of the growth was on the walls near the door, while on the control panel itself there were only small puddles of oily slime here and there overgrown with mold. On the walls and ceiling, however, a lot of quasi-cockroaches were creeping, periodically breaking away and falling to the floor. Those falling on their back couldn't recover and thus lay whitish bellies up, weakly moving their chela. "I'm about to vomit," Victor thought, though he knew already that it was not possible.
But the most important–the panel worked! It had no indications of purposeful destruction.
"Looks like we didn't get in here yet," said Adamson. "Probably it was more disgusting than anywhere else."
Linda touched the clammy seat of an armchair. When she took her finger away, sticky threads stretched out from it–and, having moved the armchair aside, she knelt in front of the panel. Screens revived, obeying her touches. Victor discerned a pimply chain of some complex organic molecule on one of them. Another screen, which broadcasted an image from an observation camera, showed something like a round pool filled in fat and viscous bubbling gook. "The protoplasm," thought Adamson.
"Do you know exactly what to do?" he asked.
"I have thought over the general virus scheme already, and will finish off the details now. This system has all the necessary tools."
"How long will it take?"
"Programming or synthesis?
"All process up to the end. Until we can blow up everything."
"I don't know. The minimum natural period of mitosis is about twenty minutes. We use catalysts to accelerate it, but all the same to infect the whole biomass, and then also to produce enough gas, requires at least several hours. Probably, days."
"Days?! We won't sustain it! I feel... I feel ITS power already now!"
"We don't have choice. We have to endure. If we kill ourselves or each other halfway, it will be necessary to begin again from the beginning.”
Something stirred in Victor's hair. He mechanically flipped it off onto the floor. It was a cockroach which had fallen from the ceiling. Adamson fastidiously crushed the creature with his boot.
He didn't know how long he had been walking up and down the post, biting his lips and grasping his hair, while more and more horrible waves of intolerable despair fell upon him. Linda continued to conjure with the panel. It was easier for her, as she was busy, and besides she was distracted by the pain of her burns. When it became especially bad, she purposely pressed on her charred fingers. Adamson understood that she suffered less than he, and felt hatred toward her for it. During one moment this hatred became so strong that he was just about ready to grab her and tear, tear her flesh with his teeth and nails. Instead he heavily punched himself in the face several times, until he felt on his lips blood running from his broken nose.
"How long still?" he shouted. "How long will you snail about?"
"That's it," Linda exhaled in a dead voice. "I have started the synthesis. Now I will run tests and will be able to tell approximately how long we have to wait."
Victor sat down on the filthy floor, digging his nails into his palms and pressing his temples with his fists.
"Hydrogen level..." Linda muttered. "No. It can't be!"
"What?" Victor moaned. "You were mistaken? All is in vain? I knew, knew that..."
"No. On the contrary, there it bowl loads of hydrogen! The whole synthesizer is filled with detonating gas. But it is impossible! Only the few minutes passed, no virus breeds with such speed!"
"Then the instruments are wrong."
"No. Not wrong... It seems... it seems… I know what happened. It's like with the rockets. We didn't remember that we have tried twice already. We have broken the panel to prevent the third hopeless attempt, but you nevertheless managed to make it work."
"You mean to say the idea of a virus also came to you not for the first time?" Adamson questioned.
"Yes. After all it is natural that we think out the same ideas over and over again. Only this idea wasn't hopeless. We just have to understand that we will succumb before the end of process. But it already went automatically. Our participation wasn't required. The main thing was not to disturb it–not to destroy all that is here in the next fit of despair, especially without yet having remembered what was what."
"So," Victor said in shock, "that means, we... that is, I... had hung you in a corridor as... a ‘No entrance’ sign?"
"Yes, by this