Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  Status would—

  He would have to think about Status.

  First, though, a careful job of data processing had to be finished; he needed a very detailed chart, in three dimensions, of his crater and its contained lake and tar patches; detailed enough to satisfy his own conscience on the matter of spreading contamination. The information was available in Maria’s surface studies, of course. It just had to be assembled.

  Five-centimeter waves got through the smog easily, but did not resolve one-centimeter details. Images from points—many points—many meters apart along the Station’s orbit had to be combined using interferometric formulas which were straightforward but tedious. Analyzing some forty square kilometers of surface to one-millimeter accuracy took even Station equipment many hours. Status took no part; this was theoretical work which might come to nothing. Only when results seemed valid and relevant would they become part of the basic record, and it was up to Goodell to decide when and if they were. So far, therefore, there was no worry about anyone’s noticing his activities.

  With the detailed map’s completion came the need for personal judgment, which meant careful examination of the model. This took even longer.

  The twenty-two kilometers of the nearly circular ring had to be examined for possible cracks which would let a methane stream flow either way. There were rivers, or at least brooks, on Titan; most of the lakes were fed partly by small, winding methane courses, though they seemed to get their principal feed from their own cumulus clouds. Very little rain had been seen to fall elsewhere than on or very close to the lakes themselves. There was nothing like the vast drainage basins so characteristic of Earth’s topology. This was why no one felt much confidence that the lakes all would turn out to have the same composition, other than the basic methane, of course. Each gathered its solutes from its own neighborhood.

  The lake which currently kept Goodell’s attention from his pain was small, about six hundred meters east to west and little more than half that north and south, about a hundred and fifty thousand square meters of, presumably, impure methane, with the usual smooth shore line except at the points where a dozen or so rivulets entered it. The number of these was unusually great for the size of the lake; presumably the crater tunneled an even higher percentage of the precipitation than usual back to its source. The depth and detailed composition of the liquid would of course have to be determined later. There was more than one way to do this; Goodell had not yet decided which to use.

  One of the patches was less than a hundred meters from shore, of typically ameboid shape, and little more than twenty-five meters in average diameter. The other had nearly ten times the area and was located, rather to Goodell’s surprise, within half a kilometer of the northwest side of the crater. He noted the sizes, shapes, and locations of these as precisely as he could, and filed the information for release to Status on his personal order.

  There was no evidence of tectonic activity—no ridges, ice boulders, or anything like the features around the factory. He wondered briefly whether he’d better search for still another site, but convinced himself that the small number of variables might be helpful.

  Besides, the general smoothness had another advantage, he suddenly realized. He was not, most certainly, a good pilot.

  It also dawned on him that he was now thinking less of what he might do sometime than of what he was going to do soon. He was not even yet quite sure just when; one problem presented by Status still had to be solved. He had had one idea, but not until after leaving the cemetery, and it was then too late.

  Distracting the robot was pointless as well as impractical, since the device could do nothing in any case but inform the rest of the staff; it controlled nothing physical except its communication links. It was the people who had to have their attentions captured. If he left his quarters without announcing his intent, Status would certainly warn everyone about the quarantine violation and keep them informed of his moment-by-moment location. There had to be a good reason for leaving again, which would satisfy his colleagues that the action was line-of-duty.

  Naturally it should involve no danger to any of his fellows.

  Well, preferably. But each time the pain came back this restriction seemed less essential, and Goodell was getting worried about this in his more objective moments.

  What problem—not too major a problem—would call for his roaming the corridors again?

  Certainly nothing involving life support, even if that were an acceptable risk from his own viewpoint. He’d be the last to be chosen to do repair work on anything of that sort; the cause of his illness was known, but no treatment was.

  Observing equipment? More promising, but he’d have to go out first to cause the trouble—and causing real trouble there would do more harm to the main project than his current plan possibly could help it. So would real damage of any other sort.

  How about unreal damage? Ha had the normal scientific abhorrence of falsifying data, repugnance which for a scientist both long preceded and vastly exceeded the military offense of violating regulations, but could he straighten this out before any ripples spread? Yes, he could indeed. Slowly a smile spread over Goodell’s face. It hurt, but he did it anyway.

  “Sergeant Belvew, are you awake?”

  “Of course. I’m flying—I mean I’m actually down here.”

  “Sorry. I’d lost track of time, I’m afraid. I knew you had stayed down after picking up Barn, but thought your suit would have needed recharging by now.”

  “Another few hours. It seemed a good idea to be here on the spot for as long as possible, since I’d had to come down anyway. Maybe if there’s something you’ve thought of for me to do I should have stocked up on power and sleep earlier; I can’t stay down too much longer now.”

  “It was just a question. When you retrieved Barn, did you shut off his suit heaters? His body was flexible when I took it from the ship.”

  “No, I didn’t. Silly of me, but I couldn’t bring myself—and if he’d frozen while Ginger was bringing him up, you might have had trouble getting him out.”

  “True enough. The fact is that I didn’t think about that, and I didn’t power him down either. I’ll have to go back to take care of it. I know it’s not exactly critical, but the sooner the better.”

  “I can do it myself when I come back. I could start now, and meet the Station in—how long Maria?”

  “Just a moment.” The woman had been busy, of course, but nothing ever seemed to disconcert her. “Since you’re just about at a pole—one hundred twelve minutes to the equator, half a minute to turn, seven and a quarter to orbit speed and clearance of atmosphere, one hundred ten to intercept and two more to match—”

  “Forget it,” Goodell interrupted firmly. “It should have been done long ago, and I can do it in a few minutes. You must be flying a planned pattern, Gene. Finish it out and come back when you’d planned. I’m leaving quarters, everyone, as soon as I’ve cleaned my suit.”

  There may have been doubts, but there was no objection; almost certainly no suspicion. Goodell was a theoretician, with rank to do as he saw fit. He was, in fact, the boss. The others were qualified, and often willing, to raise what they considered reasonable objections to his decisions; but none was likely to do it on such a trivial issue. Five minutes later he was climbing toward the station axis.

  He actually visited the cemetery. He had indeed failed to shut down Inger’s heaters—that memory was what had inspired his present plan. A direct and total falsehood would probably never have occurred to him. He was now facing a probable need to lie—really lie—probably in a very few minutes, but he didn’t want to do that until he absolutely had to. Not until it became unimportant whether anyone ever believed him again.

  The body had stiffened by now, though not from cold. This bothered Goodell slightly; it was general policy to forestall as effectively as possible the irreversible chemistry which followed death. One never knew when more information might be needed. However, there w
ere other subjects—other former friends, he thought briefly and grimly—and as long as the error was on file with Status it shouldn’t matter much.

  He made it so, without caring whether any others noticed the report. He left the cemetery, and headed not back to his own laboratory/hospital-cell/quarters but toward the pole of the station and Crius’ dock. Status would pay no attention, and his living colleagues wouldn’t know, yet.

  The remotely controlled override which would allow the jets to be handled from the station even if a waldo suit were aboard was a recent improvisation, motivated by Ginger Xalco’s recent unauthorized trip. It was considered less effective, and less important, than the unanimous agreement whose breach was about to make Arthur Goodell a liar. He knew how the device worked; he had indeed been mainly responsible for its design. Disabling it was a matter of disconnecting a single jack, easily done even while wearing a suit.

  He did not remember whether this would be noted by Status, but this no longer mattered. He was aboard now, everyone would know what was happening in a dozen minutes or so, and no one including Status could do anything about it.

  He closed the hatch, and started the prelaunch check. This was entirely passive at first, a matter of reading instruments, and would call no attention to the ship. All seemed ready. The tanks were not full, of course—but there was much more than enough to break orbit and get back to atmosphere. The fuses were solid-state devices which only went wrong catastrophically and must certainly be all right now since the jet was in one piece. Chemical batteries were at a reasonable charge. So was Goodell’s own environment suit; he had made sure of that before leaving his own quarters. He could see that the launching springs were compressed, as they had been when Ginger docked. There was no status indicator for the remote controller which would release them from inside the jet, but there was no reason to worry about it; the device was too simple to be tricky. At least, nothing had gone wrong with any of them so far.

  He energized the small heater which would make sure some of the reaction mass was vapor and would reach the feed pipes, waited for the required three seconds in tense anticipation of Status’ voice asking what was going on, realized at last that the jets were not part of the robot’s responsibility at all, and sprung the launcher.

  That brought questions, a confusion of voices from everyone in the station. Goodell ignored them. He had never actually flown one of the craft before, but had followed through with his suit many times while others were doing so; and like the others, he had received plenty of training before they left Earth. He had more than one reason for concentrating on flying now, of course. He had no intention of being talked out of this, and if he allowed himself any distraction he’d be noticing his pain again. Right now it took all his attention, blissfully.

  Crius drifted away from the station, achieved legal distance for minimal rocket use, and her pilot applied the thrust. It was only a fraction of a gravity, and nearly five minutes passed before the departure was irrevocable—before distance and accumulated orbital change would make return impossible with the available mass—and until that happened, and he had applied the sphere, he paid no attention to what anyone said. Then he uttered only one word.

  “Sorry.” Argument had already stopped; everyone but Belvew, who had not had access to the instruments in his quarters and had only a confused idea of what was happening from the equally confused tangle of voices, knew that argument was pointless. There was no way for Crius to return to the station until she had replenished her tanks in Titan’s atmosphere. Most of the staff had inferred even more, using the broken agreement as a basic datum. Ginger Xalco, whose own malfeasance had been responsible for the agreement in the first place, asked the obvious question.

  “Why, Arthur?”

  “I know I’m being a bit early,” he replied with no tremor or other sign of worry in his voice. “This is Stage Three—settlement. I’ve found a place to start the control run, a place where there are collos patches, a lake, and good isolation from the rest of the surface. We can now test the patches for what we hope they are—prebiotic areas, made of what may become life someday if Titan has time for it. You can, among you, run the analysis. You know what we want to find out; mainly, whether chemical evolution is really taking place, and how fast. I think the chances are good; there is something making those tar pools far more mobile than they should be at Titan’s temperature, and something seems to be making them even responsive. Ginger found that out; so did you, Gene. Why didn’t any of you notice that my methanol report had to be wrong? That methanol doesn’t melt until it’s a hundred Kelvins hotter than that stuff can be? I’m only guessing what it is, but I think it’s a good guess. I’ll run an analysis when I get down, and supply a batch of enzymes afterward; you’ll have to keep track of what they do, if anything, and watch for evidence that my system isn’t as isolated as I hope. I know we don’t want to contaminate all Titan; that would spoil the whole project. But we do have to see what contamination by non-native enzymes can do, and the contamination has to be in an isolated spot. You know that as well as I do. We were going to do it, eventually; I’m afraid I just lost patience.”

  “But why? Why?” It was Maria Collos’ almost frantic voice. She was upset at last; she, at least, had guessed his full intent, Goodell felt sure. “It could have waited until the planned time. It should have.”

  “It couldn’t, and you know why.” Goodell’s voice was gentle.

  “Where are you getting the enzymes, and what ones will you use?” Belvew, perhaps because he had less information, was less quick than usual on the uptake.

  “I don’t have a complete list, but there are a good many thousands. You and Pete should have fun with the chemistry. Don’t worry about details; Status can help. I’m priming him with a lot of background.” It was not until the end of the sentence that Belvew caught on. He practically screamed his next words. He wanted to do something, but was completely helpless except for talk.

  “You old idiot! You could drop a steak from culture into the pool and get the same result! Get back up and be useful!”

  “The steak will be more useful to you than I will. Shut up and think. I haven’t really driven this thing before, and will have to plan the flying part of this mission. I wish I had enough mass for a few practice maneuvers, but I’d better not risk that. It’s less than an hour to atmosphere, after all.” Belvew actually did shut up. He could guess why the theorist needed planning time.

  Goodell had never actually flown the jets not because he was incompetent, but because the pain which resulted when anything touched his skin drowned out the sensations supplied by the waldo suits—sensations which provided the feedback necessary for real reflex-type flying control. Without the service of his sense of touch, he could fly only by visual inspection of his instruments. A living pilot in an ordinary aircraft a century or two before would have had no problem with this, having been trained to ignore everything except the visual input—the seat of the pants had killed far too many early flyers for anyone to trust it over instruments. Neither Goodell nor anyone else in the group had such training; the waldos provided more tactile input than any other kind. The chemist was going to have to reinvent airplane-type instrument flying, and his principal visual information would come not from gyro-referenced attitude sensors or radar displays but from a full-sphere screen distorting its picture into an Aitoff equal-area projection.

  Like the others, Goodell was used to allowing for this distortion, but that seemed to Belvew the only bright aspect of the whole situation. He was pretty sure that no sort of argument would now swerve Goodell from his intention, though he intended to keep trying. He could—thankfully—only guess at the sensations the old fellow had had to endure for the last few years. He knew that he himself might have made the present decision long ago, in Goodell’s place.

  But he was still going to argue.

  After the jet’s tanks were full. Certainly after Crius had completed atmosphere entry, and everyone had had
a chance to see what sort of piloting Goodell could actually do.

  Entry was not too difficult. Crius was after all an aircraft, designed for stable aerodynamic flight, and she lined up easily and without pilot assistance along the proper axis once drag became perceptible an hour or so after leaving the station. Initial entry speed was only about one and a half kilometers per second, which offered no thermal problems and quickly dropped. Goodell lit the ramjets in the appropriate speed range and spent some minutes practicing turns, climbs, dives and even pipe and lift stalls. No one even offered advice.

  The watchers did grow a little tense as he started a long, gentle descent to deep atmosphere and began to hunt for a thunderhead. There was less room for error recovery with only a kilometer or two of air underneath, and as others besides Belvew knew from experience the low airspeeds needed for mass collection offered perils of their own. When a cloud did loom in the center of Crius’ Aitoff and Goodell slowed even further, even the fairly unperturbable Maria Collos had to remove her hands from her mapping controls. Belvew, for the first time, offered advice.

  “Watch airspeed and pitch, Art. Don’t let anything else distract you.” He spoke with a little tremor.

  “Right. Thanks.” Goodell’s voice showed no emotion, though his actual feeling was one of pleasure. He hadn’t noticed any pain since entering atmosphere; he had been far too busy even to think of anything but Crius’ behavior.

  He had stabilized how at what the others had found to be the most effective collection speed, about five meters a second above pipe stall, and plowed into the cloud with his eyes on the instruments Gene had recommended.

  He could feel the bumpiness of the air as his craft met upward and downward currents, but by keeping pitch and thrust constant he held his airspeed close to optimal. It was pitch which gave the most trouble; entering an updraft tended of course to lift the jet’s nose. This would slow her down if allowed actually to happen, and Goodell’s reflexes were unpracticed. He tended to overcontrol, like any novice in the cockpit.