Part 5 (1/2)
They moved on slowly, but it was soon apparent that the field was strengthening. They backed up again for a council of war.
”The tracer signal is really strong now, John,” said Wolf. ”Capman can't be far ahead of us. Let's leave all the metal objects here and scout ahead for another fifty meters. If we don't spot him after that, we'll have to give up.”Both men were feeling the strain. In good light, Wolf would have seen the reaction that his suggestion had produced in La.r.s.en. As it was, he heard a very faint a.s.sent, and leaving guns, lights, and trace sensor behind, they went on into the darkness, meter by cautious meter.
Suddenly, La.r.s.en stopped. ”Bey.” His voice was a fault whisper. ”Can you hear something up ahead?”
Wolf strained his ears. He could hear nothing.
”It sounded like a groan, Bey. There, again. Now do you hear it?”
”I think so. Quietly now, and carefully. It's only a few yards in front of us.”
They crept on through the musty darkness. They heard another low groan, then heavy and painful breathing. Suddenly, a weak voice reached them through the gloom.
”Who's there? Stay where you are and for G.o.d's sake don't come any closer.”
”Capman? This is Wolf and La.r.s.en. Where are you?”
”Down here, in the pit. Be careful where you tread. Wait a second. I'll show you where it's safe to go.”
A thin beam of light appeared, coming from the floor in front of them. They moved hesitantly forward and found themselves standing at the edge of a twelve-foot drop. At the base of it they could see Capman lying helpless, limbs contorted. He was holding a small flashlight and s.h.i.+ning it toward them.
”This pit wasn't here a couple of days ago,” he said faintly. ”It must have been dug by one of the modified forms that live in these tunnels. A big one, I think. It came this way a few minutes ago, then went away again. That way.”
He shone the flashlight along the bottom of the pit. They could see a large tunnel running away from the base of it. Capman seemed weak and obviously in pain, but he was still perfectly rational and composed.
”If it survives down here, it's probably carnivorous,” he said. ”I wonder what the basic form is.”
Wolf was astonished to hear a note of genuine intellectual curiosity in Capman's tone. He advanced closer to the edge and tried to see farther along the tunnel in the pit.
”I don't know what you can do to help me,” went on Capman calmly. ”If you can't get me out, it's vital that I give my records to you. I should have left them at the hospital. They are a crucial part of the description of the work I've been doing. Make sure they get into the right hands.”
He broke off suddenly and swung the light back along the wall of the pit. ”I think it's coming back. Here, I'm going to try to throw this spool up to you.
Step nearer to the edge. I'm not sure how well I can throw from this position.”
Capman shone the flashlight on the wall of the pit to give a diffuse light above and threw a small spool awkwardly upward. Reaching far out, almost to the point of overbalancing, La.r.s.en managed to make a s.n.a.t.c.hing one-handed catch. Capman sighed with relief and pain and sank back to the dirt floor.
They could hear a deep grunting, and a scrambling noise was approaching along the pit tunnel. While they watched in horror, Capman remained astonis.h.i.+ngly cool.
”Whatever happens here,” he said, ”remember that your first duty is to get those records back to the hospital. Don't waste any time.”
He turned the flashlight again into the pit. In the uncertain light, Wolf and La.r.s.en had an impression of an enormous simian shape moving toward Capman.
Before they could gain a clear view of it, the light fell to the floor and was suddenly extinguished. There was a grinding noise and a bubbling cough from the pit, then silence.
Wolf and La.r.s.en were seized suddenly with an understanding of their own defenseless position. Without another word or a wasted moment, both men turned and sped back through the tunnel. They picked up guns, lights, and tracer and continued at full speed through the dark ways of Old City. Not until they were once more in the elevator, rising through Central Hospital to Capman's laboratory, did La.r.s.en finally break the silence.”I don't know what Capman did in that vault, but whatever it was he paid for it tonight.”
Wolf, unusually subdued, could do no more than nod agreement and add, ”Requiescat in pace.”
They went at once to the Transplant Department, where Morris received the precious spool of microfilm. At Wolf's urging, he agreed to have a team a.s.signed to an immediate a.n.a.lysis of it, while they told him of the strange circ.u.mstance of its pa.s.sage to them.
CHAPTER 8.
An hour before sunrise, Wolf and La.r.s.en were breakfasting in the visitors'
section on the highest floor of Central Hospital. At Morris's insistence they had taken three hours of deep sleep and spent another hour in programmed stress release. Both men were feeling rested and fit and had accepted a substantial meal from the robo-servers. Before they had finished, Morris came bustling in again. It was clear from his appearance that he had not slept, but his eyes were bright with excitement. He waved a handful of listings and sat down opposite them.
”Fantastic,” he said. ”There's no other word for it. It will take us years to get all the details on this. Capman has gone further in form-change than we dreamed. Every form in that underground lab explores new ground in form-change experiment.”
He began to leaf through the listings. ”Here's an anaerobic form,” he said.
”It can breathe air, as usual, but if necessary it can also break down a variety of other chemicals for life support. It could operate under the sea, or in a vacuum, or almost anywhere. Here's another one, with a thick and insensitive epidermis-it should be very tolerant of extreme conditions of heat and radiation.
”Then there's this one.” Morris waved the listing excitedly. He was unable to remain seated and began to pace up and down in front of the window, where a pale gleam of false dawn was appearing. ”Look, he has a complete photosynthetic system, with chlorophyll pouches on his chest, arms, and back.
He could survive quite happily in a semidormant state on traces of minerals, water, and carbon dioxide. Or he can live quite well as a normal human form, eating normal food.
”Here we have miniaturized forms, only ten niches high when fully adult. They have a normal life expectancy and a normal chromosome and gene structure. They can breed back to full-sized children in a couple of generations.”
Wolf was struck by a sudden memory. ”Do these forms have any special project names with them?” he asked.
”They do. They are all shown in Capman's general work notes under the heading of Project Proteus, except for one form-and that one has us baffled at the moment. It's the one we were talking about in the lab last night.”
He riffled through the listings and came up with one that seemed much more voluminous than the others. ”It's the one with the delay loop that occurs all over the program. We have made several efforts to revive the subject, but we can't do it. He seems to be in some land of catatonic trance, and when we try and calculate the life ratio on the computer, we get overflow.”
Wolf looked at Morris and thought of Capman's note to him in the underground vault. Perhaps Capman was right and Wolf did think in the same way. There was no doubt that he found the intention of the new form obvious, while it had Morris and La.r.s.en baffled.
”Doctor,” he said. ”Did Capman ever talk to you about the future of the human race-where we will be in a hundred years, for instance?”
”Not to me personally. But his views were well known. He leaned very much toward Laszlo Dolmetsch's views-society is unstable, and without new frontiers we will stagnate and revert to a lower civilization. The United s.p.a.ceFederation can't prevent that; they are too thinly spread and have too fragile a hold on the environment.”
Wolf leaned back and looked at the ceiling. ”So doesn't it seem clear what Capman's plan was? We need new frontiers. The USF can't provide them unless it has a.s.sistance. Capman has been working towards a single, well-defined objective-to provide forms that are adapted to s.p.a.ce exploration. The forms you've been describing are ideal for working out in s.p.a.ce, or on the Moon or Mars-or for terraforming work on Venus.”
Morris looked blank. ”You're right. But what about the small ones, or this catatonic one?”
”He's not catatonic. He's asleep. All his vital processes have been slowed down by some preset amount. I don't know how much, but you should be able to find out if you look at the delay factor in the bio-feedback program. Capman set up that delay loop so the software could interact with the form-change experiment in its own 'real time.'”
Morris looked again at the listings in his hand. ”Twelve hundred,” he said at last. ”My G.o.d, it's set now for twelve hundred. That means that ... ”
His voice trailed off.
”It means that he will sleep for one of his 'nights,' ” said Wolf. ”That will be equal to twelve hundred of ours. I expect his life expectancy will be in proportion-twelve hundred times as long. That makes it about a hundred and twenty thousand years. Of course, that's not his subjective life expectancy-that will probably be about the same as ours.”
”But how do we communicate with him?”
”The same way as Capman did in his form-change programs. You'll have to slow all the stimuli down by a factor of twelve hundred. Feed him information at the same rate as he's programmed to receive it.”