“There are lots of larger plants, too — mostly modifications of the big seaweeds of Earth's oceans. The lock behind us is overgrown with them, as you can see — you can look more closely as we go back — and a lot of them grow in contact with the outer skin, where the light is best. Quite a few are free-floating, but of course selection works fast on those. There are slow convection currents, because of Raindrop's size and rotation, which exchange water between the illuminated outer regions and the darkness inside. Free-floating weeds either adapt to long periods of darkness or die out fast. Since there is a good deal of hard radiation near the surface, there is also quite a lot of unplanned mutation over and above the regular gene-tailoring products we are constantly adding to the pot. And since most of the organisms here have short life spans, evolution goes on rapidly.”
“Weisanen knows all that perfectly well,” replied Bresnahan. “What he seems to want is a snapshot — a report on just what the present spectrum of life forms is like.”
“I've summed it up. Anything more detailed would be wrong next week. You can look at the stuff around us — there. Those filaments which just tangled themselves on your equipment clip are a good example, and there are some bigger ones if you want there just in reach. It would take microscopic study to show how they differ from the ones you'd have gotten a week ago or a year ago, but they're different. There will be no spectacular change unless so much growth builds up inside the surface film that the sunlight is cut down seriously. Then the selection factors will change and a radically new batch — probably of scavenger fungi — will develop and spread. It's happened before. We've gone through at least four cycles of that sort in the three years I've worked here.”
Bresnahan frowned thoughtfully, though the facial gesture was not very meaningful inside a space helmet.
“I can see where this isn't going to be much of a report,” he remarked.
“It would have made more sense if you'd brought a plankton net and some vacuum jars and brought up specimens for him to look over himself,” replied Silbert. “Or wouldn't they mean anything to him? Is he a biologist or just a manager?”
“I couldn't say.”
“How come? How can you work for him and not know that much?”
“Working for him is something new. I've worked for Raindrop ever since I started working, but I didn't meet Weisanen until three weeks ago.
I haven't been with him more than two or three hours' total time since. I haven't talked with him during those hours; I've listened while he told me what to do.”
“You mean he's one of those high-handed types? What's your job, anyway?”
“There's nothing tough or unpleasant about him; he's just the boss. I'm a computer specialist — programming and maintenance, or was until he picked me to come up here to Raindrop with him and his wife. What my job here will be, you'll have to get from him. There are computers in the station, I noticed, but nothing calling for full-time work from anyone. Why he picked me I can't guess. I should think, though, that he'd have asked you rather than me to make this report, since whatever I am I'm no biologist.”
“Well, neither am I. I just work here.”
Bresnahan stared in astonishment.
“Not a biologist? But aren't you in charge of this place? Haven't you been the local director for three years, in charge of planting the new life forms that were sent up, and reporting what happened to them, and how Raindrop was holding together, and all—?”
“All is right. I'm the bo's'un tight and the midship mite and the crew of the captain's gig. I'm the boss because I'm the only one here full time; but that doesn't make me a biologist. I got this job because I have a decently high zero-gee tolerance and had had experience in space. I was a space-station handyman before I came here.”
“Then what sort of flumdiddle is going on? Isn't there a professional anywhere in this organization? I've heard stories of the army using biochemists for painters and bricklayers for clerks, but I never really believed them. Besides, Raindrop doesn't belong to an army — it isn't even a government outfit any more. It's being run by a private outfit which I assumed was hoping to make a profit out of it. Why in blazes is there no biologist at what has always been supposed to be a biological research station, devoted to finding new ways of making fourteen billion people like what little there is to eat?”
Silbert's shrug was just discernible from outside his suit.
“No one ever confided in me,” he replied. “I was given a pretty good briefing on the job when I first took it over, but that didn't include an extension course in biology or biophysics. As far as I can tell they've been satisfied with what I've done. Whatever they wanted out of Raindrop doesn't seem to call for high-caliber professionals on the spot. I inspect to make sure no leaks too big for the algae to handle show up, I plant any new life forms they send up to be established here, and I collect regularly and send back to Earth the samples of what life there is. The last general sampling was nearly a month ago, and another is due in a few days. Maybe your boss could make do with that data — or if you like I can offer to make the regular sampling run right away instead of at the scheduled time. After all, he may be my boss too instead of the other way around, so I should be reporting to him.”
Bresnahan thought for a moment.
“All right,” he said. “I'm in no position to make either a decent collection or a decent report, as things stand. Let's go back to the station, tell him what's what, and let him decide what he does want. Maybe it's just a case of a new boss not knowing the ropes and trying to find out.”
“I'd question that, somehow, but can't think of anything better to do. Come on.”
Silbert swam back toward the lock from which they had emerged only a few minutes before. They had drifted far enough from it in that time so that its details had faded to a greenish blur, but there was no trouble locating the big cylinder. The door they had used was still open.
Silbert pulled himself through, lent Bresnahan a hand in doing likewise, closed the portal, and started a small pump. The pressure head was only the quarter atmosphere maintained by the tension of the alga skin, and emptying the chamber of water did not take long. The principal delay was caused by Bresnahan's failure to stand perfectly still; with gravity only a little over one five-thousandths Earth normal, it didn't take much disturbance to slosh some water away from the bottom of the lock where the pump intake was located.
Silbert waited for some of it to settle, but lacked the patience to wait for it all. When he opened the door into the larger lock chamber the men were accompanied through it by several large globules of boiling liquid.
“Wasteful, but helps a bit,” remarked the spaceman as he opened the outside portal and the two were wafted through it by the escaping vapor. “Watch out — hang on there. You don't have escape velocity, but you'd be quite a while getting back to the surface if you let yourself blow away.” He seized a convenient limb of Bresnahan's space armor as the younger man drifted by, and since he was well anchored himself to the top rung of the ladder was able to arrest the other's flight. Carefully they stepped away from the hatch, Silbert touching the closing button with one toe as he passed it, and looked for the orbiting station.
This, of course, was directly overhead. The same temptation which Bresnahan had felt earlier to make a jump for it came back with some force; but Silbert had a safer technique.
He took a small tube equipped with peep-sights from the equipment clip at his side and aimed it very carefully at the projecting hub of the wheel-shaped station — the only part of the hub visible, since the station's equator was parallel to that of Raindrop and the structure was therefore edge-on to them. A bright yellow glow from the target produced a grunt of satisfaction from Silbert, and he fingered a button on the tube. The laser beam, invisible in the surrounding vacuum, flicked on and off in a precisely timed signal pattern which was reported faithfully by the source-return mirror at the target. Another response was almost as quick.