Harry stared off into the distance and let his mind work. What effect would they have on life now, if they arrived again? Perhaps another catalyst for the evolutionary process — to both man and beast?
Gigantism, Sarah had said. He mulled the word over as he sifted through the implications. He shook his head to clear away some frightening thoughts.
“Anyway, how’re your tests going? Anything interesting?”
“Well…” She nodded slowly into her microscope eyepiece. “This substance has switched on, become activated, probably because of the higher temperatures in the laboratory.” She looked sideways at him. “In a freezing environment, it’s inactive. In a moderately warm environment like on the mountaintop, it’d start to grow, but primarily stay benign. But here, like in this lab where it’s seventy-two degrees, its metabolism is accelerating.” She looked back down. “It seems highly caustic and looks to be converting organic matter. A little like some sort of digestion process.”
“Caustic — an acid? Is it excreting it?” Harry asked. “You need to—”
“Yes and no, and more like coated in it, now,” she responded. “And yes, Harry, I have checked the data, three times. It’s coated in a substance that’s suspiciously like a digestive enzyme.”
“It’s certainly unique. In the atmospheric sample, I can see spore-like microbes free floating. I would expect that if this embeds in an organism it might influence the DNA.” He turned to her. “Perhaps even making mutagenic changes there.”
Sarah snorted. “More likely just give you a nasty burn.”
Harry sighed. “Jesus Christ, you know what? We shouldn’t be working on this stuff here. It requires much greater scientific scrutiny, better equipment, and a truckload more damned biosecurity.”
“Harry, we work with what we’ve got. That’s what makes us great.” Sarah turned and winked before looking back down into her microscope eyepiece, and moving the sample a little under the lens. She reached up to adjust the scope at her eye a tad.
“Yeah, great.” He was about to turn away when he noticed that she had her visor up again.
He sighed. “Jesus, Sarah, will you at least please put your face mask down?”
She made a guttural sound in her throat. “I can’t see a damn thing. And the vents are working full blast anyway.”
Their benchtops had vents that sucked the air down to the filters, scrubbers and incinerators. Nothing should float free at all. Sarah pointed at them, and then turned, looking angry, and slapped the mask down over her face.
“Thank you.” Harry sighed again, louder and longer this time. He should have refused to work on the samples unless he and Sarah had biosafety level-4 facilities.
He snorted. Like bullshit he’d refuse. If he’d said no, then NASA would have called up that weasel, Bernie Hillstrop, to come in and do the analysis; he was dying to take over Harry’s department. He clicked his tongue. Still, the risk of contamination was extreme.
All biologists and especially astrobiologists knew that human life, in fact all life on Earth, was precariously balanced and therefore fragile. One of the reasons for its survival was a thin skin surrounding the planet — the ozone layer — that acted as a solar blanket, and a shield against anything trying to enter. Only the largest objects could make it through, but were usually then obliterated on impact. But anything else ended up being vaporized before it could touch down on the planet’s surface.
Nothing could get through — Harry straightened — unless you brought it through inside your space shuttle and transported it all the way to the ground.
“Harry, come and give me your opinion here.” Sarah stood beside the microscope, and fiddled with her mask again.
“Something interesting happening with your mold?” he asked.
“Mold? This thing is to mold as a Neanderthal is to modern man.” She pointed a finger at his chest. “You know, that might just be it. If you took some mold and let it evolve for a few million years, you might get something like this.”
“That’s a bit of a stretch,” he said as he leaned over her scope. He placed his eye over it, and adjusted the resolution. Sarah was right; it was damn hard to see while wearing the Plexiglas splatter mask as it distorted the image.
Sarah crouched down next to him. “Rapid cell division, and looks like they’re differentiating.”
“So? We knew it was still viable.”
“Yeah, I know that, but once I added in a simple sugar solution, these cells immediately consumed it — and I mean, quick. I think this stuff will eat anything. But that’s not all; then it started budding — and I mean massive sporogenesis.”
“Damn, wish we had the instruments to weigh the molecular weight of the samples before and after, but…” he shrugged.
“Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, no budget.” Sarah grinned and looked skyward for a moment.
Harry looked back into the lens. “Hmm, you’re right, definitely bigger though.” He watched as the material divided, bubbled and slid, converting the last of the sugars into more of… itself.
“Like a Trojan Horse,” he whispered.
“Huh?” Sarah leaned closer.
“The Orlando… it was like a Trojan horse, bringing this stuff in past our safe walls, our atmospheric shield.” He turned to look at Sarah who had her visor up yet again.
“Sarah, will you please drop that visor. We’re exposing ourselves to enough damn risk as it is.”
“Can’t work with this stupid thing, Harry.” She snapped it down, cursing under her breath, and then folded her arms. “Anyway, if you want my opinion, this mold reminds me a little of a polyphyletic organism.”
“Polyphyletic?” Harry frowned. “You mean like a slime mold?”
“Yeah, sort of, but much more advanced. And those spores that’re free floating in the atmosphere, well, this stuff is saturated with them.” She laid a hand on the base of the microscope. “It’s acting like a cellular entity now, like a protist slime mold. But when I first started to examine it, it was more like a plasmodial slime mold, in that it was enclosed within a single membrane without walls and as one large cell — a super cell.”
“Syncytium.” Harry came closer.
“Yes. Essentially nothing more than a bag of cytoplasm containing thousands of individual nuclei.”
“I saw it; the spores clumped together, and then broke apart — almost at will. But what does that tell us?” Harry asked. “You’re the expert.”
“Well, it tells me it likes the warmth. It triggers its metabolism, switches it on, makes it get hungry, and then it sprays spores and goes looking for food.” She tilted her head. “It decides when it wants to be a single cell, or individual cells — it can coalesce at will.”
“From protist to plasmodia? That’s a neat trick. It decides if it wants to be big or small. Hey, you think it’s doing this consciously?” Harry waved that thought away. “That’s dumb, forget I said that.”
“No, no, not dumb at all,” she said. “But if not consciously, then surely instinctively. After all, ants can operate as individuals, but also form colonies and act as a single hive mind.”
Harry nodded.
“There’s nothing like it, Harry. Nothing.” Sarah had her hands on her hips, and her eyebrows were way up. She grinned. “Understand?”
“What?” He tilted his head.
“There’s nothing like it, on Earth.” She beamed.
He scoffed. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”