“If it were a straight line, Charley. It is far from that. I suppose I could get the machine to tell me the integral, but I will simply say that it looks more like five hundred on the model.”
“How fast are you going?”
“Not nearly as fast as the little machines; this one is far less maneuverable, and as you must have noticed, many of these passages are rather tortuous. I would guess three and a half to four hours’ travel time.”
“It will take us a lot longer,” Molly said thoughtfully. “At least, we know we only have to follow the river.”
“If it lasts. Temperature may become too high even for water to stay liquid. Pardon me—I didn’t want to give you another matter for worry.”
“We’d already thought of that one,” Carol assured him. “Don’t worry; we’ll face it if we have to. In the meantime, the river is here. You ride your car, we’ll ride ours. Your river any bigger, Charley?”
“A lake, at the moment. I can’t find the outflow.”
“Good. That happened to us not long ago. Maybe you are on our track.”
“It’s the fourth time it’s happened to me.”
“Oh. Well, downstream is still the way; keep looking.”
“I am.”
Molly wondered whether the Shervah were coming to tolerate Charley a little better, or whether the teasing had been meant to hurt. She herself might have used the same words, jocularly; she was not sure at all how Carol meant them.
They went on, down the ever-slower stream. Gravity was weakening, too, though none of them had yet thought of this point, as more and more of Enigma’s mass was left overhead. Joe was aware of it; his travel was faster, and Enigma-normal was much closer to that of his natural environment. Carol and Molly weren’t, since from the beginning they had felt on the point of blowing away, and even their armor wasn’t much anchorage. The latter had, after all, been designed to be as light as possible, consistent with its other requirements. All the women really appreciated was the decreasing rate of flow of the water, and Carol was not sure whether that was an objective fact or that her time sense was getting out of order. Molly was more inclined by nature to trust her own senses, but near free fall put a severe strain on that inclination, space-trained though she was.
She did not actually get sick, fortunately. This would have put a heavy strain, though probably not an excessive one, on her armor’s recycling capacity. She was, however, getting less and less comfortable. She was also beginning to itch again, in spite of the recent bath.
Joe’s report was a relief to Molly, if not to the Nethneen; it took her mind off her mounting troubles.
“The hollow center is real.” Once again his emotion seemed under control, but Molly felt quite sure that it was there. “It is not perfectly spherical, but very nearly so. The dimension is what I reported earlier. I am inside a hollow planet and am forced to believe it. I am grateful for your suggestion about its possible origin, Carol. I might not have been able to conceive one myself, and with none at all, I would have been most uncomfortable. I realize it is only a hypothesis, but at least it gives a foundation for more imagination and work planning. If someone could do the same for the existence of life here, which has been causing me acute discomfort ever since Carol first reported it—or at least, to be honest, after the later reports when I could not longer disbelieve it—I could be quite happy.”
“You haven’t seen that?” asked Carol in surprise.
“No. Have you?”
“Of course. You have the data, too. You’ve had it for hours. You’ve had some of it for weeks.” “Well?”
“The fact that this planet is a laboratory and has been for millennia. The bodies you found. Molly’s bath, for School’s sake! Obviously the life didn’t start here; the School brought it!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Of Course Time’s Not Important Now
“I have not felt more relieved, or more foolish, since Molly first reported life. Thanks a lot, Carol. We can check that suggestion very easily, too. The life we find should show a wide variety of underlying biochemistry. Usually a given planet has one particular chemical system reach the self-replication stage, and that usually takes over completely; others either never develop at all or are destroyed by the competition. Any reasonably careful study of a single world’s biology shows the evolutionary descent of all its life forms from a common molecule, and there are enough different ways to run life chemistry so that a particular basic commonly identifies a given world uniquely. Here we should find lots of different biochemistries competing with each other. It would be unlikely for any one to have eliminated the others, especially with frequent reseeding by new visitors.”
Carol added happily, “That the metallic growths Molly found were doing well enough, and the more obviously organic ones the rest of us have encountered were also in active ecologies as far as we could tell, would support that. Also Jenny has already reported two different basic biochemistries, I recall.”
“Right. Lab work is needed, but its nature is clearly indicated. I wonder whether Jenny has been listening.”
That was as close as Joe would come, of course, to addressing the Rimmore directly, since she was presumably at work. The answer was prompt.
“I have been. Like you, Joe, I feel foolish. I got those two and didn’t see the implication; I just thought I wasn’t to the real basics yet. I am going to have to redo some of this work, because I was taking for granted that there would be some one common chemical theme here, like double helix with a small number of coding units, or the positive against negative paired-sheet arrangement, or that amusing one which duplicates using absorption versus emission microwave spectra, or…”
“We get it, Jenny dear,” Carol cut in as courteously as she could; even with Joe listening, she did not consider this the time for a general biology lecture. “I think there was a suggestion of starting with microscope work first.”
“I did. With only one specimen, but don’t—what’s Molly’s figure of speech, Charley?—don’t rub it in. We now know why we’re all students instead of Considered Words. Carol and Molly, the sooner you get back to this tent with what the two of you have collected, the better.”
“I quite agree” was the Human’s emphatic response. “Joe, I suppose you can fly your horde of miniature mappers right across the hollow and set them to working upward on our side. If there are rivers actually reaching the center, it will be a big help.”
“It will also be a big surprise,” replied Joe. “The temperature here is about three hundred thirty-seven, and the pressure one and a third atmospheres. I have never memorized the vapor pressure curve of water, but I’d rather expect the place to be dry.”
“I haven’t the whole curve in my head, either,” admitted the Human, “but the pressure is greater than standard for me, if my translator can be believed, and the temperature well below what I consider the ordinary boiling point of water. I agree there should be no ammonia, unless the vapor makes itself obvious, but your hollow should have lots of liquid water if there are many rivers like this one feeding it.”
“Good. I’ll check. It won’t be very obvious on this radar model I’m getting here, I fear; I’ll have to fly around using a spotlight. That will be easy enough, though; at least the place seems to be very empty, and I won’t have to worry about running into anything. I can fly as fast as I want. I’m heading for your hemisphere now.”
“Hold it, Joe!” It was the Shervah.
The mapper came to an abrupt halt before the Nethneen answered verbally.
“What’s the trouble?”
“Your mappers’ radars show nothing in thai space? It’s empty except for air?”