“What do we do with this new colony?” Jodge asked.

  “Leave it be and watch it for a bit,” Davide said. “Two things could happen; it could either fall apart and rejoin the collective above as before, or it could start to diversify and grow appendages, maybe some of those long tendrils.”

  Jodge sat in the sub and watched for the next twenty minutes but the colony showed no sign of being anything other than an inert sphere.

  “Okay, I’ve seen enough,” Anna said in his ear. “Come on home. We’ve got a lot of data to process.”

  Jodge piloted the sub back to the tube and started up. He had one last look back; the new colony still hadn’t shown any signs of movement.

  CHAPTER 5

  "I’d call that a success,” Anna said as they watched the sub come up the tube.

  Davide was barely listening. His gaze had been caught by something in the flask in the Refractive Spectrometer. The Opa in there had clumped together tightly in a small, pea-sized ball.

  “Did anyone see them doing this?” he asked. N’tini and Anna both shook their heads. Everybody had been busy watching the feeds Jodge sent up from the deep.

  “And it wasn’t the A.I., for she was busy with the sub,” Davide said. “Do you see what this means? They’re clumped together in the same way as that new colony below. They never saw the light show, never got the command…but they’ve obeyed it anyway.”

  “What does that tell us?” Anna asked.

  “It tells us that we’re still very much in the dark when it comes to understanding the Opas. There’s something else going on here that we haven’t gotten to the bottom of yet.”

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” N’tini said. “They could be responding to any manner of things; magnetic fields from the core below, or even from Jupiter, or even some kind of biorhythm associated with the Europa day. There are too many variables to keep track of.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences when it comes to Biology,” Davide said.

  “On this mission we can’t afford to believe in any coincidences at all. Stay on it,” Anna said. “You and N’tini work at it for now. The A.I. might have something for us once she’s processed all the data from the dive.”

  “Estimated time to completion, five hours and thirty five minutes,” the A.I. said.

  “Gives you time to catch a nap if need be,” Anna said. “Don’t overdo things. We’re not in a rush here. We knew this might be a long haul right from the start.”

  Davide merely nodded in reply. His mind was racing, trying to process everything he’d seen, all that had happened. He only looked away from the flask when N’tini took his hand again.

  “Anna’s right. I know it’s all new and spectacularly interesting and you want to know all about it, right now. I do too. But as Anna said, it’s not a race. Let the A.I. do the donkey work; it’s what she’s here for.”

  “I heard that,” the A.I. said.

  b

  Davide allowed N’tini to lead him away to the coffee machine.

  “Did you see the size of that thing down there?” he asked as they sipped the black brew.

  N’tini nodded.

  “I wonder what it was trawling for with the tendrils?”

  “Maybe just nutrients in the water, or maybe something we haven’t seen yet.”

  “Or maybe they cannibalize other Opas.”

  “I refuse to believe the ecosystem is that closed,” Davide said. “There’s more to it; I feel it in my gut.”

  Before they got any further into speculation the A.I. spoke up.

  “There’s something new happening in the flask.”

  On their return to the lab Davide saw that the Opa had morphed into a new configuration. It was now a tiny replica of the jellyfish-like things they’d encountered on Jorge’s dives. It also appeared to have almost doubled in size.

  “The cells have differentiated and multiplied with no apparent external stimulus,’ the A.I. said. “I am finding it perplexing.”

  “You and me both,” Davide muttered.

  He replayed the holovid recording of the latest dive, marveling again at the complexity of behavior achieved by what was essentially a clump of unicellular flagellates. He had one eye on the holoscreen and one eye on the results shown on the meters, but saw nothing to give him a clue to solve his problem. The Opas were certainly responding to light and rhythm, but the ones in the flask here were also responding to something else, something that didn’t show up on any of their sensors.

  “There’s something we’re missing,” he said.

  “Isn’t there always?” N’tini replied with a smile. “Maybe the A.I. will be able to tell us once she’s processed the data.”

  The A.I. let out a loud, very donkey-like bray, and Davide couldn’t help but laugh.

  Davide switched off the light sources that were aimed at the flask. Previously this had always led to the cells becoming detached from each other, the single organisms floating away to do their own thing again. This time it didn’t happen. They remained clumped in the jellyfish formation, and it was looking even larger now, almost the size of his hand.

  “It’s growing fast,” N’tini said.

  “We’d best cut its food supply. We don’t know how these things react to an overdose of nutrients.”

  He switched off the feed of sugars. The colony hung in the flask, a bluish aurora clearly visible in the now dim light. Then, as if it had been prodded, the jellyfish configuration suddenly contracted to a tight ball.

  “I’d call that a reaction,” the A.I. said.

  At the same moment a scream of pain echoed through the complex.

  CHAPTER 6

  They’d managed to get a few hours sleep, although Mark had tossed and turned in bed and when Rohit put a hand on his shoulder to calm him he found that his partner was clammy, and at the same time was sweating profusely.

  Mark rolled away from his touch and made two attempts at getting out of bed before he got his legs steady.

  “Are you okay?” Rohit asked.

  “I feel like hammered shit. I think I’ve caught a bug,” Mark said.

  Getting any sort of bug was a rarity on a mission such as this, as all participants had a full course of shots and boosters at every stage of the process; and Anna, the boss, made sure the regime was strictly followed. On top of that they were supposed to be living in as sterile an environment as could be achieved. There shouldn’t be any bugs around for them to catch.

  Rohit was immediately concerned.

  “We need to get you to the medical room, have the bio-scanner look you over.”

  “Don’t be an old mother hen. I’ll be fine. It’s just a cold or something,” Mark said. “Let’s see how I feel after breakfast.”

  Rohit surreptitiously watched Mark as he dressed; it seemed to be a much slower process than usual, and Mark almost toppled over while trying to get his leg into his trousers. He managed to walk okay to the mess room though, and asked Rohit to order up eggs, ham, hash browns and coffee, so at least he still had an appetite.

  Rohit left Mark sitting at a table while he went to call up breakfast. By the time he returned Mark was slumped in his chair. His skin had a gray, greasy look to it that Rohit didn’t like the look of, and his eyes were bloodshot and rheumy. He wiped thin green snot from his nose with a napkin, looked at it in disgust and tossed it in the waste bin.

  “That’s it,” Rohit said. “Get some food inside you, then we’re getting you to the scanner.”

  Mark must have been feeling worse, for he didn’t argue. He hardly ate a bite but managed to get two large cups of coffee inside him.

  “I’m feeling better now,” he said. He went to push up out of his chair, then screamed, the surprise jolting Rohit so much that he poured hot coffee all down his shirt. Mark’s hands went to his head, agony showing in his eyes.

  “Dear God, Mark, what’s the matter?” Rohit asked.

  Mark sat down hard in his chair. His eyes cleared, his muscles relaxed slightly. Whatever had just gripped him had just as quickly passed. But it had not gone unnoticed. The rest of the crew arrived in the mess room at a run.

  “What happened?” Anna asked.

  Rohit shook his head, having no answer to give her, and Mark was as yet unable to speak.

  “Something in his head? I don’t know,” Rohit said. “He was complaining about having caught a bug.”

  “Help him to the scanner,” Anna said. “He looks like death, warmed-over.”

  Mark did indeed look pale, and somehow thinner, as if weight had dropped off him during the night. Rohit’s worries only increased when he tried to get Mark out of the chair and found him to be an uncooperative dead weight. Mark’s eyes rolled up in their sockets.

  “He’s passed out,” Rohit said. “I need a hand here.”

  Jodge got under one shoulder, Rohit under the other and they carried Mark through to the small medical facility. They laid him on the table and stood back as the scanner hovered overhead, passing the length of the man’s body, twice, its soft hum the only sound in the room as the crew looked on.

  “Unknown infection detected,” the A.I. said a few seconds later.

  “What do you mean, unknown?” Anna replied.

  “Precisely that. It is not any pathogen with which I am familiar, and my database is extensive.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “His blood stream is now five percent infected.”

  “Do his symptoms match anything in the database?”

  “It is similar to an eradicated Earth disease known as the Ebola virus, but has many wide and varied differences.”

  “Can you show us the infection?”

  A holovid display came on above Mark’s chest. The camera zoomed in, and in again, until they were looking at a close-up inside one of the man’s blood vessels. Davide gasped as the view came into focus. The cells swimming in the bloodstream were immediately recognizable.

  “That’s no pathogen. That’s the bloody Opas. They’ve gotten inside him.”

  Rohit went to step forward to Mark, but Anna held him back.

  “No. Decontamination, now, for all of us. Mark stays here, but this room is now off-limits. Anything that needs to be done for him, the A.I. will handle it.”

  Anna frog-marched them all out of the room. The door slid shut behind them and a red warning light flashed above it; Rohit knew that the door would now stay locked until Anna ordered otherwise. Even then he tried to hang back, straining to look, needing to see that Mark was okay. Jodge took him by the arm.

  “The A.I. will see to him,” Jodge said. “But Anna’s right. We need to make sure it hasn’t spread. Come on.”

  b

  Decontamination took the best part of half an hour, what with the UV session, the chemical washes and the pills to be swallowed. All of their clothing went into the flash incinerator, along with all of their body hair and the top layer of their skin cells. They all emerged, abraded, shaved and bald, feeling red raw and uncomfortable in the new clothes that felt too rough against their skin.

  “We need to go over all the holos since Jodge’s first dive,” Anna said when they were done, addressing the A.I. “Let’s see if we can pinpoint where he got infected. There may be more of it loose in the domes. We need to find it and eradicate it if that’s the case. This is Priority One.”

  “Already on it, boss,” the A.I. replied. “But I need you in the medical area; there’s something you need to see.”

  Rohit left the contamination room at a run.

  He was first to arrive at the medical area but could not enter; the red light was still flashing above the door. He saw through the window that Mark was still lying on the table, still unconscious, although by the slow rise and fall of his chest when he breathed he might well be asleep.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, almost shouting. “Tell me!”

  Anna arrived at his back and put a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze before addressing the A.I.

  “We’re here. What have you got for us?”

  “This,” the A.I. replied, and dimmed the lights.

  A faint blue and green dancing aurora hung around Mark’s body.

  b

  “We’ve got to get it out of him,” Rohit said, “before it kills him.”

  The A.I. replied.

  “I have him on a full spectrum of antibiotics,” she said, “And the U.V. is as high as possible without harming him unduly. His immune system is fighting it, I can see that on the scanner. We must give things time.”

  “When will we know?”

  “In two or three hours the outcome will be clearer.”

  “Outcome?” Rohit said. “You mean, whether he’ll live or die?”

  “If you wish to put it that way, yes.”

  Rohit slumped against the window, slapping his left palm against the glass, willing Mark to wake up and see him. The man on the table didn’t move.

  The blue-green aurora danced.

  It looked like it was getting stronger.

  CHAPTER 7

  The A.I. found it before any of the rest of them did. Anna called for a meeting in the lab; Jodge had to almost bodily drag Rohit away from the medical room door to get him to attend, but finally they were all gathered around the main holo. They watched from the camera position in the Drill Dome roof as Rohit rubbed a green speck from his goggles onto his sleeve, then later unwittingly transferred it to the back of Mark’s head.

  “I did it? It’s my fault?” Rohit slumped, almost fell before Jodge caught him and tumbled him into a chair.

  “No time for recriminations,” Anna said. “Where’s that jacket now?”

  “Hanging up in my locker in the Drill Dome, I expect, where I left it.”

  Anna turned to Jodge.

  “Go check it out. Find the jacket, and incinerate it.”

  Jodge gave her a mock salute and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Rohit said, “I’ll come too. This is my mess, I’ll clean it up.”

  They left the other three still watching the holo.

  b

  As they went through the corridor between the domes Jodge was surprised to see that the other man was crying. He stopped and put a hand on Rohit’s shoulder.

  “Hey, the A.I.’s got it in hand. He’s going to pull through.”

  “I wish I could believe that,” Rohit said. “If he dies, and it was my fault…”

  “There’s no fault here. It was an accident.”

  “No accident. It was me. I got sloppy.”

  “...which is my definition of an accident,” Jodge interrupted. “None of us knew that the Opa could even survive out of the water. How could we? Besides, we all knew the risks when we came, Mark included.”

  “Me included too,” Rohit replied with a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That doesn’t make it any easier. What am I going to say to him?”

  “Let’s just get rid of the mess first and get you back to him. You can decide what you talk about when the time comes. But you’ll be the first thing he wants to see when he’s awake, I know that for a fact.”

  “I hope so.” Rohit said glumly, and didn’t speak again until they reached the lockers. Jodge saw Rohit reach for the handle to his locker. He put out a hand to stop him.

  “Don’t touch anything. Not until we know it’s safe.”

  He went to the tool chest and retrieved a long handled wrench which he used to turn the handle. The door swung open.

  A dancing blue green aurora spilled out.

  Jodge used the wrench to push the door shut again.

  “You getting this, Anna?” he said in the com.

  “Watching you now,” she said.

  “What do I do? Do I get a sample?”

  “No, you burn the boogers out. Right away, before it gets a chance to spread.”

  “I hear you loud and clear.”

  He turned to Rohit.

  “I’ll fetch a blowtorch, you stand behind me with an extinguisher,” he said. “You heard the boss. We need to burn this out, and we need to do it right now.”

  He found what he wanted sitting on a trestle near the equipment rack. The blowtorch was only a small handheld model used during engineering maintenance work, but it would have to do…he didn’t want to waste anymore time searching for something better. He arrived back at the lockers at the same time as Rohit. The other man carried one of the small fire extinguishers.

  Jodge spoke to the A.I.

  “Turn off the alarm and the sprinklers unless I say otherwise,” he said. “I’m going to start a fire, not cause an emergency.”

  “Message received and understood. I’ve got an eye on you,” the A.I. said.

  “That makes me feel much better,” Jodge replied. He never knew whether the A.I. understood sarcasm or not, but he liked to test it out every so often. She didn’t rise to the bait.

  He turned back to Rohit.

  “Watch my back. And make sure we get it all before you even think about putting the fire out. I don’t want to do this twice.”

  “I’ve got personal stuff in there,” Rohit said. “Recordings, some holo-discs…”

  “Sorry, pal. Say good-bye to history,” Jodge said.

  He gingerly opened the locker door with his wrench, then flicked on the blowtorch to full flame.

  The blue aurora filled the air, almost obscuring the inside of the locker. All Jodge saw was a mass of green, slimy tendrils, thrashing like snakes where the light got to them. He put his hand in as close as he dared and waved the flame over the tendrils. They went up with a whoosh, as if they’d had accelerant added to them, the sudden blast of heat forcing Jodge to step back. It was just as well he’d recently been shaved, for he would certainly have lost his eyebrows otherwise.

  Rohit went to step forward with the extinguisher as flames lapped around the door of the locker. Jodge held him back. There were still tendrils thrashing around in there, although the dancing aurora was gone. He saw clothes hanging in the depths of the locker. He waited until they too were burning fiercely before he allowed Rohit to step forward.

  Rohit washed the extinguisher over the flames. By the time he was done there was nothing remaining inside the locker but a wet, gloopy mass of ash. Jodge fetched a bucket, scooped it up, and consigned it to the incinerator chute.

 

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