"Forward,.Dr.Robert.L.-.Ocean.Under.the.Ice.Book.3.of.the.Rocheworld.Series" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forward Robert L)

"Thank you for the offer. But I think it best that I handle it," replied James. One of the "hand" branches of the motile elongated by a factor of three and reached up to pull a curtain around Nels sitting in his tank. As the curtain drew closed, Deirdre turned and grinned wickedly at Cinnamon, who winked but said nothing. The constant presence of their personal imps tended to make all the humans just a little watchful of their speech, and these two were more reserved than most.
Katrina, Deirdre, and Cinnamon now left Nels and bounced off down a long corridor on the hydroponics deck in low gravity leaps, their feet occasionally pushing against the looped carpet that lined the floors, walls, ceilings, and shafts throughout _Prometheus_. After using the central shaft stanchion to swing themselves around a corner into another corridor, they brought themselves to a halt by planting their feet firmly into the carpet and bending their knees in a controlled flexing motion that absorbed their energy and momentum. They were now standing motionless before the thick clear window of the large habitat tank that held the three flouwen. The wedge-shaped tank reached from floor to ceiling along one whole wall of the corridor. It was two meters high, six meters long, and varied from two meters wide near the central shaft to six meters wide near the outer walls.
Placed in the middle of the corridor was an out-of-place sofa, dragged up from the lounge area and put facing the tank window. There was a couple relaxing in the thick pile sofa, held in place in the low gravity by Velcro "sticky-patches" on the back belt-line of their coveralls. The small black woman with the trim razor-creased uniform was Space Marine Major General Virginia Jones, Commander of the Barnard Star Expedition, while the large older white man was her second in command, Colonel George Gudunov.
When Deirdre saw the two mission commanders there, she moved around behind Cinnamon and remained quiet, letting Cinnamon greet them. Wakened by the bounding trip down the corridor, Deirdre's familiar was back on her shoulder, its bushy reddish-brown tail nearly indistinguishable from Deirdre's locks. Foxx belonged to a once rare, but now prospering, squirrel-like marsupial species that Deirdre had discovered in the forests of South America and saved from extinction. Katrina and Deirdre moved close to the tank, looking intently at the small, flat, light-brown creatures visible on the plants in the rear.
"Look you, Katrina, that gingersnap species is doing almost too well. It's the balance that's tricky, to keep the water clean, and with exactly the right proportion of nutrients."
"Right," murmured Katrina. "I'll do a thorough analysis." She bounded off to the lab, and Deirdre bent closer, to watch the little plants undulating in the stream of hot "smoky water" loaded with hydrogen sulfide and minerals. The artificial volcanic vents were modeled after the ones occurring naturally on Rocheworld, and were carefully designed to sustain the plant life, which in turn nourished small animals, much enjoyed as food by the flouwen. The hot-water vent-field was blocked off from the cold water in the larger part of the tank by a maze of clear floor-to-ceiling baffles, backed up by circulation pumps operating through holes in the tank sides. Deirdre automatically checked the thermometers: the liquid, ten percent ammonia by weight, was well below freezing in the habitat, and boiling hot near the vents. All was well within the little world; they would not yet need the supply of dried and frozen flouwen food they had brought with them from Rocheworld.
George was eating his evening-shift dinner from his flip-lidded free-fall tray, while General Jones was on her morning-shift coffee break, enjoying a drink-ball squeezer of coffee and a croissant. Her drink-ball had two stars and the words "THE BOSS" painted on it. The two commanders were conversing quietly about crew rosters and science schedules, while keeping a relaxed eye on the contents of the tank. Inside the tank the brightly colored flouwen swam around and around in hypnotic swirling motions.
"That smells heavenly, Jinjur," said Cinnamon, inhaling the delicious aroma of the freshly-baked algae-flour croissant. "The galley imp must have let Arielle into the kitchen again."
She was putting another tray into the oven when I left," replied Jinjur. "If you hurry, there may still be some left."
"Order one for me too," added George, flipping up one of the lids on his tray to take a peek inside. "I've got a little algae-butter left in my condiments compartment."
After whispering a command to her imp, Cinnamon moved across the carpet to the tank window. She crooned a melodic greeting as her light-brown fingers touched the cold glass.
"Good morning! Good morning! Isn't it a lovely morning! Good morning! Good morning to you!..." Cinnamon's imp picked up her song and passed it by digitally-coded laser beams to the central computer James, who translated the words into flouwenese, shifted the tune down in pitch to the flouwen's middle range, then passed it along as a sonar signal to the alien creatures in the tank.
The flouwen swimming in the habitat tank were shaped like amorphous blobs of living jelly, each as big as a very large human. Their bodies were brightly colored, and shimmered internally like a liquid opal. Each of the flouwen in the tank had been budded off from a "primary" body, which was still back on Rocheworld, a gigantic multiton creature many meters across. A normal-sized flouwen was too large and heavy to be accommodated on human vehicles, but three of the flouwen had budded off a portion of themselves in order to go exploring with the humans. The buds still retained the personality and memory of the primary body, although they were slightly diminished in mental ability because of their smaller size. On their return to Rocheworld, the buds would rejoin the primary body and pass on the knowledge they had gained.
One of the buds, called Little Red by the humans, was a bright flame-red color. His primary back on Rocheworld, Roaring*Hot*Vermillion, was called Loud Red by the humans. The second was Little White, with a partially transparent opalescent milky-white color. He had budded from the flouwen, Clear^White^Whistle, given the name White Whistler by the humans because of his white color and high pitched whistling tones when he spoke. The third was Little Purple, with a deep grape-colored purple hue. The oldest of the three, he was many thousands of years old. He had budded from Strong#Lavender#Crackle, called Deep Purple by the humans.
Upon hearing Cinnamon's greeting song, Little Red undulated over to the window and spread himself against the inside of the window. Through the thick glass Cinnamon could hear a modulated roar that ended in a whistling chirp. A sonar pickup inside the tank sensed the sounds and sent them to James, who translated them from flouwenese into English, and passed them on to Cinnamon's imp via coded laser beams transmitted from laser diodes hidden in the corners of the corridor ceiling.
*Are we there yet!?!* came Little Red's query out of the "earphones" of the small imp on Cinnamon's head. The tone, although not the volume, was James's attempt at a reasonable imitation of what Little Red probably sounded like to the two older flouwen. *I'm bored! I want to go explore!*
"We've only just started," replied Cinnamon. "Although Rocheworld is close to Gargantua in this part of its elliptical orbit, it's going to take weeks to transfer to an orbit around Gargantua, and a few more weeks before we are ready to land on one of Gargantua's moons."
*Too long!* complained Little Red.
Just then, one of the galley imps rose up in the lift shaft at the end of the corridor, levitated by the rapidly beating twigs on three of its "feet". In one "hand" it was carrying Cinnamon's drink-ball, while the other "hand" held four still-steaming croissants. As the imp passed the croissants out, Deirdre quietly accepted one, broke off one end, and passed it up to Foxx, who took it in tiny paws.
The squeaks and chirps coming from the tank increased in frequency and intensity as Little Red used his sonar to scan the corridor outside the tank. Although the bodies of the flouwen were sensitive to light, they had no eyes, and so normally they did not use light as a method of looking at things. Instead they used sound pulses generated and detected by their bodies to "see". In the liquid environment of their home ocean, this was a superior method of observing things. It didn't depend upon light from the dim and often absent Barnard, so the flouwen could "see" in the dark depths as well as they could near the surface.
With sonar, the flouwen didn't just look at the surface of an object, for the sonar penetrated inside the object and gave the flouwen a three-dimensional image of what they were seeing. Sonar travels best in water, and a portion of Little Red's penetrating sound pulses bounced off the thick glass. Of the part that penetrated into the glass, a large portion was reflected by the glass-air interface, and only a small portion reached the air in the corridor. In the air, the sound waves traveled five times slower than they did in the water, and by the time they reflected from the soft, absorbing clothing of the humans, and back through the air, and glass, and into the water, there was little left. It was enough, however, for Little Red to "see" that Cinnamon was eating something.
*You eat!* Little Red announced. *I eat too!* The red flouwen peeled itself off the window, and forming itself into an efficient swimming shape, undulated away to the maze of baffles in the far corner of the habitat tank. The infinitely flexible body of Little Red had little difficulty in penetrating the maze, so it wasn't long before he had jumped an animal that looked like an orange-red blob -- as structureless as a flouwen. The animal screamed as it attempted to elude the red pseudopods that Little Red formed one after another to trap it.
"I think I'll go now," said George, getting up as Little Red caught the small creature. He handed his tray to the galley imp, peeled himself off the sofa, and pushed down the corridor to the central shaft.
"Me too," said Jinjur, following him while still carrying her squeezer of coffee.
Cinnamon averted her eyes and left too, as Little Red started to tear his living and still screaming prey apart into little pieces. Each little part continued to scream until its sounds were finally muffled by being absorbed into Little Red's body. As Cinnamon made her way down the corridor, she raised a hand and made a twisting motion next to one of the "earphones" on her imp headband, as if turning up the volume on a audio set. In response to the motion, James obliged her by playing a loud Sousa march.
Deirdre, however, trying to learn as much as she could about the little-observed process, looked dispassionately into the tank and watched carefully as Little Red devoured his meal. The orange-red "rogue" that Little Red was eating was one of a dozen that she and Cinnamon had budded from a larger rogue in their Rocheworld fauna breeding tanks, and placed into the flouwen tank vent field. The bud had originally been the size of a small sausage, and now it was as big as her forearm. The vent field must be operating well if the rogue grew that much in the few weeks since they set up the flouwen habitat tank.
It wasn't pleasant watching Little Red eat, but Deirdre knew that Little Red was doing what he must to survive. Deirdre had once raised snakes, including large pythons that required rabbits for their weekly meals. Deirdre had perforce become an expert at killing rabbits. It was unfortunate that the food animals that the flouwen ate could not be humanely killed before being eaten, but that was the way life was built on Rocheworld. Like the flouwen, the rogues and most of the other Rocheworld fauna could not be killed. Trying to kill a flouwen or a rogue was like trying to kill a slime mold or an ant colony. One could tear any of them apart into smaller and smaller pieces, but each piece would be just as alive as the larger piece, until finally only the individual cells were left.
Little Red had torn the rogue into bits which were small enough to digest easily, and they were now dispersed as separate orange-red blobs inside the large flame-red blob that formed Little Red's body. Deirdre watched carefully as the orange-red blobs grew smaller and smaller until there was only flame-red where orange-red had once been. Deirdre had watched the process of assimilation under a microscope and knew what was happening as Little Red digested the rogue.
On Earth, where humans, animals, and plants have distinctively proteins, the humans must digest the animal and plant proteins down to simple compounds like sugars and starches and amino acids, then build them back up into human proteins. On Rocheworld, where all the animal lifeforms used the same basic cell, the process of digestion didn't go as far as it did on Earth. The basic Rocheworld cell was quite large compared to a human cell and had a dumbbell-shaped body of clear jelly that varied from glassy to almost liquid depending upon the water content. When enlarged with water, it was the size of the body of a very small ant. The cells replicated by growing larger, splitting in two, then forming a necked down portion. A group of these cells would spontaneously collect together into a cross-linked blob, with necked down portions interlocking with end knob portions. On the surface of each cell was a complex pseudo-random pattern of grooves and indentations that operated as a "template" for the genetic code of the organism. In the higher animals, such as the flouwen, portions of these patterns were changeable and served as the repository for the long term memory.
Once a blob of cells had collected together, a liquid crystal layer would form between the cells, with the large complex organic chemicals in the liquid crystal layer being determined and ordered by the grooves and indentations in the surface of the cells. The optical properties of the thin layer of liquid crystal gave the flouwen and the other fauna their distinctive bright colors. The liquid crystal layer acted as the coordinating nervous system or "brain" of the collection of cells. Because all of their body cells were involved in their thinking and memory processes, the flouwen were, in essence, all brain. The genetic code information in the surface of the cells was used to organize the liquid crystal "brain", while the liquid crystal layer in turn could impress grooves and patterns onto the cells to store memories. When Little Red was "digesting" the rogue, all its body was doing was dissolving the orange-red liquid crystal layer of the rogue, and using its own flame-red liquid crystal to change the genetic pattern on the surface of the cells, which then became Little Red cells.
Now that the screams had stopped, Cinnamon returned. With her was the ship's chief engineer, Shirley Everett and one of the expedition's geoscientists, Richard Redwing. Both were well over six feet tall and well muscled, like professional basketball players. Shirley's long, blond braid was held in place behind her left ear by her imp, shaped into a crescent-shaped hairclip, while Richard bore his imp on his shoulder, like all the men on the ship. They came up behind Deirdre, close to the window.
Deirdre had been so absorbed in watching Little Red eat, that she hadn't been paying attention to the other flouwen in the tank. Now, she noticed Little White plastered up against the tank window -- and her left ear was ringing as if it were being subjected to intense noise. She turned to look at the arrival of the other humans, and the pressures in her ears changed. At the same time, she also finally noticed that Foxx was emitting a continual complaining chitter, and was fussing with her ears. Deirdre then realized that while she had been staring into the habitat tank at Little Red, Little White had been staring out of the tank at her -- scanning her body with high frequency sonar pulses.
^There is something moving on your shoulder,^ said Little White. ^It is not the Talking@Sticks that some humans have on their shoulders. It has stiff sticks inside, but it is covered with soft flesh and a thick fuzzy surface -- like hair -- but it covers the whole body, not just the top of the head. I have never seen such a thing before. What is it?^
"It's my pet, Foxx," replied Deirdre. "The fuzzy surface on it is called fur -- it is dark red in color."
^Interesting,^ said Little White. ^I must 'look' it using light as well as see it using sound.^
*Pet with red color?!?* exclaimed Little Red. *I must look it too!*
The two flouwen each formed a pseudopod with a large spheroid at the end and held the spheroid between their body and the window. After a few moments concentration, the color of the red and white spheroids slowly began to fade, while the intensity of the color in the arm of the pseudopod grew. The flouwen were withdrawing the strongly colored liquid crystal layer from between the transparent cells that made up the spheroid. Finally, all the liquid crystal was gone, leaving only a transparent sphere. Initially, the sphere was nearly invisible, since the jelly in the cells was nearly saturated with water molecules, but as the flouwen squeezed the water from the cells, they became denser and more visible, changing shape as it did so.
Finally, it transformed into a large thick "magnifying glass" held on the end of the colored pseudopod of each flouwen, like a monocle on a stick. The light from the corridor passed through the curved lens of transparent flouwen flesh, which focused it onto the surface of the flouwen body behind. There, the light-sensitive flesh of the flouwen could detect the hue and intensity patterns of the light. It was the primary of Little White -- White Whistler -- which had discovered the concept of a light-focusing lens some decades ago, before the arrival of the humans, and had taught the other flouwen the technique of making an eye that could focus light images.
Deirdre took Foxx down off her shoulder and brought the animal up near the tank window so the flouwen could look at it more clearly. While the flouwen watched, she had Foxx go through a few actions; racing up one arm and back down another, hanging from a finger with one hind foot, and jumping from one hand to another. All the while Foxx chittered away excitedly.
*What does it say?* asked Little Red. *I do not understand its talk!*
"It can't talk," replied Deirdre. "It just makes noises."
*It can't talk!?! Then it must be good to eat!* pronounced Little Red.
"We don't eat pets!" said Deirdre firmly.
With that revelation, Little Red was disgusted. *Pet not good for talking! Pet not good for food! Pet not good for anything! Pet DUMB!* The red flouwen absorbed its transparent "eye" back into its body and undulated away. Little White, however, was still interested.
^I would like to know more about this Foxx creature.^
"James has a large file on Foxx and the many other animals on Earth," Deirdre replied. "You can look at it on your taste-screen console."
The white flouwen kept one portion of his body near the window holding the imaging lens so he could continue to look at Deirdre and her pet, while the rest flowed across the habitat tank to one wall that contained what looked like the screen of a computer console. It was specially built by the ship's computer James for use by the flouwen. In addition to the usual touch-screen and optical display, it had a "taste-screen" overlay embedded with electrochemical sensors and transmitters that allowed the flouwen to interact with the central computer using the chemical senses that they normally used for transmitting information. Soon, one part of Little White was tasting the information on Foxx coming from James through the taste-screen on the wall, while another part of Little White was looking at the surface of Foxx using light focused through the lens onto its surface, and still another part of Little White was seeing the entire volume of Foxx using sonar pulses.
^Very interesting creature,^ Little White said finally. ^Especially the tail. Do humans have tails?^
"No!" replied Deirdre.
^Why not?^ asked Little White in the typical blunt flouwen fashion. Deirdre was saved from having to answer by an announcement from James. "There is a call coming up from the laser link communicator that was set up in Agua Dulce bay on Rocheworld. Deep Purple wishes to converse with Little Purple."