“We didn’t see any danger.” Anna was gradually getting control of herself, and her grip on my arm had loosened. “When we first came through the lock there were maybe half a dozen of those fuzzballs in sight. McAndrew said we ought to get a specimen before we left, because they were a more complex life-form than any that Lanhoff had reported. And then they started to arrive in millions, from all directions. Our suits were covered before we could get away — we didn’t have a chance.”
“But what are they — and what were they doing?” I said.
We had reached the top of the tunnel and entered the cargo sphere. There was no sign of Will Bayes — it occurred to me that I hadn’t sent him a single signal of any kind since I left. He must be frantic. I hit the switch that would fill the chamber with air. For some reason I was keener to get out of that suit than I had ever been.
McAndrew placed his container on the floor and we all began to work our way free, starting with the helmets.
“What were they doing? Now that’s a good question,” he said. “While we were stuck in the middle of them down there, I had time to give it some thought.”
Well, that sounded right. When McAndrew stops thinking, he’ll be dead.
“Lanhoff and I made a big goof,” he went on, “and for him it was a fatal one. We both argued that the food supply here was so plentiful that there’d be no pressure to evolve. But we forgot a basic fact. An organism needs more than food to survive.”
“What else? You mean moisture?” I had my suit off, and air had never tasted so good.
“Moisture, sure. But as well as that it needs warmth. Here on Manna, the evolutionary pressure is to get near a heat source. If you’re out too far from the center, you become part of the frozen outer layer. Those snowballs normally live down near the middle, getting as close as they can to the radioactive fragments that provide the warmth.”
Anna was out of her suit. Now that we were safe, she was making a tremendous effort to gain her self-possession, Her shivering had stopped and she was even patting at her damp and tangled hair. She peered curiously down at the container of feathered snowballs. They were still moving slowly around in the yellow liquid.
“The radioactivity must speed up their rate of evolution, too,” she said. “And I was thinking they wanted to eat us.”
“I doubt that we’re very appetizing, compared with their free soup,” said McAndrew. “No, if there hadn’t been so many of them they’d have been harmless enough. But when we came along, they sensed the heat given off by our suits, and they tried to cuddle up to us. They didn’t want to eat us, all they were after was a place by the fireside.”
Anna nodded. “This is going to create a sensation when we get back to Earth. We’ll have to take a lot of specimens back with us.”
She was reaching down towards the open container. One of the snowballs had fully opened and was a delicate white mass of feathery cilia. She put out her forefinger as though she intended to touch it.
“Don’t do that!” I shouted.
Maybe she was not even considering any such thing, but my loud command made her stiffen. She looked up at me angrily.
“You saved us, Captain Roker, and I appreciate that. But don’t forget who is in charge of this expedition. And don’t try to order me around — ever.”
“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “I wasn’t ordering you around — I was speaking for your own good. Don’t you have any idea what might be dangerous?”
My own tone must have betrayed my impatience and anger. Anna stiffened, and her color went from white to red.
“McAndrew has pointed out that these lifeforms would have been quite harmless if there had not been so many of them,” she said. And then she reached forward into the container and deliberately touched the expanded snowball with her forefinger. She looked up at me. “Satisfied? They’re perfectly harmless.”
Then she screamed. The ball was clinging to her finger as she withdrew it, and the cilia had enveloped it as far as the second joint.
“It won’t come off!” She began shaking her hand desperately. “It hurts.”
I swung my helmet hard at her finger, and the edge caught the ball near its middle. It was jarred loose and flew across the chamber. Anna stood and looked ruefully at her hand. The finger was reddened and swollen.
“Damnation. It stings like hell.” She turned accusingly to McAndrew and held forward her injured hand. “You fool. You told me they’re harmless, and now look at my finger. This is your fault.”
We all stared at her hand. The swelling on her forefinger seemed to be getting bigger and redder.
McAndrew had been standing there with a startled and perplexed expression on his face. Before I could stop him he picked up the laser that I had laid on the floor, aimed it at Anna, and pressed the switch. There was a crackle from the wall behind Anna, and the smoke of burned tissue. Her arm had been neatly severed above the elbow, and the wound cauterized with a single sweep of the instrument.
Anna looked at the stump with bulging eyes, groaned, and started to fall sideways to the floor.
“Mac!” I grabbed for the laser. “What the hell are you doing?”
His face was pale. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get her to the robodoc. This isn’t too serious — she’ll have to wait to regenerate it until we get home and find a biofeedback machine, but we can’t help that.”
“But why did you do it?”
“I made one bad mistake, back there outside the air lock,” We were hurrying back through the ship, supporting Anna between us.
“I don’t want to make another one,” he went on. “Lanhoff’s notes on the single-celled organisms inside Manna pointed out that they didn’t have a sexual method of reproduction, but they have something that resembles the plasmids down on Earth — they swap sections of DNA with each other, to get the mixing of offspring characteristics. I wondered about that when I read it, because it suggests a mechanism for speeding up an evolutionary process. But I skipped on past it, because I was so sure there would be no evolutionary pressures at work inside Manna.”
We were almost at the Control Section of Star Harvester. Unless Will had gone mad and flown off in the transfer pod, we were only twenty minutes away from the Hoatzin’s robodoc. Anna was coming out of her faint, and groaning a little.
“Mac, I still don’t see it. Why does the evolution method of the creatures inside Manna mean you had to burn off Anna’s arm?”
“If they do swap tissue regularly, their immune reaction systems have to recognize and tolerate the exchange. But we’re not made like that — Anna’s immune reaction system might mop up the materials that the snowball transferred to her bloodstream, but more likely the stuff would have killed her. I daren’t take the chance.”
We had come to the hatch that led to the transfer pod. Will Bayes stood there. For a fraction of a second he looked relieved, then he took in the whole scene. We were all pale and panting. I was dragging Anna along while she lay in a near-faint with only a stump of a right arm; and McAndrew, wild-eyed and lunatic, was bounding along behind us, still brandishing the laser.
Will backed away in horror, his hands held in front of him. “Come on, man, don’t just stand there,” said McAndrew. “Get out of the way. We’ve got to get Anna over to our ship and let the doc have a go at her. The sooner the better.”
Will took a hesitant step to one side. “She’s not dead, then?”
“Of course she’s not dead — she’ll be good as new once she’s been through a regeneration treatment. We’ll have to keep her sedated for the trip back, but she’ll be all right.”
I went to the controls of the pod, ready to take us back to the Hoatzin. It hadn’t occurred to me that Anna would be quieted down now for the return trip, but I wouldn’t be the one to complain.