Angry Moon

Chapter 11a

"The main lab is an ultra clean room," said Ben, showing Eddie into the changing room. "No contamination of any kind, not even hairs and flakes of skin, can be allowed in there, so everyone has to shower, scrubbing hard to exfoliate, and shave all parts of their bodies except the groin and head. We do that in pairs so each can get the hard to reach parts of the other. Then we wear skin tight breeches and hairnets under our cotton lab clothing."

Eddie nodded, staring around the gleaming white, porcelain room curiously. He'd accepted Ben's invitation to visit the lab where the spaceship was being studied and the whole group had flown straight to England from Martinique. The others had gone ahead while Ben helped Eddie to get through the strict security procedures. He was now wearing his newly minted identity badge which had the word 'Visitor' printed across it in big white letters. His finger still itched where the blood sample had been taken to get his DNA fingerprint, and he had to keep stopping himself from rubbing it against his trouser leg.

"So," said Ben, gesturing towards the showers. "Shall we get washed and changed? The sooner we get it done, the sooner we can go through to where it all happens."

Eddie nodded and began getting undressed, while wishing it was one of the women who was here with him. He grinned ruefully to himself. Grow up, you idiot! he scolded himself. It's not as if you've never showered with a woman before. Pleasure later. For the time being, stay professional. It would certainly be easy to remain professional in present company, he reflected as he watched the older man undressing on the other side of the room. Ben was one of those people who really should wear clothes.

An hour later, their skins red raw and itching from the razor and the exfoliating brush, they rubbed themselves with cream to keep flakes of skin from floating away into the air. "You do this every day?" asked Eddie.

"Every time we want to go through there," replied the other man, indicating the door opposite the one they'd come in through. "We don't actually go in there much, though. We have samples, scans and photographs, and they allow us to do most of the actual work in the labs upstairs. We only go in to where the ship itself is stored when we need to access the source material, and that might only be once every couple of weeks. Our first priority, though, the one thing we absolutely have to make sure of, is that the source material isn't contaminated. It could render invalid any test or experiment we want to run in the future."

"If it was buried in a coal seam for three hundred million years, I think it's a little late to worry about contamination."

"It was sealed all that time. One of the first things our predecessors did, though, was cut their way into it, letting air circulate freely throughout the vessel. Thankfully, they had the foresight to put it in a sterile, pure nitrogen atmosphere first. It's breathable in there these days, but every bit as sterile."

After the armed guards, security checks and barbed wire fences they'd passed to enter the building, Eddie expected to have to pass more barriers to go into the presence of the ship itself, but all Ben did was open the door and gesture for the new recruit to precede him in. Eddie passed through warily, his imagination conjuring up automatic defences that some overworked operator had forgotten to inform about him. Were there hidden weapons targeting him even now? Perhaps poison gas dispensers, designed to kill without releasing blood and other contaminants into the air. The sudden gust of air made him jump, therefore, but when he spun around he saw that Ben was perfectly relaxed and grinning with amusement. Just air replacement, he realised. Expelling the dusty outdoor air that had come in with them laden with spores and pollen grains and replacing it with filtered air.

The wind stopped, and Ben opened a hatch in the wall where two piles of folded cotton clothes were stored. They got dressed, and Ben handed Eddie a face mask, fitting another over his nose and mouth. Along with the hairnets, the rubber gloves and the cloth booties, it made them look like crime scene investigators about to enter a murder scene. Ben then gestured to another door in the far end of the chamber. Eddie took hold of the cold, metal handle turned it and pushed the door open.