VIII
Etta was the first who got hit by the strange disease. Many followed: the engine room technicians, two soldiers, Callum, Doctor O’Leary and two of three pilots. The symptoms were always the same: fever, hallucinations, collapsing. It was considered a sabotage at first, then virus, finally a bacterial infection. None of the tests resulted in finding microbes, though. After a long search doctor Xiao recognized the fungus that was fit for a cause. It was a rare, artificially bred species, which must have been taken on board by accident.
“How could that happen?” The captain was worried. “What do we do now? We cannot use the fungicide, it would destroy all our colonies, and we cannot breathe that in!”
“Let’s face it, we cannot get rid of it,” the doctor said in a flat voice. “We can onl
