Against Infinity Read Free

hills, and the steady hail and rain that brought to this moon the first hint of what having air would mean, when the humans were through. None of this was strange to Manuel, since he had often thought of it and sensed what it must be like. The camp was a rambling shack, with seams welded crudely and compressors that grunted and whined into life. It took hours to warm it up, and he labored with the rest to patch fresh leaks and fix circuitry, all with the odd seeping sensation of foreknown acts, of living something he already knew. He ate the field provisions the men swore over, but he found them tasty, different from the Settlement ration, gamy with spices the Cong cook put in. He slept in rough-fiber bedrolls left over from the days when they had killed the heat at night to save ergs, and found them warmer than his bed at home. The shack snapped and popped with the cold relentlessly seeping in. He felt it as a weight trying to crush and break through the thin layers men carried with them. It kept waking him. A thin wind moaned at the corners, and he listened for the sound of something else beyond it, and while he strained to hear he fell asleep. After a timeless interval morning came. The men began to grunt and cough and started to finally get up and stamp their feet to bring the circulation back.
     
2
    F OR BREAKFAST THEY had sharp-root and coffee and lurkey. The heavy smells mingled, stirring Manuel’s stomach until it growled. The lurkey was good—thick slices cut from the old slab at Sidon, meat that still had cells in it from the first turkey to survive the voyage out. For years the original Settlement families from old Mexico had lived on it and very little else.
    The men ate with concentration, smacking their lips and hardly talking, until the Colonel started outlining the day’s jobs.
    Petrovich murmured, “I rather throw sights down on crawlie mutations, Colonel.”
    Before Colonel López could reply, Major Sánchez said irritably, “You heard what he said last night.”
    “Uh. Cannot remember it.”
    “You remember pouring smeerlop down that gullet, eh?”
    “Best Swedish stuff. Trivial alcohol content.”
    Major Sánchez grunted. “Nice word, ‘trivial.’ Means you got it— cojones —you got no worry. If you don’t—”
    “Lay off him,” the Colonel said mildly.
    “I don’t want Hangover Head here shooting at crawlies around me .”
    “I say it again, for last time.” The Colonel’s voice had a firm edge to it. “Scooters we’re paid to prune; scooters we do.”
    Petrovich muttered, “Ugly things. Centipede with armor, color of pile of shit.”
    Major Sánchez said, “Hiruko makes ’em to work, not for pets.”
    “Ever smell one? Get some on your suit, come back inside, make you puke—”
    “You can get sick on your own time,” the Colonel said. “We’re not paid to criticize.”
    Major Sánchez laughed. “Sí, or we might remember those street cleaners you wanted Sidon to adopt, eh Petrovich?” There was low chuckling around the table. “Big as bear, knock over people to get trash—”
    “We can get started now?” Petrovich said abruptly, standing up. “Too much dumb talk.”
    They spread out from camp, into the territory south of Angeles Crater. The Colonel supervised the sample-taking, which was fine by the men because that was the worst job, dull and methodical, and they got enough of that kind of work at the Settlement. They went after the scooters. BioEngineering had put out a Spec Report on the long crawly things five months back. Scooters had been designed to soak up ammonia-based compounds and digest them into oxy-available ones. They searched out their foul-smelling foods in streams and pools, or chewed ice if they got desperate, and then shat steady acrid streams that Bio said would be good for plants and even animals in the long run. Trouble was, the scooters’ long-chain DNA didn’t make good copies of itself. They mated furiously. Half of the broods lately