WHITE MARS by Roger Penrose, Brian Aldiss Read Free Book Online Page B

person unlike me. Instead, I will talk about worms.
    In one Amazonis laboratory was a precious Martian possession - 'the farm', a wit called it. Dreiser Hawkwood had introduced it; his side interest was biochemistry. The farm was contained in a box two metres square and a metre and a half deep. In it was rich top soil from the Calcutta Botanical Gardens, expensively imported by courtesy of Thomas Gunther and his EUPACUS associates. In the box grew a small weigela and a sambucus. Below, in the soil, were worms of the perichaeta species, working away and throwing up their castings.
    The metabolism of the worms had been accelerated. Their digestion and ejection of soil was rapid. They worked at dragging down the leaves fallen from the plants, thus enriching the soil with vegetable and microbial life. The enriched soil was to be set in a bed inside one of the domes to provide the first 'natural'-grown vegetables. The tilth would eventually cover acres of specially prepared regolith, breaking it down under greenhouse domes into arable land.
    From this modest beginning in the farm, great things were to come. It is doubtful if Mars would ever have become more than marginally habitable without that lowly and despised creature, the earthworm, which Charles Darwin regarded so highly, not dreaming that it would one day transform an alien planet as it had transformed Earth itself.
    This new agricultural revolution, intended to supplement the food grown in chemical vats, was assisted by work carried out high above the Martian crust.
    Mars has two small satellites that chase across the sky, Swift and Laputa. Early astronomers had bestowed on these two small bodies the unbecoming names of Phobos and Diemos. Swift unwearyingly rises and sets twice in a Martian day. Landings have been made on both satellites. On Swift have been found metallic fragments, presumably the remains of an unsuccessful twentieth-century Russian mission.
    Working from a small base on Swift, a series of large PIRs - polymer inflatable reflectors - was set in orbit about Mars to reflect much needed sunlight to the surface. The PIRs are cheap, and easily destroyed by space debris, but equally easily replaced.
    The PIRs can be seen in daylight or at night, when they shine brightly unless undergoing occasional eclipse.
    It will be deduced from these developments that, despite all the protests, Mars was slowly and inevitably being drawn nearer to terraforming.
    Despite all the regulations, the pressure to live brought this change about.
     
    The observatory built on Tharsis Shield near Olympus Mons continued to yield results. The meteorite watch station became operative. The new branch of astrophysics studying the gas giants was officially named jovionics. The telescopes of the observatory tracked many asteroids. Dedication to research was a feature of the scientific atmosphere on Mars. There was little to distract the scientists, as the asteroid-watchers sought to prove the small bodies were the remains of a planet that, before being torn apart by forces of gravity, occupied an orbit between Mars and Jupiter.
     
    Studies of magneto-gravitic irregularities revealed a remarkably high gravity reading for the region near Olympus Mons. I discovered that Kathi was interested in this. No such anomaly existed on Earth, she claimed. She was reading many scientific papers on her Ambient, and told me she believed there was a connection between magneto-gravitic influences and consciousness, so that at present she was looking for a dimensionless quality, but I did not understand her.
    When I questioned this connection she believed in, she explained patiently that there were electric and magnetic fields. Whereas electric charges were the direct sources of electric fields, as far as was known there were no equivalent magnetic charges - that is to say, no magnetic monopoles. The influence of hidden-symmetry monopoles on consciousness was subtle and elusive - or appeared to be so as yet.