If he were a friend of Jake, willing to invent
some excuse to get a microscope here ... but it didn't matter. Friend or
foe, his death sentence would be equally fatal. And there were other
things to be thought of now. The little microscope was an excellent one,
though only a monocular.
Doc's hands trembled as he drew his cultures out and began making up a
slide. The sun offered the best source of light near the window, and he
adjusted the instrument. Something began to come into view, but too
faintly to be really visible.
He remembered the stains, trying to recall his biology courses. More by
luck than skill, his fourth try gave him results.
Under two thousand powers, he could just see details. There were dozens
of cells in his impure culture, but only one seemed unfamiliar. It was a
long, worm-like thing, sharpened at both ends, with the three separate
nuclei that were typical of Martian life forms. Nearby were a host of
little rodlike squiggles just too small to see clearly.
Martian life! No Martian bug had ever proved harmful to men. Yet this
was no mutated cell or virus from Earth; it was a new disease,
completely different from all others. It was one where all Earth's
centuries of experience with bacteria would be valueless--the first
Martian disease. Unless this was simply some accidental contamination of
his culture, not common to the other samples.
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