“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.