the ship’s senior communications officers for Massey to have access to a private
channel direct into my section of NASO at Washington, free from any restrictions
or censoring . . . purely as a precaution. Massey wasn’t told about it until
they were well into the voyage.”
“So what’s he really there for?” Whittaker asked, intrigued.
“I don’t know,” Conlon said. Whittaker looked totally bemused. Conlon explained,
“I’m not absolutely certain why GSEC sent Zambendorf there, but it wasn’t to
entertain at parties in the officers’ mess. I suspect they intend to use his
ability to influence public opinion as an aid to pushing the government in a
direction that suits their interests.”
Whittaker looked horrified. “You’re joking, Walt.”
“Uh-uh.” Conlon shook his head. “His antics could become a significant factor in
the formulation of major international policy.”
“But what, specifically?” Whittaker asked. “What exactly do they intend doing
with him?”
“They couldn’t have had any definite plans until they found out what exactly the
situation was on Titan,” Conlon said. “But they’ve learned a lot by now that
they didn’t know then. I’ve got a feeling that someone should be passing more
specific orders to Zambendorf very soon now. And when Zambendorf finds out what
he’s really there for, that’s when Massey will know what his job is.”
20
GRAHAM SPEARMAN PEERED INTO THE WINDOW OF THE COLD chamber in one of Orion’s
biological laboratories, where an automatic manipulator assembly was slicing
test specimens from a sample of brownish, rubbery substance recovered from the
wreckage of the bizarre walking wagons destroyed in the encounter with the
Paduan Taloids. The cold chamber was a necessity since most Taloid pseudoorganic
materials tended to decompose into evil-smelling liquids at room temperature. In
the work area around Spearman, the displays and data presentations were showing
some of the findings from electron and proton microscopes, gas and liquid
chromatographs, electrophoretic analyzers, isotopic imagers, x-ray imagers,
ultrasonic imagers, and just about every kind of spectrometer ever invented.
Spearman had already described the incendiary chemical thrown by the catapults
mounted on several of the Paduan war vehicles; it had turned out to be a
substance rich in complex oxygen-carbon compounds that would be highly
inflammable in Titan’s reducing atmosphere once ignition temperature had been
attained by the reaction of a fast-acting outer acid layer upon a metallic
target surface. The catapults themselves had been shown by video replays also to
be organic, and suggested enormous, finely sculptured vegetables that ejected
their missions either by releasing stored mechanical strain-energy or by
compressed gas accumulated internally.
In his late thirties, with thick-rimmed spectacles and a droopy mustache, and
wearing a tartan shirt with jeans, Spearman was the easygoing kind of person
that Thelma could find interesting without running the risk of ending up being
used as an ideological dumping ground if she spent time talking to him. The
problem with many scientists, she found, especially the younger ones, was that
their successful intellectual accomplishment in one field could sometimes lead
them to overestimate the value of their views on anything and everything, which
tended to make conversation a survival skill by turning every topic into a
minefield. Spearman provided a refreshing contrast by holding no political
opinions, having no pet economic theory for solving all the world’s problems at
a stroke, and no burning conviction about how other people should conduct their
lives to make it a better place.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” he said, turning back and waving an
arm to indicate the sample behind the window. “It’s capable of growing under the
direction of large, complex director molecules, sure enough, but you couldn’t
say it’s alive. It’s kind of halfway in between. … It has a primitive
biochemistry, but nothing approaching life at the level of cellular metabolism.
You see, there aren’t any cells.”
Thelma looked intrigued as she swiveled herself slowly from side to side in the
operator’s chair in front of the microscopy console, while Dave Crookes listened
from where he was leaning just inside the doorway. “Then what’s it made of?”
Thelma asked. “How does it grow without cells?”
Spearman sighed. “A comprehensive answer will probably take years to unravel,
but for the moment think of it as something like an organic crystal, but more