Cradle

ASSEMBLY AND TEST

Under the scanning electron microscope they look like tightly coiled springs with a small tail. When they are placed in water or some other liquid, the springs seem to stretch out and cilialike appendages extend a few angstroms out from the tail to provide motility.

There are millions of them concentrated in a mixture the size of a tiny drop of water and they are being carefully checked by a laser device that is also counting and sorting them as it illuminates microscopic portions of the mixture. When the count is completed, the smaller division of the separated mixture is sluiced out of the metal receptacle and down a channel into another liquid, this one emerald green in color, that is contained in a bottle-shaped beaker. The springs spread out and follow random paths in wandering around the beaker.

External mechanisms regularly churn the emerald green liquid. Around the inside of the beaker, tiny sensors register the temperature, pressure, and exact chemical and electrical characteristics of the fluid. Some parameter is not absolutely perfect. A small valve opens a port in the base of the beaker and a new chemical is injected into the green solution. Continuous measurements monitor the diffusion of this additional material. At length the fluid is properly altered and a new equilibrium is reached.

Everything is now ready. From above several thousand small pellets are dropped into the container. Some of these pellets float on the surface but most sink to variable depths in the liquid. Embedded in each of the pellets is a complicated engineering construction on an amazingly miniaturized scale. The external surface of the pellets contains sensors that scan the nearby region of the liquid for the springlike objects. A high-frequency transmitter housed next to the sensors directs a call to the springs and attracts them to the neighborhood. Clusters of springs develop around each pellet.

Now, one at a time, these springs are harvested by small instruments inside the spongy outer section of the pellet and then loaded in carriers that are electrically fired toward the central cavity of the pellet. Within that cavity sits a single black, amorphous spot, its exterior constantly changing shape as its opaque material shifts around to follow unknown stimuli. This spot is surrounded by a yellow goo that fills the remainder of the cavity.

The first spring slips out of its carrier, then locates and penetrates the spot. The spring can be seen for an instant moving toward the center. However, it is broken up and destroyed within milliseconds. Other springs are fired into the cavity at regular intervals and all try, after penetration, to reach some special region in the spot. Finally one of the procession succeeds and the spot changes color to bright red. In rapid succession, some enzyme in the spongy outer section of the pellet is dumped into the yellow goo, turning its color a little toward green, and all the rest of the springs disappear, apparently absorbed by the pellet structure. The entire pellet itself next elongates and extends a miniature propulsion system into the emerald liquid. After carefully steering around the many hazards, it then joins the queue of fertilized pellets moving, one by one, through a round diaphanous membrane in the bottom of the beaker.

The fluid dense with pellets speeds along a narrow tube until it reaches a partially closed container approximately the size of the beaker. Inside this translucent jar, a mechanical, spoonlike object digs into the stream of liquid flowing through and plucks out the pellets. They are lifted up and then suspended momentarily around the passing fluid in a heavy gas enclosed by the jar. Within moments each of the pellets splits and their carapaces apparently dissolve, leaving visible inside the jar an array of the little red spots surrounded by the off-yellow goo and suspended in an invisible gas.

The goo extends itself slowly throughout the jar above the flowing fluid until all the open areas between the red spots are filled. When the emerald stream below drops to a trickle and then disappears altogether, the goo hardens into a gelatin and fills the ports where the fluid once entered and departed. Within the jar are several thousand red spots embedded in the yellow-green gelatin. The spots undergo no visible change throughout this process.

Time passes. Activity in the jar ceases. Occasionally mechanical probes to test the stability of the gelatin are inserted into the jar at the old fluid ports. At last the translucent jar is removed from its storage location by what looks like a robotic forklift. It is placed on a moving belt that now carries it, along with several dozen other jars containing different kinds of objects (blue pencils, purple stars, and red boxes can all be seen) also suspended in yellow-green gelatin, to a vast circular oven almost an inch in diameter. Here all the jars are carefully baked together. Inside the oven, the molecules of the jar material immediately evaporate. Next a pair of disembodied manipulator hands wrap an incredibly thin blanket of connective filaments around all the gelatinous structures. After some time this ensemble unit is then pulled automatically out of the oven and packaged inside a gold metallic envelope whose several layers are designed to provide all the remaining environmental protection.

The hypergolic propellants mix and burst instantly into flame, pouring fire out the rocket nozzle. The slender vehicle rises, slowly at first, but later with astonishing speed. Before reaching the zenith of its flight, the rocket stage underneath the strange paraboloid payload falls away and tiny motors ignite on the underside of the flying boomerang. At the apex of the trajectory, the entire package suddenly explodes and apparently disintegrates. Hundreds of pieces of the original payload fall toward the surface of the planet in seemingly random directions.

Closer inspection reveals that each individual piece resulting from the explosion is made of a gold metallic material encased in plastic. A small sensor/propulsion package is attached to the plastic; it supplies needed vernier corrections during the descent after the controlled explosion. The plastic debris falls upon a strange, hybrid planet, obviously artificial judging by the wide variety of incongruous surfaces and cloud groupings that can be recognized from an altitude of tens of miles. There are scattered liquid lakes of different hues plus discontinuous surface topography with regions of desert and grasslands as well as barren mountains and canyons. A connected quarter of the planet is covered with clouds. The clouds are here white and fleecy, there brown and thick. Some of the clouds are active, building and changing with hints of turbulence. Other parts of the cloudy region are static, small wisps of white stretching without change across the sky.

One of the plastic vehicles plunges through a misty blue cloudbank into an emerald sea. The plastic is left on the surface, but the encased gold metallic object sinks thirty feet to the floor of the ocean. For a day or two there is no discernible change in its appearance. Then a protrusion begins to form in its north polar region, on the top of the golden sphere as it sits on the ocean floor. The growth expands slowly, until the spherical shape appears to have a large carbuncle on its top. A metamorphosis now takes place. On the outside of the protrusion, the hard metal surface softens and begins to resemble an organic membrane. Although the membrane is thick and dense, it occasionally bulges, suggesting some motion on the other side of its golden barrier.

Eventually a thin black rod, a probe of some kind, thrusts through the surface into the emerald ocean. A second probe becomes visible, then a third, both long black rods like the first one, but each equipped with strikingly different apparatus scattered along the length of the rod. Something larger pushes against the membrane, once, twice, then finally breaking through. What a strange contraption! It’s an aerodynamic shape about three inches long, in two separate segments with a joint between them. The forebody is a nosecone; the afterbody is long and slender and tapers to a point. In addition to the three probes on the front of its forebody, it has four other furlable appendages or arms, two connected to the side of each segment.

It swims over to a nearby underwater plant with its arms stored next to its smooth body. There it unfurls the multi-faceted appendages and begins to examine the plant. An astonishing array of tiny instruments studies the plant for a few moments and then the entity moves away. The same procedure is repeated with each plant encountered. Eventually the thing finds a plant that it “likes” and its pincers remove a major leaf. The leaf is neatly folded into a smaller volume and is then carried back to the object with the golden membrane.

The strange forager is joined by a partner, a carbon copy of itself, and by two fat fish with multiple arms and legs. The latter pair scuttle off to the side and begin modifying the ocean floor. Days pass. The things with the probes work ceaselessly, bringing more and more varieties of plant and animal life back to the home base. The legged fish meanwhile have constructed, out of available sand, rocks, shells, and living creatures, almost a thousand tiny, sealed rectangular homes on the ocean floor. These fish entities too work without break. Their next task is to transport each of the red spots, one at a time, from the golden cradle to their new houses.

If a microscope were available, it would show that some structure was already developing inside the red spots, giving them definition and distinction, by the time of their initial transport. But they are still very, very small. Once the red spots and their gelatin protection are carefully implanted inside their tiny houses, the foragers make routine stops on each trip to deposit a portion of their harvest. At the same time, the fish with legs, the architects and builders of the rectangular houses, begin working on transparent, igloolike homes for the embryos of another species.

A year later moonlight falls on the emerald lake. Several hundred eager, excited, wriggling necks, some royal blue and some pale blue, struggle upward to find the moon. Their heads pivot to face all directions and maybe two dozen separate indentations and orifices can be seen in each face. The necks crane this way, then that way. The silent serpents are searching for something.

From the direction of the moon a bizarre ship approaches on the water. It is large compared to the young serpents, its twin towers standing about eight feet out of the water and about six feet above, on the average, a squarish platform fifteen feet on a side that forms the bottom of the boat. The top surface of this platform is irregular, undulating, and cratered. The platform floats smoothly upon the water.

The ship comes into the middle of the serpents and stops. The serpents divide into two groups according to the color of their necks and then line up on either side of the ship in very orderly rows and columns. A single musical note, a B-flat with a Hautish timbre, comes from the ship. Quickly the note is repeated up and down the rows and columns by each of the serpents on the two sides of the boat. Then a second note issues forth from the ship, also sounding like a flute, and the process repeats itself. For hours the music lesson continues, covering a range of both notes and chords, until some of the serpents on each side lose their voices The exercise concludes with an attempted ensemble performance by the royal bluenecked serpents, but the result is a painful cacophony.

Inside the ship, every note, every movement, every response by the juvenile serpents to the music lesson is carefully monitored and recorded. The ingenious engineering design of the boat is based upon the key controlling elements of the original cradle. However, although segments of gold metallic material (as well as the long black rods and even portions of the fat fish with legs) appear in the computer that runs the ship, the primary constituents of its mass are derived from great quantities of local rock and organic matter taken from the floor of the emerald lake. The ship is the quintessential music teacher, a virtually perfect synthesizer equipped with microprocessors that not only store all the responses of the pupils, but also contain software that will allow experimentation with a range of individualized methods of teaching.

But this sophisticated robot, engineered by the artificial.intelligence packed around the serpent zygotes and made almost entirely of chemical compounds extracted from material found in the neighborhood of the landing point, is itself being watched and studied from afar by test engineers. The current test is in its earliest stages and is progressing splendidly. This is the third different configuration tried for the music teacher, the hardest part of the design of the cradle that will carry the serpent zygotes back to Canthor. The first was an abysmal failure; the embryos developed into adolescents all right, but the teacher was never able to instruct them well enough that they could sing the mating song and reproduce. The second design was better; it was able to teach the serpents to perform the courtship symphony and a new generation of the species was produced. However, this next group of adult serpents was not able subsequently to teach their progeny to sing.

The best of the bioengineering personnel in the Colony were brought in to study this problem. After pouring over quadrillions of bits of accumulated data associated with the development of the serpents and other related species, they found a curious correlation between the degree of nurturing provided by the parent and the resulting ability of that infant, upon reaching maturity, to teach its own offspring. The artificial intelligence package responsible for the first six months of serpent life was then redesigned to include a surrogate mother whose only purpose was to hold and cuddle the fledgling serpents at regular intervals. Subsystem tests proved successful; this slight alteration of the early nurturing protocol produced adult serpents that were able to teach their children to sing.

This demonstration test lasts for more than four millcycles. At the end of the period, the test is declared an unqualified success. A strong, creative serpent population nearing twenty-five thousand fills the artificial lake. Limitations to future growth are only test related. Eventually the test survivors are transported to another locale in the Zoo Complex and the Canthorean serpents are added to the list of species ready for zygote repatriation.