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He hauled himself slowly to his feet, his legs shooting pins and needles fiercely. Hobbling, laughing aloud, he staggered around his cluttered compartment, nearly tripping over the equipment he had scattered across the floor until his legs returned to normal. A glance at the digital clock above his bunk, which displayed the base’s time, showed him that the galley had long since closed for the night. What matter? He was hungry, though, so he put in a call for Alexios. He’s the head of this operation, Molina told himself. He ought to be able to get them to produce a meal for the discoverer of life on Mercury.
Alexios did better than that. He invited Molina to his own quarters to share a late-night repast, complete with a dust-covered bottle of celebratory champagne.
Alexios’s living quarters were no larger than Molina’s compartment, the astrobiologist saw, but the furnishings were much better. The bed looked more comfortable than Molina’s bunk, and there was a real desk instead of a wobbly pullout tray, plus a pair of comfortably padded armchairs. Their supper—cold meats and a reasonably crisp salad—was augmented by a bowl of fruit and the champagne. It all tasted wonderful to Molina.
“Living organisms?” Alexios was asking. “You’ve found living organisms?”
“Not yet,” said Molina, leaning back in the luxurious chair as he munched on a boneless pseudochicken wing.
Alexios raised his dark brows.
“As a point of fact,” Molina said, gesturing with his plastic fork, “there might not be living organisms on Mercury.”
“But I thought you said—”
Falling into his lecturer’s mode of speech, Molina intoned, “What I’ve discovered here is evidence of biological activity. This shows conclusively that there was once life on Mercury. Whether life still exists here is another matter, calling for much more extensive exploration and study.”
Alexios’s slightly mismatched face showed comprehension. “I see. You’re saying that life once existed here, but there’s no guarantee that it is still extant.”
“Precisely,” said Molina, a trifle pompously. “We’ll have to bring in teams to search the planet’s surface extensively and bore deeply into the crust.”
“Looking for organisms underground? Like the extremophiles that have been found on Earth?”
Nodding, Molina replied, “And Mars. And Venus. And even on Io.”
Alexios smiled thinly. “I wonder what Bishop Danvers will think about this? The thought of extraterrestrial intelligence seems to bother him.”
“Oh, I don’t expect we’ll find anything intelligent,” said Molina, with a wave of one hand. “Microbes. Bacterial forms, that’s what we’re looking for.”
“I see.” Alexios hesitated, then asked, “But tell me, if you bring in teams to scour the surface and dig deep boreholes, how will that affect my operation? After all, we’re planning to scoop ores from the surface and refine them with nanomachines so that we can—”
“All that will have to stop,” Molina said flatly.
“Stop?”
“We can’t risk contaminating possible biological evidence with your industrial operation. And nanomachines —they might gobble up the very evidence we’re seeking.”
Alexios sank back in his chair. “Mr. Yamagata is not going to be pleased by this. Not one bit.” Yet he was smiling strangely as he spoke.
TORCH SHIP
But that could ruin us!” Yamagata yowled, his usually smiling face knotted into an angry grimace.
Alexios had come up to the orbiting ship to present the troubling news personally to his boss. He shrugged helplessly. “The IAA regulations are quite specific, sir.
The two men were standing in
At last Yamagata muttered, “I can’t believe that any kind of life could exist down there.”
Alexios raised his brows slightly. “They found life on the surface of Venus, which is even hotter than Mercury.”
“Venus has liquid sulfur and silicone compounds. Nothing like that has been found here.”
“Not yet,” Alexios said, in a barely voiced whisper.
Yamagata frowned at him.
“We won’t have to stop all our work,” Alexios said, trying to sound a little brighter. “We still have the power satellites coming in from Selene. Getting them up and running will be a considerable task.”
“But how will we provide the life-support materials for the crew?” Yamagata growled. “I depended on your team on the surface for that.” Alexios clasped his hands behind his back and turned to stare at the planet’s surface gliding past. He knew his base on Mercury was too small to be seen by the unaided eye from the distance of the
“Well?” Yamagata demanded. “What do you recommend?”
Turning back to look at his decidedly unhappy employer, Alexios shrugged. “We’ll have to bring in the life- support materials from Selene, I suppose, if we can’t scoop them from Mercury’s regolith.”
“That will bankrupt us,” Yamagata muttered.
“Perhaps the suspension will only be for a short time,” said Alexios. “The scientists will come, look around, and then simply declare certain regions to be off-limits to our work.”
Even in the shadows of the darkened observation blister Alexios could see the grim expression on Yamagata’s face.
“This will ruin everything,” Yamagata said in a heavy whisper. “Everything.”
Alexios agreed, but forced himself to present a worried, downcast appearance to his boss.
Fuming, trying to keep his considerable temper under control, Yamagata repaired to his private quarters and called up the computer program of Robert Forward. The long-dead genius appeared in the middle of the compartment, smiling self-assuredly, still wearing that garish vest beneath his conservative tweed jacket.
Between the smile and the vest, Yamagata felt too irritated to sit still. He paced around the three- dimensional image, explaining this intolerable situation. Forward’s holographic image turned to follow him, that maddening smile never slipping by even one millimeter.
“But finding life on Mercury is very exciting news,” the image said. “You should be proud that you helped to facilitate such a discovery.”
“How can we continue our work if the IAA forces us to shut down all activities on the surface?” Yamagata demanded.
“That won’t last forever. They’ll lift the suspension sooner or later.”
“After Sunpower Foundation has gone bankrupt.”
“You have four powersats in orbit around Mercury and six more on the way. Can’t you begin to sell energy from them? You’d have some income—”
“The solar cells degrade too quickly!” Yamagata snapped. “Their power output is too low to be profitable.”
Forward seemed to think this over for a moment. “Then spend the time finding a solution for the cell degradation. Harden the cells; protect them from the harmful solar radiation.”
“Protect them?”
“It’s probably solar ultraviolet that’s doing the damage,” Forward mused. “Or perhaps particles from the solar wind.”
Yamagata sank into his favorite chair. “Solar particles. You mean protons?”
