“What form of life have they?” asked Fleming.
“They’re a very simple piece of protoplasm, with a nucleus. What do you want—feelers and heads?”
She took the syringe, squeezed a drop of fluid out on to a slide and clipped the slide on the viewing plate.
“How do they behave?”
“They move about for a bit, then they die. That’s the trouble. We probably haven’t found the right nutrients yet.”
She put her eye to the microscope and focused up. As she moved the slide under the lens they could see individual cells forming—pale discs with a darker centre—and swimming about in the screen for a few seconds. They stopped moving and were obviously dead by the time Dawnay changed to a higher magnification. She pulled the slide out.
“Let’s try the other batch.” She looked round at them with a tired smile. “This is liable to go on all night.”
Soon after midnight Bridger was seen leaving his chalet. The cliff patrol watched him go down the path to the jetty. They did not challenge him, but telephoned through to the guard-room from an old gun emplacement at the top of the path. Quadring and Judy had joined them by the time Bridger pushed out from the jetty. His outboard motor sneezed twice, then spluttered steadily away across the water. There was some moonlight, and they could see the boat moving out over the bay.
“Aren’t you going to follow him?” asked Judy.
“No. He’ll be back.” Quadring called softly to the sentries. “Stay up top and keep out of sight. It may be a long time.”
Judy looked out to sea, where the little boat was losing itself among the waves.
The moon went long before dawn, and although they were wearing greatcoats they were bitterly cold.
“Why doesn’t he come back?” she asked Quadring.
“Doesn’t want to navigate in the dark.”
“If he knows we’re here...”
“Why should he? He’s only waiting for a spot of daylight.”
At four o’clock the sentries changed. It was still dark. At five the first pearl-pale greyness began to appear in the sky. The night duty cook clanked round with containers of tea. He left one in the guardroom, another at the main gate, another at the computer building.
Dawnay pushed her glasses up on to her forehead and drank noisily.
“Why don’t you pack it in, Madeleine?” Reinhart yawned.
“I will soon.” She pushed another slide under the lens. There was a tray half-full of used slides on the table beside her, and Fleming sat perched on the corner, disapproving but intrigued.
“Wait.” She moved the slide a fraction. “There’s one!”
On the display tube a cell could be seen forming.
“He’s doing better than most,” said Reinhart.
“He’s getting pretty big.” Dawnay switched the magnification. “Look—it’s beginning to divide!”
The cell elongated into two lobes which stretched and broke apart, and then each lobe broke again into new cells.
“It’s reproducing!” Dawnay leant back and watched the screen. Her face was puckered with fatigue and happiness. “We’ve made life. We’ve actually made a reproductive cell. Look—there it goes again... How about that, Dr. Fleming?”
Fleming was standing up and watching the screen intently.
“How are you going to stop it?”
“I’m not going to stop it. I want to see what it does.”
“It’s developing into quite a coherent structure.” Reinhart observed.
Fleming clenched his fists upon the table. “Kill it.”
“What?” Dawnay looked at him in mild surprise.
“Kill it while you can.”
“It’s perfectly well under control.”
“Is it? Look at the way it’s growing.” Fleming pointed at the rapidly doubling mass of cells on the screen.
“That’s all right. You could grow an amoeba the size of the earth in a week if you could feed it fast enough.”
“This isn’t an amoeba.”
“It’s remarkably like one.”
“Kill it!” Fleming looked round at their anxious unyielding faces, and then back at the screen. He picked up the heavy container in which the tea had been brought and smashed it down on the viewing plate of the miscroscope. A clatter of metal and glass rang through the hushed room. The viewing panel went dead.
“You young fool!” Dawnay almost cried.
“John—what are you doing?” Reinhart moved forward to stop him, but too late. Fleming pulled the splintered remains of the slide out of the microscope, threw them to the floor and ground his heel into them.
“You’re mad! All mad! All blind raving mad!” he shouted at them, and ran to the door.
He ran out through the computer room, along the entrance corridor and on to the porch. There he stood for a minute, panting, while the cold air hit him in the face. To come into the open at the pale beginning of day, after a night in the concentration of Dawnay’s room, was like waking from a nightmare. He took several gulps of air and strode off across the grass to the headland, trying to clear his brain and his lungs.
In the distance, he could hear an outboard motor.
He changed direction and walked furiously towards the spot where the path from the jetty reached the top of the cliff. The sound of the boat came steadily nearer in the growing light, drawing him like a magnet; but at the cliff-top he stumbled upon Quadring, Judy and two soldiers who were lying in wait on the grass. He drew up short.
“What the devil’s going on?” He gazed at them wildly and uncomprehendingly.
Quadring stood up, binoculars swinging from his chest.
“Get back. Get away from here.”
The motor had stopped. The boat was gliding into the quay below them. Judy started to scramble to her feet, but Quadring motioned her down.
“Go away John, please!” she said in an agonised voice.
“Go away? Go away? What the hell’s everyone up to?”
“Be quiet,” ordered Quadring. “And keep back from the edge.”
“We’re waiting for Dennis Bridger,” Judy said.
“For Dennis?” He was in a state of shock and only took in slowly what was happening.
“I’d push off,” Quadring advised him. “Unless you want to witness his arrest.”
“His arrest?” Fleming pivoted slowly from Quadring back to Judy as the meaning dawned on him.
“You are all mad!”
“Keep back and keep quiet,” said Quadring.
Fleming moved towards the edge of the cliff, but on a nod from Quadring the two soldiers took an elbow each and pulled him back. He stood pinioned between them, frustrated and desperate. Cold sweat trickled down his face, and all he could see was Judy.
“Are you in on this?”
“You know what we found.” She avoided his eyes.
“Are you?”
“Yes,” she said, and walked away to stand beside Quadring.
They let Bridger get right to the top of the path, lugging the heavy canister from the cave. As his head came up over the edge, Fleming shouted to him:
“Dennis!”
One of the soldiers clamped his hand over Fleming’s mouth, but by that time Bridger had seen them. Before Quadring could get on to him, he dropped the canister and ran.
He ran fast for a man in sea-boots, along the path at the edge of the cliff. Quadring and the soldiers pounded after him. Fleming ran after them, and Judy after him. It was like a stag-hunt in the cold, early light. They could not see where Bridger was going. He got to the end of the headland, and then turned and slipped. His wet rubber boots flailed at the grass at the edge, and then he was over. Five seconds later, he was a broken body on the rocks at the sea’s edge.
Fleming joined the soldiers on the cliff-top, looking down. As Judy came up to him he turned away without speaking and walked slowly back towards the camp. He still had a splinter of glass from the microscope in his finger. Stopping for a moment, he pulled it out, and then walked on.