We sat and pondered the revelations we had just had, and realized they didn't add up to much. Finally Vladimir spoke up. Trust a half-bunny to come up with the idea where three browns couldn't. just goes to show you that a racial theory is a bunch of waggywoggle.
"Antipersonnel hell," Vladimir said. "They don't need antipersonnel. All they have to do is open a little hole in our suits and let the germs come through."
"Our suits close immediately," Amauri said, but then corrected himself. "I guess it doesn't take long for a virus to get through, does it?"
Harold didn't get it. "Let one of those bunnies try to lay a knife on me, and I'll split him from ass to armpit."
We ignored him.
"What makes you think there are germs in here? Our suits don't measure that," I pointed out.
Vladimir had already thought of that. "Remember what they said. About the Russians getting those little amino-acid monsters in here."
Amauri snorted. "Russians." "Yeah, right," Vladimir said, "but keep the voice down, viado."
Amauri turned red, started to say, "Quem ‚ que c. chama de viado!" --but I pushed the discipliner button. No time for any of that crap.
"Watch your language, Vladimir. We got enough problems."
"Sorry, Amauri, Captain," Vladimir said. "I'm a little wispy, you know?"
"So's everybody."
Vladimir took a breath and went on. "Once those bugs got in here, 004 must have been pretty thoroughly permeable. The, uh, Russians must've kept pumping more variations on the same into Post 004."
"So why aren't they all dead?"
"What I think is that a lot of these people have been killed-- but the survivors are ones whose bodies took readily to those plugs they came up with. The plugs are regular parts of their body chemistry now. They'd have to be, wouldn't they? They told us they were passed on in the DNA transmitted to the next generation."
I got it. So did Amauri, who said, "So they've had seven or eight centuries to select for adaptability."
"Why not?" Vladimir asked. "Didn't you notice? Eleven researchers on developing new weapons. And only two on developing new defenses. They can't be too worried."
Amauri shook his head. "Oh, Mother Earth. Whatever got into you?"
"Just caught a cold," Vladimir said, and then laughed. "A virus. Called humanity."
We sat around looking at the holomap for a while. I found four different routes from where we were to the secret area-- if we wanted to get there. I also found three routes to the exit. I pointed them out to the others.
"Yeah," Harold said. "Trouble is, who knows if those doors really lead into that unknown area? I mean, what the hell, three of the four doors might lead to the broom closets or service station."
A good point.
We just sat there, wondering whether we should head for the Pollywog or try to find out what was in the hidden area, when the Russian attack made up our minds for us. There was a tremendous bang. The floor shook, as if some immense dog had just picked up Post 004 and given it a good shaking. When it stopped the lights flickered and went out.
"Golden opportunity," I said into the monkeymouth. The others agreed. So we flashed on the lights from our suits and pointed them at the door. Harold suddenly felt very important. He went to the door and ran his magic flipper finger all the way around the door. Then he stepped back and flicked a lever on his suit.
"Better turn your backs," he said. "This can flash pretty bright."
Even looking at the back wall the explosion blinded me for a few seconds. The world looked a little green when I turned around. The door was in shreds on the floor, and the doorjamb didn't look too healthy.
"Nice job, Harold," I said.
"Gra€as a deus," he answered, and I had to laugh. Odd how little religious phrases refused to die, even with an irreverent filho de punta like Harold.
Then I remembered that I was in charge of ordergiving. So I gave.
The second door we tried led into the rooms we wanted to see. But just as we got in, the lights came on.
"Damn. They've got the station back in order," Amauri said. But Vladimir just pointed down the corridor.
The pea soup had gotten in. It was oozing sluggishly toward us.
"Whatever the Russians did, it must have opened up a big hole in the station." Vladimir pointed his laser finger at the mess. Even on full power, it only made a little spot steam. The rest just kept coming.
"Anyone for swimming?" I asked. No one was. So I hustled them all into the not- so-hidden room.
There were some little people in there, cowering in the darkness. Harold wrapped them in cocoons and stuck them in a corner. So we had time to look around.
There wasn't that much to see, really. Standard lab equipment, and then thirty- two boxes, about a meter square. They were under sunlamps. We looked inside.
The animals were semisolid looking. I didn't touch one right then, but the sluggish way it sent out pseudopodia, I concluded that the one I was watching, at least, had a rather crusty skin-- with jelly inside. They were all a light brown-- even lighter than Vladimir's skin. But there were little green spots here and there. I wondered if they photosynthesized.
"Look what they're floating in," Amauri said, and I realized that it was pea soup.
"They've developed a giant amoeba that lives on all other microorganisms, I guess," Vladimir said. "Maybe they've trained it to carry bombs. Against the Russians."
At that moment Harold began firing his arsenal, and I noticed that the little people were gathered at the door to the lab looking agitated. A few at the front were looking dead.
Harold probably would have killed all of them, except that we were still standing next to a box with a giant amoeba in it. When he screamed, we looked and saw the creature fastened against his leg. Even as we watched, Harold fell, the bottom half of his leg dropping away as the amoeba continued eating up his thigh.
We watched just long enough for the little people to grab hold of us in sufficient numbers that resistance would have been ridiculous. Besides, we couldn't take our eyes off Harold.
At about the groin, the amoeba stopped eating. It didn't matter. Harold was dead anyway-- we didn't know what disease got him, but as soon as his suit had cracked he started vomiting into his suit. There were pustules all over his face. In short, Vladimir's guess about the virus content of Post 004 had been pretty accurate.
And now the amoeba formed itself into a pentagon. Five very smooth sides, the creature sitting in a clump on the gaping wound that had once been a pelvis. Suddenly, with a brief convulsion, all the sides bisected, forming sharp angles, so that now there were ten sides to the creature. A hairline crack appeared down the middle. And then, like jelly sliced in the middle and finally deciding to split, the two halves slumped away on either side. They quickly formed into two new pentagons, and then they relaxed into pseudopodia again, and continued devouring Harold.
"Well," Amauri said. "They do have an antipersonnel weapon."
When he spoke, the spell of stillness was broken, and the little people had us spread on tables with sharp-pointed objects pointed at us. If any one of those punctured a suit even for a moment, we would be dead. We held very still. Richard Nixon Dixon, the top halibut, interrogated us himself. It all started with a lot of questions about the Russians, when we had visited them, why we had decided to serve them instead of the Americans, etc. We kept insisting that they were full of crap.
But when they threatened to open a window into Vladimir's suit, I decided enough was enough.