Beyond the Ice Limit

by Preston, Douglas

Brambell called security, told them to check on the specimens immediately—and to be careful. He hung up. “What now?”

  They exchanged glances for a moment before Sax answered. “Let’s dissect this little bugger before it escapes. The cadaver can wait.”

  “A most excellent suggestion.” Brambell tried not to think about what the silence in the prep lab might mean.

  He picked up the container and carried it across the room to the dissection chamber, mightily glad as he did so that the retrofitting designers of the ship had thought to include this unusual hooded and sterile dissection stage. He raised the hood and placed the latched container inside. The thing was disturbed by being moved; it reared up and displayed its black tooth, its head swaying back and forth menacingly.

  “It’s like a damn viper,” Sax said.

  Brambell shut and locked the hood. The dissection chamber had two sleeves, which manipulated remote dissection tools. Having inserted his forearms into the sleeves, Brambell used the manipulators to unlatch the box. The thing lashed out immediately, striking at the manipulator but bouncing off. It struck again and then wriggled out of the box, slithering fast across the space until it hit the wall, and then began exploring it, pushing and probing once again with its tooth.

  Despite his best efforts, Brambell felt his hands begin to tremble. He had to fix the thing to the dissection surface—and the sooner the better. It was slithering all over the place, constantly in motion. Using the manipulator, he picked up a heavy dissection pin, hovered over the worm; and then—when it came into target range—he brought it down with a sudden movement, stabbing the worm and pinning it to the soft plastic surface.

  With a faint but hideous squeal, the thing began lashing about, striking the pin with its tooth again and again.

  Breathing hard, Brambell stuck in another needle, and then another, and another, until the thing was pinned almost as if sewn to the plastic board, yet still wriggling frantically, its mouth opening and closing, the tooth sweeping toward the gleaming pins that held it in place.

  “Bring over the stereozoom,” he said.

  Sax wheeled over the microscope, used for fine dissection, and began to position it. She turned it on and an attached videoscreen popped to life, showing a blurry, magnified image of the worm. She adjusted both the focus and the zoom until the image was sharp and at the desired magnification.

  “Amazing that it refuses to die,” murmured Brambell, fitting the eyepieces of the microscope to his face and inserting his hands again into the manipulators. He picked up a scalpel and positioned it at the posterior end of the pinned, but still frantically flexing, worm. He inserted the edge of the scalpel into the tip of the creature and began to make a lengthwise incision, opening it up from tail to head. The skin was hard, and it almost seemed to Brambell as if he were cutting through plastic. The creature made another squealing sound, louder this time. The cut exposed its insides, a grouping of bizarre internal organs—if they could even be called organs, given that they looked more like bundles of wires and translucent fiber optics, along with clusters of shiny black balls, like bunches of tiny grapes. The internal workings were, oddly, without color—a range of blacks, grays, and whites.

  Still the creature struggled.

  “Not dead yet,” murmured Sax.

  Brambell fixed the open incision in place with another set of pins, then removed the initial pins. Now it was splayed open on the dissection table, the skin held open, which caused the inner organs to pop upward, ready for dissection. They quivered and flexed, the black threads or wires contracting and relaxing as the thing, still alive, fought against the dissection. Brambell felt faintly sick. It just wouldn’t die.

  “May I look, Dr. Brambell?”

  Brambell stepped away from the oculars with relief.

  “It’s too perfect, too well arranged, to be biological. It looks like a machine—don’t you think?”

  “I’m not sure I agree, Dr. Sax. It might just be a different mode of organization. The bioassays show the thing is carbon-silicon-oxygen instead of carbon-hydrogen-oxygen. This could very well be the product of carbon-silicon evolution.”

  Brambell could see the ugly little brute was now trying to saw away at one of the metal pins with its tooth. “I think all those threads are the creature’s central nervous system,” he said. “Let’s follow them to the brain.”

  “Good idea.”

  With exquisite care, Brambell teased apart the sheaths and tissues covering the black and translucent threads, exposing them. Working his way forward, he saw they led to a cluster of black granules between the eyes, just behind the tooth—right where one might expect the brain to be.

  “That must be it,” said Sax.

  “Agreed.”

  “Kill it, please.”

  “With pleasure.”

  Choosing a finer scalpel, Brambell inserted the gleaming tip into the cluster and made an incision. The reaction of the creature was sudden and dramatic: it made a sound like a high-pitched moan.

  Brambell hesitated.

  “Keep going, for God’s sake.”

  He continued the incision, opening up the brain-like organ. Through the stereozoom, many complex structures could be seen. The creature gave one last piercing whistle, vibrated violently, then suddenly went still.

  “Dead,” said Sax. “Finally.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  He continued to dissect the tiny brain, removing slivers to be sectioned and examined with the scanning electron microscope; another sliver for biochemical analysis; others for various additional tests. Slowly, he worked through the brain until it was completely exposed.

  Through the stereozoom it was obviously complex, spheres within spheres, connected by countless bundles of tiny thread-like wires—neurons?—and translucent tubes.

  Silently, he continued the dissection of the head. The tooth, black and exceedingly sharp, was shaped like a small shark’s tooth; its root was attached to a massive bundle of wires that looked mechanical, and could contract or relax to control the motion of the tooth. The tooth obviously wasn’t made of silicon dioxide; SiO2 would not cut steel like that. He felt confident it was a carbon allotrope, probably related to diamond.

  The creature’s mouth led to nothing: no gullet, no digestive system, no stomach or anus. It just ended in another cluster of black and translucent threads. Maybe it was a machine—but if so, what a machine! Unlike anything created by humankind.

  They worked rapidly but accurately, until they had dissected every visible organ and taken tissue samples for additional research. As with any dissection, the final product was a mess.

  “Let us move on to the cadaver,” Brambell asked.

  “Before we do that,” Sax said, “I would feel better if we put the remains of that thing in a blender and then incinerated it.”

  “Capital idea.” Brambell chopped up the remains, put them in a small container, sealed it, removed it from the hood, dumped it in a bio blender, reduced it to gray mush, and then spatulated the mush into the small laboratory incinerator and turned it on. He heard the comforting sound of the flame popping to life, the gentle roar of the burner, the fan pumping the gaseous waste products out of the ship. It went on for a while, and then the unit indicated complete combustion had occurred.

  “Shall we see what’s left?” asked Sax.

  “Why not?” Brambell opened the door to the incinerator and pulled open the drawer. A small bead of deep blue was present in the bottom of the container; no ash, no grit, just a gleaming ball of glass.

  “How curious,” said Sax, removing it with a pair of tweezers and holding it up to the light. “What a lovely color.” She put it in a test tube and sealed it, labeling it for future analysis. She turned. “Dr. Brambell, I believe a cadaver awaits.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  As they turned back to the body on the gurney, the ship’s emergency public address system alarm went off, red lights flashing, a siren sounding. And then a voice sounded over
the PA. Brambell was startled; this was the first time the emergency system had been employed.

  “Attention: All personnel. Attention: All personnel. The specimens brought back on board from the organism appear to have escaped the prep lab. They may have calved into a number of smaller entities resembling small snakes, each with a single tooth. They are to be considered aggressive and extremely dangerous. All personnel are expected to remain on high alert. If you see such an organism, alert security and keep your distance. All personnel not engaged in essential business are instructed to meet on the hangar deck now—repeat, now—for further instructions.”

  Without a word, Brambell picked up the long knife and began to make the Y-incision from the xiphoid process to the pubic bone. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re engaged in essential business.”

  As if in response, the ship’s phone rang. Sax picked it up. “It’s Garza. He wants us on the hangar deck. Glinn is requesting a brief.”

  Brambell laid down the long knife with regret. For now, at least, there would be no retreat into the comfort of the familiar.

  45

  GIDEON JOINED GLINN and a few other mission leaders at the far end of the DSV hangar. Glinn—who was in urgent conversation with Dr. Brambell and Antonella Sax—gave him a distracted nod. The golden orb of the sun had set into the ocean, leaving an orange glow across the horizon. The deck lights had just been turned on and were bathing the hangar in a ghastly yellow sodium-vapor light.

  The hangar deck was a crowded and restless scene, some people talking in tense murmurs, others in loud expostulations. As Gideon looked over the crowd, he was shocked at the depth of anxiety, if not terror, he saw on many of the faces.

  Glinn stepped forward. Gideon hoped he could work his calming magic, but given this crowd he was doubtful.

  Glinn held up his hands and a hush fell. “As you all know, the specimen we brought on board—what we had assumed to be a long root or tendril—has vanished from the prep lab. We know that small, worm-like appendages, calved off from the main specimen, have managed to parasitize at least three people so far, and probably four, all assigned to the exobiology lab. Craig Waingro, the lab assistant who accidentally shot himself in a struggle in mission control, had a parasitic worm in his brain. CT scans have shown that the other two exo lab assistants, Reece and Stahlweather, are also infected, harboring worms in their brains. They are now anesthetized, restrained, and locked in the brig.”

  At this, the restless murmur of the crowd swelled in volume.

  “Please. I have much more to tell you.”

  A half silence returned.

  “It also seems likely Mr. Frayne, the lead lab assistant, was also infected, which, we believe, explains why he stole the DSV. Dr. Brambell and Dr. Sax have just completed a dissection of one of the worms, and we have more information and a tentative hypothesis to share with you.”

  Another swell of chatter; a few shouted challenges.

  “Please!” said Garza stepping forward. “Keep quiet and let Dr. Glinn speak.”

  “The so-called worms have a single tooth. This consists of a diamond-like compound that can, it seems, work a hole in steel or pretty much any substance. We must assume that they are now dispersed throughout the ship. From what little we know, the worms appear to attack people when they sleep. They anesthetize the victim and enter the brain. This anesthetized period lasts perhaps two hours and, based again on the evidence, appears to take the form of an unwakable sleep.”

  “How do you know all this!” someone shouted.

  “We don’t know it. This is a working hypothesis, based on eyewitness testimony, inference, and deduction.”

  “We need to get the hell out of here!”

  Gideon looked in the speaker’s direction. It was Masterson—the second engineer who had riled up the postmortem meeting held in the wake of Alex Lispenard’s death.

  “That clearly won’t solve the immediate problem,” Glinn said calmly. “Now let me finish. The more you know about the situation, the better for everyone concerned. It appears that a person, once parasitized by the worm, becomes—for want of a better description—placed in the Baobab’s thrall. Somehow enlisted to do its bidding, so to speak. This may be the reason Frayne stole the DSV, helped by Reece, and intentionally drove it straight into the creature’s maw. And this is also why Waingro tried to interrupt the seismic charges we placed on the seabed—the Baobab must have believed them a threat and taken steps to stop us.”

  “That’s bull!” someone said.

  Glinn raised his hands. “The phenomenon is not unknown in earth biology—even in humans. Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that lives in a cat’s gut. It spreads to mice via cat droppings, invades their brains, and causes mice to lose their fear of cats—and thus get eaten. That is how the parasite spreads. People infected with toxo also become more reckless, get in more car accidents, seem to lose their sense of prudence. The worms seem to operate in a similar fashion. The parasitized person wakes up, goes about his business, unaware of what is in his brain or that he’s been infected. But while he seems completely normal…he will go to any lengths to achieve his goal of trying to unite with the Baobab. As Frayne did. Or to protect it—as Waingro tried to do.”

  “Why?” someone shouted.

  “We believe it may be for feeding purposes. It seems to have a specialized diet.”

  The feeding purposes phrase caused another tumult. Garza again shushed the crowd.

  “Dr. Brambell is going to operate on the two remaining exo lab assistants tonight and try to remove their parasites. Meanwhile, we will be taking all possible precautions. Everyone on board ship is going to be CT scanned, on a twenty-four/seven schedule, which will be posted to the ship’s net very soon. And I am sorry to say that all of us—everyone—are temporarily forbidden to sleep, because that is when it appears one is most vulnerable to attack. Sick bay will dispense phenethylamine to anyone who asks for it. Security, under the leadership of Manuel Garza, will be undertaking an intensive sweep of the ship, which we hope will find the missing worms.”

  At this the tumult became general. Garza stepped forward, crying out for people to simmer down, but the tide of anger rolled over him. The no-sleep order, in particular, seemed to spark both apprehension and anger. Suddenly Brambell, who had been waiting in the wings, stepped forward. The startling appearance of the man, and the universal respect in which he was held aboard ship, caused a temporary lull.

  “My friends,” he said in his Irish brogue, “it’s quite simple. The worm enters through the nose, and works its way through the nasal bones into the brain. Remember that—until he is given instructions by the Baobab, or until he believes it to be threatened—a parasitized person will act completely normally. The only way to tell if someone is infected, short of a CT scan, is by witnessing a two-hour period of unwakable sleep—or by sudden and unexpected behavioral changes. We must all be vigilant.”

  This little speech was met with rapt silence. Glinn, taking tactical advantage, forcefully filled the silence. “We’ve told you all this for two reasons: First, to tamp down rumor and wild talk. Second, to alert you to the dangers and challenges currently facing us. Despite all this, indeed because of it, the program of killing the Baobab must go on full speed ahead. Everyone: back to business.”

  46

  THE BLOOD ON the floor of mission control hadn’t been cleaned up; many of the maintenance employees had been assigned to the teams sweeping the ship on worm detail. Gideon made a careful detour of it. Normally the lights were kept low in the room, because of the many monitors, but now they were turned up to dazzling brilliance. A two-woman security team, wearing gloves and face protection, was moving along a wall of equipment with pencil lights, a toolbox, and dental mirrors. They were unscrewing panels, searching the guts behind, then screwing each back and moving to the next one.

  “At the rate they’re going,” said Sam McFarlane, appearing at his side, “it’ll take months to sweep the ship.”

&nb
sp; Gideon shook his head. “Let’s just get this done.”

  They joined Garza at the central command console. McFarlane, once again taking charge of the operation, ran a series of checks, first on the explosive array along the seafloor, then on the seismic sensors. The central screen showed a view of the creature itself, taken from the green-light video cameras that had earlier been placed on the seafloor. The thing appeared quiescent, like a giant, semi-translucent and sickly-green tree.

  About fifty yards from the Baobab, sitting on the seafloor, lay the crushed and balled-up DSV that had been commandeered by Frayne. The creature had expelled it about an hour before. A faint cloudy trail drifted downcurrent from it.

  “Everything’s good to go,” McFarlane said. “Let’s restart the countdown at five minutes. Dr. Garza?”

  “Initiating countdown,” said Garza. “Five minutes.”

  A large digital timer popped up on the corner of the main screen. Gideon wondered if the creature would try to stop them again—if indeed it had initiated Waingro’s psychotic break. How could it communicate with the worms through two miles of water? He wasn’t as convinced of this as Glinn seemed to be. In his mind—and McFarlane’s, he knew—the bigger question was how the thing might react to the explosions themselves. They were small charges, just enough to trigger seismic waves, nothing that would do damage…but the creature might well believe it was under attack.

  “Four minutes,” said Garza.

  “Very well,” replied McFarlane.

  Garza and McFarlane had settled down into a kind of cold-war détente. They cooperated—in fact, they cooperated well—but on a professional level only.

  Gideon felt his heart rate accelerate. It seemed unlikely the creature could do anything to them directly. Would the worms on board react? Was there really any potential communication between the parasitic worms and the mother creature? They had recorded no long-range sounds from the creature other than Prothero’s whale song, nor any other potential mode of communication such as electromagnetic waves.