She looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled and said, “I’ll ask Adri about that in the morning.”
As they turned their attention back to the dinners before them, Jordan marveled all over again at how closely the New Earthers’ cuisine resembled Earth’s. The meat on his plate certainly looked and tasted like veal. Grown in a biovat, but cooked to perfection with a tangy sauce that was tantalizingly familiar yet slightly different from anything Jordan could remember.
They were finishing their desserts when Jordan spotted Paul Longyear walking past their table.
“Paul,” he called, “join us for coffee?”
Longyear stopped, looked over their table, and pulled out the empty chair.
“It’s not coffee,” he said as he sat down. “Tastes almost the same, but it doesn’t have any caffeine at all.”
“You’ve tested it?” Jordan asked.
“I’ve been analyzing all their foodstuffs,” said the biologist. Holding up a thumb and forefinger a mere millimeter apart, he went on, “They’re all this close to Earth normal. Nothing in them that’s harmful to us, but just a tinge different.”
Aditi said, “I’m pleased that you find our food satisfactory.”
“More than satisfactory,” Jordan said. “It’s delicious. And I find the slight differences to be rather exotic.”
Thornberry pouted. “I haven’t found a decent potato here. I miss them, I do.”
Aditi looked troubled.
Then Thornberry added, “But we don’t have decent potatoes at our camp, either. Nor aboard the ship, by damn. The nearest honest potato is back on Earth, more’n eight light-years away.”
Jordan murmured, “The rigors of exploration.”
Thornberry broke into a hearty laugh. Looking around at the busy dining area, he guffawed, “Right you are. It’s hell out here on the frontier.”
Longyear didn’t laugh. Jordan thought he looked uptight, preoccupied by something that was bothering him.
When the waiter brought their coffee the biologist sipped at his cup minimally.
“So what have you and Nara been up to?” Jordan asked him, trying to shake him out of his dour mood.
“Cataloging the various species of animals here,” Longyear replied. With a shake of his head, he added, “It’s amazing what these people can do with biological engineering.”
Jordan glanced at Aditi. The “these people” phrase didn’t seem to bother her a bit.
“I mean,” Longyear went on, “they use genetic engineering the way we use mechanical engineering. Instead of inventing machines for labor-saving jobs, they gengineer animals.”
“And plants, too,” Aditi said. “Most of the fruits and vegetables we eat have been genetically modified.”
“We’ve done that on Earth,” Longyear said to her.
“We have?” Jordan asked.
“He means genetically engineered crops,” said Thornberry. “Frost-resistant wheat, grains that resist insect pests. It’s a big business.”
But Longyear said, “We’ve been doing genetic engineering for a long time, Mitch. Centuries. Millennia.”
Aditi said, “I had no idea your biological sciences were that advanced so long ago.”
With a hint of a smile, Longyear said, “They weren’t. The genetic engineering we did back then was done the old-fashioned way.”
“What do you mean?” Jordan asked.
“Well, take corn for instance. When my ancestors first came to what we now call Mexico, corn ears were no bigger than my thumb. But by consistently planting kernels from the biggest ears, over many generations we produced the kind of corn we eat today.”
“Selective breeding,” Jordan said.
“That’s right. The old-fashioned method of genetic engineering. We took wild cattle and pigs and bred them generation after generation to carry more meat. And to be docile. We fattened them up and dumbed them down.”
“And then we figured out the double helix,” said Thornberry. “Now we can do inside of a year what it took centuries to achieve before.”
Longyear nodded tightly. Then he turned to Jordan. “I need to talk to you. In private.”
Something’s in the wind, Jordan thought. With a glance toward Aditi, he replied to the biologist, “Will tomorrow morning do?”
“Fine,” said Longyear, tight-lipped. Then he repeated, “In private.”
Conundrum
The following morning, Jordan left Aditi sleeping in his bed, showered, shaved, and dressed as quietly as he could, then went to Longyear’s quarters. To his surprise, Meek was there, standing uneasily by Longyear’s desk.
“Harmon! I didn’t know you had come to the city.”
“I came early this morning,” said the astrobiologist. “I was up at the crack of dawn, the very crack of dawn.”
Longyear’s apartment was a single room, partitioned into a bedroom area, kitchen, and a sitting room furnished with a small sofa, a pair of armchairs, and a sleekly curved desk. The walls were covered with display screens that glowed pearly gray.
“I hope you had a pleasant walk through the forest,” Jordan said as he went to the sofa.
“I drove a buggy,” Meek replied. He dropped his lanky frame onto one of the armchairs.
“I see.” Turning to Longyear, who got up from his desk and went to the other armchair, Jordan said, “I gathered from the way you asked for this meeting that you didn’t want Aditi present.”
“That’s right,” the biologist said. Frowning slightly, he said, “It’s not that I don’t … um, trust her. It’s just that I think it’s better if we thrash this matter out among ourselves before talking to Adri or any of the others about it.”
“All right,” Jordan said, leaning back on the sofa’s plush cushions. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s not a problem so much as a conundrum.”
“A conundrum?”
Meek said, “A puzzle. A riddle.”
“Thank you, Harmon,” said Jordan, dryly.
Longyear’s lean face was entirely serious. “I’ve been thinking about this planet’s ozone layer.”
Jordan felt surprised.
“It’s much thicker than Earth’s,” Longyear said.
“Well, it has to be, doesn’t it? Sirius emits much more ultraviolet radiation than our Sun does. The ozone layer screens out the UV, protects life on the planet’s surface.”
“Exactly right,” said Meek.
Longyear leaned closer and asked, “But how did the ozone get there, in the first place?”
Jordan blinked at him. “As I understand it, the ultraviolet light coming in creates a reaction that turns some of the oxygen molecules high in the atmosphere into ozone: oxygen-three, isn’t it, where regular oxygen is a two-atom molecule.”
“Right,” said Longyear. “But how did the oxygen get into the atmosphere?”
Feeling as if he were taking a high school science exam, Jordan answered, “From living plants that give off oxygen as a result of photosynthesis.”
“Aha!” Meek pounced. “And how could plant life arise in the face of the heavy ultraviolet radiation reaching the planet’s surface?”
Jordan was puzzled by that. “Why … how did photosynthetic plants arise on Earth? In the oceans, wasn’t it? Single-celled bacteria in the water.”
“That’s what happened on Earth, true enough,” said Longyear. “The so-called blue-green algae—”
“Cyanobacteria, actually,” Meek interrupted.
A frown flashed across Longyear’s face as he continued, “Those single-celled creatures lived deep enough in the water so that the Sun’s UV didn’t reach them.”
“The water protected them,” Jordan said.
“Right. And over many eons, they pumped enough oxygen into Earth’s atmosphere to allow an ozone layer to build up. The ozone layer protected the planet’s surface from killing levels of ultraviolet and life could eventually evolve on land.”