Nearly everyone in the Station was there, excited and stunned.

Doctor Cubbison appeared on the scene. "What's the reason for the general alarm? Has there been a blow-up?"

Zarias laughed mirthlessly. "There has been a blow-up. A bad one. New life has been born—new life. Something alien to our cosmos, something Nature never intended to exist here, but which we clever little people brought into being. Andersen was right last night!" His voice rasped higher. "Right now, It's in there in Main Physics lab! What is It? It's twenty-odd chunks of transuranic elements, formed into an organized body by linking radiation-nerves, by which it can think, feel and act. It's only newly born, It doesn't know much yet, but It knows that It wants to grow!"

Cubbison looked impatient. "Really, these dramatics—"

Zarias suddenly relaxed. "You're right. Just dramatics." He looked around. "We're scientists. We have a problem to deal with. And we've got to deal with it quickly before it finishes us."

"What real danger can there be?" Cubbison asked dubiously.

"You didn't feel those fingers of radiation groping at your mind?" Marie asked him.

Burris came stumbling back from across the Dome.

"I've checked the main telltale panel!" he said hoarsely. "All the canyons are going full tilt. Andersen must be operating them!"

Zarias spoke swiftly and coolly now. "The thing has been born and It wants to grow. And It will grow, using Andersen and Mathers and anyone else It can get hold of to create more transuranic elements, form them into a bigger and bigger body, until Its radiation-mind can reach even through the Dome's walls, even maybe to other worlds!"

I felt the full impact of horror, then. I realized that we had set the stage for the birth of a life of radiation and radiating elements that could not share the cosmos with our own kind of life.

"It can grow colossal, but It isn't colossal now," Zarias went on. "It's newborn, fumbling, groping. We have to kill It before It gets bigger."

"But how?" cried Marie. "How can you kill a thing of chemical elements and radiation?"

The Greek set his teeth. "We've got to get back into Main Physics lab and break up Its body by switching those elements back to 

 Prev. P 11/19 next