We Contain Multitudes — Part Two
By Geoff Holder
Fortunately it was easy to overcome. Even in our over-sterilised modern world the human body is still a vector for uncountable fellow travellers, most of them invisible to the naked eye. Now, the astronauts of the Clarke had maintained excellent body hygiene. Nevertheless, once they had disembarked onto the Orbiter, they’d been obliged to undergo a complete skin defoliant and to remove all their body hair. All of it. The skin and hair cells had then been minutely analysed, not merely for chemical markers of ill-health, but also to see if the crew had unwittingly picked up any unwelcome biological hitchhikers. With both head hair and eyebrows shaved off, the astronauts did not exactly look their best, so when they were interviewed for the cameras they always wore full-head caps and goggles, the latter supposedly to protect their eyes from the unfamiliar lighting on the Orbiter. Pfff. In an unexpected development the goofy-looking goggles became something of a fashion statement back on Earth, and soon the images of the astronauts wearing them went from that’s weird to that’s normal.
Every day, our team of researchers would gather together at a meeting chaired by Jinny Ramirez, the Asimov’s Commander, and exchange our top-level findings without going into too much detail. All the results were then posted on the A.O.’s intranet if anyone wanted further detail, and sent to Control for further analysis. At first, the tests had all come back normal. The crew were in excellent health, both physical and psychological. Once the eight-week quarantine period was over, they would be heading home for family reunions and public celebrations.
The first alarm bell was rung by Dr Jayashankar, the lead microbiologist. She’d found something unexpected in the crew’s gut flora. At first she’d put it down to temporary changes in circumstance. But then more disquieting results came in. It not being my area of expertise—and I wasn’t the only one, some of the physicists being ill at ease with anything organic—further explanation was required.
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Geoff Holder is the author of more than 30 non-fiction books on the strange and the supernatural, including Zombies From History, Poltergeist Over Scotland and Scottish Bodysnatchers. His fantasy, sci-fi, horror and mystery fiction has appeared in over a dozen anthologies and magazines. He is also a produced genre screenwriter, a judge for the British Fantasy Awards, and a frequent public speaker on, perhaps not surprisingly, the strange and the supernatural.
Copyright © 2026 Geoff Dupuy-Holder