Part 1

Growing Season

By F. L. WALLACE

_Why would anyone want to kill a tender of mechanized vegetation--with, of all things, a watch and a little red bird?_

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The furry little animal edged cautiously toward him, ready to scamper up a tree. But the kernel on the ground was tempting and the animal grabbed it and scurried back to safety. Richel Alsint sat motionless, enjoying himself greatly.

Outside the park in every direction were many tiers of traffic. He was the only person in the park; it was silent there except for birds. One in particular he noticed, all body, or entirely wing--it was impossible to say which at this distance--soared effortlessly overhead, a small bundle of bright blue feathers. The wings, if it had wings, didn't move at all; the bird balanced with remarkable skill on air currents. Everything about it might be small, but the voice wasn't, and it made good use of every note.

Alsint twisted his hand slowly toward the sack beside him.

In that position the ship watch was visible. There was no need to look; it was connected to the propulsion processes of the ship and would signal long before he had to be back. Nevertheless he did glance at it.

In sudden alarm, he jumped up, scattering the contents of the sack. The circle of animals fled into the underbrush and the birds stopped singing and flew away.

He left everything on the bench. It was untidy, but his life would be more untidy if he missed the ship. He ran to the aircar parked in the clearing and fumbled at the door. The bright blue bird was changing to red, but he didn't notice that.

He bounced the car straight up, sinking into the cushions with the acceleration. High above the regular levels of traffic, he located the spaceport in the distance and jammed the throttle forward. The ship was there, and as long as it was, he had a chance. Not much, though. The absence of activity on the ground indicated they were getting ready.

He dropped the aircar down as close as he could get and left it. There was no time to take the underground passage that came up somewhere near the ship. The guard at the surface gate stopped him.

"You're too late," said the attendant.

"I've got to get in!" Alsint said.

The guard recognized the uniform, but, sitting in the heavily reinforced cubicle, made no move to press the button which would allow the gate to swing open. It was a high gate and there was no way to get over it.

He grinned sourly. "Next time you'll pay attention to the signal."

There were worse times and places to argue about it, but Alsint couldn't remember them. "There wasn't any signal," he said. He caught the cynical expression on the guard's face and extended his hand. "See for yourself."

The watch was working, indicating time till takeoff, but the unmistakable glow and the irritating tingle, guaranteed to wake any man out of a sleep this side of the final one, were missing.

The guard blinked. "Never heard of that ever happening," he said. "Tell you what--I'll testify that it wasn't your fault. That'll clear you. You can get a job on the next ship and catch up with your own in a month at the most."

It wasn't that easy, nor so simple. Alsint glanced frantically at the watch. Minutes left now, though he couldn't be sure. If the signal wasn't functioning, maybe the time was wrong too. "I'll never get on that one again," he said. "It's a tag ship."

The guard scrutinized him more closely, differentiating his uniform from others similar to it. "In that case you'd better go to the traffic tower," he said reluctantly. "They'll stop it for you."

They would, but he'd waste half an hour getting past the red tape at the entrance. There were a number of reasons why he couldn't let the ship leave without him. "I know our crew," he said. "They'll be waiting for me. Let me try to get on."

The guard shrugged. "It's your funeral." Slowly the gate swung open.

Alsint dashed through. He had to hurry, but it wasn't as dangerous as the guard imagined. The watch had failed, but inside the ship was a panel which indicated the presence or absence of any crew member. That panel was near the pilot. He wouldn't take off without clearing it.

Besides, there was standard takeoff procedure--always someone at the visionport, watching for latecomers, of which there were usually a few. Alsint raised his head as he ran. He couldn't see anyone at the visionport.

Breathing heavily, he brushed against the ship. Late, but not too late. He turned the corner at the vane.

He didn't like what he saw. The ramp was up and the outer lock was closed. They were waiting for clearance from the spaceport.

His composure slipped a little. If the clearance came within the next few minutes, he'd be dead. Not that the clearance would come. A ship just didn't lift off, leaving one of the crew behind--or he hoped it didn't.

He pounded on the lock and shouted, though it was useless. Inside, they couldn't hear him. The noise frightened a little red bird which had been hovering nearby. It flew around his head, squawking shrilly.

* * * * *

Alsint scowled at it. It reminded him unpleasantly of the park. If he hadn't gone there, he'd be safe inside the ship. True, parks were rare, and people who went to them even more rare. After so many months in the ship, it had been a great temptation--for him, not the others. No one else had been interested.

Now he had to get in. A tremor ran through the hull and he realized how urgent it was. A little more of this and he would be caught under the rockets.

The airlock was smooth, but he located the approximate latching point on the outside and stripped off the watch, holding it against the ship by the band. He tried to remember and thought the face should be turned inward. He held it that way and hoped he was right. He closed his eyes and swung hard with his fist.

His hand exploded with pain and he could feel the flash on his face. The energy, which was sufficient to drive the instrument for a thousand years, dissipated in much less than a second. An instant later the hand which held the strap reacted to the heat. He dropped the useless watch and opened his eyes.

He had figured it right and he was also lucky. The energy had turned inward, as he had hoped, otherwise he'd have no hand, and the latching mechanism had been destroyed. The resulting heat had buckled the plate outward. The hull was trembling with greater violence as the takeoff rockets warmed up.

The airlock was still very hot. His fingers sizzled as he grasped the curled edge and pulled out. It moved a little. He shifted his hands for a better grip and heaved. It opened.

He scrambled inside and shut it behind him, latching it with the emergency device. Close, but it didn't matter as long as he'd made it. The ship began to rise and the acceleration forced him to kneel in the passageway between the outer and inner lock. He kept thinking of the little red bird he'd seen outside. Burned, no doubt, as he would have been.

Finally the rockets stopped and the heaviness disappeared. They were out of the atmosphere and hence the ship had shifted to interstellar drive. The heat from the rockets began to abate. He was grateful for that.

He got to his feet and staggered to the inner lock and leaned against it. That didn't open, either. He shouted. It might take time, but eventually someone would come close enough to hear him.

There was air in the passageway and he knew he could survive. It had been too hot; now it was getting cold. He shivered and shook his head in bewilderment.

None of this was the way it ought to be. It had never been difficult to get on the ship. If he didn't know better, he'd say--

But this was not the time to say that.

He didn't hear the footsteps on the other side. The lock swung in and he fell forward. His burned hands were too cold to hurt as he checked his fall.

Scantily clad, Larienne stood over him. "Playing hiding games?" she asked. She got a better look and knelt by his side. "You're hurt!"

So he was, but mostly he was tired. In the interval before he accepted the luxury of unconsciousness, the thought flashed across his mind before he could disown it: Someone on the ship was trying to take the plant away, or wanted him to fail.

Either would have been accomplished if he had been left behind.

* * * * *

He sat in his room, thinking. He wished he knew more about the crew. Six months was enough to give him wide acquaintance, but not the deep kind. They were a clannish lot on the ship. His own assistant he knew well enough, and the doctor. The captain he hardly ever saw. The rest of them he knew by sight and name, but not much else: the few married couples, the legally unattached girls, and the larger number of male technicians.

None of them, as far as he could see, had any incentive to engineer the mixup which had nearly caused him to miss the ship. Of course he might be reading into it more than was there. It could have happened that way accidentally. And then maybe it didn't.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock. "Who's there?" he called.

Larienne walked in. "Nobody asks _who_," she said. "It's always _come in_. Even I know that, and I've been on this traveling isolation ward a mere three years."

She dropped into a chair and draped her legs, long legs that were worth showing off. She had a certain air of impartiality that attracted attention. She was smart, though, and knew when to discard impartiality.

She eyed him curiously. "I'm trying to discover the secret of your popularity. That damn plant is pining for you."

"It's not me," he said. "You have to know how to handle it."

"Thanks," she said dryly. "I don't know how. But Richel Alsint, boy plant psychologist, does. He knows when to increase the circulation, when to give it an extra shot of minerals, and when, on the other hand, to scare the damn thing out of its wits, which I sometimes believe it actually has."

"Don't personalize it," he warned. "It's partly plant and partly a machine. Your mistake is that you treat it as if it were wholly a machine."

"Seems to me I've heard that before. What should I do that I don't?"

"Cycles," he said. "Rhythm. A machine doesn't need that kind of treatment, but a plant does. Normally it starts as a seed, grows to maturity, produces more seeds, and eventually dies. Our plant isn't like that, of course. It never produces seeds, and, if we're careful, doesn't die. Yet it does have something that faintly corresponds to the original cycles."

She sighed. "It might help if I knew what it was--geranium, or sunflower, or whatever."

He had told her, but apparently she didn't want to remember. "It isn't one plant. It's been made from hundreds; even I don't know what they were. One best feature from this, another strong feature from something else. We've taken plants apart and recombined them into something new. This is just--plant."

* * * * *

Larienne dropped her legs to a more comfortable if less esthetic position. "Hydroponics was simpler," she objected.

"It was," he said. "And if you want to know, old-fashioned dirt farming was even simpler. Our combination plant and machine is merely a step and a half ahead of hydroponics."

"Suppose you come out and tell me what I've done wrong," she said, getting up.

"One last thing," he said. "Remember that plants evolved on planets. No matter what we do, we can't convince the plant that it's still on a planet. Light's the easiest. As far as we know, it will grow indefinitely under our artificial light. Artificial gravity is different. I don't know the difference, and neither do the physicists, but the plant does. It can live in the ship just so long and then has to be taken out for a rest. There are other things that affect it, vibration, noise, and maybe more. You know how I have to keep after the pilot to dampen his drive. All these things change the cycle it has to have."

"Agreed," she said impatiently, meaning mostly that she didn't care. "Let's go out and look at it."

The plant was a machine and the machine was a plant. It occupied a large space in the center of the ship. And it wasn't wasted space; properly cared for, the plant could supply food for the crew indefinitely.

The plant machine evolved from earlier attempts to convert raw material and energy into food. Originally algae were used because they were hardy and simple to control. But the end product had to be processed and algae did not produce the full scale of nutrients in the proper proportion for the human diet.

Certain cells of more highly evolved plants were far more efficient in the conversion of raw materials into proteins, vitamins and the like. Originally, inedible parts were produced too, the stalk, which might or might not be used for food, and the leaves and roots. On a planet with plenty of room, this made little difference. But on an overcrowded planet, or one with a poisonous atmosphere, and especially on a ship where space was at a premium, normal methods could not be used.

In the plant machine were certain cells which had been selected because of their ability to produce a variety of nutrients. The inedible parts of the plant were replaced by machinery. Instead of roots to draw water and minerals from the soil, there were pumps and filters. Instead of stems to elevate that material to the leaves, there were hoses. Instead of entire leaves to perform photosynthesis, there were only those cells most efficient at the process. There were no seeds, tubers, roots, nor fleshy stalks to store the food. Collecting trays replaced them. There was no waste space; nothing was produced that couldn't be eaten.

There was an additional problem of reconciling the various cell fluids and different rates of growth. In part, that was accomplished by the plant machinery; the rest depended on the plant mechanic. His job was akin to that of a factory manager. In a sense, the plant machine was nothing more than a highly organized and complex factory, of which the productive units were the actual cells.

* * * * *

Alsint went along the aisles. Dials and gauges everywhere--a continuous record was kept of every stage. Each record was important, but nothing that could be reduced to a formula. The plant was not in bad shape, considering. At his instructions, Larienne made certain adjustments.

"Why reduce the light?" she asked. "I thought this unit grew better with stronger light."

"It does, within limits."

"I was within those limits."

"You were, but consider this. The plant from which these cells came grow fastest in early summer, but it isn't edible at that time. In late summer, it is. The light change merely corresponds to original conditions."

Partly convinced, she nodded. "What kind of plant was it?"

He smiled. "I don't know. It's the nth cellular descendant of some plant that once grew on Earth."

She touched a dial she had adjusted. "And on this one you reduced the fluid flow into it, and switched the output to another unit I've never seen it connected to."

"Same thing. The input corresponds to the difference between the dry and rainy seasons."

"But things grow faster with more water."

"They do, unless it happens to be a cactus."

She shook her head. "I give up. Cactus yet."

"I didn't say it was cactus. It might be, and, if so, could be very efficient in preparing water and soil minerals for use by the leaves. There aren't any leaves, of course, but that doesn't change the principle."

"Don't think I'll ever understand it," she said. "Enough to get by, but not the way you do."

She stood at his side. It was pleasant to have her there. Other things were pleasant to imagine too, but he refrained. There were married couples on the ship, just as there were unattached men and women. But when the men outnumbered the women three to one, certain conclusions were inevitable, and he had made them the first few days aboard. Unlike many of the others, he didn't expect to stay on the ship forever. In a year and a half he would either prove his point or fail.

Then he would leave. Would Larienne come with him? Maybe, but it wasn't a good bet. A liaison, no matter how easy it was to enter into, was not always easy to break. There would be time to decide about that later.

"Is everything all right?" she asked.

He glanced over the dials and mentally added them up. "Reasonably so. Yes."

"Good," she said. "Unless you need me sooner, I'll be back in about ten hours."

He nodded and she left. It was unnecessary to ask where she was going. He could tell that from her manner. They had raised a hitherto unmarked solar system and she was helping tag it.

His injured hands were aching with the effort, though Larienne had done most of the actual work. He started toward his room, and then, on another thought, turned into the dispensary. Franklan he knew better than anyone except Larienne, and he might get a fresh viewpoint from him.

* * * * *

Franklan was waiting. He had a doctor's degree from some planet, but on the ship titles were largely ignored. "The wounded hero comes back, holding our food supply precariously in his skilled hands," he said as Alsint entered.

The sarcasm was not altogether friendly, Alsint decided. Without comment, he laid his hands on the table. He did not pretend to be a hero and he was not even particularly stubborn. He had put together a plant in a better way, one that ought to withstand the rigors of tag ship service, and he intended to see that it got a fair trial.

"What do you know about ship watches?" he asked cautiously.

"Fifteen years on a tag ship, and I've never personally seen a failure. I suppose it can happen." Franklan glanced up. "It's too bad you had to destroy yours to get in. I'd like to see what an examination by our technicians would show."

The same thought that he had, though Franklan seemed to have attached the opposite meaning to it. "Interesting, isn't it?" Alsint said evenly. "But I was thinking of the connection it has to the crew panel."

Franklan bit his lip. "I hadn't considered that."

"I have. The pilot had to check the crew panel before he could take off. If he did, and saw that I was missing, why didn't he wait? If he didn't see that I wasn't inside the ship, then the panel was defective too. It's hard to believe."

Franklan filled a small tank with fluid and motioned toward it. Alsint dipped his hands in. It stung, but he could see that it had a pronounced healing effect.

Franklan was watching him narrowly. "Service on a tag ship is voluntary. It has to be, considering all the solitude we have to take. Any man can withdraw any time he wants. A lot of them do, especially in the first three years. However, bear this in mind. You've practically accused someone on the ship of trying to leave you behind. I know you do think that. And if you can produce evidence, I'll believe you. But there is one person on whom suspicion will fall first."

That was what Alsint wanted to hear. He'd gone over it in his mind and couldn't find anyone to suspect. Any clue was welcome.

"Who?" he asked.

"You," said Franklan. "If _I_ wanted to leave the tag ship service, I'd see to it that I made as graceful an exit as possible. Forced out by an accident, of course. I'd want to tell people that."

* * * * *

He might have expected that kind of attitude. Franklan was proud of the work he was associated with. Nothing wrong with that; everyone had that right. In fact, if he didn't, he had no business doing it.

However, it made things difficult for Alsint. He was on a tag ship for other reasons. He had evolved several strains of plant cells that should be especially suited for use on tag ships.

For some reason the plants on tag ships were always dying. Ships returned to inhabited planets for refueling with the machines intact but with the plants dead. The plant cells had to be replaced. It was not that the actual material was expensive. It wasn't. But the process of getting the strange cells to work together as a new unit was time-consuming and enormously costly. That was where the trouble came. The plant couldn't be fitted together like an engine.

Alsint had evolved cells that were far more viable, but the only way to test that was in actual use. He had received permission from the Bureau of Exploration to install his plant in a ship and try it for two years. If at the end of that time the plant was still alive, he had something really worthwhile. The only stipulation was that no one on the ship should know that it was a test, since they might, out of consideration for him, modify the service the ship normally went through. It had to be a true rough, tough test.

And he was getting it, in more ways than he had expected. Unless he could stay with his plant for the next year and a half, all his work would go for nothing.

He drew his hands out of the fluid. "Do you think I'm trying to run out?" he asked quietly. He had proof that he wasn't, but he couldn't use it.

Franklan shrugged. "Honestly, I don't. But I'm not blinding myself to what the others will think." He squinted professionally at the burns and dried the hands with a gentle blast of air. He picked up a large tube and squeezed a substance on them which was absorbed almost instantly. "There. You'll be all right in a few days."

"Thanks," Alsint said laconically and stood up.

As he went out the door, Franklan called after him. "If I see the captain, I'll tell him I don't think you tried to jump ship. I doubt that he'll ask. As I said, service on this ship is voluntary."

Personally, Alsint didn't care what Franklan told the captain. However, he was at a definite disadvantage. Next time they came to a planet, if he were to disappear, nobody would be overly inquisitive.

* * * * *

The tagging operation was far from complete--seven planets in the system and each had to be thoroughly investigated. Long-range investigation, of course. A tag ship rarely landed, and then only when the planet under consideration seemed extremely desirable for colonization, enough to warrant closer observation.

It didn't matter whether it had a breathable atmosphere or not, whether it was ice-bound or blazing hot. These were minor difficulties and engineering ingenuity could overcome them. There were other criteria, and it was for these that they were checked.

Alsint went out into the ship. There was a lot of activity, but much of it was invisible, electronic in nature, affecting only instruments. The ship had slipped into an orbit, the plane of which intersected the axis of planetary revolution at the most effective angle. The ship went around twice while the planet revolved three times. In that period the mineral resources were plotted and the approximate quantities of each were determined.

Larienne looked up as he came near. "This is a real find," she said cheerfully.

"I suppose you've located the heavy stuff," he said, knowing that it was a superfluous statement.

"What else would we look for?" She bent over the small torpedo shape she was working on. "Not just one, either. This is the second planet in the system with enough heavy elements to be worth settling."

"What's the gravity?" He didn't always share the enthusiasm others had for their discoveries.

"The first was 1.6. This is about 2.3. A little high for personal comfort, but with the mineral resources there, the settlers can manage."

"What about atmosphere?"

"The first hasn't much, frozen mostly. This one has chlorine in it." She grinned at him. "Your old theme, huh?"