Part 14 (1/2)

When the party rea.s.sembled it was obvious at a glance how things had gone. Marlowe took a cup of coffee from Parkinson.

'Thanks. Well, that's that. Chris was right and Dave was wrong. Now I suppose we must get down to trying to decide what it means.'

'Your move, Chris,' said Leicester.

'Let's suppose then that my hypothesis is right, that our own transmissions are producing a marked effect on the atmospheric ionization.'

Ann Halsey handed Kingsley a mug of coffee.

'I'd be a lot happier if I knew what ionization meant. Here, drink this.'

'Oh, it means that the outer parts of the atoms are stripped away from the inner parts.'

'And how does this happen?'

'It can happen in many ways, by an electrical discharge, as in a flash of lightning, or in a neon tube the sort of strip lighting we've got here. The gas in these tubes is being partially ionized.'

'I suppose energy is the real difficulty? That your transmissions have far too little power to produce this rise of ionization?' said McNeil.

'That's right,' answered Marlowe. 'It's completely impossible that our transmissions should be the primary cause of the fluctuations in the atmosphere. My G.o.d, they'd need a fantastic amount of power.'

'Then how can Kingsley's hypothesis be right?'

'Our transmissions are not the primary cause, as Geoff says. That's wholly impossible. I agree with Weichart there. My hypothesis is that our transmissions are acting as a trigger, whereby some very large source of power is released.'

'And where, Chris, do you suppose this source of power is to be located?' asked Marlowe.

'In the Cloud, of course.'

'But surely it's quite fantastic to imagine that we can cause the Cloud to react in such a fas.h.i.+on, and to do it with such reproducibility? You'd have to suppose that the Cloud was equipped with a sort of feedback mechanism,' argued Leicester.

'On the basis of my hypothesis that's certainly a correct inference.'

'But don't you see, Kingsley, that it's utterly mad?' Weichart exclaimed.

Kingsley looked at his watch.

'It's almost time to go and try again, if anyone wants to. Does anyone want to?'

'In heaven's name, no!'said Leicester.

'Either we go or we stay. And if we stay it means that we accept Kingsley's hypothesis. Well, boys, do we go or do we stay?' remarked Marlowe.

'We stay,' said Barnett. 'And we see how the argument goes. We've got as far as some sort of a feedback mechanism in the Cloud, a mechanism set to churn out an enormous amount of power as soon as it receives a trickle of radio emission from outside itself. The next step, I suppose, is to speculate on how the feedback mechanism works, and why it works as it does. Anybody got any ideas?'

Alexandrov cleared his throat. Everybody waited to catch one of his rare remarks.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d in Cloud. Said so before.'

There were wide grins and a giggle from Yvette Hedelfort. Kingsley, however, remarked quite seriously: 'I remember you did. Were you serious about it, Alexis?'

'Always serious, d.a.m.n it,' said the Russian.

'Without frills, what exactly do you mean, Chris?' someone asked.

'I mean that the Cloud contains an intelligence. Before anybody starts criticizing, let me say that I know it's a preposterous idea and I wouldn't suggest it for a moment if the alternative weren't even more outrageously preposterous. Doesn't it strike you how often we've been wrong about the behaviour of the Cloud?'

Parkinson and Ann Halsey exchanged an amused glance.

'All our mistakes have a certain hallmark about them. They're just the sort of mistake that it'd be natural to make if, instead of the Cloud being inanimate, it were alive.'

Close Reasoning

It is curious in how great a degree human progress depends on the individual. Humans, numbered in thousands of millions, seem organized into an ant-like society. Yet this is not so. New ideas, the impetus of all development, come from individual people, not from corporations or states. New ideas, fragile as spring flowers, easily bruised by the tread of the mult.i.tude, may yet be cherished by the solitary wanderer.

Among the vast host that experienced the coming of the Cloud, none except Kingsley arrived at a coherent understanding of its real nature, none except Kingsley gave the reason for the visit of the Cloud to the solar system. His first bald statement was greeted with outright disbelief even by his fellow scientists Alexandrov excepted.

Weichart was frank in his opinion.

'The whole idea is quite ridiculous,' he said.

Marlowe shook his head.

'This comes of reading science fiction.'

'No b.l.o.o.d.y fiction about Cloud coming straight for dam' Sun. No b.l.o.o.d.y fiction about Cloud stopping. No b.l.o.o.d.y fiction about ionization,' growled Alexandrov.

McNeil, the physician, was intrigued. The new development was more in his line than transmitters and aerials.

'I'd like to know, Chris, what you mean in this context by the word ”alive”.'

'Well, John, you know better than I do that the distinction between animate and inanimate is more a matter of verbal convenience than anything else. By and large, inanimate matter has a simple structure and comparatively simple properties. Animate or living matter on the other hand has a highly complicated structure and is capable of very involved behaviour. When I said the Cloud may be alive I meant that the material inside it may be organized in an intricate fas.h.i.+on, so that its behaviour and consequently the behaviour of the whole Cloud is far more complex than we previously supposed.'

'Isn't there an element of tautology there?' from Weichart.

'I said that words such as ”animate” and ”inanimate” are only verbal conveniences. If they're pushed too far they do appear tautological. In more scientific terms I expect the chemistry of the interior of the Cloud to be extremely complicated complicated molecules, complicated structures built out of molecules, complicated nervous activity. In short I think the Cloud has a brain.'

'A dam' straightforward conclusion,' nodded Alexandrov.

When the laugh had subsided, Marlowe turned to Kingsley.

'Well, Chris, we know what you mean, at any rate we know near enough. Now let's have your argument. Take your time. Let's have it point by point, and it'd better be good.'

'Very well then, here goes. Point number one, the temperature inside the Cloud is suited to the formation of highly complicated molecules.'

'Right! First point to you. In fact, the temperature is perhaps a little more favourable than it is here on the Earth.'

'Second point, conditions are favourable to the formation of extensive structures built out of complicated molecules.'