The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories (62 page)

Hall looked up from his work. “Anyhow, now we know what we’re up against. It’s a form of protoplasm, with infinite versatility.” He lifted the spray tank. “I think this will give us an idea of how many exist.”

“What’s that?”

“A compound of arsenic and hydrogen in gas form. Arsine.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

Hall locked his helmet into place. His voice came through the Commander’s earphones. “I’m going to release this throughout the lab. I think there are a lot of them in here, more than anywhere else.”

“Why here?”

“This is where all samples and specimens were originally brought, where the first one of them was encountered. I think they came in with the samples, or as the samples, and then infiltrated through the rest of the buildings.”

The Commander locked her own helmet into place. Her four guards did the same. “Arsine is fatal to human beings, isn’t it?”

Hall nodded. “We’ll have to be careful. We can use it in here for a limited test, but that’s about all.”

He adjusted the flow of his oxygen inside his helmet.

“What’s your test supposed to prove?” she wanted to know.

“If it shows anything at all, it should give us an idea of how extensively they’ve infiltrated. We’ll know better what we’re up against. This may be more serious than we realize.”

“How do you mean?” she asked, fixing her own oxygen flow.

“There are a hundred people in this unit on Planet Blue. As it stands now, the worst that can happen is that they’ll get all of us, one by one. But that’s nothing. Units of a hundred are lost every day of the week. It’s a risk whoever is first to land on a planet must take. In the final analysis, it’s relatively unimportant.”

“Compared to what?”

“If they
are
infinitely divisible, then we’re going to have to think twice about leaving here. It would be better to stay and get picked off one by one than to run the risk of carrying any of them back to the system.”

She looked at him. “Is that what you’re trying to find out—whether they’re infinitely divisible?”

“I’m trying to find out what we’re up against. Maybe there are only a few of them. Or maybe they’re everywhere.” He waved a hand around the laboratory. “Maybe half the things in this room are not what we think they are… It’s bad when they attack us. It would be worse if they didn’t.”

“Worse?” The Commander was puzzled.

“Their mimicry is perfect. Of inorganic objects, at least. I looked through one of them, Stella, when it was imitating my microscope. It enlarged, adjusted, reflected, just like a regular microscope. It’s a form of mimicry that surpasses anything we’ve ever imagined. It carries down below the surface, into the actual elements of the object imitated.”

“You mean one of them could slip back to Terra along with us? In the form of clothing or a piece of lab equipment?” She shuddered.

“We assume they’re some sort of protoplasm. Such malleability suggests a simple original form—and that suggests binary fission. If that’s so, then there may be no limits to their ability to reproduce. The dissolving properties make me think of the simple unicellular protozoa.”

“Do you think they’re intelligent?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.” Hall lifted the spray. “In any case, this should tell us their extent. And, to some degree, corroborate my notion that they’re basic enough to reproduce by simple division—the worse thing possible, from our standpoint.

“Here goes,” Hall said.

He held the spray tightly against him, depressed the trigger, aimed the nozzle slowly around the lab. The commander and the four guards stood silently behind him. Nothing moved. The sun shone in through the windows, reflecting from the culture dishes and equipment.

After a moment he let the trigger up again.

“I didn’t see anything,” Commander Morrison said. “Are you sure you did anything?”

“Arsine is colorless. But don’t loosen your helmet. It’s fatal. And don’t move.”

They stood waiting.

For a time nothing happened. Then—

“Good God!” Commander Morrison exclaimed.

At the far end of the lab a slide cabinet wavered suddenly. It oozed, buckling and pitching. It lost its shape completely—a homogeneous jellylike mass perched on top of the table. Abruptly, it flowed down the side of the table on to the floor, wobbling as it went.

“Over there!”

A bunsen burner melted and flowed along beside it. All around the room objects were in motion. A great glass retort folded up into itself and settled down into a blob. A rack of test tubes, a shelf of chemicals…

“Look out!” Hall cried, stepping back.

A huge bell jar dropped with a soggy splash in front of him. It was a single large cell, all right. He could dimly make out the nucleus, the cell wall, the hard vacuoles suspended in the cytoplasm.

Pipettes, tongs, a mortar, all were flowing now. Half the equipment in the room was in motion. They had imitated almost everything there was to imitate. For every microscope there was a mimic. For every tube and jar and bottle and flask…

One of the guards had his blaster out. Hall knocked it down. “Don’t fire! Arsine is inflammable. Let’s get out of here. We know what we wanted to know.”

They pushed the laboratory door open quickly and made their way out into the corridor. Hall slammed the door behind them, bolting it tightly.

“Is it bad, then?” Commander Morrison asked.

“We haven’t got a chance. The arsine disturbed them; enough of it might even kill them. But we haven’t got that much arsine. And, if we could flood the planet, we wouldn’t be able to use our blasters.”

“Suppose we left the planet.”

“We can’t take the chance of carrying them back to the system.”

“If we stay here we’ll be absorbed, dissolved, one by one,” the Commander protested.

“We could have arsine brought in. Or some other poison that might destroy them. But it would destroy most of the life on the planet along with them. There wouldn’t be much left.”

“Then we’ll have to destroy all life forms! If there’s no other way of doing it we’ve got to burn the planet clean. Even if there wouldn’t be a thing left but a dead world.”

They looked at each other.

“I’m going to call the System Monitor,” Commander Morrison said. “I’m going to get the unit off here, out of danger—all that are left, at least. That poor girl by the lake…” She shuddered. “After everyone’s out of here, we can work out the best way of cleaning up this planet.”

“You’ll run the risk of carrying one of them back to Terra?”

“Can they imitate us? Can they imitate living creatures? Higher life forms?”

Hall considered. “Apparently not. They seem to be limited to inorganic objects.”

The Commander smiled grimly. “Then we’ll go back without any inorganic material.”

“But our clothes! They can imitate belts, gloves, boots—”

“We’re not taking our clothes. We’re going back without anything. And I mean without anything
at all.”

Hall’s lips twitched. “I see.” He pondered. “It might work. Can you persuade the personnel to—to leave all their things behind? Everything they own?”

“If it means their lives, I can
order
them to do it.”

“Then it might be our one chance of getting away.”

The nearest cruiser large enough to remove the remaining members of the unit was two hours’ distance away. It was moving Terraside again.

Commander Morrison looked up from the vidscreen. “They want to know what’s wrong here.”

“Let me talk.” Hall seated himself before the screen. The heavy features and gold braid of a Terran cruiser captain regarded him. “This is Major Lawrence Hall, from the Research Division of this unit.”

“Captain Daniel Davis.” Captain Davis studied him without expression. “You’re having some kind of trouble, Major?”

Hall licked his lips. “I’d rather not explain until we’re aboard, if you don’t mind.”

“Why not?”

“Captain, you’re going to think we’re crazy enough as it is. We’ll discuss everything fully once we’re aboard.” He hesitated. “We’re going to board your ship naked.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow. “Naked?”

“That’s right.”

“I see.” Obviously he didn’t.

“When will you get here?”

“In about two hours, I’d say.”

“It’s now 13:00 by our schedule. You’ll be here by 15:00?”

“At approximately that time,” the Captain agreed.

“We’ll be waiting for you. Don’t let any of your men out. Open one lock for us. We’ll board without any equipment. Just ourselves, nothing else. As soon as we’re aboard, remove the ship at once.”

Stella Morrison leaned toward the screen. “Captain, would it be possible—for your men to—?”

“We’ll land by robot control,” he assured her. “None of my men will be on deck. No one will see you.”

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Not at all.” Captain Davis saluted. “We’ll see you in about two hours then, Commander.”

“Let’s get everyone out onto the field,” Commander Morrison said. “They should remove their clothes here, I think, so there won’t be any objects on the field to come in contact with the ship.”

Hall looked at her face. “Isn’t it worth it to save our lives?”

Lieutenant Friendly bit his lips. “I won’t do it. I’ll stay here.”

“You have to come.”

“But, Major—”

Hall looked at his watch. “It’s 14:50. The ship will be here any minute. Get your clothes off and get out on the landing field.”

“Can’t I take anything at
all
?”

“Nothing. Not even your blaster… They’ll give us clothes inside the ship. Come on! Your life depends on this. Everyone else is doing it.”

Friendly tugged at his shirt reluctantly. “Well, I guess I’m acting silly.”

The vidscreen clicked. A robot voice announced shrilly: “Everyone out of the buildings at once! Everyone out of the buildings and on the field without delay! Everyone out of the buildings at once! Everyone—”

“So soon?” Hall ran to the window and lifted the metal blind. “I didn’t hear it land.”

Parked in the center of the landing field was a long gray cruiser, its hull pitted and dented from meteoric strikes. It lay motionless. There was no sign of life about it.

A crowd of naked people was already moving hesitantly across the field toward it, blinking in the bright sunlight.

“It’s here!” Hall started tearing off his shirt. “Let’s go!”

“Wait for me!”

“Then hurry.” Hall finished undressing. Both men hurried out into the corridor. Unclothed guards raced past them. They padded down the corridors through the long unit building, to the door. They ran downstairs, out onto the field. Warm sunlight beat down on them from the sky overhead. From all the unit buildings, naked men and women were pouring silently toward the ship.

“What a sight!” an officer said. “We’ll never be able to live it down.”

“But you’ll live, at least,” another said.

“Lawrence!”

Hall half turned.

“Please don’t look around. Keep on going. I’ll walk behind you.”

“How does it feel, Stella?” Hall asked.

“Unusual.”

“Is it worth it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Do you think anyone will believe us?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “I’m beginning to wonder myself.”

“Anyhow, we’ll get back alive.”

“I guess so.”

Hall looked up at the ramp being lowered from the ship in front of them. The first people were already beginning to scamper up the metal incline, into the ship, through the circular lock.

“Lawrence—”

There was a peculiar tremor in the Commander’s voice. “Lawrence, I’m—”

“You’re what?”

“I’m scared.”

“Scared!” He stopped. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she quavered.

People pushed against them from all sides. “Forget it. Carry-over from your early childhood.” He put his foot on the bottom of the ramp. “Up we go.”

“I want to go back!” There was panic in her voice. “I—”

Hall laughed. “It’s too late now, Stella.” He mounted the ramp, holding on to the rail. Around him, on all sides, men and women were pushing forward, carrying them up. They came to the lock. “Here we are.”

The man ahead of him disappeared.

Hall went inside after him, into the dark interior of the ship, into the silent blackness before him. The Commander followed.

At exactly 15:00 Captain Daniel Davis landed his ship in the center of the field. Relays slid the entrance lock open with a bang. Davis and the other

officers of the ship sat waiting in the control cabin, around the big control table.

“Well,” Captain Davis said, after a while. “Where are they?”

The officers became uneasy. “Maybe something’s wrong.”

“Maybe the whole damn thing’s a joke?”

They waited and waited.

But no one came.

General Thomas Groves gazed glumly up at the battle maps on the wall. The thin black line, the iron ring around Ganymede, was still there. He waited a moment, vaguely hoping, but the line did not go away. At last he turned and made his way out of the chart wing, past the rows of desks.

At the door Major Siller stopped him. “What’s wrong, sir? No change in the war?”

“No change.”

“What’ll we do?”

“Come to terms. Their terms. We can’t let it drag on another month. Everybody knows that.
They
know that.”

“Licked by a little outfit like Ganymede.”

“If only we had more time. But we don’t. The ships must be out in deep-space again, right away. If we have to capitulate to get them out, then let’s do it. Ganymede!” He spat. “If we could only break them. But by that time—”