Half Life (11 page)

Good. Even that thought, though not important to the work as far as anyone could tell, could hold Goodall’s attention. For a little while.

And there were the brittle black chips which were all that remained available of Ginger’s originally sticky tar sample. Goodall really should get on to that stuff. Let’s see; it was still in the collection locker removed from
Theia
…

He hoped passionately this stuff would contain proteins, or at least amino acids. His plan could be justified by any such discovery.

He was decades past conclusion-jumping or even hasty action, however. At least, he hoped that he was.

The plan itself, though still very tentative, was also able to hold his attention, sometimes for a full hour. He did not cut off his connection with
Theia’s
screen—there was always a chance of something’s happening—but turned to another display. The argument about atmospheric currents and polymerization had ended, and Goodall neither knew nor greatly cared how it had turned out; he was a theorist, greatly outranking Belvew, and would consider that matter when and if it seemed important.

The screen he now faced showed most of the scenery around the wrecked
Oceanus
, minus a few gaps which her remaining cameras could not cover even though Goodall had unobtrusively re-pointed them.

While he himself did not fly because the pain smothered his needed senses too often, everyone had waldo suits and could control the aircraft.

The factory was there. The ice mountain also showed. The mysterious gel area which had caused Ginger’s misadventure and had now expanded or moved to include the wreck was only partially on the screen. He couldn’t tell whether the tar, or whatever it was, was crawling or growing or even with any certainty whether
Oceanus
was sinking in it.

And he didn’t want merely to wait around until the jet completely disappeared. That would certainly take much too long, and there was no way to tell how much longer he’d stay competent.

Belvew’s earlier experience with another landing suggested to everyone that the wreck might indeed be sinking, but offered no basis for guessing how far down it might go. The depth of a typical pool, or rather the one which now claimed his interest, was also something Goodall wanted to know; but it was more important to get the research program properly set up while enough of the group were left to handle routine. Also, he could see no way of even being sure that any given pool was typical.

He didn’t want to modify any of the existing plans without very, very good reasons—reasons which would convince, or at least suggest to, everyone else that change was in order. It could be awkward if anyone were to suspect his real plans, especially since Ginger Xalco’s recent escapade. General drat the woman.

The colonel was, in fact, feeling the irritation of a would-be burglar who has discovered, during the casing stage, that his planned victim is under observation for drug activity. That was just the mental part.

He also wanted to remove his gloves, which just now seemed lined with needle points. It was like his only flight test, as though the pain were being deliberately directed; each and every control contact he had tried to make had been swamped with agony. He had not at that time conceived his current plan, but even then he had resolved to remain as independent as possible of routine, which seemed invariably to lead to boredom and pain. He’d have to keep wearing a suit all the time, and
practice
.

At least no one could possibly expect now…

But they could, of course. Especially now, curses on the presumably red head of Major Xalco. He’d have to be really careful.

His project was not merely private but illegal and by some standards immoral, and would be quite unacceptable to the rest. It would involve breaking the agreement everyone had accepted after the unauthorized Xalco landing. It would also be a major violation of regulations, though that would mean less to this group. Science was a military discipline out of necessity, granting the necessity of continuing the human species; but scientists, especially the commissioned ones, were still individualists.

He might, of course, get his answer about the depth and other qualities of the tar pool, if that was what it was, by simple luck. The instruments showed that the third ramjet,
Crius
, was now in descent orbit with Inger aboard—Goodall suddenly wondered how long his mind had been wandering; he did not remember the launch—and her cameras after landing might supply some of the information he wanted.

Maybe all of it. At the moment they didn’t, of course. From space he could do better with Maria’s observation gear. It would be hours yet to
Crius’s
landing, hours while he had to occupy himself with
something
.

A red-hot whip suddenly fell across his shoulder blades, and almost at the same moment his waldo boots seemed to shrink several sizes.

Something…

He found
something
, real brain-stretching work after careful thought and data checking, and decided hours later that the job had been good for him. It had held his attention.

Barn Inger had by now landed and emerged, and was examining the ground. The embarrassing gap in the factory data due as usual to poor planning had to be closed. A suit camera had been improvised, so there would be less need for the person on the ground to divert his attention to verbal reporting. Goodall brought the image from this instrument to his main screen, magnified as far as possible.

This was not, he thought ruefully, as good as eyes on the spot; Inger himself might already have observed, without considering it important enough to mention, what the colonel wanted to know but was afraid to ask. Maybe Inger would need to shift his ramjet, so the old man kept
Crius’s
Mollweide image on one of his own screens and checked it frequently.

It would have been so nice for a native Titanian to walk, or crawl, or fly into view. That would…

The commander took a firm grip on himself. If his mind was going—well, he thought wryly, that would at least justify the plan. In his own mind. Circular argument…

But it might also prevent him from carrying it out.

Barn had known like the rest that the wreck was now in the pool rather than beside it, but motion of the tar had long ago been left for Status to keep track of. He did remember how Ginger had stuck when she had stood on the glossy surface and how Belvew, on his first landing on another one in
Oceanus
, had started to sink; but he had too much else occupying his attention to think of these right now. The wreck had been powered down and allowed to cool to the local ninety kelvins. Anything about it which anyone might want to check later would presumably still be there when and if the time came.

Inger’s work on the root hunt called for holes in the ground. The dirt was largely water ice, heavily laced with silicate particles—not the carbonates found in the fragments from the cliff—and microscopic grains of polymer which had presumably settled from the atmosphere during the ages. Physically it was rock rather than dirt. Inger was not trying to resolve fundamental questions like how the silicate had found its way up from Titan’s core or why the tars had mixed with the water instead of forming a layer on top of it.

This was for the theorists, later.

He needed to find which of the numerous roots that the growing factory had extended in various directions corresponded to which analytical reader in the orbiting station; the roots themselves were numbered to match instruments, but no one had thought to provide any way of telling which way a given root was growing. This, to put it mildly, was hampering the surface analysis part of the project.

Low-pressure ice—Ice I—at ninety-plus kelvins is not slippery, at least not under the Titanian weight of a suited human being. Neither is it fragile. It is simply rock, perfectly usable for construction when pure and presumably, though no one had had a chance to try yet, tougher but less workable when full of the mess of hydrocarbon precipitates which chemists still called “tar.” Getting a drill into it was going to be a problem, all could guess. Barn Inger massed, in space gear, just under a hundred kilograms; on Titan’s surface he weighed almost exactly thirteen, less than he would have on Earth’s moon. Even with the ice not slippery he lacked both weight to make the drill bite and traction to avoid being turned by it. The tool itself was powered, but at the first high-speed try it simply skittered around on the surface. At the lowest rpm available the wielder found himself pushed sideways whenever it started to bite. Newton’s third law was still valid, even here.

There were ice boulders from the cliff scattered around the
area
which might have provided backing, but none was in just the right spot. The proposed hole was not started at random; Inger had located a root by microseismometry before attempting any drilling. If the seismometer had been able to identify it as well as locate it, there would have been no trouble; but it would be necessary to drill to a point near the conduit and feed in some chemical identifiable by the factory monitors when the root picked it up.

“Can any of those ice chunks be moved?” Maria Collos asked at length. “You could build yourself some sort of backing to lean against, or even to brace the drill against.” The amusement which sometimes bothered Goodall even when he didn’t think he had inspired it was in her voice.

“Worth trying,” Inger admitted. He set the tool down and walked in the awkward fashion dictated by Titan’s gravity to a lump of ice whose volume he guessed at nearly a cubic meter. It was clear, apparently one of the fragments fallen from the nearby cliff when the factory had first been planted. He got a grip on one of the rough sides and tried to lift, without success; even on Titan it must weigh seventy kilograms or so, he suddenly realized. At the present phase of his illness, it was too much for him in armor.

Rolling, while still awkward, was more successful, and in a few minutes the boulder was over the root.

He settled it on one of its narrower sides to provide more height to lean against, picked up the drill, and made another try.

Heavy as it was, the ice slab fell over as the tool made a brief, tentative bite.

“Right direction,” he said thoughtfully to the watchers as he picked himself up. “A pile of smaller stuff against the far side should take care of that.” The smaller stuff was plentiful and much easier to transport, and in a quarter of an hour a slope of what had to be thought of as rather low-density rock and gravel was bracing the back of the largest fragment.

The direction might be right, but the distance was still short. Another burst of power on the drill sent the man
along
the wall.

It was more than an hour before the structure had grown to an acute-angled V with solid bracing on the outside, an inward lean on the inside to give him backing for a downward push, and a pair of small but reasonably heavy blocks which he hoped would keep his feet from slipping toward the opening of the V.

They didn’t, and by this time Maria was not the only one feeling amused, though all knew it wasn’t really funny. It was a concatenation of unforeseen events in a deadly environment. Tension was mounting far above; Inger said nothing about his own feelings, but they could be guessed by all but Status.

He got back on his feet, breathing heavily—not entirely from fatigue, though even the best-designed armor still makes manual work difficult. His glove clicked against his faceplate as he unthinkingly started to stroke his mustache.

“All right. Friction just isn’t enough to count, even if ice isn’t slippery here. Ginger, or someone, turn
Crius
so her pipes point this way.”

“Better get behind your wall,” the woman promptly snapped. “A push that’ll turn the plane may be too much for your armor. I suppose you want to weld the stuff down, which will take more than the dose I got, and even if you don’t fry, getting blown away could be risky.”

“That was the idea. I won’t get behind the pile, I’ll get away from it; then neither of us will have to worry. In fact, I might as well get on board and do it myself.”

“I’m already tied in,” Ginger responded, “and you can tell better from outside when I’m lined up right, and which pipe to use when I stop swiveling. They’re far enough apart so it will make a difference. How much reaction mass should we budget for this?” She had become just a little less impulsive since her escapade, though her voice remained clipped and snappish.

“It shouldn’t take much, and the tanks are practically full. I didn’t use much on the landing. Once you’re lined up I can get right next to the wall and tell you when melting starts; you can cut off right away when I call. We
could
use a quarter of the juice and still have plenty for a takeoff and even return orbit. There’s nothing to worry about.” Barn moved away from his rock pile toward the left side of the jet, so that the exhaust—the pilot would have to use rocket mode, of course—would reach the wall before touching him. Only a little more than a sixty-degree swivel to the aircraft’s right would be needed for proper aim, and not too much thrust; the ice was smooth, even if not actually slippery.

Goodall was now watching the
Crius’s
main screen with his fists clenched near his knees—on them would have hurt, and even the clenching was painful—and unblinking eyes. The aircraft’s position shouldn’t change much, but the direction of the tail-fin camera, which had the highest viewpoint available, surely would.

Ginger checked the pipe caps and fed power and reaction mass into the left one’s chamber, gently at first. She, too, was watching the screen, but not for the same reason as Goodall. She stopped the thrust increase as the runners began to scrape and the scenery to move, and began feeding brief jolts to send the craft in a rather jerky turn to its right. It slid forward slightly each time; there was no way to stop that, though it increased by a few meters the distance from Inger’s wall. No designer had foreseen a need for reverse thrust, either.

She cut power at the same instant the man on the ground called out.