The Code of the Lifemaker by James P. Hogan

Author:James P. Hogan [Hogan, James P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

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 pseudo-organic 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 missiles 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 compli­cated...with variations in structure that you don’t get in crystals.” He gestured at the sample in the cold chamber.

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