We had. We'd been a two-man survey crew, mapping out new territory for the future expansion of the human race. On a world listed only as TR768-L-14 on the star maps, we had run into disaster. We found the planet unfit for human habitation, but not before we'd been bitten several times by things we never did see.
No infection had resulted and we thought little about it, until we were a good part of the way home. Gradually then we noticed a quickening of our sensory processes, a well-being of body too pronounced to be normal. During the next several weeks of flight, Zealley wrote a historical novel that I was certain would turn out to be a classic. I found myself mastering, without difficulty, higher math, which had always been beyond me before.
At the end of the third month we stopped needing sleep. During the days and nights that followed we conversed brilliantly on subjects that had not interested us before, and the depth of which we couldn't have fathomed if they had interested us. We were at a loss to explain the reason for the change, though we knew it tied in somehow with our stay on TR768-L-14, and probably with the things that had bitten us. The cause was of secondary importance; the marvel of the reality was what intrigued us. We looked forward with poorly restrained excitement to displaying our new mental and physical dexterity.
The Space Bureau authorities were every bit as impressed as we had anticipated. The medics readily found that we had been infested by a germ, but by a benevolent germ, a true symbiote. That discovery was followed by months of tests and examinations.
Between sessions with our own medics and laboratory men and various visiting specialists, we amused ourselves by showing our new abilities. At least a dozen times a day I had to put someone down in an arm wrestle. Even when they devised a way to pit two against me at a time, I had little difficulty besting them.
Zealley's displays tended toward the more flamboyant. One of the tricks he delighted in was taking a razor blade, and, while his audience watched with repelled fascination, cut a long gash in his forearm. For an instant the blood would ebb out, then quickly clot and cease to flow. The next day he would show them the arm, where a thin red line at the most would remain to mark where the wound had been.
Apparently Zealley's reminiscing had kept pace with my own. "It seems such a shame, doesn't it, Max?" he asked. He was genuinely sad.
So was I.
Test results and theories developed fast in those early days. The findings showed that the symbiotes repaired damage and faults in our systems and protected us against disease. It was even hazarded that they would prolong our lives indefinitely.