"We'd better get into the computer," said Joe.
The computer was a shambles.
Not obviously. I don't mean to say it was like a beam of wood that had been riddled by termites.
In fact, if you looked at the computer casually, you might swear it was intact.
Look closely, though, and some of the chips would be gone. The more closely you looked, the more you realized were gone. Worse, the stores that Computer-Two used in self-repair had dwindled to almost nothing. We kept looking and would discover something else missing.
Joe took the cylinder out of his pouch again and turned it end for end. He said, "I suspect it's after high-grade silicon in particular. I can't say for sure, of course, but my guess is that the sides are mostly aluminum and the flat end is mostly silicon."
I said, "Do you mean the thing is a solar battery?"
"Part of it is. That's how it gets it energy in space; energy to get to Computer-Two, energy to eat a hole into it, energy to-to-I don't know how else to put it. Energy to stay alive." "You call it alive?"
"Why not? Look, Computer-Two can repair itself. It can reject faulty bits of equipment and replace it with working ones, but it needs a supply of spares to work with. Given enough spares of all kinds, it could build a Computer just like itself, when properly programmed-but it needs the supply, so we don't think of it as alive. This object that entered Computer-Two is apparently collecting its own supplies. That's suspiciously lifelike."
"What you're saying," I said, "is that we have here a micro-computer advanced enough to be considered alive."
"I don't honestly know what I'm saying."
"Who on Earth could make such a thing?"
"Who on Earth?"
I made the next discovery. It looked like a stubby pen drifting through the air. I just caught it out of the corner of my eye and it registered as a pen.
In zero-gravity, things will drift out of pockets and float off. There's no way of keeping anything in place unless it is physically confined. You expect pens and coins and anything else that finds an opening to drift wherever the air currents and inertia lead it.
So my mind registered "Pen" and I groped for it absently and, of course, my fingers didn't close on it. Just reaching for something sets up an air current that pushes it away. You have to reach over and sneak behind it with one hand, and then reach for it with the other. Picking up any small object in mid-air is a two-hand operation.
I turned to look at the object and pay a little more attention to retrieval, then realized that my pen was safely in its pouch. I felt for it and it was there.
"Did you lose a pen, Joe?" I called out.
"I don't smoke. You know that."
A stupid answer. "Anything?" I said in exasperation.
"Look, Joe. Over there. Over there.''
He lunged for it. I could have told him it would do no good.
By now, though, our poking around in the computer seemed to have stirred things up. We were seeing them wherever we looked. They were floating in the air-currents.
I stopped one at last. Or, rather, it stopped itself for it was on the elbow of Joe's suit. I snatched it off and shouted. Joe jumped in terror and nearly knocked it out of my hand.
I said, "Look!"
There was a shiny circle on Joe's suit, where I had taken the thing off. It had begun to eat its way through.
"Give it to me," said Joe. He took it gingerly and put it against the wall to hold it steady. Then he shelled it, gently lifting the paper-thin metal.
There was something inside that looked like a line of cigarette ash. It caught the light and glinted, though, like lightly woven metal.
There was a moistness about it, too. It wriggled slowly, one end seeming to seek blindly.
The end made contact with the wall and stuck. Joe's finger pushed it away. It seemed to require a small effort to do so. Joe rubbed his finger and thumb and said, "Feels oily."
The metal worm-I don't know what else to call itseemed limp now after Joe had touched it. It didn't move again.
I was twisting and turning, trying to look at myself.
"Joe," I said, "for Heaven's sake, have I got one of them on me anywhere?"
"I don't see one," he said.
"Well, look at me. You've got to watch me, Joe, and I'll watch you. If our suits are wrecked we might not be able to get back to the ship."
Joe said, "Keep moving, then."
It was a grisly feeling, being surrounded by things hungry to dissolve your suit wherever they could touch it. When any showed up, we tried to catch them and stay out of their way at the same time, which made things almost impossible. A rather long one drifted close to my leg and I kicked at it, which was stupid, for if I had hit it, it might have stuck. As it was, the air-current I set up brought it against the wall, where it stayed.
Joe reached hastily for it-too hastily. The rest of his body rebounded as he somersaulted, one booted foot struck the wall near the cylinder lightly. When he finally righted himself, it was still there. "I didn't smash it, did 1?"
"No, you didn't," I said. "You missed it by a decimeter. It won't get away."
I had a hand on either side of it. It was twice as long as the other cylinder had been. In fact, it was like two cylinders stuck together longways, with a construction at the point of joining.
"Act of reproducing," said Joe as he peeled away the metal. This time what was inside was a line of dust. Two lines. One on either side of the constriction.
"It doesn't take much to kill them," said Joe. He relaxed visiby. "I think we're safe."
"They do seem alive," I said reluctantly.
"I think they seem more than that. They're viruses-or the equivalent."