Isaac Asimov - The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories

“You will die, too,” Annette managed to say.

“Of course. Once I am forced to do something like this, would I want to live? I’m not a murderer.”

“But you will be. If you flood this unit, you will flood all of Ocean-Deep and kill everyone in it—and doom those who are out in their subs to slower death. Fifty men and women—an unborn child—”

“That is not my fault,” said Demerest, in clear pain. “I did not expect to find a pregnant woman here, but now that I have, I can’t stop because of that.”

“But you must stop,” said Bergen. “Your plan won’t work unless what happens can be shown to be an accident. They’ll find you with a beam emitter in your hand and with the manual controls clearly tampered with. Do you think they won’t deduce the truth from that?”

Demerest was feeling very tired. “Mr. Bergen, you sound desperate. Listen—When the outer door opens, water under a thousand atmospheres of pressure will enter. It will be a massive battering ram that will destroy and mangle everything in its path. The walls of the Ocean-Deep units will remain but everything inside will be twisted beyond recognition. Human beings will be mangled into shredded tissue and splintered bone and death will be instantaneous and unfelt. Even if I were to burn you to death with the laser there would be nothing left to show it had been done, so I won’t hesitate, you see. This manual unit will be smashed anyway; anything I can do will be erased by the water.”

“But the beam emitter, the laser gun. Even damaged, it will be recognizable,” said Annette.

“We use such things on the Moon, Mrs. Bergen. It is a common tool; it is the optical analogue of a jackknife. I could kill you with a jackknife, you know, but one would not deduce that a man carrying a jackknife, or even holding one with the blade open, was necessarily planning murder. He might be whittling. Besides, a Moon-made laser is not a projectile gun. It doesn’t have to withstand.an internal explosion. It is made of thin metal, mechanically weak. After it is smashed by the waterclap I doubt that it will make much sense as an object.”

Demerest did not have to think to make these statements. He had worked them out within himself through months of self-debate back on the Moon.

“In fact,” he went on, “how will the investigators ever know what happened in here? They will send ’scaphes down to inspect what is left of Ocean-Deep, but how can they get inside without first pumping the water out? They will, in effect, have to build a new Ocean-Deep and that would take—how long? Perhaps, given public reluctance to waste money, they might never do it at all and content themselves with dropping a laurel wreath on the dead walls of the dead Ocean-Deep.”

Bergen said, “The men on Luna City will know what you have done. Surely one of them will have a conscience. The truth will be known.”

“One truth,” said Demerest, “is that I am not a fool. No one on Luna City knows what I planned to do or will suspect what I have done. They sent me down here to negotiate cooperation on the matter of financial grants. I was to argue and nothing more. There’s not even a laser-beam emitter missing up there. I put this one together myself out of scrapped parts. . . . And it works. I’ve tested it.”

Annette said slowly, “You haven’t thought it through. Do you know what you’re doing?”

“I’ve thought it through. I know what I’m doing. . . . And I know also that you are both conscious of the lit signal. I’m aware of it. The air lock is empty and time’s up, I’m afraid.”

Rapidly, holding his beam emitter tensely high, he closed another contact. A circular part of the unit wall cracked into a thin crescent and rolled smoothly away.

Out of the corner of his eye, Demerest saw the gaping darkness, but he did not look. A dankly salt vapor issued from it; a queer odor of dead steam. He even imagined he could hear the flopping sound of the gathered water at the bottom of the lock.

Demerest said, “In a rational manual unit, the outer door ought to be frozen shut now. With the inner door open, nothing ought to make the outer door open. I suspect, though, that the manuals were put together too quickly at first for that precaution to have been taken, and it was replaced too quickly for that precaution to have been added. And if I need further evidence of that, you wouldn’t be sitting there so tensely if you knew the outer door wouldn’t open. I need touch one more contact and the waterclap will come. We will feel nothing. “

Annette said, “Don’t push it just yet. I have one more thing to say. You said we would have time to persuade you.”

“While the water was being pushed out.”

“Just let me say this. A minute. A minute. I said you didn’t know what you were doing. You don’t. You’re destroying the space program, the space program. There’s more to space than space.” Her voice had grown shrill.

Demerest frowned. “What are you talking about? Make sense, or I’ll end it all. I’m tired. I’m frightened. I want it over.”

Annette said, “You’re not in the inner councils of the PPC. Neither is my husband. But I am. Do you think because I am a woman that I’m secondary here? I’m not. You, Mr. Demerest, have your eyes fixed on Luna City only. My husband has his fixed on Ocean-Deep. Neither of you know anything.

“Where do you expect to go, Mr. Demerest, if you had all the money you wanted? Mars? The asteroids? The satellites of the gas giants? These are all small worlds; all dry surfaces under a blank sky. It may be generations before we are ready to try for the stars and till then we’d have only pygmy real estate. Is that your ambition?

“My husband’s ambition is no better. He dreams of pushing man’s habitat over the ocean Boor, a surface not much larger in the last analysis than the surface of the Moon and the other pygmy worlds. We of the PPC, on the other hand, want more than either of you, and if you push that button, Mr. Demerest, the greatest dream mankind has ever had will come to nothing.”

Demerest found himself interested despite himself, but he said, “You’re just babbling.” It was possible, he knew, that somehow they had warned others in Ocean-Deep, that any moment someone would come to interrupt, someone would try to shoot him down. He was, however, staring at the only opening, and he had only to close one contact, without even looking, in a second’s movement.

Annette said, “I’m not babbling. You know it took more than rocket ships to colonize the Moon. To make a successful colony possible, men had to be altered genetically and adjusted to low gravity. You are a product of such genetic engineering.”

“Well?”

“And might not genetic engineering also help men to greater gravitational pull? What is the largest planet of the Solar System, Mr. Demerest?”

“Jupi—”

“Yes, Jupiter. Eleven times the diameter of the Earth; forty times the diameter of the Moon. A surface a hundred and twenty times that of the Earth in area; sixteen hundred times that of the Moon. Conditions so different from anything we can encounter anywhere on the worlds the size of Earth or less that any scientist of any persuasion would give half his life for a chance to observe at close range.”

“But Jupiter is an impossible target.”

“Indeed?” said Annette, and even managed a faint smile. “As impossible as flying? Why is it impossible? Genetic engineering could design men with stronger and denser bones, stronger and more compact muscles. The same principles that enclose Luna City against the vacuum and Ocean-Deep against the sea can also enclose the future Jupiter-Deep against its ammoniated surroundings.”

“The gravitational field—”