Most of the big man’s humor had vanished: he had that grim look Jason knew well.
“Yes, peaceful would be the right word. Because that is basically all we want. Just to live in peace. And it is not who are we killing-it is what we are killing.”
Jason pushed his plate away with an angry gesture. “You’re talking in riddles,” he said. “What you say has no meaning.”
“It has meaning enough,” Kerk told him. “But only on one planet in the universe. Just how much do you know about Pyrrus?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
For a moment Kerk sat wrapped in memory, scowling distantly. Then he went on.
“Mankind doesn’t belong on Pyrrus-yet has been there for almost three hundred years now. The age expectancy of my people is sixteen years. Of course most adults live beyond that, but the high child mortality brings the average down.
“It is everything that a humanoid world should not be. The gravity is nearly twice earth normal. The temperature can vary daily from arctic to tropic. The climate-well you have to experience it to believe it. Like nothing you’ve seen anywhere else in the galaxy.”
“I’m frightened,” Jason said dryly. ‘What do you have, methane or chlorine reactions? I’ve been down on planets like that-”
Kerk slammed his hand down hard on the table. The dishes bounced and the tablelegs creaked. “Laboratory reactions!” he growled. “They look great on a bench-but what happens when you have a world filled with those compounds? In an eye-wink of galactic time all the violence is locked up in nice, stable compounds. The atmosphere may be poisonous for an oxygen breather, but taken by itself it’s as harmless as weak beer.
“There is only one setup that is pure poison as a planetary atmosphere. Plenty of H2O, the most universal solvent you can find, plus free oxygen to work on-”
‘Water and oxygen!” Jason broke in. “You mean Earth-or a planet like Cassylia here? That’s preposterous.”
“Not at all. Because you were born in this kind of environment, you accept it as right and natural. You take it for granted that metals corrode, coastlines change, and storms interfere with communication. These are normal occurrences on oxygen-water worlds. On Pyrrus these conditions are carried to the nth degree.
“The planet has an axial tilt of almost 42°, so there is a tremendous range of temperature from season to season. This is one of the prime causes of a constantly changing icecap. The weather generated by this is spectacular to say the least.”
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“If that’s all,” Jason said, “I don’t see why…”
“That’s not all-it’s barely the beginning. The open seas perform the dual destructive function of supplying water vapor ~o keep the weather going, and building up gigantic tides. Pyrrus’ two satellites, Samas and Bessos, combine at times to pull the oceans up into thirty meter tides. And until you’ve seen one of these tides lap over into an active volcano you’ve seen nothing.
“Heavy elements are what brought us to Pyrrus-and these same elements keep the planet at a vulcanic boil. There have been at least thirteen supernovas in the immediate stellar neighborhood. Heavy elements can be found on most of their planets of course-as well as completely unbreathable atmospheres. Long-term mining and exploitation can’t be done by anything but a self-sustaining colony. Which meant Pyrrus, where the radioactive elements are locked in the planetary core, surrounded by a shell of lighter ones. While this allows for the atmosphere men need, it also provides unceasing vulcanic activity as the molten plasma forces its way to the surface.”
For the first time, Jason was silent. Trying to imagine what life could be like on a planet constantly at war with itself.
“I’ve saved the best for last,” Kerk said with grim humor. “Now that you have an idea of what the environment is like-think of the kind of life forms that would populate it. I doubt if there is one off-world specie that would live a minute. Plants and animals on Pymis are tough. They fight the world and they fight each other. Hundreds of thousands of years of genetic weeding-out have produced things that would give even an electronic brain nightmares. Armor-plated, poisonous, claw-tipped and fanged-mouthed. That describes everything that walks, flaps or just sits and grows. Ever see a plant with teeth-that bite? I don’t think you want to. You’d have to be on Pyrrus and that means you would be dead within seconds of leaving the ship. Even I’ll have to take a refresher course before I’ll be able to go outside the landing buildings. The unending war for survival keeps the life forms competing and changing. Death is simple, but the ways of dealing it too numerous to list.”