“A dry suit liner,” said Rob triumphantly.
“It is wonderful!” she said, pressing her face to the clean dry cloth and inhaling. “I hate to put it on and spoil it.”
“It won’t fit anybody else.”
She unzipped her own damp liner, wrinkling her nose at the mold patches. “I am very tired of being wet,” she said.
She stripped off her damp liner, wiped clean with four antibacterial wipes, and then very slowly Alicia got dressed. It was a sensual—but entirely nonsexual—reverse-striptease, and the expression on her face as she felt the clean fabric slide onto her limbs was like a painting of a saint touched by the Holy Spirit. “Thank you, my love,” she said at last.
“Where did you find it?” asked Josef.
“I cleaned it, actually. I used a mix of clean water from the dehumidifier and some Ilmatar seawater. To get it dry I put it in the sub cabin heat exchanger, and finally aired it out over the oxygen feed in here.”
“Robert, it must have taken you hours!” she said.
“Well, most of the time I was doing other stuff while I waited for it to dry out.”
“You are mad,” she said. “Wonderfully.”“WHAT do you think?” Alicia asked Rob as she handed him a bowl of cloudy yellow liquid.
He sniffed suspiciously. “Smells kind of like mushrooms,” he said.
“Taste it.”
“You’re sure it’s safe?”
“I have tasted it and I am not dead.”
“Yet.” He lifted the bowl to his mouth and took a tiny sip. “Kind of sour. Very salty.” He sipped some more. “Not too bad. What is it—more microbe soup?”
“Yes. A fermenting organism which breaks down the complex sugars in animal exoskeletons. It grows all through the garbage midden.”
“Yummy. What’s the calorie content like?”
“Very encouraging. I can filter it down to about one kilocalorie per three milliliters.”
“That’s great—drink a couple of liters and you can skip a food bar. Is there anything to worry about?”
“The sodium content is enormous, but that is true of everything here, and it has no usable protein. No vitamins, either, of course, but we have the supplements for that.”
“Any toxins?”
“Nothing directly harmful. There is always the risk of an allergy, though I think if we cook it enough to break down any complex molecules we should be safe.”
“How did you cook this, anyway?”
“I taped the metal sample container to the wall, and put one of the immersion heaters into it. I am afraid boiling is the only way we can cook for now, except for the micro wave oven on the sub.”
“That’s pretty smart. Oh, by the way, I was wondering about something. We’ve been using the toilet on the sub, but it’s reaching its limit and we can’t dump it into the system at Hitode anymore. So either we discharge it off in the ocean somewhere, or we quit using it—and that means we’re going to be dumping our stuff in the ocean directly like we did at the Coquille. Is that safe? For the Ilmatarans, I mean. I don’t want to start some kind of space-cholera epidemic.”
“For ourselves it is entirely safe as long as you don’t dump it nearby. As for its effect on the Ilmatarans—hmm. The wastes themselves are harmless, and I’m sure the native organisms can break it all down in time. I am more concerned about our intestinal bacteria.”
“I remember there was some fuss about that before the first mission launched.”
“Yes, nobody wanted to unleash a plague on Ilmatar. Let me find the reference.” She tapped at her computer screen. “Here is the study: ‘Risk is slight… Terrestrial bacteria fail to thrive in Ilmataran conditions… not immediately fatal, though… sample showed roughly fifty percent mortality after twenty-four hours… no cell division observed…’ I think we are safe, Robert. Our bacteria evolved to live inside a human body. It is very different out there.”
“Well, that’s good news. So how much of this stuff do you think we can collect?”
“It seemed to be fairly abundant. I think we can each have one meal of local food per day. That extends our stay by—”
“Two days. Maybe three. I’m also starting to worry about life support. We’re using the spare from the sub already, and we only have one spare suit. If any of them fail, we’ve got no backups. Another failure means somebody dies.”
“Surely the food problem will become critical first.”
“Well, probably. But the thing about air is, when you need it, you need it right now. You can put off eating for an hour or two even if you’re really hungry. You can’t put off breathing.”
She sighed. “You have a point, I suppose. But what can we do? Can you manufacture another APOS unit? Can we call Earth and have them ship us one?”
“I was thinking about salvage. Josef thinks they left monitors at Coq 2, but what about the other one? As far as I know it’s still there. Dickie didn’t mention them destroying it when they caught him. We can’t use it, and it might attract too much attention if we try to move it, but what about scavenging some parts?”
“Can you do it? I mean, do you have the tools and things?”
“I think so. Everything’s pretty modular. Swim in, pull the APOS packs and the nuke, swim out. I could do it in half an hour.”
“They will be listening for the sub. We will have to use the impeller. It is quieter.”
“We? I was gonna do it by myself. We don’t know that the place isn’t guarded.”
“Robert, do not be ridiculous. Even with an impeller you cannot manage two APOS packs and a power unit. And if something goes wrong you will be alone.”
Rob opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. He could see the argument unfolding before him, leading inevitably to Alicia getting her way. So he decided to save himself the effort. “Tell you what: you can come with me if you get in my sleeping bag right now. If you want—”
She cut him off. “You are trying to make some awful pun about Coquilles and penises, aren’t you? I will sleep with you if you promise not to speak it aloud.”
Tizhos did her best, curling up next to the human with plenty of skin-on-skin contact. All his muscles felt tightly clenched, which didn’t seem right for a human in a relaxed state. She picked up a food ball and tried to feed it to him.
He jerked his head back, then shook it from side to side. “No, thank you,” he said.
Irona had instructed her to scent the air in their room with perfumes and pheromones to establish the mood. The two Sholen would certainly have an easier time bonding with the human if they themselves felt relaxed and affectionate. Tizhos had also created a platter of treats they could all share, and turned up the heat.
“I ask you to try the food,” said Irona. “You have no cause to worry—Tizhos has programmed our foodmaker to observe human dietary and culinary constraints.”
Tizhos tried to feed him again, and again Vikram Sen pulled back. Finally he took the ball from her hand with his own and nibbled it. “Your foodmaker is an impressive feat of technology, but as I told Tizhos earlier I am afraid I have nothing more to say to either of you right now.”
“You misunderstand our purpose. We do not wish to interrogate you. We merely want to renew our friendship with you.”
Tizhos handed Vikram Sen another food ball. He took it with his hand, had a bite, and put it down with the other.
Irona moved onto the cushions next to the human on the other side. He put his midlimb around Vikram Sen’s shoulders and Tizhos could feel the little human flinch.
“This does not seem to be going well,” she murmured to Irona. “He shows no sign of a favorable response.”
“We should try harder,” Irona said back to her, then switched to the human language. “Vikram Sen, please tell me why you exhibit such a lack of comfort. We wish only to make you content.”