Space Lash

by Hal Clement

  Silbert's reaction to this remark may have been expected; both Weisanens had been watching him with slight smiles on their faces. He did not disappoint them.

  “Living quarters? That's ridiculous! There's no weight to speak of even at Raindrop's surface, and even less at the core. A person would lose the calcium from his skeleton in a few weeks, and go unbalanced in I don't know how many other chemical ways…"

  “Fourteen known so far, Mr. Silbert. We know all about that, or as much as anyone does. It was a shame to tease you, but my husband and I couldn't resist. Also, some of the factors involved are not yet public knowledge, and we have reasons for not wanting them too widely circulated for a while yet.” Brenda Weisanen's interruption was saved from rudeness by the smile on her face. “I would invite you to sit down to listen, but sitting means nothing here — I'll get used to that eventually, no doubt.

  “The fact you just mentioned about people leaching calcium out of their skeletons after a few days or weeks of weightlessness was learned long ago — even before long manned space flights had been made; the information was gained from flotation experiments. Strictly speaking, it is not an effect of weightlessness per se, but a feedback phenomenon involving relative muscular effort — something which might have been predicted, and for all I know may actually have been predicted, from the fact that the ankle bones in a growing child ossify much more rapidly than the wrist bones. A very minor genetic factor is involved; after all, animals as similar to us as dolphins which do spend all their time afloat grow perfectly adequate skeletons.

  “A much more subtle set of chemical problems were noticed the hard way when manned space stations were set up, as you well know. A lot of work was done on these, as you might expect, and we now are quite sure that all which will produce detectable results in less than five years of continuous weightlessness are known. There are fourteen specific factors — chemical and genetic keys to the log jam, if you like to think of it that way.

  “You have the ordinary educated adult's knowledge of gene tailoring, Mr. Silbert. What was the logical thing to do?”

  “Since gene tailoring on human beings is flagrantly illegal, for good and sufficient reasons, the logical thing to do was and is to avoid weightlessness,” Silbert replied. “With Phoenix rockets, we can make interplanetary flight at a continuous one-gravity acceleration, while space stations can be and are centrifuged.”

  Brenda Weisanen's smile did not change, but her husband looked annoyed. He took up the discussion.

  “Illegal or not, for good or bad reasons, it was perfectly reasonable to consider modifying human genetic patterns so that some people at least could live and work normally and indefinitely in a weightless environment. Whether it shocks you or not, the thing was tried over seventy years ago, and over five hundred people now alive have this modification — and are not, as I suppose you would put it, fully human.”

  Bresnahan interrupted. “I would not put it that way!” he snapped. “As anyone who has taken work in permutation and combination knows perfectly well, there is no such thing as a fully human being if you define the term relative to some precise, specific idealized gene pattern. Mutations are occurring all the time from radiation, thermal effects, and just plain quantum jumping of protons in the genetic molecules. This sort of phenomenon is used as example material in elementary programming courses, and one of the first things you learn when you run such a problem is that no one is completely without such modifications. If, as I suppose you are about to say, you and Mrs. Weisanen are genetically different enough to take weightlessness, I can't see why it makes you less human. I happen to be immune to four varieties of leukemia virus and sixteen of the organisms usually responsible for the common cold, according to one analysis of my own gene pattern. If Bert's had ever been checked we'd find at least as many peculiarities about his — and I refuse to admit that either of us is less human than anyone else we've ever met.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bresnahan,” Brenda Weisanen took up the thread of the discussion once more. “The usual prejudice against people who are known to be significantly different tends to make some of us a little self-conscious. In any case, my husband and I can stand weightlessness indefinitely, as far as it is now possible to tell, and we plan to stay here permanently. More of us will be coming up later for the same purpose.”

  “But why? Not that it's any of my business. I like Raindrop, but it's not the most stimulating environment, and in any case I'm known to be the sort of oddball who prefers being alone with a collection of books to most other activities.”

  The woman glanced at her husband before answering. He shrugged.

  “You have already touched on the point, Mr. Silbert. Modifying the human genetic pattern involves the same complication which plagued medicine when hormones became available for use in treatment. Any one action is likely to produce several others as an unplanned, and commonly unwanted, byproduct. Our own modification is not without its disadvantages. What our various defects may be I would not presume to list in toto — any more than Mr. Bresnahan would care to list his — but one of them strikes very close to home just now. Aino and I are expecting a child, and about nine times out of ten when a woman of our type remains in normal gravity any child she conceives is lost during the fifth or sixth month. The precise cause is not known; it involves the mother's physique rather than the child's, but that leaves a lot still to be learned. Therefore, I am staying here until my baby is born, at the very least. We expect to live here. We did not ask to be modified to fit space, but if it turns out that we can live better here — so be it.”

  “Then Raindrop is going to be turned into a — a—maternity hospital?”

  “I think a fairer term would be `colony,' Mr. Silbert,” interjected Weisanen. “There are a good many of us, and most if not all of us are considering making this place our permanent home.”

  “Which means that breaking it up according to the original plan to supply farming volume is no longer on the books.”

  “Precisely.”

  “How do you expect to get away with that? This whole project was planned and paid for as a new source of food.”

  “That was when it was a government project. As you know, it became a private concern recently; the government was paid full value for Raindrop, the station, and the shuttle which keeps it supplied. As of course you do not know, over eighty per cent of the stock of that corporation is owned by people like myself. What we propose to do is perfectly legal, however unpopular it may make us with a few people.”

  “More than a few, I would say. And how can you afford to be really unpopular, living in something as fragile as Raindrop?” queried Bresnahan. “There are lots of spaceships available. Even if no official action were or could be taken, anyone who happened to have access to one and disliked you sufficiently could wreck the skin of this tank so thoroughly in five minutes that you'd have to start all over again even if you yourselves lived through it. All the life you'd established would freeze before repairs could be made complete enough to stop the water from boiling away.”

  “That is true, and is a problem we haven't entirely solved,” admitted the other. “Of course, the nasty laws against the publication of possible mob-rousing statements which were found necessary as Earth's population grew should operate to help us. Nowadays many people react so negatively to any unsupported statement that the word would have trouble getting around. In any case, we don't intend to broadcast the details, and comparatively few people know much about the Raindrop project at all. I don't think that many will feel cheated.”

  Silbert's reaction to the last sentence was the urge to cry out, “But they are being cheated!” However, it was beginning to dawn on him that he was not in the best possible position to argue with Weisanen.

  He subsided. He himself had been living with the Raindrop project for three years, had become closely identified with it, and the change of policy bothered him for deeper reasons than his intelligence alone could recognize.

/>   Bresnahan was also bothered, though he was not as deeply in love with the project as the spaceman. He was less impressed by Weisanen's conviction that there would be no trouble; but he had nothing useful to say about the matter. He was developing ideas, but they ran along the line of wondering when he could get to a computer keyboard to set the whole situation up as a problem. His background and training had left him with some doubt of any human being's ability — including his own — to handle all facets of a complex problem.

  Neither of the Weisanens seemed to have any more to say, either, so the sphere drifted downward in silence.

  6

  They had quickly passed the limit which sunlight could reach, and were surrounded by blackness, which the sphere's own interior lights seemed only to accentuate.

  With neither gravity nor outside reference points, the sphere was of course being navigated by instrument. Sonar equipment kept the pilot informed of the distance to the nearest point of the skin, the distance and direction of the lock through which they had entered, and the distance and direction of the core. Interpretation of the echoes was complicated by the fact that Raindrop's outer skin was so sharply curved, but Weisanen seemed to have that problem well in hand as he drove the vehicle downward.

  Pressure, of course, did not change significantly with depth. The thirty per cent increase from skin to core meant nothing to healthy people. There was not even an instrument to register this factor, as far as Silbert could see. He was not too happy about that; his spaceman's prejudices made him feel that there should be independent instrumentation to back up the sonar gear.

  As they neared the core, however, instruments proved less necessary than expected.

  To the mild surprise of the Weisanens and the blank astonishment of Silbert — Bresnahan knew too little to expect anything, either way — the central region of the satellite was not completely dark. The light was so faint that it would not have been noticed if they had not been turning off the sphere's lamps every few minutes, but it was quite bright enough to be seen, when they were a hundred yards or so from the core, without waiting for eyes to become dark-adapted.

  “None of your samples ever included luminous bacteria,” remarked the official. “I wonder why none of them ever got close enough to the skin for you to pick up.”

  “I certainly don't know,” replied Silbert. “Are you sure it's caused by bacteria?”

  “Not exactly by a long shot; it just seems the best starting guess. I'm certain it's not heat or radioactivity, and offhand I can't think of any other possibilities. Can you?”

  “No, I can't. But maybe whatever is producing the light is attached to the core — growing on it, if it's alive. So it wouldn't have reached the surface.”

  “That's possible, though I hope you didn't think I was criticizing your sampling techniques. It was one of my friends who planned them, not you. We'll go on down; we're almost in contact with the core now, according to the fathometer.”

  Weisanen left the lights off, except for the tiny fluorescent sparks on the controls themselves, so the other three crowded against the bulge of the viewing port to see what was coming. Weightlessness made this easier than it might have been; they didn't have to “stand” at the same spot to have their heads close together.

  For a minute or so, nothing was perceptible in the way of motion. There was just the clear, faintly luminous water outside the port. Then a set of slender, tentacular filaments as big around as a human thumb seemed to writhe past the port as the sphere sank by them; and the eyes which followed their length could suddenly see their point of attachment.

  “There!” muttered Brenda Weisanen softly. “Slowly, dear — only a few yards.”

  “There's no other way this thing can travel,” pointed out her husband. “Don't worry about our hitting anything too hard.”

  “I'm not — but look! It's beautiful! Let's get anchored and go outside.”

  “In good time. It will stay there, and anyway I'm going out before you do — long enough before to, at least, make reasonably certain it's safe.”

  The wife looked for a moment as though she were about to argue this point, if her facial expression could be read accurately in the faint light, but she said nothing. Bresnahan and Silbert had the intelligence to keep quiet as well; more could be learned by looking than by getting into the middle of a husband-wife disagreement, and now there was plenty to look at.

  The core was visible for at least two hundred yards in all directions, as the sphere spun slowly under Weisanen's control. The light definitely came from the life forms which matted its surface.

  Presumably these were fungi, since photosynthetic forms could hardly have grown in such an environment, but they were fungi which bore little resemblance to their Terrestrial ancestors. Some were ribbon-like, some feather-like, some snaky — even patches of what looked like smoothly mown lawn were visible. The greenish light was evidently not pure color, since other shades were visible; red, purple, and yellow forms stood out here and there in eye-catching contrast to grays and browns. Some forms were even green, though it seemed unlikely that this was due to chlorophyll. Practically all seemed to emit the vague light which bathed the entire scene — so uniformly that outlines would have been hard to distinguish were it not for a few specimens which were much brighter than the others. These types bore what might have been spore pods; brilliantly luminous knobs ranging from fist to grapefruit size, raised “above” the rest of the surface as much as eight or ten feet on slender stalks. These cast shadows which helped distinguish relief.

  The woman was right; weird it might be, but the scene was beautiful.

  Weisanen cut off the water jets and waited for a minute or two. The vehicle drifted slowly but perceptibly away from the surface; evidently there was some current.

  “We'll have to anchor,” he remarked. “Bren, stay inside until we've checked. I'll go out to see what we can fasten ourselves to; there's no information at all on what sort of surface there may be. A fair-sized stony meteoroid — really an asteroid — was used as the original core, but the solids from the comets would be very fine dust. There could be yards of mud too fine to hold any sort of anchor surrounding the solid part. You gentlemen will please get into the other suits and come with me. If nothing has happened to any of us in half an hour, Bren, you may join us.”

  “There are only three suits,” his wife pointed out.

  “True. Well, your spacesuit will do; or if you prefer, one of us will use his and let you have the diving gear. In any case, that problem is low-priority. If you gentlemen are ready we'll go. I'll start; this is strictly a one-man air lock.”

  All three had been climbing out of their spacesuits as Weisanen was talking. The other garments were easy enough to get into, though Bresnahan found the huge helmet unwieldy even with no weight. Weisanen was through the lock before either of the others was ready to follow; Silbert was slowed by his space-born habit of double-checking every bit of the breathing apparatus, and Bresnahan by his inexperience. They could see their employer through the window as they finished, swimming slowly and carefully toward the weedy boundary of Raindrop's core.

  Both men stayed where they were for the moment, to see what would happen when he reached it. Brenda Weisanen watched even more closely; there was no obvious reason to be afraid, but her breath was coming unevenly and her fists tightly clenched as her husband approached the plants and reached out to touch the nearest.

  Nothing spectacular happened. It yielded to his touch; when he seized it and pulled, it broke.

  “Either the plants are awfully fragile or there is fairly firm ground anchoring them,” remarked Silbert. “Let's go outside. You're checked out on the controls of this thing, aren't you, Mrs. Weisanen?”

  “Not in great detail,” was the reply, “I know which switches handle lights and main power for the lock pump, and which control bank deals with the jets; but I've had no practice in actually handling it. Aino hadn't, either, until we started this trip an hour
ago. Go ahead, though; I won't have to do anything anyway. Aino is anchoring us now.”

  She gestured toward the port. Her husband could now be seen through it carrying something, maybe a harpoon, with a length of fine line attached to it. A couple of yards from the surface he poised himself and hurled the object, javelin style — or as nearly to that style as anyone can manage in water — into the mass of vegetation.

  The shaft buried itself completely. Weisanen gave a tug on the line, whose far end was attached to the sphere. He seemed satisfied and turned to look at the vehicle. Seeing the men still inside, he gestured impatiently. Bresnahan followed Silbert through the tiny air lock as rapidly as its cycling time would permit, leaving the woman alone in the sphere.

  Outside, Weisanen was several yards away, still beckoning imperiously.

  “You can talk, sir,” remarked Silbert in ordinary tones. “There's no need for sign language.”

  “Oh. Thanks; I didn't see any radio equipment in these helmets.”

  “There isn't any. The helmets themselves aren't just molded plastic; they're a multi-layered arrangement that acts as an impedance matcher between the air inside and the water outside. Sound goes through water well enough; it's the air-water interface that makes conversation difficult. This stuff gets the sound across the boundary.”

  “All right; good. Let's get to work. If the figures for the size of the original nucleus still mean anything, we have nearly twenty million square feet to check up on. Right now we won't try to do it all; stay in sight of the sphere. Get test rods and plankton gear from that rack by the air lock. Mr. Silbert, use the nets and collectors as you usually do. Mr. Bresnahan, you and I will use the rods; simply poke them into the surface every few yards. The idea is to get general knowledge of the firmness of the underlying surface, and to find the best places to build — or attach — permanent structures. If you should happen to notice any connection between the type of vegetation and the kind of ground it grows on, so much the better; surveying by eye will be a lot faster than by touch. If any sort of trouble comes up, yell. I don't see why there should be any, but I don't want Brenda out here until we're a little more certain.”