Read Online Half Life by Hal Clement - Free Book Online Page B

said nothing for general hearing. There was nothing useful to say for the moment, and what would be said later would never mention penalties, or violation of rules, or disobedience of orders.
    Hunger for understanding had replaced much of the desire for personal property, for influence over others’ behavior, or for simple glory which had motivated so many of humanity’s earlier high-risk activities.
    The need-for-knowledge culture, however, had not evolved in quite the same direction as the economic-religious-military one. Social awareness—idealism or patriotism—was fully as great as ever in the vaguely militarized ranks of science, and of course required as much team effort as war; but it did not usually demand the prompt and blind submission to orders which militarism had had to evolve when the opponents were other human beings. A universe with no personal wants, enmities, or survival urges was not an enemy .
    The new patriotism, if it could be called that, was not nearly so blind as the old, but it still could demand personal risk and sacrifice. Ginger knew exactly what she was doing, and why. So, in spite of their hasty questions, did Gene and the others. Nothing critical was said during the hundred minutes that Theia took to touch atmosphere and start to kill her nearly two-kilometers-per-second relative velocity; and even when she was flying rather than orbiting, navigation instructions from Maria and flying advice from the others made up most of the conversation.
    The advice was not needed. Ginger had spent as much time in simulators and roughly as much actually flying Oceanus as had any of the others, but those still in orbit felt a need to keep meaningful conversation going—to “stay in touch.”
    Xalco, after carefully purging the remaining water from her mass tanks and filling up above a convenient lake, deliberately landed by the factory at higher speed than Belvew had done. There was no way yet to tell whether this made the difference. Theia approached from the north, touched down, and slid to a stop half a kilometer west of the factory. She would have come closer, but there were numerous objects on the surface between cliff and factory, and some even west of the latter, which had been identified by Maria’s equipment as boulders of ice from the fallen shelf. One of Goodall’s labs had by now confirmed this; three separate specimens were nearly pure water ice, with traces of carbonate dust. A debate on why this was not silicate, led by Louis Mastro and Carla lePing, had taken up much time between the discovery and the jet’s landing, but no conclusions had been reached except that the news had better get to Earth promptly. There may be no telling in advance which will prove to be the key piece of a jigsaw puzzle, but anything unexpected screams for upper-level attention. Goodall had sent the report before Theia touched down.
    The landing approach had not been directly over the new patch, but the exhaust had melted or blown a shallow trough in the regular surface like the earlier ones, and like them raised no cloud of smoke of the sort that Belvew’s recent landing by Carver had done. It was still possible that this superficially uniform area—uniform except for ice blocks and the still-growing patch—differed here and there in composition. Goodall had all ripe labs now out and in action, and was sending out others as quickly as the factory completed them. He ignored the small size of the stock of inert metals—gold, platinum, and iridium—which the labs needed for chemical and electrical apparatuses and of which the factory had only a limited supply in the “yolk” of its original egg. This stock could, for a while at least, be replenished from the station; a fairly large reserve had been brought from Earth. It had seemed unlikely that any such materials would be found on or near Titan. Certainly none, not more than a few atoms per cubic millimeter, had been found in the E ring and nearby