Judas priest! Was ever a man in such an ugh situation?

Langnes peered at the sheaf of papers in his hand. “I have drafted a report of our findings with regard to the, ah, space barnacles,” he said. “I would like you gentlemen to criticize it as I read aloud. We have now accounted for the vanishing of the previous ships—”

Helledahl mopped his brow. Tiny beads of sweat broke loose and glittered in the air. “That doesn’t do much good if we also vanish,” he pointed out.

“Quite,” Langnes looked irritated. “Believe me, I am more than willing to turn home at once. But that is impracticable, as Professor Winge has shown and the unfortunate Chinese example has confirmed.”

“I say it’s just as impracticable to follow the original orbit,” declared Bull.

“I understand you don’t like it here,” said Winge, “but really, courting an almost certain death in order to escape two more years of boredom seems a trifle extreme.”

“The boredom will be all the worse, now that we don’t have anything to work toward,” said Bull.

The captain’s monocle glared at him. “Ahem!” said Langnes. “If you gentlemen are quite through, may I have the floor?”

“Sure,” said Bull. “Or the wall or the ceiling, if you prefer. Makes no difference here.”

“I’ll skip the preamble of the report and start with our conclusions. ‘Winge believes the barnacles originated as a possibly mutant life form on the ancient planet before it was destroyed. The slower breakup of the resulting super-asteroidal masses gave this life time to adapt to spatial conditions. The organism itself is not truly protoplasmic. Instead of water, which would either boil or freeze in vacuo at this distance from the sun, the essential liquid is some heavy substance we have not been able to identify except as an aromatic compound.’ ”

“Aromatic is too polite,” said Bull, wrinkling his nose.

The air purifiers had still not gotten all the chemical stench out.

Langnes proceeded unrelenting: “ ‘The basic chemistry does remain that of carbon, of proteins, albeit with an extensive use of complex silicon compounds. We theorize the life cycle as follows. The adult form ejects spores which drift freely through space. Doubtless most are lost, but such wastefulness is characteristic of nature on Earth, too. When a spore does chance on a meteorite or an asteroid it can use, it develops rapidly. It requires silicon and carbon, plus traces of other elements; hence it must normally flourish only on stony meteorites, which are, however, the most abundant sort. Since the barnacle’s powerful, pseudo-enzymatic digestive processes—deriving their ultimate energy from sunlight—also extract metals where these exist, it must eliminate same, which it does by laying down a plating, molecule by molecule, under its shell. Research into the details of this process should interest both biologists and metallurgists.

“ ‘The shell serves a double function. To some extent, it protects against ionizing radiation of solar or cosmic origin. Also, being a nonconductor, it can hold a biologically generated static charge, which will cause nearby dust to drift down upon it. Though this is a slow method of getting the extra nourishment, the barnacle is exceedingly long-lived, and can adjust its own metabolic and reproductive rates to the exigencies of the situation. Since the charge is not very great, and he himself is encased in metal, a spaceman notices no direct consequences.