“I’ll go along with you, Al,” Nat Bryan said.
“Same here,” put in Dave Herst.
The others agreed. Project Bossie was not to be discontinued. Work would proceed.
Work proceeded. The tissue-culture udder had now reached functional size, and one night it was transported from the Biochemistry Unit to Lab 106a, incubator and all, and hooked into the system. It was the eleventh week. It was now possible to introduce waste cellulose at the intake of the artificial cow and have it pass through the four “stomachs” to be broken down into the desired products. The result was synthetic blood from which the udder could extract milk. Mason computed that three hundred quarts of such blood would be needed to produce a quart of milk. It wasn’t a bad ratio, but they determined to improve on it.
Other unforeseen hitches developed. The first batch of milk that was produced, in the twelfth week, was vile stuff, about sixty per cent fat and fifteen per cent protein; it looked curdled the moment after it appeared, and rapidly got worse. It was discovered that the bleeder-lines at the final stage of the digestive process were faulty; glucose and galactose were being held back, too much fat admitted. The men went to work on this problem.
They solved it. But the solution involved rigging a new and elaborate system of tubing. The synthetic cow was taking on frightening aspects by this time. Dimly discernible beneath the network of pipes and tubes and stopcocks were the original four kettles of the digestive system. But now the apparatus took up virtually every square inch of floor space in Laboratory 106a. It sprawled toward the four comers of the room and up to the ceiling.
A new flaw was discovered: a vital liver secretion was missing, causing difficulties in the process of fat digestion. A cow’s milk has no more than four per cent fat in it; they were unable to lower the fat percentage below twenty-five per cent. Some quick research produced the reason. But a week of fruitless labor told them that it was going to be an enormous task to duplicate mechanically the necessary organ of secretion.
The project tottered on the brink of failure.
Nat Bryan made a suggestion: “We have a real udder. How about a real liver, too?”
Maury Roberts prowled through the inventory of the Biochem unit and discovered liver tissue in cold storage. The next day, a second incubator was in use; Roberts was busy growing a cow liver. It was either that or abandon the project.
Day by day the cells proliferated. The udder, meanwhile, was doing splendidly, and had to be trimmed back every three days to keep it from growing unlimitedly.
Success was approaching.
But so, unfortunately, were the congressmen.
They arrived right on schedule, 0900 hours on the 28th of January, 1996. There were six of them, as advertised. The total mass of the six legislators and their belongings was better than thirteen hundred pounds, and therefore that much useful equipment had to be displaced on the cargo ship. As Commander Henderson mournfully explained, there would be no new supply of reading-tapes this month, nor any shipments of beer. A small comptometer requisitioned by the astronomers in Base One had been left over till next time, too. It couldn’t be helped; the legislators had a right to visit the Lunar installations if they chose.
The morning of the delegation’s arrival, each man in Base Three found a mimeographed memo waiting for him on his breakfast plate:\
TO: ALL STAFF
FROM: BASE ADMINISTRATOR HENDERSON
SUBJECT: VISITORS
DESTROY AFTER READING
At 0900 today the ferry-ship is bringing us six members of Congress. They will be quartered at Base Three for the next ten days, before moving over to investigate the other bases. They are to be treated with utmost respect while they are here! I’m not joking. These boys can cut us off without a nickel in next year’s budget.
Normal routines are to prevail. I don’t intend to put on a special taut-ship demonstration for their benefit. But try to keep things tidy, and avoid any conspicuous material extravagance that might be tough to explain. Remain friendly, answer questions if they’re asked, and in general try to show them what a live-wire job we’re doing for Joe Taxpayer down there in the States.
Make a special effort to keep our visitors from blundering into high-voltage lines, walking outdoors without helmets and suits, and stuff like that. The publicity would be very very doubleplus ungood if something happened to one of our guests.
And remember—they aren’t going to be here forever, even if it seems that way. Only ten days.
Al Mason put down the memo sheet and peered owlishly at his mess-hall neighbor, Sam Brewster. “Avoid any conspicuous material extravagance that might be tough to explain!” he quoted. “Talk about locking the bam door too late! We have already been extravagant, and Td hate to have to explain.”
“If the C.O. ever pokes his nose into 106a,” Brewster said, “were going to have to explain. You better start thinking up something convincing, Al.”
Mason didn’t say anything. He grinned palely and took a long, deep, unsatisfying slug of his synthetic milk.
The senators were quartered in the Administration hut, while the congressmen had to put up with accommodations in one of the storage shacks. They were old men, the six of them—the youngest couldn’t have been much less than fifty-five—and they just loved the low gravity. But from the first hour, when they glanced beady-eyed around the base as if looking for their first target, it was evident to all hands that a real going-over was in the cards.
The six members of Project Bossie decided that for the nonce it was best to keep out of Laboratory 106a for the next ten days, except for performing routine operations necessary for maintenance of the complex contraption. There would be the deuce to pay if the investigating committee ever caught on. For one thing, the installation had become immense. For another, better than ten thousand dollars worth of good equipment had been sidetracked into the project by this time, along with a good many man-hours of highly skilled time. It would be unwise in the extreme to let the visitors find out that six men, without the knowledge of the Base Commander, had squandered so much time and energy and money for anything so frivolous as the production of milk—and just for the fun of it.
So Mason and his fellow conspirators entered Laboratory 106a at odd hours just to keep things running—mostly to keep an eye on the nutrient bath that supported the rapidly sprouting liver tissue. The udder was doing fine.
It didn’t take long to learn who were the legislators to watch out for. Representative Claude Manners was the fiercest ogre of the lot—a crusty New Englander from, of all places, Masons home state of New Hampshire. Representative Manners regarded any sort of governmental expenditure with horror. He persisted in wandering around the base asking, in a thin and insistent voice, “Yes, but what practical use does this have?”
On the senatorial side, the hardest to deal with was Senator Albert Jennings of Alabama. Senator Jennings’ favorite questions were, “Can’t this project really be dispensed with?” and “Let me see the cost figures on this equipment, please.”
It was trial by budget. Base Three was fidgety and tense. AL Mason began to wish he had never thought of building a synthetic cow. It was only a matter of time before the secret would be out.
And they were so close to the finish, too. Everything had seemed to check out at the last examination. The liver was thriving now—in fact, it was threatening to outgrow its space allotment, and Maury Roberts had to lower the incubator temperature in order to inhibit the organ’s boundless growth. The rest of the system was in working order. If only those snoopers would leave the Base, Mason thought, so we could run the final tests—