Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

of stuttering, and accompanied them down the stairs and into the tunnel. Half of him raged at his own timidity⁠—why hadn’t he made that suggestion?

The passages connecting the domes were all alike, straight featureless holes lined with plastic. Behind lay insulation and the pipes of the common heating system, then more insulation, finally the Hill itself. That was mostly porous iron, surprisingly pure though it held small amounts of potassium and aluminum oxides. The entire place was a spongy ferrous outcropping. But then, Triton was full of geological freaks.

“How goes your work?” asked Alemán sociably.

“Oh, pretty well,” said Catherine. “I suppose you know we’ve synthesized virus which can live outside. Now we’re trying to build bacteria to do the same.”

On a professional level, Gilchrist was not a bad conversationalist. His trouble was that not everyone likes to talk shop all the time. “Is there any purpose in that, other than pure research to see if you can do it?” he inquired. “I can’t imagine any attempt ever being made to colonize this moon.”

“Well, you never know,” she answered. “If there’s ever any reason for it, oxide-reducing germs will be needed.”

“As well as a nuclear heating system for the whole world, and⁠—What do your life forms use for energy, though? Hardly enough sunlight, I should think.”

“Oh, but there is, for the right biochemistry with the right catalysts⁠—analogous to our own enzymes. It makes a pretty feeble type of life, of course, but I hope to get bacteria which can live off the local ores and frozen gases by exothermic reactions. Don’t forget, when it’s really cold a thermal engine can have a very high efficiency; and all living organisms are thermal engines of a sort.”

They took the stairs leading up into the main dome: apartments, refectories, social centers, and offices. Another stair led downward to the central heating plant in the body of the Hill. Gilchrist saw an engineer going that way with a metering kit and a worried look.

The bar was crowded, this was cocktail hour for the swing shift and⁠—popular opinion to the contrary⁠—a scientist likes his meals regular and only lives off sandwiches brought to the lab when he must. They found a table and sat down. Nobody had installed dial units, so junior technicians earned extra money as waiters. One of them took their orders and chits.

The ventilators struggled gallantly with the smoke. It hazed the murals with which some homesick soul had tried to remember the green Earth. A couple of astronomers at the next table were noisily disputing theories.

“⁠—Dammit, Pluto’s got to be an escaped satellite of Neptune. Look at their orbits⁠ ⁠… and Pluto is where Neptune should be according to Bode’s Law.”

“I know. I’ve heard that song before. I suppose you favor the Invader theory?”

“What else will account for the facts? A big planet comes wandering in, yanks Neptune sunward and frees Pluto; but Neptune captures a satellite of the Invader. Triton’s got to be a captured body, with this screwy retrograde orbit. And Nereid⁠—”

“Have you ever analyzed the mechanics of that implausible proposition? Look here⁠—” A pencil came out and began scribbling on the long-suffering table top.

Catherine chuckled. “I wonder if we’ll ever find out,” she murmured.

Gilchrist rubbed chilled fingers together. Blast it, the air was still cooling off! “It’d be interesting to land a ship on Nep himself and check the geology,” he said. “A catastrophe like that would leave traces.”

“When they can build a ship capable of landing on a major planet without being squeezed flat by the air pressure, that’ll be the day. I think we’ll have to settle for telescopes and spectroscopes for a long, long time to come⁠—”

The girl’s voice trailed off, and her dark fine head poised. The loudspeaker was like thunder.

“Dr. Vesey! Dr. Vesey! Please contact engineering office! Dr. Vesey, please contact Dr. Jahangir! Over.”

For a moment, there was silence in the bar.

“I wonder what the trouble is,” said Alemán.

“Something to do with the heating plant, I suppose⁠—” Again Catherine’s tones died, and they stared at each other.

The station was a magnificent machine; it represented an engineering achievement which would have been impossible even fifty years ago. It kept a hundred human creatures warm and moist, it replenished their air and synthesized their food and raised a wall of light against darkness. But it had not the equipment to call across nearly four and a half billion kilometers of vacuum. It had no ship of its own, and the great Corps vessel would not be back for three years.

It was a long way to Earth.

Dinner was a silent affair that period. There were a few low-voiced exchanges, but they only seemed to deepen the waiting stillness.

And the cold grew apace. You could see your breath, and your thin garments were of little help.

The meal was over, and the groups of friends were beginning to drift out of the refectory, when the intercoms woke up again. This chamber had a vision screen. Not an eye stirred from Director Samuel Vesey as he looked out of it.

His lips were firm and his voice steady, but there was a gleam of sweat on the ebony skin⁠—despite the cold. He stared directly before him and spoke:

“Attention, all personnel. Emergency situation. Your attention, please.”

After a moment, he seemed to relax formality and spoke as if face to face. “You’ve all noticed our trouble. Something has gone wrong with the heating plant, and Dr. Jahangir’s crew haven’t located the trouble so far.

“Now there’s no reason for panic. The extrapolated curve of temperature decline indicates that, at worst, it’ll level off at about zero Centigrade. That won’t be fun, but we can stand it till the difficulty has been found. Everyone is advised to dress as warmly as possible. Food and air plant crews are going on emergency status. All projects requiring energy sources are cancelled till further notice.

“According to the meters, there’s nothing wrong with the pile. It’s still putting out as much heat as it always has. But somehow, that heat isn’t getting to us as