Asteroid Rake – Chapter 7

Before too long, a fairly large  ship, The Asclepius pulled up next to mine and hermetically sealed itself to my ship, airlock to airlock.  Typically, when 2 ships interface like this, there is no danger with opening up both doors of each airlock simultaneously, as the pressure difference between the 2 crafts will be negligible…almost all ships keep their air pressure as close to 101.3 kPa as possible.  However, when I opened up my doors to allow the boarding party access, I saw that The Asclepius was going through complete airlock procedures.  I was beginning to wonder what was taking so long, when their outer door finally opened.

When Officer Jespers told me to prepare for his boarding party, I expected a few people to come on with clip-boards and maybe a few hand-held scanning devices.  I wasn’t expecting the team to arrive in full bio-hazard suits with self-contained oxygen tanks.  One of the arriving team members…a member of the space navy, based on his plastic wings, greeted me and said, “please excuse the length of time for the airlock procedure, the five chamber system does take a while.”

Last I checked, an airlock only has one chamber with a door on either side.  You go in one door and pump atmosphere in or out (depending on which way you are going), and then go out the other door.  So I asked the obvious question:  “why so many chambers”.

I was told that the five chambers are not quite so crucial for leaving their ship, but they don’t want to take any chances with returning to to their ship.  Apparently their bio-suits contain the latest in flame-resistant and temperature controlling nano-tech.  As they return to their ship, in each of the five chambers, they will go through a “shower” of flames, and 400° C temperature to burn off any contaminants.  I guess they figure that the more flames they subject themselves to, the less possibility of taking any unwanted guests with them.

“Is this thing really that big of a deal?”

“We believe it is,” said a man who identified himself as Jespers.  “Captain Kelvington, do you have much knowledge of biology?”

I admitted that my knowledge of the field was rather limited, but I had, perhaps, a basic knowledge.

Jespers explained to me how many bacterium can protect themselves, when threatened, by producing spores.  These spores are very difficult to kill.  That is why, apparently, when I did my cleaning of the ship, they were still able to come “back to life”.

Then he asked me a rather odd question, “Are you familiar with the Portuguese Man of War?”

“Isn’t that some sort of jellyfish?”

“That is what many people believe.  They look a lot like, and they sting like jellyfish, but they are not in fact, jellyfish.  A jellyfish is a single organism, but the Man of War is actually a colony of many individual organisms that work together symbiotically.  The Exo-0001 as we are calling it, for lack of a better name, has some similar characteristics.  Unlike the Man of War, they can survive and reproduce individually, but, when they reach a critical mass, they begin to function as if they are a single organism.  Our researchers have concluded that each one, on its own, has no ability to reason, but does contain a limited “brain” of sorts.  When two or more are touching, they operate not as two units with two brains, but as one unit with one brain that is twice as “smart” as one on its own.  Once they reach this “critical mass”, about 100 billion or so individual organisms, they can actually achieve a limited sentience.  They can even work together to move around and, it seems, even make simple plans and carry them out.  At the point that they discovered this, our scientists did the smart thing and incinerated the contents of their lab.  Fire is the only thing that we have found that can kill them.  We can only imagine what would happen if they were able to reach earth and colonize to trillions or more organisms.  It’s not as if we can scorch the entire planet!”

The severity of my situation was just beginning to dawn on me.

~~

linked to Inspiration Monday

• asteroid rake
• microorganism
• reproduce
• science fiction
• sentience
• spore