Chapter 37: A Desperate Gambit
An eerie quiet greeted Captain Keith as he opened the airlock and entered Space Explorers Headquarters. The normally teeming halls were empty. In the silence, the hissing of the ventilation system seemed magnified to an ear-shattering volume.
Captain Keith moved as silently as a Plutonian ice-panther, his coiled sinews poised to react at the first sign of danger. His mind raced. His last contact with Explorer High Command had been twenty nega-minutes ago, and Colonel Ries hadn't indicated any problems. Clearly, that was no longer the case.
As he stealthily rounded the corner onto the main corridor, he saw them. Dozens of his comrades lay on the floor, strewn about like Centaurian ragdolls. Calling upon the medical knowledge he'd gained when he got his space-physician license at age 9, Captain Keith checked the pulse of one poor devil slumped up against the passage wall. Alive. But barely. Time, then, was of the essence.
Captain Keith flew down the hallway using every bit of speed that had allowed him to win the Epsilon V Mega-Marathon ten years in a row. His way was littered with Space Explorers laid low by whatever this intruder was.
Captain Keith's steely logic told him that he would find his adversary on the bridge. Whatever the goal of this invader, he reasoned, he would need to threaten those in charge.
Captain Keith paused outside the door to the bridge. He used his incredibly fine-tuned hearing to listen for any sinister conversation, any discharge of weapons, any sign of a struggle...but he heard nothing. He took a calm, deep breath and touched the contact. The door slid noiselessly open.
The scene on the bridge mirrored that he'd seen in the hall. Bodies clinging to life littered the floor. Colonel Ries sat slumped in his command chair. Carefully monitoring his surroundings, Captain Keith made his way to the colonel. As he reached down to check the old man's pulse, the colonel's eyes suddenly opened wide and turned upon Captain Keith.
"Cap-p-p-taaain K-k-eeeeeeeeeith," Colonel Ries hissed. Instantly, Captain Keith understood that these words were not coming from his commander, but from some other intelligence that was using the colonel like a Jovian ventriloquist.
"Who are you?" said Captain Keith, in his calm, firm baritone.
"Wearenot annnn enemy yyyyoooou canvanquishCaptainnnn," said the being speaking through his friend.
"Well," replied Captain Keith, "I supposed we'll have to see about that."
The colonel gave an ugly, rumbling cackle. "Nnnnoo, Captain. You cannotdefeat annn invader yyyyou cannottouch. You cannotdefeat annn enemy thatmultiplies exponentially by the second. You cannot destroooooyyy a foe that courses through men's very veins.
"A virus," thought Captain Keith. "I'm speaking to a virus."
With the speed of Venusian lightning, Captain Keith formulated a plan. His mighty arm flew forth and his steely fist fractured the nose of Colonel Ries. In the next pico-second, he pulled a sample vial from his belt and captured some of the stream of blood that poured forth from the old man's nostrils.
As the colonel collapsed back onto his chair, Captain Keith raced to his lab. "If my calculations are correct," he thought, "I've got about forty-five minutes to turn this blood sample into a cure. That's about seventeen more minutes than I need."
