“Take samples,” said Josef.
“Oh! Yes. Both of you help,” said Alicia, passing out some little sample baggies from her suit pocket.
“More data?” asked Rob as he scraped a little of what looked like caviar into a bag.
“Yes, and not just for research. There may be a few things here which we can eat.”
Thinlegs approaches Broadtail and Longpincer. “My dear colleagues. I find I must return to my own home. Longpincer, may I borrow the service of an apprentice to load my animal?”
“Of course you may,” says Longpincer. “But why must you leave now? So much is happening!”
Thinlegs reaches over with his pincers and taps on Longpincer’s shell, loud enough for Broadtail to hear. “That is why I must leave,” he spells out. “It is too much. I recall joining the Company as a diversion from the cares of managing my property. The discoveries and opinions of the members are interesting, and some of their ideas are profitable. As I say, it is a pleasant diversion. The Company are better conversationalists than my neighbors and apprentices, and you keep a good larder, Longpincer. But all that is happening now—it is simply too much! Beings from beyond the ice! Creatures capable of thinking and speaking like adults! Two varieties at war with each other! I fear that if I remain I must take a side in this fight and risk my life or my property.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” says Longpincer. “But I intend to welcome you again.”
“I am grateful. But I must go.”
Broadtail waits until Thinlegs is too far to hear them, then taps on Longpincer’s shell. “How many others are leaving?”
“I recall speaking with two—Narrowbody and Smoothshell.”
“I regret this is happening. Longpincer,” says Broadtail after a moment’s hesitation, “if the presence of the Builders creates difficulties, I can take them elsewhere. Perhaps hide them in a different set of ruins, or take them off to the shallows.”
“No. I am their host and I recall saying as much before the Company. This is the best place to keep them.”
“I must ask—can you afford this? Have you enough surplus for the Company and the Builders?”
“You need not worry. Even if my own jars are empty, I have beads to spend. Besides,” Longpincer’s tone shifts to amusement, “I remember you demonstrating these Builders cannot eat my food. Surely that is the best sort of guest to have?”
The sub could sleep two people in only moderate discomfort, but adding a third meant that someone had to stretch out on top of the underside hatch. The unlucky sleeper always woke up cold, stiff, and with a pattern of little triangles pressed into his skin by the floor grid. When they were awake, Rob and Josef spent as much time outside as possible. Alicia used the cramped space as a lab.
On their second day at the Ilmataran settlement, Rob found Alicia hard at work inside the sub. He was quiet as she prepared another sample and slid the little test strip into the analyzer.“How’s it going?”
She straightened up and stretched. “In two days I have tested sixty-five Ilmataran foodstuffs. Seven have nutritional value for us, two contain no identifiable toxins or allergens, and one even seems to be palatable.”“You mean the orange stuff you showed me this morning?
For some values of palatable, I guess.”
“What is the old American saying? Pretend it is chicken?”
“More like rotten eggs.”
“That is just the sulfur. Everything here is rich in sulfur. It is the foundation of the ecology.”
“And that means half the things we’ve tested are full of sul furic acid and carbon sulfide.”
“The orange bacterial mats have only trace amounts. And we can get rid of the hydrogen sulfide you don’t like by cooking it. That would also break down the complex carbohydrates.”
“Mmm. Fried sulfur-reducing bacterial mats. When we get back to Earth we can start a chain of Ilmataran restaurants.”
“The usable carbohydrate content is about point one kilocalorie per gram. That is a bit less than lettuce. It will help keep us alive, Robert.”
“I know. Sorry. How many more samples today?”
“I am hoping to process another twenty. Our friend Broadtail has been a great help. His people have a very sophisticated classification system based on anatomy and physiology. It is essentially Linnean without the modern genetic component.”
“How does that help?”
“It means that I can eliminate entire phyla rather quickly.
For instance, we were able to determine that all the animals have tremendous concentrations of metals from the water in their tissues. Which is a shame, because I would like to find a source of protein we can use.”
“How about eggs?”
“They are too acidic. To be honest, the best things for us here are the products of decay. All of their energetic molecules are bad for us. But the sugars and starches they use for structural materials are all right.”
“We’re garbage eaters from space.”
“Essentially. I am gaining new respect for oxygen respiration. Speaking of which, how is your work?”
“Longpincer—he’s the guy who apparently runs this whole settlement—has given us a little outbuilding. Josef and I just spent the whole morning caulking it with silicone and reactor tape. Josef’s test-filling it with one of the spare APOS packs. If it’s really airtight, we can dismount the sub’s backup unit and fill the whole building with oxygen and argon.”
“How big is the building?”
“It’ll be snug. We had to leave the bottom part flooded, so the air space is about seven cubic meters. We can put a couple of hammocks in there and any equipment we want to keep dry.”
“What about heat?”
“Well—it’s chilly. It’s washed by outflow from the vent, but by the time it gets down the pipes it’s only about ten degrees C. Still, that’s better than the ambient seawater.”
“Ten is not so bad. I have gone camping in Normandy in worse weather.”
“That’s the spirit.” He was silent for a moment. “Is this really going to work?”
“I do not know. Food is the bottleneck. With enough calories we can survive despite the cold. The ‘orange stuff’ is useful, but it isn’t concentrated enough. We will need to eat kilograms of it.”
Rob rejoined Josef outside to inspect the little outbuilding for leaks now that it was full of oxygen. The Ilmataran masonry work was really extraordinary, especially when you considered they had no metal tools to work the stone with. Underwater it was hard to swing a hammer, so most of their stone cutting had to be done by patient grinding instead of chipping and wedging.
The building was beehive-shaped, with the stones fitted together by abrading them into place. It reminded Rob of pictures he’d seen of Inca stonework in Peru. The seams were very tight, and Rob and Josef had used up four tubes of silicone sealant and a roll of reactor tape on the inside of the building. Now they hovered inches above the domed roof looking for suspicious bubbles.
After plugging another tube’s worth of leaks, both of them weresatisfied that the building was airtight. Josef maneuvered the sub over to their new home and the two of them spent half an hour getting the backup APOS system and spare argon tank moved inside. Since it was designed to run underwater anyway, Rob just put it on the floor below water level and taped the in and out hoses to the wall.
They waited for the machine to cycle the atmosphere in the building and get it to the right gas mix. Then Rob used more reactor tape to anchor the hammocks and a heater.
“Electrical work is exciting,” Josef commented, floating chest-deep in seawater while holding a cable from the sub’s powerplant.
“Tell me about it,” said Rob, wrapping another layer of reactor tape around a connection.