San took over: “Said they missed the layers because they were masked by methane ice and other volatiles. Even said, when the first indications of rising water were upon us, that most of it would evaporate and the atmospheric processors would clean and recycle it for us… as cloud. Geez!”
I was unsure who San was talking about, but was guessing that whoever they were, they had paid for their mistakes with their lives. If they hadn’t died, I think San was ready to kill them all over again.
Lilly regained her composure and went on. “The water kept rising and just beneath the surface, the ground was still frozen… I mean, it wasn’t going to melt overnight was it? - like from a million years of sub-zero temperatures? But, in no time at all, the water without the chance to soak into the permafrost, bubbled up and spread out. It was like pouring water across hard baked earth. It rolled without absorbing.” Lilly swirled the drink in her hand as if demonstrating. Her anger slopped a rim-full over her fingers; “It might yet subside, and there is evidence that it is beginning to do so, but we haven’t time to wait. We have to deal with the organism that has made us prisoner here, before we die of starvation.”
So far, so bad. Water wasn’t a problem to Blue Base and the purifiers worked well; we wouldn’t die from dehydration, but we didn’t have any food to speak of. Before moving onto a solution to this major problem, Lilly and San thought they had better tell us what they knew of the alien blob, which was preventing escape and access to supplies. Everybody sat in silence, hunched up in chairs or leant despondently upon the bar top, heads buzzing with booze. It was as if our bodies were soaking up this grim news and expressing it in ever more dejected postures.
“Before doctor Haslam was killed,” Lilly sent off another torpedo, “he believed the organism closely resembled a Leucochloridium.” A few heads rose. “That’s the nearest thing he said he could think of. It’s a parasitic worm known to biologists on Earth. It is aggressive and begins by invading a host and mimicking their cells so that it doesn’t get destroyed by the body’s immune systems and other defence mechanisms. It branches through the victim, absorbing proteins until it is big enough and ready enough to lay eggs. When this happens, it transmutes from the body of the host into the monster you have already seen. It then rampages, consuming as much protein as it can get hold of and in as short a space of time as possible, so as to nourish the eggs that incubate somewhere in its body; we believe in what passes for its abdomen.”
“Hang on a minute,” Bram interrupted, clinking his glass away from his teeth in the process. “It can’t have eaten all the people of Blue Base, can it?”
Lilly grimaced. “You got to remember, nearly all of us believed that we weren’t in any danger. Everyone I knew personally, went about their work without taking any precautions. Yes, we wore respirators and protective suits, but when the second flood came, it was so quick, half the population of Blue were drowned in a swirling toxic soup. Running for safety with the extra weight of gravity compounded things. If it had been sleep-time then most would have been saved, safe in our bedchambers, but we were spread all over the place; in the nurseries, on building sites, and others, on their time off, exploring the new planet they had begun to call home. Some, who managed to get into this, our original base, had been swimming in the soup for ages and half of the poor sods went on to develop purple lesions on their skin… especially in places that were not visible to the naked eye. Before we knew it, our erstwhile colleagues were attacking the rest of us and the organism was inside the complex.”
There were a few murmurs of angry disbelief. San headed them off: “You see, the organism is clever, it doesn’t show itself until it has gained mass and strength. Apart from feeling a bit odd and out of sorts, the person infected continues to function on a cognitive level that isn’t out of character. The mimicking invader cells keep performing the same duties as the hosts own, until reaching critical mass and transmuting. Infected people do see the purple blobs on their skin, but most of the damage is being done subcutaneously, that’s to say, beneath the skin, away from prying eyes. Besides, because they felt fine, they were disinclined to bring attention upon themselves with a problem where a sixty-day quarantine and social exclusion was part of the cure.”
There was a long pause. The story was going to get shittier… I could tell. San swigged off his drink in one mouthful. “The victim toward the end of the gestation period is then controlled mentally by the Sporo.”
“What!” Neil spat a mouthful of drink. He seemed aggressive, as if the person telling the story let it happen.
“Yes, we think that chemicals, or more probably the affected takeover of brain cells, alter the thinking patterns of the host. Perversely they fight for the organism’s survival, not their own, a bit like a crazy mother protecting her baby monster.”
“Or a zombie?”
“No, I don’t think so. There is compelling evidence that meaningful action is present.” San shrugged, “Anyhow, whatever the point is that I’m trying to make, a firefight erupted. People had begun killing and consuming each other. It was easy at first for the Sporo. For example, say when an already compromised member of personnel found themselves, and others like them, alone in a bedroom with an unsuspecting prey they/it could assimilate/consume - whichever it is that it does to the victim - at leisure. Later when its many parts were too big to hide, it fought its way to join together as one sentient. It was strong, without needing muscles, and it attacked us with impunity until we worked out a strategy to fight back. We don’t know if the blob needs to remain whole, it was separate for a considerable time - like when it is dissolving a new host - but it seems to want to return to just one entity. Maybe when it gets real big, it might separate again, but either way, there is a weak point in the cycle.”
It was hard to take it all in. Hoping for some good news I asked. “Are there more of those things out there, I mean in the water?”
“The small spores? Yes, we think so, but when so tiny they pose little threat to unprotected skin. If adequate clothing is worn, penetration is easily prevented. We were caught unprepared before, without any knowledge of what we were dealing with. During the deluge, protective suits were used but then peeled off without a notion to kill the spores attached. That this left us open to penetration when a simple task of eradication would have saved many lives.”
The room went quiet again, a bout of collective thinking. San poured another shot of whatever ethanol he was drinking. Lilly took up the last of the fucked-up story. “The Sporo, because that is what we decided to call the thing, slows down when consuming new protein or laying eggs. The eggs can be laid in any environment as far as we know, and are on spurs of elastic that fire off when something good to eat approaches. They can be destroyed relatively easy if you know where they are and have a flame thrower handy. It’s when they are secreted in places like corners and behind ceiling pipes that they become dangerous. It was at this stage, with a few weapons and a quantity of salt, that we managed to destroy the nest of eggs we found on level 1 – we don’t think there are any others but are far from certain.” Lilly’s body language made the last statement very clear. “We managed to flush the main Sporo out of the air lock and into the water. It cost the lives of the only other six remaining crew members though. Not a small price to pay. You’ve seen how strong it is and the fact its limbs can stretch to enormous length.”
Several questions flitted about my brain and none would resolve into words.
Lilly added the postscript: “It’s outside now, as you know, mad as hell. It constantly tries to break through weak spots in Blue Base. Because we are pretty sure it has a beating heart or something that passes for such an organ, it can’t pass all its bulk through really tight spaces. It can stretch its extremities down pipes though, some no bigger than faucets and to lengths of tens of metres. It killed Miguel whist he brushed his teeth. We know, because we found his bloodied toothbrush and the top of his skull, wedged in the plughole. It had roved from one room to
another using the plumbing.”
The room became more restless. San refreshed what had been said already in order to wrap things up, parcel the awful news. “The Sporo can go wherever water can go. It can elongate to massive strings of elastic. It has a heart, though we are not sure how it manages its other functions. We think we can kill it, but with great difficulty. We are not sure where any more eggs are laid, if there are any, but to be sure, we blocked off all other areas. That’s why you came to us via the service conduit. We are pretty sure there aren’t any in the sleeping quarters, we have searched. Now comes the pressing problem. Water that we drink is all recycled but there is scant food left. Before we closed off the kitchen on level 1 and welded shut the access bulkheads, we brought everything we could carry from there. Food is down to a critical level, even before six new mouths appeared. There are still some supplies upstairs, but there might be Sporo eggs to contend with if we return. We may have to consider it though. The Sporo can think for itself, and remote sensors and screen monitors tell us that it has tried getting into the base through the exhaust ports. They are shut, but we will need to vent off soon because the sorbent canisters have reached a saturated level. The lithium peroxide just can’t absorb much more CO2, never mind the other more poisonous gasses.”
“So, what the hell we gonna do?” asked Pernio twitching her head and pulling a hand down her beaky nose, “I mean, you must have come up with something whilst you been down here for fuck’s sake… surely?”
San bristled. “Well, a solution to all our problems would be to kill the Sporo, but we can only use firepower on the monster if we let it in again. This could lead to catastrophic consequences to ourselves and Blue Base. It is an option, what do you think?” He pointed the finger at Pernio.
Pernio said nothing, and San somewhat appeased said; “We could manufacture a load of sodium hydroxide which is a potent protein decomposer. It would be the ideal weapon to kill the Sporo. It is very water soluble, so would absorb much of the Sporo’s mass and causes sever chemical burning as a bonus.”
There was a period of general conversation. People weren’t convinced. I suppose we all thought it better to burn or blow the sucker away.
San persisted: “Think of salt on a slug. We set a trap for the Sporo and once it’s doused in enough hydroxide, far more powerful than salt, it dies... I’m sure of that. However, that’s the easy bit, getting the raw material to make sodium hydroxide isn’t. We’ve tried already, and it resulted in the horrible death of Dobson and Prendergast. They tried and failed to reach the basic ingredient, salt. A large supply of it lies off to the north and was being used as a catalyst in drilling and fracking for minerals needed for terraforming. They both left the base in full survival suits, but didn’t get ten metres before the wretched monster sensed movement, or noise, or scent, that carries so well in the medium of water. They were swallowed alive and we endured listening to their terrible deaths over the comms as they were digested.
It was probably Dobson or Prendergast who we saw smeared all over the lander’s window.
“Are there any nuts behind the bar?” Jenna asked.
Chapter Fourteen. Suck it Up.
Forget killing the Sporo for now. The majority decided that our immediate objective would be to obtain food. Hot headed as we all were - mostly on account of all the booze we’d consumed - we decided that now was as good a time as any to get some. We were hungry for some fatty rations and were told that all that was left in the make-shift pantry downstairs, were some measly soya dry-packs. These just wouldn’t fit the bill!
It was quickly decided that myself, Bram, Jenna, Neil and Clem would suit up and go after the boxes of provisions that were left in the kitchen on the top floor. There was no stopping us. We were full of shit. Oh, we aren’t going to take any chances, oh no sir. To that end we’d fully dress in the space suits for protection, which none of us had ever worn before. Lilly made a half-hearted attempt to talk us out of such reckless folly, telling us that we needed to be sober first, “…at least less drunk.” We pushed aside her advice. “But what about all the people who have just died? Have you no feelings?”
Well, what about them? I’d seen so much death in my thirty-two years. Lilly was right of course, but for me at least, I needed to do something constructive. I was free for the first time to make my own decisions, bad as they might be. I followed San to a locker where the suits were kept. He, for one, thought it a great idea; he wasn’t coming.
Ridding the bulky outfits of unnecessary internal attachments, such as the urine collection assembly, medi-kit and re-breather carbon dioxide scrubber, (San told me what the box was when he threw it over my shoulder) we were patched into a few layers of body hugging tricot polymer urethane - according to the safety decals. We took a few, drunken tipple-tales out of the legs, scrunched up the joint bellows and then Lilly, on the verge of apoplexy took over. Her demeanour was that of a more-than angry school mistress. “You got to fucking check everything,” she hawked, whilst inspecting the self-sealing seams of our suits, for any obvious leaks. She gave them all a good old yank. Then she moved to the pressure gauges and oxygen hawser, making sure that the individual circulation pumps were operating correctly. At least she was focused, if not joyful. She lowered our visors and then mouthed the word, “Speak.” The suit pressurised as I said “Hello,” and a myriad of green data transfers, scrolled across the visor. I hadn’t a clue what any of it meant; apart from the readouts that said MISSION TIME, OXYGEN LEVEL and TEMPERATURE. A number of ‘Hellos’ from my fellow internees returned my greeting. Speaking directly into a microphone under the chin, once the pressure tight helmet was sealed there was no other way to be heard. This, I realized - even in my drunken state - would make directional finding of persons in distress, very difficult, should any of us find ourselves in a tight spot. It was however, the only way we could talk to each other.
The simple plan was to return to the kitchen where we’d already been. It had been safe, without evidence of any Sporo eggs. Of this we were certain. It was straightforward when accompanied with an over confident brain made brave with liquor. Clem and I would have the flame throwers, Neil would be the door opener. He had been equipped with a portable oxyacetylene welder, to unpick the brazing that had sealed the pressure doors tight shut by the last crew. He would take the middle ground. Bram and Jenna would take the rear, their job - to prevent anything nasty springing down at us from off the rafters as we passed, or from a blind spot unforeseen. I wasn’t counting on myself to do much in the way of meaningful observations, cocooned as I was in this cumbersome apparatus. I hoped the others could see better.
Lilly watched with mounting concern as Neil began his work on the first pressure hull. Pearls of black molten metal skated along the floor at our feet, as the powerful glare of his blow-torch began to unknit the untidy weld. I felt the vibration of the air purifiers step up a gear, cleansing the poisonous vapours as they balled along the ceiling, increasing the workload of the already overwhelmed sorbent canisters San had told us about. We were to leave all the doors open for our retreat and weld them shut, in turn, on our return pass. Main power was down, auxiliary power only, and so it was with the aid of a pneumatic jack that me, Neil and Clem, muscled open the heavy, plate-metal shutters. They opened onto B-DECK, writ large and proud on the opposing wall in a grubby yellow, military font.
Ahead, a grey-blue hue illuminated the passageway to an inadequate shadowy gloom. The smoke from the oxyacetylene followed us. It curled around our backs and as we moved forward, fingered its way into the small nooks and crannies ahead, sniffing out the best places for Sporo eggs to hide. Surfaces looked wet, angles and pipes dripped with condensation. I stood a moment shivering, despite the ambient temperature of the spacesuit; was this my first foreboding? I might have turned and asked the others, is this such a good idea after all, but Clem was already doing her military crab-thing and was quietly moving forward. “Keep a steady pace,” she advised, waving the rest of us onward,
as if we were going on a picnic in the woods with the newly qualified teacher. Her words came across clearly, without echo, devoid of human warmth.
Lilly was our backup and was to study the blueprint of the area we were venturing into, and could, if necessary, direct us on an alternate route; should the need arise. She had a battery uplink, patched into the helmet’s frequencies that worked around the lack of power boost the base normally used. Having never been a soldier, but appointed with the flamethrower - I now considered my property - I advanced as carefully as I could. Pointing the business end forward and swivelling my head in exaggerated sweeps of the area - checking for real and imagined danger - I followed Clem. My peripheral vision was restricted by the curved panels of the helmet that acted like blinkers on a work-horse. The top of my head felt weird and vulnerable to surprise attack.
Neil began work on the second door that would, according to the plan, lead to a stairwell.
Sporo eggs came in batches of five or six we were told, and we knew they could fire up to six metres of elasticated projectiles, the tip of which were covered in spores and barbs to grip onto passing prey. This meant that we were vulnerable whichever side of the corridor we walked upon. The ceiling and the floor, places human beings normally took for granted as being safe, took on a wholly different plane. We walked as if on broken bottles and expected horrible things to descend from above us; like we were walking through a disused barn full of deadly spiders.
Beyond the Rubicon Page 10