Among them, there are two who are closest to being right, the Pragmatic Woman and the Cold Scientist. You can see this, right?
It is astonishing how badly they both miss the big picture, and this is why it’s sad, really, that this species ever developed space flight at all.
Still, it’s the Captain’s conscience that makes the decision. He says that he believes that if this organism is as dangerous as it professes to be, it’s their duty to preserve it, so it can be investigated by authorities a lot smarter than anybody in this room. (This is a rather low bar, all told, but honestly, he is trying to do the right thing, so let’s cut him some slack.)
Everybody talks over each other for a moment.
The Cold Scientist says, “That’s insane. To even think of bringing that thing into Earth’s biosphere…”
“I’m not,” the Captain says. “We’re stopping at the System Biological Hazard Laboratory, the one that’s in orbit around Pluto. We’ll send a dispatch up ahead so they know we’re coming. Once we’re there we’ll get Hennessy quarantined, undergo stringent examinations and decontamination ourselves, and make absolutely sure that the ship is scrubbed before we head the rest of the way home. If we’re lucky, they’ll be able to cure him. If we’re not, we’ll give the mission payment to his next of kin. But until then, we’ll do everything we can to make sure he’s secured and comfortable. Is that clear?”
And once again everybody talks over one another, all with their own pressing reasons why this a terrible idea, but sooner or later the Captain cuts them off and reminds them that this is not a democracy: a truism meant to establish that he’s in charge but really means that if he’s making the worst possible decision, as he is, then they’re stuck with it unless they want to kill him.
The reason you don’t really need this part of the story is that it amounts to ultimately doing nothing, even as the thing that used to be Hennessy becomes more and more unrecognizable in its chair.
Really: human beings are adorable.
You are a human being who has encountered this story in various forms, any number of other times, and you’re still not getting it.
Perhaps it might help if we reference a related story type: the zombie plague.
In the incarnation we cite, one of many posited, a pathogen spread exclusively by biting escapes an isolated laboratory in the countryside. Somebody is infected, visibly deteriorates, becomes a lurching carnivorous zombie of either the rabid-but-living or the reanimated-corpse variety, and with no will other than that dictated by the virus starts biting others, who contract the same syndrome and commence spreading it themselves, at a terrifying geometric rate. You could predict the further course of the story in your sleep. In short order, it goes worldwide.
Our question is: if these are the conditions, why exactly does it go worldwide?
That it will go wide, that it will take uncounted lives and wreak almost unimaginable terror before any possibility of containing it, is a given. After all, the deadliest thing about these fast-moving plagues is that they pop up by surprise and spread like wildfire before their vectors are isolated. By the time people realize that they shouldn’t consume any pastry baked by Mary Mallon, it’s too late. But zombies? Those creatures with clouded eyes and blue complexions who stagger about with the gait of people who have forgotten how to use their knees, and are easy to peg as infected even at a distance, well, even in this theoretical model where you can be generous and posit that their spread is not noticed by the authorities until there are millions of them—even in this case, how exactly do they go worldwide? They are all walking billboards for their condition, and they become that way shortly after the point of initial exposure. Even before they start eating people, even before they cross the line between people who are still clinging to the behavior of the uninfected and those who will happily chow down on the slowest members of the pack, they don’t look at all well; they look like what they are, which is sweaty, pale, and dying. Any well-armed perimeter with checkpoints will see them coming at a distance. They won’t suddenly turn up on the far side of the planet because it takes longer to get to the other side of the planet than it does for the disease to incubate.
You want to design a zombie plague that will wipe out all of humanity? Posit multiple methods of exposure. Not just the traditional bite: also, let’s say, sexual contact, blood transfusions, exposure to contaminated surfaces, and airborne pathogens that can be spread at workplaces, social gatherings, schools, and in enclosed environments like pressurized airplane cabins. Let’s say that you can infect everybody in a room by not covering your mouth when you sneeze. Let’s say that you can do this while you still look and act perfectly fine. And finally, let’s say that the disease lingers in your body for months before activating to the point where you transform and start biting people, months that you have spent spreading the plague to second and third generation carriers, who have themselves spread the plague to second and third generation carriers, all of whom will also prepare their food, kiss their children, and travel obliviously through crowds.
By the time hundreds of millions start biting people, it’s everywhere.
That’s how you start a zombie plague that can’t be contained.
Make sure it’s already done its damage before you even realize it’s there.
A successful virus allows time for its own spread.
So this is the point the Captain doesn’t get, that it is far more unbelievable to note that the Cold Scientist doesn’t get. Take another look at Hennessy, who was showing symptoms within the very first few hours of exposure on an alien planet, even before his subsequent return to a spaceship that would take weeks or months to return to civilization depending on the physics you model. Within twenty-four hours, his personality was gone, and he was staggering around the ship’s corridors killing people. Within forty-eight hours, he was strapped to a chair, viscous and repellent and oozing, openly telling his erstwhile companions that he was the avatar of an intelligent alien pathogen that had wiped out any number of sentient races and intended on going after human civilization next.
The question you need to ask is whether this is any way for a self-respecting malignant alien parasite to behave.
Why would it do this?
I ask you this question, those few of you who may have been smart enough to realize that it’s that very infection talking: What advantage did evolution find in arranging for me to act that way?
Here’s another part of the story you don’t need to see, even if it is the part of the story that you may enjoy.
The sound of tremendous destruction lures the various members of the crew back to the isolation chamber, where the increasingly powerful thing that used to be Hennessy has burst free of its shackles. It is now nine feet tall, disfigured past all past definitions of revolting, and glistening. It makes various raaar-noises as it pounds on the door. The Hot Girl screams at the sight of him, the Cold Scientist utters some comments to the effect that this is fascinating, and the Pragmatic Woman shouts at the Captain that this would be a fine time to eject the module. The Captain, not being entirely stupid even if the events up to this point establish that it is certainly within his Venn Diagram, agrees and slams his fist on the big red button, the one that’s sitting right there on the console for that precise purpose. A calm female voice commences announcing that the Ejection Program is inoperable for some reason. The Psychotic Type opines that he’s done with this bullshit, and that he’s going to smear that motherfucker over all four walls. To this end he breaks some safety glass and pulls out an impressive-looking projectile weapon that is, for some reason, stored right there. He gives the thing a cha-chunk to establish that it’s loaded and orders the Hot Girl to open the door. The Captain shouts at her to Belay That Order, and there’s some back-and-forth screaming over who’s in charge and who should be in charge that prevents immediate action until the Hennessy-thing starts pounding on the walls with a raw strength that makes its imminent breach of the rest of the habitat an absolute, imminent inevitability. The Forgettable Guy tries to grab the weapon from the Psychotic Type and is blown away, in a convulsive and instinctive burst that the Psychotic Type didn’t fire intentionally, which is not a great consolation to the Hot Girl, who starts screaming her head off. The Captain grabs a heavy tool that happens to be on hand and splits the Psychotic Type’s skull for him. The bulkhead between all these observers and the isolation chamber is now only seconds from breaching. The Pragmatic Woman manages to get her hands on the projectile weapon, superfluously cocks it a second time—because, in such stories, that gesture does not fulfill an actual mechanical purpose, but instead just communicates resolve as danger approaches—and aims it at the imminent breach in the bulkhead. The instant the crack appears and widens enough for a revolting moist tentacle to intrude, she starts firing.