We found Marvin inside his steel enclosure. The pen had expanded since I’d last seen it, and I realized with a frown he’d gone far beyond my instructions. There were seven sectional areas now, each with its own muddy pit of bubbling liquid. Tubes ran in and out of these puddles, gently pumping in oxygen and nutrients. There were no filters of course-filters were meant to clean out microbes, not to promote their growth. I looked for evidence of punishment systems, but didn’t see any. At least it didn’t look like he’d been shocking any of these tiny beings into submission.
“It kind of smells,” Sandra said, peering into the steel pens with her nose wrinkling.
“Biotics commonly produce gaseous byproducts,” Marvin said.
He was sprawled over one of the pools, using his tentacles in a splayed array. He looked like an umbrella with all the cloth removed. I now understood why he’d been adding extra tentacles lately-it was so he could suspend himself over these pools and work.
“Are you honestly going to lie down in that sludge, Kyle?” Sandra said. “Because if you do, I’m not going to make love to you for days afterward.”
“That’s a risk I’ll have to take,” I said. “Marvin, do you have everything ready now, or should I come back later?”
“Do you have the organic mass? It must be from Earth. This is going to require a lot of base materials.”
“We brought about sixty pounds of beef,” I said. “It nearly killed the main chef to give it up. He went on about how irreplaceable it was.”
“Is it fresh?” Marvin asked. “May I see it?”
“It’s fresh,” Sandra said. “We just ate some of it at our picnic.”
Marvin finally put a few cameras on her. Most of his eyes remained focused on me or the stinky bubbling mud he squatted over. “Is the presence of the Lieutenant absolutely necessary?”
Sandra glowered at him. “Yes, it is,” she said.
“I want to know what you are planning to do to me, Marvin,” I said, crossing my arms. I knew Sandra didn’t trust him completely. I was in her camp on this one. He had such a fascination with these Microbes and what they could do to a human. He might throw in few extras-like gills or wings-just because he could.
“Raising tissue density is the primary goal. In order to withstand the harsher climate, lung-capacity must be increased, and the alveoli must be toughened.”
“The what?”
“Lung sacs.”
“You don’t expect him to breathe their atmosphere, do you?”
“No, not at all. But depending on how deeply you must penetrate their atmosphere, the pressure may be intense. Human alveoli pop easily. It can be done just by coughing.”
I thought about it and nodded slowly. High-gravity, high-pressure. It was going to be like a deep sea dive. Except instead of diving into sea water in a submarine, I was going down bare-skinned into a swirling, freezing mass of poisons.
“This is sounding better by the minute,” I said.
“Wait a second,” Sandra said. “I thought you were going to stay inside a battle suit, at least.”
Marvin shuffled himself and put three cameras on Sandra. At least five tracked me. Maybe he was worried I was going to change my mind. I had to admit, this process was looking more alarming by the minute.
“The cultural requirements of this species are unlike most others. They interact by physical contact-this always includes an intermixing of body mass. Since humans are far more dense creatures, they will have to experience you by touching your bare skin with their aerogel tendrils. I only hope this will be sufficient.”
“Sufficient for what?”
“To achieve meaningful communion. The most difficult part of your mission will be gaining their attention. They are not accustomed to interacting with other biotics.”
“How do we talk to them in the first place, Marvin? Do we use radio or something?”
“Gaseous interchange. I have built a translation system for you. It consists of a brainbox and an artificial emitter-organ.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Sounds like we are going to have some kind of sniffing contest.”
“Something like that, yes.”
The list of physical changes was daunting. I was going to lose a lot of hair-but Marvin said it would grow back in time. My skin and muscles would be hardened and denser. I had to be able to draw breath against a great deal of gravity and pressure. Internal organ changes were critical, especially the ones that weren’t that tough to begin with, the like the spleen and kidneys. I’d never thought about it before, but much of the human body was designed to survive on Earth under very specific conditions.
When Marvin began discussing altering my eyes, Sandra objected. “I like his eyes the way they are. I don’t want any changes!”
Marvin studied her, then swung his attention to me. I’d already stripped out of my battle suit and thrown a number of steaks into the bubbling pond. Marvin dipped his tentacles into the liquid and precisely adjusted their locations. I couldn’t see what the Microbes were doing with the meat, but it seemed to me the bubbling had increased.
“The human eye is not designed for these pressure levels,” he said in that calm, clipped voice of his. “Colonel Riggs will experience blindness at the very least, due to the malformation of the eye.”
“Is that permanent?”
“No. But it will incapacitate him. Humans have a poor level of functionality while blind. I’ve conducted a number of-”
“Studies,” I finished for him. “Yes, we know Marvin. But what about returning me to normal afterward? Is that possible?”
He squirmed for a few seconds without speaking.
“He’s working up a good lie, Kyle. Don’t trust him.”
I had to agree with her assessment. “All right,” I said. “Is there another way to protect my eyes? Some kind of heavy goggles?”
“That wouldn’t be desirable,” Marvin said.
“To whom, robot? You just want to work every freaky change you can so you can study Kyle like a bug.”
“There might be another way,” Marvin said at last. “Recall the metallic content of the aqueous fluid after an injection of nanites?”
“Ah yes,” I said. “We’ve all experienced that. Are you saying that a lot of nanites swimming in my eyes could protect them?”
“Yes,” he said.
“But they blinded the subject, at least temporarily,” Sandra objected. “I remember it well.”
“They were untrained. They were not disciplined, and thus blocked the critical path through the fluid to the optic nerve.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Sounds like a choice between an eyeful of nanites, or some serious alteration of my vision by Microbes. I’ll take the nanites. At least that way, I’ll know what to expect.”
Marvin seemed crestfallen. “It represents an entire study lost, a bath unused. But I suppose there’s no sense wasting more time.”
“An entire bath?” I asked. “You mean I’m taking more than one plunge into a mud puddle?”
Marvin looked at me in surprise. “Of course. If you examine my facility, I now have seven experimental environments. Each has a specially-bred Microbial colony.”
“I’m taking seven mud-baths?”
“No, only five. One bath contains the base species, the raw stock used to grow the other cultures. Another will go unused, as you have opted for a different solution for your optical organs.”
I heaved a sigh. Within another twenty minutes, I found myself submerged in the first tickling, bubbling pool. It felt like tiny fish swam all over my body. I wasn’t sure if that sensation was real, or only psychosomatic. Either way, I wasn’t happy.
As I lie there, I saw Marvin’s strange, spider-like form working over me. He tirelessly adjusted temperature probes and tapped at screens around us. The steel walls of the pens that separated the pools were riddled with
