Jenny needed no guidance, however. Carol’s words had been enough—they might have come through in more helpful form to the Rimmore, Molly realized. Near the limit of vision set by the boat’s geometry and the local topography, Jenny stopped, quickly enough to prove she was in control and not speeding recklessly, and elevated the front half of her long body. After a moment she dropped back to the ground, crawled another ten meters in a direction slightly to the right of her original course, and stopped again.
“There you are” came the grating voice. “I can see why a place like that would get anyone in trouble. Don’t pull on the rope until I’ve moved away from the edge and onto solid rock, here; the traction is poor, and I don’t want to be pulled in, too.”
“All right. I’ll tell you when the rope reaches me but won’t pull at all. You can do that when you’re ready.”
There was pause; Molly assumed that the Rimmore was checking the coiling of the rope, but could not see her clearly enough to be sure. Then the rough voice resumed.
“Ready now to throw. I have no weight to attach to it; I’ve fastened one end around my body, made an open coil of the rest, and will try to throw that over you. I wish my arms were longer; maybe I should have brought Joe or Charley along.”
“In this gravity it shouldn’t take much,” pointed out Carol. “Give it a try.”
There followed an almost Human grunt.
“Told you it would be easy. Fine for distance, a couple of meters to one side.”
“I’ll coil and try again, unless you think you can climb that far.”
“That far, yes. Wait a minute.” Pause. “There—no, missed it, and I’m back at the bottom—but the rope came a little way, too, with the sliding sand. One more try—there. 1 have it. Let me tie it around me; there. I’m no more of a knot expert than Charley, but we can get it off later. There’ll be no hurry. You can pull whenever you want.”
“A minute. I’m getting as far from the edge as the rope will let me—there. That’s something to hold on to, though I feel as though I were floating anyway. I’m pulling—very slowly. I’m not moving, I’m glad to say. Are you?”
“Yes. Upward bound at last. There’s an upward wind through the sand at the bottom, for some weird reason, which helps a little. Steady does it. I’m not wiggling at all; I’d do more harm than good. Halfway up now. Are you coiling the rope or backing away?”
“Coiling. I don’t dare move a leg; I’ve got a grip with each foot and don’t dare shift a single one. Nearly up?”
“Nearly up. Ten more meters. Five. Two. Over the edge, thanks. I’d jump over to hug you but don’t think I’ll do any more jumping on this planet. Wait till I get this rope untied.”
“Why untie it?” came Charley’s voice. “Seems to me you’ll be a lot safer connected. Come on back to the boat; there are still some robots to put out.”
The rope did have to be untied before the women could remove their armor, but the Kantrick’s sensible suggestion was followed. The untying was done in the conning room, by Joe’s nimble tendrils.
“That makes two of us,” the Nethneen remarked as he recoiled the rope. “Experience has its uses, however valuable foresight may be, Charley. I hope you were less frightened than I, Carol.”
“For just a moment it was bad,” the little humanoid admitted. “Falling into a hole means nothing in this gravity, of course, but the pit did remind me of the knevreh—ant-lion, Molly called it, which is quite a dangerous creature at home. For just a moment I thought of that. Then of course I remembered that whatever may be on Enigma, including interesting prelife chemistry, it won’t be life.”
“Of course it won’t,” agreed Joe.
“Of course it will,” grated Jenny.
Chapter Seven
Of Course I See It’s Gone
There was a moment of silence, and several sets and patterns of eyes focused on the speaker. She sprawled relaxed, in the corner of the room that had been fitted with a tangle of pipes, bars, and ropes for her comfort.
“I should have thought of it when I did the first analysis,” Jenny continued calmly. “I should certainly have thought of it when we were talking about the possibility of free oxygen.”
“But there isn’t any oxygen, you said. At least, no more than could be explained by hard light from Arc on the other gases.” Charley’s tone was indignant, through Molly’s translator.
“Quite true; there isn’t. However, there is a large amount of carbon dioxide, and that is just as improbable—at least, with activation energy—mixed with ammonia as the oxygen is. They would have reacted to produce ammonium carbamate.”
“Of which there is plenty around, you said,” Molly pointed out.
“Yes. So there is evidently nothing to block the reaction. But there must be something to reverse it, up the energy hill, or one of the gases would be gone. There is plenty of energy, of course; but how is it applied? All I can think of is the sort of thing that supplies free oxygen on your world and mine, Molly, and nitrosyl chloride on Carol’s, and high-energy nitrogen and chlorine compounds on Joe’s and Charley’s: biological catabolism.”
“But this place can’t possibly be old enough to have life at that organization level.”
“As far as our experience goes, no, Carol. I fully agree. Nevertheless, I am happier about my wild-shot project than I have been since it was approved. At the moment, the best working suggestion I can make is that there is something analogous to vegetation here that uses energy from Arc to break down ammonium compounds and release gaseous ammonia and carbon dioxide, and maybe water ice. Whether there is anything using the reverse reaction to power itself I would not presume to guess; this is, as you point out, a very young planet—we feel sure.”
“It has a very young sun,” insisted Joe.
“I accept that.”
“What do we do?” asked Charley.
“My first thought is to watch the ground we pass over much more carefully than we have been, looking for any unusual coloration. We should be particularly attentive near bodies of liquid, which will presumably be ammonia. Once your robots have started work, Joe, I want to return to the lakes we have already seen and do much more sampling and much more careful analysis of what we get. I set up for only simple compounds, I am ashamed to admit, on the earlier runs.”
“If you hadn’t, would you have finished any of them yet?” asked Joe. “Very few.”
“Then there seems no need for shame. You were doing what seemed needed. Now more seems needed. We can live with that. Molly, perhaps the time has come when your different color sense will be of help. We could of course set each screen to different selection and different false-color representation, but I have the impression that you can do more by watching your whole natural range. Do you mind riding with your screen hooded? Or would it be better if we stayed elsewhere in the boat and let you watch in comfort?”
“I don’t mind the hood, if one of you doesn’t mind looking ahead while I lock down. The assumption that we have been flying higher than any hills agrees with the radar data, but I still prefer to trust living eyes this close to the ground. The catch is that except in areas where the clouds are thin or nonexistent, and we haven’t hit any of those on the day side yet, my eyes are no better than yours; the light is very faint, fainter even if whiter than on most of your worlds, I’d guess, but if anything you can probably see better. The clearest region was around the south pole, and it’s having winter. No daylight. As I recall, Arc’s companion is shining on that area, and I’ll certainly be glad to watch it in white light when we get there.”