“Still no sign of membrane activity,” he reported.
A square face appeared on the screen—a two-star Aquarius—J. D. Birk, Moses’ immediate superior in the Pipe caste.
“You still have about a quarter of a mile to go,” said Birk. “The first disturbance you’ll come to is on the other side of the bubble curtain, in the aerobic section.”
Birk was a human, of course, but his years in the hierarchy had robbed him of his sense of humor. Moses was always a bit suspicious of anyone with authority who couldn’t smile.
“Right, sir,” said Moses, steering through the jungle of microorganisms. His membrane scope saw nothing. The micron-sized cell life did have polarized membranes, but his calibration was set for centimeter-and-up scale. The scope’s field continued to quest about the sludge for ghosts.
For months the digester’s sensors had picked up nondescript sightings—membrane integrity on the level of a coelenterate with a size larger than his minisub. Of course such sightings did not compute. The data was given a ghost classification and the electronic components were being checked. The images appeared in different areas of the digester, changed shape and disappeared, only to reappear somewhere else. Birk was satisfied with the “ghost’ interpretation until the caloric output of the digester was observed to fall when they appeared. Ghosts—electronic or otherwise—did not require calories. Moses had been sent in.
“I’m passing through the bubble curtain,” shouted Moses over the hiss and roar.
Around him the sludge islands became aerated and buoyed to the surface.
“I have you on the screen. See anything?” asked Birk.
“Nothing. Visibility is pretty good too—more than thirty yards.”
“Most of the sludge has been activated in that section. The skimmers are removing— Watch it! Looks like a ghost is forming up around you.”
“Can’t see anything unusual. Turbidity might be increasing a little. That’s all—hey! Something just turned my sub over! Viewport clouded up. Can’t see a thing.”
“Turn off your jets. It is alive and delicate. Your jets are tearing it apart. Keep recording. It is carrying you up out of the range of this pick-up.”
Moses calmed down and deactivated his motor. Squirming for comfort in his harness he looked out the upside-down port. A quivering, amorphous mass covered the plate, blocking his view of the outside world. Depth gauge changes indicated a drop in water pressure. The sub slowly righted itself.
“My instruments tell me I’m on the surface—but I still can’t see.”
Birk switched to surface sensors in the arched ceiling of the digester. Audio picked up the drip, drip, drip of condensate. Optics showed the usual gas pocket—an arched dome trailing fine hairlike mycelia and the dark fluid surface flecked with bacterial colonies. He tried other optics. Several were blocked by a tangle of rootlike structures—branching, white and glistening.
“Sit tight,” said Birk. “Keep your sensors on. Maybe we’ll learn something. You are safe enough. If we want to get you out, all we have to do is turn on your jets and rip the membrane ghost apart.”
Moses activated his sampler tube and biopsied the nebulous thing that held him. Then he sat back and relaxed. Opening a cylinder sandwich he munched his way through a crisp brown, a rubbery yellow and a pasty green. Several hours later he biopsied the thing again. That bite shook the sub. The ghost’s tensile strength had increased markedly. He opened his mouth to complain when the film over the port rolled up into a ropelike structure. He pressed his face against the cold, flat plate and peered out.
Birk watched the ghost fade from the sensors. “It is gone,” he exclaimed. “What can you see?”
Moses stared a moment longer. “Not gone—dead.”
Birk’s screen had registered a large sheet of ionic activity while the creature lived. Now, as it changed from a huge amoeba-like mass to a tangle of stems, the ionic activity faded.
Moses amended: “Not dead—fruited. That thing has turned into a mat of tall white stems, each topped by a melon.”
The sub floated in an acre-sized gas pocket filled with stalks and melons. Some of the melons were glistening and white, but most had taken on a dull gray appearance. A few were split, black and dusty. Moses described what he saw.
“The Amorphus!” exclaimed his superior. “It must be a giant mutant of the Amorphus—a slime mold. I’ve seen them in digesters before—the small one-inch size. Taste good. Delicious. Like a truffle. If these are related to the edible species, we’re rich! Can you suit up and get one of those white ones into your cockpit?”
Moses put on his Pelger-Huet helmet. Its pair of large symmetrical view glasses gave him a buglike appearance. After checking the suit’s air supply he cracked the hatch. Digester gases were usually not breathable. He would have to wait until later to see how the Amorphus smelled.
The mat of stems supported his weight with only slight fluctuations. He snapped off a small rubbery white melon with a short segment of stem, returned and wedged it behind his seat.
The sub nosed its way into its home berth and bit into its power socket. Birk waited on the dock with two men from Synth. They transferred the melon to their cart and rolled off.
“We’ll name it the Birk-Eppendorff Melon when we file our report. BEM. Has a certain ring to it,” said Birk.
Moses shrugged out of his sticky suit. He watched the cart with its burden disappear around a corner.
“It must weigh twenty or thirty pounds,” said Moses. Then he frowned thoughtfully. “Moses’ Melon. Moses’ Melon. I like that.”
After a moment of suspicious silence Birk smiled cheerfully: “Right! Moses’ Melon does have a certain ring to it. I’ll write it up that way. And—I’ll add a recommendation for a bonus vacation for you. How would you like to go on a Hunt?”
Moses shook his head.
“Trophy-taking has never appealed to me.”
“A Climb?”
Moses shrugged. “A Climb? Why not.”
Birk seemed satisfied, and began filling out his report.
Even in the off hours the tubeways were crowded. Half a million per hour passed through Moses Eppendorff’s home station. With fresh nose filters in place he was able to tolerate the acrid stench while he changed tubeways twice to end up at his own shaft base. A press of hundreds of his anonymous neighbors queued up at dispensers and blocked his way. Stepping over a discoloring corpse he pushed up the spiral. Two hours later, bone tired, he reached his crawlway.
“HC has been calling,” said his dispenser.
Moses waited. Val’s face at Hunter Control appeared on the screen.
“Sorry to disturb you, Moses. But we needed a Pipe. The catcher’s mitt unit went out on our dispenser. The ten-centimeter tube.”
“Can you use the one in the garage until tomorrow?”
Val saw the tired lines growing around Moses’ eyes.
“Yes. Don’t worry about it tonite. I’ve been looking at it myself. If it’s in the timing circuit I’ll be able to plug in a new one myself.”
Moses nodded a thank you and hit his cot, sleeping instantly. Tomorrow he served on the megajury.
In the crowded station a frightened girl quickened her pace. She wore the blue-white smock of Attendant caste. Her Virgo emblem had no stars. Her smooth body curves marked her as one of the polarized—puberty plus four. Her green eyes darted over the crowd—hundreds of blank faces flowed around her—the usual mass of nose-picking strangers that filled the tubeways with its random movements. But now one of those strangers did not move randomly.
He followed her.
Rough hands reached out of the crowd. Strong fingers tore at her tunic exposing pink flesh of breasts and hips. A maniacal face pressed against her—beady eyes too close together, aquiline nose, thin dry mouth. A knife point toyed with the skin of her flank—scratching and pinking—releasing thin trickles of blood. A hard mouth sought hers. Her screams and struggle went unnoticed by the anonymous crowd. Two inches of the knife playfully poked into her belly, popping an unseen gas-filled viscus. In and out, in and out. The red blade made a row of puncture wounds under her ribs. A large vessel parted. Her strength faded. The image of the maniacal face was frozen into her memory molecules as she slumped to the floor. He bent down over her. The crowd continued its random movements. A careless footstep on her limp left hand snapped two small finger bones. Other footsteps tracked the widening circle of red.