He switched on the desk lamp, the sudden glare making him blink, and rubbed his eyes wearily. He was tired and yet his brain refused to rest. Ruth must have fallen asleep, otherwise she would have been in before now, chiding him for disobeying Weinbaum's strict instruction to get "plenty of rest and fresh air." Ye gods, doctors never changed.
It was the conversation with Nick several months ago at the fish farm that had stirred the accumulated sludge of memories and started him thinking about a journal or an account of some sort. They'd been standing on the walkways where you could look down into huge shallow tanks and see thousands of fish, some of them, like the white amur, a Chinese delicacy, that could grow to over a foot in length in less than a year. They were cultivating other varieties that would grow to edible size in three months.
In the warm shallow water, fed with precisely the right amounts of phosphates and other nutrients, diatoms bloomed. Living on minerals, sunlight, and carbon dioxide, these microscopic one-celled plants provided food for the fish--just as they had on earth.
But on earth, as Chase had pointed out to his grandson, the diatoms had performed another, more important, function.
"They gave us oxygen, Nick, which is in the air all around us. We breathe it in and it keeps us alive. Without it we die."
Nick had a good look around. "I can't see it."
"No, but it's there. If it weren't we wouldn't be here."
"Would we be dead?"
"Stone-cold dead in the market."
Nick pressed his chin into the plastic mesh, eyes swiveled down as far as they would go, watching the streaking fish.
"Mummy said you and Grandad, my other grandad, the one who's dead, used to swim under the ice." Nick frowned up at him, the grid-ded imprint on his chin. "Ice is little. I have some in my orange. Did you swim in the freezer?"
"You've seen snow and ice on TV, haven't you, Nick? Well, on earth some parts of the land and ocean were once covered in deep snow and thick ice. Your grandad and I used to dive in the sea, underneath the ice. It was colder than in the freezer, so we had to wear rubber suits to keep us warm."
"Was it dark?"
"Yes," Chase smiled. "We had to take very big, very bright lights to see with."
"What were you looking for?"
"Those tiny green plants down there."
"Is that all?"
Chase nodded.
"What for?"
That was a tough one. How to explain marine biology to a five-year-old in a few simple sentences? At the time it was research for its own sake, without any specific purpose. It was only later--was it months or years later?--that the work he'd been doing at Halley Bay Station took on dramatic significance.
He'd never been able to give young Nick a proper answer, but the sludge had been disturbed and the memories began to float to the surface. About diving underneath the ice, for instance. Funny how he could recall every detail as vividly as if it were yesterday, when more recent events, even things that had happened here in the colony, had been forgotten.
The cold in the Antarctic--he could feel it now! Cold enough to freeze gasoline and make steel as brittle as porcelain. How you had to
stop breathing when adjusting instruments with your mittens off so that your fingers wouldn't become frozen to the metal parts. One guy had lost so many layers of skin that his fingerprints had peeled off.
Chase leaned back and looked at the medal, made out of moon gold and sealed in a block of crystal, on the shelf above the desk. The inscription read: "The Confederation Premier Order of Merit. Awarded to Dr. Gavin Chase in recognition of his unceasing efforts in the field of planetary ecology and for his contribution to mankind's understanding of the problems that confronted it during the past quarter-century. ad 2026."
The presentation had been made at a rather grand ceremony the year after his arrival at Canton Island. Standing before the assembled throng of representatives from all the colonies, Chase had given a brief address, recognizing a few (not many) faces from the old days, including Frank Hanamura, now senior lecturer in closed-cycle ecosystems at the university on Okinawa Island. It had been a very emotional occasion.
Always amused by it, Chase thought it sensible and discreet that the citation spoke of "unceasing efforts" and omitted any reference to "outstanding achievement," which was the usual time-honored phrase. Because of course there hadn't been any achievement, outstanding or otherwise.
Yes, he really ought to do something about it while there was still time. Who did Weinbaum think he was fooling with his "new" treatment? Chase looked along the shelf to the cassettes, notebooks, and files of clippings, spines buckled and torn, corners dog-eared, colors faded. He'd given up hope of ever seeing them again after they evacuated and destroyed the Tomb. A patrol had gone in a year later and found the place wrecked and this stuff miraculously moldering in his office just as he'd left it.
