREATED.

  The corporate rule of "no excess” on expeditions applied to the number of personnel, as well as everything else. With half the staff gone, those remaining would have been busy in normal circumstances. Now a fourteen-hour day was a light work load. But, in a way, the extra work was a blessing. It kept people from having time to think.

  There were no more attacks on the dome. Sometimes, in the mornings, there would be tracks of the creatures in the mud by the lake, and deep prints on the hill behind the base, as if the animals stood up there in the rain at night, watching. But no person dared to go up there at night to see.

  Theo spent most of her days in the lab. With the discovery of the creature’s burial, Tairas suspected they were dealing with an intelligent life form. He had returned with a crew and excavated the site. The scavengers had left little, even in so short a time, but still clasped in the right foreclaws of the skeleton had been two large crystals. The sight of them there had so frightened him, he privately confessed later to Theo, that he had looked around, expecting to see the victim’s fellows come running to avenge this desecration. He had ordered the grave closed and returned to its original condition.

  "The position of the crystals may be accidental,” Theo told him. "The act of burying a fallen comrade instinctive. I suspect they bury one another when they collapse from dehydration. It is a mistake to read human feeling into the actions of other animals.” She smiled. "Besides, if we believe them capable of reason, it will scare everybody silly.
”

  "What do you believe, Theo?”

  "Nothing, yet. You can’t begin to know any creature until you’ve studied it at ease in its own environment. The lab will give us bits and pieces of fact—but not the living thing.”

  "I want to know the relationship between creature and crystals,” he said.

  So she set to work on the crystals, even though they were what interested her least about the animal. What she wanted to study was cryptobiosis. One important discovery had been made. There was in the lab an "Eridan chamber,” a plastic tank in which the normal desert-like conditions of the planet were duplicated so that small specimens could be kept alive and studied at close range. Karen had brought in one of the meat puddings and released it into the chamber. It immediately lost its appetite and began to shrink. In three days it resembled a buffalo chip. When put into a bell jar with sand and with humidity rising gradually over a ten-hour period, it swelled and returned to life and apparent good health.

  Later, on the basis of this and subsequent experiments, under Theo’s guidance, Karen wrote her first published paper, "The Cryptobiotic Characteristics of Specific Cephalopodic Scavengers on Eridan.”

  Karen’s simple experiments promised excitement with the big animal. But there would be time for that later. First the crystals. Where was the base file on them ?

  Both of the Expedition’s experts on crystals were dead; Joan Lee and Genis Illian, geologists. "Why didn’t they go with the others to hunt crystals that day?” she wondered aloud as she waited for the computer to retrieve their notes. "Did they have other duties that prevented it? Or weren’t they interested? If the crystals are so valuable, why would the two people most likely to know where to find the best specimens stay in camp ?”

  "Maybe they had their weight limit already?” Karen was stretched out on the lounge under the window, reading.

  "Maybe. But everybody else keeps on looking for bigger and better ones.” The bell dinged on her terminal, indicating the retrieval of printed matter. She turned her attention to the screen.

  The geologists’ report gave the chemical composition of the crystals and identified them as proteins, "infinite numbers of small protein crystallites mixed with foreign substances.” It speculated on their growth in a gel-like media, marveled at their alignment, hardness, and insolubility. It concluded by noting the crystals were "of great curiosity and worthy of extended study. Gem value: None. Commercial value: To be determined.”

  "Hasn’t anybody read this?” was Theo’s first reaction, then remembered that she had not bothered to read it. She had had no interest in the stones, other than aesthetic appreciation. But the others? She pushed the cross-index key, and Illian’s face appeared on the screen, speaking in his soft Russian accent.

  "As a matter of permanent record, Dr. Lee and I are aware of the rumored value of these crystals. The rumor apparently originated at Base One. It is said our analyses were falsified to protect Corporate interests or to avoid gold fever. This is untrue. These crystals are not of geologic origin or of known mineral values. They are organics, and unique. With research, biochemists may find a use for them. We know of none presently. Dr. Lee and I have found our facts ignored, and we lack the time to defend our findings constantly.” Illian’s image smiled. "It would be ironic if, considering the esteem in which these crystals are held, they turned out to be gravel from the renal systems of the local beasts. In any event, collecting them is a harmless pastime for the crew.”

  Hearing this, Karen began to grin. "The crystals are worthless? All this fuss and they’re worthless!”

  Theo didn’t answer. Karen looked over to see if she had said something out of order. One glance and she knew Theo had heard nothing she said. The woman sat staring at the screen, her eyes narrowed in concentration, pupils moving slightly as thoughts came and went, lips open over precisely clenched teeth, respiration shallow. It was familiar; the look of the fanatic, the totally absorbed. Karen sighed, but silently so she wouldn’t distract.

  Theo slipped off the stool and went to rummage through the samples they had brought back from the cave. "Protein?” She repeated the word twice. "What kind of protein? What form . . . ?” She extracted a small vial containing one of the crystals and brought it back to the workbench. Then, as if on impulse, she put it into the isolation chamber, opened the vial with the mechanical hands, and prepared a sample for the electron microscope.

  Karen went back to her book. An hour passed, then two. She looked up once to see Theo taking blood samples from her own finger and watched her face as she studied them under the microscope. Then saw her smile to herself with satisfaction. But she made no comment. Karen went back to her book.

  When she heard Theo approach the sofa, Karen merely held out her hand. Theo smiled down at her as she sterilized and punctured the girl’s index finger. "Evelyn’s right,” she said, "we are a good match. Squeeze.” With Karen pressing the disinfectant pad on the wounded finger, Theo retreated with her sample.

  Again and again the microscope hummed to itself. The lights came on outside as night fell. Karen’s stomach began to growl. At last she heard Theo turn off the equipment.

  "It’s a virus,” she said. "The crystal is a virus colony.”

  Karen tried to understand this. From Theo’s tone, it was obviously important. But the girl could not pretend. "What does that mean?” she said.

  "I think it means your father and Tairas were on the right track. I think this fear is a symptom of viral infection. And you and I have either a natural immunity to it, or we were lucky enough to get a mild dose and immunized ourselves.”

  "When I tasted it!”

  "Maybe. I don’t know. I tasted it too. And then we left them alone.”

  Karen thought it over. "You know,” she said, "we are either very smart or very simple. But lucky.”

  "Lucky, I think. Want to see why?”

  XXIII

  THE MICROSCOPE’S FILM SHOWED A TINY HEXAGONAL SHAPE FLOATING IN THE FLUID BETWEEN THE BLOOD CELLS. SEEMINGLY AT RANDOM, IT GLIDED TO REST UPON A CELL’S SURFACE.

  "What’s it doing?” said Karen.

  "Drilling. It sends a pipe down through the cell wall. Into the pipe it secretes a substance, a nucleic acid, that makes the host cell reproduce more virus. The new virus moves out and attacks other cells. This virus doesn’t kill the host cell. It simply takes it over.”

  "It’s a vampire!” said Karen. "It bites the cell’s neck and makes it one of the living dead! It forces it to do evil things . . .” She saw the look on Theo’s face and sputtered to a halt. ". . . Well, it is. Sort of?”

  Theo grinned. "Yes. Sort of. Where did you learn about vampires?”

  "On Coreco. Where I shot roaches. It’s a mining planet. Very dull. There’s a big library on the base. Nobody used the library much, but I liked it. They had a lot of great books. How come this virus doesn’t make our animal sick?”

  Theo sorted through and chose to reply to the question. "I don’t know. Maybe because the cave bears are immune. Maybe because the animal’s system segregates the virus and renders it harmless. Or the virus may be beneficial to them, even essential. They seem to cherish the crystals. . . . When the animal goes into its cryptobiotic state, the virus may follow suit. It may be expelled from muscle or nerve tissue and congregate in the renal system, as Illian suggests.” Theo paused to speculate on that, then shrugged. "I don’t know, Karen.”

  "So what are you going to do?”

  "Tell the Commander what we’ve found. Then turn it over to Evelyn and her medical staff—all four of them—they are the experts in this field. I wonder how long it takes to find an antibody?” She glanced at her watch as if considering starting that now.

  "Let’s eat before you do anything else, O.K. ?”

  On their way out they passed the bell jar where a revived meat pudding scuttled about, searching for escape. "That thing must be full of bugs!” said Karen.

  Theo stopped and stared down at it. "I wonder if it is . . . and
how it. . Karen pulled her out the door.

  Their dinner was delayed. En route Theo stopped off at the

  Commander’s office. After listening to her for a few minutes, he wanted to come back to the lab and see for himself.

  "If it’s hard enough to be a crystal, how are our people getting contaminated? If they are?” he asked.

  "By touch. It’s acid soluble,” Theo said. "Saliva or normal skin acid will do nicely. Each time we handle a crystal, we could be reinfecting ourselves.”

  Tairas stared at the crystal fragment glowing in the isolation chamber. "I’ve seen people spit-polishing them,” he mused to himself. ". . . Damn! Why didn’t I read that report!”

  Armed with the geologists’ report and Theo’s findings, he called a staff meeting and presented the facts. He concluded by saying all crystals were to be collected and placed in impermeable bags, sealed and brought to the hangar. From there they would be flown back into the hills and buried.

  "So someone else can find them?” protested Felix. "No thanks. I didn’t believe the geology report, and I’m not about to take a biologist’s word for it. I’m keeping my stones.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from around the room.

  The Commander looked as if he were going to argue, then changed his mind. "Get one of your crystals, Dr. Felix. Bring it to the lab. The rest of us will be there.”

  Felix hesitated, then went.

  In the lab Tairas took the crystal Felix had brought, put it in the isolation chamber, and applied a flame. After a few seconds the "stone” began to burn. There were no more arguments.

  As Evelyn said, "We may be greedy, but once we understand the situation, we’re not stupid.” But even she was surprised by the quantity of supposed gems the staff had managed to collect.

  "Four tons!” she told Theo as they worked together in the lab the next morning. "Four tons of dreams! Do you know how it makes people feel to give up something like that? The disappointment ...”

  "I know how it feels to give up a dream,” Theo said. "But there is a subtle difference between dream and obsession.”