The Hour Before Earthrise by James Blish

Author:James Blish [Blish, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2020-09-16T21:00:00+00:00

Grinning, Dolph told her of his experiment with the sap. She was furious; it took him the better part of ten minutes to get her calmed down.

“I know, I know. Everything you say is true, but all the same it had to be tried. And look, Nanette, this stuff is better than food. It stows down the metabolism—stows it way down, about five times. We’ll use that much less food, that much less oxygen, that much less water. And there’s something else. I’ll check this very carefully, believe me, but it might even make it possible for us to live outside without masks, at least for a few hours at a time during the day. We’ll save on heat, too—I’ll bet my body temperature’s going to wind up at about half normal—and we’ll be glad of that in about a year.”

“Why a year?”

“Because then it’ll be winter. The Martian seasons are four times as long as they are on Earth.”

“Hmm. I still think it was foolhardy, but . . . . I want to try it.”

“No,” Dolph said firmly.

“Don’t give me that! If you can make a nitwit of yourself, I can too. And if there are any benefits, I ought to be entitled to them.”

“No argument—but the experiment’s less than an hour old. The stuff could kill me. Even if it doesn’t there may be longterm bad effects—what the doctors call chronic toxicity. And then there’s this business of feeling so good; it’s like a drug. Maybe the sap’s addicting.”

“Even if it is, there’s obviously plenty,” Nanette said, but she did not press the point. “Okay, I’U hold off for a little while, anyhow. How long are you going to insist upon?”

“Oh—say a week. Not really long enough, but it’ll have to do. I want to experiment with the dose, too; maybe I took more than I need, or—well, we just don’t know yet. What now?”

Nanette had cocked her head and had stopped listening to him with more than half her mind.

“Listen to the wind. That’s not just the evening blow. It’s getting worse.”

After listening a moment for himself, Dolph had to agree. “I wonder what that means?”

“Didn’t you say we had a year to go until winter? Then we’re just at the beginning of autumn here. This is such a small planet, the winds must change pattern pretty sharply with the seasons. And I think it’s just started to change.”

“I think you’re right.” Dolph strode to the porthole and looked out. “Look at that sand! It’s getting thicker every second. This could be a bad one.”

Nanette nodded soberly. “If you ask me,” she said, “that week is going to be a long one.”

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