Foundation and Earth

Only then did he signal for entry into the ship. He welcomed the hiss and feel of air coming into the lock as the inner door opened. Its coolness and its convective powers would carry off the warmth of the space suit far more quickly than radiation alone would do. It might have been imagination, but he felt the cooling effect at once. Imagination or not, he welcomed that, too.

"Off with your suit, Janov, and leave it out here in the lock," said Trevize.

"If you don't mind," said Pelorat, "a shower is what I would like to have before anything else."

"Not before anything else. In fact, before that, and before you can empty your bladder, even, I suspect you will have to talk to Bliss."

Bliss was waiting for them, of course, and with a look of concern on her face. Behind her, peeping out, was Fallom, with her hands clutching firmly at Bliss's left arm.

"What happened?" Bliss asked severely. "What's been going on?"

"Guarding against infection," said Trevize dryly, "so I'll be turning on the ultraviolet radiation. Break out the dark glasses. Please don't delay."

With ultraviolet added to the wall illumination, Trevize took off his moist garments one by one and shook them out, turning them in one direction and another.

"Just a precaution," he said. "You do it, too, Janov. And, Bliss, I'll have to peel altogether. If that will make you uncomfortable, step into the next room."

Bliss said, "It will neither make me uncomfortable, nor embarrass me. I have a good notion of what you look like, and it will surely present me with nothing new. What infection?"

"Just a little something that, given its own way," said Trevize, with a deliberate air of indifference, "could do great damage to humanity, I think."

68.

IT was all done. The ultraviolet light had done its part. Officially, according to the complex films of information and instructions that had come with the Far Star when Trevize had first gone aboard back on Terminus, the light was there precisely for purposes of disinfection. Trevize suspected, however, that the temptation was always there, and sometimes yielded to, to use it for developing a fashionable tan for those who were from worlds where tans were fashionable. The light was, however, disinfecting, however used.

They took the ship up into space and Trevize maneuvered it as close to Melpomenia's sun as he might without making them all unpleasantly uncomfortable, turning and twisting the vessel so as to make sure that its entire surface was drenched in ultraviolet.

Finally, they rescued the two space suits that had been left in the lock and examined them until even Trevize was satisfied.

"All that," said Bliss, at last, "for moss. Isn't that what you said it was, Trevize? Moss?"

"I call it moss," said Trevize, "because that's what it reminded me of. I'm not a botanist, however. All I can say is that it's intensely green and can probably make do on very little light-energy."

"Why very little?"

"The moss is sensitive to ultraviolet and can't grow, or even survive, in direct illumination. Its spores are everywhere and it grows in hidden corners, in cracks in statuary, on the bottom surface of structures, feeding on the energy of scattered photons of light wherever there is a source of carbon dioxide."

Bliss said, "I take it you think they're dangerous."

"They might well be. If some of the spores were clinging to us when we entered, or swirled in with us, they would find illumination in plenty without the harmful ultraviolet. They would find ample water and an unending supply of carbon dioxide."

"Only 0.03 percent of our atmosphere," said Bliss.

"A great deal to them-and 4 percent in our exhaled breath. What if spores grew in our nostrils, and on our skin? What if they decomposed and destroyed our food? What if they produced toxins that killed us? Even if we labored to kill them but left some spores alive, they would be enough, when carried to another world by us, to infest it, and from there be carried to other worlds. Who knows what damage they might do?"

Bliss shook her head. "Life is not necessarily dangerous because it is different. You are so ready to kill."

"That's Gaia speaking," said Trevize.

"Of course it is, but I hope I make sense, nevertheless. The moss is adapted to the conditions of this world. Just as it makes use of light in small quantities but is killed by large; it makes use of occasional tiny whiffs of carbon dioxide and may be killed by large amounts. It may not be capable of surviving on any world but Melpomenia."

"Would you want me to take a chance on that?" demanded Trevize.

Bliss shrugged. "Very well. Don't be defensive. I see your point. Being an Isolate, you probably had no choice but to do what you did."

Trevize would have answered, but Fallom's clear high-pitched voice broke in, in her own language.

Trevize said to Pelorat, "What's she saying?"

Pelorat began, "What Fallom is saying-"