“All set for four o’clock, Chief. What are you going to tell them?”
“I don’t know yet.” He grunted. “It’s too damn big to simplify, and the U-Con heads aren’t very bright.”
“Exactly what is the problem, doctor?” M’b asked.
“Shifting gears, M’bantu. I had to make a lightning shift when I looked into the capsule and I feel like a damned fool for going into shock. Bless you all for saving me. My God, it was like a paleface ambush…”
“When you saw the naked rats?” I asked.
“They aren’t rats.”
“Aliens from outer space, maybe, taking over our world?”
“Don’t Rover Girl me, Guig. You’ll find out in due time. I have to sort it out in my head first. I wish you could transplant an extra brain into my skull, Nemo.”
“You don’t need it, lad.”
“Thanks. Now let me think for a minute.”
So we all ate in silence and waited. Even Fee was quiet. That was quite a quantum jump she made.
“Here are the problems,” Sequoya began at last. “Explain to United Conglomerate what actually happened, and the overwhelming concept it opened up. I must give them some idea of the procedures involved in exploring the discovery. I must make them understand that the Pluto mission will have to be scrubbed.”
“Scrubbed! After all that advance publicity?”
“That’s what’s going to hurt, Guig, but the results of the cryo exploratory have wiped out the Pluto mission for our time, maybe for all time. But on the other hand it’s produced something so unexpected and challenging that I’ve got to persuade them to transfer the Pluto funding into it. I can handle the scientific palaver but I’m dumb as a honk when it comes to selling a proposition.”
“We’ll need the Greek Syndicate for advice on that,” I whispered to the princess. She nodded and slipped out.
“The only reason I’m being so open with you is that I’ve learned to trust and respect your Group.”
“How much do you know about the Group, Sachem?”
“A little.”
“Fee told you?”
“I never said a word!” she protested.
“You’ve been reading my diary. Yes, Fee?”
“Yes.”
“How the devil did you learn how to decode my private terminal keyboard?”
“I taught myself.”
I threw up my hands. Go live with a genius girl. “How much did you pass on to your guy?”
“Nothing,” Sequoya said with his mouth full. “What little I know is from induction, deduction, hints, clues, things overheard. I’m a scientist, you know, and I’ll tell you something else, I not only speak XX, I read body english. So why don’t we drop it? I’ve got a murderous scene ahead of me and I depend on your Group to help me. Wilco?”
“Why should we?”
“I could blow the whistle on your act.”
“F.”
“Good for you.” He realsie smiled again and it was very winning. “Because we all like each other and want to help each other.”
“You Indian con. Wilco.”
“Gung. I’ll need you and Edison. Fee too, of course. I’ll brief you in the chopper so you can ask the right leading questions at the status review. Let’s chop.”
When we arrived at JPL I was so dazed by the enormity of Sequoya’s discovery and the frontiers it had opened that I wasn’t aware of anything around me. All I know is that I recovered consciousness in a large astrochem laboratory seated on a kinobench along with some fifty United Conglomerate majority stockholders. We were facing Hiawatha, who stood with his back to a work table cluttered with chemical apparatus. He was leaning against it and looked relaxed and pleased, as though he was about to hand the U-Con brass a surprise package. He sure was. The question was, would they buy it? The entire review was conducted in Spang, of course, but I translate for my goddamn diary and Fee-snoop Grauman’s Chinese.
“Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. You’ve been waiting anxiously for a status review so I won’t apologize for calling you together on such short notice at four in the morning. You all know me; I’m Dr. Guess, project scientist on the Pluto mission, and I have remarkable news for you. Some are expecting this to turn into a failure review, but—”
“Never mind the guff talk,” I yelled. It had been agreed that I was to be the Bad Guy. “Just tell us why you failed and lost us ninety million.” Some of the stockholders glared at me, which was the purpose of my nasty behavior, to attract hostility from Guess to myself.
“A fair question, sir, but we have not failed; we have had a tremendous unexpected success.”
“By killing three cryonauts?”
“We did not kill them.”
“By losing them?”
“They are not lost.”
“No? I didn’t see them. Nobody saw them.”
“You did see them, sir, in the cryocoffins.”
“I saw nothing but things that looked like naked rats.”
“They are the cryonauts.”
I laughed sardonically. The stockholders rustled with interest and there were growls directed at me — “Gag, man. Let him do the talking.”
I subsided and Edison took over. “Dr. Guess, this is an amazing statement, unheard of in the history of science. Will you explain yourself, please?” Ed was the Good Guy.
“Ah! My old friend from the RCA plasma division. This will be of particular interest to you, Professor Crookes, because the electronic discharges which we call plasma may very well be involved.” Guess turned to the assembled. “Professor Crookes is not an intruder. He is one of several experts I invited to witness the put-down.”
“Stop stalling and start the alibi,” I called.
“Certainly, sir. Some of you may recall an historic theory developed in embryology centuries ago: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. In other words, the development of the embryo within the womb duplicates the successive lost stages in the evolution of the species. I do hope you remember this classic.”
“If they don’t, Dr. Guess, you’re making it abundantly clear,” Edison said pleasantly.
I thought it time for another sneer. “And what are you paying your old friend for his loyal support? How big a cut of a hundred million is he getting?”
A lot more growls at me. I gave thanks that Fee-5 had been in on the briefing or she would have been on me with claws. Sequoya ignored the rude man in the third row. “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, but” — here he paused — “but I believe we have discovered that cryology recycles ontogeny.”
“Good God!” Edison exclaimed. “This will make history for JPL. Are you sure, Dr. Guess?”
“As sure as any experimenter can ever be, professor. Those quote naked rats unquote are embryos, the embryos of the cryonauts. After ninety days in space they have been regressed to an early stage in fetal development.”
“Any theory why?” This from a bright stockholder.
“I must be honest; none. We never had a hint of this fantastic possibility in any of our cryogenic preparations, but all the experiments were conducted on Earth where they were protected by our heavy atmospheric insulation. We did orbit animal subjects, but only for short periods. Our three cryonauts were the first to be exposed to space for an extended period and I have no idea of what factors produced the phenomenon.”
“Plasma?” Edison asked.
“Indeed, yes. Protons and electrons in the Van Allen belts, the solar wind, neutrons, quasar radio bursts, hydrogen ion emissions, the entire electromagnetic spectrum — there are hundreds of possibilities. All must be explored.”