From the window of his study he could view the sliding stars through the transparent panels several thousand feet above. The Great Bear drifted by, pointing to the unseen Pole Star. As with the other colonies, Canton Island's angle of declination was such that the earth couldn't be seen from inside the colony itself. It was possible to see the earth (in rather uncomfortable circumstances) by taking a stroll along one of the six-kilometer-long thruways that connected Globe City to the outer torus. But then the motion of the colony in its spinning orbit whirled the planet around and around, above and below the watcher in a series of dizzying spirals. Nobody experienced space sickness except when tempted to take a peek at the old homestead; Chase had tried it once, never again.
Actually, the sad part was, there was nothing to see. A muddy ball wreathed in haze. No brilliant blue oceans or dazzling white clouds. No landmasses or islands or polar caps. Just gray nothingness masking every feature, like a once-beautiful woman shamefully hiding her aged crumbling face behind a soiled veil.
Chase had often speculated about the forms of life that had taken possession of the planet. The mutants would continue to breed, of course, and evolve perhaps into a completely different and unrecognizable species, in much the same way that man had been transformed from fish to mammal, a fluke of evolutionary engineering. And there were the new breeds to take into account--the uncles--cross matches of plant and animal with a genetic blueprint quite unknown before. Would they become the new lords of Creation?
He could foresee wars between the rival groups. Small-scale tribal conflicts with primitive weaponry fought in stinking jungles and belching bogs. Straight out of a science-fiction writer's nightmare. With an atmosphere so thick you couldn't spit through it.
There would be victors and vanquished. The eternal law of survival of the fittest would still apply, though now the fittest would be those best able to thrive in an atmosphere with only the merest trace of oxygen. They would be methane-breathers perhaps, with a physiology as alien to the human as the earthworm's. Or they might feed off dioxin, the deadliest poison known to man, and produce offspring that drank sulfuric acid and breathed in sulfurous smog as if it were an invigorating sea breeze. There would be forms of life so bizarre--grotesque and horrific to human eyes--that it was beyond the wit of man to conjure them up, even in his most demented imaginings.
And all the while, as this was taking place, the species that had failed the course in planetary management would be gazing down at what had been theirs and was now lost, at what they had willfully thrown away, perhaps forever. The earth wouldn't care. Nature was amoral, impersonal, quite indifferent to the fate of a single species. The brute thrust of growth went on, unconcerned, in other directions, explored other avenues. As far as the planet was concerned, mankind was only one more to add to the long list of failed experiments.
True, mankind might have made a greater impact than all the rest, created more havoc, interfered like a spoiled ignorant brat in things he didn't understand, and yet the earth abided.
He switched on the desk lamp, the sudden glare making him blink, and rubbed his eyes wearily. He was tired and yet his brain refused to rest. Ruth must have fallen asleep, otherwise she would have been in before now, chiding him for disobeying Weinbaum's strict instruction to get "plenty of rest and fresh air." Ye gods, doctors never changed.
It was the conversation with Nick several months ago at the fish farm that had stirred the accumulated sludge of memories and started him thinking about a journal or an account of some sort. They'd been standing on the walkways where you could look down into huge shallow tanks and see thousands of fish, some of them, like the white amur, a Chinese delicacy, that could grow to over a foot in length in less than a year. They were cultivating other varieties that would grow to edible size in three months.
In the warm shallow water, fed with precisely the right amounts of phosphates and other nutrients, diatoms bloomed. Living on minerals, sunlight, and carbon dioxide, these microscopic one-celled plants provided food for the fish--just as they had on earth.
But on earth, as Chase had pointed out to his grandson, the diatoms had performed another, more important, function.
"They gave us oxygen, Nick, which is in the air all around us. We breathe it in and it keeps us alive. Without it we die."
Nick had a good look around. "I can't see it."
"No, but it's there. If it weren't we wouldn't be here."
"Would we be dead?"
"Stone-cold dead in the market."
Nick pressed his chin into the plastic mesh, eyes swiveled down as far as they would go, watching the streaking fish.
"Mummy said you and Grandad, my other grandad, the one who's dead, used to swim under the ice." Nick frowned up at him, the grid-ded imprint on his chin. "Ice is little. I have some in my orange. Did you swim in the freezer?"
"You've seen snow and ice on TV, haven't you, Nick? Well, on earth some parts of the land and ocean were once covered in deep snow and thick ice. Your grandad and I used to dive in the sea, underneath the ice. It was colder than in the freezer, so we had to wear rubber suits to keep us warm."
"Was it dark?"
"Yes," Chase smiled. "We had to take very big, very bright lights to see with."
"What were you looking for?"
"Those tiny green plants down there."
"Is that all?"
Chase nodded.
"What for?"
That was a tough one. How to explain marine biology to a five-year-old in a few simple sentences? At the time it was research for its own sake, without any specific purpose. It was only later--was it months or years later?--that the work he'd been doing at Halley Bay Station took on dramatic significance.
He'd never been able to give young Nick a proper answer, but the sludge had been disturbed and the memories began to float to the surface. About diving underneath the ice, for instance. Funny how he could recall every detail as vividly as if it were yesterday, when more recent events, even things that had happened here in the colony, had been forgotten.
The cold in the Antarctic--he could feel it now! Cold enough to freeze gasoline and make steel as brittle as porcelain. How you had to
stop breathing when adjusting instruments with your mittens off so that your fingers wouldn't become frozen to the metal parts. One guy had lost so many layers of skin that his fingerprints had peeled off.
Chase leaned back and looked at the medal, made out of moon gold and sealed in a block of crystal, on the shelf above the desk. The inscription read: "The Confederation Premier Order of Merit. Awarded to Dr. Gavin Chase in recognition of his unceasing efforts in the field of planetary ecology and for his contribution to mankind's understanding of the problems that confronted it during the past quarter-century. ad 2026."
The presentation had been made at a rather grand ceremony the year after his arrival at Canton Island. Standing before the assembled throng of representatives from all the colonies, Chase had given a brief address, recognizing a few (not many) faces from the old days, including Frank Hanamura, now senior lecturer in closed-cycle ecosystems at the university on Okinawa Island. It had been a very emotional occasion.
Always amused by it, Chase thought it sensible and discreet that the citation spoke of "unceasing efforts" and omitted any reference to "outstanding achievement," which was the usual time-honored phrase. Because of course there hadn't been any achievement, outstanding or otherwise.
Yes, he really ought to do something about it while there was still time. Who did Weinbaum think he was fooling with his "new" treatment? Chase looked along the shelf to the cassettes, notebooks, and files of clippings, spines buckled and torn, corners dog-eared, colors faded. He'd given up hope of ever seeing them again after they evacuated and destroyed the Tomb. A patrol had gone in a year later and found the place wrecked and this stuff miraculously moldering in his office just as he'd left it.