“Why not?” She grabbed his arm. “Life from space; this could be it.” She grinned. “Here’s NASA’s damned stardust, Doctor Harry H. McManus.”
He laughed. “Well, let’s hope not, or they might…” his face dropped, and he stared.
“What?” She frowned back at him.
There was a speck in the white of one of Sarah’s eyes. He frowned and craned his neck forward to see a little better through their visor shields.
“What?” She took a step back.
Harry peered at her. “Did you touch the slide and then your microscope lens?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.” Her brows snapped together. “What the fuck, Harry?”
“When your visor was up, did you… did you let the lens touch your face?”
“I don’t…” She raised a gloved hand, the fingers hovering inches from her cheek. She looked like she desperately wanted to touch it. Her head whipped from one side to the other, perhaps searching for something reflective to look into.
“Hold still.” Harry raced to the benchtop and got a swab; a long, thin stick with cotton fibers wound around one end.
She flipped up her splatter mask. “Is there something there? Is it on me? Please tell me it’s not on me.”
Harry saw panic on her face, and he grabbed her arm.
“It’s corrosive, but…” Sarah tugged back. “We don’t know what it can do to mammalian tissue. We don’t know what it can do! Get it off me.”
Harry grabbed her again. “Just hold still.” He held up the swab, preparing to wipe away the biological speck. Sarah’s eyes widened in fright. “Hooold it right there.” He eased the swab toward the speck.
It moved.
Harry jerked back, and immediately regretted it. Sarah gulped air in horror, like a drowning swimmer going down for the last time. Harry also felt a bolt of fear run through his gut. The thing had moved away from the swab, he was sure of it.
Behind his visor it was becoming stifling. He tried to blink away the rivulets of sweat running down his face.
“Sorry, Sarah, ah, missed it. Stay still.”
His hand shook when he reached out again. But this time when he neared it, the tiny speck of matter darted away across her eyeball. He jabbed at it but missed, and the blob vanished into the corner of Sarah’s eye.
“Fuck!”
Sarah’s expression turned to outright terror and she backed up, her hands up and fingers curled into claws. “What, Harry?”
“I, I missed it.” He swallowed in a dry throat and his mind felt like it was short-circuiting from fear.
“You missed it — twice? What the fuck does that mean?” She tore off her visor and flung it across the room and then spun back. “How did you miss it? How?” She suddenly jerked a hand up toward her face, and he grabbed it holding it away. Her arm was trembling. Or was that his?
“Sarah, please, just hold still, dammit, and sit down.” He pushed her back into a seat, and ripped his own visor off, dropping it; to hell with his own safety.
He searched for the tripod magnifying glass, grabbed it and stood it on the desk next to her. He switched on its ring of halogen lights and angled it toward her.
“Open your eyes wide, and look to your right.” Sarah shivered and the color had drained from her face, but to her credit, she kept still and did as he asked.
Harry looked deep into the outer corner of her eye. The orb itself looked normal, if not a little red from a spray of fine spidery veins. He was sure his own eye looked the same — lack of sleep, too much coffee, and eyestrain from staring down too many microscope lenses.
“Eeeasy, just hold it there.” He tried to keep his voice soothing, as she had gripped his wrists, tight.
“Look away.” The pupil stayed where it was. “Sarah, look away please.” He insisted.
“I am.”
Harry frowned, pulling back a moment, and noticing that her other orb had shifted the pupil away into the corner as he instructed. But the one he was examining stayed fixed — on him.
“Are you sure y—”
The errant pupil finally slid away from him — but in the opposite direction of its twin.
He frowned. “Uh, are you doing that?”
“Doing what?” Her grip on his wrist got tighter. “What are you talking about?” She pushed at him. “Hand me a mirror… or the specimen tray.”
Harry glanced at the silver tray. “Not yet.” He hung onto her. “Keep looking away.”
Sarah’s eye turned to fix on him, but only the one he was examining.
“It stings, Harry.” She whimpered, and a tear ran down her cheek. “And I’m getting a headache.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just going to rinse it out.” Harry felt a hard knot tighten in his stomach. The eye was a gateway to the human body, and a direct path to the brain.
Harry lifted a small vial of sterile saline solution, and let some drip into the eye. The fluid didn’t stay on the eye’s surface, but seemed to be immediately absorbed.
This stuff will eat anything, Sarah had said.
He put a few more drops in, then a lot more. It all just seemed to drain inwards.
Then, to his horror the pupil just melted away to leave a totally white orb. Then the entire eye shriveled like a deflating balloon, and then collapsed back into an empty socket.
Gas escaped from the gaping hole — horrifyingly, he smelled it through his bio-filter — methane, CO2, nitrogen, just like from the Orlando sample. He wasn’t wearing his visor and he quickly held his breath, and went to pull back, but Sarah’s hand on his arm tightened.
Her mouth dropped open. “Gah.”
“Let go, Sarah,” He let the empty water vial fall to the floor, and used his spare hand to try and dislodge her fingers. “Please — let go — now.”
“Gah, gah.” Her mouth swung wider as it worked, as if she was suddenly unable to speak the language.
“Gah, ga-aaah.”
Her other eye shrunk into the socket.
“Oh god, Sarah.” Harry’s head whipped around to the phone on the wall. He needed help — he snatched at her hand that was pressing so hard on his forearm now that his fingers were beginning to throb.
“Gaaa-aaaaaaaaaaa…”
Harry felt his colleague begin to vibrate, and there came a small moan, but it was his own voice. He gave up trying to dislodge her hand and instead used his greater mass to drag himself and her with him toward the phone on the wall.
Sarah came slowly, but she was strangely heavy. Not fighting against him, but more a dead weight, like he was dragging a sack of wet sand.
“Help!” His yell did little but echo in the sealed laboratory. Harry continued to drag at Sarah, and the pain in his forearm was so acute now, that his hand was swelling and his fingers wouldn’t bend anymore. It felt as if someone had looped steel cables around his arm and yanked it tight.
He looked down at her upturned face; the empty sockets were dark moist holes, and her mouth hung slack. However, her jaws still worked as though she was desperately trying to speak.
“Ga-aaaaaaacgghhhkkk.”
Her gag became a wet, ragged sound, and then insanely he saw within her open mouth that her tongue had crumpled back into her throat. Her head looked tiny, as the collar on her suit swamped her.
Harry felt sanity leaving him. “Heeeeeelp!” He screamed even harder and yanked at her, pulling furiously.