Chapter 5

"An ark?" she repeated.

"Yes! A spacegoing ark! We don't want to go back to study them or gloat over them or any of the stuff you said. We want to rescue them!"

Her face still tear-stained, she gave him an unbelieving look. "How is that possible?" she asked.

"It can be done, Amanda," he replied. "Not all of them, of course, not even very many. But enough; and they'll bring all the others with them, in their mind. Remember, you told me when you got back from the second trip, every time a new one's born it leaves its imprint on their think-together, their collective mind. One way or another they can all go!"

"But go where? What planet do we know that could accommodate them?"

"None," he admitted. "Not now, at least. So there's only one place, we'll have to bring them home. To Earth."

She shook her head. "You're not thinking, John," she said. "The biology, remember? We couldn't eat anything there, it wouldn't nourish us, and by the same token they can't survive here. We'd just be taking them out of one kind of death to another."

"That's the beauty part, Amanda, we can bring their own stuff with them!"

"Come again?"

"Look, it's pretty simple," he said. "I've spent a lot of time lately with a bunch of people who know a lot more about this than I do, and they tell me it can be done if we can find the room. They've been working for years with some of the plant and soil samples we brought back, and you did from the second time, and they've kept them alive and even thriving. All we have to do is do that on, well, a bigger scale."

She laughed. "A hell of a sight bigger scale, John," she said. "What are we going to do, build some sort of massive biosphere in a desert somewhere? And even if we could, how could we guard against leaks? Even the tiniest leak could be disastrous. I mean, the Eden plants propagate mainly by airborne pollination, as I recall. All it would take would be for a single spore to escape and suddenly there's a whole alien population of plant life trying to take over the Earth without any of Earth's native species able to resist it."

He shook his head vigorously. "An escaped spore is a dead spore, or so they tell me," he explained. "Even the soils are different, too different. It's something to do with concentration of minerals, and I haven't gone into detail with the biologists about it, but they say they're sure. They've learned how to manufacture Eden soil, it's why the plant samples we brought back, or their descendants, are still alive, but it doesn't occur naturally here. Even so, you've hit on a big reason SES won't even think about it," he added sourly.

"What?"

"SES has vetoed the idea, mainly because of what you just said. They say it's too big a risk, that the Eden ecology might spread and take over the world. But they're politicians and bureaucrats, what do they know, or care, about science? I mean, you have to hear it to believe it. I read once that politicians spent years rejecting the idea of global warming because it didn't fit convenient politico-economic views, even though all the scientists said otherwise. They didn't back off until half the coastal cities of the time were flooded out by melting ice caps."

"That was a long time ago," she demurred.

"Well, people haven't got a lot smarter," he said tartly. "Every biologist I've talked to who's actually worked with the Eden plants, I mean every single one, has said the risk of cross-pollination is zero. Not small, not infinitesimal, a flat zero. It can't happen. But tell that to the SES minions. They won't hear of it. Bringing even a single Edenite to Earth, according to them, would expose us to God knows what sort of catastrophes, and it isn't even to be considered."

"Hmm." Meiersdottir, too, had her experiences with the political and bureaucratic mind­set, and some of them weren't happy ones. "You're sure of that, John?" she asked.

"Want references?"

"Yes, probably," she said. "But there's a lot more. How would you propose to transform some small part of Earth to being able to accept a sudden influx of Eden ecology?"

"It can be done, Amanda!" he told her enthusiastically. "It's going to cost an awful lot of money, and take an awful lot of effort, but it can actually be done. We've got the plans, we've got the methodology, we've even got the money tentatively lined up, or anyway a start on it, it's all ready to go!"