Cavor nodded and glanced at the packet of red capsules once more.
‘When those are finished, I’ll give you some more.’
‘Whatever you say, doc.’ Cavor rubbed his stomach and glanced uncomfortably at the WCS. ‘Hey, I don’t suppose you’ve got anything for an upset stomach, have you?’
IV
The physicists have informed us that entropy is the natural state of the universe. Given enough time, they say, everything will fall apart. Suns will cool. Planets will die. Stars will collapse in upon themselves, and the whole universe will disintegrate. All this is certain, if a long way off. in our everyday world, however, there are two antientropic phenomena that build order out of chaos. These are crystallization and life. Life is not a closed system. It can import energy from outside — for example, the way plants capture energy from sunlight. And life itself exists not just within molecules, but between molecules. All living organisms must die, but there is no reason why life — all animal life — can’t begin anew to actuate the same body many times over before death eventually arrives. No reason at all, not least because it happens. Metabolism may cease, life may be suspended, indeed it may be seemingly destroyed and yet, hidden, life may persist.
Impossible, you say? When metabolism ceases, death ensues. And yet consider the strange phenomenon of cryptobiosis, meaning ‘hidden life,’ which describes a natural form of suspended animation possessed by dozens of multicellular species that can be found, millions of them, in the most hostile environments on Earth — everywhere from the Sahara Desert to the Arctic tundra. These animals include aquatic-dwelling rotifers, insectlike tardigrades, and wormlike nematodes. When environmental coziditions require it, these little creatures — smaller than a millimeter — dry up and shrink into tiny seedlike husks, not eating, not breathing, not moving, and to all apparent evidence, not living. In this strange cryptobiotic state they can survive for years on end until, with the return of moisture — water is the catalyst for a great many chemical reactions, most importantly, life itself — they revive. Moreover, these animals can withstand extremes of temperature — thousands of degrees of heat, freezing cold vacuums, even ionizing radiation — that would easily kill them in their active, hydrated state. These seemingly immortal protozoans may go into and out of the cryptobiotic state numerous times. One tardigrade was revived after two hundred years, while a rotifer at the University of California at Berkeley has been resurrected over fifty times.
If man could do the same as one of these small creatures from whom, after all, he has evolved, think what might be achieved. With time seemingly suspended for an astronaut, space itself would grow smaller. Vast distances might easily be traveled.[95] Why, even the remotest galaxies might be explored and new solar systems discovered, perhaps even colonized. Eventually, in some future diaspora, the seed of life, perhaps uniquely cultured on Earth, might be carried to every corner of the universe.
There are no miracles except the science that is not already known. And man is the measure of all things.
V
Moisture. It wasn’t just Mariner’s windows that were clouded with it. As well as sponging these, Ronica had to wipe the instruments free of great globs of water that shimmered in the zero gravity of the cabin like uncut diamonds. A university degree in blood banking, with a major in cryoprecipitation technology, and this was what she was reduced to doing: cleaning windows. Not that she really minded. Until they had gained entry to the vault in the First National and removed several thousand of the deep-frozen components held there, there would be little for her to do. Only after samples of the cryoprecipitate had been thawed could she inspect the condition of the blood, to check for possible bacterial contamination[96] that might produce abnormal color in the red cells, or plasma. Once she had ensured platelet viability she could undertake the phlebotomy of those crew members who were carrying the P2 virus, which effectively meant everyone except herself and Dallas. So she wiped the moisture from their collective exhalations feeling something close to satisfaction that she was making herself useful.
Prevezer pushed himself off the ceiling like a great bat and flew toward her, enjoying the sensation of weightlessness. Being weightless gave Prevezer a tremendous sense of liberation, such as an angel might have enjoyed back in heaven after a prolonged period on Earth. On Earth, Prevezer had always felt heavy, even a little overweight. But in space, soaring, hovering, levitating, he felt just a little like a god.
‘I think that’s the last time you’ll have to do that, Roni,’ he predicted.
‘I don’t mind.’
‘What I meant was that I fixed the environmental control system. On a ship as old as this one, the fluids that supply the ECS tend to become stratified in zero g. So you have to stir the contents now and again. Like a cake mix. That’s what the problem was.’ He paused, watching Ronica chase down a small floating sphere of water with the muzzle of her vacuum cleaner. ‘You just reverse the fans on the air purifiers a couple of times to stir up the liquid cylinders.’
‘Mmm-hmm?’
‘Hey, I’m sorry about what happened earlier on,’ he said. ‘I was kind of rude back there.’
‘Forget it, Prev,’ she said.
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘When we get to our hotel at TB, are you planning to share a room with anyone?’
‘As a matter of fact, I’m sharing with Dallas.’
Prevezer nodded. ‘Is that just cover?’ he asked. ‘Or are you lovers?’
‘Lovers?’ Ronica’s smile broadened.
‘Because if everything works out, I’m going to be cured soon, and that’ll mean I’m just as healthy as you. If you know what I’m saying.’
It was true that she and Dallas were drawn to each other, and not just because they had in common their good health. Although she was looking forward to being alone with him, she would probably have shared a room with him in any case. Probably slept with him too. Like most women of her age and background, Ronica’s major concern was that the guy was healthy. Which would automatically have excluded Prevezer.
‘It’s sweet of you to say so, Prev. I guess you could say that Dallas and I are together, although I wouldn’t exactly say that love comes into it. I always think love is a little like cosmology. There’s a Big Bang, a lot of heat, followed by a gradual drifting apart, and a cooling off. Which means that a lover is pretty much the same as any cosmologist. Just some poor misguided individual looking to find some significance in the smallest of things and asking a lot of foolish questions that can never really be answered. There’s no utility in love, Prev. It’ll waste your life and keep you from all that’s profitable in the world. Love’s just part of the great cosmic joke. It’s ironic physics. Just like final theories. Just like God.’
2
I
Tourism was the biggest industry on the Moon. Over one hundred thousand people went there every year on vacations costing an average of two hundred thousand dollars per person. Mostly the tourists traveled to the Moon for sex or gambling,[97] although an increasing number of people went for outdoor activities such as hiking and mountaineering — backpacking through Schröter’s Valley or climbing Mount Doerfel. As well as the tourists there are the astronomers,[98] the mining engineers, the ecosystems engineers,[99] and meteorologists,[100] not to mention all the hotel workers, tour guides, charter pilots, pachinko engineers, and, of course, prostitutes.[101]
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