Half Life (26 page)

“Tars, in other words?” the commander queried.

“I couldn’t say yet. Using the word even more loosely than we have so far, not just for the stuff in the smog, I suppose so. That’s about as meaningful, though, as the word ‘protoplasm’ was back when it referred to the few powers of ten between the smallest thing you could see with a microscope and the biggest you could recognize in a test tube.”

“Are you trying to say ‘life’ again?”

“It won’t—wouldn’t—surprise me.”

“And jellyfish swam into the pipes?”

Seichi ignored Belvew’s sarcasm. “That
would
surprise me,” he responded, keeping straight what was left of his face even though no one could see it.

“How about a heading for the factory?” It was Ginger this time who changed the subject.

“Sorry. Wasn’t thinking,” replied Maria. “Status?”

“Wait, please.” It was Yakama again. “One of the labs you dropped beside the slope has stopped reporting. Major, could you look it over before leaving?”

“Sure. Where was it?”

“I moved it to the edge of the hill, if that’s what we’re calling it now, as soon as you were away. It should be at the edge of the tar—pardon the word; we
will
have to find some more specific labels—within half a dozen meters of the other, which is sampling the ground between lake and whatever. It should not be more than half a meter into the whatever.”

“All right. I’ll concentrate on flying. The rest of you do anything you can think of with your screens, and look for that egg. Any better ideas?”

None was offered, and the jet glided back toward its recent landing site, easily enough identified from above. The smoke had drifted out over the lake, but the hill itself still contrasted in color with the ground.

Ginger flew over the area at three hundred meters and standard observing airspeed.

The two labs by the lakeside could be seen easily enough, and after a few seconds Martucci spotted what was presumably the still active member of the second pair. He indicated it on his own screen, and Status emphasized the image for the others. No one, however, could see the fourth lab, and Ginger banked out over the lake to make another pass. Scalp once more sweating, she dropped to a hundred meters altitude and two per second above pipe-stall speed and straightened out, tensely ready to close air scoops and turn on reaction mass at reflex notice.

Several screens showed the errant lab almost at the same moment. Maria and even Belvew waited for Seichi to report; he should, after all, have the most to say. Peter, however, was less restrained.

“It’s sunk in! It’s nearly half—”

“Look closer,” Maria interrupted softly.

“What?”

“It hasn’t sunk. There’s a little hill around it.”

“I told you!” exclaimed the chemist.

Belvew cut in, to no one’s surprise. “The lab is pseudolife. It was grown from molecular patterns. Its shell is organic—close enough to chitin. All sorts of things would react with it—”

“And climb up around it like ants around a jar of—”

“Or like the other one around my boots?” Xalco cut in.

“General Order Six, Sergeant.” This was not Maria’s voice.

“No! No! I mean
dissolve it—absorb
it—and swell up as the lab’s molecules took up room! I’ll bet you’ll find molecules from the lab spreading out in that stuff like…”

Maria refrained from interfering this time. Science might have become more military under need, and it had always needed discipline as much as combat ever did, but Lieutenant Colonel Maria Collos believed strongly that a scientific debate was better not stopped until it grew acrimonious enough to involve personalities. Belvew
was
suggesting a way of testing, after all.

“How do I find out?” asked Seichi more specifically. “The lab’s not working, or at least not reporting.”

Belvew paused for a moment’s thought as this question was raised, but no one expected him to be silent for long.

“If this thing really eats carbon polymers,” he finally suggested thoughtfully, “it shouldn’t be too hard
to
grow a lab with—oh, silica armor, or maybe a heavy-metal plating, if we can spare enough metal. That should at least last long enough to make some analyses.”

“Cheru, please check the practicality of that, and if it can be done at all, estimate cost in time and material.” Maria displayed her usual prompt decisiveness. “Gene, you seem to be speculating that the hill by Carver represents something which was absorbed—recently—by the patch. What would it be? Just speculate, for now. Forget Six.”

“Meteorite would be my first thought.”

“What kind?”

“Ice would be most likely out here.”

“Then why aren’t there a whole flock of these tar pools near the factory? A lot of ice fell there when Barn knocked the mountain down, and the mountain itself is ice!”

“There’s one forming among the fragments already, Pete; and they weren’t shed very long ago. Also, the pieces of cliff couldn’t have hit the ground at anything like meteorite speeds. And there’s carbon—carbonate dust, anyway—in those ice chunks. Arthur reported it, didn’t he, Status?”

“He did.”

“But you don’t suppose a stone or iron body got this far out in the system, do you?”

“I don’t know. We’ve found only one pool like this so far, anything can happen once, and don’t tell me what a coincidence it would be for us to find it this early.”

“We’re getting a bit abstract for real planning, Gene,” Maria said, closing the discussion. “If it proves practical to make a lab such as you suggest, I’m willing to try it. After all, if Belvew’s Hill really is unique, we should learn that as quickly as possible. We should also find out what made it. In the meantime, back to routine.”

“Commander.”

“Yes, Seichi.”

“We maybe don’t need to wait for Cheru’s feasibility study. The regular labs have two collectors each with inert-metal plating, gold for the fluid samplers and iridium for the scrapers. I can reach those maybe thirty or forty centimeters in without getting the rest of a lab in contact with the stuff. Maybe that’ll let us find out enough to tell whether Cheru should go on.”

“Go to it!” Gene’s and Maria’s voices were too nearly simultaneous to be distinguished; perhaps the commander didn’t realize that the sergeant had also spoken. At any rate, she said nothing about his issuing orders to a captain.

Yakama spoke again a moment later, sounding crestfallen. “I can’t judge distances well except where I have items in sight to provide scale. The lab has only one eye, and that doesn’t have much resolving power; it’s mainly for travel guidance. Getting close to the pool may be riskier than I thought.”

“The eye’s on a stalk,” Martucci pointed out promptly. “Wave it around to provide parallax and have Status build you a 3-D image. You can keep the lab out of danger easily enough, and if you do slip up there are always more. It’s not as though they were jets.”

“Not exactly, but you pointed it out just now. Parts of the labs need inert metals like gold and iridium for sampling tips and electrical and chemical equipment. We brought reserves of those along, since it didn’t seem very likely we’d find them here, given Titan’s density. Unless we manage to salvage and recycle used labs, though, we’ll run out of those metals sooner or later.”

“What’s the difference? Isn’t that true of the jets, too? And the jets need a lot more—”

“No, they don’t. Believe it or not. Not very much more. And we’ve been pretty casual with labs. Ginger’s going back to the factory now for cans, and she can get more labs while she’s at it, but we’d better be less free with them from now on.”

“The 3-D trick should work,” Maria interjected firmly. “Ginger, your heading is two-zero-two. Seichi, get to it—no, first make sure the labs at the factory site are all working.”

“They are,” was the report after a brief pause.

“All right, you get back to your lake and Belvew’s Hill work. Status, keep track of
all
the labs and tell us if any of them, anywhere, either stops reporting or sends readings inconsistent with its own earlier ones. Use one-sigma consistency criteria. Cheru, use at least one eye as you’re doing the study to cover my mapping program along with Status; I want to keep on top of the tar-pool count and sizes. Gene—”

“It’s almost time for me to relieve Ginger with
Theta,” the
sergeant interrupted.

“Take
Crius
instead and make a really tight air-current grid through the turbulence region she just left. Modify it to fit any new information Status may supply; use your own judgment on aircraft limitations. Keep repeating it at decreasing altitudes until either you get too tired to fly, or Titan has been out of Saturn’s shadow for two hours. That time’s arbitrary; stay with it longer if things are still happening. Carla, plan your R and R to be ready to relieve Gene when he needs it. Ginger should last long enough at what she’s doing, but Louis can be ready to relieve her if necessary. Don’t either of you even think about wanting more strata pictures until I clear you; you should be happy enough checking over what’s on hand already. If anything surprising turns up, of course, let me know and I may reconsider.

“Ginger, get to Factory One and start earning your pay.”

No one laughed at the p-word; there was serious work to be done. Even those not receiving specific orders had routine to continue—routine which included rest and recreation, but might have to be interrupted at any time by a medical alert from Status or a sudden meaningful fact from Titan. By the time
Theia
reached the factory site, Yakama had learned, with some mild but natural irritation, that his analyses seemed to support the Belvew diffusion hypothesis. The lost lab had now disappeared completely into the tar, the bulge which had formed around it was now slowly flattening out to match the surrounding slope, and the confusion of molecules in the now-presumed-to-be-monovinyl gel definitely included many which almost had to be fragments of the lab’s pseudolife outer shell and inner machinery. They contained trace elements not so far detected on Titan, even copper and startling amounts of iron and nickel; their polymer makeup was consistent with bits of ordinary industrial pseudolife, and nothing very like them in structure had been found anywhere else on the satellite.

There were even a few atoms of really heavy metals. The lost lab had apparently been well digested.

Seichi was able to report all this without revealing too much annoyance, and Belvew refrained from any triumphant remarks. He was far too busy by this time, in any case; he had taker over
Crius
, and flying a planned grid pattern through and around a heavy-turbulence zone was straining even his skill. He found it comforting to remember that he had made no tactless remarks about Ginger’s handling of the same task.

She would never have missed a chance to return them.

“The ice cliff’s in sight,” reported Xalco. “I’ll make a wind check before I set her down.” No one argued or even commented; not even Maria felt this time that the pilot had or should have any qualms about the landing. Yakama made a request, but not of the pilot.

“Status, check the camera records as she goes over and give me any changes in albedo or topography at and near
Oceanus
.”

“And record any details you can about the strata at the top of that mountain as you pass, too, please.”

This time Mastro got in ahead of Lieutenant lePing. The commander decided not to comment; the request was technically insubordination, but it involved no change in flight plan or loss of time.

“Topography changes seem minor,” came Status’s prompt answer. “Less can be seen of the craft. I will need a moment for stereo interpretation to tell whether
Oceanus
has sunk or the pool has risen. Strata at the top of the block have been recorded again; do you want the records themselves or comparison with earlier ones, Major?”

“Both, please,” replied Mastro.

“It wasn’t even—in the pool last time I—knew!” Belvew’s attention was diverted even from his present flying task. “Why didn’t—you tell us? Did the pool—or the ship move?”

“Your statement disagrees with my memory. The pool had spread to include
Oceanus
at the time of Sergeant Inger’s death. Have I been shut down without proper warning for any significant time?”

“No, Status,” Marie replied at once. “Sergeant Belvew’s attention was distracted at the time, and his memory of the pool is unreliable. Don’t attempt record-conflict resolution.”

“You were told to—report changes—”

“The command was much more specific than that, Gene,” Maria pointed out. “You know it would have to be, or Status would have been swamping us with unusable and probably meaningless data. Ginger has passed the site now, Status; do you have a stereo comparison?”

“Yes. The pool is now a hill, if our naming is to be consistent. Its slope is even greater than the one by Lake Carver, everywhere within about twenty meters of
Oceanus
.”

“Has the expansion gotten as far as any of the ice boulders, and if so what has happened where they met the tar? Were they absorbed, or what?”

“Yes. Four of them. They are resting motionless on the slopes of the hill, and show no signs of sinking or being absorbed or engulfed.”

“So the stuff isn’t interested in ice,” commented Yakama.

“I can see the ice being rejected,” Seichi put in, “but the hulls and especially the keels of the aircraft are also chemically very different from the lab shells. How could the same solution process be occurring here?”

“What do your labs say?” returned the commander. “All the ones near Factory One are still working, aren’t they? Or have we lost some here too?”

“All are reporting, including those on the pool itself. I have kept the latter moving, and none so far have been caught.”

“Better stop one of them, Captain. Just don’t let
Theia
get—uh—into it, Ginger.” Belvew seemed back to normal after a few minutes of silent thought in a background of turbulent flight; he couldn’t hold back the superfluous advice.

“I’m landing to the north. There’s a five-meter wind from there.” Ginger might have been replying indirectly, or merely reporting to Maria. The wind direction was not surprising, but the speed was, and for just a moment Maria wondered whether she should have Belvew handle the landing. There could be a lot of ground turbulence.