The Blob

Mission voice log 344.76

We reached our destination today. The planet is a wonderful sight for cryo-sore eyes. Though I couldn't stare at the screen long with my eyeballs feeling shrivelled, too small for their sockets. And I'm thirsty, I daydream of a clear, cold liquid running down my throat instead of the slimy, pink slush we're supposed to consume to reactivate our cell functions. Otherwise, we're fine. Speed-cyber-learning the things we forgot during stasis. It's exhausting and takes more time to gain the basic knowledge than we're supposed to have.

We knew this might happen. It's one thing to send a human body into prolonged stasis, but another to store its memories during this state of inactiveness. Early tests suggested the "wipe", as the scientists called it, would be temporary, and memories would surface after a few stimulating inputs to the brain.

Unfortunately, we've been in the pods longer than any test subject, so the prompting didn't work. Guess we're lucky the programmers instructed the Eye to initiate the reload of general knowledge in the worst case, or we'd all ended as mind-wiped idiots.

Now, reloading we are, at a brain-frying rate. The Eye allows us a pause every two standard hours to drink another pint of the revitalising slush, then it's back to the wires and uploading. Human history, astrophysics, engineering. Each of us gets a special treatment and is supposed to play a different role in the survey of the planet we orbit. I wonder about mine.

Mission voice log 346.79

The upload is complete. Still feels strange, being able to recall plenty of facts about human history but no individual memories. Doreen insists they will return, at one point. Though I'm not sure she believes it herself. She sounds like a rational person otherwise. We all are, or we wouldn't have passed the assessment for the mission.

Besides, there's no time to mourn our unknown loss, not with a world to explore and data to confirm. If all goes well, Wolfe will soon become a teeming human colony. And we are the ones to make it possible, forerunners, way-finders, true deep space explorers. Lost personal memories are a small price to pay for the honour. I think.

Time has arrived to launch landing probe A. As the team's designated specialist for environmental sciences, I'll supervise the procedure. Excitement rushes my emotion-starved body.

Mission voice log 348.84

The long wait for the probe's return is over: it rests in our hold and waits for clearance. The Eye insists on 24 hours of quarantine before I'm allowed to analyse the samples. I'm aware of biohazards, but honestly, the preliminary scan states the shiny container contains only minerals. No carbon, nothing suggesting organic matter. Would be an unbelievable coincidence if humanity encountered alien life on the first planet explored. I mean, what are the stats? 100 billion to one? Most scientists today don't believe in alien life. But the Eye insists to play by the book. Even if the instructions in question are basic programming by an over-enthusiastic science fiction geek back on Earth.

Mission voice log 349.87

Today, we opened the probe—under strict observation, wearing a full hazard suit. Doreen volunteered to join me. It's illogical, as an engineer this isn't her field. But I accepted, an additional pair of hands never hurts.

At first, I was disappointed. The sample container was almost empty, either the gripper wasn't adequate or the program glitched. Instead of several dozen samples, we got three, not more than a few litres of dirt. It looks like genuine, brown, ordinary mud with a few rocks strewn in. On the bright side, the water content is above 50 percent. Not pure H2O, but close enough to be distilled with little fuss into something drinkable. Our outlook for colonising Wolfe gains perspective.
After this confirmation, I scanned the other components, mostly minerals, nothing too special. Traces of a few rare metals and crystalline structures similar to magmatic rock on Earth.
The most exciting discovery is a silvery liquid resembling mercury. It nestled as a single big drop in the mud, not more than a spoonful. The scan shows a mixture of heavy elements way off our periodic table. This is amazing, but I had to interrupt research for dinner and our first drill for the landing in a few weeks.

Mission voice log 351.92

Continued my analysis. As predicted, most of the rocks contain minerals and metals we know from home. If not for the silvery blob, I'd say we found Earth's sister planet.
To split the liquid mass was quite a feat, but Doreen came up with an idea. She constructed a device resembling a miniature Guillotine. Now, we own eight smaller, pearl-like drops of the strange conglomerate. I tried heating one and was impressed how fluently it changed its state of aggregation from a thick, opaque liquid to an invisible gas. Oddly enough, it soon solidified in the upper corner of the test chamber—even though I hadn't lowered the temperature. Then I froze it, but it never reached a solid state. To cut it short, we ran every analysis I could think of. The HPL chromatography provided interesting results, and the mass spectrometry confirmed my first theories.
Doreen kept me company the whole day. I wonder what keeps her interested. But she's a good assistant so I won't complain.

Mission voice log 353.94

Doreen is dead, and I fear we—or I—made a grave mistake.
Today, when we came to the lab, our collection of blob-containers were empty save one. Somehow, the strange matter found a way to unify itself into one single, compact entity again. Also, it had grown to twice its size. This intrigued me. I believe it escaped by sublimation, turning into its gaseous state. So, we split off another drop from the mother-blob to run a few tests.

Doreen picked up the dish with the sample, stumbled, and the silvery stuff touched her glove. All went downhill from there.
Doreen's glove sizzled as she stared at it, eyes wide-open behind her mask. Then she screamed. I caught her before she fell, and laid her down on the floor, careful not to step on the blob gleaming innocently beside her. With her good hand, Doreen caught my wrist and pressed it hard. She never finished the sentence that formed on her lips.

"Oh Paul, if I'd only..."

Right then, the blob distracted me. It moved—slow at first, then with increasing speed till it catapulted itself back to the table and wriggled into the container with the mother-part. It actually threaded itself under the screw top of the glass jar.
A thump made me turn back to Doreen. Her eyes were already dull, and she didn't respond anymore. When I checked the table, the jar was empty.

We haven't found the alien yet.

Mission voice log 356.98

The last few days were hell. It got them all, I'm the last alive. It killed Marilyn in her sleep. The captain died trying to deny the alien access to the main computer, out of fear it might corrupt the Eye. I told him not to touch the thing, but he tried anyway, wearing his spacesuit for protection. It burned through the shielding like molten lead through soft skin. In the meantime, it had grown beyond the size of a football.
Janos was next. While I watched him die, he screamed names I'd never heard him mention before. Perhaps his loved ones, remembered in his last minute?

Now I'm alone, holding the bridge against an enemy I can't fight. The Eye is no help. I tried to disconnect it, to prevent the alien access to Earth's coordinates. But the Eye locked me out, declared me a threat.
On my screen, our destination planet already dwindles away. We're on the way back, back to Earth. Nothing I can do—except watching the enemy edge nearer at a leisurely pace. It's no longer a tiny blob, but an amorphous mass, in control of the ship and in no hurry to finish me. Why should it? I have no means to stop it or even send a warning home.

While I sit in the captain's chair, my feet tucked beneath me so it can't yet reach me, I wonder what Doreen saw in her last moments. She called my name...

And then, a silvery tentacle finds my boot. Suddenly, I remember the sunset, a warm hand in mine, the night before launch.

Oh my god, Doreen! I'm so sorry, my love, I didn't know...