40

“Can I have a copy of this?” asked the icthyologist, watching the vid.

Altman shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “What do you think?”

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” he said. “Those strange hornlike projections, I don’t have a precedent for those. You may have discovered a new species. Or it may be the result of a mutation of some kind. I can ask around, see if anybody’s seen anything like it, but I never have.”

“So, it’s unusual.”

“Very unusual.”

“Well?” Altman asked. He was in Skud’s lab, the water bottle with him. The pinkish swath had been extracted from it and placed into a specimen tube. From this, Skud had taken a tiny sample, running a genetic test.

“It’s strange,” said Skud. “It’s tissue.”

“What sort of tissue?”

“Living tissue,” said Skud. “Like flesh. It was once alive. But it has a very unusual genetic profile.”

“So, it is skin that has been torn off something?”

“I don’t think this is so,” said Skud. “I think it was alive not so long ago. It was alive when you found it. Maybe even alive until you bottled it.”

“That can’t be,” said Altman. “When I found it, it was just like this, but in big sheets. It couldn’t have been alive.”

“Yes,” said Skud. “It is a very simple organism. I do not know what it is. It has no brain and no limbs and was made of almost nothing at all. But it was, technically, alive.”

Altman shook his head.

“You are a doubter, I see,” said Skud. “I can prove it with a simple experiment.” He upturned the sample vial, leaving the pink swath lying curled on the table. He took a battery with a pair of wires connected to it, sparked them against each other, then touched them to one another. Immediately the swath jolted, moved.

“You see,” said Skud proudly. “Alive.”

“Don’t,” said Ada. “It’s morbid.”

“It’s not morbid,” said Altman. “I’m just stating the facts. This is just anecdotal, mind you, but it still must mean something.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Just listen,” said Altman. “Just listen and give me a hand.” He held up one finger. “You were the one who started this back in the town. I’m just going to give you the same talk you gave me, more or less. Nearly everybody I’ve talked to on the ship has a headache. Even if I haven’t heard them say it aloud, I’ve seen them clutching their heads. That’s not normal.”

“It’s just anecdotal,” said Ada. “It’s not scientific.”

“I said that already,” said Altman.

“It could be a gas leak,” said Ada, “or a problem with the ventilation system.”

“It could be,” said Altman, but most of those people have been having headaches long before that. They’ve been having them ever since the first signal broadcast.”

He held up a second finger. “Insomnia,” he said. “I’ve asked around about this. Showalter has it. I have it off and on. That German scientist has it. I heard the two guards outside of the command center complaining about it and then later another three in the main dome. Have you had it?”

“No,” said Ada. “But I’ve been having weird dreams.”

“That’s the other thing people are talking about,” said Altman, raising another finger. “Strange, vivid dreams. I’ve had them, too, lots of people have. And then we get to the more extreme cases.” He held up two more fingers. “Attacks,” he said, wiggling one, “and suicides,” he said, wiggling the other. “Not scientific, I admit,” he said. “But we’ve only been talking a few minutes and I’ve already run out of fingers. I’ve never been around a place where I’ve seen so many of either.”

“I heard that Wenbo went crazy,” said Ada. “Tried to strangle one of Markoff’s men.”

“I heard the same thing,” said Altman. “Similar thing happened with Claerbout and Dawson. And Lumley stabbed Ewing and then painted a set of weird symbols on the walls of his own room with his own shit. And who knows what we’re not hearing about, what they’re covering up.”

Ada shuddered. “And poor Trostle,” she said. “He always seemed so stable.”

“Suicides and attempted suicides. Don’t forget Press.”

“Frank Press? Did he attempt suicide?”

“Not only did he attempt it, he succeeded. There must be at least three or four more on that list, too. Doesn’t that seem abnormal? I mean there are only two or three hundred on board. That’d put the suicide rate up over two percent. That can’t be normal, can it?”

Ada shook her head.

“It’s not scientific,” said Altman, waving his fingers around. “But I still don’t like what it’s telling me. Ask around. See if I’m wrong. I hope to God I am.”

A few hours later, Markoff appeared at his door. He was carrying a tranquilizer gun in his hand. It looked like an ordinary pistol but with a longer and thicker barrel, a square cartridge near the barrel’s end.

“Ever worked one of these?” he asked.

Altman shook his head.

He opened the cartridge. “Darts go here,” he said. “Cartridge snaps in and out. There are CO₂ cartridges in the grip, but you don’t need to worry about changing those; we’ll handle it. You pull this bolt back,” he said, drawing back a lever on the gun’s side, “and set the safety like this. It’s easy to thumb off. As long as the bolt’s back, it’ll shoot. Aim for flesh.”

“It won’t go through clothing?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Markoff. “It’ll go through clothing, but clothing means more chances of something going wrong. Aim for flesh. Or, if you’re not much of a shooter, just try to push it up against the person’s chest before you fire.”

He handed the tranquilizer over to Altman, who held it awkwardly.

“The dart contains a strong sedative. It’ll take a few seconds to take effect,” Markoff said. “It’ll hurt going in but probably not enough to slow a maniac down much. You sure you don’t want a real gun?”

Altman shook his head.

“You leave in fifteen minutes,” Markoff said.

Hurriedly he tracked down Ada and told her what was happening.

“I don’t want you to go down there again,” she said.

“It doesn’t affect me.” He kissed her again. “Besides, I have no choice.”

“But after what happened to Hendricks . . .”

“I handled that all right, didn’t I? We’re still both in one piece, aren’t we?”

She covered her mouth with one hand. “You haven’t heard?” she said.

“Haven’t heard what?”

“Hendricks is dead. He killed a nurse, tore her apart. They had to shoot him.”

Stunned, he collapsed onto the bed. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Even more so than Moresby, this had been his fault. Maybe if he’d turned back when Hendricks had first wanted, it wouldn’t have happened. How many deaths would be on his conscience before it was all over?

Ada was lying beside him, stroking his forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And then, “Michael, don’t go.”

He shook his head. “I have to go,” he replied. “I have no choice.” Turning away from her, he climbed out of the bed and made his way heavily down to the submarine bay.