They kept their containment helmets on just to be sure, and progressed through the doorway once the computer had unsealed it. They each went to their own section of the quarters and looked around for indications of what might have happened.
"In here," Jake called out. Sheena went through to his quarters, realising it was the first time she'd been in there since before he'd moved his belongings in at the start of the mission. A circle of plas-foam filled a small breach in the hull that would be only an inch in diameter, but enough to be catastrophic if it hadn't been dealt with instantly.
"What's this?" Sheena asked, squatting to inspect a cylindrical object a foot long and an inch in diameter. Each end of the cylinder was hemispherical and at first glance it seemed to be some kind of ceramic. She held her hand nearby to check whether it radiated heat, or perhaps extreme cold, unwilling to take a chance on touching something that may have been injurious.
"Not mine," Jake replied. "Could that have caused the breach?"
"Must have done if it's not yours," Sheena suggested, not seeing anywhere else it could have come from.
"Well that's a bloody mystery then," Jake suggested. "Maybe we should take it to the lab."
"We definitely should. We need to apply quarantine protocols." Sheena left Jake watching the object and went to collect a pair of tongs and a sealable container for the long cylinder. She returned, used the tongs to pick up the object and drop it into a flexible plas bag. Jake then followed her back to the lab, where she shut the bagged object in a quarantine locker.
Once it was secure, they had the computer scan the station's atmosphere to confirm it hadn't been contaminated in any way. When it was confirmed the air was clean, Sheena and Jake removed their containment helmets. They moved to the quarantine locker and spent a good hour gazing at something that neither moved nor gave any indication of its origin or purpose.
Eventually boredom trumped curiosity, and they went back to their usual routine of testing Culture 6823, while only occasionally glancing in the direction of the mysterious object. They discussed it over their mid shift meal and again at the end of the day. They each had a strong temptation to start doing tests on it, to try and understand what it was. They resolved to sleep on it and see how they felt in their arbitrarily determined morning.
It turned out their sleep time had done nothing to lessen their curiosity, so they decided over their morning meal to try and learn what the material was.
Jake set up a quarantined test area where he could use remotely controlled implements to try and detach test samples of the material. It took time to set up and it wasn't immediately successful, but after some trial and error Jake managed to chip a small piece from the shell for testing. It proved to be composed of a complex metallic structure, even the elements of which (five or six of them, it was unclear so far) had never before been encountered by humankind. And amazingly, although these elements all had atomic numbers above 150, they all appeared to be stable, e.g. they weren't giving off radiation and transmuting into other elements. The discovery was exciting. Sheena and Jake knew they'd achieve all sorts of celebrity amongst the scientific community for it, but there was also a significant risk they'd be allowed no further role in investigating its origin. For that reason, they decided to press ahead with running whatever tests they could manage before reporting to Ground Control.
By the time they were due for their next sleep cycle, they'd learned a lot about what it wasn't, but very little about what it actually was. They returned it remotely to the quarantine locker and returned to their quarters to sleep.
The following morning Sheena woke and headed straight to the lab to check on their discovery before sitting down to eat her first meal of the day. She peered through the clear plas-steel front of the locker and gasped. Nestled against the plas-steel at the front of the locker was a pale grey creature that if standing would be about six inches tall and a couple inches in diameter. It looked very like a tiny octopus, though its eight tentacles emerged from two levels of its body, four at the bottom and four partway up. It was obviously alive, not because it was moving, but one could just tell. The foot-long hollow cylinder still lay on the bottom of the locker, but it was now split cleanly along its longitudinal axis into two separate halves.
Sheena rushed from the lab to fetch Jake, knowing he wouldn't want to wait a moment before witnessing this development. She barged into his room, in her excitement not even considering what his state of dress might be. Neither of them bothered locking their doors with even courtesy locks, in case an emergency demanded a need for the other to enter. They had made a practice of respecting each other's privacy enough not to take advantage of their free access. Sheena was so excited about the alien species that she nearly didn't notice that Jake was standing there naked when she entered so abruptly. It was almost an afterthought for her to glance down at the package she'd seen so much of, even though she hadn't yet seen it naked. She wasn't disappointed.
"I'm so sorry," she blurted out, "But you have to come see this. There's an alien life form in the quarantine locker!"
"Are you serious?" Jake asked in shock before reaching for his lab suit. They didn't wear underwear, it wasn't allowed because of some bio interface the suit employed, so he simply pulled it on. Sheena watched, trying not to stare as he stuffed his package inside and carefully zipped the suit up past it and then up to his neck. Sheena led the way from his room to the lab. Crossing the lab to the locker, she gasped for the second time that morning when she discovered a round hole an inch in diameter in the plas-steel and no life form. The creature must be loose in the lab!
"What the fuck?" she exclaimed as Jake came to stand beside her. They both urgently cast their gazes around the lab, seeking the creature.
"There!" Sheena exclaimed and pointed. The small creature, now several inches in diameter, (clearly able to adjust its shape if it had squeezed itself through a one-inch hole) was perched on top of the dish containing the Culture 6823 that had been the subject of their testing for the last forty eight hours. Even as they spotted it, the transparent cover of the dish dissolved beneath the creature and it dropped onto the culture itself. Within moments the entire culture had been consumed.
"What the hell can we do with it?" Jake asked. "The damn thing ate through plas-steel! That shouldn't even be possible."
"Fucked if I know," Sheena said worriedly, inching toward the lab's door.
"Wait, where are you going?" Jake asked nervously, turning his back on the alien.
"Just keeping my options open; if that thing moves, I want to be able to close this ...Jake!"
Jake reflexively turned back to look at the alien. Unfortunately, Sheena had shouted because it had suddenly propelled itself through the air. She hadn't seen how it had launched itself, she just saw it soaring towards Jake. Jake's turning back caused it to land on his forehead, whereupon it latched on to him. Sheena squealed in shock. Jake went to grab it, then stopped with his hands halfway to their goal. The creature slithered quickly around behind him until it was resting at the nape of his neck. Sheena watched in shock, too surprised to react, until she saw a tentacle extend from Jake's neck and up to his temple. She unobtrusively stepped backwards through the door and hit the button to seal the lab. The door silently closed. It didn't make her feel safe at all.
She stood watching and worrying, all thoughts of how she might respond driven from her mind. As she watched, the alien grew at an astounding rate until its torso was about three feet in length. Its tentacles appeared to be fluid in both thickness and length from moment to moment. Within minutes, she saw the tips of two narrow tentacles affix themselves to his temples. Small trickles of blood ran down each side of his face from their apparent insertion points while larger tentacles wrapped around each arm.
The situation had exploded way out of control, she needed to call it in. Decision made, she turned away from the lab and headed for the command module. Even though she was certain her life was in danger, she needed to word the message carefully, knowing that clarity would be vital for any hope of rescue (extremely faint, she assessed with a sinking heart) and for how the situation would be viewed historically.
Little did she know that behind her, two smaller creatures had split from the original that had attached itself to Jake. One slithered surprisingly quickly across the floor in pursuit of Sheena, pausing for less than a second to dissolve a small hole through the supposedly impenetrable door. The other scuttled its way to the computer terminal in the corner of the lab. She wouldn't realise until much later that the creature had taken control of the station's computers and disabled all the alarm, security and guidance functions.
Sheena was hurrying, but she didn't run because she wasn't aware anything was in pursuit. No alarm sounded to indicate the door she'd closed and locked behind her had been breached.
The first hint she had that something new was wrong was when she felt something slither up her ankle, forcing its way beneath her lab suit. She screamed and tried to run, but her left leg, the one the creature had begun climbing, didn't respond. She fell to the floor.
Sheena lost the next five minutes. Afterwards she wasn't sure if she'd blacked out, but she could never quite remember anything other than coming to consciousness back in the lab, sitting on one of the stools. Jake was sitting opposite her, staring vacantly. There was a faint pain coming from each of her temples.
Interesting physiological differences between the two subjects
, Sheena heard in her thoughts. It was like someone was speaking, but nothing was said aloud. The words just went directly into her mind.
Indeed, Xu
