Lifeline

“I have genetically altered this animal to have a dominant survival characteristic that takes advantage of its plant attributes. When it is exposed to a vacuum, the organism will increase its surface area. This allows it to capture more light and increase its ability to photosynthesize. Implanted mineral packets will allow the creature to grow—”

“In a vacuum?” interrupted Magsaysay.

“Yes. That is the point, Yoli. If this proves successful, our next step will be to have this organism grow outside. Outside! Think of the food source we could harvest.”

Sandovaal pushed through the Council of Twenty and moved right up to the viewport. The organism’s cigar-shaped body floated out of the airlock attached to a long tether. Stubby “wings” extended from either side of the meter-long body; lights outside the airlock illuminated the creature. It spun slowly as the line played out.

“By tomorrow the creature’s wings will have grown several centimeters. And in two weeks, they will extend for meters. If it survives that long.”

Sandovaal pressed his lips together and waited for the accolades. Magsaysay clasped his shoulder as the Council of Twenty nodded among themselves.

Sandovaal did not stay to participate in the political small talk. He had much more important tasks to attend to. He strolled back to the bioengineering lab modules, muttering to himself.

Sandovaal ignored the regular day/night schedule imposed by rotating shutters on the lightaxis. He worked until he had exhausted himself, realizing after several hours that it was Sunday and he could not expect his assistant Dobo to arrive, since Dobo’s wife would insist on attending Mass and relaxing with him. Sometimes Sandovaal didn’t understand other people’s priorities.

He returned to his own quarters and slept for little more than an hour before the insistent ringing of the door chime brought him awake again. He slid open the door, rubbing his eyes and automatically snapping at the short, florid-faced man waiting for him.

“Dobo, why can’t you—”

But Dobo seemed agitated and cut off Sandovaal’s words. The mere fact that his assistant would dare to interrupt brought Sandovaal to silence. “Dr. Sandovaal, you must come to the viewport end! Quickly! Something strange and wonderful has happened. Perhaps you can tell us what it is. The others are gathering there.”

Dobo turned and hurried back to his waiting jeepney before Sandovaal could say anything. His curiosity piqued, Sandovaal joined him. As they drove, he could see other Filipinos jetting or pedaling their way across the core to the cap on the cylinder. After parking the jeepney with the other vehicles at the wall, Dobo cleared a way through the crowd for Sandovaal.

Pressing his face against the hexagonal quartz sections, Sandovaal stared in astounded silence. He saw the familiar sea of stars, the glints of nearby debris at L-4, where the first superstructure for the new station Orbitech 2 was under construction, the great glare of the gibbous Moon.

But he also saw a giant, translucent wisp of material covering part of the viewport. It seemed extraordinarily thin, yet extended for kilometers. Fragments hundreds of meters across tore away due to the colony’s rotation and hovered in the L-4 gravity well, where they would drift under pressure from the solar wind.

Many other people watched the flimsy material, fascinated, possibly frightened. Some looked toward Sandovaal, as if expecting him to produce a comprehensive answer after only a simple glance. He saw President Magsaysay alighting from a jeepney.

Sandovaal turned to Dobo. “Well, has anyone thought to have a piece brought inside for analysis?”

When Sandovaal did complete his inspection in the laboratory—with Magsaysay and some of the senators from the Council of Twenty breathing down his neck—he discovered that the transgenetic organism had grown far beyond even his wildest estimate.

Months later, in a simultaneous announcement to Nature and the New York Times, Dr. Luis Sandovaal presented his discovery. The original creature looked not unlike a manta ray. It puttered around, swimming in the zero-G core, eating small amounts of wall-kelp and photosynthesizing, completely innocuous. But when ejected into the hard vacuum of space, it underwent a drastic survival measure—a transformation in which its volume expanded to maximize surface area. The tiny flippers in the body core crushed down and smeared out into a layer only a few cells thick. This let it absorb as many solar photons as possible for photosynthesis. The end result was a beautiful, but thoroughly impractical wing-like body spanning scores of kilometers: a giant organic solar sail that could live on its metabolic reserves for perhaps weeks.

Sandovaal did not admit that he had failed to produce a radical new food source—the tissue proved too thin to be of use—but instead played up the basic discovery in the field of transgenetic biology.