wigglin’ upstream like salmon. Story of my life

and if this grack will let me finish, there are nine fibers on the outside of that whip to every one fiber on the inside

she’s fine y’know wonderful but also great at takin’ the ol’ romance out of it

and that ratio, that nine to one, is the same in thousands of organisms all over Earth and nobody has the slightest idea

unoriginal God is the best explanation. He just got tired

couldn’t you mumble a little softer I can still hear what you’re saying

okay okay so tell us nine. to one

we can’t see any obvious selective survival advantage for the nine-to-one ratio but who knows, still the easiest out is that ’way back at the beginning when sex started the nine to ones were just lucky is all and that ratio got locked in early

kiss me quick I’m nine to one

had too much sniffo already eh?

love me love my ratio

well you just keep on holding up that bulkhead it looks like hard work white the adults talk

hark the queen speaketh

so first thing I look for in the dust crawlies from Isis is the flagella, and sure enough—oh thanks, I’m having that rum stuff—sure enough I squint into the electron mike and there are the little whips going like mad, only when I splice some down it’s a seven to one, not our nine to one. So question is, what’s magic about odd ratios?

only two cases hell honey not statistically meaningful

still sounds suspicious to me

could be that an odd ratio gives ’em edges to hold onto?

so what’s the comparative advantage?

more leverage with an odd ratio? maybe that way it’s easier to make your point even if the lady’s not interested

talk about anthropocentric

must be they need a good grip right Nigel?

I never speculate on extraterrestrial pornography

Well they use something to hold onto those dust motes while they’re riding the winds out from the Eye, up those mountains and down to the sea, chomping away on those sulfide electron donors

then when the Eye winds turn near the seas the big cyclone pattern that’s when the dust falls

Remarkable how fast his head clears I could almost follow that

But do we need to decide basic mechanisms like that before a manned landing?

There’s lots of biochem to study we can spend a year easy

Not me Come now we’ve been in orbit for months already bloody long enough

Much as we all love good, old Bob-boy I’d rather rely on Nigel’s judgment

Thanks but isn’t that what this muitifass is about?

Goddamn dust if we could only see more. That third flyback probe, it found lots of dust eaters dropping off near the seas but you know I keep thinking

Yeah, seems like those li’l buggers are a planet-wide feeding system for the bigger life-forms, so we ought to look at who benefits

Their function is carrying chemical energy you mean, that’s all?

Sure, they’ve sopped up photons at the Eye and made the right carbo-oxy compounds

—which get dumped into the mountain valleys where those EMs are—

right

Strange kind of energy vector, moving biochem energy out from the Eye. Hard to see how a whole biosphere like that could evolve

This isn’t New jersey m’ love

I’ve noticed.

Damnably low-grade process though, with that skimpy energy budget the deck’s stacked against the whole biosphere

God’s ingenious

Well he had longer to work on this one.

Five-billion-year-old biosphere makes you wonder what could happen

You two might talk to Bob over there about the exploration if you’ve the time—

Sure come on soul mate

Damn that sniffo’s some stuff isn’t it? Whattad I say?

Just let me do the talking

Nigel, Nigel, lemme tell you, I figure you can do somethin’, man I was so

mad

I felt like runnin’ over a toad with a power mower—

Ted’s more the man to complain to, precious little I can do

Sure but the right word in, y’know

Can’t promise anything but if it’s a friendly ear you’re after

C’mon you could have his job anytime we’d all vote for you.

Nonsense, step over this way the noise is dreadful now what was the—

He values the cascade of impressions more than anything. He drifts down carved rock corridors, in and out of rooms, never lingering long—

—yes, I know him, he’s from GHQ, works with Ted, kind of nice but homely as hell—

—uh-huh, ugliness like that is nature’s contraceptive, I figure. Forget it. You got anybody else in mind, though, the night is young even if I’m not—

—She came over to me and positively whispered all of it to me in one gush which was a kind of tribute when you think about it, coming from a woman who obviously hasn’t found much in the world it was necessary to whisper about—

—Evolution goes all sorts of ways, that’s why I don’t think we’ll puzzle out the radio sources just by peeking at the basic biochem, not when we got such lousy resolution through all that damned dust. I mean, all kinds of things are selected for, right? You and me are myopic because the nearsighted males couldn’t hunt so good, so they stayed home while the bruisers went out running down meat. Just hanging around the caves and painting the walls and gettin’ a little on the side in the heat of the day. Never mind all that strong pair-bonding stuff they always tell you; fact is, you never know who the father is and that’s why a male strategy of spreading it around as much as you can pays off. So it gets selected for. Hell, it feels good—that’s the sure sign; evolution doesn’t read our rule books, she’s got her own—

—think you’ve had enough? That rum isn’t rum, it’s spidmeer and you’re starting to look like a lobster—

—we need more recon down there skip this biochem piffle—

—yeah, right, way I see it is, we got a surplus a genius an a shortage of guts aroun’ ’ere—

—an oxidation-reduction cycle,’s what it is, down there in that dust they’re playin’ the same ol’ game we are, only not so profitable. Higher up the chain from those dust eaters there’s gotta be starch production using that crummy low-cal sunlight. Leaves oxy as leftovers, an’ that’s what the EMs gotta breathe, but damned if I know how anything could live off that—

—I don’t see why she has to bite my head off just over a spilled

sample

container—

—You get us contaminated with those Isis spores I’ll vac you so fast—

—well I

didn’t

why should I look I don’t. think you can say that just like

that

—

—Could be wrong but

some

body left off the seals.

—then don’t look at me when you—

—call this a multifass well, this may shape you up for a vote but nobody’s talking about what I want

—part of it’s to find out what the goddamn issue is if you’d just listen fer once—

—I was saying, when the smaller animals breathe they have this little sac, kind of an air trap, and it filters the dust out of the air before they hit the inward stroke to suck in a lungful—

—Real slow, about two breaths a minute, I’ve seen it

—No bigger’n your finger, intricate li’l things, damn fine design for eatin’ up those dust-huggin’ fellas. Then the ones fat as your hand, they’re lunchin’ off the finger-sized guys

—Him? Just a passing thing, yer ol’ hump ‘n’ hustle is all—

—Come on Elinor no civilized woman ever regrets a pleasure and this is going to be—

—so while you guys are grandstanding it with the survey, somebody’s taking out the garbage, getting meals, agronomists and skiffers, all scutwork, so at least we’d like to be in on what’s comin’ out instead of flashin’ on it in the weeklies you squirt Earthside—

—I still say you stack up your shipcred, you can get your tail upholstered the way he did, just give the usual squeeze to Dexter in medmon, they’ll slip you in, won’t be more than a hairline scar nobody’ll notice in the dark