by George Right
Stop! He jerked back his hand. The space is closed in a cocoon of a field. The computer of a probe knows nothing about it! It wasn't pre-programmed for launching from a dark phase–of course not, after all such a launch is senseless. It considers that outside of the hangar there is a usual continuum, where to accelerate with the ship astern means to move away from her.
Adamson's fingers began again to dance on the panel and to hit the buttons. If only he could make it! The smell of burning details increased. The panel could be cut off at any moment. So, start with the maximum acceleration. He was right to cancel all restrictions on g-loads and fuel. Then, when the ship suddenly appears ahead of the rocket nose, the maneuvering engines would not have time to turn the rocket to avoid collision.
"Program confirmed. Launching sequence initiated."
The red indicator shone, showing that the exit to the hangar was blocked, and one more screen, displaying the view from the probe's camera, turned on. In normal conditions decompression of the hangar would take several minutes, but because of the canceled safety options the wide doors have slid apart at once, letting the air out into a space. However, outside there was not the usual blackness of space, but some qualmish gray-brown twilight, certainly without any stars. The landing module, turned by its mobile pylon head-on to the exit, ignited the engines.
Victor would prefer to track the process of attaching to the rocket and its further flight to the end, but Linda was still alive, and he couldn't torture her anymore. The computer should do its job. Adamson again moved his hand to turn the stand off. At that instant, as it was required for any operations in near-ship space, spaceship orientation lights turned on outside, and in their light through a doorway coming nearer to the module, Victor saw on the screen a scattering of some small objects floating in space. He understood what it was–the tools which they had thrown out (the field was configured so that it created gravity inside the ship, but not beyond its hull, the pilot remembered). If the probe collided with them, could it affect its direction? Probably not because they are too small.
"That's all, Linda." He exhaled when the probe reached outer space, but before he had time to open the circuit, a short crackle of electric breakdown sounded in the stand bowels. But capacitors which had time to be charged kept the image on the screen for a few of seconds more. And during these seconds the lander camera showed one more item–drifting in the same cloud of garbage, much larger than the others: a body with outstretched arms and legs. And Victor even had time to make out whose body it was. The screen had gone out, but before his eyes there was still the grinning grimace of his own corpse.
Linda fell backwards, with a wooden knock hitting her nape against the floor. Her blackened fingers smoked. From her nose bloody slime was leaking. Victor bent down over the woman. She gave no signs of life. Dead after all? But even if so, it's not even possible to say about the deceased, "She suffers no more." Not anyway, until the rocket fulfills its task.
But if she was now revived in the nose part of the ship, will she perish when the rocket hits here, in the aft part? Probably not. But if the biosynthesizer with all protoplasm is destroyed, the series of regenerations will end, and on the dilapidated ship she will not survive for much longer. As he had just ascertained, they nevertheless cannot live in a vacuum, though he was sure that he was then killed by a vacuum? Perhaps he couldn't commit suicide for quite some time, until he managed to catch one of the tools flying nearby? Feeling sick from this thought made Victor understand that he, most likely, had guessed right.
Well, where is the explosion? Victor felt, as a hard weariness, the true companion of hopeless despair, bore heavily on him again. He leaned against a wall and closed his eyes, as it happened, just in time to hear the short obtuse rataplan of hits pass through the wall. None of them were strong enough to make the colossal ship shudder even slightly. Certainly it couldn't be the explosion of the rocket. Collision with tools or whatever else they had thrown out? But where, where is the damned rocket? Could it really miss? If he had incorrectly estimated the curvature of that pseudo-space in which they are captured, however, the rocket still has nowhere to go, as there is too little space here, so sooner or later... but where exactly will it hit?
If Linda is dead, it would be possible to connect her body again to the wires and to try to establish communication again with the rocket. He had already taken her hand with this thought, but at that moment the body of the woman suddenly convulsively moved. She coughed so as if she had choked on her own tongue, again convulsively shuddered, and then heavily raised her head.
"We are still... here?" she hoarsely exhaled.
"What idiots we are!" Victor exclaimed, having surmised something from his last thought. "You shouldn't grasp the wires! We could drag any corpse here and use it!"
"Never mind." She awkwardly wiped her face with the back of her right hand, trying not to touch anything with the burned fingers. "It is better, than IT.”
"IT," Adamson blightly nodded. "Perhaps, IT influences even our decisions, forcing us to choose what serves its law–the law of increase of despair."
"The rocket. What is with the rocket? You didn't manage to launch it?"
"I did, but... I got it. We are idiots twice," Victor gloomily stated. "The ship has no self-destruction system. But unmanned rockets have! And when the computer has understood that collisions is unavoidable... We were reached only by small fragments."
"And we can't turn it off in any way?"
"No. And even if we could, it was the only lander with which I managed to establish communication. And the stand, I am afraid, won't work any more."
Linda sat on the floor, looking at her blackened fingers. The suffering grimace curved her mangled face, making it especially eerie–layers of dead skin, crawling against each other, rumpled in rigid folds and chapped here and there.
"Very painful?" Victor asked. "Perhaps you, well... a new cycle?"
"Death as the best medicine, murder as first aid..." she muttered. "No. I do not want it again from the beginning. Again to remember that all... to pass from hope to... especially, it becomes shorter... Listen. I know what to do. We will blow up this damned ship all the same. Anyway, the second level for sure."
"How?"
"Hydrogen. Detonating gas."
"And where will we get it, especially in such quantities?"
"We will force this rubbish to create its death by itself. We will introduce a virus into the protoplasm. Its cells are very flexible. Capable of serving as a material either for human tissues or for anaerobic biorobots, and emission of biogene hydrogen is a routine biochemical process. It is very simple to program. Currently protoplasm grows owing to dark energy, as the vegetative biomass of Earth–owing to solar one. Well, let it grow, the more, the better. The virus will build in all its cells. And will make them produce hydrogen."
"You can create such a virus?"
"I am still a bioengineer."
"Yes, but everything is crushed."
"At the second level there is a reserve control post too."
"If it is in the same condition, as this one..."
"What do we have to lose? Let's go."
"All right," Adamson agreed in a colourless voice. "Let's go–if you insist."
"You don't believe that we will manage to do it?"
"It won't release us. I do not know, how, but it won't."
"Victor, don't speak like that! It is IT that forces you to think this way! You have said yourself that it is an absolutely stupid force, not an artful enemy! We should fight it!"
"You can still ... have any... hope?" The wave of apathy and powerlessness which overtook him was so heavy that he hardly forced himself to move his lips.
"Pain. I think, it's the point. While I think of the pain, I can't concentrate completely on despair. But it will become, of course, stronger. Let's go, while we still can bear it." Seeing that Victor does not move at all, she managed a mighty slap across his face and then another, before she moane
d from the pain in her own fingers. Adamson grudgingly put his hand on the panel opening the exit. The hangar was already filled with air again and automatics allowed them to leave the dispatching post.
At the second level little had changed since the last Adamson visit–except for the disgusting life that had seemingly bred even more. But as with the previous time, Victor did not look at the mucous mushrooms and meat stalactites hanging down from a ceiling but instead on the mangled corpse crucified across a corridor. In its dead flesh all halfworms-halfbugs droopingly crawled about, it seemed, there were more of them now, as well as their dead bodies on the floor. Now he knew that this was Linda's corpse and that he was the monster who had done it to her.
The memories about what happened here sharply splashed out on to his consciousness, causing a feeling of almost a physical blow. Adamson shuddered and squinted tightly, but that made the dreadful scene only more clear before his eyes.
"I remember it, too," Linda said in low voice. "Let's go." She resolutely moved sideways by her own mutilated remains, having dived under the hand ripped up by a wire. Victor followed her, trying simultaneously not to look at the body and not to touch it. Underfoot dead insectoid creatures damply crackled and crunched. In many places the floor was already covered with a continuous carpet. His boots stuck and slipped in the slime. He was glad–as much as that adjective in general fit the situation–that he had put on the dead man's footwear–that is, of course, his own. But Linda walked on all this muck barefoot and, apparently, even paid no attention to it. Meanwhile the corridor around them resembled less and less a construction created by humans, and more and more an interior of some monstrous gut, affected with polyps and ulcers. Light could no longer penetrate all that grew on light fixtures, so it was necessary to use the flashlight again. In one place their way was barred by something like a soft log. Linda stepped on it (the sound similar to a squelched sigh came out) and went further, and Victor stumbled in the dark. He shined the light at feet and made a wry face when he understood what it was. It was a corpse which had become now a part of the general goop which covered the walls, floor and ceiling. It was accreted so densely that it was already impossible to understand, if it was male or female, least of all the cause of death. It was possible to distinguish only a hole of an opened mouth, a black cavity in the continuous knobby crust which completely hid all other facial features. Victor feared that further passage was overgrown completely, and they would have to almost literally gnaw their way through to the post.
Nevertheless, they reached the desired door without any special problems. On the whole perimeter of the door through a slit between it and the wall some spongy substance had squeezed, and the identification touch panel had grown with a fetid black mold, but seemingly it still worked and, as much as it was possible to discern, was shining red. Adamson fastidiously wiped away the mold with his elbow, then habitually positioned his palm. However, nothing changed–the same ominous red light glowed between his fingers.
"Step aside!" Linda ordered and, almost having pushed him away, postioned her hand. "This is my domain."
Confirming her words, the panel lit up green, and then a door, tearing at the spongy mess, moved aside.
The biosynthesizer control post turned out to be less fouled than a corridor near it. Most of the growth was on the walls near the door, while on the control panel itself there were only small puddles of oily slime here and there overgrown with mold. On the walls and ceiling, however, a lot of quasi-cockroaches were creeping, periodically breaking away and falling to the floor. Those falling on their back couldn't recover and thus lay whitish bellies up, weakly moving their chela. "I'm about to vomit," Victor thought, though he knew already that it was not possible.
But the most important–the panel worked! It had no indications of purposeful destruction.
"Looks like we didn't get in here yet," said Adamson. "Probably it was more disgusting than anywhere else."
Linda touched the clammy seat of an armchair. When she took her finger away, sticky threads stretched out from it–and, having moved the armchair aside, she knelt in front of the panel. Screens revived, obeying her touches. Victor discerned a pimply chain of some complex organic molecule on one of them. Another screen, which broadcasted an image from an observation camera, showed something like a round pool filled in fat and viscous bubbling gook. "The protoplasm," thought Adamson.
"Do you know exactly what to do?" he asked.
"I have thought over the general virus scheme already, and will finish off the details now. This system has all the necessary tools."
"How long will it take?"
"Programming or synthesis?
"All process up to the end. Until we can blow up everything."
"I don't know. The minimum natural period of mitosis is about twenty minutes. We use catalysts to accelerate it, but all the same to infect the whole biomass, and then also to produce enough gas, requires at least several hours. Probably, days."
"Days?! We won't sustain it! I feel... I feel ITS power already now!"
"We don't have choice. We have to endure. If we kill ourselves or each other halfway, it will be necessary to begin again from the beginning.”
Something stirred in Victor's hair. He mechanically flipped it off onto the floor. It was a cockroach which had fallen from the ceiling. Adamson fastidiously crushed the creature with his boot.
He didn't know how long he had been walking up and down the post, biting his lips and grasping his hair, while more and more horrible waves of intolerable despair fell upon him. Linda continued to conjure with the panel. It was easier for her, as she was busy, and besides she was distracted by the pain of her burns. When it became especially bad, she purposely pressed on her charred fingers. Adamson understood that she suffered less than he, and felt hatred toward her for it. During one moment this hatred became so strong that he was just about ready to grab her and tear, tear her flesh with his teeth and nails. Instead he heavily punched himself in the face several times, until he felt on his lips blood running from his broken nose.
"How long still?" he shouted. "How long will you snail about?"
"That's it," Linda exhaled in a dead voice. "I have started the synthesis. Now I will run tests and will be able to tell approximately how long we have to wait."
Victor sat down on the filthy floor, digging his nails into his palms and pressing his temples with his fists.
"Hydrogen level..." Linda muttered. "No. It can't be!"
"What?" Victor moaned. "You were mistaken? All is in vain? I knew, knew that..."
"No. On the contrary, there it bowl loads of hydrogen! The whole synthesizer is filled with detonating gas. But it is impossible! Only the few minutes passed, no virus breeds with such speed!"
"Then the instruments are wrong."
"No. Not wrong... It seems... it seems… I know what happened. It's like with the rockets. We didn't remember that we have tried twice already. We have broken the panel to prevent the third hopeless attempt, but you nevertheless managed to make it work."
"You mean to say the idea of a virus also came to you not for the first time?" Adamson questioned.
"Yes. After all it is natural that we think out the same ideas over and over again. Only this idea wasn't hopeless. We just have to understand that we will succumb before the end of process. But it already went automatically. Our participation wasn't required. The main thing was not to disturb it–not to destroy all that is here in the next fit of despair, especially without yet having remembered what was what."
"So," Victor said in shock, "that means, we... that is, I... had hung you in a corridor as... a ‘No entrance’ sign?"
"Yes, by this time we already knew that bloody inscriptions like ‘don't go there!’ didn't work. And when you saw this–you after all did not go further? And I wouldn't go... no, I really hoped that the pain would destroy my mind, and for me all would finish, but if not... as it in fact happened..."
"And how much time is left til
l the end of the process?"
Linda looked at the screen again.
"It is finished. All protoplasm is infected."
"So, we have lost a wilderness of time while you created the virus anew!" Victor again flew into a rage. "We could finish that all a way back!"
"Don't shout. We are almost there. Let's go."
They didn't need to return to the corridor. It was possible to pass to the synthesizer tank directly from the control post. After descending a short low-sloped stairway and passing a hanger, on which protective suits once hung (Where could they be now? On which of still not found corpses?), the astronauts found themselves before one more door covered by outgrowths. Under the outgrowths it was still possible to discern a sign of biological danger. That certainly couldn't stop them anymore. In principle, behind each door there should be a leakproof airlock, but how then had all this living muck gotten outside? Was it thanks to the paradoxical properties of dark matter, or had they let it out themselves? Linda put her hand again on the scanner and they, having passed the airlock, went on to a balcony surrounding from within the large round premise which they already saw on the screen. At a closer look the life cradle made an even more repellent impression than on the monitor. Viscous bubbles were slowly overflowing and loudly burst two meters below their feet. In the air there was a dense heavy smell of some rotten concoction. Now Victor understood what these bubbles meant: Hydrogen was evolving–odorless by itself, of course.
"Well now," Adamson inquired, "how will we set it on fire?"
"Oh," Linda was confused, "actually I has absolutely forgotten about that. We had electrolighters but where are they now?"
"I suspect, overboard."
"And here," she inspected the walls, "there are no wires which we could reach."
"If only this crap were metal!" Victor punched a balcony handrail. "There would be a chance to strike a spark. But there is only plastic around."
