Ca0 Ca Ca
I I
HNCHCO-HNCHCO-HNCHCO-HN… .
I I I Ca0 Ca Ca
I I
HNCHCO-HNCHCO-HN… .
For a second, Helmuth watched it grow. It was, after all, one of the incredible possibilities the Bridge had been built to study. On Earth, such a compound, had it occurred at all, might have grown porous, bony, and quite strong. Here, under nearly eight times the gravity, the molecules were forced to assemble in strict aliphatic order, but in cross section their arrangement was hexagonal, as if the stuff would become an aromatic compound if it only could. Even here it was mod-erately strong in cross sectionbut along the long axis it smeared like graphite, the calcium atoms readily surrender-ing their valence hold on one carbon atom to grab hope-fully for the next one in line
No stuff to hold up the piers of humanity’s greatest engineering project. Perhaps it was suitable for the ribs of some Jovian jellyfish, but in a Bridge-caisson, it was cancer.
There was a scraper mechanism working on the edge of the lesion, flaking away the shearing aminos and laying down new ice. In the meantime, the decay of the caisson-face was working deeper. The scraper could not possibly get at the core of the troublewhich was not the calcium carbide dust, with which the atmosphere was charged beyond redemption, but was instead one imbedded sodium speck which was taking no part in the reactionfast enough to extirpate it. It could barely keep pace with the surface spread of the di-sease.
And laying new ice over the surface of the wound was worthless. At this rate, the whole caisson would slough away and melt like butter, within an hour, under the weight of the Bridge above it.