Part 2 (1/2)

Mountains and valleys, and a wide river. Patches of wispy cloud shot by, obscuring the view, but they could see down. Suddenly there was a black line, a twisting ribbon of India ink, and beyond that the ocean.

Only for a moment the ocean showed, and then the rift jogged east and was gone. But the ocean was an emerald green.

Wall's voice was soft with awe. ”Carv, there's life in that water.”

”You sure?”

”No. It could be copper salts or something. Carv, we've got to get down down there!” there!”

”Oh, wait your turn. Did you notice that your hot border is black in visible light?”

”Yah. But I can't explain it. Would it be worth our while to turn back after you get the s.h.i.+p slowed?”

Carv fingered his neatly trimmed Vand.y.k.e. ”It'd be night over the whole continent before we got back there. Let's spend a few hours looking at that green ocean.”

The Overcee Overcee went down on her tail, slowly, like a cautious crab. Layer after layer of cloud swallowed her without trace, and darkness fell as she dropped. The key to this world was the word ”moonless.” Sirius B-IV had had no oversized moon to strip away most of her atmosphere. Her air pressure would be comfortable at sea level, but only because the planet was too small to hold more air. That same low gravity produced a more gentle pressure gradient, so that the atmosphere reached three times as high as on Earth. There were cloud layers from ground to 130 kilometers up. went down on her tail, slowly, like a cautious crab. Layer after layer of cloud swallowed her without trace, and darkness fell as she dropped. The key to this world was the word ”moonless.” Sirius B-IV had had no oversized moon to strip away most of her atmosphere. Her air pressure would be comfortable at sea level, but only because the planet was too small to hold more air. That same low gravity produced a more gentle pressure gradient, so that the atmosphere reached three times as high as on Earth. There were cloud layers from ground to 130 kilometers up.

The Overcee Overcee touched down on a wide beach on the western sh.o.r.e of the smallest continent. Wall came out first, then Carv lowered a metal oblong as large as himself and followed it down. They wore lightly pressurized vac suits. Carv did nothing for twenty minutes while Wall opened the box out flat and set the carefully packed instruments into their grooves and notches. Finally Wall signaled, in an emphatic manner. By taking off his helmet. touched down on a wide beach on the western sh.o.r.e of the smallest continent. Wall came out first, then Carv lowered a metal oblong as large as himself and followed it down. They wore lightly pressurized vac suits. Carv did nothing for twenty minutes while Wall opened the box out flat and set the carefully packed instruments into their grooves and notches. Finally Wall signaled, in an emphatic manner. By taking off his helmet.

Carv waited a few seconds, then followed suit.

Wall asked, ”Were you waiting to see if I dropped dead?”

”Better you than me.” Carv sniffed the breeze. The air was cool and humid, but thin. ”Smells good enough. No. No, it doesn't. It smells like something rotting.”

”Then I'm right. There's life here. Let's get down to the beach.”

The sky looked like a raging thunderstorm, with occasional vivid blue flashes that might have been lightning. They were flashes of sunlight penetrating tier upon tier of cloud. In that varying light Carv and Wall stripped off their suits and went down to look at the ocean, walking with shuffling steps in the light gravity.

The ocean was thick with algae. Algae were a bubbly green blanket on the water, a blanket that rose and fell like breathing as the insignificant waves ran beneath. The smell of rotting vegetation was no stronger here than it had been a quarter of a mile back. Perhaps the smell pervaded the whole planet. The sh.o.r.e was a mixture of sand and green sc.u.m so rich that you could have planted crops in it.

”Time I got to work,” said Wall. ”You want to fetch and carry for me?”

”Later maybe. Right now I've got a better idea. Let's get the h.e.l.l out of each other's sight for an hour.”

”That is brilliant. But take a weapon.”

”To fight off maddened algae?”

”Take a weapon.”

Carv was back at the end of an hour. The scenery had been deadly monotonous. There was water below a green blanket of sc.u.m six inches deep; there was loamy sand, and beyond that dry sand; and behind the beach were white cliffs, smoothed as if by countless rainfalls. He had found no target for his laser cutter.

Wall looked up from a binocular microscope, and grinned when he saw his pilot. He tossed a depleted pack of cigarettes. ”And don't worry about the air plant!” he called cheerfully.

Carv came up beside him. ”What news?”

”It's algae. I can't name the breed, but there's not much difference between this and any terrestrial algae, except that this sample is all one species.”

”That's unusual?” Carv was looking around him in wonder. He was seeing a new side to Wall. Aboard s.h.i.+p Wall was sloppy almost to the point of being dangerous, at least in the eyes of a Belter like Carv. But now he was at work. His small tools were set in neat rows on portable tables. Bulkier instruments with legs were on flat rock, the legs carefully adjusted to leave their platforms exactly horizontal. Wall handled the binocular microscope as if it might dissolve at a touch.

”It is,” said Wall. ”No little animalcules moving among the strands. No variations in structure. I took samples from depths up to six feet. All I could find was the one algae. But otherwise- I even tested for proteins and sugars. You could eat it. We came all this way to find pond sc.u.m.”

They came down on an island five hundred miles south. This time Carv helped with the collecting. They got through faster that way, but they kept getting in each other's way. Six months spent in two small rooms had roused tempers too often. It would take more than a few hours on ground before they could b.u.mp elbows without a fight.

Again Carv watched Wall go through his routines. He stood just within voice range, about fifty yards away, because it felt so good to have so much room. The care Wall exercised with his equipment still amazed him. How could he reconcile it with Wall's ragged fingernails and his thirty hours growth of beard?

Well, Wall was a flatlander. All his life he'd had a whole planet to mess up, and not a crowded pressure dome or the cabin of a s.h.i.+p. No flat ever learned real neatness.

”Same breed,” Wall called.

”Did you test for radiation?”

”No. Why?”

”This thick air must screen out a lot of gamma rays. That means your algae can't mutate without local radiation from the ground.”

”Carv, it had to mutate to get to its present form. How could all its cousins just have died out?”

”That's your field.”

A little later Wall said, ”I can't get a respectable background reading anywhere. You were right, but it doesn't explain anything.”

”Shall we go somewhere else?”

”Yah.”

They set down in deep ocean, and when the s.h.i.+p stopped bobbing Carv went out the airlock with a gla.s.s bucket. ”Its a foot thick out there,” he reported. ”No place for a Disneyland. I don't think I'd want to settle here.”

Wall sighed his agreement. The green sc.u.m lapped thickly at the Overcee Overcee's gleaming metal hull, two yards below the sill of the airlock.

”A lot of planets must be like this,” said Carv. ”Habitable, but who needs it?”

”And I wanted to be the first man to found an interstellar colony.”

”And get your name in the newstapes, the history books-”

”-And my unforgettable face on every trivis in the solar system. Tell me, s.h.i.+pmate, if you hate publicity so much, why have you been tr.i.m.m.i.n.g that Vand.y.k.e so prettily?”

”Guilty. I like being famous. Just not as much as you do.”

”Cheer up then. We may yet get all the hero wors.h.i.+p we can stand. This may be something bigger than a new colony.”

”What could be bigger than that?”

”Set us down on land and I'll tell you.”

On a chunk of rock just big enough to be called an island, Wall set up his equipment for the last time. He was testing for food content- again, using samples from Carv's bucket of deep ocean algae.

Carv stood by, a comfortable distance away, watching the weird variations in the clouds. The very highest were moving across the sky at enormous speeds, swirling and changing shape by the minutes and seconds. The noonday light was subdued and early. No doubt about it, Sirius B-IV had a magnificent sky.