Asimov’s Future History Volume 19

by Isaac Asimov

  67.

  PELORAT AUTOMATICALLY LIFTED his gloved hand to his face-plate and then took it away and looked at it.

  “What is it?” he said, puzzled. Then, he looked at Trevize and went on, rather squeakily, “There’s something peculiar about your face-plate, Golan.”

  Trevize looked about automatically for a mirror. There was none and he would need a light if there were. He muttered, “Come into the sunlight, will you?”

  He half-led, half-pulled Pelorat into the shaft of sunlight from the nearest window. He could feel its warmth upon his back despite the insulating effect of the space suit.

  He said, “Look toward the sun, Janov, and close your eyes.”

  It was at once clear what was wrong with the face-plate. There was moss growing luxuriantly where the glass of the face-plate met the metallized fabric of the suit itself. The face-plate was rimmed with green fuzziness and Trevize knew his own was, too.

  He brushed a finger of his glove across the moss on Pelorat’s face-plate. Some of it came off, the crushed green staining the glove. Even as he watched it glisten in the sunlight, however, it seemed to grow stiffer and drier. He tried again, and this time, the moss crackled off. It was turning brown. He brushed the edges of Pelorat’s face-plate again, rubbing hard.

  “Do mine, Janov,” he said. Then, later, “Do I look clean? Good, so do you.-Let’s go. I don’t think there’s more to do here.”

  The sun was uncomfortably hot in the deserted airless city. The stone buildings gleamed brightly, almost achingly. Trevize squinted as he looked at them and, as far as possible, walked on the shady side of the thoroughfares. He stopped at a crack in one of the building fronts, one wide enough to stick his little finger into, gloved as it was. He did just that, looked at it, muttered, “Moss,” and deliberately walked to the end of the shadow and held that finger out in the sunlight for a while.

  He said, “Carbon dioxide is the bottleneck. Anywhere they can get carbon dioxide-decaying rock-anywhere-it will grow. We’re a good source of carbon dioxide, you know, probably richer than anything else on this nearly dead planet, and I suppose traces of the gas leak out at the boundary of the face-plate.”

  “So the moss grows there.”

  “Yes.”

  It seemed a long walk back to the ship, much longer and, of course, hotter than the one they had taken at dawn. The ship was still in the shade when they got there, however; that much Trevize had calculated correctly, at least.

  Pelorat said, “Look!”

  Trevize saw. The boundaries of the mainlock were outlined in green moss.

  “More leakage?” said Pelorat.

  “Of course. Insignificant amounts, I’m sure, but this moss seems to be a better indicator of trace amounts of carbon dioxide than anything I ever heard of. Its spores must be everywhere and wherever a few molecules of carbon dioxide are to be found, they sprout.” He adjusted his radio for ship’s wavelength and said, “Bliss, can you hear me?”

  Bliss’s voice sounded in both sets of oars. “Yes. Are you ready to come in? Any luck?”

  “We’re just outside,” said Trevize, “but don’t open the lock. We’ll open it from out here. Repeat, don’t open the lock.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bliss, just do as I ask, will you? We can have a long discussion afterward.”

  Trevize brought out his blaster and carefully lowered, its intensity to minimum, then gazed at it uncertainly. He had never used it at minimum. He looked about him. There was nothing suitably fragile to test it on.

  In sheer desperation, he turned it on the rocky hillside in whose shadow the Fur Star lay.-The target didn’t turn red-hot. Automatically, he felt the spot he had hit. Did ‘it feel warm? He couldn’t tell with any degree of certainty through the insulated fabric of his suit.

  He hesitated again, then thought that the hull of the ship would be as resistant, within an order of magnitude at any rate, as the hillside. He turned the blaster on the rim of the lock and flicked the contact briefly, holding his breath.

  Several centimeters of the moss-like growth browned at once. He waved his hand in the vicinity of the browning and even the mild breeze set up in the thin air in this way sufficed to set the light skeletal remnants that made up the brown material to scattering.

  “Does it work?” said Pelorat anxiously.

  “Yes, it does,” said Trevize. “I turned the blaster into a mild heat ray.”

  He sprayed the heat all around the edge of the lock and the green vanished at the touch. All of it. He struck the mainlock to create a vibration that would knock off what remained and a brown dust fell to the ground-a dust so fine that it even lingered in the thin atmosphere, buoyed up by wisps of gas.

  “I think we can open it now,” said Trevize, and, using his wrist controls, he tapped out the emission of the radio-wave combination that activated the opening mechanism from inside. The lock gaped and had not opened more than halfway when Trevize said, “Don’t dawdle, Janov, get inside.-Don’t wait for the steps. Climb in.”

  Trevize followed, sprayed the rim of the lock with his toned-down blaster. He sprayed the steps, too, once they had lowered. He then signaled the close_of the lock and kept on spraying till they were totally enclosed.

  Trevize said, “We’re in the lock, Bliss. We’ll stay here a few minutes. Continue to do nothing!”

  Bliss’s voice said, “Give me a hint. Are you all right? How is Pel?”

  Pel said, “I’m here, Bliss, and perfectly well. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “If you say so, Pel, but there’ll have to be explanations later. I hope you know that.”

  “It’s a promise,” said Trevize, and activated the lock light.

  The two space-suited figures faced each other.

  Trevize said, “We’re pumping out all the planetary air we can, so let’s just wait till that’s done.”

  “What about the ship air? Are we going to let that in?”

  “Not for a while. I’m as anxious to get out of the space suit as you are, Janov. I just want to make sure that we get rid of any spores that have entered with us-or upon us.”

  By the not entirely satisfactory illumination of the lock light, Trevize turned his blaster on the inner meeting of lock and hull, spraying the heat methodically along the floor, up and around, and back to the floor.

  “Now you, Janov.”

  Pelorat stirred uneasily, and Trevize said, “You may feel warm. It shouldn’t be any worse than that. If it grows uncomfortable, just say so.”

  He played the invisible beam over the face-plate, the edges particularly, then, little by little, over the rest of the space suit.

  He muttered, “Lift your arms, Janov.” Then, “Rest your arms on my shoulder, and lift one foot-I’ve got to do the soles-now the other.-Are you getting too warm?”

  Pelorat said, “I’m not exactly bathed in cool breezes, Golan.”

  “Well, then, give me a taste of my own medicine. Go over me.”

  “I’ve never held a blaster.”

  “You must hold it. Grip it so, and, with your thumb, push that little knob-and squeeze the holster tightly. Right.-Now play it over my face-plate. Move it steadily, Janov, don’t let it linger in one place too long. Over the rest of the helmet, then down the cheek and neck.”

  He kept up the directions, and when he had been heated everywhere and was in an uncomfortable perspiration as a result, he took back the blaster and studied the energy level.

  “More than half gone,” he said, and sprayed the interior of the lock methodically, back and forth over the wall, till the blaster was emptied of its charge, having itself heated markedly through its rapid and sustained discharge. He then restored it to its holster.

  Only then did he signal for entry into the ship. He welcomed the hiss and feel of air coming into the lock as the inner door opened. Its coolness and its convective powers would carry off the warmth of the space suit far more quickly than radiation alone would do. It might have been imag
ination, but he felt the cooling effect at once. Imagination or not, he welcomed that, too.

  “Off with your suit, Janov, and leave it out here in the lock,” said Trevize.

  “If you don’t mind,” said Pelorat, “a shower is what I would like to have before anything else.”

  “Not before anything else. In fact, before that, and before you can empty your bladder, even, I suspect you will have to talk to Bliss.”

  Bliss was waiting for them, of course, and with a look of concern on her face. Behind her, peeping out, was Fallom, with her hands clutching firmly at Bliss’s left arm.

  “What happened?” Bliss asked severely. “What’s been going on?”

  “Guarding against infection,” said Trevize dryly, “so I’ll be turning on the ultraviolet radiation. Break out the dark glasses. Please don’t delay.”

  With ultraviolet added to the wall illumination, Trevize took off his moist garments one by one and shook them out, turning them in one direction and another.

  “Just a precaution,” he said. “You do it, too, Janov.-And, Bliss, I’ll have to peel altogether. If that will make you uncomfortable, step into the next room.”

  Bliss said, “It will neither make me uncomfortable, nor embarrass me. I have a good notion of what you look like, and it will surely present me with nothing new.-What infection?”

  “Just a little something that, given its own way,” said Trevize, with a deliberate air of indifference, “could do great damage to humanity, I think.”

  68.

  IT WAS ALL done. The ultraviolet light had done its part. Officially, according to the complex films of information and instructions that had come with the Far Star when Trevize had first gone aboard back on Terminus, the light was there precisely for purposes of disinfection. Trevize suspected, however, that the temptation was always there, and sometimes yielded to, to use it for developing a fashionable tan for those who were from worlds where tans were fashionable. The light was, however, disinfecting, however used.

  They took the ship up into space and Trevize maneuvered it as close to Melpomenia’s sun as he might without making them all unpleasantly uncomfortable, turning and twisting the vessel so as to make sure that its entire surface was drenched in ultraviolet.

  Finally, they rescued the two space suits that had been left in the lock and examined them until even Trevize was satisfied.

  “All that,” said Bliss, at last, “for moss. Isn’t that what you said it was, Trevize? Moss?”

  “I call it moss,” said Trevize, “because that’s what it reminded me of. I’m not a botanist, however. All I can say is that it’s intensely green and can probably make do on very little light-energy.”

  “Why very little?”

  “The moss is sensitive to ultraviolet and can’t grow, or even survive, in direct illumination. Its spores are everywhere and it grows in hidden corners, in cracks in statuary, on the bottom surface of structures, feeding on the energy of scattered photons of light wherever there is a source of carbon dioxide.”

  Bliss said, “I take it you think they’re dangerous.”

  “They might well be. If some of the spores were clinging to us when we entered, or swirled in with us, they would find illumination in plenty without the harmful ultraviolet. They would find ample water and an unending supply of carbon dioxide.”

  “Only 0.03 percent of our atmosphere,” said Bliss.

  “A great deal to them-and 4 percent in our exhaled breath. What if spores grew in our nostrils, and on our skin? What if they decomposed and destroyed our food? What if they produced toxins that killed us? Even if we labored to kill them but left some spores alive, they would be enough, when carried to another world by us, to infest it, and from there be carried to other worlds. Who knows what damage they might do?”

  Bliss shook her head. “Life is not necessarily dangerous because it is different. You are so ready to kill.”

  “That’s Gaia speaking,” said Trevize.

  “Of course it is, but I hope I make sense, nevertheless. The moss is adapted to the conditions of this world. Just as it makes use of light in small quantities but is killed by large; it makes use of occasional tiny whiffs of carbon dioxide and may be killed by large amounts. It may not be capable of surviving on any world but Melpomenia.”

  “Would you want me to take a chance on that?” demanded Trevize.

  Bliss shrugged. “Very well. Don’t be defensive. I see your point. Being an Isolate, you probably had no choice but to do what you did.”

  Trevize would have answered, but Fallom’s clear high-pitched voice broke in, in her own language.

  Trevize said to Pelorat, “What’s she saying?”

  Pelorat began, “What Fallom is saying-”

  Fallom, however, as though remembering a moment too late that her own language was not easily understood, began again. “Was there Jemby there where you were?”

  The words were pronounced meticulously, and Bliss beamed. “Doesn’t she speak Galactic well? And in almost no time.”

  Trevize said, in a low voice, “I’ll mess it up if I try, but you explain to her, Bliss, that we found no robots on the planet.”

  “I’ll explain it,” said Pelorat. “Come, Fallom.” He placed a gentle arm about the youngster’s shoulders. “Come to our room and I’ll get you another book to read.”

  “A book? About Jemby?”

  “Not exactly-” And the door closed behind them.

  “You know,” said Trevize, looking after them impatiently, “we waste our time playing nursemaid to that child.”

  “Waste? In what way does it interfere with your search for Earth, Trevize?-In no way. Playing nursemaid establishes communication, however, allays fear, supplies love. Are these achievements nothing?”

  “That’s Gaia speaking again.”

  “Yes,” said Bliss. “Let us be practical, then. We have visited three of the old Spacer worlds and we have gained nothing.”

  Trevize nodded. “True enough.”

  “In fact, we have found each one dangerous, haven’t we? On Aurora, there were feral dogs; on Solaria, strange and dangerous human beings; on Melpomenia, a threatening moss. Apparently, then, when a world is left to itself, whether it contains human beings or not, it becomes dangerous to the Interstellar community.”

  “You can’t consider, that a general rule.”

  “Three out of three certainly seems impressive.”

  “And how does it impress you, Bliss?”

  “I’ll tell you. Please listen to me with an open mind. If you have millions of interacting worlds in the Galaxy, as is, of course, the affil case, and if. each is made up entirely of Isolates, as they are, then on each world, human beings are dominant and can force their will on nonhuman life-forms, on the inanimate geological background, and even on each other. The Galaxy is, then, a very primitive and fumbling and misfunctioning Galaxia. The beginnings of a unit. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I see what you’re trying to say-but that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with you when you’re done saying it.”

  “Just listen to me. Agree or not, as you please, but listen. The only way the Galaxy will work. is as a proto-Galaxia, and the less proto and the more Galaxia, the better. The Galactic Empire was an attempt at a strong proto-Galaxia, and when it fell apart, times grew rapidly worse and there was the constant drive to strengthen the proto-Galaxia concept. The Foundation Confederation is such an attempt. So was the Mule’s Empire. So is the Empire the Second Foundation is planning. But even if there were no such Empires or Confederations; even if-the entire Galaxy were in turmoil, it would be a connected turmoil, with each world interacting, even if only hostilely, with every other. That would, in itself, be a kind of union and it would not yet be the worst case.”

  “What would be the worst, then?”

  “You know the answer to that, Trevize. You’ve seen it. If a human-inhabited world breaks up completely, is truly Isolate, and if it loses all interaction with other human w
orlds, it develops-malignantly.”

  “A cancer, then?”

  “Yes. Isn’t Solaria just that? Its hand is against all worlds. And on it, the hand of each individual is against those of all others. You’ve seen it. And if human beings disappear altogether, the last trace of discipline goes. The each-against-each becomes unreasoning, as with the dogs, or is merely an elemental force as with the moss. You see, I suppose, that the closer we are to Galaxia, the better the society. Why, then, stop at anything short of Galaxia?”

  For a while, Trevize stared silently at Bliss. “I’m thinking about it. But why this assumption that dosage is a one-way thing; that if a little is good, a lot is better, and all there is is best of all? Didn’t you yourself point out that it’s possible the moss is adapted to very little carbon dioxide so that a plentiful supply might kill it? A human being two meters tall is better off than one who is one meter tall; but is also better off than one who is three meters tall. A mouse isn’t better off, if it is expanded to the size of an elephant. He wouldn’t live. Nor would an elephant be better off reduced to the size of a mouse.

  “There’s natural size, a natural complexity, some optimum quality for everything, whether star or atom, and it’s certainly true of living things and living societies. I don’t say the old Galactic Empire was ideal, and I csfa certainly see saws in the Foundation Confederation, but rm not prey say that because total Isolation is bad, total Unification is good. The eats: may both be equally horrible, and an old-fashioned Galactic Empire, however imperfect, may be the best we can do.”

  Bliss shook her head. “I wonder if you believe yourself, Trevize. Are you going to argue that a virus and a human being are equally unsatisfactory, and wish to settle for something in-between-like a slime mold?”

  “No. But I might argue that a virus and a superhuman being are equally unsatisfactory, and wish to settle for something in-between-like an ordinary person.-There is, however, no point in arguing. I will have my solution when I find Earth. On Melpomenia, we found the co-ordinates of forty-seven other Spacer worlds.”

  “And you’ll visit them all?”