Judas priest! Was ever a man in such an ugh situation?
Langnes peered at the sheaf of papers in his hand. «I have drafted a report of our findings with regard to the, ah, space barnacles,» he said. «I would like you gentlemen to criticize it as I read aloud. We have now accounted for the vanishing of the previous ships—»
Helledahl mopped his brow. Tiny beads of sweat broke loose and glittered in the air. «That doesn’t do much good if we also vanish,» he pointed out.
«Quite,» Langnes looked irritated. «Believe me, I am more than willing to turn home at once. But that is impracticable, as Professor Winge has shown and the unfortunate Chinese example has confirmed.»
«I say it’s just as impracticable to follow the original orbit,» declared Bull.
«I understand you don’t like it here,» said Winge, «but really, courting an almost certain death in order to escape two more years of boredom seems a trifle extreme.»
«The boredom will be all the worse, now that we don’t have anything to work toward,» said Bull.
The captain’s monocle glared at him. «Ahem!» said Langnes. «If you gentlemen are quite through, may I have the floor?»
«Sure,» said Bull. «Or the wall or the ceiling, if you prefer. Makes no difference here.»
«I’ll skip the preamble of the report and start with our conclusions. ‘Winge believes the barnacles originated as a possibly mutant life form on the ancient planet before it was destroyed. The slower breakup of the resulting super-asteroidal masses gave this life time to adapt to spatial conditions. The organism itself is not truly protoplasmic. Instead of water, which would either boil or freeze in vacuo at this distance from the sun, the essential liquid is some heavy substance we have not been able to identify except as an aromatic compound.’»
«Aromatic is too polite,» said Bull, wrinkling his nose.
The air purifiers had still not gotten all the chemical stench out.
Langnes proceeded unrelenting: «‘The basic chemistry does remain that of carbon, of proteins, albeit with an extensive use of complex silicon compounds. We theorize the life cycle as follows. The adult form ejects spores which drift freely through space. Doubtless most are lost, but such wastefulness is characteristic of nature on Earth, too. When a spore does chance on a meteorite or an asteroid it can use, it develops rapidly. It requires silicon and carbon, plus traces of other elements; hence it must normally flourish only on stony meteorites, which are, however, the most abundant sort. Since the barnacle’s powerful, pseudo-enzymatic digestive processes—deriving their ultimate energy from sunlight—also extract metals where these exist, it must eliminate same, which it does by laying down a plating, molecule by molecule, under its shell. Research into the details of this process should interest both biologists and metallurgists.
«‘The shell serves a double function. To some extent, it protects against ionizing radiation of solar or cosmic origin. Also, being a nonconductor, it can hold a biologically generated static charge, which will cause nearby dust to drift down upon it. Though this is a slow method of getting the extra nourishment, the barnacle is exceedingly long-lived, and can adjust its own metabolic and reproductive rates to the exigencies of the situation. Since the charge is not very great, and he himself is encased in metal, a spaceman notices no direct consequences.
«‘One may well ask why this life form has never been observed before. First, it is doubtless confined to the Asteroid Belt, the density of matter being too low elsewhere. We have established that it is poisoned by water and free oxygen, so no spores could survive on any planet man has yet visited, even if they did drift there. Second, if a meteorite covered with such barnacles does strike an atmosphere, the surface vaporization as it falls will destroy all evidence. Third, even if barnacle-crusted meteorites have been seen from spaceships, they look superficially like any other stony objects. No one has captured them for closer examination.’»
He paused to drink water from a squeeze bottle. «Hear, hear,» murmured Bull, pretending the captain stood behind a lectern.
«That’s why the unmanned probe ships never were found,» said Helledahl. «They may well have been seen, more or less on their predicted orbits, but they weren’t recognized.»
Langnes nodded. «Of course. That comes next in the report. Then I go on to say: ‘The reason that radio transmission ceased in the first place is equally obvious. Silicon components are built into the boom, as part of a transistor system. The barnacles ate them.
«‘The observed increase in internal irradiation is due to the plating of heavy metals laid down by the barnacles. First, the static charges and the ferromagnetic atoms interfere with the powerful external magnetic fields which are generated to divert ions from the ship. Second, primary cosmic rays coming through that same plating produce showers of secondary particles.
«‘Some question may be raised as to the explosive growth rate of barnacles on our hull, even after all the silicon available in our external apparatus had been consumed. The answer involves consideration of vectors. The ordinary member of the Asteroid Belt, be it large or small, travels in an orbit roughly parallel to the orbits of all other members. There are close approaches and occasional collisions, but on the whole, the particles are thinly scattered by Terrestrial standards, isolated from each other. Our ship, however, is slanting across those same orbits, thus exposing itself to a veritable rain of bodies, ranging in size from microscopic to sand granular. Even a single spore, coming in contact with our hull, could multiply indefinitely.’»
«That means we’re picking up mass all the time,» groaned Bull. «Which means we’ll accelerate slower and get home even later than I’d feared.»
«Do you think we’ll get home at all?» fretted Helledahl. «We can expect the interference with our radiation shield, and the accumulation of heavy atoms, to get worse all the time. Nobody will ever be able to cross the Belt!»
«Oh, yes, they will,» said Captain Langnes. «Ships must simply be redesigned. The magnetic screens must be differently heterodyned, to compensate. The radio booms must be enclosed in protective material. Or perhaps—»
«I know,» said Bull in great weariness. «Perhaps antifouling paint can be developed. Or spaceships can be careened, God help us. Oh, yes. All I care about is how we personally get home. I can’t modify our own magnetic generators. I haven’t the parts or the tools, even if I knew precisely how. We’ll spin on and on, the radiation worse every hour, till—»
«Be quiet!» snapped Langnes.
«The Chinese turned around, and look what happened to them,» underlined Winge. «We must try something different, however hopeless it too may look.»
Bull braced his heavy shoulders. «See here, Torvald,» he growled, «what makes you so sure the Chinese did head back under power?»
«Because they were never seen again. If they had been on the predicted orbit, or even on a completed free-fall ellipse, one of the ships watching for them in the neighborhood of Earth would have—Oh.»
«Yes,» said Bull through his teeth. «Would have seen them? How do you know they weren’t seen? I think they were. I think they plugged blindly on as they’d been ordered to, and the radiation suddenly started increasing on a steep curve—as you’d expect, when a critical point of fouling up was passed. I think they died, and came back like comets, sealed into spaceships so crusted they looked like ordinary meteorites!»
The silence thundered.
«So we may as well turn back,» said Bull at last. «If we don’t make it, our death’ll be a quicker and cleaner one than those poor devils had.»
Again the quietude. Until Captain Langnes shook his head. «No. I’m sorry, gentlemen. But we go on.»