D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,124

and assumed that the light seemed brighter to them after control room's gloom.

They descended a level. Here it seemed there were also some control posts, but they had been crushed in the most ruthless way too, so their purpose could be only guessed at. Here and there among the spoiled fragments dead cockroach mutants lay while their living brothers crept about lethargically.

"What if neither madmen nor monsters made all this destruction?" Eve asked suddenly. "What if it had been done purposefully?"

"By whom?" Adam grinned wrily, fastidiously trying to find a place where to put his foot. "Suicide terrorists?"

"Crewmen who have understood that this ship shouldn't return. Never should get to Earth... or any habitable planet. Therefore they have directed it into starless space, and then..."

"But what for?"

"So that what has happened here would not be repeated on Earth." She shrugged shoulders.

"Because of these creatures? No, ridiculous. Even if they are infectious, there are quarantine measures. The ship could be held in an orbit while scientists tried to understand the situation."

"And if these measures are insufficient? Probably, when they... that is, we...took these wretches aboard, it was done not to spread them all over the ship! You say that most of all this is at the second level from the bottom. Probably, our zoo was on that level–or the samples repository, or how it is called? And we were sure that no bacterium would slip out of there."

"Well, suppose someone has committed an error, didn't close a door in time, ignored disinfection. But it doesn't mean that this muck is capable of getting through the walls of the ship and the space vacuum!"

"I do not know. Perhaps the point is not in chemistry or the physical passage through walls."

"But in what?"

"Any remote influence from which our protections do not save us."

"Worms-telepathists?" he skeptically hummed but at the next moment thought seriously about this idea. "Necrophages causing an uncontrollable penchant for violence in larger creatures and thus providing themselves with stocks of dead flesh...and apartments." He remembered the crucified corpse of the woman transformed into the huge...ant hill–hive?–and that made him shutter. "Generally, such hypotheses explain much. For example, why do these corpses not decay here. If this fauna produces some preservative... But still, why destroy all the devices of the ship, leaving no hope for the last survivors? After all, if we survived and remained normal, the protective mechanisms do exist!"

"Perhaps they weren't assured that we remained normal. We were unconscious, and they didn't have time to wait till the end. But there is also an even worse possibility."

"Worse than flying somewhere into intergalactic space on a ship purposely deprived of all chances for a return?"

"Yes. If we didn't remain normal. If these creatures are already in us."

Adam stood examining his own sensations. He was half expecting to feel parasites gnawing roads through his to bowels, but felt only sticky cold fear spreading in his stomach. And this fear had no plan to disappear, irrespective of the presence of material confirmations.

"You didn't see the worm that had crept out of the guts of that guy," he said hoarsely, trying to convince not as much her as himself. "And those that have legs... They are large enough–we would feel them, if..."

"And what if they simply wait for their time?" Eve objected. "Larvae can be small. And they may not be as stupid as they may seem. They know that we are the last ones onboard. And they will let us live until we meet new potential carriers and transmit the infection further."

"All the same," he obstinately curved his lips, "it can't be that the humans, who had already learned to build the interstellar ships, weren't able to contend with just some parasites! And they don't have any real mind. I mean the parasites. You see, they don't even hurry up to escape from a foot, so that I have to look so as not to squash this muck! And how many of them have perished already?"

"Probably, it is difficult for them to adapt in this unusual environment. But some nevertheless manage to do it, all too well." Eve suddenly squatted, picked up a plastic shard and used it to move a pair of dead "cockroaches," and then overturned one of their living comrades. The latter torpidly stirred with no chance to return to a normal position. Eve, with a crunch, smashed it on a floor. "I cannot understand where such creatures could come from," she said. "Have you noticed that they have