MURIELLE’S detailed scientific report was a long time coming, but in the end copies of it, in both French and English, appeared in Vikki’s and Dr Ye’s inboxes. Vikki wondered at first whether to work from the French version, putting it through an AI-based translator: but on reading a few pages of the English text she decided it was well enough written to use. Evidently Murielle was better at writing English than speaking it!

But before Vikki had even started proofreading the text, Murielle came to her cabin.

“You remember I said I must ’ave a look at ze ‘Bala’,” she began. “If it really is a living creature, it’s my duty to learn all about it. Shall we go together?”

“You want to go now? Before Dr Ye and I have finished reviewing your paper?”

“Yes. If we really ’ave another life form here, I must find out what it is and begin my report on that too. I can do it while you are reviewing my other paper.”

So a little while later, having advised Alex of their intentions and obtained her consent, the two of them were making their way across the ice to the Bala.

“I should warn you,” Vikki said, over the radio, “that the Bala will want to manhandle you into its interior. It will use its tentacles. You need not be startled: it will not harm you. It did not harm Gustave, and it only harmed me because it did not realise I was wearing a space-suit that could be punctured. It’s not much worse than going through spaceport security,” she added. This last was a little lie, but Vikki wanted to get her own back on Murielle for being so pushy. Let her get scared out of her wits for once!

Sure enough, once they were standing outside the ‘doorway’ and Vikki had dutifully prodded the skin, the aperture appeared and a tentacle coiled out and wrapped itself around Murielle. She squealed and wriggled, but the tentacle firmly and with determination pulled her inside. Vikki followed, again remembering in time to switch on her chest lamp.

“That was very ’orrid,” complained Murielle over the radio, once she had been released.

“I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped,” was Vikki’s reply. “Just wait.”

The pressure in the chamber built up again, and the text appeared.

◄ Welcome. And I am sorry I had to handle you in that way, newcomer: it was necessary to check you over. You may remove your space suits. You wish to ask me more questions?

“I certainly do,” exclaimed Murielle, once she had recovered from her shock—which took less time than it had with Gustave. She had copied Vikki in removing her helmet.

“Use the keyboard,” said Vikki, pointing. “Just type your quest­ion.” So Murielle peeled off her gloves and started typing:

► Are you really a living creature, or are you a robot?

◄ I am a living being, just as you are. What makes you think I am a robot?

► It seems so strange, that you can live in a vacuum, without food or anything.

◄ Why do you think I do not take in food?

“I need to check this out,” Murielle whispered to Vikki. “I am not convinced this is a living being.” And before Vikki could utter a word, she had whipped a small plastic bag and a scalpel out of her backpack.

“Murielle—wait!” yelled Vikki. But she could not stop her. Murielle had deftly sliced off a small sliver of tissue, about twenty centimetres long by ten wide, from the wall of the chamber, and slipped it into her bag.

“No, Murielle! We should have asked—” shouted Vikki, but she got no further. All sorts of things were happening at once. Fissures in the walls appeared all around them. A riot of tentacles emerged, some of them fingered, but some of them clawed. Suddenly Vikki realised that she was gasping for air.

“Mure! We’re losing air!” she screamed, but her voice barely carried in the thinning air. She reached for her helmet at the same time, slammed it down on the collar of her suit as quickly as she could, and twisted it. To her relief, it latched first time, and she took deep breaths as the helmet filled with air once again. But Murielle was struggling. She had managed to put on her gloves, but could not reach her helmet since the tentacles had pinioned her arms. Vikki made a grab for it and tried to attach it to Murielle’s collar, but a tentacle wrapped around her and pulled her back. Murielle’s face was turning blue, and blood was starting to well up at her nose and around her eyes and ears.

“No! NO!!” shrieked Vikki over the radio, but to no avail. She was pushed out of the ‘doorway’ by the tentacle, and deposited on the ice outside. The aperture shut instantly. Vikki hammered on the Bala’s skin, trying to induce it to open up again, but even as she did so the texture changed. It was now that of friable frozen snow, not the skin she was used to. Vikki was numb with shock, and she barely noticed that her legs were buckling under her and she was sinking slowly face down on the ice. With her last breath before she lapsed into a dead faint, she cried out “Help! HELP!!”

---§§§---

“Lucky we got to you this time, before your air ran out.” The voice sounded faint and indistinct in Vikki’s ringing ears, but it was calm­ing and reassuring. She tried opening her eyes, but all she could see was a blur. She shut them again, and winced as she felt some sort of cold liquid dropping onto her eyelids. But when she opened her eyes again, she could see more clearly. The buzzing in her head had also subsided.

Dr Ye was standing over her.

“You’ll pull through all right—but we couldn’t find Murielle. Where is she, do you know?”

“Oh, Dr Ye!” Vikki moaned faintly, “I think she’s still inside the Bala. We were trapped—she was, I barely got out.”

“Inside? We searched everywhere. Alex, Hal, Gustave, Paul, Joachim—they’re all out there, scouring the place like hell. Digging into the mound—the Bala. It’s just like a pile of snow—it can’t be a living being. But it’s a hell of a hard job digging into it. They’ll go on until they start running out of air: then they’ll come back, re-charge, and go out for another sortie. We’ll find her: don’t you worry.”

“Dr Ye,” said Vikki, more or less composed now, “I think she will have asphyxiated. We were suddenly out of air: the Bala just depressurised the chamber without warning. I managed to get my helmet on, but Murielle couldn’t reach hers. Last I saw of her, she’d started bleeding, probably from vacuum exposure. And was turning blue. I’m very afraid…”

“There’s still hope, Vikki—but we’ll get her back, dead or alive. What happens if we lose her—I dare not think. But I think the search party are coming back now.”

They could hear the airlock cycling, and snippets of conversation. Vikki pushed herself out of bed, ignoring Dr Ye’s protests, and shuffled woozily towards the suit lockers. The rest of the crew were there, plugging their space-suits into re-charge stations.

“Find anything?” she ventured, weakly.

“Not yet,” replied Gustave. “That Bala—it’s just turned into a regular snowdrift again. Damned tough to dig into: we’ve not made much progress. If only we had our digger—the backhoe. But it’s still in pieces: I didn’t ask for it to be assembled: didn’t think we’d be using it around here.

“But you shouldn’t be up, Vikki. Dr Ye said—”

“Damn the doctor! I need to know. It was I that was the last one with Murielle. Why can’t I help with the search?”

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“Absolutely not,” intervened Alex. “You just go back to sick-bay, Vikki. It’s our job now.”

Vikki complied. But she was restless. She found her strength gradually returning. Why couldn’t she be up and about? She waited until Dr Ye was called out of the room, then slipped out of bed. She made her way to the suit lockers: luckily there was no-one there. It would take about half an hour for the others’ space-suits to be re-charged: she had time. She took out her own suit—fully charged—wriggled into it, fastened her helmet, worked the airlock, and was away.

She’d gone about ten metres in the direction of the Bala when she noticed the anomaly.

The Bala wasn’t there any more.

Vikki was thunderstruck. Had the crew managed to dig away the entire ‘drift’? But no: Gustave had just told her they’d made little progress. So maybe the Bala had ‘taken off’—with Murielle still inside it?

She could see something small and indistinct, out on the ice at the exact spot where the Bala had been. Something that had been left behind. She must go and investigate. She’d get there before the others caught her.

As she came nearer, she could make out what the object was.

It was a space-suit.

A space-suit torn in several places. But she could make out the words Dr Murielle d’Anterre written across the chest. The helmet, smashed, was about three metres further on. And there was some­thing else, some ten metres beyond that. A pile of elongated white objects. Vikki took them at first for a pile of ice crystals.

They were bones. Among them was a human skull.

Vikki turned away. She was gagging and retching. Throwing up in a space-suit is never a good idea, but she couldn’t stop herself. She shut her eyes and tried not to breathe in the foul stench. Her visor was smeared with vomit and she couldn’t see a thing. She stumbled about for a few moments, then sank down to the ice once again. All went black…

---§§§---

Alex, Gustave, Hal, and Dr Ye were all standing around her. She was lying on a bed in sick-bay, and had been cleaned up and given a clean jumpsuit. That was a relief. But then she remembered what she’d seen, and burst into tears.

“Well, you sure are the one for narrow escapes, Vikki,” said Alex, more kindly than expected. “But of course, we’ve got big problems now. I’ve sent a message to Earth via Ceres: we’ll be getting our instructions direct from SSSA directorate—but it almost certainly looks like mission abort. I’ll get a definite answer in about four hours. We can’t carry on, not after this tragedy.”

“So it’s true—about Murielle?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Dr Ye. “I’m still running the DNA test, but there isn’t any doubt that they’re her remains. And of course, SSSA will want to run a full enquiry once we get back to Earth. You’ll be questioned intensively. Are you up for that?”

“No matter whether she’s up for it or not, she’s got to face it,” put in Alex. “I just hope it doesn’t turn into a murder or manslaughter enquiry. For the record, Vikki, I, and all the other crew, firmly believe in your innocence—that what happened wasn’t your fault. It’s just that this alien—this ‘Bala’—we just didn’t take it seriously enough.”

“I still feel I’m to blame,” wailed Vikki. “I shouldn’t have taken her to—to that thing. I didn’t think it would turn against us. B-but—”

“But what, Vikki?”

“Maybe it was what she did. She cut a slice out of the Bala. Wanted a sample to test—see if it really was living tissue, I guess.”

“She did what?”

“As I said: she cut some of the Bala’s tissue away. She had a scalpel and a plastic bag with her.”

“Are you sure you saw that?”

“Yes, I’m positive. Off the wall of our chamber. It was just after that, things went crazy.”

“Had it not occurred to either of you that this Bala might feel pain?” asked Dr Ye.

“It certainly seems that way to me—now. At the time, I just tried to stop her. But I wasn’t quick enough.”

“If I just stuck a scalpel into you for no reason, Vikki, wouldn’t you react?” continued Dr Ye. “Wouldn’t you try to stop me?”

“Of course I would. I see it all now. Murielle hurt the Bala, and it hit back. It killed her.”

“Damn right it hit back,” said Alex. “This puts a whole new complexion on the situation. You’ll have to repeat all you’ve told us at the SSSA enquiry, Vikki. It’s important.”

“I will. I promise. So you think we’ll be ordered back to Earth straight away?”

“I’ll know in a few hours. It’ll be a long trip: Earth’s badly placed for us at present. How we manage it: that’ll be Joachim’s decision. Probably several stopovers. In the mean time, everyone can pack their belongings and make sure all files are saved and archived.”

---§§§---

Vikki was restless. She’d packed her meagre possessions—all but one. She still had the file from Murielle in her inbox: the report on the ‘Archaea’. She supposed she was still tasked with peer-reviewing it—but she couldn’t bear to even look at it. It can wait.

She badly wanted Hal’s company, but he was busy out at the drilling rig, dismantling it.

There was one thing she needed to do. Survivor’s guilt was overwhelming her: why hadn’t it been she whom the Bala had some­how sucked all the flesh off? She’d been the insubordinate one. If she hadn’t investigated what they thought was just a hummock, in the first place, Murielle would still be alive. The fact that she’d been at odds with Murielle on some occasions made no difference: she still felt responsible and remorseful.

She took a treasured possession of hers that she hadn’t packed. It was a small Russian Orthodox cross: a parting gift from her parents who were devout churchgoers, given to her just before she left Earth. No matter that she was an unbeliever: it was still precious to her. She looked at it closely. Made of ebony, it was little more than twenty centimetres high, with its three crossbeams, the lowest one slanted in the Russian tradition. A perfect piece of craftsmanship. And she knew what to do.

She suited up and cycled the airlock. No-one tried to stop her: everyone else was too busy. She slowly made her way to the place where the Bala had been. There was a slight depression in the ice marking the outline of the alien. All the debris had been cleared away, but she remembered the exact spot where Murielle’s remains had lain. Kneeling down, she planted the cross in the ice, using a small hammer from her backpack to drive it home. Then she stood back and crossed herself in the Orthodox fashion, as she’d been taught as a child.

She had no idea whether Murielle had been at all religious, and if so she would probably have been Roman Catholic—but no matter.

“Farewell, Murielle. I’m so sorry I deserted you. May you rest in peace.”

She stood awhile thinking about events, and as she did so tears welled up in her eyes. In the low gravity the tears clung to her eyelashes, and in her space-suit she could not rub her eyes to get rid of them. She shook her head and blinked several times, and that helped to clear her vision somewhat. She looked around her, and then she noticed it.

There was something strange about the ice at the exact centre of the Bala’s impression.

---§§§---

“I’ve got the instructions from Earth. We evacuate as soon as we’re ready: in about six hours’ time. Joachim will provide the details.”

“No, Alex, please, can we wait a little longer? I’ve just found something really interesting.” Vikki had just rushed in to join the meeting, having bounded back from the Bala site as fast as she could. She was still wearing her space-suit.

“Not another alien, is it?” asked Alex, visibly annoyed at the inter­ruption.

“No no, nothing as spectacular as that. But someone must really come with me and inspect the Bala site. Hal, especially: this will interest him no end. Can I at least take him to have a look?”

“If you can be there and back, and still be in good time for our departure, then all right, you can go. But take care. And don’t be late!”

“Thanks a lot, Alex. Come on Hal, suit up and come with me. I’ve something to show you.”

It did not take long for the two of them to reach the Bala site. Vikki led Hal to the exact centre of the impression, and pointed.

There were three holes in the ice, each about ten centimetres in diameter, arranged in an exact equilateral triangle about fifty centi­metres to a side.

“Not made by us,” was Hal’s first remark over the radio. “You know full well I haven’t been drilling anywhere near here. Not that I could have, with that Bala creature sitting right on top of this spot, anyway. Also, I haven’t been using a drill big enough to make those holes. But they certainly don’t look natural.”

“Then they were made by the Bala,” replied Vikki. “That’s the obvious conclusion isn’t it? Perhaps it too was drilling through the ice to get at the water beneath. Perhaps that’s how it was feeding itself. And perhaps there’s something down there. We have to find out!”

“Let’s go back to base. I’ll have a word with Alex. You’re right: this looks very interesting. I’m sure two or three days’ delay won’t unduly mess up our flight schedule.”