Atoms
By James S. Dorr

"They died, sure," Commander Robertson said. He stood on the bridge of Admiral Yanov's own ship, the Padronix, wishing he'd had a chance to change from his tattered uniform. "The problem was, it wasn't enough. They still wouldn't give up."

"Now let me get this straight, commander," the admiral said. "You actually killed them. They weren't just wounded?"

Robertson nodded. He stared past the admiral's shoulder toward the image of a yellow mottled planet -- the planet he and his men had just left -- that hung in space in the forward viewscreen. "In the sense of clinically dead, I think so. These creatures are humanoid in form and, even if their organs may be different from ours, a fifteen centimeter laserblast through the chest, or a sonic implosion. . . ."

"I can understand that you're rattled, commander," the admiral said. He spoke for a moment to the officer at the helm, then opened a hatchway and motioned to Robertson to precede him into his quarters. "Perhaps something to drink. . . ?"

"Thank you, sir, no." Robertson closed the door behind them, then stood in silence, listening to the chug of the ship's ventilation system while the admiral poured his own whisky. He watched as the admiral set his glass down on a round, padded coaster on his desk, then fingered a hideous, spider shaped paperweight after he'd taken the chair behind it.

Robertson waited until, at last, the admiral motioned for him to sit too.

"Now, commander," the admiral said, "we can talk in private. I don't need to impress on you the disgrace a defeat like this causes the service -- unless, of course, we can find some way to turn it to victory in the long run. I don't want you to believe, either, that I necessarily blame you. What I do want, though, is for you to tell me exactly what happened while you were down there."

"Most of it you know already, admiral. I sent my reports to the fleet on schedule, except at the end. We landed -- a standard Marine assault team -- at 0700 the day before yesterday."

"For the record. This was fleet chronometer time?"

"Yes, sir, although it happened to be morning too where we landed. Not that you could see very much through the murk anyway, but, with our suits on, we found that infrared visors helped some. In any event, we weren't disturbed until we'd gotten our base dome set up and started to send patrols into the field. Lieutenant Hendricks' patrol, Group Echo, contacted the first native movement that afternoon at about 1600. He opened fire in the usual manner -- show of force to impress the enemy, but leave enough of them alive to go back to their chieftains and tell them how much damage we can inflict."

"And then what happened?"

"They wouldn't retreat. They wouldn't surrender. They just kept coming. Hendricks figured it must be some kind of tribal thing, the kind you get in some primitive cultures where they figure it's a loss of manhood or something if they give up, so they'd rather die. If that was the case, Hendricks and his men gave them their wish. They had no choice since, even though it was getting harder to see in the murk, they could see that the natives were carrying weapons."

"Your report of the morning after said something about the weapons, I think."

"Yes, admiral." Robertson wished he could loosen his collar, but, even with his uniform in the condition it was, he was still a Marine. "Hendricks wondered, as he took his patrol farther on, why they'd only had visual signs of the weapons -- why the telltales on their suits' metal-screens stayed at neutral. In any event, as the planet's primary started to set about two hours later, the murk got so thick that I had to order the groups back in. Shortly afterward, Hendricks found out."

Robertson paused. He saw that the admiral had placed his hand on the spider shaped paperweight again -- had picked it up and was stroking it softly. "When Hendricks got back to the valley the earlier battle had been in," he went on, "the visibility outside the range of their helmet lamps was down to zero. Then one of the men to one side of the group screamed and Hendricks turned to see natives attacking -- appearing, as if like ghosts, out of the darkness. These were the same natives. . . ."

"Different natives," the admiral broke in. "They just looked the same. This is where your reports start causing problems."

"No, sir. The same natives that he was sure had been killed before. They'd placed indicators around the site -- it's standard procedure -- just as they did along the entire route of their march. If anything had moved in or out of the area afterward, they would have known. Anyhow, they defended themselves, killing the natives -- or so they thought -- for a second time, and got back to base. But they'd taken casualties."

"I think you'd better have that drink I offered before, mister." Robertson looked up and saw the admiral nod toward the shelf where he'd left the bottle standing next to a second glass. He nodded back and got up from his couch, crossing the narrow room in two strides, and poured his drink neat. He tried not to think of what the wounded and dead had looked like when Hendricks and his men brought them in, some with their heads crushed through their helmets, others with suits and flesh torn open. . . .

He downed the whisky and regained his seat, then continued his story. He told the admiral what Hendricks and his men had found out, about how the suits' repulsers had failed because the weapons used against them had been made out of stone, not metal. He told him about how they'd buttoned up the base for the night and then, the next morning, he'd personally led all five patrols out to the site of the battle.

This time the indicators showed there'd been movement, all right. Delta Group found the enemy first by a small, winding river -- found itself surrounded by hundreds of natives, not just a handful like Echo had fought with the evening before -- and Robertson had the others close in, spewing death before them. He'd brought heavy weapons, just in case, and used them as well -- sonic grenades and the big, fifteen-centimeter cannon -- until the whole valley had been cleared of life. Then, leaving Alpha Group as a rear guard, he had the rest of his men fan out alongside the river, into the plain that lay beyond, to search for where the enemy reinforcements had come from.

"Then what happened?" the admiral prompted.

"We found what we wanted," Robertson said. "The native town -- more a small city, really -- and, even though the planet's atmosphere made it risky, we used our flame units. We cleaned the place out, turning it into a lake of boiling blood and charred meat. But then parts of the lake started coalescing."

"'Coalescing,'" the admiral repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I said, sir. As the lake cooled, lumps of flesh and blood came together. They formed back into man-like shapes, struggling to pull themselves up the hillside to where we waited. We fired again, driving them back down, and then Alpha Group called."

"And they saw the same thing?"

"More or less, sir. I'd said we'd used heavy weapons against the natives in the valley. Literally, sir, most of the bodies were blasted apart. But Alpha reported that the parts were coming together -- not always the pieces from just one corpse either -- and picking up weapons to fight them again. Alpha was trapped if we didn't get back to them, so that's why I ordered the groups I had with me to retreat.

"Hendricks and Group Echo volunteered to take the rear, to hold back the ones we'd tried to burn. He said he was coming up with a theory. . . ."

"And what was that, Robertson?"

"Well, he didn't really come up with it until that night -- when we took the prisoner. But the gist of it was that the humanoid creatures weren't the real enemy we were fighting. That the real enemy might not even be native to the planet itself, but some kind of space-borne group intelligence, like that pseudo-sentient virus we ran up against on Rigel II except, in this case, with actual volition. The thing is, though, once it had taken its humanoid hosts, it was trapped inside them. Even when one of the hosts was killed, it couldn't get out, so it had to do its best to repair whatever was left to keep itself going."

"That may not be as far off as it sounds," the admiral said. He put down the paperweight, then reached across his desk to a small control panel. He pushed a button, and Robertson watched as a screen built into the office bulkhead flared into life.

"Let's give it a couple of moments to warm up," the admiral said. "In the meantime, I want you to tell me about this prisoner."

Robertson nodded. "There's not much to tell, sir, that wasn't in the assessment I handed in when I got here. We managed to join up with Alpha Group -- what was left of it -- and fight our way through the natives we'd _thought_ we'd left dead in the valley. By the time we got back to base camp, it was already late afternoon, so I had the base sealed up for the night. That's when I sent my last report from the planet's surface, the one that said I thought I might need a Special Forces team in the morning.

"The thing is, sir, I still wasn't sure myself how much I believed of what had happened. Most of the men, except for Hendricks, were trying their best to convince themselves it was just a case of there being more natives than we'd expected, with maybe equipment malfunctions explaining how they'd been able to move new men in without our knowing. As for the lake of fire, none of the lumps had actually come close enough for us to be sure they might not have been something perfectly natural. Some trick of the wind, maybe, pushing the lighter stuff up into waves.

"Anyhow, we were sealed up tight under our base dome until about 0300 hours. That was when the first of the enemy breached the airlock."

"What do you mean, breached the airlock?"

"I don't know, sir. Again, perhaps, some kind of malfunction. The alarms didn't even sound -- there was no loss of air -- until the natives picked up our own weapons and started swinging them at us like clubs. It was hand to hand fighting then, and then I did begin to believe what I'd seen before when we'd burned the village. Some of the natives were from the village, scarcely humanoid any more, but walking collections of blackened lumps, seemingly strung together on frames made of sticks and rocks. Hendricks' theory, after we'd fought the enemy back long enough to get to the shuttle hanger and board our ship, was that the _things_ weren't even a virus, but something on the atomic level. Something that, in the case of the village, could have been partially released by the heat and blended into the sticks and things we saw moving now. But that could also reduce itself, with its host material, back down to individual atoms to pass through the airlock, then reassemble itself inside.

"Anyhow, we managed to retreat back to the ship -- we managed to blast off -- but even then we hadn't gotten completely away. One of the enemy managed to board us, to make its way to the control room unnoticed while the rest of us were strapped in. Then, when we were in space, it attacked me. . . ."

"Why you, Robertson?"

"Somehow it knew that I was the leader -- that's Hendricks' theory. Just the way that, if we found a single leader who resisted us on a planet we wanted to conquer, that's the one we'd go after first. Anyway, it attacked me with its bare hands, with its fingernails even, while two of the men tried to pull it off. But its skin kept shifting enough for it to keep slipping away every time they grabbed it until, just by chance, I managed to get away from it myself for a moment. Just long enough for me to hit it."

Robertson shrugged. That part almost seemed funny, now that it was over. "The humanoids must have glass jaws, admiral. I didn't hit it all that hard, but it was enough to knock it out. Anyhow, we figured then that, if the thing's attached to its host and its host can be kept alive, but nonfunctioning, we had it trapped. Kill the host, and then it can animate the remains, but keep it unconscious. . . ."

"That will do for now, commander," the admiral said. "You kept it under a general anesthetic you got from your shuttle's sickbay and, when you transferred it to us, we took it to the ship's hospital here. Now I want you to look at this."

The admiral reached a second time to the viewscreen control, then retrieved his paperweight, turning it slowly around in his hands. Robertson gasped -- the screen came into focus, showing the alien prisoner strapped down to a surgical table, its body cut open, its organs pulsing underneath the bright hospital light.

"Still alive, commander," the admiral said. "I wanted you to see what we found out. Doctor Bauman, could you explain it?"

The view shifted slightly to take in the Padronix' chief surgeon behind the table. "Yes," the doctor said. "In laymen's terms, the enemy's body is able to shift and regenerate tissue. If you'll look at the heart, for instance -- notice that it's on the right side in this creature -- you'll see where more than half of it had been recently damaged. Somehow, though, the creature was able to staunch the blood, then form new tissue. . . ."

"Would you say, doctor, that that's a sign that the creature itself is host to some kind of intelligent microbe?" the admiral broke in. "An atom, maybe, that's able to link itself with others into a group mind?"

The doctor smiled. "They're not the same thing, atoms and microbes, but I think I see what you're getting at. You mean something like that Rigelian virus, but that was a freak, the sort of thing you only run across once. It _could_ be something like that, of course -- all creatures are host to all sorts of microbes -- but I'd just say this thing has amazing recuperative powers."

"Thank you, doctor," the admiral said. "You know what to do." He turned back to Commander Robertson. "That, I believe, will be the official explanation. An enemy that can regenerate tissue to the extent it can take a wound that would kill one of us, yet continue fighting, would be difficult enough to cope with, don't you think? Still, some lower life forms can do the same thing."

"But what about Lieutenant Hendricks? He still believes. . . ."

"Chief Petty Officer Hendricks, commander. He told his theory to too many ny people."

For a moment, the admiral was silent. All that Robertson could hear were the blended cadences of the ship -- the ventilator, the life support system, the distant rumbling of the engines -- the reassuring, ever-present whispers of power. Then the admiral leaned forward, suddenly, slamming the paperweight down on the desk.

"Have I ever told you about this, Commander Robertson? Why I keep this thing in my office? Look at it Robertson. Pick it up."

Robertson did so. The spider shaped form was nearly twenty-five centimeters from front to back -- it might have been more than three times that size if the legs that folded underneath it were stretched out to full length. It was made of some kind of glossy black metal and great attention had been given to even the tiniest of its details. In fact, it looked almost too well put together.

"I don't understand, sir," he said as he placed it back onto the desk.

"It's a reminder of an extinct race," the admiral said. He lowered his voice. "A race that was already developing a primitive star drive when we discovered it. Spiders, commander, that's all they were, but intelligent and . . . dangerous . . . spiders."

"You mean, then, that if word got out about how really dangerous the creatures on this planet could be, the government might make us stop our expansion?"

"Something like that, or maybe even worse, commander. Maybe, if the government learned that there really _were_ intelligent atoms -- or, for that matter, intelligent spiders -- they'd want to change our mission to study them. They'd want to be able to use our ships to try to find out where they might have come from, like they almost did after Rigel II, and, rather than sending the military who'd know how to handle the situation, they'd want to send scientists and diplomats. Now do you understand, commander."

Robertson nodded. "Doctor Bauman's theory, about regeneration, isn't all that unusual, is it? I mean, like you say, there are lower creatures already that can grow new limbs when one is torn off, so there's nothing in that explanation to make anybody overly curious if we quarantined this planet. Is that what you mean, sir?"

"Almost, commander. The only thing is, we're not going to quarantine this planet, but sterilize it. Incinerate it into atoms, whether intelligent atoms or not, starting with what's left of your prisoner. In fact" -- the admiral got up from his desk and reached for his and Robertson's glasses -- "just about now, while I'm getting us refills, Doctor Bauman should be putting the prisoner into the ship's crematory."

Robertson nodded, accepted his glass, then felt a quick whiff of warmth through the ship's ventilating system. He nodded again as the admiral sat down, and heard, in the distance, the sounds of machinery coming to life -- unusual sounds for a ship in space. He sipped his whisky, trying to forget the sight of the creatures from the village, halfway incinerated themselves, blending into. . . .

He froze as the admiral's spider paperweight started to move, as its legs uncurled and it twisted around, the mandibles on its underside clicking open and shut. The spider kept turning until it faced the admiral's chair, then flexed its legs as it prepared to spring.

Discuss this story at our forum!
Send your comments on this story: Your Name:  Your E-mail:	Did you enjoy this story? Show your appreciation by tipping the author! Enter your tip amount. ($1.00 minimum) Then click on the tip cup!

| Home | Alternative | Fantasy | Science Fiction | Artwork | Editorial | Submissions | News |
| Discussion Board | Recommended | Merchandise | About Us | Links | Webrings | Archives | E-mail |