Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus Read online

3. Yeast!

  LUCKY'S EXPRESSION REMAINED IMPASSIVE. Not by SO

  much as an eye flicker did he betray any concern. "Details, please," he said.

  Morriss was smiling again, half his mouth hidden by his preposterous Venusian mustache. "Not here, I'm afraid. "

  "Name your place, then. "

  "One moment. " Morriss looked at his watch. "In just about a minute, the show will begin. There'll be dancing by sealight. "

  "Sealight?"

  "The globe above will shine dim green. People will get up to dance. We will get up with them and quietly leave. "

  "You sound as though we are in danger at the moment. "

  Morriss said gravely, "You are. I assure you that since you entered Aphrodite, our men have never let you out of their sight. "

  A genial voice rang out suddenly. It seemed to come from the crystal centerpiece on the table. From the direction in which other diners turned their attention, it obviously came from the crystal centerpiece on every table.

  It said, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Green Room. Have you eaten well? For your added pleasure, the management is proud to present the magnetonic rhythms of Tobe Tobias and his-"

  As the voice spoke, the lights went out and the remainder of its words were drowned in a rising sigh of wonder that came from the assembled guests, most of whom were fresh from Earth. The aquarium globe in the ceiling was suddenly a luminous emerald green and the sea-ribbon glow was sharply brilliant. The globe assumed a faceted appearance so that, as it turned, drifting shadows circled the room in a soft, almost hypnotic fashion. The sound of music, drawn almost entirely from the weird, husky sound boxes of a variety of magnetonic instruments, grew louder. The notes were produced by rods of various shapes being moved in skillful patterns through the magnetic field that surrounded each instrument.

  Men and women were rising to dance. There was the rustle of much motion and the sibilance of laughing whispers. A touch on Lucky's sleeve brought first him, and then Bigman, to their feet.

  Lucky and Bigman followed Morriss silently. One by one, grim-faced figures fell in behind them. It was almost as though they were materializing out of the draperies. They remained far enough away to look innocent, but each, Lucky felt sure, had his hand near the butt of a blaster. No mistake about it. Mel Morriss of the Venusian section of the Council of Science took the situation very much in earnest.

  Lucky looked about Morriss's apartment with approval. It was not lavish, although it was comfortable. Living in it, one could forget that a hundred yards above was a translucent dome beyond which was a hundred yards of shallow, carbonated ocean, followed by a hundred miles of alien, unbreathable atmosphere.

  What actually pleased Lucky most was the collection of book films that overflowed one alcove.

  He said, "You're a biophysicist, Dr. Morriss?" Automatically, he used the professional title.

  Morriss said, "Yes. "

  "I did biophysical work myself at the academy," said Lucky.

  "I know," said Morriss. "I read your paper. It was good work. May I call you David, by the way?"

  "It's my first name," conceded the Earthman, "but everyone calls me lucky. "

  Bigman, meanwhile, had opened one of the film holders, unreeled a bit of the film, and held it to the light. He shuddered and replaced it.

  He said belligerently to Morriss, "You sure don't look like a scientist. "

  "I imagine not," said Morriss, unoffended. "That helps, you know. "

  Lucky knew what he meant. In these days, when science really permeated all human society and culture, scientists could no longer restrict themselves to their laboratories. It was for that reason that the Council of Science had been born. Originally it was intended only as an advisory body to help the government on matters of galactic importance, where only trained scientists could have sufficient information to make intelligent decisions. More and more it had become a crime-fighting agency, a counterespionage system. Into its own hands it was drawing more and more of the threads of government. Through its activities there might grow, someday, a great Empire of the Milky Way in which all men might live in peace and harmony.

  So it came about that, as members of the Council had to fulfill many duties far removed from pure science, it was better for their success if they didn't look par- ticularly like scientists-as long, that is, as they had the brains of scientists.

  Lucky said, "Would you begin, sir, by filling me in on the details of the troubles here?"

  "How much were you told on Earth?"

  "The barest sketch. I would prefer to trust the man on the scene for the rest. "

  Morriss smiled with more than a trace of irony. "Trust the man on the scene? That's not the usual attitude of the men in the central office. They send their own trouble shooters, and men such as Evans arrive. "

  "And myself, too," said Lucky.

  "Your case is a little different. We all know of your accomplishments on Mars last year [1] and the good piece of work you've just finished in the asteroids. " [2]

  Bigman crowed, "You should have been with Mm if you think you know allabout it. "

  Lucky reddened slightly. He said hastily, "Never mind now, Bigman. Let's not have any of your yarns. "

  They were all in large armchairs, Earth-manufactured, soft and comfortable. There was something about the reflected sound of their voices that, to Lucky's practiced ear, was good evidence that the apartment was insulated and spy-shielded.

  Morriss lit a cigarette and offered one to the others but was refused. "How much do you know about Venus, Lucky?"

  Lucky smiled. "The usual things one learns in school. Just to go over a few things quickly, it's the second closest planet to the sun and is about sixty-seven million miles from it. It's the closest world to Earth and can come to within twenty-six million miles of the home planet. It's just a little smaller than Earth, with a gravity about five sixths Earth-normal. It goes around the sun in about seven and a half months and its day is about thirty-six hours long. It's surface temperature is a little higher than Earth's but not much, because of the clouds. Also because of the clouds, it has no seasons to speak of. It is covered by ocean, which is, in turn, covered with seaweed. Its atmosphere is carbon dioxide and nitrogen and is unbreathable. How is that, Dr. Morriss?"

  "You pass with high marks," said the biophysicist, "but I was asking about Venusian society rather than about the planet itself. "

  "Well, now, that's more difficult. I know, of course, that humans live in domed cities in the shallower parts of the ocean, and, as I can see for myself, Venusian city life is quite advanced-far beyond Martian city life, for instance. "

  Bigman yelled, "Hey!"

  Morriss turned his little twinkling eyes on the Martian. "You disagree with your friend?"

  Bigman hesitated. "Well, maybe not, but he doesn't have to say so. "

  Lucky smiled and went on, "Venus is a fairly developed planet. I think there are about fifty cities on it and a total population of six million. Your exports are dried seaweed, which I am told is excellent fertilizer, and dehydrated yeast bricks for animal food. "

  "Still fairly good," said Morriss. "How was your dinner at the Green Room, gentlemen?"

  Lucky paused at the sudden change of topic, then said, "Very good. Why do you ask?"

  "You'll see in a moment. What did you have?"

  Lucky said, "I couldn't say, exactly. It was the house meal. I should guess we had a kind of beef goulash with a rather interesting sauce and a vegetable I didn't recognize. There was a fruit salad, I believe, before that and a spicy variety of tomato soup. "

  Bigman broke in. "And jelly seeds for dessert. "

  Morriss laughed hootingly. "You're all wrong, you know," he said. "You had no beef, no fruit, no tomatoes. Not even coffee. You had only one thing to eat. Only one thing. Yeast!"

  "What?" shrieked Bigman.

  For a moment Lucky was startled also. His eyes narrow
ed and he said, "Are you serious?"

  "Of course. It's the Green Room's specialty. They never speak of it, or Earthmen would refuse to eat it. Later on, though, you would have been questioned thoroughly as to how you liked this dish or that, how you thought it might have been improved, and so on. The Green Room is Venus's most valuable experimental station. "

  Bigman screwed up his small face and yelled vehemently, "I'll have the law on them. I'll make a Council case of it. They can't feed me yeast without telling me, like I was a horse or a cow-or a. . . "

  He ended in a flurry of sputtering.

  "I am guessing," said Lucky, "that yeast has some connection with the crime wave on Venus. "

  "Guessing, are you?" said Morriss, dryly. "Then you haven't read our official reports. I'm not surprised. Earth thinks we are exaggerating here. I assure you, however, we are not. And it isn't merely a crime wave. Yeast, Lucky, yeast! That is the nub and core of everything on this planet. "

  A self-propelled tender had rolled into the living room with a bubbling percolator and three cups of steaming coffee upon it. The tender stopped at Lucky first, then Bigman. Morriss took the third cup, put his lips to it, then wiped his large mustache appreciatively.

  "It will add cream and sugar if you wish, gentlemen," he said.

  Bigman looked and sniffed. He said to Morriss with sharp suspicion, "Yeast?"

  "No. Real coffee this time. I swear it. "

  For a moment they sipped in silence; then Morriss said, "Venus, Lucky, is an expensive world to keep up. Our cities must make oxygen out of water, and that takes huge electrolytic stations. Each city requires tremendous power beams to help support the domes against billions of tons of water. The city of Aphrodite uses as much energy in a year as the entire continent of South America, yet it has only a thousandth the population.

  "We've got to earn that energy, naturally. We've got to export to Earth in order to obtain power plants, specialized machinery, atomic fuel, and so on. Venus's only product is seaweed, inexhaustible quantities of it. Some we export as fertilizer, but that is scarcely the answer to the problem. Most of our seaweed, however, we use as culture media for yeast, ten thousand and one varieties of yeast. "

  Bigman's lip curled. "Changing seaweed to yeast isn't much of an improvement. "

  "Did you find your last meal satisfactory?" asked Morriss.

  "Please go on, Dr. Morriss," said Lucky.

  Morriss said, "Of course, Mr. Jones is quite cor. . . "

  "Call me Bigman!"

  Morriss looked soberly at the small Martian and said, "If you wish. Bigman is quite correct in his low opinion of yeast in general. Our most important strains are suitable only for animal food. But even so, it's highly useful. Yeast-fed pork is cheaper and better than any other kind. The yeast is high in calories, proteins, minerals, and vitamins.

  "We have other strains of higher quality, which are used in cases where food must be stored over long periods and with little available space. On long space journeys, for instance, so-called Y-rations are frequently taken.

  "Finally, we have our top-quality strains, extremely expensive and fragile growths that go into the menus of the Green Room and with which we can imitate or improve upon ordinary food. None of these are in quantity production, but they will be someday. I imagine you see the whole point of all this, Lucky. "

  "I think I do. "

  "I don't," said Bigman belligerently.

  Morriss was quick to explain. "Venus will have a monopoly on these luxury strains. No other world will possess them. Without Venus's experience in zymoculture. . . "

  "In what?" asked Bigman.

  "In yeast culture. Without Venus's experience in that, no other world could develop such yeasts or maintain them once they did obtain them. So you see that Venus could build a tremendously profitable trade in yeast strains as luxury items with all the galaxy. That would be important not only to Venus, but to Earth as well- to the entire Solar Confederation. We are the most over populated system in the Galaxy, being the oldest. If we could exchange a pound of yeast for a ton of grain, things would be well for us. "

  Lucky had been listening patiently to Morriss's lecture. He said, "For the same reason, it would be to the interest of a foreign power, which was anxious to weaken Earth, to ruin Venus's monopoly of yeast. "

  "You see that, do you? I wish I could persuade the rest of the Council of this living and ever-present danger. If growing strains of yeast were stolen along with some of the knowledge of our developments in yeast culture, the results could be disastrous. "

  "Very well," said Lucky, "then we come to the important point: Have such thefts occurred?"

  "Not yet," said Morriss grimly. "But for six months now we have had a rash of petty pilfering, odd accidents, and queer incidents. Some are merely annoying, or even funny, like the case of the old man who threw half-credit pieces to children and then went frantically to the police, insisting he had been robbed. When witnesses came forward to show that he had given the money away, he nearly went mad with fury, insisting that he had done no such thing. There are more serious accidents, too, like that in which a freight-roller operator released a half-ton bale of weed at the wrong time and killed two men. He insisted later that he had blacked out. "

  Bigman squealed excitedly, "Lucky! The pilots on the coaster claimed they blacked out. "

  Morriss nodded, "Yes, and I'm almost glad it happened as long as the two of you survived. The Council on Earth may be a bit readier to believe there is something behind all this. "

  "I suppose," said Lucky, "you suspect hypnotism. "

  Morriss drew his lips into a grim, humorless smile. "Hypnotism is a mild word, Lucky. Do you know of any hypnotist who can exert his influence at a distance over unwilling subjects? I tell you that some person or persons on Venus possesses the power of complete mental domination over others. They are exerting this power, practicing it, growing more adept in its use. With every day it will grow more difficult to fight them. Perhaps it is already too late!"