The Taking

life."
        Molly knew that on the distant world from which it had come, this fungus had been as natural and unremarkable in its environment as a dandelion in an earthly field. Reason did not allow her to attribute a moral value to it any more than she could rationally ascribe conscious intention to a carrot.
        Nevertheless, judging only by the evidence of her eyes, she felt that this thing was profoundly malignant. On an intuitive level, she knew that it harbored malice, that in some strange way it dreamed of violence, as a trap-door spider might dream of sucking the juices from the beetle that sooner or later would fall into its lair, though this thing dreamed of cruelty with a glee that no spider could ever experience, with a ferocity that transcended nature. On a level even deeper than intuition, in that realm of belief that is of the heart rather than of the mind, and might be called faith, she had no doubt whatsoever that this life form, whether fungus or not, whether plant or animal or something between, was not just poisonous but evil.
        As the repulsive thing finished sewing itself together from the inside, as the squirming gray tentacles disappeared behind the glossy black-and-yellow-spotted skin, it seemed to have no rightful place in a universe created by the God of light, but belonged in another universe than this one, where the divine impulse had been dark and twisted, the divine intention cruel beyond imagining.
        Folding the blade of his knife into the handle, pocketing it, Derek looked at Molly. "You still think it might be just an exotic mushroom you've never happened to run across before?"
        "No," she admitted.

----

    23
        
        AFTER MOLLY AND DEREK HAD RETREATED FROM the janitorial closet, Neil took one last look at the fungus before switching off the light in there. Closing the door, he said, "If we explored Black Lake right now, we'd find those things all over town, wouldn't we?"
        "Those and God knows what else," Derek replied. "Fast-track terra-forming. The growing cycle has begun. In the streets and parks, in backyards and alleyways, in school playgrounds, out there in the forests, at the bottom of the lake-oh, everywhere, everywhere-we will find a new world growing, a botanical wonderland of things we've never seen before and that we'll wish we'd never seen at all."
        With sudden, devastating understanding, Molly said, "The air."
        "I wondered when you'd think of that," Derek said.
        Trees, grasses, the vast floating fields of algae in the seas: The flora of Earth filter carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As a by-product of photosynthesis, they pump out oxygen. Vital, life-sustaining oxygen.
        What process, similar to but different from photosynthesis, might this alien vegetation employ? Instead of oxygen, might it produce another gas? The current equation could conceivably be reversed: oxygen in, carbon dioxide out.
        "How many days before we notice that we're suffering from oxygen deprivation?" Derek wondered. "If we even do notice. After all, one of the symptoms of oxygen deprivation is delirium. How many weeks before we suffocate like fish flopping on a beach?"
        These questions staggered the mind and so oppressed the heart that Molly felt prescient when she remembered how she had earlier thought of Derek Sawtelle as the embodiment of the mortal temptation to despair.
        The astringent piney scent of the deodorizing cakes and the more subtle but repugnant effluvium of stale urine seemed to burn in Molly's nostrils and throat. She inhaled shallowly to avoid those unpleasant smells. When that didn't work, and when she found that without conscious volition she had suddenly begun breathing more deeply and rapidly, she recognized an incipient panic attack and strove to repress it.
        "Perhaps we should hope to suffocate sooner than later," Derek said, "before the beasts of that other world are set loose among us."
        "If news reports can be trusted, they're already in the cities," Neil reminded him.
        Derek shook his head. "By 'beasts,' I don't mean the invaders themselves, but all the many animals of their world, the beasts of their fields and forests, the predators and the serpents and the insects. I suspect some of them are going to be more vicious and terrifying than anything the poor damn science-fiction writers have ever dreamed up in their darkest