The Red Stuff

CHAPTER III

On the 10th of February of the current year, a little over a month of the finding of the message-globe, the Anna­belle, a service and research ship out of Gilling­ton, Mars, made rendez­vous with the Space-Control's vessel, Circe, dispatched from Mexico, Earth, by way of Clarke Station.

The Annabelle pulled into the appointed area situated within the Asteroid Belt in the sector of Pomona Negra to find the Circe already arrived and lying idle at orbit speed as she waited. Even as his braking tubes went into action Captain Richard Bentley of the Annabelle made personal radio report to his opposite number in the other ship, and announced him­self.

“Oh, it's you, Dick, is it?” responded the Circe's Captain, with a tinge of relief evi­dent in his tone. “They didn't tell me who'd be in your ship. Glad you're here. I'd a nasty feel­ing it might be one of those trip-round-the-Moon mer­chants —you never can tell with Head Office. I think the best thing would be for you to come over and have a chat once you're up to us. Suit you?”

Bentley agreed. The Annabelle conti­nued to brake smoothly until she too was down to orbit speed. Then, with occa­sional little tufts of flame from one steer­ing tube and then another her pilot expertly man­oeuv­red her until she lay close in to the other ship. A magnetic grapple floated out towards the Circe with its cable loop­ing lazily behind it. It moved a trifle wide of the ship and looked likely to miss it, but a momen­tary touch of current down the cable caused it to veer in the right direc­tion. A minute or two later it made con­tact on the hull and clamped itself there as the power was switched on. Captain Bentley emerged, space-suited, from the air-lock of his ship, laid hold of the cable and pulled him­self across the void which sepa­rated the two. He seemed to swim through the black empti­ness, using only one hand on the rope with a dex­terity which revealed experience.

Inside the Circe's lock Captain Waterson greeted him and, after he had got rid of the suit, led the way to his cabin. He handed the visitor a drink in a space-bottle, tapped a globule into his own mouth from another with the skill of long practice, and lit a cigarette. Dick Bentley lit one also and inhaled.

“Lucky man,” he said. “Our owners don't allow smoking.”

“Bad luck,” said Captain Waterson. “Anybody would think we were sailing in wood and paper ships to read some Company's rules. They want to spend some time in space and learn that a contented crew is more impor­tant. Well, now, what about this business?”

“I don't know any more than there is in Foggatt's report.”

“Nor does space-control. That's why we're here. They want all the details we can get.”

“What's your own view?” Bentley asked.

“I'm not forming any views yet, but I'm not dis­count­ing anything Foggatt says; he is — or was — a sound man. It's clear that Space-Control takes it seriously or they wouldn't have arranged for the two of us to be on the job.”

Bentley nodded.

“Well, you're in charge, Tom. What's the plan?”

“We've got two jobs really. One is to locate the Joan III and give all assis­tance we can. The other is to find some of this red stuff Foggatt talks about. Learn what we can about it, and collect some speci­mens for exami­na­tion at home.”

Bentley nodded again.

“There shouldn't be a lot of diffi­culty about the second part. From Foggatt's account of the red asteroids I gather he thought that it existed on them. They're some­where in this area, so they ought not to be hard to find. What isn't at all clear is how the Joan III became covered with the stuff. If the report's right it didn't gradually grow over her. The instru­ment glasses and windows were all covered at once at more or less the same moment.”

“I know,” Captain Waterson agreed. “It would seem almost as if she ran through a cloud of the stuff just lying about in space, as it were. Queer things do lie about in space ... I've seen one or two myself in my time, but all the same ... Besides, how was it they didn't spot it before they ran into it? They don't seem to have had a sus­picion there was any­thing there.”

“There was some reference to obstruction of obser­va­tions at the time,” Dick Bentley recalled, “though it seemed as if it referred to inter­vening flocks of petty asteroids...”

“H'm. Well if we find them maybe we'll learn a bit more —but it's a big if. Nearly four­teen months now since they sent off that globe. Seems to me one of the things we've got to keep a sharp look out for round these parts is that we don't get into the same kind of mess they did.”

“Maybe that's why they sent the two of us,” Bentley suggested, thoughtfully.

They got down to the details of operation. There could be no doubt about the first move. It would be to examine the Asteroid, Pomona Negra, for any signs that the Joan III had indeed landed there as her inten­tion had been. It was quite possible that crippled as she was on the navi­ga­tion side and depending only on the direc­tions of a look­out who would find diffi­culty in the condi­tions in using even field-glasses, she had been unable to reach it. If neither she nor any sign of her presence was to be seen, there would be a further confer­ence on the method of search to be adopted.

Captain Bentley was content to leave the arrange­ment at that when he returned to the Anna­belle. Half an hour later the two ships, at a speed very little above that of the aster­oids them­selves began to nose their way with a delicate fas­tid­ious­ness into the Belt in the direc­tion of Pomona Negra.

The next days were tedious with slow move­ment. The imperative quality was caution. It was im­possible to observe and avoid all contact with asteroids which travel­led not only in swarms, but often soli­tary and might be in size any­thing from a pebble to a large building and there­fore necessary to limit their speed to one at which the larger bodies could be seen and avoided, and glancing or direct blows from the smaller would do no harm. For all on board the ships it was a dis­agree­able period of weariness which frayed the nerves and short­ened the tempers.

Were Pomona Negra an out­flier such as Pallas or Eros, approach would be simpler; un­for­tu­nately she holds an orbit of low in­cli­na­tion to the ecliptic and travels attended by considerable ruck of cosmic debris, and there is no path to her that does not require patience and caution. Almost two weeks passed before Circe signalled obser­vation of a body 75 miles in dia­meter in the posi­tion nomi­nally occupied by Pomona Negra.

Bentley contacted Captain Waterson:

“What's this ‘nominally’ stuff, Tom? There can scarcely be two asteroids of that size around here.”

“That's just the trouble, Dick. If Pomona Negra means anything it should be The Black Apple — because, presum­ably, the thing's black. This isn't — it's bright scarlet.”

“Oh-ho,” murmured Bentley thought­fully.

“Exactly my senti­ments. Oh-ho, followed by, now what?”

“Well-what?”

“Investigate cautiously. Decrease speed, proceed with added care to avoid any suspi­cious object or sub­stance. Pick your own course — it's wiser to separate in case what­ever the Joan III ran into is hanging around. Rendez­vous twenty-five mile level to sun­ward of Pomona. Keep in radio touch. In case of radio failure the ship in trouble will reduce to Pomona's orbit speed and the other ship will go to her aid. Got it?”

“Okay. That's clear. And at the rendez­vous we inspect and decide further?”

“That's it. Good luck. Dick.”

“And to you, Tom.”

Three days later the two ships hung at the appointed twenty-five miles above the sur­face of the reputed Pomona Negra. No one had the least doubt that it was the right asteroid, but the name was now thoroughly inap­pro­priate; no single spot of black was visible on its sur­face.

Bentley, visiting the Circe once more, suggested that the first thing to do was to recommend that its name be changed to Pomona Rosa.

They looked out of the window at it: a globe of scarlet touched here and there by the fall of the light with a faint oily irri­descence. The surface was smooth, fat, bulg­ingly un­pleas­ant as if dis­tended. More than any­thing else it reminded Bentley of a boil, angry and bloated with pres­sure.

Captain Waterson's expression as he gazed at it was serious.

“That thing,” he said, “should be a ball of rough black rock. Instead, it's a perfectly smooth globe. God knows what quan­tity of the stuff there must be to have level­led off over all that area. The rate of growth! It doesn't bear think­ing about.”

“Assuming that the Joan III in brought it here, you mean.”

“I think we're justi­fied in that. It can't have been like this before or Foggatt would have noticed it and reported it.”

“He did report some of those red asteroids,” Bentley reminded him.

“But nothing like this. We saw some small ones our­selves some twenty-four hours back, a few twenty or thirty footers, I expect you did. This is colossal, horrible — And it must have over­run the whole thing in less than four­teen months: that's what gets me. I'd not believe it possible any­thing could grow at such a rate. Think of the area it covers!”

They gazed down in silence for some minutes on the asteroid. The more Bentley looked at it the less he liked it, for though at moments it had the aspect of a vast vivid pearl, its constant suggestion was repul­sively obscene tumes­cence.

“What do you suppose it is?” he asked at length.

Waterson shrugged his shoulders.

“What is life anyway? — some kind of seed floating about the universe until it finds suitable condi­tions to develop? May be. Lord knows what there may be in all this Space. Perhaps we were once a few chance spores; perhaps there are a lot of different kinds of life floating about waiting for time to give them their chance...”

“Still, that's for the scien­tists to argue about when they get some of the stuff. The present question is what about Foggatt and the Joan III.”

Bentley stared down at the red mass.

“I'm afraid there's not much question there. Even if they could keep the stuff out of the ship, and manage to survive as long as this — which is doubt­ful, what is there to be done about it? Nothing if they're buried in all that muck. You could try full power on the radio, but it's un­likely, by the report, to reach them — and even if it could, it's highly im­prob­able that they've had anyone listen­ing on the chance all this time. Honestly, I don't see that there is any­thing to be done, poor devils.”

Waterson pondered, and then agreed reluctantly.

“Nor do I, hanged if I do. I'm afraid that was finish for poor old Foggatt and his lot. Still, I shall go down and take a closer look — there might be some­thing though I doubt it. Any­way, I've got to get the speci­mens. Your job'll be to hang around here and keep an eye on things.” “Okay, Tom. For Heaven's sake be careful, though.” “Oh, I'm not going to take any risks. Just shoot down some auto­matic­ally closing speci­men bottles and have a man standing by to burn them clean when we haul them up again. Simple. No, I'm not taking any chances with that stuff. Loathsome-looking muck, it is.”

Back on the Annabelle, Bentley watched the Circe go down on a spiral matched to the rota­tion of the scarlet globe. Through the instru­ments they watched the shuttle-like, silver shape level off a mile or less above the surface and set itself to circle the asteroid.

“What's it look like from there, Circe?” the Annabelle's navigator asked his opposite number.

“More revolting, if possible,” the other assured him. “Like a mass of red mucous; dis­gusting. Not altogether stable, either. Unless it's a trick of the light, there seem to be undu­la­tions in it. Might be a sort of tidal move­ment — or it might be some­thing to do with its meta­bolism as it revolves, if Foggatt's-notion of its drawing sus­te­nance from sun­light is right. Going to make a circuit now.”

Reception faded as the Circe passed round the other side of the mon­strosity, and came back as she reappeared.

“The same all the way round,” said her navi­gator. “Just a nasty big blob. Another circuit at 90 degrees now.”

He watched the silver shape turn into line with the axis of the body and disap­pear over the nearer pole. No great time elapsed before it came into sight again flashing in the sun­light on the opposite side.

“From what you can see in the dark round there, there's no dis­ting­uish­ing feature any­where,” came the navigator's voice again. “Going down now. Descen­ding to 300 feet, to take samples.”

From the Annabelle it looked as though the other ship ? were stationary. Only the reports of her navigator's voice as he gave decreasing alti­tudes told them that she was actually sinking closer to the viscous surface. They heard him sing out: “Three hundred” and then: “Aye, aye, sir,” and, after a pause: “Two hundred, and steady, sir.”

Through the Annabelle's instru­ments it was possible to discern some kind of disturb­ance on the red sur­face below the other ship. A sort of tide or tremor in roughly circular ripples seemed to be running through the mass. At first Bentley attri­buted it to the impact of the sample bottles which, he judged would now have been propelled into the sub­stance, and thought it in conse­quence to be in a much more liquid state than he had hitherto imagined. Then he realized uneasily that the ripples were not spreading out­wards as from a stone dropped into water, but inwards. He doubted if the effect were, as clearly observable from the close range of the other ship, and leaned over to speak into the navi­gator's phone.

“Circe. There's some­thing queer going on just below you,” he said.

A voice came back:

“It's okay, sir. Just the effect of — 'Strewth!”

Bentley turned back to his instru­ment just in time to catch a glimpse of the cause of the excla­mation.

The stuff had gathered in a kind of mound beneath the Circe, and flung out towards her a vast shape­less limb of itself, a reach­ing pseudo­pod like a licking red tongue.

Those on board wasted no time. There was a gush from the Circe's main tubes, and she leapt forward like a flash. But swift as she was, she did not draw clear in time. She tore through the top of the extend­ing tongue like a streak and emerged from it with speed un­dimin­ished, but she was no longer a silver ship: from bow to tubes she was coated in brilliant scarlet.

At once with her hull aerial system fouled, radio communication died. Captain Bentley seized a head­set of the type built into space-suits, and began calling. Evidently Waterson had done the same. His first remarks were vivid, but unprint­able. Bentley waited for the pictures­que­ness to sub­side.

“You all right?” he asked.

“What do you mean, ‘all right’? The main radio's dead, and we can't see a bloody thing outside, other­wise I suppose we are. Except that we'll have lost the man in the air-lode putting down the bottles, I'm afraid.”

Another voice cut in, speaking some­what unsteadily:

“I'm still here, sir, in the lock. Must have been knocked kind of silly for a minute when we started like that.”

“Good man. Look here —”

Bentley broke in on them :

“Tom, what about braking? You're still running free, you know.”

“God, yes!” He heard Captain Waterson shout orders for decelera­tion equal to pre­vious impetus.

The man in the lock spoke again.

“The place is crawling with this ruddy muck, sir.”

“Is the outer door damaged?”

There was a pause.

“No, it's shut all right, sir.”

“Good. Well, keep it shut. You've still got the blow­torch?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. Clean up with it as much as you can in there. Don't touch your suit fasten­ings. When you come out I'll have a couple of chaps here with torches to finish it off. That clear?”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Captain Waterson turned his attention back to Bentley and the Annabelle.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“About three hundred miles sun­ward from Pomona,” Dick told him. “You made some jump. We're coming up to you now. You're lying pretty well at orbit speed. Hold it like that.”

“We're covered in the stuff, I take it?”

“Every inch.” He caused for another burst of lurid comment which ended with Waterson's inquiry:

“What the hell do we do now?”

“I suggest I try to burn you clean.”

“How?”

“First thing, I'm going to send over two grappels, one to bow and the other to stern.”

“The stuff will spread back along the cables to you.”

“We can take care of that. The thing I want to know is can you roll your ship? With­out giving any direc­tional move­ment, I mean.”

“Roll? What, you mean horizontally?”

“Sure.”

“God knows. In all my years in Space I've never even wanted to try. You'd better speak to the engi­neer about that. What if we can?”

“Then I turn my tubes on to you. That ought to burn pretty near anything off.”

“It'll shove you away.”

“Not if I put on the braking tubes to balance the thrust.”

“H'm. It's an idea,” approved Captain Waterson. “Yes, it's worth trying — only don't go and con­certina your ship in between the two thrusts.”

“We'll take good care of that,” Bentley assured him, and turned to his prep­ara­tions.

The two magnets were floated out, and since accu­rate placing was neces­sary, were guided into posi­tion by space-suited men equipped with propul­sive pistols. The two men took good care to project them­selves back from the red hull before contact was made. The rest watch­ing intently from the Annabelle's windows broke into comments; within half a minute it was possible to see the red sub­stance begin to swarm up the sides of the magnets; in four it was start­ing to travel along the cables connect­ing the ships. Once it had begun, it conti­nued to extend along them at a sur­prising rate. Then, some fifty out from the Circe, it came to an obstruc­tion. The Annabelle's men watched anxiously, and then relaxed for the progress of the red sub­stance was checked. It had encountered the three foot sections that had been wrapped in asbestos and bound with wire which now glowed incan­descent, and it did not like them. The advance was stopped, and it contented itself with thickening upon that part of the cable already covered.

The Annabelle manoeuvred deli­cately to place her­self stern on to the other ship, and slightly closed the distance between them.

“Hello, Circe,” Bentley called. “I'm about to start. Have your out­side party ready with lamps to mop up when we finish. Be ready to start rolling when I give the word — and make it as slow as you can.”

A blaze began to glow from both for­ward and stern tubes of the Annabelle. Gradually it increased to a blast of fire gushing out from the stern tubes to envelope the scarlet ship in a roaring gale of fire. The effect upon the sub­stance was imme­diate and en­courag­ing. Under the searing heat the red coating shrivelled, smoked and blackened.

“Roll Circe. Gently over,” Bentley ordered.

Slowly, still bathed in the fiery spume, the Circe began to turn on one side, and as the farther side rolled into the heat the scarlet vanished to leave nothing but a sticky, incinerated mess.

Bentley was being cautious. The Circe made six com­plete revolu­tions before he gave her the word to stop, and shut off his tubes.

A moment after she had ceased to turn half a dozen men with their adapted torches already lighted emerged from the air-lock and scattered about the hull. Another half dozen joined them a minute later, and already a party was floating across from the Annabelle to join them. They found the smooth hull steri­lized of all life. The remains were now no more than an inert rough covering baked on like a black varnish. Even so, the stuff had not been com­pletely elimi­nated. Where there were crevices or angles protect­ing it from the direct flame it had managed to survive the heat of the metal beneath it, and with a persis­tent tenacity was starting to spread again from such sheltered spots as the bunched flanges mount­ing fore and rear tubes and others which had chanced to lie in the lee of some project­ion. The men swarmed around the danger points playing their flames into any and every cranny which had the least chance of holding a grain of the scarlet pest intact. After an hour's work they were satisfied that the last vestige save for that enclosed in the specimen bottles had been completely exter­mi­nated. Never­the­less, Captain Waterson was taking no chances; when his men were called in, an outside party of four remained on watch, ready to pounce upon the first speck of red they might spy.

He and Bentley adjourned to his cabin, and toasted the occasion.

“Well, thank God they did send two ships — most intelligent thing I've ever known them do,” he said. “Even after Foggatt's report I didn't realize what a hell-brewed stuff it is until it got us. But for you, Dick—” He shrugged and turned his thumbs down.

“Well, hang it, that's what I was here for, wasn't it? But I'm afraid it makes it pretty certain what happened to the Joan III.”

Waterson nodded, and looked out of the windows towards the red globe which was Pomona.

“It does, Dick. That'll be the report. If they want to find her now, they've got to find some means of clearing away that muck. God, if that stuff did get at them — horrible! Why, it'd smother and blind you within five minutes.”

“And that's all we've got to tell 'em,” Bentley said.

“Yes, that's it — but we've got samples of the stuff. I suppose that's the really important thing. It may save others from going the way Foggatt did — and we nearly did.”

Some few hours later the two ships turned sunward and began again their weari­some, cautious progress. Clear of the Belt they put on speed, risking the out­fliers, and their ways diverged. The Anabelle set course for her home port on Mars. The Circe to return to Earth by way the Clarke Lunar Station.