Theobald thought about it.
"It will be a favor to Dad." Phyllis could have warned him against that approach. Theobald had been rather slow in reaching the degree of social integration necessary to appreciate the cool pleasure of conferring benefits on others.
"Will you do me a favor?" he countered.
"What do you want?"
"A flop-eared buck." The boy had been raising rabbits, with some adult assistance; but his grandiose plans, if unchecked, would have resulted in their entire home being given over to fat, furry rodents. Nevertheless, Hamilton was somewhat relieved to find the favor desired was no larger.
"Sure thing, sport. You could have had one anyhow."
Theobald made no answer, but stood up, signifying his willingness to get on with it.
After they had gone Hamilton considered the matter for a moment. A new buck rabbit was all right; he did not mind that as much as he would have minded a new doe. But something had to be done fairly soon, or else his garden would have to be abandoned.
Theobald seemed to be working out, with the busy and wholehearted collaboration of his rabbits, an interesting but entirely erroneous neo-Mendelian concept of inherited characteristics. Why, he wanted to know, did white bunnies sometimes have brown babies? Felix pointed out that a brown buck had figured in the matter, but soon bogged down, and turned the matter over to Mordan-accepting as inevitable the loss of face involved. Theobald, he knew, was quite capable now of being interested in the get of a flop-eared buck.
The boy had formulated an interesting, but decidedly specialized, arithmetic to keep his records of rabbits, based on the proposition that one plus one equals at least five. Hamilton had discovered it by finding symbols in the boy's rabbit note book with which he was unfamiliar. Theobald boredly interpreted them for him.
Hamilton showed the records to Monroe-Alpha the next time Monroe-Alpha and Marion showed up at his home. He had regarded it as an amusing and insignificant joke, but Clifford took it with his usual dead seriousness. "Isn't it about time you started him on arithmetic?"
"Why, I don't think so. He is a little young for it-he's hardly well into mathematical analysis." Theobald had been led into mathematical symbology by the conventional route of generalized geometry, analysis, and the calculi. Naturally, he had not been confronted with the tedious, inane, and specialized mnemonics of practical arithmetic-he was hardly more than a baby.
"I don't think he is too young for it. I had devised a substitute for positional notation when I was about his age. I imagine he can take it, if you don't ask him to memorize operation tables." Monroe-Alpha was unaware that the child had an eidetic memory and Hamilton passed the matter by. He had no intention of telling Monroe-Alpha anything about Theobald's genetic background. While custom did not actually forbid such discussion, good taste, he felt, did. Let the boy alone, let him keep his private life private. He and Phyllis knew, the geneticists involved had to know, the Planners had had to know since this was a star line. Even that he regretted, for it had brought such intrusions as the visit of that old hag Carvala.
Theobald himself would know nothing, or very little, of his ancestral background until he was a grown man. He might not inquire into it, or have it brought to his attention, until he reached something around the age Felix had been when Mordan called Felix's attention to his own racial significance.
It was better so. The pattern of a man's inherited characteristics was racially important and inescapable anyhow, but too much knowledge of it, too much thinking about it, could be suffocating to the individual. Look at Cliff-damned near went off the beam entirely just from thinking about his great-grandparents. Well, Marion had fixed that.
No, it was not good to talk too much about such things. He himself had talked too much a short time before, and had been sorry ever since. He had been telling Mordan his own point of view about Phyllis having any more children-after the baby girl to come, of course. Phyllis and he had not yet come to agreement about it; Mordan had backed up Phyllis. "I would like for you two to have at least four children, preferably six. More would be better but we probably would not have time enough to select properly for that many."
Hamilton almost exploded. "It seems to me that you make plans awfully easy-for other people. I haven't noticed you doing your bit. You are pretty much of a star line yourself- how come? Is this a one-way proposition?"
Mordan had kept his serenity. "I have not refrained. My plasm is on deposit, and available if wanted. Every moderator in the country saw my chart, in the usual course of routine."
"The fact remains that you haven't done much personally about children."
"No. No, that is true. Martha and I have so many, many children in our district, and so many yet to come, that we hardly have time to concentrate on one."
From the peculiar phraseology Hamilton gained a sudden bit of insight. "Say, you and Martha are married-aren't you?"
"Yes. For twenty-three years."
"Well, then ... but, why-"
"We can't," Mordan said flatly, with just a shade less than his usual calm. "She's a mutation ... sterile."
Hamilton's ears still burned to think that his big mouth had maneuvered his friend into making such a naked disclosure. He had never guessed the relationship; Martha never called Claude anything but "chief"; they used no words of endearment, nor let it creep otherwise into their manner. Still, it explained a lot of things-the rapport-like co-operation between the technician and the synthesist, the fact that Mordan had shifted to genetics after starting a brilliant career in social administration, his intense and fatherly interest in his charges.
He realized with a slight shock that Claude and Martha were as much parents of Theobald as were Phyllis and himself-foster parents, godparents. Mediator parents might be the right term. They were mediator parents to hundreds of thousands, he didn't know how many.
But this wasn't getting his work done-and he would have to go home early today, because of Theobald. He turned to his desk. A memorandum caught his eye-from himself to himself. Hmmm ... he would have to get after that. Better talk to Carruthers. He swung around toward the phone.
"Chief?"
"Yes, Felix."
"I was talking with Doctor Thorgsen the other day, and I got an idea-may not be much in it."
"Give." Way out on far Pluto, the weather is cold. The temperature rarely rises above eighteen degrees centigrade absolute even on the side toward the sun. And that refers to high noon in the open sunlight. Much of the machinery of the observatories is exposed to this intense cold. Machinery that will work on Terra will not work on Pluto, and vice versa. The laws of physics seem to be invariable but the characteristics of materials change with changes in temperature- consider ice and water, a mild example.
Lubricating oil is a dry powder at such temperatures. Steel isn't steel. The exploring scientists had to devise new technologies before Pluto could be conquered.
Not only for mobiles but for stabiles as well-such as electrical equipment. Electrical equipment depends on, among other factors, the resistance characteristics of conductors; extreme cold greatly lowers the electrical resistance of metals. At thirteen degrees centigrade absolute lead becomes a superconductor with no resistance whatsoever. An electric current induced in such lead seems to go on forever, without damping.
There are many other such peculiarities. Hamilton did not go into them-it was a sure thing that a brilliant synthesist such as his chief had all the gross facts about such matters. The main fact was this: Pluto was a natural laboratory for low temperature research, not only for the benefit of the observatories but for every other purpose.