Behind him, Marcia watched too. "It's—alive," she said.
"Yes. Sleeping when we arrived, but it's alive now. Twenty years ago it ate the people of that Havelock, and then it became sluggish. Evidently it does not need much food, for all its vast bulk. It became sluggish and it slept, and when we landed we stirred it and it finished the job on that Havelock. Then it wanted us...."
"But alive?"
"Why not?" Burt said. "Part plant, part animal, it's warm with its own life. It breathes slowly, holding the thin atmosphere to its body, growing plants for photosynthesis when it needs oxygen, a perfectly co-ordinated being."
"So big, Burt. It's so big."
"Sure. On Mars the native life is bigger than on earth. Why?"
"Why? I don't know."
"Because Mars has a weaker gravity pull, being smaller than the earth. And here, out in space, there is no gravity to keep life down. A plant grows and grows as long as it lives, unlike an animal. This huge asteroid has been growing for ages, millions of years, maybe. What's to stop it? No gravity pressing down. Perhaps it can live purely on the mineral matter of the meteors which fall. Maybe it's only a seed, with food-matter stored up inside. Who knows?"