Tut paused… maybe trying to think of what came after quintillions. Then he just shook his head. "Var-Lann had never seen this new microorganism before. Nothing even close. It certainly didn’t match native Mutan life. This bug was one hundred percent alien."
Festina winced. "Why am I not surprised?"
"On this planet?" Tut said. "Of course, it’s no surprise. The Fuentes and Greenstriders had colonies here. They tracked in microbes from their homeworlds — maybe from other worlds too. By now, Muta’s biosphere has lots of bugs that aren’t native. It wouldn’t even be surprising if a bug became superaggressive. Organisms outside their native environment can develop all kinds of fluky behavior."
"Really?"
Tut gave Festina a look. "I specialized in micro, Auntie. Bugs released on other planets usually just die because they can’t find the right food or living conditions. Once in a while, though, they multiply like a son of a bitch — either because they have no natural enemies or because they’re just stronger and meaner than anything on the new world. Sometimes you get a die-off and a bloom. The bugs dwindle down near the point of extinction and limp along for years… then suddenly, pow! Some tiny mutation lets them adapt to their new world, and they grow like gangbusters." Tut shrugged. "Var-Lann knew all this. That’s why he didn’t issue a red alert the second he noticed the weird microbial buildup: what he was seeing might just be natural behavior.
"But," Tut continued, "Var-Lann realized these new germs might also be Muta’s Big Bad Nasty Horror — the thing that wiped out the Greenstriders. He decided to be supercautious: he equipped himself with a hot-button gadget that would let him send a trans-galactic Mayday within a heartbeat."
I looked down to where the man had been lying. No sign of any Mayday device. It must have self-destructed with everything else. Still, it didn’t surprise me that Team Esteem had a few hair-trigger Maydays among their supplies… nor was I surprised that Var-Lann had only donned one when he thought he might be facing special danger. Years ago, our own fleet tried giving every Explorer an Instant Mayday signal. The experiment failed from too many false alarms. It was just too easy to hit the button by accident… but if you made the signal more difficult to trigger, the person in trouble was often killed or incapacitated before the button got pushed. Eventually the navy decided that hair-trigger Maydays were only appropriate to carry for short periods of time, and then only when an obvious, imminent danger threatened not just you but others as well. That way, even if you died a split second after pressing the button, your warning might save your companions.
Obviously, the Unity had come to the same conclusion as the Technocracy navy. Which is why Var-Lann didn’t normally wear a Mayday but decided it was appropriate on this occasion.
I wondered how long the device had lasted before it got EMP’d.
"So Var-Lann strapped the Mayday gadget to his wrist," Tut continued, "then went back to studying the new microbe. Worked on it all night long, till one of his teammates dragged him off to breakfast. He ate as fast as possible so he could get back to the lab. He was just heading back again when the first spasm hit him."
"Ah." Festina only said the one word. Maybe she didn’t even say it aloud — maybe I only perceived it through my sixth sense — but I could tell this was what she’d been waiting for. The moment when things went wrong.
"Yeah," Tut said. "Var-Lann had a major seizure. Like his whole body exploding. It happened so fast, he didn’t even push the Mayday button. It must have bumped on something when he fell… or when he went into convulsions half a second later. All the time he was shaking, Var-Lann said he could hear the device’s audio feedback: a loud, piercing screech, wailing away.
"He wasn’t sure how long the seizure lasted — probably no more than ten seconds. By the time he stopped shaking, his teammates were crowded around him. Var-Lann had crashed just a few steps outside the mess hall, so the rest of the team jumped up from the table and came running. The camp’s doctor began examining Var-Lann with everybody else there watching… and suddenly, they all turned into smoke."
"Var-Lann saw that?" Festina asked.
"With his own two eyes. His teammates vaporized simultaneously. Poof, up in smoke."
"Outside the mess hall?"
Tut nodded. "Their bodies just vanished. Clothes and implants self-destructed a few seconds later. Good thing the camp has gravel on the ground, or the implants might have started a fire."
"The gravel wouldn’t show much sign of fire," Festina murmured. "That’s why we didn’t notice any evidence of burning. And the wind blew away any ash." She looked at Tut. "What happened next?"
"Var-Lann said the smoke from each team member swirled in place for a few seconds, then they all joined into a single cloud. The cloud closed tight around him… which is when his Mayday stopped screeching."
"The cloud EMP’d it," I said.
"Seems so," Tut agreed. "Var-Lann didn’t know about the EMP, but he knew the Mayday had sounded long enough to be heard all the way back to the Unity homeworld. A rescue team would be on the way, and it was Var-Lann’s job to live long enough to report what happened. Normally, he’d just upload his report via brain-link to the team’s computers… but the link had stopped working."
"The cloud EMP’d the brain-link too," I said.
"Right. So Var-Lann realized he had to deliver his report in person. That meant he had to survive — hours or even days — and his best option was sealing himself in stasis. Otherwise, he knew damned well he’d become smoke himself. He could feel it coming on. Stasis was the only way to stave off the transformation."
"Good thinking on his part," Festina said. "You have to admire a man who did what he had to do."
"It wasn’t easy," Tut told her. "Var-Lann got dropped by a few more seizures on his way to the storage building. And the EMP cloud stayed right on him — like it was trying to hold him back or fog him in so completely he’d lose his way. But he kept going till he reached the storage building’s stasis generators and sealed himself in. By then, he was crumbling apart. He’d have turned to smoke like the others if not for his boosted immune system."
Festina looked pensive. "Var-Lann believed those microbes he’d seen were responsible for the transformation?"
"Absolutely. He’d had all night to study them, and…" Tut broke off. "You know how a virus reproduces?"
"The virus invades a cell," I said. "It hijacks the cell’s protein-making facilities and creates copies of itself. Sometimes hundreds of copies, built with stolen materials from the cell. Once the cell is full of new viruses, its outer membrane ruptures, and the viruses scurry off to do the same thing in other cells."
Tut nodded. "That’s the idea. Regular cells become Trojan horses, chock to the brim with freshly manufactured viruses. That’s what Var-Lann saw: normal cells filled with alien stuff."
"When you say ‘normal cells,’ what do you mean?" Festina asked. "Normal Mutan bacteria?"
"Normal Fuentes bacteria. Team Esteem had found lots of Fuentes bugs in Drill-Press: microbes that weren’t native to Muta, growing undisturbed since the Fuentes left. The new bacteria that Var-Lann found had similar DNA, the same sort of outer membrane, plenty of structures in common. However, Var-Lann’s bugs also had stuff that normal Fuentes germs didn’t have: human chromosomes floating inside."
"Human chromosomes?" Festina and I spoke in unison disbelief.
"Yes. Var-Lann’s version of human — Homo unitatis. The Unity’s twenty-four chromosomes rather than our twenty-three."
I said, "Let me get this straight. Var-Lann’s working in his lab. Suddenly, he’s surrounded by new bacteria he’s never seen before. The bacteria look like Fuentes microbes, but they’ve got Unity chromosomes inside?"