“You ought to get more rest,” Linc said.
The old man shook his head. “Rest when we get there. Here…look at this.”
He touched a few buttons and a view of Beryl flashed onto the main desk-top screen. It was blue-green and beautiful, a lovely gibbous crescent hanging in space, flecked with white clouds, topped by a polar cap of dazzling white.
“Now watch—” Jerlet touched more buttons.
The picture disappeared, to be replaced by a strange glow of colors that ranged from violet to deepest red. Squinting at the unfamiliar sight, Linc saw that there were hundreds of black lines scratched vertically across the band of colors.
“That’s a spectrogram of the planet,” Jerlet said. “A sort of fingerprint of Beryl.”
“Fingerprint?” Linc asked.
Jerlet scratched at his craggy face. “That’s right, you don’t know what fingerprints are. Well… what’s on the agenda for lunch?”
“We’re supposed to go over the route I take to get back to the Living Wheel.”
“H’mm. And dinner?”
“Nothing yet.” He and Jerlet had a set routine for each meal. If Linc had any questions that required a lengthy explanation, Jerlet used mealtime to explain them.
“Okay, dinner. The subject will be fingerprints. Might even tell you about retinal patterns and voice prints.”
Linc nodded. He didn’t understand, but he knew that Jerlet would explain.
“Now, about this spectrogram,” the old man resumed. “It tells us what the air on Beryl is made of… what elements and compounds are in the air.”
Curiosity knit Linc’s brow. “How’s it do that?”
Jerlet smiled again. Patiently he explained how the light from the planet is split into a rainbow pattern of colors by the spectrograph’s prisms; how the spectrograph is fitted into the telescope; how each element and compound leaves its own distinctive telltale mark on the rainbow pattern of Beryl’s spectrum.
Linc listened and learned. Usually, he only had to hear things once to remember them permanently.
“…And here,” Jerlet said, his rough voice trembling with excitement, “is the computer’s analysis, together with a reference to old Earth’s atmospheric composition.”
He touched a button, and the viewscreen showed:
ATMOSPHERIC CONSTITUENTS
BERYLEARTH
Nitrogen 77.23%Nitrogen 78.09%
Oxygen 20.44%Oxygen 20.95%
Argon 1.0I%Argon 0.93%
Carbon Dioxide 0.72%Carbon Dioxide 0.03%
Water Vapor: variable Water Vapor: variable, up to 1.8% abs up to 1.5% abs.
Linc studied the numbers for a few moments. Then he looked back at Jerlet.
“It’s almost the same as Earth… but not exactly.”
“Close enough to be a twin,” Jerlet boomed. “And as close as any planet’s going to be. A smidge less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, but that could be because the planet’s a bit newer than Earth. There’s chlorophyll all over the place, lots of it. That means green plants, just like Earth.”
“We can live there,” Linc said.
Jerlet pumped his shaggy head up and down. His mouth was trying to form a word, but nothing came out for several seconds. Finally he gulped a strangled, “Yes, you can live there.”
Linc saw that there were tears in his eyes.
“I’ll have to tell the other kids about it,” Linc said. “They’ll be terrified by Baryta. They all think that the yellow sun is going to swallow us… burn us.”
“I know,” said Jerlet.
Linc went on, “I ought to get back to them as soon as I can. They’ve got to know about Beryl. I’ve got to stop them from being afraid.”
Jerlet nodded wearily.
“If they think that we’re all going to die, there’s no telling what they’ll do—”
“All right!” Jerlet slammed his heavy hand on the desk top. It startled Linc, made him jump and drift away a few meters, weightlessly.
“I know you’ve got to get back to them, dammit.” In the golden light of Baryta the old man’s paunchy body glowed in radiance, his wild hair looked like a crazy halo. “I know you’ve got to go back. I… it’s just that… I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want you to stay here, with me.”
Linc reached up for a handhold on the telescope frame and pushed back toward Jerlet.
“But I’ve got to go back,” he said. “The bridge—”
“I know,” Jerlet grumbled. His face scowled. “But I don’t have to like it! There’s nothing in the laws of thermodynamics that says I have to like the idea.”
Linc felt the air easing out of his lungs. He had been so tense that he had been holding his breath. But now Jerlet was grumbling in his usual way, and Linc could let himself grin. It would be all right. He would go back. Jerlet wouldn’t try to keep him here.
The rest of the day went normally. Jerlet stayed in the observatory, studying Beryl. Linc went down to the workshop and studied the computer’s memory tapes for information on repairing the instruments on the ship’s bridge.
That’s going to be the toughest part of the job, he told himself. Clearing the dead crew out of the bridge and getting the controls working again. Despite himself, he shuddered.
At dinner that evening Jerlet launched into a long explanation of fingerprints, retinal patterns, voice prints, and other aspects of detective work.
Linc felt confused. “But why bother with all that? Everybody knew everybody else, didn’t they? Why couldn’t they just ask who a person was?”
Jerlet guffawed, stuffed a slice of synthetic steak into his mouth, and then began to explain about crime and police work. By the time dessert was finished and the dishes flashed into the recycler. Linc was asking:
“Okay, but who figured out this business of fingerprinting? Kirchhoff and Bunsen?”
Jerlet slapped a palm to his forehead. “No, no! They worked out the principles of spectroscopy. The fingerprint technique was discovered by some policeman or detective or somebody like that. An Englishman named Holmes, I think. It’s in the computer’s memory banks somewhere.”
Linc looked down at his fingertips and saw the swirling patterns of fine lines there. Then he looked up, Jerlet’s face was dead white. Veins were throbbing blue in his forehead. Cords in his neck strained.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ahhrg… hurts,” Jerlet gasped. “Must’ve eaten… too much… too fast—”
Linc pushed out of his chair and went to the old man.
“No… I’ll be… all right…”
Without bothering to argue, Linc pulled him up from his chair and propped him up with his shoulder. He wanted to carry the old man, but Jerlet’s girth was too wide for Linc’s arms to grasp, even though the minuscule gravity made him light enough to carry.
Linc walked him past his own bedroom and down to the infirmary. Jerlet was panting with pain as Linc eased him down onto the tiny medical center’s only bed.
Turning to the keyboard that stood on a little pedestal beside the bed. Linc switched on the medical sensors. The infirmary was almost completely automatic, and Linc didn’t understand most of its workings, but he watched the wall screen above the bed.
It showed numbers for pulse rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood pressure—all in red, the color of danger. A green wiggly Linc traced out Jerlet’s heartbeat. It was wildly irregular.
“What should I do?” Linc called out to the automated room. There was no one to hear or answer.
Except Jerlet. “Punch… emergency input… tell medicomputer… heart attack—”