Cold as Ice (35 page)

The work went slowly, but there was never a moment of tedium. By the end of the second day, Jon was ready to move to the next stage: cytology, the detail of individual cells. He was increasingly eager to see that cell structure, because during the final stages of preliminary analysis an awful suspicion had been creeping into his mind.

It had begun as a pleasant surprise: The Europan life forms might be grossly different in appearance and function from the organisms found on Earth's surface, and even from the chemosynthetic sulfur-based life supported by Earth's oceanic vents; but there were enough similarities that his descriptions could be made with existing notations. He would not be driven to devise a whole new taxonomy for Europan life.

And then it began to dawn on him: There were not merely
enough
similarities; for the big leechlike creatures, there were
too many.

He listed them: multicellular structure, with cellular differentiation. Internal body cavity, with digestive tube and mouth. Tough outer integument, an ectoderm with nervous and sensory capacities. Two-sex reproductive organs.

Jon had never seen anything like the creatures that he was examining; but he could well imagine a hybrid of mollusk and annelid worm that would fit their description.

And at the cellular level?

He did the analysis, already afraid of what he would find.

The results ticked in. True eukaryotic cells, with well-defined nuclei. Twenty familiar amino acids. Mitochondria, and ATP for energy production within them. And then, the final coffin nail: the cell scans were unambiguous. A DNA-based system was used for the coding of genetic material, with RNA as messenger.

Jon stared with a sinking feeling at the listing of bases produced by the first part of the genome scan. Even the RNA codons for the amino acids were the same; CGU produced arginine, ACG gave threonine, UAC coded for tyrosine . . .

At the most basic molecular level, the organisms that he had dredged up from the depths of Scaldino were not just
like
Earth organisms—they
were
Earth organisms. Parallel evolution might lead to DNA and RNA as the most efficient method for the transfer of genetic material, but the odds were impossibly long that the very same amino acids would be used and that the same symbiosis of cell and mitochondria would have taken place.

Far more likely—overwhelmingly likely—was a much simpler explanation: Europan quarantine, designed so carefully to protect that pristine ocean environment, had failed. Sometime, perhaps as long ago as the original prewar Europan expeditions, Earth life had found its way through the shield of ice and drifted down to the warm hydrothermal vents. And there, without competition, that same Earth life—vigorous, tenacious, uncompromising—had established a toehold. It had grown, mutated, and multiplied into riotous profusion.

Jon was filled with a colossal, soul-wounding gloom. He slumped at the terminal and laid his head on his forearms. A new living biosphere? No way. Instead of discovering a whole different world, he had found
nothing
, not one thing of value, only careless contamination. He did not need to travel all the way to Jupiter to find
that.
It was common enough on Earth.

The dreadful feeling of disappointment lasted for less than a minute. It was swept away by an even stronger emotion:
relief.

He had come so close—so close to the absolute brink! He had, thank God, sent word of the confirmation of native Europan life to Hilda Brandt alone. Suppose he had followed his first inclination, and blazed a message out through the news media? Then he, Jon Perry, would have become the laughingstock of the whole solar system.

Jon wandered out of the lab with a copy of his results, convinced that he was a coward first and a scientist a poor second. Sure, it would be nice to become the new Linnaeus and live in the glow of fame. But suppose he had made his announcement at a big public press conference
before
he made his detailed analysis? That had been the temptation. Then he would be remembered all right—remembered as another Lamarck, a great and once-distinguished scientist now famous to most people only as the creator of a discredited theory.

Jon could point to half a dozen other cases of bogus "great discoveries," from Blondlot's N-rays early in the twentieth century to polywater and cold fusion. His skin ran with goose bumps at the thought of joining that select leper colony of scientific pariahs.

Another thought suddenly made things worse:
Suppose he was too late?
Suppose that Hilda Brandt had already presented his earlier message to the Jovian General Assembly?

He had to talk to her. At once. Jon found himself racing through the white corridors of Mount Ararat, stared at by the few people he passed.

Hilda Brandt was in a meeting with half a dozen of her senior staff. Fortunately, Europa possessed none of the multiple layers of bureaucracy that plagued Earth. Jon hammered on her door and blundered through. She took one look at his face and turned to the others.

"You can manage this well enough without me. Buzz, I'd like you to carry on in your own office." And as Sandstrom and the rest left, staring at Jon with annoyance and undisguised curiosity, "Cheer up, Jon Perry. Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

"It's worse." How was he going to tell her? Straight. There was no other way. "What I said to you about Europan life—it's all wrong. It's not native life forms. There's been
contamination
of the Europan ocean. The life down there developed from
Earth forms.
Look at this."

He laid the summary of his results in front of her. The kindly, concerned expression did not change. Only a flicker of bright brown eyes showed that she heard him, and understood the significance of his statements.

"Are you
sure
?"

"Absolutely. It was tricky to take the deep-ocean specimens and move them into the
Spindrift
, but once I got back to Mount Ararat the whole analysis was straightforward. Your staff can confirm the results."

"Have you mentioned this to anyone else?"

"Nobody. I came straight here."

"That's good. Will you do me a favor and keep it that way for the moment? Your discovery has big implications for Europa. I need to decide how I'm going to break this to my staff, and then I have to make a trip to Ganymede as soon as I get a ship in to take me."

Jon's own problems began to seem minor. A contaminated Europan ocean could make nonsense of the decades of work done at Mount Ararat. Every one of Hilda Brandt's programs might be in jeopardy. "I won't say a word until you tell me to. But what about Wilsa Sheer? She gave her final Ganymede concert yesterday, and she's supposed to be arriving here at any time. She's sure to ask me how things are going."

"She's already here. She landed an hour ago. You had a Do-Not-Disturb sign on your lab terminals, so I didn't interrupt. Wilsa's in Guest Suite Four, tell her as much as you like." Hilda Brandt was rapidly gathering papers and closing file-cabinet drawers. "But I don't want either of you using the communications systems until I get back. I'm going to tell Buzz Sandstrom to put the whole Mount Ararat base into isolation mode until we have a strategy worked out. A lot of careers are at stake."

Hilda Brandt's plump and aging body could move with speed and economy. Before Jon could ask more questions she had swept a final stack of files into her case, nodded, and headed for the door. "I have a few other things to take care of before I can leave. Better make sure your results look nice and tidy. When this goes public you're going to be hit with a million questions."

She was gone before Jon had a chance to mention a new worry. When he had spoken the word
contamination
, another idea with different and more ominous overtones had flickered across the back of his mind.

It was one that he should be able to confirm with a few more minutes of work. He rushed out of Brandt's office, almost colliding with Buzz Sandstrom in the doorway. The muscular deputy glared at him in surprised annoyance. "What the devil have you been doing in there?" Jon took no notice and headed back to the lab.

The genome scans that he had performed on the Europan organisms were still available in rapid-access files. He searched for and loaded the appropriate matching programs, those that would take his new genetic data and use it to seek segment-by-segment matches with the stored genomes of existing forms.

And at once he ran into a snag. Jon had a good idea of which Earth forms he needed: selected annelid worms, and some form of mollusk, probably a gastropod. But those genomes were missing from the files.

Accident, or design? His suspicions were growing. Europan research workers had little interest in the organisms of Earth; perhaps it was not too surprising then that the genomes he required were not to be found in the data bank. But the fact that genomes for so many other Earth organisms
were
in the files was surely significant.

He swore under his breath. If only he were back on the
Spindrift.
He knew that its onboard computer files held just what he needed.

Jon called up the display of the Europan genomes anyway and began to examine them visually, segment after segment. It was slow, painstaking work, and it depended too much on his memory. He could never be
sure
, not as a computer match using the
Spindrift
's stored data would have provided certainty. But what he saw was familiar enough to convince him at a deep interior level that he was right.

Contamination, yes. But not the natural contamination of a random drift of Earth life into Europa's deep ocean. That could certainly have happened. But it would not—could not—have produced in less than a century mutations so exquisitely suited to the chemistry and temperatures of the Europan black smoker.

Deliberate contamination,
constructed
contamination; and then—

Use the right words.
A setup.

The leeches, and probably all of the other life forms he had found, were not the product of natural evolution. They were genetic hybrids, designed organisms crafted from existing Earth forms to thrive and multiply in the Europan deep ocean. And Jon did not have to look far to find their maker.

He stared at the genetic sequences and cursed his blindness.
Shelley Solbourne.
Manuel Posada had given Jon all the clues that he needed when he was still in Arenas. Shelley had left PacAnt 9 and headed out for the Jovian system. She had come up with "indirect" evidence of Europan life. But then, instead of staying to confirm its nature, as any mortal scientist would have done—lasting fame within reach for the discoverer of the first alien life form—she had returned to Earth. That had not amazed Posada, a nonscientist; but it should have raised a million red flags with Jon. He recalled Posada's words: ". . . did well for herself and came back to Earth a wealthy woman."

And Jon, in his innocence, had never thought to ask where that wealth had come from!

He did not need to ask now. Someone had paid Shelley, and paid her well, to develop chemosynthetic hybrids that could flourish in Europa's hydrothermal vents. She had done her job competently, as she did everything she touched. Then she had seeded the results in the deep ocean, "discovered" their existence—but not, of course, produced specimens for inspection—and returned quietly, and wealthily, to Earth.

Why hadn't Jon followed up his own first thought back in Arenas? He had wanted to go over to see Shelley in her Dunedin villa and discuss the discovery. Instead he had been kept constantly busy, hustled off Earth at maximum speed and shipped to Ganymede within three days. No reason had ever been offered for all the rush.

And it had not ended when Jon left Earth. Surely, whoever had paid Shelley Solbourne to seed the ocean of Europa had also
intended
for Jon to discover the deception. He had been manipulated, from first to last.

But his manipulation was over now. Enough was enough. He would confirm his suspicions directly, using the data banks on the
Spindrift.
And then, with proof in hand, he would act.

He grimly transferred the evidence of the Europan genomes to a portable data-storage device, slipped it into his pocket, and headed for Hilda Brandt's quarters. He didn't want to trust anyone, but she had to be the exception. She, and she alone, could not be in on the fraud. It made no sense for her to hire someone to plant imported life in the Europan ocean, and then permit Jon to come in and prove that her own effort was a fake.

Brandt was not there. But Buzz Sandstrom was. He was sitting at the desk, his cropped head bowed in concentration.

"Has Dr. Brandt left yet?" Jon blurted out the question as he realized that Sandstrom was reading the work summary left behind during Jon's previous visit.

Sandstrom lifted his head, and Jon had never seen such anger on any face.

"Dr. Brandt has gone to Ganymede." Sandstrom stood up, muscles flexing. "I'm in charge. She told me that there was bad news on the way, but I had no idea of
how
bad 'til I saw
this
."

He tapped the summary sheets. "Everybody's work here depends on an
uncontaminated environment.
I don't know why Dr. Brandt allowed you and that Sheer woman to come here at all, messing things up. You've destroyed all we've been doing."

Jon stared at him in disbelief. "Me? I didn't contaminate anything. All I proved is that the deep ocean was
already
spoiled, long ago."

"You expect me to believe that? Until you got here, Europa was fine. If the ocean is spoiled now, it's because you came. You and your Earth ship, and your Earth filth, you ruined us. I always said it was too risky, bringing you. And now you've opened the door for Mobarak and his whole lousy fusion project."

It was tempting to pick up Sandstrom's furious mood and reply in kind. But it would accomplish nothing. Jon swallowed his irritation. "You're right about one thing, but you're wrong about another. Someone
did
come here from Earth and spoil this ocean. It wasn't me and my submersible. It was Shelley Solbourne."