Buy Jupiter and Other Stories Part 19

"I mean many things."

Lou Tansonia's expression was a mixture of barely suppressed excitement and barely suppressed apprehension. "I'm glad to have this chance to see you, Mr. Secretary," he said breathlessly, puffing against Earth's gravity.

"I'm sorry we couldn't make it sooner," said Adrastus smoothly. "I have excellent reports concerning your work. The other gentleman present is Jan Marley, a science writer, and he need not concern us."

Lou glanced at the writer briefly and nodded, then turned eagerly to Adrastus. "Mr. Secretary-"

"Sit down," said Adrastus.

Lou did so, with the trace of clumsiness to be expected of one acclimating himself to Earth, and with an air, somehow, that to pause long enough to sit was a waste of time. He said, "Mr. Secretary, I am appealing to you personally concerning my Project Application Num-"

"I know it."

"You've read it, sir?"

"No, I haven't, but the computers have. It's been rejected."

"Yes! But I appeal from the computers to you."

Adrastus smiled and shook his head. "That's a difficult appeal for me. I don't know from where I could gather the courage to override the computer."

"But you must, must," said the young man earnestly. "My field is genetic engineering." said the young man earnestly. "My field is genetic engineering."

"Yes, I know."

"And genetic engineering," said Lou, running over the interruption, "is the handmaiden of medicine and it shouldn't be so. Not entirely, anyway."

"Odd that you think so. You have your medical degree, and you have done impressive work in medical genetics. I have been told that in two years time your work may lead to the full suppression of diabetes mellitus for good."

"Yes, but I don't care. I don't want to carry that through. Let someone else do it. Curing diabetes is just a detail and it will merely mean that the death rate will go down slightly and produce just a bit more pressure in the direction of population increase. I'm not interested in achieving that."

"You don't value human life?"

"Not infinitely. There are too many people on Earth."

"I know that some think so."

"You're one of them, Mr. Secretary. You have written articles saying so. And it's obvious to any thinking man-to you more than anyone-what it's doing. Over-population means discomfort, and to reduce the discomfort private choice must disappear. Crowd enough people into a field and the only way they can all sit down is for all to sit down at the same time. Make a mob dense enough and they can move from one point to another quickly only by marching in formation. That is what men are becoming; a blindly marching mob knowing nothing about where it is going or why."

"How long have you rehea.r.s.ed this speech, Mr. Tansonia?"

Lou flushed slightly. " And the other life forms are decreasing in numbers of species and individuals, except for the plants we eat. The ecology gets simpler every year."

"It stays balanced."

"But it loses color and variety and we don't even know how good the balance is. We accept the balance only because it's all we have."

"What would you do?"

" Ask the computer that rejected my proposal. I want to initiate a program for genetic engineering on a wide variety of species from worms to mammals. I want to create new variety out of the dwindling material at hand before it dwindles out altogether."

"For what purpose?"

"To set up artificial ecologies. To set up ecologies based on plants and animals not like anything on Earth."

"What would you gain?"

"I don't know. If I knew exactly what I would gain there would be no need to do research. But I know what we ought to gain. We ought to learn more about what makes an ecology tick. So far, we've only taken what nature has handed us and then ruined it and broken it down and made do with the gutted remains. Why not build something up and study that?"

"You mean build it blindly? At random?"

"We don't know enough to do it any other way. Genetic engineering has the random mutation as its basic driving force. Applied to medicine, this randomness must be minimized at all costs, since a specific effect is sought. I want to take the random component of genetic engineering and make use of it."

Adrastus frowned for a moment. " And how are you going to set up an ecology that's meaningful? Won't it interact with the ecology that already exists, and possibly unbalance it? That is something we can't afford."

"I don't mean to carry out the experiments on Earth," said Lou. "Of course not."

"On the moon?"

"Not on the moon, either. -On the asteroids. I've thought of that since my proposal was fed to the computer which spit it out. Maybe this will make a difference. How about small asteroids, hollowed-out; one per ecology? a.s.sign a certain number of asteroids for the purpose. Have them properly engineered; outfit them with energy sources and transducers; seed them with collections of life forms which might form a closed ecology. See what happens. If it doesn't work, try to figure out why and subtract an item, or, more likely, add an item, or change the proportions. We'll develop a science of applied ecology, or, if you prefer, a science of ecological engineering; a science one step up in complexity and significance beyond genetic engineering."

"But the good of it, you can't say."

"The specific good, of course not. But how can it avoid some good? It will increase knowledge in the very field we need it most." He pointed to the s.h.i.+mmering lettering behind Adrastus. "You said it yourself, 'Man's greatest a.s.set is a balanced ecology.' I'm offering you a way of doing basic research in experimental ecology; something that has never been done before."

"How many asteroids will you want?" Lou hesitated. "Ten?" he said with rising inflection. "As a beginning."

"Take five," said Adrastus, drawing the report toward himself and scribbling quickly on its face, canceling out the computer's decision.

Afterward, Marley said, "Can you sit there and tell me that you're a glorified clerk now? You cancel the computer and hand out five asteroids. Like that."

"The Congress will have to give its approval. I'm sure it will."

"Then you think this young man's suggestion is really a good one."

"No, I don't. It won't work. Despite his enthusiasm, the matter is so complicated that it will surely take far more men than can possibly be made available for far more years than that young man will live to carry it through to any worthwhile point."

"Are you sure?"

"The computer says so. It's why his project was rejected."

"Then why did you cancel the computer's decision?"

"Because I, and the government in general, are here in order to preserve something far more important than the ecology."

Marley leaned forward. "I don't get it."

"Because you misquoted what I said so long ago. Because everyone misquotes it. Because I spoke two sentences and they were telescoped into one and I have never been able to force them apart again. Presumably, the human race is unwilling to accept my remarks as I made them."

"You mean you didn't say 'Man's greatest a.s.set is a I balanced ecology'?"

"Of course not. I said, 'Man's greatest need need is a balanced ecology.'" is a balanced ecology.'"

"But on your s.h.i.+mmer-plast you say, 'Man's greatest a.s.set-'"

"That begins the second sentence, which men refuse to quote, but which I never forget-'Man's greatest a.s.set is the unsettled mind.' I haven't overruled the computer for the sake of our ecology. We only need that to live. I overruled it to save a valuable mind and keep it at work, an unsettled mind. We need that for man to be man-which is more important than merely to live."

Marley rose. "I suspect, Mr. Secretary, you wanted me here for this interview. It's this thesis you want me to publicize, isn't it?"

"Let's say," said Adrastus, "that I'm seizing the chance to get my remarks correctly quoted."

Alas, that was my last sale to John. The check arrived on August 18, 1970, and less than a year later he was dead.

When the story appeared in the January 1972 issue of a.n.a.log a.n.a.log my good and gentle friend, Ben Bova, was editor of the magazine. It isn't possible to fill John Campbell's shoes, but Ben is filling his own very successfully. my good and gentle friend, Ben Bova, was editor of the magazine. It isn't possible to fill John Campbell's shoes, but Ben is filling his own very successfully.

The next story was written as the result of a comedy of errors. In January 1971, as a result of a complicated set of circ.u.mstances, I promised Bob Silverberg that I would write a short story for an anthology of originals he was preparing.* [* You may be surprised that I don't explain the complicated set of circ.u.mstances, since I am such a blabbermouth, but Bob finds my version a little on the offensive side, so we'll let it go.]

I wrote the short story but it turned out not to be a short story. To my enormous surprise, I wrote a novel, THE G.o.dS THEMSELVES (Doubleday, 1972), my first science fiction novel in fifteen years (if you don't count FANTASTIC VOYAGE, which wasn't entirely mine).

It wasn't a bad novel at all, since it won the Hugo and the Nebula, and showed the science fiction world that the old man still had it. Nevertheless, it put me in a hole since there was the short story I had promised Bob. I wrote another, therefore, TAKE A MATCH, and it appeared in Bob's anthology New Dimensions II New Dimensions II (Doubleday, 1972). (Doubleday, 1972).

TAKE A MATCH.

s.p.a.ce was black; black an around in every direction. There was nothing to be seen; not a star.

It was not because there were no stars- Actually the thought that there might be no stars, literally no stars, had chilled Per Hanson's vitals. It was the old nightmare that rested just barely subliminally beneath the skin of every deep-s.p.a.cer's brain.

When you took the Jump through the tachyon-universe, how sure were you where where you would emerge? The timing and quant.i.ty of the energy input might be as tightly controlled as you liked, and your Fusionist might be the best in s.p.a.ce, but the uncertainty principle reigned supreme and there was always the chance, even the inevitability of a random miss. you would emerge? The timing and quant.i.ty of the energy input might be as tightly controlled as you liked, and your Fusionist might be the best in s.p.a.ce, but the uncertainty principle reigned supreme and there was always the chance, even the inevitability of a random miss.

And by way of tachyons, a paper-thin miss might be a thousand light-years.

What, then, if you landed nowhere; or at least so distant from anywhere that nothing could possibly ever, guide you to knowledge of your own position and nothing, therefore, could guide you back to anywhere?

Impossible, said the pundits. There was no place in the universe from which the quasars could not be seen, and from those alone you could position yourself. Besides, the chance that in the course of ordinary Jumps mere chance would take you outside the galaxy was only one in about ten million, and to the distance of, say, the Andromeda galaxy or Maffei 1, perhaps one in a quadrillion.

Forget it, said the pundits.

So when a s.h.i.+p comes out of its Jump, and returns from the weird paradoxes of the faster-than-light tachyons to the healthy we-know-it-all of an the tardyons from protons down to protons up, there must must be stars to be seen. If they are not seen nevertheless, you are in a dust cloud; it is the only explanation. There are smoggy areas in the galaxy, or in any spiral galaxy, as once there were on Earth, when it was the sole home of humanity, rather than the carefully preserved, weather-controlled, life-preserve museum-piece it now was. be stars to be seen. If they are not seen nevertheless, you are in a dust cloud; it is the only explanation. There are smoggy areas in the galaxy, or in any spiral galaxy, as once there were on Earth, when it was the sole home of humanity, rather than the carefully preserved, weather-controlled, life-preserve museum-piece it now was.

Hanson was tall and gloomy; his skin was leathery; and what he didn't know about the hypers.h.i.+ps that ploughed the length and breadth of the galaxy and immediately neighboring regions-always barring the Fusionists' mysteries-was yet to be worked out. He was alone, now, in the Captain's Corner, as he liked to be. He had at hand all that was needed to be connected with any man or woman on board, and with the results of any device and instrument, and it pleased him to be the unseen presence.

-Though now nothing pleased him. He closed contact and said, "What else, Strauss?"

"We're in an open cl.u.s.ter," said Strauss's voice. (Hanson did not turn on the visual attachment; it would have meant revealing his own face and he preferred his look of sick worry to be held private.) "At least," Strauss continued, "it seems to be an open cl.u.s.ter, from the level of radiation we can get in the far infrared and microwave regions. The trouble is we just can't pinpoint the positions well enough to locate ourselves. Not a hope."

"Nothing in visible light?"

"Nothing at all; or in the near-infrared, either. The dust cloud is as thick as soup."

"How big is it?"

"No way of telling."

"Can you estimate the distance to the nearest edge?"

"Not even to an order of magnitude. It might be a light-week. It might be ten light-years. Absolutely no way of telling."

"Have you talked to Viluekis?"

Strauss said briefly, "Yes!"

"What does he say?"

"Not much. He's sulking. He's taking it as a personal insult, of course."

"Of course." Hanson sighed noiselessly. Fusionists were as childish as children and because theirs was the romantic role in deep s.p.a.ce, they were indulged. He said, "I suppose you told him that this sort of thing is unpredictable and could happen at any time."

"I did. And he said, as you can guess-'Not to Viluekis.' "

"Except that it did, of course. Well, I I can't speak to him. Nothing I say will mean anything at all except that I'm trying to pull rank and then we'll get nothing further out of him. -He won't start the scoop?" can't speak to him. Nothing I say will mean anything at all except that I'm trying to pull rank and then we'll get nothing further out of him. -He won't start the scoop?"

"He says he can't. He says it will be damaged."

"How can you damage a magnetic field!"

Strauss grunted. "Don't say that to him. He'll tell you there's more to a fusion tube than a magnetic field and then say you're trying to downgrade him."

"Yes, I know. -Well, look, put everyone and everything on the cloud. There must be some way to make some sort of guess as to the direction and distance of the nearest edge." He broke connection.

Hanson frowned into the middle distance, then.

Nearest edge! It was doubtful if at the s.h.i.+p's speed (relative to the surrounding matter) they dared expend the energy required for radical alteration of course.

They had moved into the Jump at half-light speed relative to the galactic nucleus in the tardyon-universe, and they emerged from the Jump at (of course) the same speed. There always seemed an element of risk in that. After all, suppose you found yourself, on the return, in the near neighborhood of a star and heading toward it at half-light speed.

The theoreticians denied the possibility. To get dangerously close to a ma.s.sive body by way of a Jump was not reasonably to be expected. So said the pundits. Gravitational forces were involved in the Jump and for the transition from tardyon to tachyon and back to tardyon those forces were repulsive in nature. In fact, it was the random effect of a net gravitational force that could never be worked out in complete detail that accounted for a good deal of the uncertainty in the Jump.

Besides, they would say, trust to the Fusionist's instinct. A good Fusionist never goes wrong.

Except that this Fusionist had Jumped them into a cloud.

-Oh, that! It happens all the time. It doesn't matter. Do you know how thin thin most clouds are. You won't even know you're in one. most clouds are. You won't even know you're in one.