Beside him, Ari was sitting on the floor with one hand on his knee. The man called Ettore stood across from them, pensive as always, and next to him, the last prisoner, Thomas Frece. Doctor Kriege was not there. It seemed the führer of their little ensemble, like the grand Führer himself, was a late sleeper.
“So we abandon the radiation theory,” Dominik said.
Ari shook his head. “We may have to. I've never seen anything like it.”
“I believe Mister Kaminski is correct. It's the melanin,” Ettore offered. “That would explain the color, in any case. Did you take a look at my temperature measurements?”
Frece took an aggressive step forward. “Excuse me, are you a biologist? Because you're starting to sound like one. There's only one biologist here, and he's not doing a damned thing.”
In fact, Dominik had done plenty. He'd even started keeping a journal at Kriege's request, an old red notebook cataloging their theories and experiences. Arguing wouldn't get him anywhere with Frece though, and he kept silent.
“My measurements indicate that the temperature inside the terrarium increased dramatically after exposure, and the increase was proportionate to the amount of radiation we pumped in,” Ettore said placidly. He indicated a series of charts. “See for yourself.”
The proof was there, and like it or not, Frece was going to have to come around to it. Because the fungus — what Gideon Grey called The Carrion and what the current troupe could only think of as the growths—wouldn't die. When cut, they healed. When chopped into parts, they grew like earthworms. When starved of food and air, they simply waited. Most recently, Frece had tried hitting it with gamma rays, alpha radiation, and exposed it directly to plutonium 239 bombarded with neutrons. Even that had no effect. The growths burned at high temperatures, but a solution like that wouldn't serve The Reich. They wanted something to control it. That was their goal, the four of them: control that which could not be controlled.
Ari sighed. “It's converting all types of ionizing radiation to heat. That's what you're saying, isn't it?”
“It's doing more than that,” Ettore said. “It's growing. Its mass and girth will increase proportional to the amount of gamma rays we pump in. In fact, there doesn't seem to be an upper limit. It's quite extraordinary.”
“Yeah,” Frece said. “Just great.”
“Again, we're back to the melanin. That was your theory, Dominik, and you believe it's true?”
Dominik looked up and saw that they were all watching him. “We've known about certain types of extremophile fungi for a little while: organisms that thrive in extreme temperatures or in extremely low PHP values. We've theorized that some could exist under the effects of ionizing radiation. I've never encountered any myself, though,” he added quickly.
“But it's not mysterious. The conversion of gamma rays to heat energy is chemical?” Ettore said, leading him.
“Oh yes. I'm quite certain it's due to the high concentration of melanin. We know that it can buffer some of the effects of ionizing radiation in mammals. In this case, the organism has a more efficient means of not only absorbing it, but converting it directly into energy.”
“And by 'not mysterious,' you mean it's a perfectly ordinary alien species that just happens to eat gamma rays for lunch?” Frece added. “Christ, Ettore, you're just as weird as those things are.”
The man regarded him down the hook of his brown nose. “Well, we don't know its origins, do we? That certainly isn't part of our job. As for my oddities, I think you should know I have more melanin in my skin than you do.”
Dominik and Ari chuckled, though Frece didn't. The man was a nuclear physicist, one of the only published researchers of his kind. The Reich had plucked him all of the way from Sweden. If he proved useless in their little endeavor, however, his blond hair and blue eyes would not save him. The thought was sobering, and as soon as it entered his head, Dominik stopped laughing.
As a collective, they stood up and went to the glass case where their latest specimen was waiting. It was twice the size since Dominik had seen it last, folded around itself within the air-tight cage.
“It looks like it's going to break through if we don't find it a bigger home,” Ari said.
Ettore's look of curiosity returned. “We'll have to do a vacuum transfer to one of the larger cages and release the air through the vents before we burn it. The air inside this one is toxic now.”
“More of the same?” Dominik asked.
The other man nodded. “Spore count is up with the growth, as is the concentration of carbon monoxide. I found something else in my last effusiometer test as welclass="underline" traces of arsine gas.”
Dominik grunted, running through his mental encyclopedia of knowledge. When everyone looked at him again, he realized he was mumbling to himself. “Sorry. There are certain types of black molds that do that.”
“Black molds?” Ari asked.
“That's right, some species of the Stachybotrys genus. It's why fungi growing in old houses smell particularly bad. It's the arsine. It's poisonous in high concentrations but just unpleasant in trace amounts. Those fungi, though… well, they're not anything like our boy, here.”
“You stick your head in there, I'd say you'd get more than something unpleasant,” Ari murmured.
The lights flickered, and they all looked up. The door to the room opened, and Doctor Kriege stepped through. It had been weeks, and Dominik still didn't know the man's first name. He knew him well enough to ascertain that Kriege wasn't a bad man, his first encounter was enough to show him that. But he followed the rules like everyone above, and that made him untrustworthy. He followed all the rules, that was, save for rules of punctuality. “Damnable electricity. The flickering keeps me awake at night. But yes, I think Mister Quintus is quite right. Our little pets are very dangerous, are they not? The spores are quite infectious. I will not be surprised if Captain Smit is not the last accident to occur during our development.” He said this casually, as if the man's life had meant nothing. “The question is, why?”
“Why what?” Ari asked.
“Why spores, Mister Quintus! They are not used for reproduction. They are instead unleashing a kind of parasite, are they not?”
The remark caused Dominik to look up. A similar thought had crossed his mind in the preceding week, but it had seemed too far-fetched. “It's a defense mechanism,” he said.
Ettore cocked his head. “If so, the particulars seem rather evolved.”
That was perhaps the greatest understatement Dominik had heard since his arrival.
“So what we're looking at,” Kriege said, “is a creature that borrows particulars from others in the same phylum. And all of these things — the ability to spread rapidly, to convert ionizing radiation into energy, the ability to produce harmful spores — all of these things are suited to protecting itself and spreading as quickly as possible. Yes?”
Another silence followed, and Dominik realized the man was right. These things, these growths… they were a survival machine, more suited to snub any threat, physical or environmental, than the cockroach.
“So, our solution will likely be chemical and not physical. Isn't that right, Mister Frece?” Kriege asked.
The Swede nodded, and Dominik could read the look in his eyes. Great. Perfect. Just tell me I'm useless.