“I can’t worry about that right now. There are too many pressing problems to take care of first. Besides, the other three iso units are still intact, right? And I presume you still have samples of the spores that you can use to grow more lichens.”
“Yes, but that’s not what I’m worried about.”
Tennant sighed. “Please, doctor, get to it.”
“There’s a third possible reason for the lichens to be missing.”
“All right, Tom. I’ll play along, but be quick about it. What else may have happened to them?”
“They may have escaped.”
CHAPTER 20
Engineering Marvels: Terraforming Mars—Before the arrival of mankind, the barometric pressure of the Martian atmosphere was barely one-percent of EARTH’S, and contained only 1.6% OXYGEN. Even after nearly a century of mining and terraforming efforts, the air pressure is still only eight percent that of Earth’s, and its O2 content is only four percent. It is ironic that on Earth, mining refineries are among the many culprits contributing to the air pollution and greenhouse gasses that threaten human existence. Yet on Mars the same greenhouse gasses are essential for terraforming.
— Excerpt from Encyclopedia Solaris, 2176
* * * *
Tennant blinked. “I know you’re not suggesting that the lichens are intelligent enough to formulate and execute an escape plan!”
Dr. Shallitt burst out laughing. “Good heavens, no. What I was getting at was that the Martian lichens developed motility due to some biological imperative. Whether it was to find food or to escape from a predator, I don’t know—maybe both. But either way, it’s possible that they used the opportunity of the explosions to leave the lab. I’m not suggesting conscious thought, merely an autonomic reaction to the proper stimulus. Just as houseplants grow toward a sunny window, maybe these lichens are attracted to heat sources, or repelled by fire.”
“Oh, okay. I was afraid you’d taken a serious blow to the head in the explosion.”
Shallitt snorted. “Fortunately not; but as I said, we may have a problem. We don’t know enough about the lichens to know what will happen if they’re introduced into the biologically friendly environment of our underground facility. It’s warm, humid, and has plenty of CO2—everything an Earth lichen needs to thrive, except sunlight, and who knows if the Martian variety needs much of that. Many Earth varieties don’t. We’ve already seen that Martian lichens can grow extraordinarily fast in only a few hours. We could have a problem on our hands if they were to get loose.”
“Thanks for telling me, Tom. I’ll keep an eye out for a herd of rampaging lichens. But in the meantime, let’s just hope they were destroyed in the explosion and fire. I’ve got more urgent problems on my hands.”
“I understand, Lee. I just wanted to give you a heads-up; not trigger an alarm.”
“So noted, Tom. I think you’d better work up some method of detecting them. Something Security can implement.”
“Detecting them? With what—a ‘tricorder’? These are just lichens, not some exotic life form that’ll trigger sensor alarms.”
“I don’t know, doctor, you’re the expert. But we need something. We can’t have a lichen infestation running amok in the complex.”
“Running amok?” Shallitt shook his head and sighed in frustration. “I’ll see what I can do, Lee.”
“Good. Keep me apprised. Tennant out.”
He pressed the disconnect button with some exasperation and looked across at his old friend, slouching in a chair across from Tennant’s desk. “Great. Martian jumping lichens staging a prison break. Heaven help us!”
Taggart grinned and quipped, “Hey, it gives us a new expletive, anyway: ‘Great Jumping Lichens!’”
That was good for a half-hearted chuckle. Probably no one else could have elicited even that much from Tennant before they had to dive back into the nightmare of figuring out who’d lived and who died in the destruction.
As bad as the next hour was, it was nothing compared to what came next: sending v-mails to the families of the victims and arranging for burials….
* * * *
Taggart shook his balding head in frustration as he strode from Tennant’s office. The man’s gonna kill himself if he doesn’t slow down. I know he doesn’t go in for the “touchy-feely” stuff, but every man has a breaking point. He needs to talk with someone to let out all that pent-up rage.
If he won’t talk to me, I’ll have to find some other way to lighten his load. If it’s not bad enough that he has the responsibility for rebuilding most of the site, he’s carrying around the burden of dozens of deaths too. That’s too much weight for anyone to bear.
He continued in silence down the passageway toward the temporary mess hall.
I know he feels responsible for all the deaths, but Bella’s has to be the hardest to take, even if he won’t admit it. She looks and sounds enough like his own daughter that it had to be especially shocking to find her bloody corpse like that.
I wonder if it would help to have Gwen call him so he can see and hear that she’s alive and well on Earth. He rubbed his gray-stubbled chin for a moment before coming to a conclusion. Yeah, that’s worth a try.
With sudden purpose, Taggart increased his pace and detoured to his office.
* * * *
In-site communication was still spotty, due to the extensive damage to the complex. As a result, status reports had to be made in person. Forcing the workers to leave their repairs and report back to Tennant’s office would have been disruptive; it made more sense for Tennant to make the rounds of the facility himself. Besides, touring the grounds and seeing the work first-hand gave him a better feel for the progress being made. The damage and loss of life were horrific, but it could have been far worse. The rocky regolith that covered the roofs of the underground structures helped contain the blasts. Only three explosions actually breached the surface.
A few more breaches in just the wrong places and we’d all be dead.
He made his way to what was left of the Security office, to speak with the acting head of security, Juhi Pradesh. Her boss, Jason Peabody, was among those still missing and presumed dead.
“How’s the investigation coming, Juhi?”
“Hi, Lee. About as well as can be expected. We’ve established that it was sabotage—if there was any doubt that fifteen separate explosions weren’t coincidental. We found fragments of several explosive devices and the transceiver used to trigger them. But they’re all made from commonly available parts and chemicals found anywhere on Mars. We’re a mining colony, for goodness sake. Every camp on the planet does blasting, and we all source the same materials from the same suppliers back on Earth. There were no recoverable fingerprints or DNA found on the transceiver and explosives. Whoever did the bombings was extremely careful. I know you think this was the work of Doug Jardin, but there’s nothing yet to tie the sabotage back to him.”
“Juhi, I don’t think it was Jardin’s work, I know it. I told you he left me a note to make sure I knew it.”
“But you don’t have the note anymore, and without that or any other concrete proof we can’t do anything about it, legally.”
Tennant pounded a fist into his open palm, wishing it were Jardin’s face. “I know, damn it! But he’s bound to slip up eventually. We just have to keep an eye on him until he does. I want you to assign someone you trust, that Jardin can’t buy off, to track him down and monitor his movements at all times.”
“That might be tough, boss. He travels between camps a lot, and there isn’t exactly a lot of highway traffic out there for our tracker to lose himself in.”
“I know, I know. See if you can plant a bug on his Cat, or find someone in every camp who will report Jardin’s movements to us. I don’t care how you do it. I want to know every move he makes, everyone he talks to, everything he does. If he so much as belches suspiciously, I want to know it!” In his fatigue and frustration, Tennant allowed an undeserved edge to creep into his voice
. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes sir,” she replied stiffly. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Sorry, Juhi. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I know I can count on you.” He turned and stalked off, heading for the infirmary to check on some of the more seriously injured victims.
There may not be anything I can do to Jardin legally, but there are other ways.
* * * *
James exited the maglev car at Site 23 and was sickened by what he saw. Even after more than twenty-four hours of repairs, the blackened remains of office buildings and warehouses remained. Hardly a structure was undamaged. Soot covered the hallway ceilings and the stench of smoke permeated everything.
Sweet Jesus! Who could have done something like this? And why? Surely it couldn’t have been to steal the spores. There weren’t any security guards at the lab. Someone could have stolen the spores without causing all this damage. So what were they after?
James quickly abandoned that line of speculation as fruitless. I’d better track down Lee and find out how I can help.
He found Tennant in the infirmary and was shocked at the change in the man in the last forty-eight hours. Aside from the obvious injuries, his haggard face belied any claim of sleep in that time. The look in Tennant’s eyes seemed to alternate between the hollowness of shock and flames of rage as he moved from patient to patient and witnessed the results of the explosions and fire. As advanced as medical science was, and as miraculous as the nanobots were at repairing internal injuries without invasive surgery, there still was no cure for mangled and missing limbs or a gaping hole where an abdomen used to be.
James looked at the inferno raging in Tennant’s eyes and quailed inwardly at its intensity. James had gotten the short version of the events on the maglev train ride in.
I’m damn glad I’m not the one who set the bombs. I wouldn’t want to have this man coming after me.
“I got here as quickly as I could, Lee. What can I do to help?”
* * * *
In a dimly lit corner of an access passage near the lab, a five-centimeter disk intermittently hopped, hopped, hopped until it reached a place where the rubberized floor coating was torn, exposing the bare durasteel beneath. The lichen had no intelligence, no memory, no desires. All it had to drive it was biological imperative. It stopped and began to feed. The process was slow, but the lichen was in no hurry. It had no concept of time, only the need to eat.
Several hours passed and the need eased. A small piece of the lichen broke off from the main disk and lay on the floor, inert, while the rest continued on. Behind, it left a patch of bare durasteel, scarred and pitted to a depth of six millimeters.
Nearly five hours later, the little piece of lichen, now grown to a five-centimeter disk itself, stood on ten tiny legs and set off in a different direction, searching for food.
* * * *
Tennant continued his rounds and stopped by the lab on the way back to his office. “So, Tom, how are you making out?”
He ground the heels of his hands into his eyelids, seeking relief from the gritty dryness, but to no avail. Equally unsuccessful was his attempt to suppress a yawn.
At the sound, Dr. Shallitt looked up from his console screen. “Hmm? Oh. Hi, Lee. You look terrible! When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t have time for sleep, right now. I’ll sleep when this is all over. What have you got for me?”
“Lee, you can’t keep going like this. As you said to me not so long ago, you’ll be far more effective with a few hours sleep. As Chief Medical Officer, I can make it an order.”
“Doc! Shut up with the mothering and give me a straight answer so I can get on with the next task on my list! What have you learned about the lichens?”
Dr. Shallitt looked deep into Tennant’s red-rimmed eyes for a moment before sighing. “We’re gradually putting the lab back together, so it’s slow going; but I’m already learning the most astonishing things about these lichens. You remember I said that five of the eight iso units were smashed and the lichens were gone?”
Tennant nodded. “Yeah, so?”
“Well, an hour ago I went to look in on the remaining three and two of them were gone.”
“What? Someone broke in? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“No, no, nothing like that. In fact, the bioseals are still intact.”
“Then what—?”
“There were holes eaten through the bottoms of the units.”
“Holes? But those iso units are made out of durasteel. What could—?”
“A highly corrosive chemical soup capable of dissolving metals, plastics, and most other materials I’ve tested. I’ve been watching the last remaining lichen very closely. Evidently those twiglike legs serve more purposes than just locomotion. From what I can determine, when the algae portion of the lichen doesn’t get enough sunlight for photosynthesis, the fungus side takes over and procures the food itself. First, the legs exude a type of acid; then, after the material is dissolved, they reabsorb some of the acid—which now contains dissolved minerals—using the legs as siphons. That makes perfect sense for an organism living in a harsh environment. It’s economical to reuse fluids.”
“Acid?”
“It’s not unusual for a lichen to produce acids. They do it all the time on Earth to dissolve rock. But I’ve never heard of one that reabsorbs it to feed.”
“That’s pretty impressive for a supposedly primitive form of life.”
“No kidding.”
Tennant put his hands on his hips. “So let me get this straight, doc. You’re saying that the two missing lichens escaped from their iso units by burning holes through durasteel, absorbing and eating the steel, and then hopping away?”
“Well, no, they couldn’t absorb all the steel they dissolved. It would weigh too much for them. More likely they absorbed trace amounts of it and the rest remained behind in solution. But, yes, they ate their way out of the units and apparently hopped away.”
“So you’re telling me that we have two lichens capable of eating holes through solid durasteel hopping around loose in the site? Or more than two, if the others survived the explosion?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Tennant closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “Great. Just what I need: another headache. What about the last lichen?”
“I’ve already taken care of it. It’s secure inside a glass container the corrosive mixture can’t eat through. I’m continuing to study it to see what else we can learn from it. I’ve also started to grow several more lichens from the original spores so I can try some other experiments.”
“Good. At some point I may need to know what can kill them. Just make sure these don’t escape.”
“Kill them? You can’t kill them. This is a unique moment in human history. At last we have a chance to study life that wasn’t born on Earth. We—”
Tennant put up a hand to interrupt. “Whoa, doctor. Believe me, I’m all for research and expanding the bounds of human understanding. But if you recall, we lost a lot of good people this week, some of them to suffocation and decompression when we lost air containment. I’ll be damned if I let some damned lichens cost us more lives by eating through airtight bulkheads somewhere. First and foremost, we have to protect our people. If we can do that without harming the lichens, that’s fine by me. But the lives of our people have to come first. Is that understood, Dr. Shallitt?”
The doctor recognized the change in tone and responded in kind. “Yes, Foreman Tennant. Quite understood. Now if you’ll let me get back to my research, maybe I can supply you with some answers soon.”
Tennant’s demeanor returned to something friendlier. He clapped his old friend on the shoulder. “Very good, Tom. Site-wide communications should be back up and running in the next hour or two. If you need to reach me, I’ll be back in my office.”
“Will do, Lee. Oh, and watch where you’re stepping.”
Tennant had just turned to leave and half-stumbl
ed at Dr. Shallitt’s words. He looked down at his feet expecting to see lichens, and realized he’d been had. “Ha-bloody-ha.”
As Tennant’s frame exited through the door, Dr. Shallitt pursed his mouth and shook his head in disgust. We finally encounter an extraterrestrial life form and the first thing he wants to do is kill it. Typical. For all we know, the spores in that cave may be the last remaining samples of an entire species, maybe the last examples of life anywhere on Mars. It would be criminal to kill them.
He sighed. “I guess I’d better get busy making sure that doesn’t have to happen.”
CHAPTER 21
Engineering Marvels: Terraforming Mars—If Mars is ever to sustain life again in the open, it must have a breathable atmosphere, greenhouse gasses to hold in the sun’s warmth, and an ozone layer capable of blocking radiation. The Martian refineries are able to release vast quantities of oxygen as byproducts of the mineral extraction process. Other byproducts are produced as well, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and other greenhouse gasses that serve to thicken the atmosphere and eventually to warm the planet.
The Martian atmosphere is still extremely thin, and nowhere near breathable, yet it thickens year by year. A few centuries hence, Mars may yet be able to sustain human life without protective suits.
— Excerpt from Encyclopedia Solaris, 2176
* * * *
Twenty-two lichens now roamed the corridors of Site 23, searching for food. There would have been more but bare metal was scarce and light in the correct spectrum scarcer still. Where it was intact, the nonskid surface of the floor sealant prevented the lichens from detecting the necessary tantalum and other trace elements that triggered the autonomic response to feed. But the lichens were in no hurry.
A few were crushed beneath the wheels of heavy vehicles. One was swept up with the trash and incinerated. Several others entered a state of hibernation from lack of food.
The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative Page 25
