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the end of the tunnel had reappeared, brighter than ever before!
"Goodbye Erika. I will call you back as soon as I am able. I must check
on several things, now that you have given me this new information. My
congratulations. I am very, very proud of you."
She beamed at that, and he saw Jason Dvorak clap a congratulatory hand
on her shoulder. The transmission ended and the screen winked out.
Less than five seconds later, Kent Woodward began screaming from the
quarantine chamber.
* * * *
Parvu ran down the curved corridor and stopped in front of the
observation window.
Inside, Kent Woodward was scrambling backward. He had knocked a chair
over and stood up against the nanocore, screaming. His eyes remained fixed on
something that looked like Old Gimp convulsing on the floor.
"Kent!" Parvu shouted. He turned up the volume on the intercom. "Kent,
what has happened?"
"I was holding it right in my hands! Right in my hands!" He extended
his palms, staring at them and then at the floor.
Then Parvu noticed that the rat looked fluid, bumpy, and _flowed_ over
the floor.
Suddenly, its legs convulsed, sticking straight out. Bulges pulsed on
its sides, bending the ribcage outward. Its mouth opened wider, wider, until
the skin parted, and still the rat's jaws folded backward even more.
The seams split as the rat writhed and thrashed. Blood oozed out, then
sealed up. Something squirmed inside the yawning mouth of Old Gimp, a lump, a
pinkish gray shape thrust out -- a second head, with blue-black eyes buried
beneath a film of wet skin. Two more legs protruded from its sides.
The rat's ears elongated, folded back again. The whole body shuddered,
split, and rolled over. A dozen more limbs protruded from its ribcage.
Something that might have been a ... wing thrust upward, flapped once, and
then curled over to melt like cellular wax back into the seething main body.
Kent was screaming now. But Parvu could watch nothing but the rat as it
began to lose all bodily definition. It flowed together into a sizzling mass
as eyeballs and bones and teeth bubbled upward and came back down.
White fur suddenly sprouted like tall feathers, turning the lump into a
mound of hair -- but then the strands, too, rippled and flattened out. The
thing changed to a uniform brown-red consistency, like protoplasm oozing in a
formless mass, adjusting its contours to the shape of least structure.
Then the whole thing slowly moved, extending a tiny pseudopod forward.
Parvu opened and closed his mouth, gaping. He felt a cold deeper than
the Antarctic storm running through his veins. What had he done? "Kent," he
said. "Kent!" But he had no idea what he should say.Inside the quarantine
chamber, Kent was not listening anyway. His screams had continued to rise in
pitch until his own eyes rolled backward, white.
He stretched out his hands in front of him. He screamed and stared at
his fingers. They visibly elongated, stretching out like pencils.
As Parvu watched, the skin sloughed off Kent's fingerbones like melting
grease, red and pink and yellow crayons oozing down into his cupped hands.
"Oh ... God ...." Kent gurgled, then he toppled backward. His knees
seemed to turn to jelly as he fell onto the floor, convulsing.
--------
PART VI
"To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature."
-- Max Beerbohm
"He is dangerous who has nothing to lose."
-- Goethe
--------
*CHAPTER 27*
MOONBASE COLUMBUS
_Take any action necessary to ensure the survival of your crew._
McConnell's words rang in Bernard Chu's ears. He hadn't spent all that
time in astronaut training and periodic refresher courses learning how to roll
over and die. He knew how to find options, to determine what he could do and
how he could fight back. Now it was for real.
The ordeal on the Grissom eleven years ago had taught him that he might
not always get a second chance. Celeste wasn't giving him any second chances.
She had dumped it all back in his lap. Okay then, she had no right to complain
if she didn't agree with his tactics from now on. He was going to make her pay
attention. He had to convince Celeste to let them all come home.
Rubbing his jaw, Chu wandered into the commissary, which was kept open
to accommodate the different working hours of the crew. Since days and nights
on the Moon were two weeks long, Earthbound work schedules meant little.
Tables and chairs fashioned of scrap metal from the original cargo
landers made up the decor. Only a third of the fifty-meter-long cylinder was
used for eating; the galley and food storage areas were hidden behind a
sectional curtain of plastic blankets. Some crewmembers had scrawled sarcastic
but generally good-natured graffiti over the walls; others had pinned pictures
of home to the plastic blanket.
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