“It means—life has appeared and evolved and grown rotten ripe inside the bubble, sir. All in the space of an hour or so.”
“But that’s—impossible.”
Lawton shook his head. “It isn’t at all, sir. We’ve had it drummed into us that evolution proceeds at a snailish pace, but what proof have we that it can’t mutate with lightning-like rapidity? I’ve told you there are gases outside we can’t even make in a chemical laboratory, molecular arrangements that are alien to earth.”
“But plants derive nourishment from the soil,” interpolated Forrester.
“I know. But if there are alien gases in the air the surface of the bubble must be reeking with unheard of chemicals. There may be compounds inside the bubble which have so sped up organic processes that a hundred million year cycle of mutations has been telescoped into an hour.”
Lawton was pacing the floor again. “It would be simpler to assume that seeds of existing plants became somehow caught up and imprisoned in the bubble. But the plants around us never existed on earth. I’m no botanist, but I know what the Congo has on tap, and the great rain forests of the Amazon.”
“Dave, if the growth continues it will fill the bubble. It will choke off all our air.”
“Don’t you suppose I realize that? We’ve got to destroy that growth before it destroys us.”
It was pitiful to watch the crew’s morale sag. The miasmal taint of the ominously proliferating vegetation was soon pervading the ship, spreading demoralization everywhere.
It was particularly awful straight down. Above a ropy tangle of livid vines and creepers a kingly stench weed towered, purplish and bloated and weighted down with seed pods.
It seemed sentient, somehow. It was growing so fast that the evil odor which poured from it could be correlated with the increase of tension inside the ship. From that particular plant, minute by slow minute, there surged a continuously mounting offensiveness, like nothing Lawton had ever smelt before.
The bubble had become a blooming horror sailing slowly westward above the storm-tossed Atlantic. And all the chemical agents which Lawton sprayed through the ventilation valves failed to impede the growth or destroy a single seed pod.
It was difficult to kill plant life with chemicals which were not harmful to man. Lawton took dangerous risks, increasing the unwholesomeness of their rapidly dwindling air supply by spraying out a thin diffusion of problematically poisonous acids.
It was no sale. The growths increased by leaps and bounds, as though determined to show their resentment of the measures taken against them by marshalling all their forces in a demoralizing plantkrieg.
Thwarted, desperate, Lawton played his last card. He sent five members of the crew, equipped with blow guns. They returned screaming. Lawton had to fortify himself with a double whiskey soda before he could face the look of reproach in their eyes long enough to get all of the prickles out of them.
From then on pandemonium reigned. Blue funk seized the petty officers while some of the crew ran amuck. One member of the engine watch attacked four of his companions with a wrench; another went into the ship’s kitchen and slashed himself with a paring knife. The assistant engineer leapt through a ’chute opening, after avowing that he preferred impalement to suffocation.
He was impaled. It was horrible. Looking down Lawton could see his twisted body dangling on a crimson-stippled thornlike growth forty feet in height.
Slashaway was standing at his elbow in that Waterloo moment, his rough-hewn features twitching. “I can’t stand it, sir. It’s driving me squirrelly.”
“I know, Slashaway. There’s something worse than marijuana weed down there.”
Slashaway swallowed hard. “That poor guy down there did the wise thing.”
Lawton husked: “Stamp on that idea, Slashaway—kill it. We’re stronger than he was. There isn’t an ounce of weakness in us. We’ve got what it takes.”
“A guy can stand just so much.”
“Bosh. There’s no limit to what a man can stand.”
From the visiplate behind them came an urgent voice: “Radio room tuning in, sir.”
Lawton swung about. On the flickering screen the foggy outlines of a face appeared and coalesced into sharpness.
The Perseus radio operator was breathless with excitement. “Our reception is improving, sir. European short waves are coming in strong. The static is terrific, but we’re getting every station on the continent, and most of the American stations.”
Lawton’s eyes narrowed to exultant slits. He spat on the deck, a slow tremor shaking him.
“Slashaway, did you hear that? We’ve done it. We’ve won against hell and high water.”
“We done what, sir?”
“The bubble, you ape—it must be wearing thin. Hell’s bells, do you have to stand there gaping like a moronic ninepin? I tell you, we’ve got it licked.”
“I can’t stand it, sir. I’m going nuts.”
“No you’re not. You’re slugging the thing inside you that wants to quit. Slashaway, I’m going to give the crew a first-class pep talk. There’ll be no stampeding while I’m in command here.”
He turned to the radio operator. “Tune in the control room. Tell the captain I want every member of the crew lined up on this screen immediately.”
The face in the visiplate paled. “I can’t do that, sir. Ship’s regulations—”
Lawton transfixed the operator with an irate stare. “The captain told you to report directly to me, didn’t he?”
“Yes sir, but—”
“If you don’t want to be cashiered, snap into it.”
“Yes—yessir.”
The captain’s startled face preceded the duty-muster visiview by a full minute, seeming to project outward from the screen. The veins on his neck were thick blue cords.
“Dave,” he croaked. “Are you out of your mind? What good will talking do now?”
“Are the men lined up?” Lawton rapped, impatiently.
Forrester nodded. “They’re all in the engine room, Dave.”
“Good. Block them in.”
The captain’s face receded, and a scene of tragic horror filled the opalescent visiplate. The men were not standing at attention at all. They were slumping against the Perseus’ central charging plant in attitudes of abject despair.
Madness burned in the eyes of three or four of them. Others had torn open their shirts, and raked their
