Titans of Chaos

He created metallic plant-mollusk creatures that looked like green clams. They adhered to theouter surface of Vanity's ship, perfectly happy in the airlessness, and multiplied until, at the end offive days, they covered every square inch. Victor said they were iron-based life-forms that couldabsorb and block dangerous radiation, and protect us from the reentry heat of the Martianatmosphere. Vanity doubted the laws of nature inside the ship would allow for radiation, butQuentin thought that Lucretius-theory might permit small, fast-moving atomies of fire-essence toexist, so I ruled in favor of Victor.

The portholes were occluded by clams, which bothered everyone but Victor (who doesn't getbothered) and me (who doesn't need portholes). Victor and Quentin designed a light source thatlooked like a basin of burning water, which also fed oxygen and hydrogen into the littleair-atomies. Vanity had to green-stone the basin so that its rim formed another boundary for yet athird set of laws of nature.

There was enough lumber left over from the wreckage of the tower to build two crude platforms,one above the other, amidships, to divide our cylinder into three chambers. Victor glued thelumber together with a resin he secreted from an orifice that, shall we say, made the vomiting upof green clams look in contrast like a wholesome process.

This timber was too bulky to fit in our Jules Verne-style brass airlock, so my job was to reachthrough the walls and pull the lumber inside. The tower came with a chamber pot, and Ivolunteered to empty it overboard, which I could do without touching the hull. When the ship wasunder thrust, the stern became floor. With our lamp hanging in the bow, the third chamber wasdark and private enough, even with all the light leaking through the crudely glued floorboards, toserve as the head.

Victor broke the remaining pieces of the tower into small bits, too small to survive reentry heatand reach the ground in lumps, once their orbit decayed.

And yes, the ship could maintain one-g for two days.

We spent the time telling each other ghost stories. Quentin's were the best.

The fourth world out from Sol swelled in my vision, red as rust, lifeless as a skull, and capped withdry ice at the poles. It was beautiful.

You are wondering how the Dark Mistress prevented her troops from going stir-crazy when lockedin a large coffin for nine days. Well, keep in mind our background: We were used to confinement,to boring assignments, to grueling schoolwork.