Half Life (31 page)

“He probably had nearly full lungs, and tried to hold his breath when the glove went!” exclaimed Belvew.

“He’d have known better—we all do—but it’s hard to get ahead of reflexes.”

“His final statement before losing consciousness may have referred to that, though I am unable to relate the words to what actually happened to him. Imagination will presumably be needed. ‘I should have thought. Heavy-metal coenzymes’ were his last words.”

There were some seconds of silence, which Gene spent wondering whether it would be wise to point out the processor’s own neglect of GO6. He had just decided that admitting ignorance could hardly be called a speculation when the commander spoke again.

“Status, has the infection of Seichi’s suit resumed?”

“No. So far, the stoppage presumably due to vacuum has lasted.”

“Vacuum or particle radiation? We’re outside Saturn’s orbit and well inside its belt just now.” Martucci was pleased with himself for obeying regs so promptly, but few heard his suggestion over Belvew’s voice.

“Status! Is there any heavy metal from the lab pickups—iridium or gold—in the stuff from Seichi’s suit? Or from
Crius’s
surface film?”

“Neither has yet been analyzed completely. Captain Yakama was at work on the latter when the decision to move the material was made. No one has even sampled his suit material.”

“My job,” Maria said instantly. “Someone has to move Seichi, and I can bring in another lab when I go for him. I can let it take scrapings from his suit, and use cordage to move him without contact.”

“There are already several labs in his quarters, Commander. Also, I suggest you use the strapping now holding him to the treatment table; this can be freed from the table without touching the armor.”

“Good. All hands: I’m unsealing and going to Seichi’s quarters. I’ll report en route to the mausoleum and again when I get back to my own room. Everyone stand by for memorial to another friend. Lieutenant Skokie, you seem the right one to collect and judge for relevance personal data for the eulogy.

“Status, keep checking my armor for infection, starting
now
to furnish control data, not waiting until I get to the captain. Cheru, complete the analyses on the wing sample he started, initiate the same kind when a suit sample is obtained, and answer Sergeant Belvew’s question about heavy metals as quickly as precise work will permit. Everyone else, carry on.”

The first answer came from Akagawa even before the commander’s arrival at Seichi’s door.

“The
Crius
samples average between forty and forty-one thousand atoms of gold per cubic millimeter, just a little less than a tenth as many of iridium, and about three thousand of platinum. This is roughly a tenth of a percent of what is found in Earth’s oceans. More precision will require much more time, and ideally should have many more samples. Does this help your inspiration, Gene?”

“I don’t see how.”

“Maybe the rest of us can. Forget GO6 for the moment and tell us your idea.” Maria did not quite make this sound like an order, but the sergeant needed little encouragement. He spoke less rapidly than usual, however; he seemed to be choosing his words with more than ordinary care.

“I’ve picked up quite
a bit
of biochem in the last few days. A lot of it has to do with the effects of metals on organics. For example, the iron in our blood and cells is framed in a porphyrin group”—he didn’t pause to explain what a porphyrin group was; people who cared but didn’t know already could consult Status for themselves—“and the magnesium in chlorophyll and the cobalt in vitamin B12 are similarly framed. All do very different jobs in our bodies, though. I still think—” He broke off suddenly. Then, “Cheru, how do those figures jibe with uncontaminated lake samples?” Belvew suddenly sounded even more excited again.

Ginger practically sneered. “If you mean uncontaminated by the collectors and lab reactors, how do we find out? Analyze uncollected samples?” She didn’t sound exactly delighted, but she was not the only one glad to catch Gene asking a silly question. None of the others betrayed themselves, however: the sergeant riposted too promptly.

“Check something that was collected by scraper for gold, and something collected by tube for iridium, of course. The platinum is all inside the labs; test for it at different points along the procedure chain for different samples. Status will have records of every step if we don’t wait too long. It’ll be on the running log.

“Now we know why they used different metals in the labs, I guess. Remember we were wondering why just iridium wasn’t enough? I’ll bet
somebody
showed some foresight after all in planning this. We certainly can cross-check, Major. We used up lots of labs on my little hill, some on our late commander’s, and I’m sure the collection routines must have varied here and there between solid and liquid sampling.”

Status probably caught and even interpreted annoyed sounds in that part of its attention centered on crew welfare, but rightly judged them irrelevant. “All such information is on record. It will take some minutes to check and cross-check. You are right about the varying routines.”

Most of the survivors spent the minutes ignoring current duties and trying to imagine what Belvew had in mind; but even the answer, which came well within the promised time, failed to help them.

“About ninety-one percent of all three metals appear to come from contamination from collectors and Colonel Goodall’s remains. As was pointed out, many more sources should be sampled to make these figures really reliable.”

“Don’t waste the time here,” replied the sergeant. “Commander, I suggest we report this to Earth, and advise they start checking for really heavy metal coenzymes
everywhere
. Remember, we’ve been using such metals in increasing quantities for two or three centuries now at home.

“Do it in tissue samples dating from now as far back as possible—before the general collapse if the data are still around. I suggest , that increasing heavy-metal distribution has made new enzymes possible.”

“You think—”

“I think Seichi’s last words about heavy-metal coenzymes meant more than we thought—and possibly more than he thought. The trouble is, the quantities just reported, at even one metal atom per molecule, couldn’t possibly be enough for what I’m thinking, unless I’ve missed something really important in my lessons from Status. The four metal atoms instead of one in each molecule, as hemoglobin has, would make it a lot worse. I’ll check my arithmetic and the numbers Status gave me, too.”

“But how could something like the population implosion, with the increase in metal and presumably in any new enzymes being slow and fairly steady, appear so suddenly?” asked Ginger.

“That’s common sense. For any pandemic, the cause, either microbe or chemical, needs to reproduce, or at least increase, faster in the environment than it’s decreased or immobilized by the deaths of its hosts or victims. It could
exist
for thousands or millions of years at an unnoticeable concentration, forming by random reactions or mutations or human hacking, and causing too few problems to be noticed. Most of its victims would probably die of an ordinary cancer or traffic accident before the new symptoms were taken seriously or even noticed. Lack of raw material would limit its expansion rate.”

“You really have been reading,” remarked Xalco. “It couldn’t have been random. What was steering you?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read any psychology. It wasn’t conscious thinking, though. But let me finish your question. For the coenzymes, once we started high-energy living, the supply of heavy metals being
widely
spread
over Earth began to increase more or less exponentially, both with rising population and improving technology if nothing else. More coenzymes could form randomly. I don’t know whether the word
mutation
applies, but it sounds right. With a wider variety of metals available to bring their concentration up, new enzymes could suddenly reach a formation rate as fast or faster than the removal one. They’d reach—well, not a critical mass, but a critical concentration. And remember, the deaths of their hosts wouldn’t remove them permanently, unless you toss everyone’s body into space.

“I’m all for remembering good things about people, but until now I haven’t been completely happy with keeping them around afterward. Yes, I know it’s for data purposes, Major, but I never felt very sure we’d have use for that data. Now I see it.

“I haven’t been all the way through Status’s banks yet, and not even Pete could expect ever to have time to, but I’ve picked up quite a lot.”

Maria thought she could see where this was heading, and took a chance.

“You’re going along with Seichi—that this stuff is alive?”

“No. Not quite. I’d like to think it was in the chemical evolution stage still. Half alive, we could say. Different tar pools show different characteristics, which ought to be mostly chance; the only selection factor so far is the ability to replicate.”

“You suggest that the search be for coenzymes containing metals which have become widespread in Earth’s environment in the last few decades, then? Or that we should have done that if only Cheru’s atom count had been more encouraging?” Maria sounded impressed but not quite convinced. “We can certainly run analyses on our friends—and on ourselves, for that matter.

“A more serious objection seems to me that most of the iridium and hafnium and similar rare metals now around have been circulated extensively only
since
the medical problems began.”

“No.” Two voices, Ginger’s and Belvew’s, sounded together. The sergeant might have been deferring to senior rank, welcoming support, or being polite. “Go ahead, Major.”

“There’s one heavy metal that’s been around since long before high tech. We’ve been spreading it for thousands of years, in pretty close proportion to the number of people around. We wear it, and
wear
it—two different meanings. That’s the one I’d concentrate on first. Jewelry! Think of it. Rings, bracelets, collars, pendants, coins, all sorts of items circulating around among human beings and rubbing off atoms all over the planet ever since human beings liked pretty things. Never mind high tech.”

“You mean—,” started Maria.

Ginger became polite, too, and waited. Some did not.

One word was overlapped among the voices of Corporal Pete Martucci, Corporal Cheru Akagawa, Lieutenant Carla lePing, Corporal Ludmilla Anden, and one other. It was a short word, and clear to all the hearers in spite of the overlap, but the last was the clearest. Since the Xalco speech had involved more behavioral than physical science, Status came in a poor last, and unmixed with other voices.

“Gold!” Excitedly and confusedly.

“Gold.” Prosaically and clearly. Silence. Thoughtful and critical.

Maria couldn’t see how GO6 might apply. Certainly testing for gold in protein molecules could hardly qualify as an alternative to testing for iridium or other metals; only one basic hypothesis was involved.

Furthermore, there was still the quantity problem, even with gold if Akagawa’s figures were right. Still, the major
had
offered a reason for preferring it…

Even Maria Collos had never been one to follow the wording of a rule blindly, but she did know why there
were
rules. The general excitement which had followed the word—not for the first time in human history—gave her enough time to compose the wording of her next order very carefully. It must not imply that the speculation was probably correct and the end of their mission was in sight.

“Sergeant Belvew, you will write up a report of your suggestion for transmission home. You will no doubt prefer to offer a detailed procedure for testing it, but you are free to provide an alternative if one should occur to you—or do you have one already?”

“No, Commander.”

Maria just barely refrained from thanking General aloud.

“You will take, or be given if you prefer to think 01 it that way, full responsibility for the speculation, which is far beyond presently established information. It will be interesting to see whet her you are reduced to private, or commissioned. I will recommend the second if asked.

“Major Mastro, you will take four tissue samples from each of our friends in the mausoleum, recording in detail the source of each, sterilizing the outside of your collecting equipment both chemically and by radiation before and after each sampling, and bring them to the valve of Cheru’s quarters.

“Each of us will also provide personal tissue samples, with Status’s assistance, and place them outside our quarters for Louis to pick up. Each tell Louis when yours is ready.

“In the meantime, all mapping, meteorological, and other work will continue as nearly as possible as though the sergeant’s suggestion had never been made. There’s still a lot to answer about Titan, and no doubt many of the answers will inspire more speculations, as usual. Major Xalco, have you any idea what took the thunderhead so far from the center of Goodall Crater a short time ago? Cheru, why did the film on the jet wings, which had been well exposed to vacuum when it orbited up here, then produce something able to affect suits, but which was
stopped
by vacuum? Lieutenant diSabato—”

“Did it have to be only one stuff?” Akagawa was no more conscientious about GO6 than the rest, but had thought of this point already and was not sorry for a chance to let the rest know it.

“No, of course not. Look for variation among the wing and fuselage samples, and get more if you need them. Lieutenant diSabato—”

“Excuse me again, please, Commander. Sergeant, have you any idea how much gold, or anything else, should be in the samples in order to confirm your hypothesis?”

“Not yet. All the better for whoever’s analyzing; he won’t
want
to find some particular answer. But it would be nice to compare the gold, platinum, and iridium figures from the surface and wing samples with those from us and our friends, I’d say.”

“Make it so, Cheru. Lieutenant diSabato—”

The commander finally got the rest of her assignments out.