I stepped through into the shaft. The damage had to be ascertained, for the three lifeships would never take us all the way into Mars. They were not atomic and their range was sharply limited ... five hundred thousand miles at most.
The remains of the asteroid was a congealed mass filling the lower end of the shaft, and bits of machinery and shards of plating were scattered about the deck. The tubemen who had been in the shaft at the time of collision might have been the charred lumps stuck to the wallplates ... I didn't want to know.
The pile itself had been ripped open in one place, and a threatening glow emanated from the torn place setting our geigs whirring. I knew we could stand the radiation in small dosages, since our suits were insulated. But not for long. Repairs had to be made quickly ... if they could be made at all.
Using the pieces of plating that lay about, Holcomb, Swanson and I set about mending the break with the torch.
That was the first time I became conscious of the strangeness. Not many men even today have looked into a plutonium pile. It was eery, that light within. It was like ... well ... like the essence of life. Mindless, unknowing, but vibrantly alive beyond any human comparison.
The break was almost healed when the ... the thing ... happened. I don't know of any other way to express it. The slow rotation of the ship brought the hole in her side into line with the Sun ... and for a long moment the brilliant light burned down on us ... and into the pile.
In that timeless minute I felt the interplay of forces greater than the human mind can conceive. The pile and the Sun glared at one another. There is no other way it can be said. They _looked_ at each other ... and something happened. The Sun called to that mindless life that was the essence of Clem ... and she answered! She did! And all the others felt it too! In that instant the atomic fire in Clem's heart ... that fire spawned of the Sun ... awoke! And there was _oneness_!
The sunbeam passed and darkness fell once again in the shaft. All of us stood about in silence. All of us convinced of what we had seen and felt, and yet each afraid to give voice to it. Colloidal life is too vain, somehow, to admit another, more vital sort of life into our neat little cosmos. Even when the proof of it happens before your eyes, you pass it off as ... imagination. We did. Or tried. The pile subsided into a sullen glow, and we pushed the thing from our minds. We had _seen_ nothing. And men in danger are sometimes confused. That's the way we rationalized it.