Mutant

Short Story
The last link between the isolated marine research station and the mainland had been broken months before. It had come suddenly. The last supply plane had landed on the tenth of November. For two years the Sun had been pouring out increased radiation on every spectral band, peaking in the ultraviolet and upwards in frequency. The solar wind was now a hurricane, a sleet of atomic particles travelling at a million miles an hour that hit the upper atmosphere and rained a torrent of high energy alpha-particles. It didn’t kill, not immediately. But it was intense enough to mangle genes.