“What’s that? Are we going to land? When? Where?”
Lazarus, willing to be mollified, told her. The type G2, or Sol-type star, toward which they had bent their course years earlier was now less than a lightyear away-a little over seven light-months-and it was now possible to infer by parainterferometric methods that the star (ZD9817, or simply “our” star) had planets of some sort.
In another month, when the star would be a half lightyear away, deceleration would commence. Spin would be taken off the ship and for one year she would boost backwards at one gravity, ending near the star at interplanetary rather than interstellar speed, and a search would be made for a planet fit to support human life. The search would be quick and easy as the only planets they were interested in would shine out brilliantly then, like Venus from Earth; they were not interested in elusive cold planets, like Neptune or Pluto, lurking in distant shadows, nor in scorched cinders ilke Mercury, hiding in the flaming skirts of the mother star.
If no Earthlike planet was to be had, then they must continue on down really close to the strange sun and again be kicked away by light pressure, to resume hunting for a home elsewhere-with the difference that this time, not harassed by police, they could select a new course with care.
Lazarus explained that the New Frontiers would not actually land in either case; she was too big to land, her weight would wreck her. Instead, if they found a planet, she would be thrown into a parking orbit around her and exploring parties would be sent down in ship’s boats. - -
As soon as face permitted Lazarus left the two young women and went to the laboratory where the Families continued their researches in metabolism and gerontology. He expected to find Mary Sperling there; the brush with Nancy Weatheral had made him feel a need for her company. If he ever did marry again, he thought to himself, Mary was more his style. Not that he seriously considered it; he felt that a iiaison between Mary and himself would have a ridiculous flavor of lavender and old lace.
Mary Sperling, finding herself cooped up in the ship and not wishing to accept the symbolic death of cold-sleep, had turned her fear of death into constructive channels by volunteering to be a laboratory assistant in the continuing research into longevity. She was not a trained biologist but she had deft fingers and an agile mind; the patient years of the trip had shaped her into a valuable assistant to Dr. Gordon Hardy, chief of the research.
Lazarus found her servicing the deathless tissue of chicken heart known to the laboratory crew as “Mrs. ‘Avidus.” Mrs. ‘Avidus was older than any member of the Families save possibly Lazarus himself; she was a growing piece of the original tissue obtained by the Families from the Rockefeller Institute in the twentieth century, and the tissues had been alive since early in the twentieth century even then. Dr. Hardy and his predecessors had kept their bit of it alive for more than two centuries now, using the Carrel-Lindbergh-O’Shaug techniques and still Mrs. ‘Avidus flourished.
Gordon Hardy had insisted on taking the tissue and the apparatus which cherished it with him to the reservation when he was arrested; he had been equally stubborn about taking the living tissue along during the escape in the Chili. Now Mrs. ‘Avidus still lived and grew in the New Frontiers, fifty or sixty pounds of her-blind, deaf, and brainless, but still alive.
Mary Sperling was reducing her size. “Hello, Lazarus,” she greeted him. “Stand back. I’ve got the tank open.”
He watched her slice off excess tissue. “Mary,” he mused, “what keeps that silly thing alive?”
“You’ve got the question inverted,” she answered, not looking up; “the proper form is: why should it die? Why shouldn’t it go on forever?” -
“I wish to the Devil it would die!” came the voice of Dr. Hardy from behind them. “Then we could observe and find out why.” - -
“You’ll never find out why from Mrs. ‘Avidus, boss,” Mary answered, hands and eyes still busy. “The key to the matter is in the gonads-she hasn’t any.”
‘Hummph! What do you know about it?”
“A woman’s intuition. What do you know about it?”
“Nothing, -absolutely nothing!-which puts me ahead of you and your intuition.”
“Maybe. At least,” Mary added slyly, “1 knew you before you were housebroken.”
“A typical female argument. Mary, that lump of muscle cackled and laid eggs before either one of us was born, yet it doesn’t know anything.” He scowled at it. “Lazarus, I’d gladly trade it for one pair of carp. male and female.” -
“Why carp?” asked Lazarus.
“Because carp don’t seem to die. They get killed, or eaten, or starve to death, or succumb to infection, but so far as we know they don’t die.”
“Why not?”
“That’s what I was trying to find out when we were rushed off on this damned safari. They have unusual intestinal flora and it may have something to do with that. But I think it has to do with the fact that they never stop growing.”
Mary said something inaudibly. Hardy said, “What are you muttering about? Another intuition?”
“I said, ‘Amoebas don’t die.’ You said yourself that every amoeba now alive has been alive for, oh, fifty million years or so. Yet they don’t grow indefinitely larger and they certainly can’t have intestinal flora.”
“No guts,” said Lazarus and blinked.
“What a terrible pun, Lazarus. But what I said is true. They don’t die. They just twin and keep on living.”
“Guts or no guts,” Hardy said impatiently, “there may be a structural parallel. But I’m frustrated for lack of experimental subjects. Which reminds me: Lazarus, I’m glad you dropped in. I want you to do me a favor.”
“Speak up. I might be feeling mellow.”
“You’re an interesting case yourself, you know. You didn’t follow our genetic pattern; you anticipated it. I don’t want your body to go into the converter; I want to examine it.”
Lazarus snorted. “‘Sail right with me, bud. But you’d better tell your successor what to look for-you may not live that long. And I’ll bet you anything that you like that nobody’ll find it by poking around in my cadaver!”
The planet they had hoped for was there when they looked for it, green, lush, and young, and looking as much like Earth as another planet could. Not only was it Earthlike but the rest of the system duplicated roughly the pattern of the Solar System-small terrestrial planets near this sun, large Jovian planets farther out. Cosmologists had never been able to account for the Solar System; they had alternated between theories of origin which had failed to stand up and sound mathematico-physical “proofs” that such a system could never have originated in the first place. Yet here was another enough like it to suggest that its paradoxes were not unique, might even be common.
But more startling and even more stimulating and certainly more disturbing was another fact brought out by telescopic observation as they got close to the planet. The planet held life . . , intelligent life … civilized life.
Their cities could be seen. Their engineering works, strange in form and purpose, were huge enough to be seen from space just as ours can be seen.
Nevertheless, though it might mean that they must again pursue their weary hegira, the dominant race did not appear to have crowded the available living space. There might be room for their little colony on those broad continents. If a colony was welcome…
“To tell the truth,” Captain King fretted, “I hadn’t expected anything like this. Primitive aborigines perhaps, and we certainly could expect dangerous animals, but I suppose I unconsciously assumed that man was the only really civilized race. We’re going to have to be very cautious.”