The Watch Below (5 page)
Authors: James White
The crew, with the exception of the medical officer, had been pressing
Gunt for an early cooling now that their work was done, but he could not
give permission for this until he told them everything he knew. At the
same time he did not want to tell them the worst before the other captain
was made aware of the problem -- for there was always the chance, the log
implied, that Captain Deslann with his completely fresh viewpoint would
find a solution which Gunt could not. If a solution could not be found,
then Deslann could tell all to the crew and hope that one of them might
come up with something.
And if that failed . . .
Deslann had been unable to find a solution in six days and, because
Gerrol was becoming downright impertinent in his requests to be cooled,
Deslann had told all to the crew. Or to be more accurate, he was letting
the medical officer tell it while be himself observed reactions and
tried desperately not to give up hope.
"But surely there was some indication that this might happen!" Gerrol broke
in suddenly. "Hibernation anesthesia was perfected fifteen years ago.
The fleet -- the whole operation depends on it!"
The astrogator stopped, plainly unable to find the words to describe
his feelings of outrage and betrayal. From their positions around the
control room the two computer technicians and the engineer were also silent,
although not, Deslann thought, because they were slow to grasp the
implications. With them it was probably a state of emotional shock.
Their personalities were more simple and well-rounded than that of the cold,
egotistical, highly intelligent, and of necessity selfish Gerrol, so it was
to be expected they would feel this thing more strongly and take longer to
recover from the shock of being told that they all were as good as dead.
Looking at each of them in turn the medical officer said defensively,
"That is not wholly accurate, Gerrol. The technique was used successfully,
but the subject was a volunteer who understood the risks involved. While
we were trying to perfect the technique many of the later volunteers were
not so lucky as he was. But you must understand that the method had to
show only a strong probability of success at that time for the decision
to be taken to begin building the fleet. There wasn't enough
time
for
the usual lengthy program of testing given to new drugs and techniques -- "
"I understand that time was limited, Healer," Gerrol broke in again,
"but we were told that the technique was safe -- "
". . . Despite this time limit," the healer went on, looking at Gerrol
but otherwise ignoring the interruption, "the technique was perfected
and rendered safe
so far as was possible to do so within our own home
planet and solar system
! I must stress that point. It is hard to see
how the absence of weight could affect a person whose metabolic processes
have been halted in a Cold Sleep tank -- but this might be a factor.
It is more likely that subtle differences in background radiation are the
cause, or a combination of free fall and radiation, or some factor which
we cannot conceive of as yet. Whatever it is it has uncovered a flaw in
our suspended animation system. The effects are subtle, but cumulative,
and they are serious enough to wreck this whole operation."
"I don't see that," said the communications officer suddenly, speaking
for the first time. "The effects are subtle, you say -- so subtle that
they won't actually kill anyone. Why can't we carry on as planned and
hope for the best?"
Bitingly, the healer replied, "There is nothing to stop your going ahead
as planned and hoping for the best, for as long as you have enough brain
left to hope with -- and that won't be for long, believe me! I have now
definitely established the fact that with each cooling and subsequent
warming there is a deterioration in cell structure, and it is the brain
cells which come off worst.
"I have been working on this since the shutdown of acceleration," he went
on more quietly, "nearly ten years ago. The tests were conducted with
animals, of course, which means that they could not verbally communicate
their symptoms to me, but there are methods of physical and psychological
probing which render such communication superfluous. The tests covered
the smallest lab animals right up to food animals with eight times the
physical mass of ourselves. They were exhaustive and left no room for
doubt. I was absolutely sure of this flaw even before the captain's
warming added final proof."
He looked apologetically at Deslann, possibly because what he was about to
say might be a breach of privilege, then went on, "The effect after the
first warming is minor. There is a mild, peńistent headache which is, of
course, susceptible to medication. There is a feeling of mental confusion,
also mild, and temporary. It is a little difficult to remember things,
but the memories are still available and are complete and accurate.
"After the second warming," he continued grimly, "the effects would be
more -- noticeable. Large segments of memory are no longer available and
those remaining have faded or become distorted, the most recent memories
or training being the first to go. You will all have had experience with
aged relatives, and noticed the gradual decaying of mental processes
which seems to peel away the more recent layers of memory so that they
live increasingly in the past. What is happening here, however -- and
this is an extreme oversimplification, since none of you are advanced
in this specialty -- is that the tiny electrochemical charge by which
data are stored in the brain cells leaks away, partially at first and
then completely, when the brain in question is subjected to repeated
hypothermia. After two periods of Long Sleep I would not trust any of you
to navigate this ship to the target system, or to land if we got there.
"After the third or fourth warming," he concluded softly, "I wouldn't
trust you to get to the other end of the ship. If you were very lucky
you might remember how to talk."
And on the voyage it was expected that each member of the crew would
be cooled and warmed on an average of twenty times, and anything up to
fifty times for the two captains. . . .
Gerrol and the others began asking the questions and putting the
suggestions expected of highly intelligent lay people, and Deslann found
his attention wandering away from them and from the increasingly testy
answers being given by Healer Hellahar. Perhaps it was the effects of
his first resuscitation beginning to show, or more likely it was simple
autosuggestion brought about by the knowledge of those effects, but his
mind seemed bent on dwelling on the period of his late childhood and
early maturity.
Not that any of them were old now, because the aging and infirm, the
middle-aged, and the unfit had all been left behind on Untha, together
with the young people who had elected to stay and those who had not
so elected but for whom there were not enough places in the fleet. The
people who went with the fleet were very carefully chosen, the people
who crewed the ships were chosen with even greater care, and the crew
of the flagship was the result of a physical and psychological screening
process which had been carried almost to ridiculous lengths. With Deslann
the initial testing had started before he had reached maturity, so that
he did not have much childhood, and that which he did have had not been
exactly happy.
This had been due to the atmosphere of fear and tensions which pervaded his
home and his world rather than to any failing on the part of his parents.
During the past three hundred years Untha's sun had grown steadily hotter
and her two great oceans had shrunk until there was no longer a water
connection between them. Plant and animal life had long since disappeared
from the land surface and in the sea his people were being forced to
occupy an ever narrowing life stratum -- between the ocean surface, which
was close to boiling point and too hot to allow life without complex
refrigeration systems, and the depths where the increased pressure demanded
even more complicated forms of protection. And so at an early age Deslann
had come to understand the reasons for the atmosphere of tension and fear,
and to realize that not only were his people being pressed between an ever
deepening layer of boiling heat and the crushing pressures of the ocean
depths, they were trying to decide on which of two methods should be
adopted to solve the problem. The choice was not easy.
They could bend all of their considerable technology and resources of
metal and power to pushing downward, to building great pressureproof
cities on the ocean floor, perhaps extending down into the bed of the
ocean itself. In this way they could buy a few more centuries of time
for all their people before the oceans boiled completely away and the
very water they breathed became superheated steam. Or they could throw
all those same resources into an attempt to place a small proportion of
their people onto another and more hospitable world.
To a people who had had space travel for ten generations the choice,
although difficult, was perhaps obvious from the start.
And so a tremendous telescope was built in orbit around Untha, an instrument
whose mirror covered a greater area than a large city, and a suitable world
had been found. Fifteen generations would come and go during the trip
to this planet, but it was cool and its oceans covered four-fifths of
its surface and its mass was just right and there were no indications
of intelligent life, so that nearer and less-perfect possibilities were
not seriously considered. The fleet was built, and during the building
the hibernation anesthesia technique was perfected, making it possible
to take along many more times the number of people originally intended,
so the ships were modified to carry large numbers of passengers who would
not require food from the beginning to the end of the tremendous voyage,
and great efforts were made to develop foolproof timers for the Long
Sleep tanks and remote-control systems for the un-crewed ships.
The plan finally adopted called for full crews only at the beginning
and end of the trip, the interim period being covered by individual
crew members who timed themselves to wake for a few hours or days every
four of five years for the purpose of checking position and correcting
the courses of any wanderers. The ship which was to navigate for the
fleet had a crew of six, the sub-fleet command ships had three each,
and the section leaders had one each, the remainder of the fleet
being comprised of uncrewed ships under remote control. In the event
of death or disablement or some other emergency occurring in the ships
of a sub-fleet commander or section leader there was provision in the
flagship for controlling each and every unit in the fleet.
It was to have been the flagship's job to make a detailed study of the
target planet during the final approach, to decide on the best landing
points and to see that the guidance systems of each of the following
ships were set to land them at these points, and then to go down with
the leading contingent to establish themselves and carry out the final
on-the-spot tests which would aid the settling-in of the later arrivals.
. . . Except that they all might just as well have stayed at home!
Angry suddenly, Deslann silenced the five-sided argument still raging
around him by saying sharply, "Since you have only just been made aware
of this problem I think it is unlikely you will be able to assist the
healer with it just yet. I suggest that you each go to your quarters --
you, too, Healer -- and think about it. There's plenty of time. Nothing
drastic is going to happen until, or unless, you go into Long Sleep. When
you have constructive suggestions to make I'll listen to them."
As they swam out of the control room and dispersed, Deslann's mind
slipped back again in time to the period when his archeologist father
had first taken him on a trip overland to the other ocean. They had
used a pressurized and refrigerated land-boat, traveling at night to
escape the heat of direct sunlight and sheltering during the day at the
bottom of the deep lakes -- all that was left of the wide channel which
had at one time joined the two oceans. Deslann had marveled at the dry,
powdery soil -- at home
dry
substances could not be found outside a
laboratory -- and at the fact that the incredibly thin gaseous mixture
which stretched from the land and sea surface out to space had once been
capable of supporting plant and animal life, even intelligent life.
But one day they were forced to shelter in a cave instead of at the bottom
of a lake and Deslann saw the remains of a family of these strange,
gas-breathing land-dwellers. The awkward, strangely jointed skeletons
large and small, the containers and utensils of baked clay and bone,
and the charred remains of a long wooden structure his father said was
a sea boat. His father spoke of the old records which told of these
primitive but intelligent beings using such devices to float on the
surface of the ocean while their crews speared any of the smaller and
more stupid food animals which ventured too close.
This family, his father said, had obviously taken shelter in the cave
at a time when its mouth could only be entered at low tide. Here they
escaped the savage heat of the day, which had killed the small land
animals these people had hunted and made it impossible to grow food,
and fished the sea in the cool of the night when low tide allowed them
out of their cave. But the surface of the sea would have retained more
and more of the heat of the day, and the smaller aquatic animals would
have been driven away from the hot tidal areas. There would have been no
light in the cave because all the available combustibles had already been
burned by the furnace in the sky, and no food, and on days when there was
a very low tide the cave would have been filled with near-scalding steam.
They had been intelligent, his father had said, but
their level of technology had not been high enough for
them to survive.
Gunt for an early cooling now that their work was done, but he could not
give permission for this until he told them everything he knew. At the
same time he did not want to tell them the worst before the other captain
was made aware of the problem -- for there was always the chance, the log
implied, that Captain Deslann with his completely fresh viewpoint would
find a solution which Gunt could not. If a solution could not be found,
then Deslann could tell all to the crew and hope that one of them might
come up with something.
And if that failed . . .
Deslann had been unable to find a solution in six days and, because
Gerrol was becoming downright impertinent in his requests to be cooled,
Deslann had told all to the crew. Or to be more accurate, he was letting
the medical officer tell it while be himself observed reactions and
tried desperately not to give up hope.
"But surely there was some indication that this might happen!" Gerrol broke
in suddenly. "Hibernation anesthesia was perfected fifteen years ago.
The fleet -- the whole operation depends on it!"
The astrogator stopped, plainly unable to find the words to describe
his feelings of outrage and betrayal. From their positions around the
control room the two computer technicians and the engineer were also silent,
although not, Deslann thought, because they were slow to grasp the
implications. With them it was probably a state of emotional shock.
Their personalities were more simple and well-rounded than that of the cold,
egotistical, highly intelligent, and of necessity selfish Gerrol, so it was
to be expected they would feel this thing more strongly and take longer to
recover from the shock of being told that they all were as good as dead.
Looking at each of them in turn the medical officer said defensively,
"That is not wholly accurate, Gerrol. The technique was used successfully,
but the subject was a volunteer who understood the risks involved. While
we were trying to perfect the technique many of the later volunteers were
not so lucky as he was. But you must understand that the method had to
show only a strong probability of success at that time for the decision
to be taken to begin building the fleet. There wasn't enough
time
for
the usual lengthy program of testing given to new drugs and techniques -- "
"I understand that time was limited, Healer," Gerrol broke in again,
"but we were told that the technique was safe -- "
". . . Despite this time limit," the healer went on, looking at Gerrol
but otherwise ignoring the interruption, "the technique was perfected
and rendered safe
so far as was possible to do so within our own home
planet and solar system
! I must stress that point. It is hard to see
how the absence of weight could affect a person whose metabolic processes
have been halted in a Cold Sleep tank -- but this might be a factor.
It is more likely that subtle differences in background radiation are the
cause, or a combination of free fall and radiation, or some factor which
we cannot conceive of as yet. Whatever it is it has uncovered a flaw in
our suspended animation system. The effects are subtle, but cumulative,
and they are serious enough to wreck this whole operation."
"I don't see that," said the communications officer suddenly, speaking
for the first time. "The effects are subtle, you say -- so subtle that
they won't actually kill anyone. Why can't we carry on as planned and
hope for the best?"
Bitingly, the healer replied, "There is nothing to stop your going ahead
as planned and hoping for the best, for as long as you have enough brain
left to hope with -- and that won't be for long, believe me! I have now
definitely established the fact that with each cooling and subsequent
warming there is a deterioration in cell structure, and it is the brain
cells which come off worst.
"I have been working on this since the shutdown of acceleration," he went
on more quietly, "nearly ten years ago. The tests were conducted with
animals, of course, which means that they could not verbally communicate
their symptoms to me, but there are methods of physical and psychological
probing which render such communication superfluous. The tests covered
the smallest lab animals right up to food animals with eight times the
physical mass of ourselves. They were exhaustive and left no room for
doubt. I was absolutely sure of this flaw even before the captain's
warming added final proof."
He looked apologetically at Deslann, possibly because what he was about to
say might be a breach of privilege, then went on, "The effect after the
first warming is minor. There is a mild, peńistent headache which is, of
course, susceptible to medication. There is a feeling of mental confusion,
also mild, and temporary. It is a little difficult to remember things,
but the memories are still available and are complete and accurate.
"After the second warming," he continued grimly, "the effects would be
more -- noticeable. Large segments of memory are no longer available and
those remaining have faded or become distorted, the most recent memories
or training being the first to go. You will all have had experience with
aged relatives, and noticed the gradual decaying of mental processes
which seems to peel away the more recent layers of memory so that they
live increasingly in the past. What is happening here, however -- and
this is an extreme oversimplification, since none of you are advanced
in this specialty -- is that the tiny electrochemical charge by which
data are stored in the brain cells leaks away, partially at first and
then completely, when the brain in question is subjected to repeated
hypothermia. After two periods of Long Sleep I would not trust any of you
to navigate this ship to the target system, or to land if we got there.
"After the third or fourth warming," he concluded softly, "I wouldn't
trust you to get to the other end of the ship. If you were very lucky
you might remember how to talk."
And on the voyage it was expected that each member of the crew would
be cooled and warmed on an average of twenty times, and anything up to
fifty times for the two captains. . . .
Gerrol and the others began asking the questions and putting the
suggestions expected of highly intelligent lay people, and Deslann found
his attention wandering away from them and from the increasingly testy
answers being given by Healer Hellahar. Perhaps it was the effects of
his first resuscitation beginning to show, or more likely it was simple
autosuggestion brought about by the knowledge of those effects, but his
mind seemed bent on dwelling on the period of his late childhood and
early maturity.
Not that any of them were old now, because the aging and infirm, the
middle-aged, and the unfit had all been left behind on Untha, together
with the young people who had elected to stay and those who had not
so elected but for whom there were not enough places in the fleet. The
people who went with the fleet were very carefully chosen, the people
who crewed the ships were chosen with even greater care, and the crew
of the flagship was the result of a physical and psychological screening
process which had been carried almost to ridiculous lengths. With Deslann
the initial testing had started before he had reached maturity, so that
he did not have much childhood, and that which he did have had not been
exactly happy.
This had been due to the atmosphere of fear and tensions which pervaded his
home and his world rather than to any failing on the part of his parents.
During the past three hundred years Untha's sun had grown steadily hotter
and her two great oceans had shrunk until there was no longer a water
connection between them. Plant and animal life had long since disappeared
from the land surface and in the sea his people were being forced to
occupy an ever narrowing life stratum -- between the ocean surface, which
was close to boiling point and too hot to allow life without complex
refrigeration systems, and the depths where the increased pressure demanded
even more complicated forms of protection. And so at an early age Deslann
had come to understand the reasons for the atmosphere of tension and fear,
and to realize that not only were his people being pressed between an ever
deepening layer of boiling heat and the crushing pressures of the ocean
depths, they were trying to decide on which of two methods should be
adopted to solve the problem. The choice was not easy.
They could bend all of their considerable technology and resources of
metal and power to pushing downward, to building great pressureproof
cities on the ocean floor, perhaps extending down into the bed of the
ocean itself. In this way they could buy a few more centuries of time
for all their people before the oceans boiled completely away and the
very water they breathed became superheated steam. Or they could throw
all those same resources into an attempt to place a small proportion of
their people onto another and more hospitable world.
To a people who had had space travel for ten generations the choice,
although difficult, was perhaps obvious from the start.
And so a tremendous telescope was built in orbit around Untha, an instrument
whose mirror covered a greater area than a large city, and a suitable world
had been found. Fifteen generations would come and go during the trip
to this planet, but it was cool and its oceans covered four-fifths of
its surface and its mass was just right and there were no indications
of intelligent life, so that nearer and less-perfect possibilities were
not seriously considered. The fleet was built, and during the building
the hibernation anesthesia technique was perfected, making it possible
to take along many more times the number of people originally intended,
so the ships were modified to carry large numbers of passengers who would
not require food from the beginning to the end of the tremendous voyage,
and great efforts were made to develop foolproof timers for the Long
Sleep tanks and remote-control systems for the un-crewed ships.
The plan finally adopted called for full crews only at the beginning
and end of the trip, the interim period being covered by individual
crew members who timed themselves to wake for a few hours or days every
four of five years for the purpose of checking position and correcting
the courses of any wanderers. The ship which was to navigate for the
fleet had a crew of six, the sub-fleet command ships had three each,
and the section leaders had one each, the remainder of the fleet
being comprised of uncrewed ships under remote control. In the event
of death or disablement or some other emergency occurring in the ships
of a sub-fleet commander or section leader there was provision in the
flagship for controlling each and every unit in the fleet.
It was to have been the flagship's job to make a detailed study of the
target planet during the final approach, to decide on the best landing
points and to see that the guidance systems of each of the following
ships were set to land them at these points, and then to go down with
the leading contingent to establish themselves and carry out the final
on-the-spot tests which would aid the settling-in of the later arrivals.
. . . Except that they all might just as well have stayed at home!
Angry suddenly, Deslann silenced the five-sided argument still raging
around him by saying sharply, "Since you have only just been made aware
of this problem I think it is unlikely you will be able to assist the
healer with it just yet. I suggest that you each go to your quarters --
you, too, Healer -- and think about it. There's plenty of time. Nothing
drastic is going to happen until, or unless, you go into Long Sleep. When
you have constructive suggestions to make I'll listen to them."
As they swam out of the control room and dispersed, Deslann's mind
slipped back again in time to the period when his archeologist father
had first taken him on a trip overland to the other ocean. They had
used a pressurized and refrigerated land-boat, traveling at night to
escape the heat of direct sunlight and sheltering during the day at the
bottom of the deep lakes -- all that was left of the wide channel which
had at one time joined the two oceans. Deslann had marveled at the dry,
powdery soil -- at home
dry
substances could not be found outside a
laboratory -- and at the fact that the incredibly thin gaseous mixture
which stretched from the land and sea surface out to space had once been
capable of supporting plant and animal life, even intelligent life.
But one day they were forced to shelter in a cave instead of at the bottom
of a lake and Deslann saw the remains of a family of these strange,
gas-breathing land-dwellers. The awkward, strangely jointed skeletons
large and small, the containers and utensils of baked clay and bone,
and the charred remains of a long wooden structure his father said was
a sea boat. His father spoke of the old records which told of these
primitive but intelligent beings using such devices to float on the
surface of the ocean while their crews speared any of the smaller and
more stupid food animals which ventured too close.
This family, his father said, had obviously taken shelter in the cave
at a time when its mouth could only be entered at low tide. Here they
escaped the savage heat of the day, which had killed the small land
animals these people had hunted and made it impossible to grow food,
and fished the sea in the cool of the night when low tide allowed them
out of their cave. But the surface of the sea would have retained more
and more of the heat of the day, and the smaller aquatic animals would
have been driven away from the hot tidal areas. There would have been no
light in the cave because all the available combustibles had already been
burned by the furnace in the sky, and no food, and on days when there was
a very low tide the cave would have been filled with near-scalding steam.
They had been intelligent, his father had said, but
their level of technology had not been high enough for
them to survive.
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