Slowly, in a mental haze, I regained consciousness. I was lying on a gurney in the medical centre. Krishna, the surgeon, and Diana, one of the nurses, were peering down at me. I felt woozy. God, my wrist was sore.
‘Ah, back in the land of the living you are,’ said Krishna.
‘What on Earth is wrong with my wrist?’ I asked as I looked down at the bandaging and splint to hold my left hand in line with my arm. Had I broken it somehow?
‘We’ve given you morphine,’ Krishna said. ‘The LRP was entering your body as you fired the multidirectional projector. It died and changed back to its original shape, tearing the skin and flesh at the entry point. That would explain the pain.’
‘But I’m clear?’
‘Yes, but I’d like you to sleep or, at least, lie still for a couple of hours. Then we’ll look at how necessary the splint is.’
‘I need to get up to date!’ I said, forcefully, trying to sit up but falling back with my head spinning. ‘Is Anna, Bill or Doug about?’
‘Doug’s on his way from the bio dome,’ said Krishna. The door swung open. ‘Ah, here he is now.’
‘You’re okay, Mark?’ Doug asked.
‘Yes. Bit disorientated. Fill me in.’
‘You hit the button just in time. The bug was halfway into my glove.’
‘It worked then?’
‘Yes, sure did. I am so annoyed with myself for not setting it up earlier. Stupid mistake,’ said Doug.
‘We are where we are. What’s the situation with the people?’
Krishna said, ‘The eight in the common room are all up and about. All the LRPs were dead, close to the outside of the skull and we managed to get them with keyhole surgery.’
‘What’s the recovery time?’ I asked, worrying that we would be severely understrength.
‘Only two or three hours. Once the headache’s gone most are back to normal. One or two are still suffering and I’ve signed them off until tomorrow. Gillian was not as lucky, though. We have her in ward one and will operate later to remove it. It is inside the brain tissue and might have caused some damage.’
‘Not good,’ I said.
‘No, but it could have been worse. She is conscious, but has a hell of a headache,’ said Doug.
‘I remember the feeling,’ I said, casting my mind back to Wilmington Hospital.
‘We’ll get it out,’ said Krishna.
‘And the others? What happened?’
‘I dashed over here and Bill and I rushed the com dome,’ said Doug. ‘Got them all. Their tactic relied on surprise. We were lucky. Another fifteen minutes and they’d have infected everyone. The med team has already dealt with victims. No problems.’
‘And the three in the bio dome?’
‘Ah, interesting. When we entered, we immediately irradiated John Dyson and Dave Morgan, then we heard Vicky Jones calling for us not to shoot. She was down one of the aisles. I irradiated a section of the dome near the main door, got her to stand in it and Bill kept the projector on her while I went around the entire dome irradiating all the plants, chicken coop, ceilings, the office and paths. One of the chickens passed out. Don’t know if that was an experimental infection.’
‘They infected a chicken?’
‘Think so,’ said Doug.
‘Vicky gave herself up?’ I asked.
‘Yes, it did. We mustn’t forget that it is one of them. It is no longer Vicky. We got it to strip out of its clothes, irradiated them too, and let it dress again. Completely clear. We’ve been holding it in the bio dome office waiting for your recovery.’
‘Why didn’t you just irradiate her?’
‘Well, it must know where the others are and what they’re doing in the Asimov Rille. That seems pretty valuable intel,’ said Doug.
‘Yes, I’m not thinking clearly. Hold her until Krishna releases me. We’ll tackle her then. You’re sure there are no other LRPs in Moonbase?’
‘Absolutely, Mark. We used the multidirectional projector in each open area. If there are any more, they’re in the bio dome office with Vicky. I have two Marines on guard with the brief to irradiate the door every ten minutes. It’s not a foolproof strategy, but it will do for a while.’
‘And further attacks?’
‘We now have exterior two-person patrols using one of the open buggies to circle Moonbase on a continual basis. When power gets low, they switch buggies. We also have a permanent two-person guard at each entry point plus pairs at two locations in the central corridor so that the entire length is covered,’ said Doug.
‘How’s the com dome?’ I asked.
‘Dave Morgan says it should be fully operational by tomorrow afternoon, but not all of the communication equipment will be fully operational for up to a week.’
‘That’s enough, I think,’ said Krishna. ‘Sleep you must.’
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
By the afternoon I was almost fully recovered. My wrist was extremely sore, but I could survive with ordinary dressings.
When I thought about what had happened, I was annoyed at Doug not setting up patrols from the start and not unpacking the multidirectional projector immediately. It seemed sloppy to me. If it hadn’t been for Linda voicing her concerns, we could all have been infected. Doug had realised his mistake and apologised. Was that enough?
Later, Anna, Bill, Doug and I made our way down the tunnel into the bio dome. Inside, Mikhail and Zoya were on guard outside the office. They were both seated. Zoya to the left of the door and Mikhail seated about three metres away facing her. The smaller projectors had a range of about four metres. We could see Vicky sitting inside the office.
Mikhail and Zoya stood as we entered. Doug briefly irradiated each of them.
‘There might be free bugs inside the office by now, of course,’ said Doug.
‘Okay. Get her out and check,’ I said.
Mikhail opened the door, told Vicky to leave the office and sit in his seat. Zoya kept her covered while Mikhail did a thorough job of irradiating the entire office and the doorway.
The four of us stood a couple of metres away from her and she regarded us coldly.
‘We know what you are,’ I said. ‘Presumably you realise we can kill you with these.’ I lifted a projector.
She didn’t answer.
‘What are you doing in the Asimov Rille?’ asked Anna.
The LRP in Vicky turned her gaze to my second in command but said nothing.
‘If you’re not going to talk to us, we might as well kill you. If you give us useful information, we could let you leave your host,’ I said.
‘And why would you do that? You would never let me roam free,’ said the LRP.
‘Better death for you than captivity, then?’ I said.
‘Killing comes easily to you. So far you have killed many of us. Are you not interested in discovering another intelligent species? Is that not one of NASA’s prime scientific objectives?’ it asked.
‘But when you take us over, you suppress our minds. It isn’t a symbiosis you’re seeking, but total domination,’ I said.
Anna surprised me by asking, ‘Can you release Vicky and let us speak to her?’
‘I can, but how would you know if it was her or me?’
‘An interesting question. Let her speak to us,’ I said.
Vicky’s body slumped in the chair, then recovered and looked around at us. ‘What’s happening? One of them got me.’
‘Vicky, what’s 238 plus 162?’ I asked.
She immediately replied, ‘401.’
Her body twisted in the seat and sat upright. Her eyes glazed and she spoke again, ‘That’s wrong. It’s 400.’
‘Yes, we are aware of that and all of our people know a number of special responses if asked particular questions once they were infected,’ I said.
‘I am not an infection. I am a living being,’ it said.
‘You are a parasite. You are imprisoning and torturing your host. I know. I experienced it,’ I said.
‘We can work in symbiosis too and have been doing so in the Rille.’
‘Do not harm Vicky. We’ll consider what we might do with you,’ I said and then to the colonel, ‘Lock her up again.’
‘Mikhail, Zoya, get her back into the office then irradiate the seat and area surrounding it,’ said Doug.
The four of us left the bio dome and headed back to the common room where we hit the multidirectional projector button to ensure we’d not brought any passengers.
‘So, the host is inside and can be released,’ I said.
‘What if it had learned about the question from Vicky and had known to add the digit to that question?’ said Doug.
‘Possible, but I do think we were definitely talking to Vicky. I looked carefully at her eyes and they’d lost that glazed expression we always see in the infected,’ Anne said.
‘Yes. I’m sure it was her as well,’ I added.
‘So, what do we do?’ asked Bill.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Does it take us forward? Is it any real help at all?’
‘It had a point,’ said Anne. ‘We’ve not only found alien life, but also intelligent alien life. That’s rather remarkable and the first thing we do is kill them.’
‘But they can take us over. It’s too dangerous to have any sort of relationship with them,’ said Doug. ‘The whole point of us being here is to destroy them.’
‘We’re putting off the inevitable,’ I said. ‘We need to find out what is going on in the Asimov Rille. Is buggy three operational?’
‘Yes,’ said Anne. ‘Wheel replaced and cleared of dust. Took some time. That regolith gets everywhere.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Buzz Aldrin, in his book, said that the biggest problem with living on the moon would be the regolith. He was dead right. It’s so invasive.’
‘He didn’t know about the bugs when he wrote that,’ said Doug.
I chuckled. ‘True. I want you, Pete and two Marines ready to leave at nine in the morning. Anna, you’ll command Moonbase while I’m away. Now, I want a conference with Neil,’ I said, and we all left the bio dome.
Talking to Vicky and knowing she could be freed by the LRP was a new development. I needed to know what Earth thought about it.