Extermination by Patty Jansen

Author:Patty Jansen [Jansen, Patty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Capricornica Publications

Chapter Ten

TARA DID NOT WANT to destroy all of Ken’s work. He had worked so hard for his plans, and hoped so much that he would have a big breakthrough. How happy would people be when they could grow plants on the outside of spaceships, saving themselves the trouble of having to control pests and diseases which always plagued crops inside a closed environment?

It was such an innovative idea.

Ken wanted to help people. Tara wanted to help people, but it was as if other people and fate conspired against her.

She was trained properly as a lab technician, and knew and recognised the risk. Contamination was real and dangerous. They didn’t know what they were dealing with or where it came from. Contamination was the scourge of this station and no matter how well they cleaned everything, it just kept coming back.

There was nothing to do but to destroy the experiment.

So the next morning, she came in early, went into the lab, and started putting the mushrooms in the incinerator. By now, most of them had collapsed into a heap of mush, many of them blackened and slimy.

When Tara pulled the trays out of the shelving unit, however, the trays that held the growing medium were spun together with slimy threads. It was hard to pull the trays out, because the threads went up into the light fittings that hung over each tray. And while the mushrooms were clearly dead, little blue specks of light glowed inside the gelatinous substance of the threads.

Whatever was that?

Tara grabbed a sample jar and scooped some of the material up. It was surprisingly tough and stringy, even if the material was almost transparent. She had never seen anything like this before.

She closed the lid, and set the tube aside for later analysis. She also took samples of the remains of the mushrooms, before tossing the mushrooms into the incinerator.

It was with pain in her heart that she turned it on. Whatever had happened to those mushrooms, she would probably never know, and it was another part of Ken gone forever.

By the time she could hear Ashley coming into the lab, Tara had finished cleaning up. She went to tend to the regular experiments and take her daily measurements.

She took the trays from the shelf and put them into the dryer so that all the moisture could be sucked out, she could grind up the samples, and she could start analysing them.

She then went and looked at the carrots.

And when she opened the temperature cupboard, she almost let out a squeal of surprise.

The little plants that grew in the tubes glowed. They had acquired that same phosphorous and blue-green glow that had also laced the mushrooms.

Was that some kind of infection or bacteria?

“What’s that?” a male voice said behind her.

Sure enough, it was Mr Fred the frog.

“Has this strange phenomenon now spread to the whole room? I thought I told you to get rid of the mushrooms.”

“I did.” She was not crazy.

“Is this part of the secret experiment as well?”

“This tray is, but the one over there is not.

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