through the hydroponics, through the dry stores, through--
"Is there anything it _can't_ use?"
"If there is, I haven't found it," Hrunta said sadly. "In fact, I can'tsee any reason why it couldn't consume this ship and everything in it,right down to the last rivet--"
* * * * *
They walked down to the hold for another look at their uninvited guest,and almost wished they hadn't.
It had reached the size of a small hippopotamus, although theresemblance ended there. Twenty hours had elapsed since the survey hadbegun. The _hlorg_ had used every minute of it, draining the tanks,engulfing dry stores, devouring walls and floors as it spread out insearch of food, leaving trails of eroded metal wherever it went.
It was ugly--ugly in its pink shapelessness, ugly in its slimyhalf-sentient movements, in its very _purposefulness_. But its uglinesswent even deeper, stirring primordial feelings of revulsion and loathingin their minds as they watched it oozing implacably across the hold toanother dry-storage bin.
Wally Stone shuddered. "It's _grown_."
"Too fast. Bowman charts it as geometric progression."
Stone scratched his jaw as a lone pink pseudopod pushed out on the floortoward him. Then he leaped forward and stamped on it, severing thestrand from the body.
The severed member quivered and lay still for a moment. Then it flowedback to rejoin the body with a wet gurgle.
Stone looked at his half-dissolved shoe.
"Egotropism," Jenkins said. "Bowman played around with that, too. Asevered piece will rejoin if it can. If it can't it just takes upindependent residence and we have two _hlorgs_."
"What happens to it outside the ship?" Stone wanted to know.
"It falls dormant for several hours, and then splits up into a thousandindependent chunks. One of the boys spent half of yesterday out theregathering them up. I tell you, this thing is equipped to _survive_."
"So are we," said Green Doctor Stone grimly. "If we can't outwit thisfree-flowing gob of obscenity, we deserve anything we get. Let's have aconference."
They met in the pilot room. The Black Doctor was there; so were Bowmanand Hrunta. Chambers, the physiologist, was glumly clasping andunclasping his hands in a corner. The geneticist, Piccione, drew symbolson a scratch pad and stared blankly at the wall.
Jenkins was saying: "Of course, these are only preliminary reports, butthey serve to outline the problem. This is not just an annoyance anylonger, it's a crisis. We'd all better understand that."
The Black Doctor cut him off with a wave of his hand, and glowered atthe papers as he read them through minutely. As he sat hunched at thedesk with the black cowl of his office hanging down from his shouldershe looked like a squat black judge, Jenkins thought, a shadow from theInquisition, a Passer of Spells. But there was no medievalism in BlackDoctor Neelsen. In fact, it was for that reason, and only that reason,that the Black Service had come to be the leaders and the whips, theexecutors and directors of all the manifold operations of HospitalEarth.
* * * * *
The physicians of the General Practice Patrol were fledglings, newlytrained in their specialties, inexperienced in the rigorous disciplineof medicine that was required of the directors of permanent PlanetaryDispensaries in the heavily populated systems of the Galaxy. On outlyingworlds where little was known of the ways of medicine, the temptationwas great to substitute faith for knowledge, cant for investigation,nonsense rituals for hard work. But the physicians of the Black Servicewere always waiting to jerk wandering neophytes back to the scientificdisciplines that made the service of Hospital Earth so effective. TheBlack Doctors would not tolerate sloppiness. "Show me the tissue,Doctor," they would say. "Prove to me that what you say is so. Provethat what you did was valid medicine...." Their laboratories were themorgues and autopsy rooms of a thousand planets, the Temples of Truthfrom which no physician since the days of Pasteur and Lister couldescape for long and retain his position.
The Black Doctors were the pragmatists, the gadflies of Hospital Earth.
For this reason it was surprising to hear Black Doctor Neelsen saying,"Perhaps we are being too scientific, just now. When the creature hasexhausted our food stores, it will look elsewhere for food. Perhaps wemust cut at the tree and not at the root."
"A frontal attack?" said Jenkins.
"Just so. Its enzyme system is its vulnerability. Enzyme systems operateunder specific optimum conditions, right? And every known enzyme systemcan be inactivated by adverse conditions of one sort or another. Aphysical approach may tell us how in this case. Meanwhile we will be onemergency rations, and hope that we don't starve to death finding out."The Black Doctor paused, looking at the men around him. "And in case youare thinking of enlisting help from outside, forget it. I've sentplague-warnings out for Galactic relay. We have this thing isolated, andwe're going to keep it that way as long as I command this ship."
They went gloomily back to their laboratories to plan their frontalattack.
That was the night that Hrunta disappeared.
* * * * *
He was gone when they came to wake him from his sleep period. His bunkhad been slept in, but he wasn't in it. In fact, he wasn't anywhere onthe ship.
"But he couldn't just vanish!" the Black Doctor burst out when they toldhim the news. "Maybe he's hiding somewhere. Maybe this business wasworking on his mind."
Green Doctor Stone took a crew of men to search the ship again, eventhough he considered it a waste of precious time. He had his privateconvictions about where Hrunta had gone.
So did every other man on the ship, including Jenkins.
The _hlorg_ had stopped eating. Huge and round and wet and ugly, itsquatted in the after-hold, quivering gently, without any other sign oflife.
Surfeited. Like a fat man after a turkey dinner.
Jenkins reviewed progress with the others. No stone had been leftunturned. They had sliced the _hlorg_, and squeezed it. They had boiledit and frozen it. They had dropped chunks of it in acid vats and coveredother chunks with desiccants and alkalis. Nothing seemed to bother it.
A cold environment slowed down its activity, true, but it alsostimulated the process of fission. Warmed up again, the portions suckedback together again and resumed eating.
Heat was a little more effective, but not much. It stunned the creaturefor a brief period, but it would not burn. It hissed frightfully andgave off an overpowering stench, and curled up at the edges, but as soonas the heat was turned off it began to recover.
In Hrunta's lab chunks of the _hlorg_ sat in a dozen vats on tables andin sinks. Some contained antibiotics, some concentrated acids, somedesiccants. In each vat a blob of pink protoplasm wiggled happily,showing no sign of discomfiture. On another table were the remains ofHrunta's (unsuccessful) attempt to prepare an anti-_hlorg_ serum.
But no Hrunta.
"He was down there with the thing all day," Bowman said sadly. "He feltit was his responsibility, really. Hrunta thought biochemistry was theanswer to all things, of course. Very conscientious man."
"But he was in _bed_."
"He claimed he did his best thinking in bed. Maybe he had a brainstormand went down to try it out, and--"
"Yes." Jenkins nodded sourly. "And." He walked down the row of vats."You'd think that at least concentrated sulphuric would dessicate it alittle. But it's just formed a crust of coagulated protein arounditself, and sits there--"
Bowman peered over his shoulder, his mustache twitching. "But it doesdessicate."
"If you use enough long enough."
"How about concentrated hydrochloric?"
"Same thing. Maybe a little more effective, but not enough to count."
"Okay. Next we try combinations. There's got to be _something_ thewretched beast can't tolerate--"
There was, of course.
* * * * *
Green Doctor Stone brought it to Jenkins as he was getti
ng ready to turnin for a sleep period. Jenkins had checked to make sure double guardswere posted in the _hlorg's_ vicinity, and jolted them with Sleep-Not tokeep them on their toes. All the same, he tied a length of stout cordaround his ankle just to make sure he didn't do any sleepwalking. He wastying it to the bunk when Stone came in with a pan in his hand and apeculiar look on his face.
"Take a look at this," he said.
Jenkins looked at the sickly brown mass in the tray, and then up atStone. "Where did you find it?"
"Down in the hold. Our _hlorg_ has broken precedent. It's _rejected_something that it ate."
"Yeah. What is it?"
"I don't know. I'm taking it to Neelsen for paraffin sections. But Iknow what it looks