Who Mourns for Methuselah?
Chapter 7
"I can't believe you!" Atom yelled at his brother. "Since when have we ever just thrown in the towel! We can't just abandon mankind and the Earth! And that goes for you too!" he said giving Uran the evil eye.
Uran returned the same glance to Atom.
"Who says I've given up? I need to study the biology of those worms. Somehow I think they hold the key to all of our problems." She said, walking out of the office.
"Uran's abilities to communicate with animals has always freaked me out." Cobalt said. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear she's already had some kind of ESP contact with those worms."
Atom watched his sister walk out of the office. He face palmed when he realized that he had actually admired her butt wiggle as she walked.
"You might be right about that, Cobalt. The look on her face when we were in that worm tunnel was strange. Not only that, I don't think she was afraid when we ran into face to face into a worm. I flew us the hell out of there the instant I saw that mouth full of sharp teeth, but Uran seemed calm the whole time. She might have been in telepathic contact with the creature."
Atom paced back and forth.
"So what the heck are we going to do about this?" He demanded. "We've got the Zeroth and First laws hanging over our heads you know."
Cobalt drummed his fingers on the desk.
"I've studied the reports from Earth for weeks. The Earth's oceans are now highly polluted from hydro-carbon poisons dumped there from over a century of oil production and shipment. The Exxon Valdez was the tip of the iceberg. BP hid the real truth as to how much oil they lost in the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon accident. Almost HALF of that well's total production capacity is now sitting on the bottom of the ocean. That's enough oil to leave a pool several FEET thick covering the ENTIRE gulf! Those bastards did one heck of a PR spin, let me tell you."
"Wow, I've never seen you like this, Cobalt. You almost never get angry."
"Yeah I guess so. Hey, I could also mention the well blow out off the coast of Saudi Arabia. No one ever heard about that one 'cause the royal family put everyone to death that had any knowledge of it. They lost TWICE as much oil in that one than BP did. Now you add up all of the small scale dumping of toxic wastes over a century and a half and you can see just how mankind has turned the oceans into one huge cesspool."
"And there is nothing we can do about it?" Atom asked.
"I'm afraid not. Hydrocarbons are some of the most toxic stuff to life, Bro. They take years to break down, almost nothing living can stomach them, and when they do break down into simpler molecules the stuff is usually even more toxic. The bizarre thing is that hydrocarbons are formed when the remains of living plants and animals break down over millions of years under extreme conditions. Nature turns harmless carbohydrates into deadly hydrocarbons. If only there were a way to run the cycle in reverse then we could clean up the oceans. The best minds on two planets haven't been able to come up with the answer."
Uran carried three of the thumpers with her as she flew over the waste lands of Mar's undeveloped far side. She had a strap on jet pack on her back so she could fly like her brother Atom. To protect herself from the blowing sand she wore desert garb like the Arab Bedouins on Earth. As a result, a few of the terraforming workers had started jokingly calling her Maud'Dib, after the character in the Frank Herbert, Dune novel.
Like the Freemen in the novel, she wasn't afraid of the giant worms, and had learned how to deal with them using many of the techniques from the story. First she placed the three thumpers at equal-distant points, turned them on and then waited. It usually took less than 15 minutes for a worm to break the surface. She learned that just as in the novels, she could capture a worm by driving a wedge between the folds in the segments of its skin. Once the folds opened up, the worm wouldn't attempt to dive back under the sand because it would injure itself from the friction. She had to hid from view until the worm had moved past her, then she could run up to it and drive the wedge in. She carried a few long poles with the wooden wedges on the ends with her along with the thumpers. The final trick was a pair of metal hooks attached to long ropes. Uran tossed them up and hooked the worm at two places just behind the head. She pulled herself up on the worms back, and then standing just behind its head, was able to ride it across the sand for miles.
She would keep a worm moving until it tired out. Then she was able to draw some of its body fluids and get a tissue sample. Finally, she detached the hooks from its skin, removed the wedges and climbed down from the worm's back. Uran then flew away and allowed the worm to return underground to recover from its ordeal.
She also collected samples of worm poop, belch, and upchuck. While the idea might sound disgusting, Uran needed to understand what the worms ate, and how their bodies processed their meals. That, along with the bio-samples she removed gave her the raw materials needed to understand the Mars sandworm biology.
Towards the end of the month Uran struck pay dirt. She came upon a dying worm that had breached itself. She contacted Atom by radio and gave him instructions. Atom flew to the site carrying the equipment that Uran asked for. They set up a large tent over the worm carcass to keep it from drying out in the sun. The two of them then used the power tools that Atom carried over to dissect the animal. Uran took a large collection of pictures detailing the anatomy of the worm, and they tried to preserve as much of the organs as possible in airtight jars. Now that she had detailed specimens to work with, Uran started the laboratory work to analyze them and come up with the answers that she needed.
Cobalt walked into the building housing Uran's laboratory. The huge space had been built to house earth moving machinery, but was for the present being used as an exobiology laboratory. Lying to one side, and taking up almost half of the space, were most of the remains of a dead Martian sand worm stored in several dozen refrigerated lockers. Uran sat in front of an electron microscope, examining a specimen.
"Yuck, it smells funky in here!" Cobalt said.
"Is the first time you've been in here to check up on my work?" Uran asked.
"I think so. I said I'd give you a month, and I decided not to get in the way until the time was up. Well it's almost up now. So how is your research going?" Cobalt asked. "We need to make a decision quickly about the far side of the planet."
"I'm very close to making a breakthrough discovery. I need a little more time." Uran pleaded.
"What kind of discover, and how much more time." Cobalt asked.
"I've been trying to figure out the metabolic cycle of these worms. They seem to be able to recycle many forms of primitive compounds into forms compatible with higher forms of life." she said.
"Give me an example." Cobalt replied.
"You know that the early exploration of the planet showed it still had some ancient forms of simple compounds of hydrogen and carbon deep in the planets core. Just like on Earth there is frozen methane buried deep underground, where ancient Martian oceans are now frozen."
"Yes, the water supply that we discovered. I know about that." Cobalt said.
"Well, I'm almost certain that the worms can dive deep through the the Martian subterranean to reach those layers. I suspect they thrive on that ancient methane, and other simple hydrocarbons. What they excrete are simple carbohydrates. Humans would get intoxicated if they drink worm piss, it's ethanol."
Cobalt took a few seconds to digest the information. "Can you document this biology in detail? I need the scientific proof on this."
"Yes, but that will take me a few weeks." Uran said.
"You've got it." Cobalt laughed.
"What's going on?" Uran asked. "There's something you're not telling me."
"I'd rather wait till I have the details, but what you've just described to me sounds like the miracle I didn't dare hope for. I think you were right all along. You may have just discovered the secret to saving the Earth!" Cobalt said. Then he did something that he never did in all his life. He gave Uran a big hug and kissed her on the lips.
Atom walked in just in time to see his siblings in a face suck.
"WHOA! Incest! I didn't need to see that!" Atom laughed.
Uran pushed Cobalt aside. "It's not what you think!" She insisted.
Cobalt blushed and looked at his brother innocently. "I was just overcome by the moment. I think Maud'Dib here has come up with a miracle."
"You don't know how appropriate that nickname is" Uran laughed. "Herbert came to my rescue here. His description of the Dune sandworms and the way the Freemen handled them actually apply quite well to the Martian variety. I'd never had been successful with my research on these worms if I hadn't read Dune."
Atom had managed to make some progress with the Terraforming operation during the six weeks that Uran had been doing her research on the Martian sandworms. It was slow going because they had to use passive means of looking for safe passages through the Martian dessert. They also lost some time while the hydrogen diesel engines of the heavy equipment were replaced by fuel cell electric motors, which didn't produce the low frequency vibrations that attracted the worms.
Cobalt had managed to placate the NASA directors on Earth and had been granted a delay in the Terraforming schedule by hinting of a breakthrough discovery that would give Earth some more time. Cobalt was respected enough by the Earth command to get away with such a request, but he knew they'd want concrete facts, and soon.
Just when he thought that his time was up, and Earth command would demand a response from him, Uran walked into his office with the biggest smile on her face. Atom was right behind her, with a grin on his face as well.
"We did it!" Uran said, slamming a stack of looseleaf notebooks, and several optical storage disks on his desk.
"What's this?" Cobalt asked.
"All the gory details." Atom said. "I helped Uran on the computer, we prepared the required data in several formats. It's all here, in hard copy and electric media. You also have it on the network under your home directory."
Cobalt's fingers danced on his computer and quickly found the index file for the HTML formated version of the report. He was a speed reader and absorbed the info as fast as the computer would present it. The expression on his face went from one of a man deep in thought, to that of a kid who had just broken into a candy store. He couldn't contain the grin on his face.
"Holy Moses!" Cobalt said. "I don't believe this!"
Uran grinned and started to explain.
"The Martian sandworms have been living on this planet, in the same form that we see them now for millions of years. I think that they might have been dormant, waiting for the planet to warm up again. We probably woke them from their deep slumber with our exploration and terraforming operations. Their biology is geared to the consumption of raw hydrocarbons which they transform into carbohydrates. I've run the chemistry analysis many times. Their bodies could eat raw petroleum crude and transform it into ethanol or simple sugars. They can survive underwater, they don't have lungs, but rather an organ that resembles primitive gills that can extract oxygen from air or water. If we dump a few hundred of these guys into the Earth's oceans they'll act like the snails and catfish that are used in aquarium tanks to clean up fish garbage. They can process all that oil pollution into harmless carbohydrates. They will reproduce and multiply in the Earth's oceans until all of the pollution is gone."
"Then we have another problem to solve." Cobalt sighed. "We have to figure out how to capture a few hundred worms and transport them safely to Earth."
Cobalt explained Uran's discovery to Earth command. He transmitted all of the data electronically, along with a proposal prepared by Uran and himself to capture several hundred juvenile Mars sandworms and transport them to Earth. It would be necessary to build many giant transport ships and assemble them in Mars orbit. Getting the worms up to the ship would require ferrying them up one at a time. A rush order was placed to convert several 0.7C ships into cargo service. By Cobalt's estimate they could be ready to start transport of the first worms in one Mars year, if the space ship contractors on Earth worked double shifts and over time.
Now it would be up to Uran to figure out how to capture the worms and house them until the transportation was ready. She also needed to figure out how to keep them alive during the month long trip to Earth. The Terraforming operations were not abandoned, but the rush to get that job done was no longer present. Hope for Earth's survival now rested on Uran to deliver the worms, and for their biology to actually be able to undo what man had done to the planet.
