“But certainly,” Cruzate said. “You put it exactement.”
“Now on Mars these lichen plants grow in sand and dust. They break down the ferrites in the soil and absorb principally iron and silicates. The Earth-like algae bodies supply oxygen by photosynthesis. You have checked that?”
“Correct.” Cruzate nodded. “And also build up the organic substances.”
“Well, back to our problem. How to account for the extremely rapid growth. The speed at which the green areas expand in the spring has been a puzzle for generations. Now we ourselves have seen them shoot out toward the spacecraft and grow over a hundred yards of bare sand in an hour. Now look.”
Wertz put a pinch of the ocher-colored powder under a large bell glass. “The ferric oxide will serve as a concentrated form of the iron food the Mars lichens find in the soil. I next dampen it with water bearing finely ground silicon dioxide, the pure form of silica. Water is an unknown elixir of life for our Mars lichens accustomed only to the meager H2O they can draw from a trace of mist. At best a light dew is their only experience with water, and they are extremely hydroscopic. Next I replace the bell jar over my souped-up synthetic Mars soil. It has these inlets by which I can introduce an equally souped-up atmosphere.”
He connected a tube running from a small metal gas cylinder. “The atmosphere in the spacecraft is regulated Earth atmosphere, rich in oxygen, such as the Mars lichens have never known.” He turned the petcock at the end of the cylinder for an instant and then closed it again. “This introduces a little more carbon dioxide, about the same as its percentage in the atmosphere of Mars.”
He took up the test tube. “Now, my botanist friend, for the climax of our little drama. I have provided a small bed of highly concentrated lichen fertilizer, so to speak, under an enriched atmosphere.”
Cruzate shrugged. “You make the beaucoup talk. You belong, I say it again, in the Sorbonne lecture salles. This ‘lichen fertilizer,’ I do not comprehend.”
Wertz laughed. “A figure of speech. The silica and the hydrous ferric oxide are very similar to the minerals the Mars lichens decompose in their native sand for their own growth. Only much concentrated. The water seems to work like a catalyst. Just watch.”
He held up the test tube. “In this solution I have concentrated a substance that I’ve been able to extract from the Mars lichen plant. I haven’t been able yet to formulate its exact structure, but it belongs among the carbon compounds and isomers. For the time being I just call it the growth element. As a matter of fact, in spite of the tremendous research in the organic compounds, their practically infinite possibilities have barely begun to be synthesized. All that we know about most of them is that they are theoretically possible.”
Cruzate cleared his throat hesitantly. Wertz ignored him. The demonstration would settle his hash, but really one had to have a little of the background. To attain a reasonable understanding of experimental phenomena, one must be prepared to grapple with principles.
“Let me take one example,” he went on. “The simplest group of carbon compounds is the paraffin hydrocarbons, composed of only carbon and hydrogen. The simplest compound in the series is CH4, with one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. The next is C2H6, followed by C3H8, then C4H10, and so on. The thing to remember is that with the exception of the first three members of the series, the formula for each compound does not represent a single substance. There are five different substances represented by the formula C6H14 and nine by C7H16. The simpler members of the series have familiar names, like butane for the fourth. But there are two butanes, normal butane and isobutane. They may have the same molecular formula, but they are very different in properties. Even though they are both gases under ordinary conditions, normal butane liquifies at about zero Centigrade, isobutane at about minus 17 degrees. And every chemical compound made with normal butane is different from the substance with the same molecular formula that is made from isobutane. Follow me?”
It didn’t matter. Cruzate was smart enough to know that the other man knew his own field. Wertz went ahead with it, savoring the symmetry of his exposition, glad over the compactness of the explanation. When he really wanted to, he could explain the complex in terms easy enough for anybody. “Such varieties of a compound are called isomers,” he went on, “and for the higher members of even the simple paraffin series chemists have not yet prepared all the possible isomers, each of which, remember, has its own properties, different in at least some fashion from all the other isomers and compounds in the entire range of organic chemistry. Chemists have calculated that there are over three hundred thousand isomers represented by the formula C20H42 and about seventy trillions of isomers—that’s seventy million millions—represented by the formula C40H82. And that’s in only one series of simple carbon compounds. They have not even calculated yet the number of possible carbon substances that result from the isomers of the many series of possible compounds, say with from one to forty carbon atoms and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen atoms in all possible combinations. How do we pretend to know what can be? Who knows what mysteries may be among them?”
“It is enough!” Cruzate cried. “Desist. I whirl in the head!”
“Here you are then,” Wertz said, “one more idea, then I will demonstrate what strange properties some of these infinite combinations may conceal. In the Mars lichen I have found an isomer of a carbon compound that has the same property for self-reproduction or self-copying that we find in the protein structure of the sexual genes of Earth life. Now I have established that this carbon-hydrogen-nitrogen-oxygen isomer is a profuse constituent of the body of the Mars lichen, and that it and two related isomers are capable of exploding into an immense multiplication of their own kinds, resulting in the formation of the overall shape and substance of the complete lichen plant. Explosive generation, as I told you. And explosive generation you are about to see.”
Wertz reached for a pipette and drew up a few minims of the straw-colored isomer from the test tube and introduced it into a glass tube that stemmed through the shell of the bell jar. The liquid ran slowly down until a drop formed on the inside end of the tube directly over his tiny pile of fertilizer dotting the filter paper.
While the little spheroid swelled heavy and pendant on its glass stem, Wertz watched Cruzate. He was characteristically intense. This he won’t like, Wertz thought. It’s going to upset his allegiance to a one-way passage between the living and the dead.
The surface tension of the drop could no longer sustain its weight. Grossly large by any standard imposed by Earth gravity, it drew down an obese, pyramidal umbilical stalk, ruptured it, and fell upon the waiting powder. Immediately, as if spark had fallen on gunpowder, the reaction exploded into a cluster of dwarf Mars lichens, a bush-like bunch as large as a grapefruit.
“Mon dieu!” Cruzate breathed. “C’est incroyable!”
Wertz said, “Maybe. But there it is. Explosive generation of the whole plant. Bypassing the entire process of cellular growth. You still think they are what you call normal plants or what you call living organisms producible only by parent living organisms?”
Cruzate lifted the bell jar and fingered the lichens. “I will examine this.” He broke off a sprig, murmuring, “It is the perfect replica. I see lichen thallus. I feel it, but I must at once make microscopic sections. We shall see if it really lives. It cannot grow and reproduce its kind, unless somehow your liquid was alive. Maybe in it virus-like sub-microscopic organisms.”
Wertz said, “Don’t try to go down that street. There was nothing under that bell jar but what you or anyone else would call purely non-vital substances. But if you don’t think that plant you see is alive, look at this.”
He thrust the tip of a spatula into the container of hydrous ferric oxide and lifted a small quantity into a test tube, then added a like amount of silica. He put a little water into the tube and shook up the mixture, thumb over the mouth of the tube. “Lichen fertilizer suspended in water,” he said, displaying th
e murky liquid. “I’ll pour a little of this around the plants, and I’ll bet you say you can see them grow—rather see them expand by the instant addition of new branches and new stems.”
He tilted the tube carefully and poured a few drops at the base of the miniature Mars lichens. The cluster of plants snapped to triple its size so quickly that it spilled the tube out of his fingertips. Instantly the things crackled into being all over the end of the bench. Now they were the size of the plants out on the Mars plains. Wertz jumped back. He swore mildly. “It got away from me, but it’s damn convincing, isn’t it?”
“It is unholy!” Cruzate exclaimed. “If it is true, it is not good. I would rather not believe it. I must test it for life. Now. With no more the delay!”
Wertz said, “Test away all you want. I have already made sections, naturally. But maybe you can see something I didn’t. For anybody’s money, that stuff’s what you call alive, and get this, it’s indisputable that it came from non-living substances.”
“Virus, subvirus, whatever it is, it had to be in the solution. There is no other explanation.”
Wertz suppressed his exasperation. “Now you’re merely expressing a faith. In a preconceived idea. It has to be there, you say. Nothing has to be anywhere, until we establish that it is there. ‘Has to be’ is optative and absolute. Frankly I have very little patience with optatives, and in the universe of physical events I have none. There they are intruders and the cause for most of our blunders.”
“Maybe so,” Cruzate muttered. “But you, do you not really say by these same words that I ought not to accept optatives? That itself is an optative!”
“Medieval. Any good apprentice logician would be able to demolish that. While you look through your microscope and do...”
Cruzate’s eyes were bulging.
Wertz followed his outstretched arm and pointing finger.
The entire top of the bench was crowned by lichen plants. Instruments and glassware tumbled crazily among them. “It must be feeding on the silica in the glass!” he exclaimed.
A sharp cracking snapped like the ultra-rapid staccato of a dozen firecrackers. The embedded bell jar vanished in a swipe of transmuted color. Gray-green arms struck out at them.
And then Wertz was fighting. Shoulder-high, all over the laboratory, protruding from the benches and the shelves, from every point of security, the lichens had exploded into a jungle profusion. Except for the small air space in the geometric center of the room, they were drowning inside a great stinking puff ball. Walls, floor, ceiling, all familiar shape of the room had gone.
“Cruzate!” Wertz shouted. “Watch out for the acids. The tips are loaded with it. Cover your face and eyes. We’ve got to get out of here.”
It was thickly clinging. Yet it yielded, like a seaweedy maze. Wertz covered his face with one arm, and plunged at the door, like a fullback hitting the line.
“Come on, Cruzate!” He fumbled for the latch against the tingle of chemical activity on his bare face, at the same time noting methodically the mildness of the action and reflecting on the high selectivity of the plant’s acids for the substances the organism had affinity for. Instantly dissolve glass but only gently irritate the epidermis.
He burst out, reached behind, and jerked Cruzate through with a heavy pull. “Christ!” He slammed the door behind them.
“Some of that stuff got out!” He pointed to the lichen bits and severed strands at the sill. “Look! We’ve got to get it. If it starts to spread out here, we’re done for.”
Cruzate stooped, grubbing for the particles. “In the next lab we burn it. Or the acid.”
“No! Leave it there. We don’t dare lose a crumb. It could explode all over the ship.”
“It cannot eat of this metal,” Cruzate protested. He stamped the timageel deck.
“We don’t know what it can do. It ate into Houck’s suit and killed him. Maybe timageel will resist the acids. Maybe it won’t. Maybe the things might mutate under the conditions inside the spacecraft. You saw them hang on the walls and ceiling inside the lab. It had to find something it could corrode well enough to hold it. Probably the insulating panels. Maybe something else. We can’t take a chance.”
He yelled for help, shoving words of explanation at the dancing Cruzate between shouts.
A much-surprised airman eventually showed and wanted to know what the noise was all about.
“A blowtorch,” Wertz told him. In the geological lab next door was Dr. Judah’s blowtorch. On the tool bench.
The man gave him a hard look.
“I can’t move from here, dammit!” Wertz told him. “Neither can he. We’ve got lichen tips on us. Now get me that torch quick, and I’ll explain it to you later all you want. We’ll have to burn up our clothes too. Right here.”
The stare turned blank.
“Move, man!” Wertz slashed at him. “Then we’ll put on a good show for you.”
The airman shook his head, but he did turn around and go into Judah’s laboratory and he came back with the blow-torch. Wertz told him to set it on the floor and stay away from them.
“You got a match?” Wertz demanded. When the man had found a package in his pocket, he tried to remember how to light the torch.
The airman moved in. “Let me.”
“Get the hell back away from this stuff,” Wertz said. “You tell me. One step at a time.”
Between them they got it lighted. Wertz picked it up and poured the blue flame over the lichen fragments, carbonizing them, all that he could find.
“Next we burn our clothes,” he pronounced. “Then we take a bath and wash our hair in a good neutralizing base.”
“It is frantic!” Cruzate sputtered. “These things here, that you have somehow made. They cannot grow. The green plants need the light of the sun to live and grow. Where is the sun in this metal monster that bring us here?”
“Maybe so. But we don’t know.”
Cruzate’s face lightened. “The heat! That is it. The fungus, it cannot survive the heat. The cold, yes. Indefinitely. But the heat, non! One hundred fifty degrees they do the work. Then they are dead.”
Wertz wondered if the little guy thought he would make himself ridiculous by taking off his clothes.
“Oui,” Cruzate said firmly, “the heat. It is all is required. The 150 degrees. It is easy. Pouf—they are dead!”
Wertz thought a moment. “Is that established? The 150 degrees, I mean? Fahrenheit? Is that the theoretical limit for fungus plants?”
“On Earth, but certainly! Here many things are different.” Cruzate waved a grand gesture of uncertainty. “Perhaps this also. But with the general temperatures lower than the Earth temperatures, so also would I expect to be lower the maximums for the living plants.”
“Okay, okay.” Wertz had the idea now. A few coils of heating element thrown into the close-sealed lab ought to do it. “Isn’t your name Whipple?” he asked the gawking airman.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, Whipple. I want you to do two more things for me. I don’t want to leave this spot and maybe scatter some of the stuff around. Please call the flight surgeon and ask him to have a strong solution of sodium carbonate prepared. Two big buckets of it, and send them up to me. Tell him it’s important and I’ll explain later. Then call the commander and ask him to do me the favor of coming up here. Will you do that?”
After reflection Whipple allowed that he would.
“Okay. There’s a phone in where you found the blowtorch. Ask them to hurry. Ask Captain King to send a couple of bath sponges too.”
While they waited, Wertz got out of his clothes, feeling the amazing lightness no human could ever accustom himself to when he had shucked his heavy gravity belt and footgear. Finally he persuaded Cruzate to follow his example. “We’ll throw all these clothes inside when we open the door to introduce the heating elements. We’ll foul up the place if we try to burn them up with the torch. Then we soak ourselves good with sodium carbonate, and it neutralizes the acids
in any fragments in our hair or sticking to our bodies. Then we swab down the floor with the same stuff, and I think everything will be sterile. The damned things can’t grow any more without their acids, that’s for sure.”
Cruzate grunted his disgust. He moved delicately about with his weight off, as if he were afraid he would soar up and bump his head.
When the two buckets of solution and the sponges came up, they further amused Captain King’s grinning medical orderly by bathing in the milky liquid, sloshing it freely over their bodies and squeezing it out of the sponges on each other’s head. As soon as the orderly saw Major Noel come through the bulkhead, he departed abruptly.
“I guess all this has an explanation of some kind,” Noel commented.
“We’re not exactly playing games,” Wertz told him.
“We’ve got trouble enough for everybody.”
“I hope it’s not a brand-new one.”
Noel sounded tired. Wertz felt a twinge of sympathy for the man. He had his load, all right enough. “It’s about the lichens,” he said. “We were experimenting with them and they literally blew up in our faces. I’m afraid now that they could be dangerous to the spacecraft if they grow up to it and get in contact with it.” He began telling him what had happened.
Noel listened soberly.
With the reflective man’s disturbance over directness, Wertz struggled against Noel’s interrupting queries that chopped off his explanations. It would take only a few more minutes to report the incident adequately, with some indication of the historical and analytical detail of the experiment.
Noel wasn’t having any. The basic facts were enough for him. Obviously he was getting excited under the official mask.
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