Part 1

Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

CATALYSIS

BY POUL ANDERSON

_Man is a kind of turtle. Wherever he goes, he will always carry a shell holding warmth and air--and with them his human failings...._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

When you looked outside, it was into darkness.

Going out yourself, you could let your eyes accommodate. At high noon, the sun was a sharp spark in a dusky heaven, and its light amounted to about one-ninth of one percent of what Earth gets. The great fields of ice and frozen gases reflected enough to help vision, but upthrust crags and cliffs of naked rock were like blackened teeth.

Seventy hours later, when Triton was on the other side of the primary that it always faced, there was a midnight thick enough to choke you. The stars flashed and glittered, a steely twinkle through a gaunt atmosphere mostly hydrogen--strange, to see the old lost constellations of Earth, here on the edge of the deep. Neptune was at the full, a giant sprawling across eight degrees of sky, bluish gray and smoky banded, but it caught so little sunlight that men groped in blindness. They set up floodlights, or had lamps glaring from their tracs, to work at all.

But nearly everything went on indoors. Tunnels connected the various buildings on the Hill, instruments were of necessity designed to operate in the open without needing human care, men rarely had occasion to go out any more. Which was just as well, for it takes considerable power and insulation to keep a man alive when the temperature hovers around 60 degrees Kelvin.

And so you stood at a meter-thick port of insulglas, and looked out, and saw only night.

Thomas Gilchrist turned away from the view with a shudder. He had always hated cold, and it was as if the bitterness beyond the lab-dome had seeped in to touch him. The cluttered gleam of instruments in the room, desk piled high with papers and microspools, the subdued chatter of a computer chewing a problem, were comforting.

He remembered his purpose and went with a long low-gravity stride to check the mineralogical unit. It was busily breaking down materials fetched in by the robosamplers, stones never found on Earth--because Earth is not the Mercury-sized satellite of an outer planet, nor has it seen some mysterious catastrophe in an unknown time back near the beginning of things. Recording meters wavered needles across their dials, data tapes clicked out, he would soon have the basic information. Then he would try to figure out how the mineral could have been formed, and give his hypothesis to the computer for mathematical analysis of possibility, and start on some other sample.

For a while Gilchrist stood watching the machine. A cigaret smoldered forgotten between his fingers. He was a short, pudgy young man, with unkempt hair above homely features. Pale-blue eyes blinked nearsightedly behind contact lenses, his myopia was not enough to justify surgery. Tunic and slacks were rumpled beneath the gray smock.

_Behold the bold pioneer!_ he thought. His self-deprecating sarcasm was mildly nonsane, he knew, but he couldn't stop--it was like biting an aching tooth. Only a dentist could fix the tooth in an hour, while a scarred soul took years to heal. It was like his eyes, the trouble wasn't bad enough to require long expensive repair, so he limped through life.

Rafael Alemán came in, small and dark and cheerful. "'Allo," he said. "How goes it?" He was one of the Hill's organic chemists, as Gilchrist was the chief physical chemist, but his researches into low-temperature properties were turning out so disappointingly that he had plenty of time to annoy others. Nevertheless, Gilchrist liked him, as he liked most people.

"So-so. It takes time."

"Time we have enough of, _mi amigo_," said Alemán. "Two years we 'ave been here, and three years more it will be before the ship comes to relieve us." He grimaced. "Ah, when I am back to Durango Unit, how fast my savings will disappear!"

"You didn't have to join the Corps, and you didn't have to volunteer for Triton Station," Gilchrist pointed out.

The little man shrugged, spreading slender hands. "Confidential, I will tell you. I had heard such colorful tales of outpost life. But the only result is that I am now a married man--not that I have anything but praise for my dear Mei-Hua, but it is not the abandonment one had hoped for."

Gilchrist chuckled. Outer-planet stations did have a slightly lurid reputation, and no doubt it had been justified several years ago.

After all--The voyage was so long and costly that it could not be made often. You established a self-sufficient colony of scientists and left it there to carry on its researches for years at a time. But self-sufficiency includes psychic elements, recreation, alcohol, entertainment, the opposite sex. A returning party always took several children home.

Scientists tended to be more objective about morals, or at least more tolerant of the other fellow's, than most; so when a hundred or so people were completely isolated, and ordinary amusements had palled, it followed that there would be a good deal of what some would call sin.

"Not Triton," said Gilchrist. "You forget that there's been another cultural shift in the past generation--more emphasis on the stable family. And I imagine the Old Man picked his gang with an eye to such attitudes. Result--the would-be rounders find themselves so small a minority that it has a dampening effect."

"_Sí._ I know. But you 'ave never told me your real reason for coming here, Thomas."

Gilchrist felt his face grow warm. "Research," he answered shortly. "There are a lot of interesting problems connected with Neptune."

Alemán cocked a mildly skeptical eyebrow but said nothing. Gilchrist wondered how much he guessed.

That was the trouble with being shy. In your youth, you acquired bookish tastes; only a similarly oriented wife would do for you, so you didn't meet many women and didn't know how to behave with them anyhow. Gilchrist, who was honest with himself, admitted he'd had wistful thoughts about encountering the right girl here, under informal conditions where--

He had. And he was still helpless.

Suddenly he grinned. "I'll tell you what," he said. "I also came because I don't like cold weather."

"Came to _Neptune_?"

"Sure. On Earth, you can stand even a winter day, so you have to. Here, since the local climate would kill you in a second or two, you're always well protected from it." Gilchrist waved at the viewport. "Only I wish they didn't have that bloody window in my lab. Every time I look out, it reminds me that just beyond the wall nitrogen is a solid."

"_Yo comprendo_," said Alemán. "The power of suggestion. Even now, at your words, I feel a chill."

Gilchrist started with surprise. "You know, somehow I have the same--Just a minute." He went over to a workbench. His inframicrometer had an air thermometer attached to make temperature corrections.

"What the devil," he muttered. "It _is_ cooled off. Only 18 degrees in here. It's supposed to be 21."

"Some fluctuation, in temperature as in ozone content and humidity," reminded Alemán. "That is required for optimum health."

"Not this time of day, it shouldn't be varying." Gilchrist was reminded of his cigaret as it nearly burned his fingers. He stubbed it out and took another and inhaled to light it.

"I'm going to raise Jahangir and complain," he said. "This could play merry hell with exact measurements."

Alemán trotted after him as he went to the door. It was manually operated, and the intercoms were at particular points instead of every room. You had to forego a number of Earthside comforts here.

There was a murmuring around him as he hurried down the corridor. Some doors stood open, showing the various chemical and biological sections. The physicists had their own dome, on the other side of the Hill, and even so were apt to curse the stray fields generated here. If they had come this far to get away from solar radiations, it was only reasonable, as anyone but a chemist could see, that--

The screen stood at the end of the hall, next to the tunnel stairs. Gilchrist checked himself and stood with a swift wild pulse in his throat. Catherine Bardas was using it.

He had often thought that the modern fashion of outbreeding yielded humans more handsome than any pure racial type could be. When a girl was half Greek and half Amerind, and a gifted biosynthesizer on top of it, a man like him could only stare.

Mohammed Jahangir's brown, bearded face registered more annoyance than admiration as he spoke out of the screen. "Yes. Dr. Bardas," he said with strained courtesy. "I know. My office is being swamped with complaints."

"Well, what's the trouble?" asked the girl. Her voice was low and gentle, even at this moment.

"I'm not sure," said the engineer. "The domes' temperature is dropping, that's all. We haven't located the trouble yet, but it can't be serious."

"All I'm asking," said Catherine Bardas patiently, "is how much longer this will go on and how much lower it's going to get. I'm trying to synthesize a cell, and it takes precisely controlled conditions. If the air temperature drops another five degrees, my thermostat won't be able to compensate."

"Oh, well ... I'm sure you can count on repair being complete before that happens."

"All right," said Catherine sweetly. "If not, though, I'll personally bung you out the main air-lock _sans_ spacesuit."

Jahangir laughed and cut off. The light of fluorotubes slid blue-black off the girl's shoulder-length hair as she turned around. Her face was smooth and dark, with high cheekbones and a lovely molding of lips and nose and chin.

"Oh--hello, Tom," she smiled. "All through here."

"Th-th-th--Never mind," he fumbled. "I was only g-going to ask about it myself."

"Well--" She yawned and stretched with breathtaking effect. "I suppose I'd better get back and--"

"Ah, why so, señorita?" replied Alemán. "If the work does not need your personal attention just now, come join me in a leetle drink. It is near dinnertime anyhow."

"All right," she said. "How about you, Tom?"

He merely nodded, for fear 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 it should. The engineers are checking the pipes now.

"I'll have a stat of the findings made up and issued. Suggestions are welcome, but please take them to my office--the engineers have their own work to do. Above all, don't panic! This is a nuisance, I know, but there's no reason to be afraid.

"All personnel not needed at once, stand by. The following specialists please report to me--"

He read off the list, all physicists, and closed his talk with a forced grin and thumbs up.

As if it had broken a dam, the message released a babble of words. Gilchrist saw Catherine striding out of the room and hastened after her.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Where do you think?" she replied. "To put on six layers of clothes."

He nodded. "Best thing. I'll come along, if I may--my room's near yours."

A woman, still in her smock, was trying to comfort a child that shivered and cried. A Malayan geologist stood with teeth clattering in his jaws. An engineer snarled when someone tried to question him and ran on down the corridor.

"What do you think?" asked Gilchrist inanely.

"I don't have any thoughts about the heating plant," said Catherine. Her voice held a thin edge. "I'm too busy worrying about food and air."

Gilchrist's tongue was thick and dry in his mouth. The biochemistry of food creation and oxygen renewal died when it got even chilly.

* * * * *

Finished dressing, they looked at each other in helplessness. Now what?

The temperature approached its minimum in a nosedive. There had always been a delicate equilibrium; it couldn't be otherwise, when the interior of the domes was kept at nearly 240 degrees above the surrounding world. The nuclear pile devoted most of its output to maintaining that balance, with only a fraction going to the electric generators.

Gilchrist thrust hands which were mottled blue with cold into his pockets. Breath smoked white before him. Already a thin layer of hoarfrost was on ceiling and furniture.

"How long can we stand this?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Catherine. "Not too long, I should think, since nobody has adequate clothes. The children should ... suffer ... pretty quickly. Too much drain on body energy." She clamped her lips together. "Use your mental training. You can ignore this till it begins actually breaking down your physique."

Gilchrist made an effort, but couldn't do it. He could stop shivering, but the chill dank on his skin, and the cold sucked in by his nose, were still there in his consciousness, like a nightmare riding him.

"They'll be dehumidifying the air," said Catherine. "That'll help some." She began walking down the hall. "I want to see what they're doing about the food and oxy sections."

A small mob had had the same idea. It swirled and mumbled in the hall outside the service rooms. A pair of hard-looking young engineers armed with monkey wrenches stood guard.

Catherine wormed her way through the crowd and smiled at them. Their exasperation dissolved, and one of them, a thickset red-head by the name of O'Mallory, actually grinned. Gilchrist, standing moodily behind the girl, could hardly blame him.

"How's it going in there?" she asked.

"Well, now, I suppose the Old Man _is_ being sort of slow about his bulletins," said O'Mallory. "It's under control here."

"But what are they doing?"

"Rigging electric heaters, of course. It'll take all the juice we have to maintain these rooms at the right temperature, so I'm afraid they'll be cutting off light and power to the rest of the Hill."

She frowned. "It's the only thing, I suppose. But what about the people?"

"They'll have to jam together in the refectories and clubrooms. That'll help keep 'em warm."

"Any idea what the trouble is?"

O'Mallory scowled. "We'll get it fixed," he said.

"That means you don't know." She spoke it calmly.

"The pile's all right," he said. "We telemetered it. I'd'a done that myself, but you know how it is--" He puffed himself up a trifle. "They need a couple husky chaps to keep the crowd orderly. Anyhow, the pile's still putting out just as it should, still at 500 degrees like it ought to be. In fact, it's even a bit warmer than that; why, I don't know."

Gilchrist cleared his throat. "Th-th-then the trouble is with the ... heating pipes," he faltered.

"How did you ever guess?" asked O'Mallory with elaborate sarcasm.

"Lay off him," said Catherine. "We're all having a tough time."

Gilchrist bit his lip. It wasn't enough to be a tongue-tied idiot, he seemed to need a woman's protection.

"Trouble is, of course," said O'Mallory, "the pipes are buried in insulation, behind good solid plastic. They'll be hard to get at."

"Whoever designed this farce ought to have to live in it," said his companion savagely.

"The same design's worked on Titan with no trouble at all," declared O'Mallory.

Catherine's face took on a grimness. "There never was much point in making these outer-planet domes capable of quick repair," she said. "If something goes wrong, the personnel are likely to be dead before they can fix it."

"Now, now, that's no way to talk," smiled O'Mallory. "Look, I get off duty at 0800. Care to have a drink with me then?"

Catherine smiled back. "If the bar's operating, sure."

Gilchrist wandered numbly after her as she left.

The cold gnawed at him. He rubbed his ears, unsure about frostbite. Odd how fast you got tired--It was hard to think.

"I'd better get back to my lab and put things away before they turn off the electricity to it," he said.

"Good idea. Might as well tidy up in my own place." Something flickered darkly in the girl's eyes. "It'll take our minds off--"

Off gloom, and cold, and the domes turned to blocks of ice, and a final night gaping before all men. Off the chasm of loneliness between the Hill and the Earth.

They were back in the chemical section when Alemán came out of his lab. The little man's olive skin had turned a dirty gray.

"What is it?" Gilchrist stopped, and something knotted hard in his guts.

"_Madre de Díos--_" Alemán licked sandy lips. "We are finished."

"It's not that bad," said Catherine.

"You do not understand!" he shrieked. "Come here!"

They followed him into his laboratory. He mumbled words about having checked a hunch, but it was his hands they watched. Those picked up a Geiger counter and brought it over to a wall and traced the path of a buried heating pipe.

The clicking roared out.

* * * * *

"Beta emission," said Gilchrist. His mouth felt cottony.

"How intense?" whispered Catherine.

Gilchrist set up an integrating counter and let it run for a while. "Low," he said. "But the dosage is cumulative. A week of this, and we'll begin to show the effects. A month, and we're dead."

"There's always some small beta emission from the pipes," said the girl. "A little tritium gets formed down in the pile room. It's ... never been enough to matter."

"Somehow, the pile's beginning to make more H-3, then." Gilchrist sat down on a bench and stared blankly at the floor.

"The laws of nature--" Alemán had calmed down a bit, but his eyes were rimmed with white.

"Yes?" asked Catherine when he stopped. She spoke mostly to fend off the silence.