Half Life (27 page)

She decided against it, but was not sorry to note that practically everyone’s screen was copying
Theia’s
.

It seemed unlikely that the pilot would be allowed to overlook anything serious.

The wind, a gale for Titan, was indeed producing strong ground turbulence in the heavy atmosphere.

Ginger stored for possible future Rule X use the fact that Belvew had not predicted this.

The accelerometers showed the jolts as Ginger rode down the approach, and she felt grateful for her recent practice. Wings stayed almost perfectly level once she had set up her heading; pitch angle remained unchanged; she was able to handle descent rate with thrust alone. She intended to touch down heel first, with the keel toes only a centimeter higher at that instant if the ground was really level. The attitude change would be barely perceptible, but lift would fall sharply below weight and keel drag would start almost instantly.

—She would be west of the factory and the remains of
Oceanus;
she had paid no particular attention to the latter as she passed over it on the wind check.

Neither, for some reason, had anyone else. Status had no relevant orders.

She had picked the approach line to keep away from the ice cliff and the larger scattered fragments at its foot. The small ones should be harmless.

To her own surprise, everything went exactly as planned; she was disappointed to find that Belvew had been far too busy to watch.
Theia
slid to a halt half a kilometer west and slightly north of the factory, with a record low of reaction mass used during the rocket-driven part of the approach.

“Nice job, Major,” Maria remarked, seeing the tank readings. “Just as well. I’ll need to use a lot of juice taxiing. Is the factory ready to deliver, Status?”

“It indicates so. You will want the full complement of cans. There are fifty new labs also ready, and even if you take them all you will still have room in the jet for a dozen more from those already operating in the factory area. These would of course be harder to load.”

“Think we’ll need ’em, Seichi?” asked the pilot.

“I can hope not,” was the dry answer. “I’ve picked up nearly fifty samples from the base of this hill of Gene’s without losing any more yet. Of course, if dope is needed from nearer the top, I can’t promise anything.”

“It will be,” assured Gene.

“The lost one, assuming material diffused about equally in all directions and the tar layer itself is thick enough for vertical motion to—”

“Tar layer? Didn’t it go into the lake?” Ludmilla, usually quiet, cut in this time. No one asked whether recreation or duty had kept her out of touch. Maria, who had been trying to persuade the corporal that reading was greatly preferable to visual shows, felt slightly guilty.

“Not according to present data… for vertical motion to count, seems to be accounted for,” the acting nanochemist went on without seeming bothered by the interruption. “It appears to have dissolved completely, even the metal in the sampling heads and reaction stomachs. I find quite a bit of gold and iridium, far more than the occasional random atoms that are of course always there even on Titan. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of background material—polypeptides, carbohydrate polymers, and probably stuff similar to but not identical with either—so a lot of time will be needed to specify the mixture details.”

“Maybe we
should
call it protoplasm,” suggested Martucci. “Just for the historical implication,” he added hastily. “Something sitting between the high side of low resolution and the low side of high.”

Maria gently ruled against this without trying to find out how seriously the suggestion had been meant.

Any such word would be far too likely to influence what should
not
be wishful thinking, and thus help feed the Aarn Munro instant-certainty syndrome. “But it wasn’t a bad idea, at that, Peter,” she finished tactfully. “We do seem to be in a sort of in-between situation calling for some such improvisation.”

“Whatever it is, let’s keep the jet out of it.” This was Belvew rather than Maria, and Ginger allowed her irritation to show once more.

“Don’t worry. She’s—I’m—down and stopped, and there’s plenty of juice for taxiing. Tend to your own driving, Sergeant.” Belvew detected her feelings both in her tone and her use of the formal title, and said no more for a while; but his attention did not go back entirely to his own jet.

He committed a gross piloting error. He set his Mollweide to copy Ginger’s, flying
Crius
with complete confidence by the waldo instruments. This should have been a court-martial offense, and he
must
have known better.

He didn’t stop to think, this time, that attending to a visual display from one aircraft and
tactile
readings from another at the same time might strongly resemble trying to fly simultaneously by instrument and contact, a mistake which had killed far too many people through flying history.

Worse, Status had never been given instructions about appropriate reality breaks for anyone driving, in effect, two aircraft at once. The processor also lacked human common sense: the fact that one of the jets was on the ground would have affected human judgment, but Status made no attempt to reorganize the independently, random breaks. It was pure chance that Belvew’s own error rather than Status’s inadequate procedure caused the first trouble. It had been inevitable anyway.

The sergeant fell into the trap he had set for himself. As Xalco, started to swivel her charge, his reflexes for a moment responded to,
Theia’s
attitude change rather than
Cruis’s
.

Theia
was nearly motionless.
Crius
was at standard observing airspeed, which was already close to pipe stall for the present turbulence. Belvew’s jet nosed up slightly as he entered an updraft, his reflexes tried to handle conflicting yaw and pitch inputs, his airspeed dropped further, and both his fires went out as
Cruis’s
sensors responded to inadequate ram pressure and her electronic reflexes sought to forestall a front fire.

Mentally, Belvew recovered instantly. Reflexively, he over-controlled. This did not endanger the aircraft, which had plenty of altitude, or even deceive the waldo suit, which had built-in safety cutouts to cover shivering, startle reflexes, and even convulsions. The suits had been designed, after all, for terminally ill wearers. The overcontrol was strictly in Belvew’s own body, the results purely biological.

Everyone in the station, including Xalco, heard him yelp.

“What’s wrong, Gene?” the commander cried. The answer came from Status, not the sergeant, who was already doffing his waldo and emphatically did not want to talk.

“His right ulna is broken some four centimeters above the elbow. He seems to have forgotten momentarily his bone condition.”

“Gene! Can you fly?”

“ ’Fraid not.”

“Carla, take
Crius!
” snapped the commander. “Don’t worry about the pattern if you can’t follow it without practice—the aircraft itself is more important. Status, provide Lieutenant lePing with full-detail guidance for that observing grid after she recovers from the present stall until she tells you it’s not needed. Gene, are you out of your suit yet?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Get onto your cot and let Status do what’s needed.”

“Does he know? I haven’t actually broken anything until now. Only been expecting it.”

“We’ll soon find out. Ginger, what’s your status?”

“Still taxiing, a couple of hundred meters south of the pool, nearly three hundred from the factory. I assume I carry on.” There was no question in her tone at first; then a thought struck her. “Or do you want Mastro to take over here and me to handle
Crius?
I’ve been in the turbulence already.”

The commander hesitated only a moment. “No,” she decided. “Carla has plenty of altitude if she needs it, and you’ve been down at the factory before. Louis hasn’t. Pick up the cans, and at least a dozen labs. You said there were more than that, Status?”

“Yes. Everything previously suggested is ready to load when the jet reaches position. I assume the standing order to look for detail changes around
Oceanus
should be supplemented from any relevant
Theia
camera data as she taxis.”

“Right. What are you doing about Gene’s arm?”

“The bone ends are set and the elbow and shoulder immobilized. There are few data on what to expect in the knitting process with CPRS, but it will be several days before he can use a suit for either flying or environmental protection. I will maintain continuous watch over his blood calcium and phosphorus as well as bone analysis. Do you have further suggestions?”

“Not right now.” She did not bother to ask for other ideas which seemed promising, reasonable, or even slightly relevant; that was common sense even Status would take for granted. She went back to the basic problem.

“Status, how do the chemistries of the pools we’ve actually touched with ships, labs, or armor compare so far with each other and with any others you have on file?”

“All are alike in being essentially gels with apparently mono-vinyl alcohol as the dispersing agent. I have no basic data which would have let us predict that this compound would be so stable even at Titan’s temperature. The most up-to-date bonding information I have suggests that the activation energy for its conversion to water and acetylene should be low enough to make the reaction explosively rapid even here. We are of course in a temperature range where tunneling strongly affects reaction-rate calculations, but so far no combination of Arrhenius formulas and tunneling theory seems to match any observations. Commander Goodall was investigating this point.”

“I suppose,” Yakama interjected, “that this will all he very useful if humanity survives and we have nothing to do but unravel the mysteries of the universe. It complicates the human survival problem, though, if this project of ours is really part of it.”

Even Belvew chuckled at the complaint, and Maria briefly but uselessly pitied the computer, which presumably could not
enjoy
learning. Status went on as though there had been no interruption. “Subject to conflicting orders, I strongly advise moving the sample now under study in the mausoleum outside for safety, though the condition and behavior of those still in the commander’s quarters at normal life temperature suggest that trouble is not likely. I advise also that the same precaution be taken with these, Commander. They are at a far higher temperature than the mausoleum.”

That brought silence. Status was not supposed to have an imagination; any foresight it showed should be a very straightforward extrapolation indeed. Therefore it should suggest only very probable events.

Everyone who had ever heard of nitrogen triiodide monoammate suddenly remembered about it.

The work, however, went on, even among the knowledgeable. They belonged, after all, to a species whose members are highly skilled in convincing themselves that if something they don’t want hasn’t happened yet, it probably won’t. Even Maria rejected the hint.

Ginger looked a little uneasily at the remains of
Oceanus
as she slid past, but didn’t allow the memory of Belvew’s landing misfortune to distract her seriously. Loading from the factory was straightforward but needed care. She had to get close enough for the dispensers to reach the jet, but not too close. Also, wings could not be allowed to damage themselves against ground objects; and getting into a position which could not be escaped without exposing the factory to rocket exhaust would be highly embarrassing.

The factory could of course be replanted, probably even with an improved model, but if the wasted time meant that the staff would all be dead before its job was done, this would still be a net loss. Ginger did not take seriously any of the half-lives for the group which had been calculated en route to Saturn—or even the later ones.

She nudged the aircraft slowly into position, wincing slightly as the tank gauges forced themselves on her consciousness, and signaled the factory to start loading. A tube promptly reached out from the main structure, passed over and along
Theia’s
right wing, and approached the fuselage. She relaxed slightly as the proper hatch opened to accept it, and her instruments showed that cans were settling into the proper magazines. She felt even better as these filled and labs began to come aboard.

She was almost completely happy when the tube withdrew and left her free to fire up once more. Almost, not totally, because the fuel gauges were still looking at her—the nice economical landing had been followed by much taxiing. Also, it had crossed her mind during the recent conversation that no one had thought to replenish from the orbiting station the heavy-metal stocks which had been yolk to the factory’s original egg, and which must be getting low by now. Since nothing could be done about it this trip, she filed a reminder with Status and resumed maneuvering.

There were a few boulders of fallen ice from the eastern cliff to be avoided during departure. She felt quite proud of managing this without sending exhaust any where near the factory, but by then the tank gauges wore an even more reproachful expression.

She considered the wind, and decided that a slightly downwind takeoff would use less extra mass than meters of extra taxiing. She swung around to the northwest, lined up carefully with no visible ice fragments directly ahead within some hundreds of meters, and pumped liquid into the arcs. She noticed on her Mollweide an ice boulder behind
Theia
caught in the exhaust and shattered into flying fragments, wished briefly that this could have happened in time to warn Barn Inger, and relaxed slightly as her keels left Titan’s surface.

Looking for a thunderhead once into ramjet mode was routine. Tanks full, she relaxed even further.

The monovinyl alcohol explosion warning had little effect on the general personnel of the station, and apparently none whatever on Seichi Yakama. He seemed to have gone through the it-hasn’t-happened-yet-so-there-must-be-some-reason-it-won’t stage so quickly that he was never conscious of it.