Contamination Crew is a 1958 science fiction short story by Alan E. Nourse.
Orders were orders! The creature had to be killed.
But just how does one destroy the indestructible?
A scout ship picks up a blob that consumes everything, organic and inorganic. The doctors aboard are at a loss of how to kill the thing before it eats the ship.
Contamination Crew was first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction February 1958.
Alan Edward Nourse (1928-1992) was an American science fiction author and physician. He wrote both juvenile and adult science fiction, as well as nonfiction works about medicine and science. His SF works generally focused on medicine and/or psionics. Psionics refers to the practice, study, or psychic ability of using the mind to induce paranormal phenomena. Examples of this include telepathy, telekinesis, and other workings of the outside world through the psyche.
His novel The Bladerunner lent its name to the Blade Runner movie, but no other aspects of its plot or characters, which were taken from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?