Battle on Venus by Temple William F

Author:Temple, William F. [Temple, William F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Goodreads: 19498780
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1963-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

IV

“Nature makes many blunders,” Senilde said, “and one of them, I always thought, was that men should have to die. Simple cell creatures keep splitting in halves, and the halves in turn split, and so on. But the original portions still live. Any one of those creatures could truly be said to be potentially immortal. You can take a tissue of man or beast and keep it alive indefinitely in a suitable culture.

“Single protoplasmic cells or small groups of them survive. But if they grow into a large, multi-celled body, like that of a man, that large group dies. Why does it die? The only different factor is—size. The size of the group. Once a group grows beyond a certain size, it seals its own doom.”

“Critical mass,” George murmured.

“You know about atomic energy?” asked Senilde, mildly interested. “Yes, I suppose you would. Tell me, have you ever made any of those delightful atomic bombs?”

“Not personally,” said George.

“They were my favorite toys at one time. Such a spectacle! But one wearies even of that…My instruments tell me that they still go off in various parts of the planet sometimes, but I never bother nowadays to go out and look at them. I’ve still got a pretty large stock of them around somewhere…I think.”

“Our astronomers saw some of your explosions, I guess,” said George. “Great atmospheric disturbances concentrated in various small spots. One in November, 1985. One in June, 1927—photographed at Mount Wilson. Another back in February, 1913.”

“Indeed?” said Senilde, indifferently.

Mara said: “I don’t know what you’re both talking about. Why don’t you keep to the subject, which was immortality?”

“I find these days a growing tendency of my mind to wander,” said Senilde. “Where was I?”

Mara told him. He went on: “The reason, I found, was that the duration of life was directly linked to the permeability in that part of the living cell exposed to the radiations of the universe around it. As growth—that is, accumulation—proceeds, so the inner cells suffer a natural and inevitable decrease in that permeability. They’re entombed, choked, cut off from light, denied invigorating contact with exterior radiation.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Mara pouting.

George said, thoughtfully: “Half a century or more ago, on Earth, a fellow named…er…Benedict-yes, H.M. Benedict—came to that conclusion after studying the senility of plants.”

“Did he go on from there?”

“How could he?”

“I did. Nature made an error in the colloidal degree of protoplasm. I corrected it. Just a matter of the injection into the bloodstream of a perpetual solvent, which, as it circulates, thins out the too dense, too clinging proteins. The cells of your body are specialists. Either they travel a fixed, confined circuit in your bloodstream or else they’re gummed immovably in place in your flesh and bones. Except the white blood corpuscles, that is.

“Fixity and specialization spell death. My body-cells are free, fluid, adaptable, amoeboid. When they feel the need to come to the surface, they do so. They move slowly—but they move. Also, they’re versatile and continually change their functions.

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