The whole communications deck was gone and the only radio on board that worked was the tiny panel set in control. The UVR was mangled and so was its crew of four men. Three tubemen had died in the tuberoom and I didn't know how badly Bat might be hurt. No one could enter because the place was hot. The thorium was gone and the sheathing on the pile too. I looked in on the Captain and scratched him off the list. Death from bends is not a pleasant thing to see. The Eagle was my command now. As pilot and Second Officer, I took over, for better or worse.
I returned to Control and gave the crew a quick rundown on the situation. Work parties were made up and the wreckage cleared away. The dead—the ones we could find—were wrapped in celoflex and consigned to space. I mumbled a prayer over them as they slipped out into the void. They weren't all Christians, but somehow I had a feeling that they wouldn't mind too much. There's something about the immensity of the cosmos that makes men relinquish their petty prejudices. And when I got back into Control and watched the tell-tales on the Geiger-Muller Counters down in the tuberoom, I said another prayer—for Bat Kendo.
I kept wondering why we had hit that meteor swarm. The normal chances of such an encounter are in the vicinity of a thousand to one. Bits of memory kept tugging at me, but I couldn't get things properly trimmed up until a call from Bat in the tuberoom furnished the key.
"Morley, there's a piece of those damned rocks down here ... and it's melting!"
Ice! Water! Weather-plant! The pieces of the puzzle began to fit now. The swarm was ice ... superhard ice ... tempered by the awful cold of the void. And the weather-plant in the hold—one hundred tons of it—had attracted it hungrily! The plant had more than just an affinity for water! It acted like a magnet! There had probably been nitrogen dissolved in the water, too, and that had added to the plant's attraction!
A sick feeling moved into the pit of my stomach and stayed right there. There was no way of jettisoning the cargo, and there wasn't enough fuel for a try at airless Luna! That meant....
I could hear the Venusian botanist's words echo mockingly in my ears. "... we suspect it can create its own weather!"
I knew real fear then. I looked at the great greenish globe of Earth that grew hourly larger beneath us, and shuddered....
Seventeen hours later we were into the ionosphere. My instruments warned that I had just enough thorium left in the pile to keep the Eagle up for another hour and ten minutes. The radar was gone, but the weather-plant was fat and healthy.