actly as long-range as the electromagnetic one, must

also involve a massless exchange particle—which is

called a graviton.

 

But physicists have strong reason to suppose that

massless particles can travel through a vacuum only at

the speed of light; that is, at 186,282 miles per second,

neither more nor less.

 

If this is so, then gravitons travel at exactly the

speed of photons. This means that if the sun were to

disappear, the last gravitons it emits would reach us

 

164

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

at just the same time that the last photons would. At

the instant we saw the sun disappear, we would also

cease to be under its gravitational pull.

 

In other words, gravitation travels at the speed of

light.

 

Why can't matter travel faster than the speed of light?

 

Energy added to a body can affect it in a number of

ways. If a hammer strikes a nail in midair, the nail

goes flying off, gaining kinetic energy—in other

words, energy of motion. If a hammer strikes a nail

embedded in hard wood, so that the nail can't move,

the nail still gains energy—but in the form of heat.

 

Albert Einstein, in his theory of relativity, showed

that mass could be viewed as a form of energy (and

the invention of the atom bomb certainly proved him

correct). If energy is added to a body, that energy

may therefore appear in the form of mass, as well as

in other forms.

 

Under ordinary conditions, the gain of energy in the

form of mass is so incomprehensibly tiny that no one

could ever measure it. It was only in the twentieth

century, when subatomic particles were observed to

move at speeds of tens of thousands of miles per sec-

ond, that examples of mass increase were found that

were large enough to be detectable. A body moving at

160,000 miles a second relative to ourselves would be

measured by us as having twice as much mass as

when it was at rest relative to ourselves.

 

If energy is added to any freely moving body, that

energy can enter the body in one of two ways: (1) as

velocity, so that its speed of motion increases, and (2)

as mass, so that it becomes, "heavier." The divison be-

 

OPUS 200

 

165

 

tween these two forms of energy-gain, as measured by

ourselves, depends upon the speed of the body to be-

gin with, again as measured by ourselves.

 

If the body is going at ordinary velocities, virtually

all the added energy enters the body as velocity, and

the body moves faster and faster with hardly any

change in mass.

 

As the speed of the moving body increases (and

as we imagine additional energy constantly being

pumped into it), less and less of the energy enters as

velocity and more and more as mass. We note that,

though the body is still moving faster and faster, its

rate of gaining speed is falling off. Instead, we note

that it is becoming more massive at a slightly greater

rate.

 

As its speed increases still further and gets fairly

close to the 186,282 miles per second that is the speed

of light in a vacuum, almost all the added energy en-

ters as mass. In other words, the speed of motion of

the body increases very slowly, but now it is the mass

that is moving upward bv leaps and bounds. By the

time the speed of light is reached, all the added en-

ergy is appearing as additional mass.

 

The body cannot go faster than the speed of light

because to make it do so one must impart additional

energy to it and, at the speed of light, all that addi-

tional energy, however great, will merely be converted

into additional mass, and the body will not increase

its speed one iota.

 

Nor is this "just theory." Scientists have been care-

fully observing the speeding subatomic particles for

years. Cosmic ray particles exist with unimaginably

high energy contents, yet though their mass climbs

high indeed, their speeds never quite reach that of

light in a vacuum. The mass and velocity of subatomic

 

166

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

particles work out to just what the theory of relativity

predicts, and the speed of light is a maximum speed as

a matter of observed fact and is not merely specula-

tion.

 

In the atom bomb, matter is converted into energy. Is

it possible to do the reverse and convert energy into

matter?

 

It is certainly possible to change energy into matter,

but to do so in large quantities is impractical. Let us

see why.

 

According to Einstein's special theory of relativity,

e == me2, where e represents energy, measured in ergs,

m represents mass in grams, and c is the speed of light

in centimeters per second.

 

Light travels through a vacuum with a speed of

very nearly 30 billion (3 X 1010) centimeters per sec-

ond. The quantity c2 represents the product of c X c;

 

that is, 3 X 1010 X 3 X 1010, or 9 X lO^0. This means that

c2 is equal to 900,000,000.000,000,000,000.

 

A mass of 1 gram (m=l) can therefore be con-

verted, in theory, into 9 X lO"0 ergs of energy. The av-

erage American is more familiar with the ounce

(equal to 28.35 grams) as a unit of mass. One ounce

of matter represents 2.55 X 10s-'2 ergs of energy.

 

The erg is a very small unit of energy. The more

familiar kilo-calorie is equal to nearly 42 billion ergs.

An ounce of matter turned into energy would yield

6.1 X1011 (or 610 billion) kilo-calories. You can keep

alive very comfortably on 2500 kilocalories a day, ob-

tained from the food you eat. If you had the energy

available to you that is represented by a single ounce

of matter, you would have a supply that would last

 

OPUS 200                167

 

you 670,000 years, which is a lot by anybody's stan-

dards.

 

To put it another way, if the energy represented by

a single ounce of matter could be turned completely

into electrical energy, it would keep a hundred-watt

electric light bulb burning continuously for 800,000

years.

 

To put it still another way, the energy represented

by a single ounce of matter is equivalent to that ob-

tained by burning 200 million gallons of gasoline.

 

It is no wonder, then, that in nuclear bombs, where

sizable quantities of matter are turned into energy, so

much destruction is turned loose in the explosion of

one bomb.

 

The change works both ways. If matter can be

turned into energy, then energy can be turned into

matter. This can be done anytime in the laboratory. A

very energetic particle of energy—a gamma ray pho-

ton—can be converted into an electron and a positron

without much trouble. The process is thereby re-

versed, and energy is, in this way, turned into matter.

 

The matter formed, however, consists of two very

light particles, almost vanishingly small in mass. Can

the same principle be used to form more matter—even

enough matter to be seen?

 

Ah, but you can't beat the arithmetic. If an ounce of

matter can be converted into as much energy as is

produced by burning 200 million gallons of gasoline,

then it will take all the energy produced by burning

200 million gallons of gasoline to manufacture a mere

ounce of matter.

 

Even if someone were willing to make the demon-

stration and go to all the expense involved in collect-

ing all that energy (and perhaps several times as

much, allowing for inevitable wastage) just to form

 

168                 ISAAC ASIMOV

 

an ounce of matter, it still couldn't be done. All that

energy simply could not be produced quickly enough

and concentrated into a small enough volume to pro-

duce an ounce of matter all at once.

 

Thus, the conversion is possible in theory, but is

completely impracticable. To be sure, the matter of

the universe was once formed presumably from en-

ergy, but certainly not under any set of conditions we

can possibly duplicate in the laboratory today.

 

The Science Digest column wasn't the only thing my

inability to say a literary no had gotten me into.

Among my first hundred books is a small one I did for

the Atomic Energy Commission called The Genetic

Effects of Radiation, It earned me only a small flat

sum, and there were no royalties since the booklet was

distributed by the AEC, as a public service, to anyone

who asked for it.

 

Naturally, I couldn't very well argue myself into the

proposition that I must never do a public service, so I

had agreed to do the book. And, naturally, the AEC,

having tasted blood, asked for more. In the course of

my second hundred books, I did two more booklets

for the AEC. One is Electricity and Man {Book 123}

and the other is Worlds Within Worlds {Book 131},

both on physics.

 

Worlds Within Worlds was to be on the history of

the development of nuclear energy, and it was to be

only ten thousand words long. It ran away with me,

however, as books sometimes do, and by the time I

screeched to a half, panting and lightly perspiring, I

had done thirty thousand. The AEC cheefully put it

out as three booklets, but I listed it in my records as a

single book.

 

OPUS 200                 169

 

From Worlds Within Worlds, here is my discussion

of the development of the first nuclear reactor:

 

from WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS (1972)

 

Earlier in this history, we discussed chain reactions in-

volving chemical energy. A small bit of energy can ig-

nite a chemical reaction that would produce more

than enough energy to ignite a neighboring section of

the system, which would in turn produce still more—

and so on, and so on. In this way the flame of a single

match could start a fire in a leaf that would bum

down an entire forest, and the energy given off by the

burning forest would be enormously higher than the

initial energy of the match flame.

 

Might there not be such a thing as a nuclear chain

reaction? Could one initiate a nuclear reaction that

would produce something thafr would initiate more of

the same that would produce something that would

initiate still more of the same and so on?

 

In that case, a nuclear reaction, once started, would

continue of its own accord, and in return for the tri-

fling investment that would serve to start it—a single

neutron, perhaps—a vast amount of breakdowns

would result with the delivery of a vast amount of en-

ergy, Even if it were necessary to expend quite a bit

of energy to produce the one neutron that would start

the chain reaction, the end profit would be enormous.

 

What's more, since the nuclear reaction would

spread from nucleus to nucleus with millionths-of-a-

second intervals, there would be, in a very brief time,

so many nuclei breaking down that there would be a

vast explosion. The explosion would be millions of

times as powerful as ordinary chemical explosions in-

 

170

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

volving the same quantity of exploding material, since

the latter use only the electromagnetic interaction,

while the former use the much stronger nuclear inter-

action.

 

The Hrst to think seriously of such a nuclear chain

reaction was the Hungaiian phvsicist Leo Szilard. He

was working in Germany in 1933 when Adolf Hitler

came to power and, since he was Jewish, he felt it

would be wise to leave Germany. He went to Great

Britain and there, in 1934, he considered new types of

nuclear reactions that had been discovered.

 

In these, it sometimes happened that a fast neutron

might strike a nucleus with sufficient energy to cause

it to emit two neutrons. In that wav the nucleus, ab-

sorbing one neutron and emitting two, would become

a lighter isotope of the same element.

 

But what would happen if each of the two neutrons

that emerged from the original target nucleus struck

new nuclei and forced the emission of a pair of neu-

trons from each. There would now be a total of four

neutrons flving about, and if each struck new nuclei

there would next be eight neutrons, and so on. From

the initial investment of a single neutron there might

soon be countless billions initiating nuclear reactions.

 

Szilard, fearing the inevitability of war and fearing

that the brutal leaders of Germany might seek and use

such a nuclear chain reaction as a weapon in warfare,

secretly applied for a patent on a device that could

make use of such a nuclear chain reaction. He hoped

to turn it over to the British government, which might

then use its possession as a way of restraining the Na-

zis and keeping the peace.

 

However, it wouldn't have worked. It took the im-

pact of a very energetic neutron to bring about the

emission of two neutrons. The neutrons that then

 

OPUS 200                 171

 

emerged from the nucleus simply didn't have enough

energy to keep things going. (It was like trying to

make wet wood catch fire.)

 

But what about uranium fission? Uranium fission

was initiated by slow neutrons. What if uranium fis-

sion produced neutrons as well as being initiated by a

neutron? Would not the neutrons produced serve to

initiate new fissions that would produce new neutrons

and so on endlessly?

 

It seemed very likely that fission produced neu-

trons, and, indeed, at the conference where fission

was first discussed, Enrico Fermi suggested it at once,

Massive nuclei possessed more neutrons per proton

than less massive ones did. If a massive nucleus was

broken up into two considerably less massive ones,

there would be a surplus of neutrons. Suppose, for

instance, uranium-238 broke down into barium-138

and krypton-86. Barium-138 contains 82 neutrons, and

krypton-86, 50 neutrons, for .a total of 132. The

uranium-238 nucleus, however, contains 146 neutrons.

 

The uranium fission process was studied at once to

see if neutrons were actually given off, and a number

of different physicists, including Szilard, found that

they were,

 

Now Szilard was faced with a nuclear chain reac-

tion he was certain would work. Only slow neutrons

were involved and the individual nuclear breakdowns

were far more energetic than anything else that had

yet been discovered. If a chain reaction could be

started in a sizable piece of uranium, unimaginable

quantities of energy would be produced. Just one

gram of uranium, undergoing complete fission, would

deliver the energy derived from the total burning of

three tons of coal and would deliver that energy in a

tiny fraction of a second.

 

172

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

Szilard, who had come to the United States in 1937,

clearly visualized the tremendous explosive force of

something that would have to be called a nuclear

bomb. Szilard dreaded the possibility that Hitler

might obtain the use of such a bomb through the

agency of Germany's nuclear scientists.

 

Partly through Szilard's efforts, physicists in the

United States and in other Western nations opposed to

Hitler began a program of voluntary secrecy in 1940

to avoid passing along any hints to Germany. What's

more, Szilard enlisted the services of two other Hun-

garian refugees, the physicists Eugene Paul Wigner

and Edward Teller, and all approached Einstein, who

had also fled Germany and come to America.

 

Einstein was the most prestigious scientist then liv-

ing, and it was thought that a letter from him to the

President of the United States would be most persua-

sive. Einstein signed such a letter, which explained

the possibility of a nuclear bomb and urged the

United States not to allow a potential enemy to come

into possession of it first.

 

Largely as a result of this letter, a huge research

team was put together in the United States, to which

other Western nations also contributed. It had but one

aim—to develop the nuclear bomb.

 

Although the theory of the nuclear bomb seemed

clear and simple, a great many practical difficulties

stood in the way. In the first place, if only uranium

atoms underwent fission, a supply of uranium had at

least to be obtained in pure form, for if the neutrons

struck nuclei of elements other than uranium, they

would simply be absorbed and removed from the sys-

tem, ending the possibility of a chain reaction. This

alone was a heavy task. There had been so little use

for uranium in quantity" that there was almost no sup-

 

OPUS 200

 

173

 

ply in existence and no experience in how to purify'it.

 

Secondly, the supply of uranium might have to be a

large one, for neutrons didn't necessarily enter the

first uranium atom they approached. They moved

about here and there, making glancing collisions and

traveling quite a distance, perhaps, before striking

head-on and entering a nucleus. If in that time they

had passed outside the lump of uranium, they were

useless.

 

As the quantity of uranium within which the fission

chain reaction was initiated grew laiger, more and

more of the neutrons produced found a mark, and the

fission reaction died out more and more slowly. Fi-

nally, at some particular size—the "critical sizes'—the

fission ieaction did not die at all, but maintained it-

self, with enough of the neutrons produced finding

their mark to keep the nuclear reaction proceeding at

a steady rate. At any greater size the nuclear reaction

would accelerate and there would be an explosion.

 

It wasn't even necessary to send neutrons into the

uranium to start the process. In 1941 the Russian phys-

icist Georgii Nikolaevich Flerov found that every

once in a while a uranium atom would undergo fission

without the introduction of a neutron. Occasionally

the random quivering of a nucleus would bring about

a shape that the nuclear interaction could not bring

back to normal, and the nucleus would then break

apart. In a gram of ordinary uranium, there is a nu-

cleus undergoing such "spontaneous fission" every

two minutes on the average. Therefore, enough ura-

nium need only be brought together to surpass criti-

cal size and it will explode within seconds, for the

first nucleus that undergoes spontaneous fission will

start the chain reaction.

 

First estimates made it seem that the quantity of

 

174

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

uranium needed to reach critical size was extraordi-

narily great. Fully 99.3 percent of the metal is

uranium-238, however, and, as soon as fission was dis-

covered, Bohr pointed out that there were theoretical

reasons for supnosin^ that it was the uranium-235 iso-

tope (making up onlv 0.7 percent of the whole) that'

was the one undergoing fission. Investigation proved

him right. Indeed, the uranium-238 nucleus tended to

absorb slow neutrons without fission, and to go on to

beta-particle production that formed isotopes of nep-

tunium and plutonium. In this way uranium-238 ac-

tually interfered with the chain reaction.

 

In any quantity of uranium, the more uranium-235

present and the less uranium-238, the more easily the

chain reaction would proceed and the less the critical

size need be. Vast efforts were therefore made to sep-

arate the two isotopes and prepare uranium with a

higher than normal concentration of uranium-235

("enriched uranium").

 

Of course, there was no great desire for a fearful

explosion to get out of hand while the chain reaction

was being studied. Before any bomb could be con-

structed, the mechanism of the chain reaction would

have to be studied. Could a chain reaction capable of

producing energy (for useful purposes as well as for

bombs) be established? To test this, a quantity of

uranium was gathered in the hope that a controlled

chain reaction of uranium fission could be estab-

lished. For that purpose, control rods of a substance

that would easily absorb neutrons and slow the chain

reaction were used. The metal, cadmium, served ad-

mirably for this purpose.

 

Then, too, the neutrons released by fission were

pretty energetic. They tended to travel too far too

 

OPUS 200                 175

 

soon and get outside the lump of uranium too easily.

To produce a chain reaction that could be studied

with some safetv, the presence of a moderator was

needed. This was a supply of small nuclei that did not

absorb neutrons readily, but absorbed some of the en-

ergy of collision and slowed down any neutron that

struck it. Nuclei such as hydrogen-2. beryllium-9, or

carbon-12 were useful moderators. When the neutrons

produced by fission were slowed, they traveled a

smaller distance before being absorbed in their turn,

and the critical size would again be reduced.

 

Toward the end of 1942 the initial stage of the pro-

ject reached a climax. Blocks of graphite containing

uranium metal and uranium oxide were piled up in

huge quantities (enriched uranium was not vet avail-

able) in order to approach critical size. This took

place under the stands of a football stadium at the

University of Chicago, with Enrico Fermi (who had

come to the United States in 1938) in charge.

 

The large structure was called an "atomic pile" at

first because of the blocks of graphite being piled up.

The proper name for such a device, and the one that

was eventually adopted, was, however, "nuclear reac-

tor."

 

On December 2, 1942, calculations showed that the

nuclear reactor was large enough to have reached crit-

ical size. The only thing preventing the chain reaction

from sustaining itself was the cadmium rods that were

inserted here and there in the pile and that were soak-

ing up neutrons.

 

One by one the cadmium rods were pulled out. The

number of uranium atoms undergoing fission each

second rose and, finally, at 3:45 P.M., the uranium fis-

sion became self-sustaining. It kept going on its own

 

176

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

(with the cadmium rods ready to be pushed in if it

looked as though it were getting out of hand—

something calculations showed was not likely).

 

News of this success was announced to Washington

by a cautious telephone call from Arthur Holly Comp-

ton to James Bryant Conant. "The Italian navigator

has landed in the New World," said Compton. Conant

asked, "How were the natives?" and the answer was,

"Very friendly."

 

This was the day and moment when the world en-

tered the "nuclear age." For the first time, mankind

had constructed a device in which the nuclear energy

being given off was greater than the energy poured

in. Mankind had tapped the reservoirs of nuclear en-

ergy and could put it to use.

 

PART 5

 

CHEMISTRY

 

Although chemistry is the field m which I obtained

my degrees (including my Ph.D.) and although I am

still an associate professor of biochemistry at Boston

University School of Medicine (though I haven't

worked at it these past few decades), I do not write

as much in the field of chemistry as I do in physics or

astronomy.

 

In my first hundred books are such titles as The

Noble Gases, Photosynthesis, and Life and Energy,

which were all strongly chemical in content, but in

the second hundred books not a single full-sized non-

fiction book is devoted to chemistry. This was not on

purpose, 1 assure you.

 

However, things work out.

 

In 1975, I received a suggestion from Alan R.

Bechtold of Topeka, Kansas, that I write a science fic-

tion short story for him. He wanted to put out a series

of booklets of about six thousand words apiece, each

to consist of an original story from a well-known sci-

ence fiction writer. The booklets would he put out in

strictly limited editions and would be sold primarily

at fan conventions. When the limited edition was sold

out, the story would revert to the author.

 

Unexpectedly, the concept appealed to me. For one

thing, I got an idea at once and that always helps. As

 

180

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

it happened, the idea resulted in one of the few sci-

ence fiction stories I wrote that centered on chemis-

try. I called it Good Taste, and it was published in

1976, entering my list as Book 174.

 

1 wish I could report that the envisioned series was

a success, but it wasn't. My hook did well, but waiting

for the next writer to meet his obligation was a long

procedure and Bechtold run out of money, I'm sorry

to say.

 

Anyway, here is Good Taste in full:

 

GOOD TASTE (1976)

 

It was quite clear that it would not have happened—

the family would not have been disgraced and the

world of Gammer would not have been stunned and

horrified—if Chawker Minor had not made the Grand

Tour.

 

It wasn't exactly illegal to make the Grand Tow-

but, on Gammer at least, it was not really socially ac-

ceptable. Elder Chawker had been against it from the

start, to do him justice, but then Lady Chawker took

the side of her minor, and mothers are, at times, not to

be withstood. Chawker was her second child (both of

them sons, as it happened) and she would have no

more, of course, so it was not surprising that she doted

on him.

 

Her younger son had wanted to see the Other-

Worlds of the Orbit and had promised to stay away no

longer than a year. She had wept and worried and

gone into a tragic decline and then, finally, had dried

her eyes and spoken stiffly to Elder Chawker—and

Chawker Minor had gone.

 

Now he was back. one year to the day (he was al-

 

OPUS 200

 

181

 

ways one to keep his word, and, besides. Elder's sup-

port would have ceased the day after, never fear),

and the familv made holiday.

 

Elder wore a new, black glossy shirt but would not

permit the prim lines of his face to relax, nor would he

stoop to ask for details. He had no interest—no interest

whatever—in the Other-Worlds with their strange

ways and their primitive browsing (no better than the

ways on Earth, of which Cammerpeople never

spoke).

 

He said, "Your complexion is dirtied and spoiled,

Chawker Minor." (The use of the full name showed

his displeasure.)

 

Chawker laughed and the clear skin of his rather

thin face crinkled. "I staved out of the sun as much as

I could. Elder-mine, but the Other-Woriders would

not alwavs have it so."

 

Lady Chawker would have none of Elder's criticism

either. She said warmly, "It isn;t dirtied at all, Elder.

It breathes a warmth."

 

"Of the Sun," grumbled Elder, "and it would be

next that he would be grubbing in the filth they have

there."

 

"No farming for me. Elder. That's hard work. I vis-

ited the fungus vats at times, though."

 

Chawker Major, older than Minor by three years,

wider of face, heavier of body, but otherwise of close

resemblance, was torn between envy of his younger

brother's having seen different worlds of the Orbit

and revulsion at the thought of it. He said, "Did you

eat their Prime, Minor?"

 

"I had to eat something," said Chawker Minor. "Of

course, there were your packages. Lady-mine—

lifesavers, sometimes."

 

"I suppose," said Elder Chawker with distaste, "the

 

182

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

Prime was inedible there. Who can tell the Eith that

found its way into it."

 

"Come now. Elder-mine." Chawker paused, as

though attempting to choose words, then shrugged.

"Well, it held body and soul together. One got used to

it. I won't say more than that . . . But, Elder-Lady-

mine, I am so glad to be home. The lights are so warm

and gentle."

 

"You've enough of the Sun, I take it," said Elder.

"But you woulcJ go. Well, welcome back to the inner

world with light and warmth under our control,

locked away from the patch and blaze of sunshine.

Welcome back to the womb of the people, as the say-

ing goes."

 

"Yet I'm glad I went," said Chawker Minor. "Eight

different worlds, you know. It gives you a view you

don't have otherwise."

 

"And would be better off not having," said Elder.

 

"I'm not sure about that," said Chawker Minor, and

his right eyelid trembled just slightly as he looked at

Major. Chawker Major's lips compressed but he said

nothing.

 

It was a feast- Anyone would have had to admit that,

and in the end it was Chawker Minor himself, the

greediest to begin with, who was the first to push

away. He had no choice; else Lady would have kept

on supplying him with samples out of what seemed to

be a bottomless larder.

 

"Lady-mine," he said affectionately, "my tongue

wearies. I can no longer taste anything."

 

"You not taste?" said Lady. "What kind of nithling

story is that? You have the skill of the Grand-Elder

himself. At the age of six, you were already a Gusta-

tor; we had endless proof of that. There was not an

 

OPUS 200                 183

 

additive you could not detect even when you could

not pronounce it right."

 

'Taste buds bkint when not used," said Elder

Chawker darkly, "and jogging the Other-Worlds can

utterly spoil a man."

 

"Yes? Well, let us see," said Ladv. "Minor-mine, tell

your doubting Elder what you have eaten."

 

"In order?" said Chawker Minor.

 

"Yes. Show him vou remember."

 

Chawker Minor closed his eyes. "It's scarcely a fair

test," he said. "I so relished the taste I did not pause

to analyze it—and it's been so long."

 

"He has excuses, See, Ladv?" said Elder.

 

"But I will trv," Chawker Minor said hastily. "In the

first place, the Prime base for all of them is from the

fungus vats of the East Section and tlie thirteenth cor-

ridor within it, I believe, unless great changes have

been made in my absence."

 

"No, you are right," said Lady. with satisfaction.

 

"And it was expensive," said Elder.

 

'The prodigal returns," said Chawker Major just a

bit acidly, "and we must have the fatted fungus, as

the saying goes . . . Get the additives. Minor, if you

can."

 

"Well," said Chawker Minor, "the first dab was

strongly Spring Morning with added Leaves A-

Freshened and a touch, not more than a touch, of

Spara-Sprig."

 

"Perfectly right," said Ladv, smiling happily.

 

Chawker Minor went on with the list, his eyes still

closed, his taste memory rolling backward and for-

ward luxuriously over the tang and consistency of the

samplings. He skipped the eighth and came back to it.

 

"That one," he said, "puzzles me."

 

Chawker Major grinned. "Didn't you get any of it?"

 

184

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

"Of course I did. I got most of it. There was Frisk-

ing Lamb—not Leaping Lamb, either, Frisking, even

though it leaned just a little toward Leaping."

 

"Come on, don't try to make it hard. That's easy,"

said Chawker Major. "What else?"                ,

 

"Green Mint, with just a touch of Sour Mint—both—

and a dusting of Sparkle-Blood . . . But there was

something else I couldn't identify."

 

"Was it good?" asked Chawker Major.

 

"Good? This isn't the day to ask me that. Every-

thing is good. Everything is succulent. And what I

can't identify seems very succulent. It's close to Hedge

Bloom, but better."

 

"Better?" said Chawker Major delightedly. "It's

mine!"

 

"What do you mean, yours?" said Chawker Minor.

 

Elder said with stiff approval, "My stay-at-home

son has done well while you were gone. He devised a

computer program that has designed and produced

three new life-compatible flavor molecules of consid-

erable promise. Grand-Elder Tomasz himself has

given one of Major's constructions tongue-room—the

very one you just tested. Fly-away Minor-mine—and

has given it his approval."

 

Chawker Major said, "He didn't actually say any-

thing, Elder-mine."

 

Lady said, "His expression needed no words."

 

"It is good," said Chawker Minor, rather dashed at

having the play taken away from him. "Will you be

entering for the Awards?"

 

"It has been in my mind," said Chawker Major,

with an attempt at indifference. "Not with this one—1

call it Purple Light, by the way—but I believe I will

have something else, more worthy of the competition."

 

Chawker Minor frowned. "I had thought that—"

 

OPUS 200'                 185

 

"Yes?"

 

"—that I am ready to stretch out and think of noth-

ing. Come, half a dab more of Major's construction,

Lady-mine, and let's see what I can deduce concern-

ing the chemical structure of his Purple Light."

 

For a week, the holiday atmosphere in the Chawker

household continued. Elder Chawker was well known

in Gammer, and it seemed that half the inhabitants of

the world must have passed through his section before

all had had their curiosity sated and could see with

their own eyes that Chawker Minor had returned un-

scathed. Most remarked on his complexion, and more

than one young woman asked if she might touch his

cheek, as though the light tan were a layer that could

be felt.

 

Chawker Minor allowed the touch with lordly com-

placency, though Lady disapproved of these forward

requests and said so.

 

Grand-Elder Tomasz himself came down from his

aerie, as plump as a Gammerman ever permits himself

to be and with no sign that age or white hair had

blunted his talents. He was a Master-Gustator such as

Gammer might never have seen before, despite the

tales of Grand-Elder Faron of half a century ago.

There was nothing that Tomasz tongued that did not

open itself in detail to him.

 

Chawker Minor, who had no great tendency to un-

derrate his own talent, felt no shame in admitting that

what he himself had. innately, could not yet come any-

where near the old man's weight of experience.

 

The Grand Elder, who, for nearly twenty years

now, had governed the annual Awards festival by

force of his skill, asked closely after the Other-Worlds,

which, of course, he himself had never visited.

 

186

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

He was indulgent, though, and smiled at Lady

Chawker. "No need to fret, Lady," he said. "Young

people these days are curious. In my time we were

content to attend to our own cylinder of worth, as the

saying goes, but these are new times and many are

making what they call the Grand Tour. Good, per-

haps, to see the Other-Worlds—frivolous, sun-

drenched, browsive, nongustational, without a taste

bud to content themselves with—makes one appreciate

the eldest brother, as the saying goes."

 

Grand-Elder Tomasz was the only Gammerman

whom Chawker Minor had ever heard actually speak

of Gammer as "the eldest brother," although you

could find it often enough in the video cassettes. It

had been the third colony to be founded in the

Moon's orbit back in the pioneering years of the

twenty-first century; but the first two. Alter and Bay-

ter, had never become ecologically viable. Gammer

had.

 

Chawker Minor said with tactful caution, "The

Other-World people never tired of telling me how

much the experience of Gammer meant to all the

worlds that were founded afterward. All had, learned,

they said, from Gammer."

 

Tomasz beamed. "Certainly. Certainly. Well said."

 

Chawker Minor said with even greater caution,

"And yet such is self-love, you understand, Grand-

Elder, that a few thought they had improved on Gam-

mer."

 

Grand-Elder Tomasz puffed his breath out through

his nose ("Never breathe through your mouth any

more than you can help," he would say over and over

again, "for that blunts the Gustator's tongue") and

fixed Chawker with his deep blue eyes that looked

 

OPUS 200                 187

 

the bluer for the snow-white eyebrows that curved

above them.

 

"Improved in what way? Did they suggest a spe-

cific improvement?"

 

Chawker Minor, skating on thin ice and aware of

Elder Chawker's awful frown, said softly, "In matters

that they value, I gather. I am not a proper judge of

such things, perhaps."

 

"In matters that they value. Did you find a world

that knows more about food chemistry than we do?"

 

"No! Certainly not, Grand-Elder. None concern

themselves with that as far as I could see. They all

rely on our findings. They admit it openly."

 

Grand-Elder Tomasz grunted. "They can rely on us

to know the effects and side effects of a hundred

thousand molecules, and each year to study, define,

and analyze the effects of a thousand more. They rely

on us to work out the dietary needs of elements and

vitamins to the last syllable. Most of all, they rely on

us to work out the art of taste to the final, most subtly

convoluted touch. They do so, do they not?"

 

"Thev admit all this, without hesitation."

 

"And where do you find computers more reliable

and more complex than ours?"

 

"As far as our field is concerned, nowhere."

 

"And what Prime did they serve?" With heavy hu-

mor, he added, "Or did they expect a young Gammer-

man to browse."

 

"No, Grand-Elder, they had Prime. On all the

worlds I visited they had Prime; and on all those I did

not visit, I was told, there was also Prime. Even on the

world where Prime was considered fit chiefly for the

lower classes—"

 

Tomasz reddened. "Idiots!" he muttered.

 

"Different worlds, different ways," said Chawker

 

188

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

Minor rather hurriedly. "But even then, Grand-Elder,

Prime was popular when something was needed that

was convenient, inexpensive, and nourishing. And

they got their Prime from us. All of them had a fungal

strain brought originally from Gammer."

 

"Which strain?"

 

"Strain A-5" said Chawker Minor apologetically.

"It's the sturdiest, they said, and the most energy-

sparing."

 

"And the coarsest," said Tomasz with satisfaction.

"And what flavor additives?"

 

"Very few," said Chawker Minor. He thought a mo-

ment, then said, "There was, on Kapper, a place

where they had an additive that was popular with the

Kapperpeople and that had . . . possibilities. Those

were not properly developed, however, and when I

distributed tastes of what Lady-mine had sent me,

they were forced to admit that it was to theirs as

Gammer is to a space pebble."

 

"You had not told me that," said Lady Chawker,

who, till then, had not ventured to interpose in a con-

versation that had the Grand-Elder as one of its par-

ticipants. 'The Other-WorIders liked my preparations,

did they?"

 

"I didn't often hand it out," said Chawker Minor. "I

was too selfish to do it. But when I did, they liked it a

great deal, Lady-mine."

 

It was several days before the two brothers managed

 

to find a way of being alone together.

Major said, "Weren't you on Kee at all?"

Chawker Minor lowered his voice. "I was. Just a

 

couple of days. It was too expensive to stay long."

"I have no doubt Elder would not have liked even

 

the two days."

 

OPUS 200                 189

 

"I don't intend telling him. Do you?"

 

"A witless remark. Tell me about it."

 

Chawker Minor did, in semi-embarrassed detail,

and said, finally, "The point is, Major, it doesn't seem

wrong to them. They don't think anything of it. It

made me think that perhaps there is no real right and

wrong. What you're used to, that's right. What you're

not used to, that's wrong."

 

'Try telling that to Elder."

 

"What he thinks is right and what he is used to are

precisely the same. You'll have to admit that."

 

"What difference does it make what Z admit^ Elder

thinks that all rights and wrongs were written down

bv the makers of Gammer and that it's all in a book of

which there is only one copy and we have it, so that

all the Other-Worlds are wrong forever. I'm speaking

metaphorically, of course."

 

"I believe that, too, Major—metaphorically. But it

shook me up to see how calmly those Other-World

people took it. I could— watch them browse."

 

A spasm of distaste crossed Major's face. "Animals,

you mean?"

 

"It doesn't look like animals when they browse on

it. That's the point,"

 

"You watched them kill and dissect that—that—**

 

"No," he said hastily. "I just saw it when it was all

finished. What they ate looked like some kinds of

Prime and it smelled like some kinds of Prime. I imag-

ine it tasted—"

 

Chawker Major twisted his expression into one of

extreme revulsion, and Chawker Minor said defen-

sively, "But browsing came first, you know. On Earth,

I mean. And it could be that when Prime was first

developed on Cammer it was designed to imitate the

taste of browse food."

 

190

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

"I prefer not to believe that," said Chawker Major.

 

"What you prefer doesn't matter."

 

"Listen," said Chawker Major. "I don't care what

they browse. If they ever got the chanoe to eat real

Prime—not Strain A-5, but the fatted fungus, as the

saying goes—and if they had the sophisticated addi-

tives and not whatever primitive trash they use, they

would eat forever and never dream of browsing. If

they could eat what J have constructed and will yet

construct—"

 

Chawker Minor said wistfully, "Are you really

going to try for the Award, Major?"

 

Chawker Major thought for a moment, then said, "I

think I will. Minor. I really will. Even if I don't win, I

eventually will. This program I've got is different."

He grew excited. "It's not like any computer program

I've ever seen or heard of—and it works. It's all in

the—" But he pulled himself up sharply and said un-

easily, "I hope, Minor, you don't mind if I don't tell

you about it? I haven't told anyone."

 

Chawker Minor shrugged. "It would be foolish to

tell anyone. If you really have a good program, you

can make your fortune. You know that. Look at

Grand-Elder Tomasz. It must be thirty-five years

since he developed Corridor Song and he still hasn't

published his path."

 

Chawker Major said, "Yes, but there's a pretty good

guess as to how he got to it. And it's not really, in my

opinion—" He shook his head doubtfully, in prefer-

ence to saying anything that might smack of lese ma-

jeste.

 

Chawker Minor said, "The reason I asked if you

were going to try for the Award—"

 

"weiir

 

OPUS 200                 191

 

"Is that I was rather thinking of entering myself."

 

"You'^ You're scarcely old enough."

 

"I'm twenty-two. But would you mind?"

 

"You don't know enough, Minor. When have you

ever handled a computer?"

 

"What's the difference? A computer isn't the an-

swer."

 

"No? What is?"

 

"The taste buds."

 

"Hit and miss and taste buds all the way. We all

know that sound, and I will jump through the zero

axis in a bound, too, as the saying goes."

 

"But I'm serious, Major. A computer is only the

starting point, isn't it? It all ends with the tongue no

matter where you start."

 

"And, of course, a Master-Gustator like Minor-lad,

here, can do it."

 

Chawker Minor was not too tanned to flush.

"Maybe not a Master-Gustator, but a Gustator any-

way, and you know it. The point is that being away

from home for a year I've gotten to appreciate good

Prime and what might be done with it. I've learned

enough. Look, Major, my tongue is all I've got, and I'd

like to make back the money that Elder and Lady

spent on me. Do you object to my entering? Do you

fear the competition?"

 

Chawker Major stiffened. He was taller and heavier

than Chawker Minor and he didn't look friendly.

"There is no competition to fear. If you Want to enter,

do so, Minor-child. But don't come whimpering to me

when you're ashamed. And I tell you, Elder won't like

your making a no-taste-batch of yourself, as the say-

ing goes."

 

"Nobody has to win right away. Even if I don't win,

 

192                 ISAAC ASIMOV

 

I eventually will, as your saying goes." And Chawker

Minor turned and left. He was feeling a little huffy

himself.

 

Matters trailed off eventually. Everyone seemed to

have had enough of the tales of the Other-Worlds;

 

Chawker Minor had described the living animals he

had seen for the fiftieth time and denied he had seen

any of them killed for the hundredth. He had painted

word-pictures of the grain fields and tried to explain

what sunshine looked like when it glinted off men

and women and buildings and fields, through air that

turned a little blue and hazy in the distance. He ex-

plained for the two hundredth time that, no, it was

not at all like the sunshine effect in the outer viewing

rooms of Gammer (which hardly anyone visited any-

way ).

 

And now that it was all over, he rather missed not

being stopped in the corridors. He disliked no longer

being a celebrity. He felt a little at a loss as he spun

the book film he had grown tired of viewing and tried

not to be annoyed with Lady.

 

He said, "What's the matter. Lady-mine? You haven't

smiled all day."

 

His mother looked up at him thoughtfully. "It's dis-

tressing to see dissension between major and minor."

 

"Oh, come." Chawker Minor rose irritably and

walked over to the air vent. It was jasmine day and he

loved the odor and, as always, automatically won-

dered how he could make it better. It was very faint,

of course, since everyone knew that strong floral

odors blunted the tongue.

 

"There's notliing wrong, Lady," he said, "with my

trying for the Award. It's the free right of every Gam-

merperson over twenty-one."

 

OPUS 200                 193

 

"But it isn't in good taste to be competing with your

brother."

 

"Good taste! Why not? I'm competing with every-

one. So's he. It's just a detail tliat we're competing

with each other. Whv don't you take the attitude that

he's competing with me?"

 

"He's three vears older than you, Minor-mine."

 

"And perhaps he'll win, Lady-mine. He's got the

computer. Has Major asked you to get me to drop

out?"

 

"No, he did not. Don't think that of your brother."

Lady spoke earnestly, but she avoided his eyes.

 

Chawker Minor said, "Well, then, he's gone moping

after you and vou've learned to tell what he wants

without his having to say it. And all because I quali-

fied in the opening round and he didn't think I

would."

 

"Anyone can qualify," came Chawker Major's voice

from the doonvav.

 

Chawker Minor whirled. "Is that the way it is?

Then why does it upset you? And why did a hundred

people fail to qualify?"

 

Chawker Major said, "What some small-taste nither-

lings decide means very little. Minor. Wait till it comes

to the board."

 

"Since you qualified, too, Major, there's no need to

tell me how little importance there is to some small-

taste nitherlings—"

 

"Young-mine," said Lady rather sharply. "Stop it!

Perhaps we can remember that it is very unusual for

both major and minor of a single unit to qualify."

 

Neither ventured to break the silence in Lady's

presence for a while thereafter—but their scowls re-

mained eloquent.

 

194

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

As the days passed, Chawker Minor found himself

more and more involved in preparing the ultimate

sample of flavored Prime, which his own taste buds

and olfactory area would tell him was to be nothing

like anything that had ever rolled across a Gammer

tongue before.

 

He took it upon himself to visit the Prime vats

themselves, where the delectably bland fungi grew

out of malodorous wastes and multiplied themselves

at extraordinary speed, under ideal conditions, into

three dozen basic strains, each with its varieties.

 

(The Master-Gustator, tasting unflavored Prime it-

self—the fungal unalterate, as the saying went—could

be relied upon to pin its source down to the section

and corridor, Grand-Elder Tomasz had more than

once stated, publicly, that he could tell the very vat

itself and, at times, the portion of the vat, though no

one had ever quite put him to the full test.)

 

Chawker Minor did not pretend to the expertise of

Tomasz, but he lipped and tongued and smacked and

nipped till he had decided on the exact strain and va-

riety he wanted, the one that would best blend with

the ingredients he was mixing in his mind. A good

Gustator, said Grand-Elder Tomasz, could combine

ingredients mentally and taste the mixture in his imagi-

nation. With Tomasz it might, for all one knew, be

merely a statement, but Chawker Minor took it seri-

ously and was sure he could do it.

 

He had rented out space in the kitchen—another ex-

pense for poor Elder, although Chawker Minor was

making do with less than Major had demanded,

Chawker Minor did not repine at having less, for,

since he was eschewing computers, he didn't require

much. Mincers, mixers, heaters, strainers, and the rest

of the cookery tools took up little room. And at least

 

OPUS 200                 195

 

he had an excellent hood for the masking and removal

of all odors. (Everyone knew the horror tales of the

Gustators who had been given away by a single sniff

of odor and then found that some creative mixture

was in the public domain before they could bring it

before the board. To steal someone else's product

might not be, as Lady would say, in good taste, but it

was done and there was no legal recourse.)

 

The signal light flashed in a code sufficiently well

known. It was Elder Chawker. Chawker Minor felt

the thrill of guilt he had felt as a child when he had

pilfered dabs of Prime reserved for guests.

 

"One moment. Elder-mine," he sang out, and, in a

flurry of activity, set the hood on high, closed the par-

tition, swept his ingredients off the tabletop and into

the bins, then stepped out and closed the door quickly

behind him.

 

"I'm sorry, Elder-mine," he said with an attempt at

lightness, "but Gustatorship^is paramount."

 

"I understand," said Elder stiffly, though his nos-

trils had flared momentarily as though he would have

been glad to catch that fugitive whiff, "but you've

scarcely been at home lately, scarcely more than when

you were on your space folly, and I must come here to

speak to you."

 

"No problem. Elder, we'll go to the lounge."

 

The lounge was not far away, and, fortunately, it

was empty. Elder's sharp glances this way and that

made the emptiness seem fortunate for him, and

Chawker Minor sighed inaudibly. He would be lec-

tured, he knew.

 

Elder said at last, "Minor, you are my son, and I

will do my duty toward you. My duty does not con-

sist, however, of more than paying your expenses and

seeing to it that you have a fair start in life. There is

 

196

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

also the matter of reproval in good time. Who wishes

fair Prime must not stint on foul waste, as the saying

goes."

 

Chawker's eyes dropped. He, along with his

brother, had been among the thirty who had now

qualified for the final awarding to be held in a week,

and the unofficial rumor had it that Chawker Minor

had done so with a somewhat higher score than

Chawker Major had-

 

"Elder," said Chawker Minor, "would you ask me to

do less than my best for my brother's sake?"

 

Elder Chawker's eyes blinked in a moment of puz-

zlement and Chawker Minor clamped his mouth shut

He had clearly jumped in the wrong direction.

 

Elder said, "I do not ask vou to do less than your

best, but rather more than you are doing. Bethink you

of the shaming you have inflicted on us in your little

quarrel with Stens Ma|or last week."

 

Chawker Minor had, for a moment, difficulty re-

membering what this could apply to. He had done

nothing with Stens Major at all—a silly young woman

with whom he was perfectly content to confine him-

self to mere talk, and not very much of that

 

"Stens Major? Shaming? How?"

 

"Do not say you do not remember what you said to

her. Stens Major repeated it to her elder and lady,

good friends of our family, and it is now common talk

in the section. What possessed you. Minor, to assault

the traditions of Gammer?"

 

"I did not do such a thing. She asked me about my

Grand Tour and I told her no more than I have told

three hundred others."

 

"Didn't you tell her that women should be allowed

to go on the Grand Tour?"

 

"Oh."

 

OPUS 200                 197

 

"Yes. Oh."

 

"But, Elder, what I said was that if she would take

the Grand Tour herself there would be no need to ask

questions, and when she pretended to be shocked at

such a suggestion, I told her that, in my opinion, the

more Gammerpeople saw of the Other-Worlds, the

better it would be for all of us. We are too closed a

society, in my opinion, and, Elder, I am not the first

to say so."

 

"Yes, I have heard of radicals who have said so, but

not in our section and certainly not in our family. We

have endured longer than the Other-Worlds; we have

a stabler and fitter society; we do not have their prob-

lems. Is there crime among us? Is there corruption

among us?"

 

"But, Elder, it is at the price of immobility and liv-

ing death. We're all so tied in, so enclosed."

 

"What can they teach us, these Other-Worlds? Were

you not yourself glad to come back to the enclosed

and comfortable sections of Gammer with their corri-

dors lit in the gold light of our own energy?"

 

"Yes—but, you know, I'm spoiled, too. There are

many things on the Other-Worlds that I would have

very much liked to have made myself accustomed to."

 

"And just exactly what, Minor-madman-mine?"

 

Chawker Minor bit back the words. After a pause

he said, "Why simply make assertions? When I can

prove that a particular Other-World way is superior to

Gammerfashion, I will produce the proof. Till then,

what is the use of just talking?"

 

"You have already been talking idly without end,

Minor, and it has done you so little good that we can

call what it has done you harm outright. Minor, if you

have any respect left for me after your Grand Tour—

which Lady-yours wheedled out of me against my

 

198

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

will. Gammer knows—or if you have any regard for

the fact that I still deny you nothing that my credit

can obtain for you, you will keep your mouth shut

henceforward. Think not that I will halt at sending

you away if you shame us. You may then continue on

your Grand Tour for as long as the Orbit lasts—and be

no son of mine thereafter."

 

Chawker Minor said in a low voice, "As you say,

Elder. From this moment on, unless I have evidence, I

will say nothing."

 

"Since you will never have evidence," said Elder

grimly, "I will be satisfied if you keep your word."

 

The annual Finals was the greatest holiday occasion,

the greatest social event, the greatest excitement of

any sort in the course of the year. Each one of thirty

dishes of elegantly flavored Prime had been prepared.

Each one of the thirty judges would taste each dish at

intervals long enough to restore the tongue. It would

take all day.

 

In all honesty, Gammerpeople had to admit that the

nearly one hundred winners who had taken their prize

and acclaim in Gammer history had not all turned out

dishes that had entered the Great Menu as classics.

Some were forgotten and some were now considered

ordinary. On the other hand, at least two of Gammer's

all-time favorites, combinations that had been best

sellers in restaurants and homes for two decades, had

been also-rans in the years in which they had entered

the contest. Black Velvet, whose odd combination of

chocolate-warm and cherry blossom had made it the

standard sweet, did not even make it to the Finals.

 

Chawker Minor had no doubt of the outcome. He

was so confident that he found himself in continual

danger of being bored. He kept watching the faces of

 

OPUS 200                 199

 

the individual Judges as every once in a while one of

them would scoop up a trifle from one of the dishes

and place it on his tongue. There was a careful blank-

ness to the expression, a heavy-Iiddedness to the eye.

No true judge could possibly allow a look of surprise

or a sigh of satisfaction to escape him—certainly not a

quiver of disdain. They merely recorded their ratings

on the little computer cards they carried.

 

Chawker Minor wondered if they could possibly re-

strain their satisfaction when they tasted his. In the

last week, his mixture had grown perfect, had reached

a pinnacle of taste glory that could not be improved

on, could not—

 

"Counting your winnings?" said Chawker Ma|or in

his ear.

 

Chawker Minor started, and turned quickly.

Chawker Major was dressed entirely in platon and

gleamed beautifully.

 

Chawker Minor said, "Come, MaJor-mine, I wish

you the best. I really do. I want you to place as high

as possible."

 

"Second place if you win, right?"

 

"Would you refuse second place if I win?"

 

"You can't win, I've checked somewhat. I know

your strain of Prime; I know your ingredients—"

 

"Have you spent any time on your own work, all

this time you've been playing detective?"

 

"Don't worry about me. It didn't take long to leam

that there is no way you can combine your ingredients

into anything of value."

 

"You checked that with the computer, I suppose?"

 

"I did."

 

"Then how did I get into the Finals, I wonder? Per-

haps vou don't know all there is to know about my

ingredients. Look, Major, the number of effective

 

200

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

combinations of even a few ingredients is astronomi-

cal if we can consider the various possible proportions

and the possible treatments before and after mixing,

and the order of mixing and the—"

 

"I don't need vour lecture. Minor."

 

"Then you know that no computer in existence has

been programmed for the complexity of a clever

tongue. Listen, you can add some in^edients in

amounts so small as to be indetectable even by

tongue, and yet they add a cast of flavor that repre-

sents a marked change,"

 

"They teach you that in the Other-Worlds, youn-

gling?"

 

"I learned that for myself." And Chawker Minor

walked away before he could be goaded into talking

too much.

 

There was no question that Grand-Elder Tomasz this

year, as in a large number of previous years, held the

Judging Committee in the hollow of his tongue, as the

saying went.

 

He looked up and down the long table at which all

the judges had now taken their seats in order of pref-

erence, with Tomasz himself right in the middle. The

computer had been fed; it had produced the result.

There was complete silence in tlie room where the

contestants, their friends, and their families sat wait-

ing for glory or, failing that, for the consolation erf

being able to taste all the contesting samples.

 

The rest of Gammer, possibly without exceptions,

watched by holo-video. There would, after all, be ad-

ditional batches made up for a week of feasting, and

the general opinion did not always match that of the

judges either, though that did not affect the prize

winning.

 

OPUS 200                 201

 

Tomasz said, "I do not recall an awarding in which

there was so little doubt as to the computer decision,

or such general agreement."

 

There was a nodding of heads, and smiles and looks

of satisfaction.

 

Chawker Minor thought: They look sincere; not as

| if they're just going along with the Grand-Elder, so it

|- must be mine.

 

Tomasz said, "It has been my privilege this year to

taste a dish more subtle, more tempting, more ambro-

sial than anything I have ever, in all my time and ex-

perience, tasted. It is the best. I cannot imagine it

being bettered."

 

He held up the computer cards. "The win is unani-

mous, and the computer was needed only to deter-

mine the order of the runners-up. The winner is—" just

that pause for effect and then, to the utter surprise of

U everyone but the winner, "Chawker Minor, for his

dish entitled Mountain Cap. Young man . . ."

 

Chawker Minor advanced for the ribbon, the

plaque, the credits, the handshakes, the recording, the

beaming, and the other contestants received their

numbers in the list. Chawker Major was in fifth place.

 

Grand-Elder Tomasz sought out Chawker Minor after

a while and tucked the young man's arm into his el-

bow.

 

"Well, Chawker Minor, it is a wonderful day for you

and for all of us. I did not exaggerate. Your dish was

the best I've ever tongued. And yet you leave me cu-

rious and wondering. I identiBed all the ingredients,

but there was no way in which their combinations

could produce what was produced. Would you be

willing to impart your secret to me? I would not

 

202

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

blame you if you refused, but in the case of an accom-

plishment so towering by one so young, to—"

 

"I don't mind telling you, Grand-Elder. I intend to

tell everybody. I told my Elder that I would say noth-

ing till I had proof. You supplied the proof!"

 

"What?" said Tomasz blankly. "What proof?" '

 

"The idea for the dish occurred to me, actually, on

the Other-World Kapper, which is why I called it

Mountain Cap, in tribute. I used ordinary ingredients,

Grand-Elder, carefully blended, all but one. I suppose

you detected the Garden Tang?"

 

"Yes, I did, but there was a slight modification

there, I think, that I did not follow. How did the

Other-World you speak of affect matters?"

 

"Because it was not Garden Tang, Grand-Elder, not

the chemical. I used a complicated mixture for the

Garden Tang, a mixture whose nature I cannot be en-

tirely certain of."

 

Tomasz frowned portentously. "You mean, then,

yon cannot reproduce this dish?"

 

"I can reproduce it; be certain of that, Grand-Elder.

The ingredient to which I refer is garlic."

 

Tomasz said impatiently, "That is only the vulgar

term for Mountain Tang."

 

"Not Mountain Tang. That is a known chemical

mixture. I am speaking of the bulb of the plant."

 

Grand-Elder Tomasz's eyes opened wide and so did

his mouth.

 

Chawker Minor continued enthusiastically, "No

mixture can duplicate the complexity of a growing

product, Grand-Elder, and on Kapper they have

grown a particularly delicate variety which they use

in their Prime. They use it incorrectly, without any

appreciation of its potentiality. I saw at once that a

 

OPUS 200

 

203

 

true Gammer-person could do infinitely better, so I

brought back with me a number of the bulbs and

used them to good advantage. You said it was the best

dish of Prime you had ever rolled tongue over, and if

there is any better evidence than that for the value of

opening our societv, then—"

 

But he dwindled to a stop at last and stared at To-

masz with surprise and alarm, Tomasz was backing

away rapidly. He said in a gargling voice, "A growth—

from the dirt—I've eaten—"

 

The Grand-Elder had often boasted that such was

the steadiness of his stomach that he had never vom-

ited, not even in infancy. And certainly no one had

ever vomited in the great Hall of Judgment. The

Grand-Elder now set a precedent in both respects.

 

Chawker Minor had not recovered. He would never

recover. If it were exile that Elder Chawker had pro-

nounced, so be it. He would never return.

 

Elder had not come to see him off. Neither had Ma-

|or, of course. It didn't matter. Chawker Minor swore

inwardly that he would make out, somehow, without

their help, even if it meant serving on Kapper as a

cook.

 

Lady was there, however—the only one in all the

field to see him off; the only one to dare accept the

nonperson he had become. She shivered and looked

mournful and Chawker Minor was filled with the des-

perate desire to justify himself.

 

"Lady-mine," he said in a fury of self-pity, "it's un-

fair! It was the best dish ever made on Gammer. The

Grand-Elder said so himself. The best. If it had grated

bulb in it, that didn't mean the dish was bad; it meant

the bulb was good. Don't you see it? Look, I must

 

204

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

board the ship. Tell me you see it. Don*t you under-

stand it means we must become an open society, leam

from others as well as teach others or we'll wither?"

 

The platform was about to take him up to the ship's

entrance. She was watching him sadly, as though she

knew she would never see him again.

 

He began the final rise, leaned over the rail. "What

did I do wrong. Lady-mine?"

 

And she said in a low, distraught voice, "Can't you

see, Minor-mine, that what you did was not in—"

 

The clang of the ship's port opening drowned her

last two words, and Chawker Minor moved in and put

the sight of Gammer behind him forever.

 

Biology suffered in my second hundred hooks, as

chemistry had. Whereas mi/ first books include such

works as The Human Bodv and The Human Brain,

nothing of the sort appears later,

 

On the other hand, there is mif How Did We Find

Out series for Walker. One of them. How Did We Find

Out About Vitamins? (Book 158}, published in 1974,

is on the borderline between biology and chemistry.

Another item in the series, .How Did We Find Out

About Dinosaurs? (Book 145), published in 1973, is

on the borderline between biology and geology. A

third. How Did We Find Out About Germs? (Book

153), published in 1974, is clearly about biology. Here

is a passage from that book on the first medical vic-

tory over infectious disease.

 

from How Dm WE FIND Our ABOUT GERMS?

(2974)

 

Disease is a subject that concerns everyone. No one

can ever be sure that he or she might not suddenly fall

sick. A person can at any time begin to feel bad, de-

velop a fever, or break out in a rash. Eventually, he or

she might even die of a disease.

 

208

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

When one person falls sick, others might also. A dis-

ease can suddenly spread over a whole town or a

whole region, and some diseases can be very deadly.

 

In the 1300s, for instance, a disease called the Black

Death spread all over Europe, Asia, and Africa and

killed millions of people. It was the greatest disaster

in human history. One-third of all the people in Eu-

rope died.

 

At this time nobody in the world knew what caused

disease. Some people thought demons or evil spirits

took over the body. Some people thought it was bad

air of some sort or another. Some people thought it

was a punishment from Heaven for evil deeds.

 

Whatever it was, though, no one imagined the dis-

eases could be stopped and no one knew when an-

other Black Death might strike.

 

One hopeful thing about disease was that some dis-

eases only hit a person once. If someone got measles

or mumps or chicken pox and got well, that person

would never get that particular disease again. He or

she was "immune." His or her body had fought off the

disease and had developed some kind of defense that

would continue to work for many years.

 

One particularly dreadful disease that only struck

once was smallpox. The trouble was that very often

once was quite enough. Many people who got small-

pox died. Many others recovered, but their faces and

bodies were covered with scars left over from the ter-

rible blisters they had had. Every once in a while,

though, someone had only a light case that did not

scar him or her much. When that happened, the per-

son was Just as immune afterward as if he or she had

had a terrible case.

 

Naturally, it was much better to have a light case of

smallpox than to have none at all. With a light case,

 

OPUS 200                209

 

you were safe for life; with none at all, vou could

never be sure you might not get it at anv moment.

 

People knew that if vou were near a person with

smallpox you might catch it. Would it not be a good

idea, then, to hang around a person with a light case?

You might catch the light case and then be safe. To

make sure, you might scratch vour skin with a needle

that had been dipped in some of the fluid in the

smallpox blisters of the sick man. This was called "in-

oculation."

 

The trouble was, though, that a person might have

a light case of smallpox, yet another person catching

it might get a severe case. Inoculation just was not safe.

 

In the 1770s, an English doctor, Edward Jenner,

grew interested in a disease called cowpox. It was

called that because it was found in cows and in other

farm animals. The diease was something like a very

mild smallpox. It a person caught cowpox from a cow,

he or she would get a blister or two and that was it

People would hardly ever know they were sick.

 

The country people where Jenner lived thought it

was good luck to get cowpox because then you never

got smallpox- Most doctors thought this was Just a su-

perstition, but Jenner wondered. He did notice that

people who worked with farm animals a good deal

hardly ever got smallpox.

 

After twenty years of study, Jenner decided to try a

very dangerous experiment. On May 14, 1796, he

found a milkmaid who had Just developed cowpox.

He dipped a needle into the fluid inside a blister on

her hand and scratched the skin of a boy who had

never had either cowpox or smallpox. The boy got

cowpox and developed a blister in the place where he

had been scratched.

 

Jenner then waited for two months to make sure the

 

210

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

boy was completely recovered. He was now immune

to cowpox, but was he also immune to smallpox? Tak-

ing an enormous chance, Jenner deliberately

scratched the boy with a needle that had been dipped

in the fluid of a real smallpox blister. The boy did not

catch smallpox.

 

Jenner tried the whole thing again two years later

when he found another girl with cowpox. He again

found he could make someone immune to smallpox by

giving them fluid from a cowpox blister.

 

The medical name for cowpox is "vaccinia," from a

Latin word for "cow." Jenner's system for giving peo-

ple cowpox to save them from smallpox was therefore

called "vaccination." When Jenner announced his find-

ings, vaccination was quickly adopted all over the

world. Smallpox disappeared from places where vacci-

nation was used.

 

Of course, a hook need not be entirely about biology

in order to deal with biology. In 1975, a book of mine

appeared entitled The Ends of the Earth {Book 168),

published by Weybright and Talley. It was about the

polar regions, and I tried to cover every aspect of the

subject, including the biological part.

 

from THE ENDS OF THE EARTH (7975)

 

The smallest living organisms of the ocean float pas-

sively in the surface layers. The German physiologist

Viktor Hensen, in 1889, called this floating life of the

ocean "plankton," from a Creek word meaning "wan-

dering," and this expression has been used ever since.

Most of the plankton are microscopic in size, but the

 

OPUS 200                211

 

name is used also for such large plant organisms as

seaweed and such large animal organisms as giant jelly-

fish.

 

The microscopic plant cells of the plankton ("phyto-

plankton," the prefix from a Greek word meaning

"plant") are the basic food of all ocean animal life. All

sea animals either eat phytoplankton or eat other ani-

mals that have eaten phytoplankton, or other animals

that have eaten other animals that have eaten other

animals—and so on, until we come to an animal that

has eaten phytoplankton. This "food chain" can be of

varying lengths.

 

The small animals of the surface ("zooplankton,"

the prefix from a Greek word meaning "animal") feed

on the phytoplankton. The most common of the zoo-

plankton are small Crustacea called "copepods." There

are six thousand species of copepods, with lengths

varying from 0.5 millimeter (barely visible to the na-

ked eye) to 1 centimeter. They make up about 70 per-

cent of all the zooplankton and can sometimes turn

the ocean pink with their numbers. A somewhat larger

variety of shellfish is the small, shrimplike "krill,"

which is up to 5 centimeters in length.

 

Larger animals, such as young fish, feed on the zoo-

plankton, and themselves serve as food for larger or-

ganisms.

 

Food is not converted into the tissues of the eater

with perfect efficiency. There is roughly a 90 percent

loss, so that, in general, the total mass of a species can

only be about 10 percent that of the species it feeds

upon.

 

Since plant life in general is the food of animal life

in general, the mass of plant life on earth must be ten

times that of animal life, and the total mass of the

phytoplankton in the ocean must be roughly ten times

 

212

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

that of all the animal life there. (Animal life in the

ocean exists at all levels, but plant life is conBned to

the euphotic zone.)

 

Because each step upward in the food chain means

a decrease in total mass of the organism by a factor of

ten, the actual number of larger animals decreases

 

drastically.

 

Thus, the white shark, which is the largest sea verte-

brate with gills (12 meters long) that lives on other

large organisms, is a relatively rare creature. The sea

cannot support white sharks in the myriads that it can

support herring, for instance, which live on plankton.

 

Large animals can be supported in large numbers if

they cut through the food chain by living on plankton

directly. The whale shark and basking shark are even

larger than the white shark (up to 15 meters long)

but can be supported in surprising numbers because

they live on plankton.

 

There are land animals that live primarily on sea

life, and the distribution of these animals differs from

that of land animals that live primarily on land life.

Land plants grow stunted and sparse as one ap-

proaches the poles, and consequently land animals

that live on them grow fewer, too. The sparseness of

land life on the tundra and the virtual absence of land

life in Antarctica have already been mentioned.

 

Sea life is, however, richer in the polar regions than

in the tropics, thanks to the greater supply of oxygen

and nutrients in cold water than in warm water. As a

result, the polar regions are rich in land animal life

that finds its food in the ocean.

 

Land life that depends on the sea for its food roust

be adapted to ocean feeding, and this takes place to

a greater or lesser extent. In some cases, the adaptation

is so extreme that the land animals are no longer

 

OPUS 200                 213

 

really land animals, having adapted themselves to

continuous life in the oceans, even to the point of de-

veloping the streamlined fish shape for more rapid

motion.

 

The best known of the extremely adapted organ-

isms are the whales and their smaller relatives the dol-

phins, which breathe by means of lungs, bring forth

living young, and are, by every criterion, as fully

mammalian as we ourselves, but which spend all their

lives in the water.

 

The smallest dolphins are about 1.2 meters long and

weigh about 45 kilograms. The largest dolphin is the

killer whale, with males as long as 10 meters. The

killer whale is an example of an organism that is at

the top of the food chain. There are no other large

organisms for whom the killer whale is a regular arti-

cle of diet. A killer whale will die of disease, accident,

or old age, not by ordinary predation.

 

The one exception to this in the case of the killer

whale and of all other organisms that exist at the top

of the food chain rests in the activity of man. In his

natural physical state, man is no match for the larger

animals, but armed with the products of the technol-

ogy produced by his restless mind, he can destroy

them all and is, indeed, in the process of doing so.

 

Another large dolphin, the narwhal, up to 5 meters

long, is an Arctic animal. It inhabits the sea among

tile loose ice of the Arctic beyond 65° N, migrating

farther northward as the pack ice melts and recedes in

the polar summer. The most unusual characteristic of

the narwhal is that one tooth on the left side of its Jaw

forms a straight, spiral tusk up to 2.5 meters long. Its

appearance is exactly that of the fabled horn of the

unicorn, which was supposed to have miraculous med-

ical properties—and no wonder, since sailors brought

 

214

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

home pieces of narwhal tooth and, claiming it to be

unicorn horn, sold them for large sums.

 

The largest truly carnivorous whale is the sperm

whale. The male sperm whale can be as long as 20

meters and may weigh as much as 60 tons. It lives

largely on giant squid. It, too, is at the top of the'food

chain and is threated onlv bv man.

 

Still larger whales, like the largest sharks, must cut

through the food chain if they are to be supported in

any numbers. The largest of all whales (and, indeed,

the largest animal that has ever lived) is the blue

whale, which can be 30 meters long and weigh 135

tons. It feeds largely on krill, eating 3 tons per dav.

Whales that feed on plankton have fringes of homy

plates, up to 3 meters long, extending down from the

roof of tile mouth and frayed and brushlike at the

end. These, called "baleen" or "whalebone," trap and

strain out the plankton.

 

Whales are worldwide in their distribution, but nat-

urally they are most common where the food supply is

richest, and this means the polar regions; and the Ant-

arctic far more than the Arctic.

 

Whalers, hunting the whale for meat, oil, and whale-

bone, ventured into Arctic and Antarctic waters, and

a great deal of the early exploration of the polar re-

gions was performed by whalers and by those who

hunted other sea mammals.

 

The search for whales was ruthless, however, and

without any thought for preserving the species. In the

eighteenth century, the large baleen whales of the

Arctic were reduced to such small numbers that it was

simply not worthwhile hunting them anymore.

 

With the passing of the baleen whales of the north,

attention turned to the sperm whale when it was dis-

covered that quantities of sperm oil could be obtained

 

OPUS 200                 215

 

from the head of that organism and that such oil was

particularly useful in oil lamps. The sperm whale was

a more difficult and savage target (Moby Dick in

Herman Melville's great novel was a sperm whale),

but they would have been wiped out also if the elec-

tric light and the growing use of petroleum had not

eased the need for sperm oil.

 

Whaling is now almost entirely confined to the Ant-

arctic, where the food supply of the oceans is the rich-

est in the world thanks to the Antarctic Convergence.

Some 70 percent of the whales killed are hunted down

in the Antarctic and, of these, 70 percent are the fin

whale- Even now 35,000 whales are being killed each

year, and these great animals will be wiped out if

mankind does not manage to control the whalers.

 

Stepping down a notch in the extent of adaptation

to the sea, we come to the seals. They, too, are typi-

cally polar in distribution because of the richness of

the cold regions of the ocean.

 

Like the whales, the seals have been hunted down

and slaughtered. Where the whales are bare skinned

and depend on retaining warmth against the cold wa-

ter of the polar oceans by thick layers of fat ("blub-

ber") under the skin, seals have, in many cases, devel-

oped thick coats of hair. The coats of these "hair seals"

have been coveted and have very nearly proved the

doom of those animals.

 

The ones that yield the best "sealskins" are the

Alaska fur seals. These gathered in huge hordes on the

Pribilof Islands (discovered'by the Russian navigator

Gerasim Pribilof in 1786) in the Bering Sea. At the

time of the discovery, some 5,000,000 seals formed

the herd. They began to wither under the attack

of the sealers until the Russian government exerted

protection.

 

216

 

ISAAC ASIMOV

 

The Pribilof Islands, along with all of Alaska,

passed to the United States in 1867, and at once the

sealers began to make destructive inroads until only

125,000 seals remained in 1911. There seemed no way

of making men forgo short-term profits in favor of a

careful conservation that would, in the long run, yield

greater returns.

 

Finally, when the United States and other nations

imposed rigorous controls on sealing activities, the

seal herds began to be restored. By now the herds are

back up to 3,000,000 despite the fact that since 1911,

under carefully rationed culling of the herds, 1,500,000

seals have been taken for their fur.

 

The most northerly of the seals is the ringed seal,

which lives almost exclusively on and under the ice of

the Arctic Ocean.

 

The largest of the seals is the elephant seal, so

called more because of its trunklike nasal protuber-

ance than its size- Species are found in both the Arctic

and the Antarctic, with the latter somewhat the larger.

The Antarctic males reach a length of 6.5 meters and

a weight of nearly 4 tons.

 

The next largest seal is the walrus, which can reach

a length of 3.5 meters and a weight of 1.4 tons. It dif-

fers from the other members of the seal family by pos-

sessing a pair of downward pointing tusks (the two

upper canine teeth), which can be as long as 40 centi-