David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

Saul nodded. His mind was already racing ahead. “The newly formed comet’s surface, exposed to space, would remain cold… an insulating blanket. Even if most of the interior were molten water, the heat wouldn’t escape.”

“Right! Of course it works only under certain conditions. You need a very large comet, like Halley, and lots of salts or free electrolytes, as we have found here:”

Unconsciously, Saul lifted all his slight weight off the floor by stretching his hands against the table. His body was tense from too much lab work and too little exercise. Perhaps soon he would have to accept Mike Cruz’s offer to teach him spaceball.

“How long does this T Tauri phase last?”

“A few million years. Not very long. But long enough to create these deep chambers we found! And with all that electricity running around, it’s easy to see how so many compounds got separated into thin veins all over the core!”

Quiverian clearly had a right to be elated. The man had envied Saul his discovery and attention in the Earthside press, but now he had reported an achievement of his own. It would doubtless be a sensation, especially in the Brazilian papers.

“Congratulations, Joao,” Saul said sincerely. “This is really tremendous. Can I have this copy of your reference list to look over?”

“Take it. Take it. I have already sent a preliminary report.”

Ideas were fizzing like sparkles of gas in Saul’s mind. “I think this will help me in my own studies, Joao.”

“I’m glad. But you know, this is going to require a very complex computer simulation. I don’t want to request Earth assistance until this thing is better developed.

“Can you help, Saul? You are good at that sort of thing.”

Saul shrugged. “As a dilettante, I guess. But one of the greatest experts is on this very watch crew with us, Joao. Why not ask Virginia Herbert?”

Quiverian looked uncomfortable. “I do not think this Herbert woman would be very cooperative. Her type…” He shook his head, letting the implication hang.

Saul was pretty sure he understood what the man meant. He had heard it before.

“Their kind has always been a problem.”

“Their kind…”

Quiverian shifted nervously. “These Percells are a closed, uncooperative lot, Saul. I don’t think she would be willing to help a scientist from my country.”

Saul could only shake his head. “I’ll talk to her and let you know, Joao. What do you say we meet here again for lunch, tomorrow. And we’ll include Nicholas in the discussion.”

He was grateful when Quiverian merely nodded moodily and sighed. “I shall be here.”

As Saul left, the planetologist was staring at the slowly turning holographic glow, his sharp features bathed in colored shadows. It occurred to Saul, then, that Quiverian was not looking particularly well.

The fellow really ought to get more sleep. It might improve his outlook on life.

An hour later, Saul was at work in front of his own display, mumbling instructions into a subvocal mike and fumbling with the computer grips, struggling to keep up.

Ideas were coming faster than he could note them down, let alone integrate them into the new model. Every time he explored one aspect, a whole vista of unexpected ramifications would leap out at him.

It was the true creative process—a sort of divine, nervous transport—as painful as it was exalting.

But he could almost see it. There it was—flickering like a willo’-the-wisp—a light glimpsed across a fog-swirled swamp. A theory. A hypothesis.

A way that a mystery might have come to Comet Halley.

Saul had sorted through terabytes of raw data the expedition had accumulated about the comet, tracing ingredients as they might have been stocked in the sun’s early pantry. They were all there, but the right kitchen had been lacking.

Joao Quiverian’s references seemed to offer the crucible Saul had been looking for.

The T Tauri phase …Saul mused. In its infancy, the sun was an unruly child . In those days, the star’s breath had been charged and hot.

So there had been electricity—great. But how much, for how long?

There were hydrogen cyanide and carbon dioxide and water—as must have saturated the primitive atmosphere of Earth—so the basic amino acids would have formed quickly. But the next steps would be harder.

The three-dimensional network of interrelationships on his central display grew more and more unwieldy, a towering, tottering edifice built up from tacked-together assumptions .

“Ach! May your goats chew on cordite and then give you copious milk!”

He cursed the machine in Arabic, a more satisfying tongue for such purposes than English. His fingers felt like clumsy sausages, and the arcane math he had brought in from the astronomy papers danced just outside of reach. He couldn’t quite integrate the equations into the overall scheme he had in mind.

For one hour, two, three, he pushed away at it. But the damn thing just wouldn’t gel.

Saul tried brute force, pulling in block after block of external memory, more and still more parallel processors to iterate the problem. It was far from an elegant approach…more like looking for a house in the dark by sending a herd of elephants stampeding into the night, hoping to learn something from the sound of splintering wood.

I’m doing this all wrong. I should go and have a beer. Listen to some Bach. Tune the wall to show a Polynesian sunset. Let it sit.

Saul drummed his fingers.

Maybe I should ask for help.

He sat there in the web-chair, weary not so much in the body as in the mind, in the heart.

This was the only joy left in his life, the quest for mysteries. And still he felt like a small boy—frustrated and vexed—whenever Nature seemed to want to wrestle with him, to make him wheedle and cajole her secrets out of her, instead of surrendering them easily, without a fight.

How many of life’s pleasures are painful in the actual process? Miriam, forgive me, but you always knew that I loved Life, Nature, just a little more than you and the children, didn’t I?

And here I am, getting cranky because my oldest love won’t put out again.

Saul blinked and sat up. The sudden movement sent him hovering over the webbing, but he hardly noticed.

What in the…

Unbelievably, something was happening on the display right before his eyes. A ripple of change.

It started off in the upper right quadrant of the computation. All at once, elements had begun to grow fuzzy around the edges. Indistinct, random bits jostled one another. Then, impossibly, the Gordian knot of logic began unraveling!

At first he thought the entire mess was falling apart of its own inertia.

Then he changed his mind.

Minnie, mother of pearl…

Out of chaos, simplicity was taking shape. Out of ugliness—beauty!

It was like watching a solution precipitate into a gorgeous, growing crystal. Wonderful… yes. Too wonderful.

Something or somebody was intervening, he decided. And Saul quickly realized something else: that this whoever… or whatever… was clearly a lot smarter than he.

Equations cleaved, as if sliced by RNA nuclease. The pieces fell apart, while he stared. They arrayed themselves in stacks, row by row, piling neatly into a glowing pyramid of logic. And at the apex…

Saul breathed rapidly as he looked at the culminating formula. He could feel his own pulse pound.

“I’m sorry I interfered without asking permission, Saul. But you were stomping all through the data system by the time I noticed. Sooner or later you were bound to set of alarms.”

Saul found his voice.