“Infestation?” Chuck Havers’s voice broke in incredulous anger.
“What else to call it?” Phas Radamanth remarked in his dogmatic fashion. “What we need to know is how often it occurs? Every hundred and fifty years? That patterning was planet-wide, wasn’t it, Carol?” She nodded. “And how long does it last once it occurs?
“Last?” Chuck demanded, appalled.
“We’ll get the answers,” Paul Benden said firmly.
* * * * *
The colony’s two psychologists flew in late that evening when the infirmary was still crowded with the injured and shocked, and set to work immediately to help reduce traumas. Cherry Duff had suffered a stroke at the news, but was recovering splendidly. Joel and his wife were both prostrated by the loss of their sons. Bernard Hegelman had submerged his own grief to comfort his shattered wife and the other families bereft by loss.
Sean and Sorka had tirelessly sledded in the wounded they located. Even those uninjured were dazed, some weeping uncontrollably until sedated, others pathetically quiet. Porrig Connell had sent his eldest daughter and his wife to help cope with the survivors, while he stayed with his extended family in the cave.
“The first time Porrig Connell ever did anything for anyone else,” his son remarked under his breath to Sorka, who berated him for such cynicism. “He wants to use Cricket to service the rest of his mares when they foal. He expects me to give up my stallion because he hadn’t trained his!”
Sorka wisely said nothing.
With one exception, the distant holdings had contacted Landing, offering either assistance or sympathy. The one exception was the Big Island mining camp, comprised of Avril Bitra, Stev Kimmer, Nabhi Nabol, and a few others. Ongola, running over the log, noticed their absence.
Kenjo, appearing like magic from his distant Honshu plateau, headed the aerial survey. By nightfall, he and his team produced accurate maps and pics of the extent of the terrible “Threadfall,” as it soon came to be called. The original complement of biologists reconvened at Landing to ascertain the nature of the beast. Kitti Ping and Wind Blossom lent their special skills to analyze the life-forms as soon as samples were brought in.
Unfortunately too many, acquired at considerable danger to the volunteers, were found apparently moribund in the metal or heavy plastic containers in which they had been contained. Seemingly, after about twenty minutes, all the frenetic activity, the replications of the original strand several thousand times into big wriggling “sausages,” ceased. The form unraveled, blackened, and turned into an utterly lifeless, sticky, tarry mess, within a tougher shell.
The captain of the Mayflower, which had been trawling at the ragged northern edge of the Fall, inadvertently discovered a segment of thread in a pail of fish bait, slapped on a tight lid, and reported the find to Landing. He was told to keep it alive, if possible, by judicious feeding until it could be flown to Landing.
By then, the Thread had to be housed in the biggest heavygauge plastic barrel on board the Mayflower. Ongola transported the tightly sealed barrel, using a long steel cable attached to the big engineering sled. Only when the crew saw the sled disappearing in the distance would they come on deck. The captain was later astonished to learn that his act was considered one of extreme bravery.
By the time the pulsing life-form reached Landing, it coiled, a gross meter long and perhaps ten centimeters in circumference, resembling a heavy hawser. Double-thick slabs of transparent silicon-based building plastic, tightly banded with metal strips, were rigged into a cage, its base quikplased to the floor. Several thin slits with locking flaps were created. A hole the size of the barrel opening was incised in the top, the barrel lid readied, and with the help of grimly anxious volunteers the terrible creature was transferred from barrel to cage. The top opening was sealed as soon as the life-form was dropped into the plastic cube.
One of the men scrambled for a corner to be sick in. Others averted their faces. Only Tarvi and Mar Dook seemed unmoved by the creature’s writhing as it engulfed the food that had been placed in the cube.
In its urgency to ingest, the thing rippled in waves of gray, greasy colors: sickly greens, dull pink tones, and an occasional streak of yellow flowed across its surface, the image sickeningly distorted by the thick clear plastic. The outer covering of the beast seemed to thicken. The thick shell probably formed at its demise, the observers guessed, for such remains had been found in rocky places where the organism had starved. The interior of the beast evidently deteriorated as rapidly as it had initially expanded. Was it really alive? Or was it some malevolent chemical entity feeding on life? Certainly its appetite was voracious, although the very act of eating seemed to interfere with whatever physical organization the beast had, as if what it consumed hastened its destruction.
“Its rate of growth is remarkable,” Bay said in a very calm voice, for which Pol later praised her, saying that it had provided an example for the others, all stunned by the sight of that gross menace. “One expects such expansion under the microscope but not in the macrocosm. Where can it have come from? Outer space?”
Blank silence met her astonishing query, and those in the room exchanged glances, partly of surprise, partly of embarrassment at Bay’s suggestion.
“Do we have any data on the periodicity of comets in this system?” Mar Dook asked hopefully. “That eccentric body? Something brought in from our Oort cloud? Then there’s the Hoyle-Wickraman-singh theory, which has never been totally discredited, citing the possibility of viruses.”
“That’s one helluva virus, Mar,” Bill Duff said skeptically. “And didn’t someone on Ceti III confound that old theory?”
“Considering it drops from the skies,” Jim Tillek said, “why couldn’t it have a space origin? I’m not the only one who’s noticed that red morning star in the east getting brighter these past weeks. A bit of coincidence, isn’t it, that the planet with the crazy orbit is coming right into the inner planets, right at the same time this stuff hits us? Could that be the source? Is there any data in the library on that planet? On this sort of thing?”
“I’ll ask Cherry. No,” Bill Duff corrected himself before anyone could remind him that the redoubtable magistrate was indisposed. “I’ll access the information myself and bring back hardcopy to study.” He hurried from the room as if glad to have a valid excuse to leave.
“I’ll get a sample from that section pressing against the lower slot,” Kwan Marceau said, gathering up the necessary implements in the rush of someone who dared not consider overlong what he was about to do.
“A record’s being kept of the . . . intake?” Bay asked. She could not quite say “food,” remembering what the creatures had already consumed since they had fallen on Pern.
“Now, to judge the frequency of . . . intake” – Pol seized gratefully on that euphemism – ”sufficient to keep the . . . organism alive.”
“And to see how it dies,” Kitti added in a voice so bland that it rang with satisfaction.
“And why all its ilk died in this first infestation,” Phas Radamanth added, pulling the EEC pics out of the welter of hardcopy in front of him.