Two astronauts on a repair mission to a navigation satellite discover that it’s been infested by a strange, interstellar virus.

This story has a very clever idea at its center, and if there is any weakness to it it’s that one has to stretch one’s credibility rather far to accept the premise—but what the heck, it’s clever anyway. Asimov also goes to great pains to disguise the fact that his protagonist is a woman as an illustration that when the protagonist’s gender doesn’t matter, one can work as well one way as the other.

(The way Asimov clues us in to the narrator’s sex is to have her refer to her husband. Nowdays that may as easily be taken as saying that the narrator is gay, but I really doubt Asimov would have minded that interpretation.)

I still don’t count this as a highly memorable story, however, because it’s core is the idea only and not the people surrounding the idea—but it’s good and definitely worth reading.

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