For a moment Lawton felt as though all sanity had been squeezed from his brain. Twice he started to ask a question and thought better of it.
Pumpings were superfluous when he could confirm Caldwell's statement in half a minute for himself. If Caldwell had cracked up—
Caldwell hadn't cracked. When Lawton walked to the quartz port and stared down all the blood drained from his face.
The vegetation was luxuriant, and unearthly. Floating in the sky were serpentine tendrils as thick as a man's wrist, purplish flowers and ropy fungus growths. They twisted and writhed and shot out in all directions, creating a tangle immediately beneath him and curving up toward the ship amidst a welter of seed pods.
He could see the seeds dropping—dropping from pods which reminded him of the darkly horned skate egg sheaths which he had collected in his boyhood from sea beaches at ebb tide.
It was the unwholesomeness of the vegetation which chiefly unnerved him. It looked dank, malarial. There were decaying patches on the fungus growths and a miasmal mist was descending from it toward the ship.
The control room was completely still when he turned from the quartz port to meet Forrester's startled gaze.
"Dave, what does it mean?" The question burst explosively from the captain's lips.
"It means—life has appeared and evolved and grown rotten ripe inside the bubble, sir. All in the space of an hour or so."
"But that's—impossible."