The next morning she suited up again and jetted around the netted debris, continuing her investigation. Meanwhile, Captain Fargoe approved Lieutenant Benden's preliminary flight data, and Ross continued his study of the EEC survey reports and the two cryptic messages that were the only communications from the colony world.

"If there is a life-form," Ni Morgana said tentatively in the week's officer's meeting, "its response time is far too slow for us to discern. There have been some anomalies, both in superconductivity and in cryochemistry, that I want to follow up. I shall begin a series of tests, slowly warming some representative samples, and see what occurs."

The next week she reported: "At minus two hundred degrees Celsius, some of the larger particles are showing relative movement, but whether this is driven by anomalous internal structure, or reacting to the warmer temperature, I cannot as yet ascertain."

"Keep in mind at all times, Lieutenant," the captain said at her sternest, "what happened to the Roma!"

"Ma'am, I always do!" The legendary "melting" of the Roma when the science officer brought aboard a metal-hungry organism was the cautionary example drummed into every science officer.

The following week Ni Morgana was almost jubilant. "Captain, there is a real life-form in some of the larger chunks from the cloud. Ovoid shapes, with an exceedingly hard crust of material, they have some liquid, perhaps helium, inside. They're very strange, but I'm sure they're not artifacts. I'm bringing one sample up above zero degrees Celsius this week."

The captain held up an admonishing finger at her science officer. "Remember the Roma," she said again.

"Ma'am, even the situation on the Roma didn't happen in a day."

In the process of leaving the conference room, the captain stopped and stared quizzically at Ni Morgana. "Are you deliberately misquoting something, Lieutenant?"

"Mister Benden!" The peremptory summons of the science officer over the comunit by his ear jolted Ross Vaclav Benden out of his bunk and to his feet.

"Ma'am?"

"Get down to the lab on the double, mister!"

Benden struggled into his shipsuit as he ran down the companionway, stabbing feet into soft shipshoes. It was zero-dark-hundred of the dogwatch, and no one was even in Five Deck's lounge area as he raced across it and to the appropriate grav shaft down to the lab. He skidded to a halt at the door, skinning his forearms on the frame as he braked and fell into the facility. He almost knocked over Lieutenant Ni Morgana. She pointed to the observation chamber.

"Funkit, what in the name of the holies is that?" he breathed as his eyes fell on the writhing grayish pink and puke-yellow mass that oozed and roiled on the monitor screen. The mass was, in reality, ten kilometers from the Amherst, but he could understand why everyone was standing well back.

"If that is what fell on Pern," Ni Morgana said, "I don't blame ‘em for shrieking for help!"

"Let me through!" The captain, clad in a terry-cloth caftan, had to exert some strength to push past the mesmerized group watching the phenomenon. "Gods above! What have you unleashed, mister?"

"We're taping the show, ma'am," Ni Morgana said. In reassurance, she prominently waved the hand she held over the Destruct button that would activate laser fire. Benden could see her eyes glittering with clinical fascination. "According to the readings I'm getting, this complex organism exhibits some similarity to Terran mycorrhizoids in its linear structure. But it's enormous! Damn!"

The organism suddenly collapsed in on itself and became a viscous, inanimate puddle. The science officer tapped out some commands on the waldo keyboard and a unit extruded toward the mass, scooped up a sample in a self-sealing beaker, and retreated. Lights glittered on the remote testing apparatus as the sample was analyzed.

"What happened to it?" Captain Fargoe demanded, and Benden admired how firm her voice was. He, himself, had the shakes.

"I should be able to tell you when the analysis is finished on that sample of the residue, but I'd hazard the guess that; with such rapid expansion, if it found no sustenance in the chamber—and there was none apart from a very thin atmosphere—it died of starvation. That's only a guess."

"But," Benden heard himself saying, "if this is the Pernese organism. . ."

"That's only a possibility at this point," Ni Morgana said quickly. "We must first discover how it might have managed to get from the cloud to Pern's surface."

"Good point," the captain murmured. Her faintly amused tone angered Benden: there was nothing remotely funny about what they had just witnessed.

"But if it did, and it's what attacked Pern, I can't blame ‘em for wanting help," said Ensign Nev, whose complexion was still slightly green.

The captain gave him a long look that caused him to flush from neck to a scalp that was visible under his latest space trim.

"Captain, " Ni Morgana said as she pressed the Destruct button and destroyed the remains of the sample, "I request permission to join the Pern landing party to pursue my investigation of this phenomenon."

"Granted!" Stepping over the lintel of the lab, the captain paused with a wicked grin. "I always prefer volunteers for landing parties."

Whoever might have envied Lieutenant Benden the assignment had different feelings once the details of the "organism" became scuttlebutt. A concise report from Lieutenant Ni Morgana was published to quell the more rampant speculations, and her lab team became welcome as experts at any mess.

Ross Vaclav Benden had nightmares about his uncle: the admiral, unexpectedly garbed in dress whites, great purple sash of the Hero of the Cygnus Campaign, and a full assortment of other prestigious and rare decorations on his chest, struggled against engulfment by the monstrosity of the lab chamber. Determined to do his best by his uncle, Ross studied, to the point of perfect recall, the EEC evaluation of Pern. The terse all-safe message by Admiral Benden and Governor Boll and Tubberman's Mayday were easy to memorize, the latter tantalizingly ambiguous. Why had the colony botanist sent the message? Why not Paul Benden or Emily Boll, or one of the senior section heads?

Although this was not Benden's first landing party command, he believed in checking and double-checking every aspect of the assignment. He wanted to be as prepared as possible for any and all hostile conditions, including omnivorous organisms and other enigmas to be solved or avoided, they might encounter on Pern's surface; also, he judiciously plotted an alternative holding orbit, in case they had to evacuate early, before the escape window opened up for their rendezvous with the Amherst. The landing party had five days, three hours, and fourteen minutes on the surface to conduct its investigations. To his chagrin, Ni Morgana asked for Ensign Nev as the junior officer.

"He needs some experience, Ross," Ni Morgana said, blandly ignoring Benden's disgruntlement, "and he's had some xeno training. He's strong, and he obeys orders even as he's turning green. He's got to learn sometime. Captain Fargoe thinks this could give him valuable experience."

Benden had no option but to accept the inevitable, but he asked for Sergeant Greene to command his marines. That tough, burly man knew more about the hazards that could embroil a landing party than Benden ever would. Having seen the organism Ni Morgana had unleashed, Ross wanted solid experience to offset Nev's ingenuousness—if that was the proper word for the boy.

"Just what were you like as an ensign, Lieutenant?" Ni Morgana asked, giving him a sly sideways glance.

"I was never that gauche," he replied tartly. True enough, since he'd been reared in a Service family and had absorbed proper behavior along with all the normal nutrients. Then he relented, grinning wryly back at her as he remembered a few incidents… "This sounds like a fairly routine mission: find and evaluate."