oh.  god.  am i cold.
i feel like shit.
cattle ranch!
right. fire up all systems.
where are we?
what the hell?
chaz, i've got something here on my security alert. a high priority from the computer.
computer, you have signalled a priority three message. what is the message?
what? why?
unknown! what do you mean?
oh my god.
if there is some kind of alien intelligence down on that planetoid, it'd be a serious mistake for us to blunder in unequipped.
hell, no! we don't know what's down there on that piece of rock! it might be dangerous! what we should do is get on the radio to the exploration authorities.  and let them deal with it.
look --
no -- that's atmosphere. cloud layer.
just a second. those aren't water vapor clouds; they have no moisture content.
atmospheric turbulence. dust storm.
locked.
engines off.
engine room, what happened?
has the hull been breached?
how long to fix?
well, get started.
not much help.
or something will be able to see us.
there could be a whole city out there and we'd never see it.
hello, faust!
how's it coming on the engines?
yeah, okay.
close.
10% argon, 85% nitrogen, 5% neon.  and some trace elements.
ten to the fourth dynes per square centimeter.
zero. dry as a bone.
not a one. it's dead.
yeah, rock particles. dust.
read you, chaz.
okay, chaz, i hear you. i've got you on my board.
hell!
found what?
i agree. this is the single most important discovery in history.
what killed it?
he died.
not they.  he.
 there was only one skeleton.
i don't even know what i'm looking for.
oh well.  you know me.
what would you say that was supposed to mean?
but why draw it on the wall?
this ship is full of cat hair.
here comes the dust again.
now what's wrong?
can you get them back?
well, there ought to be some way we can get through to them --
yeah, okay. go ahead.
yes!
hold it, i can't hear a damn thing!
go ahead!
you mean.  you've translated it?
well come on, come on! what does it say?
the computer just translated the goddamn message. it's not an s.o.s. it was a warning.
jay, we've got a problem. i was wondering if there was any way you could shortcut the repairs and give us immediate takeoff capability.
the computer's translated the alien signal, and it's kind of alarming.
it couldn't translate the whole thing, only three phrases. i'll just read it to you the way i got it: ".  hostile.  survival.  advise do not land.  " and that's all it could translate.
no.
we're not going anywhere.
we can't spare the personnel. we've got minimum takeoff capability right now. that's why chaz left us on board.
just can that crap! i'm in command here till chaz returns! and nobody's leaving this ship!
how many?
hey, can you guys hear me?
thank christ! we lost you! listen, there's been a new development --
oh no.
right.
here, chaz.
chaz -- what happened to broussard?
chaz, if it's an organism, and we let it in, the ship will be infected.
chaz, listen to me -- we've broken every rule of quarantine. if we bring an organism on board, we won't have a single layer of defense left.
i understand why you did that.
i guess i had it coming. let's call it settled.
would somebody fill me in?
look at that.
it's some kind of organ -- it's inserted some kind of tube or something down his throat.
i think that's how it's getting oxygen to him.
seems to have stopped penetrating.
i think it's fizzled out.
my god, what about broussard?
did it get on him?
look there, what's that stain on his lungs?
that tube must be depositing it in him.
hey! what about the film?
broussard had film in his datastick, didn't he? we can see what happened to him.
the same thing must've happened to the creatures on the other ship.  except they took one of those jars on board, and opened it there.
what common objects?
is that its mouth?
ugh.
for chrissake, open the main lock!
my god, it's lethal even when it's dead!
about four hours.
look, i'm not trying to rub anybody's nose in anything. the important thing is just to get away from here as fast as possible.
if we knew exactly what happened to the beings on the other ship --
yeah?
where did the parasites come from?
couldn't the pyramid have been built here by space travellers?
i think we better take another look at those heiroglyphs.
up one kilometer, jay.
engaged.
i'm altering our vector now; should give us an easy escape velocity --
we made it! damn, we made it!
with great pleasure.
that's the part that always makes me feel like i'm gonna puke -- when we accelerate into light speed.
we'll have to go into quarantine, maybe for quite a while.
are you in pain?
dell, what's the last thing you can remember?
do you remember the pyramid?
first thing i'm going to do when we get back is eat some biological food.
tastes like something you'd feed a chicken to make it lay more eggs.
you like this shit?
you know what they make this stuff out of?
i didn't say it was bad for you, it's just kind of sickening, that's all.
what dell -- what?
that thing used him for an incubator!
but we can't kill it. if we kill it, it will spill all its body acids right through our hull and out into space.
we won't need it then.
but if we haven't caught it in a week, then we have to go into the freezers anyway.
we have to avoid injuring it. what we really need is some electric animal prods.
even simple.
where's it coming from?
okay.
what happened to the lights?
oh, hold it!
yes!
where are you?
we're coming!
what's it doing, having a seizure?
now what?
hey, wait a minute! that's all our food supplies in there! we can't pump poison gas all over them!
you win.
this stuff's deadly -- i hope we know what we're doing.
now what?
where does that go?
are you crazy?
so the only question left is: who gets to crawl down the airshaft?
there. that's where it's got to come out.
that's a flip-flop gate to channel the air, but we can use it to trap the thing.
uh-huh.
by eating our food supplies.
it was horrible -- horrible. like a chicken.
dead.
it's monstrous -- it grew, like some horrible tapeworm. we were completely unprepared.
two down, four to go.
nothing.
don't count on it.
i think it's time we took a hard look at those heiroglyphs.
can you make out any pattern in all that?
i know it looks like a senseless jumble, but if you look closely, there are recognizable forms.
in symbolic form.  very stylized.  but if you stare at it, you can see some of the different creatures we've been dealing with.
and right next to it, that oval design with the markings -- it's a dead ringer for the spore casings.
so the next step should be --
this is all the same creature. we're seeing the different stages in its life-cycle.
you will notice, though, that there are no more phases. only four forms are shown. after that the pattern repeats.
 more spores coming.
how much oxygen did we lose?
i saw it. faust got himself jammed in the air lock door. his body held it open.
no, i had to seal off a whole section. we'd lose too much of our remaining air if we opened the connecting door.
poor kitty; puss puss puss.
no such luck. i saw it running down one of the corridors.
it was time for that a couple days ago.
i've got an idea, but you're not going to like it.
okay. first we shut down all the cooling systems on the stardrive engines.
right.  but it'll take a few minutes for the engines to overheat and melt down the core. in the meantime, we get in the lifeboat and leave the ship.
and the creature with it. we can make it back to irth in the lifeboat.
doesn't matter -- we're already at light speed. and when we get back to the colonies, they'll pick us up in the network.
our lives are more important. anyway, we can take a small amount of the most valuable stuff with us on the lifeboat.
yeah.  i forgot.
i think it's going to be almost impossible to drive it up into the lifeboat.
it's not going to work.
you know, it's funny -- this stuff we went to so much trouble to dig up -- this treasure, the paydirt -- it'll make it back to irth just fine -- even if we're not with it.
hey watch it!
so what do we do? do we ignore it and finish loading the explosives into the boat -- or do we flush it out now?
oh -- jesus --
i should hope so! and we'd better make sure it's pretty far from the ship when we blow it.
well, if we had some, i'd eat it. i'm starting to get hungry.
isn't "bait" the word you used?
who gets the privilege?
is it armed?
thanks for the thought.
and you'll let me know when you've got it coming this way.
kablooey.
hello? standard? hunter?
what did it do to you?
i'll get you out of there.
but i can save you -- get you to the autodoc!
what can i do?
kitty go bye-bye.
what'll it be, kitty? here -- how about some tacitum-35, ten kilos of it. this'll buy us an island on some nice planet.
computer! i've turned all the cooling units back on! what's wrong?
try a little of this, you fucking bastard.
 so it looks like i'll make it back to the colonies on schedule after all. i should be to the frontier in another 250 years or so, and then with a little luck the network will pick me up. i'm not as rich as i was a couple days ago -- but i'm not exactly broke either. incidentally, i did manage to salvage one souvenir out of this whole mess.
poor yorick here should go at least partway toward proving i'm not a crank. i wish it was him we'd met in the first place -- things might have turned out different.
this is martin roby, executive officer, last survivor of the commercial vessel snark, signing off. come on, cat, let's go to sleep.