Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (556 page)

Andra held out her communicator, a box that sent out flashing lights and sound bursts in various mathematical patterns, strings of primes and various representations of pi and other constants. It even emitted puffs of volatile chemicals, to alert any chemosensing creature with a hint of intelligence. Not that she expected much; their probes had broadcast such information over the past year.

Then she saw it: A giant zoöid was approaching, five times taller than the others and perhaps a hundred times their weight. As it barreled along, picking up speed, the small striped ones took off, zigzagging crazily before it. The ground rumbled beneath her feet.

“Get back to my cabin!” urged Skyhook. “We’ll all get run over.”

“Wait,” said Pelt. “Do you think it heard us? What if it wants to talk?”

“I don’t think so,” said Andra, prudently backing off. “I think the smaller zoöids attracted it, not us.”

A small zoöid went down under the giant one, then another. That seemed to be the giant’s strategy, to run down as many little ones as it could. At last it slowed and turned back, coming to rest upon one of the squashed carcasses.

“It’s extending its suckers to feed,” observed Skyhook. “Let’s get back before it gets hungry again.”

“I think that will be a while,” said Andra. “It’s got several prey to feed on.” The rest of the smaller zoöids seemed to have calmed down, as if they knew the predator was satisfied and would not attack again soon. Definitely a herd mentality; no sign of higher intelligence here.

Andra resumed collecting phycoids and soil samples, recording the location of each. Deeper into the field, she saw something thrashing about in the phycoids. She made her way toward it through the tangle of looped foliage.

“It’s a baby zoöid,” she exclaimed. The poor little bagel must have fallen out when its parent ran off. Or perhaps the parent had expelled it, as a mother kangaroo sometimes did. At any rate, there it was, squirming and stretching its little suckers ineffectually, only tangling itself in the phycoids.

“Watch out; it might bite,” said Skyhook.

“Nonsense. I have to collect it.” Andra stuffed her hands into a pair of gloves, then approached warily. With one hand she held out an open collecting bag; with the other, she grabbed the little zoöid. It hung limply, twisting a bit.

Suddenly it squirted something. An orange spray landed on the phycoids, some of it reaching her leg. Andra frowned. She plunged the creature into her bag, which sealed itself tight. “Sorry about that, Pelt.”

“You’re the one who would have been sorry,” Pelt replied. “That stuff is caustic, as strong as lye. No problem for me, but your skin would not have liked it.”

“Thanks a lot. I guess we should head back now; I’ve got more than I can hold.”

She turned back toward Skyhook, some hundred meters off, his spidery landing gear splayed out into the phycoids. Methodically she made her way back, with more difficulty now that she had so much to carry. She was sweating now, but Pelt handled it beautifully, keeping her skin cool and refreshed. The distant forest of tall blue phycoids sang in her ears. The Singing Planet, they should call it, she thought.

“Andra…something’s not right,” Pelt said suddenly.

“What is it?” She was having more trouble plowing through the foliage; her legs were getting stiff.

“Something that baby zoöid sprayed is blocking my nanoprocessors. Not the chemicals; I can screen out anything. I’m not sure what it is.”

“What else could it be?”

Skyhook said, “Just get back to my cabin. We’ll wash you down.”

“I’m trying,” said Andra, breathing hard. “My legs are so stiff.” The shuttle craft stood hopefully ahead of her. Only about ten meters to go, she thought.

“It’s not your legs,” Pelt’s voice said dully. “It’s my nanoplast. I’m losing control over the lower part, where the spray hit. I can’t flex at your joints any more.”

Her scalp went cold, then hot again. “What about your air filter?”

“So far it’s okay. The disruption has not reached your face yet.”

“Just get back here,” Skyhook urged again. “You’re almost here.” Obligingly the doorway appeared on the craft’s surface, molding itself open in a rim of nanoplast.

“I’m trying, but my legs just won’t bend.” She pushed as hard as she could.

“Drop your backpack,” Skyhook added.

“I won’t give up my samples. How else will we learn what’s going on here?” She fell onto her stomach and tried to drag herself through.

“It’s microbes,” Pelt exclaimed suddenly. “Some kind of microbes—they’re cross-linking my processors.”

“What? How?” she demanded. “Microbes infecting nanoplast—I’ve never heard of it.”

“They messed up the probe before.”

“Quantum?” called Andra. “What do you think?”

“It could be,” the radio voice replied. “The nanoprocessors store data in organic polymers—which might be edible to a truly omnivorous microbe. There’s always a first time.”

“Microbes eating nanoplast!” Skyhook exclaimed. “What about other sentients? Are the microbes contagious?”

“You’ll have to put us in isolation,” said Andra.

“Andra,” said Pelt, “the cross-linking is starting to disrupt my entire system.” His voice came lower and fainter. “I don’t know how long I can keep my filters open.”

Andra stared desperately at the door of the shuttle, so near and yet so far. “Quantum, how long could I last breathing unfiltered air?”

“That’s hard to say. An hour should be okay; we’ll clean your lungs out later.”

She tried to recall how long the first rat had lived. Half a day?

“I’m shutting down,” Pelt warned her. “I’m sorry, Andra…. “

Skyhook said, “Pelt, you’ll last longer in rest mode. We’ll save you yet—there’s got to be an antibiotic that will work. They’ve got DNA—we’ll throw every DNA analogue we’ve got at them.”

The nanoplastic skin opened around Andra’s mouth, shrinking back around her head and neck. An otherworldly scent filled her lungs, a taste of ginger and other unnameable things, as beautiful as the vision of golden ringlets. Planet Ginger, she thought, smelled as lovely as it looked. She was the first human to smell it; but would these breaths be her last?

Pelt’s skin shriveled down her arms, getting stuck at her waist near the spot that got sprayed. She tried again to pull herself through the phycoids, grabbing their tough loops. Suddenly she had another idea. Pulling in her arms, she sank down and rolled herself over and over, just like the zoöids. This worked much better, for the phycoid foliage proved surprisingly elastic, bending easily beneath her and bouncing back again. Perhaps those zoöids were not quite so silly after all.

At the door, Skyhook had already extruded sheets of quarantine material, to isolate her and protect his own nanoplast from whatever deadly infection Pelt harbored. The doorway extended and scooped her up into the cabin.

As the doorway constricted, at last closing out the treacherous planet, Andra let out a quick sigh of relief. “Skyhook, we’ve got to save Pelt. Have you got anything to help him?”

Two long tendrils were already poking into the quarantine chamber, to probe the hapless skinsuit. “I’m spreading what antibiotics we have on board,” said Skyhook, from the cabin speaker now. “Nucleotide analogues, anything likely to block DNA synthesis and stop the microbes growing. It’s bizarre, treating a sentient for infection.”

Andra carefully peeled off the remaining nanoplast, trying to keep as much of it together as possible, although she had no idea whether it was beyond repair. “Pelt,” she whispered. “You did your best for me.”

By the time they returned to the station, there was still no sign that any of the antibiotics had curbed the microbes. Quantum was puzzled. “I have a few more to try,” she said, “but really, if the chromosomes are regular DNA, something should have worked.”

“Maybe the microbes’ DNA is shielded by proteins.”

“That wouldn’t help during replication, remember? The double helix has to open and unzip down the middle, to let the new nucleotides pair. There’s no way around it.”

Andra frowned. Something was missing; there was still something wrong, about the growing microbes with their three daughter cells. How could they unzip their DNA, fill in each complementary strand, and end up with three helices? She thought she had figured it out before, but now it did not add up. She coughed once, then again harder. Her lungs were starting to react to the dust—she had to start treatment now.

“We’ve got some data on your samples,” Quantum added. “The microbial cells concentrate acid inside, instead of excreting it, like most of our cells do. I still find only fifteen amino acids, but some of them—”

“I’ve got it!” Andra leapt to her feet. “Don’t you see? The chromosome is a triple helix. That’s why each cell divides in three—each daughter strand synthesizes two complements, and you end up with three new triple helices, one for each cell.” A fit of coughing caught up with her.

“It could be,” Quantum said slowly. “There are many ways to make a DNA triple helix. One found in human regulatory genes alternates A-T-T triplets with G-C-C.”

“Then it has a two-letter code, not four.” Double-helical DNA has four possible pairs, since A-T is distinguished from T-A; likewise G-C differs from C-G.

Quantum added, “The triple helix is most stable in acid, just what we found in these cells.”

“Just hurry up and design some triplet analogues.” Quantum’s sentient brain could do this far faster than any human. “Triple helix,” Andra repeated. “It would resist ultraviolet damage much better, with the planet’s thin ozone layer. But how to encode proteins, with only two `letters’?” The triple helix had only two possible triplets; its three-letter “words” could only specify eight amino acids to build protein. “Maybe it uses words of four letters. With two possible triplets at each position, that would encode two to the fourth power, that is, sixteen possible amino acids.”

“Fifteen,” corrected Quantum, “if one is a stop signal.”

* * * *

The next day, after an exhaustive medical workout, Andra felt as if a vacuum cleaner had gone through her lungs. Pelt still had a long way to recover, but at least the pesky microbes were cleaned out.

“It’s hopeless,” complained Skyhook’s eyespeaker. “If even sentients aren’t safe, we’ll never explore that planet.”

“Don’t worry,” said Quantum’s voice above the holostage. “Pelt’s nanoplast has an exceptionally high organic content. A slight redesign will eliminate the problem. Machines have that advantage.”

Still, Pelt had nearly died, thought Andra.

“Your phycoid and zoöid samples all have toroid cells, too,” Quantum added. “They have circular chromosomes, with no nuclear membranes: They’re all prokaryotes. Just wait till the Free Fold hears about this,” Quantum added excitedly. “I’ve got the perfect name for the planet.”

Andra looked up. “Planet of the Bagels?”

“Planet Prokaryon.”

Prokaryon—yes, thought Andra, it sounded just pompous enough that the Fold would buy it.

Still, she thought uneasily about those regular garden rows of phycoid forest and fields, with all kinds of creatures yet to be discovered. “I wonder,” she mused. “Some one else just might have named it first.”

* * * *

Copyright © 1995 by Dell Magazines.

(1952– )

A member of the Thai royal family, Somtow Sucharitkul wrote under his own name until it was pointed out to him by court astrologers that it was unlucky to do so; they then worked with him to develop an acceptable
nom de plume
, S. P. Somtow. Somtow is one of the best short story writers I know, although it’s a secondary vocation for him: Writing stories and writing music are two aspects of the same creative craft to Somtow, and his most productive periods of fiction writing came during a period of musical writer’s block.

Somtow spent his childhood in in Europe and was educated there, at Eton and the University of Cambridge. While his first genre publication (the poem “Kith of Infinity” in the
Bangkok Press
) came as a teenager in 1967, Somtow focused primarily on avant-garde music (and writing a few poems) in the 1970s, until he turned to prose in the late 1970s as a creative outlet while his writer’s block persisted. (There were other creative outlets as well, such as producing an independent film.) Somtow’s first novel was
Starship and Haiku
in 1981, the same year, he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He’s especially strong at capturing voices and believable characterization, but thematically he’s roamed widely, from the Mallworld stories to the Aquiliad alternate histories to the dark fantasy of
Vampire Junction
(1984).

Somtow returned primarily to music in the 1990s, as a neo-Romantic composer. He composed the
Mahajanaka Symphony
for the seventy-second birthday of the King of Thailand, as well as
Madana
(2001), the first opera written by a Thai composer. He is currently the artistic director of the Bangkok Opera.