Classic Fiction by Hal Clement

Author:Hal Clement [Clement, Hal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

Mancini spent more than an hour at his rather revolting task before he finally laid down his instruments. Stubbs had not been able to watch him the whole time, since the Shark had picked up the other two unresponsive whales while the job was going on. Both had been infected in the same way as the first. The boy was back in the lab, though, when the gross dissection of the original one was finished. So was Winkle, since nothing more could be planned until Mancini produced some sort of report.

“The skeleton was gone completely,” was the mechanic’s terse beginning. “Even the unborn one hadn’t a trace of metallic iron in it. That was why the magnets didn’t hold, of course. I haven’t had time to look at any of the analysis reports, but I’m pretty certain that the jelly in the body cavity and the moldy stuff outside are part of the same life form, and that organism dissolved the metallic skeleton and precipitated the iron as magnetite in its own tissues. Presumably it’s a mutant from one of the regular iron-feeding strains. Judging by its general cellular conformation, its genetic tape is a purine-pyrimidine nucleotide quite similar to that of natural life—”

“Just another of the original artificial forms coming home to roost?” interjected Winkle.

“I suppose so. I’ve isolated some of the nuclear material, but it will have to go back to the big field analyzer on the Guppy to make sure.”

“There seem to be no more damaged fish in the neighborhood. Is there any other material you need before we go back?”

“No. Might as well wind her up, as far as I’m concerned—unless it would be a good idea to call the ship first while we’re out here to find out whether any other schools this way need checking.”

“You can’t carry any more specimens in your lab even if they do,” Winkle pointed out, glancing around the littered bench tops.

“True enough. Maybe there’s something which wouldn’t need a major checkup, though. But you’re the captain; play it as you think best. I’ll be busy with this lot until we get back to the Guppy whether we go straight there or not.”

“I’ll call.” The captain turned away to his own station.

“I wonder why they made the first pseudolife machines with gene tapes so much like the real thing,” Stubbs remarked when Winkle was back in his seat. “You’d think they’d foresee what mutations could do, and that organisms too similar to genuine life might even give rise to forms which could cause disease in us as well as in other artificial forms.”

“They thought of it, all right,” replied Mancini. “That possibility was a favorite theme of the opponents of the whole process—at least, of the ones who weren’t driven by frankly religious motives. Unfortunately, there was no other way the business could have developed. The original research of course had to be carried out on what you call ‘real’ life. That led to the specific knowledge that the cytosine-thymine-adenine-guanine

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