Poul Anderson

“ Suddenly he grinned. "I'll tell you what," he said. "I also came because I don't like cold weather."
"Came to Neptune?"
"Sure. On Earth, you can stand even a winter day, so you have to. Here, since the local climate would kill you in a second or two, you're always well protected from it." Gilchrist waved at the viewport. "Only I wish they didn't have that bloody window in my lab. Every time I look out, it reminds me that just beyond the wall nitrogen is a solid."
"Yo comprendo," said Alemán. "The power of suggestion. ”

“ Going out yourself, you could let your eyes accommodate. At high noon, the sun was a sharp spark in a dusky heaven, and its light amounted to about one-ninth of one percent of what Earth gets. The great fields of ice and frozen gases reflected enough to help vision, but upthrust crags and cliffs of naked rock were like blackened teeth. ”

“ The planet-sized moon of a world which could swallow ours whole without noticing. A thin hydrogen atmosphere, glaciers of nitrogen which turn to rivers when it warms up, ammonia snow, and a temperature not far above absolute zero. ”

“ The office was very quiet for a while.
"Don't spread the word," said Vesey. "We'll confine it to the engineers. Conditions are bad enough without a riot breaking loose. We can take several days of this radiation without harm, but you know how some people are about it."
"You've not been very candid so far," snapped Catherine. "Just exactly what have you learned?"
Jahangir shrugged. There was a white frost rimming his beard. "There've been no bulletins because there's no news," he replied. "We checked the pile. It's still putting out as it should. The neutron flux density is the same as ever. ”

“ What do we know? What is this arrogance of ours which insists that the truth on Earth is also the truth on the rim of space?
No!
He stood up, shuddering with cold, and said slowly: "We'd better go see Dr. Vesey. He has to know, and maybe they haven't thought to check the radiation. And then—"
Catherine stood waiting.
"Then we have to think our way out of this mess," he finished lamely. "Let's, uh, start from the beginning. Think back how th-th-the heating plant works." ”

“ What else will account for the facts? A big planet comes wandering in, yanks Neptune sunward and frees Pluto; but Neptune captures a satellite of the Invader. Triton's got to be a captured body, with this screwy retrograde orbit. ”

“ Gilchrist chuckled. Outer-planet stations did have a slightly lurid reputation, and no doubt it had been justified several years ago.
After all—The voyage was so long and costly that it could not be made often. You established a self-sufficient colony of scientists and left it there to carry on its researches for years at a time. But self-sufficiency includes psychic elements, recreation, alcohol, entertainment, the opposite sex. A returning party always took several children home.
Scientists tended to be more objective about morals, or at least more tolerant of the other fellow's, than most ”

“ A colleague, Danton, turned empty eyes on them as they joined the rest. "Any word?" he asked.
"They're working on it," said Catherine shortly.
"God! Won't they hurry up? I've got a wife and kid. And we can't even sleep, it's so cold."
Yes, thought Gilchrist, that would be another angle. Weariness to eat away strength and hope ... radiation would work fast on people in a depressed state. ”

“ It makes a pretty feeble type of life, of course, but I hope to get bacteria which can live off the local ores and frozen gases by exothermic reactions. Don't forget, when it's really cold a thermal engine can have a very high efficiency; and all living organisms are thermal engines of a sort."
They took the stairs leading up into the main dome: apartments, refectories, social centers, and offices. Another stair led downward to the central heating plant in the body of the Hill. Gilchrist saw an engineer going that way with a metering kit and a worried look. ”

“ But the pumps maintained the pressure. It was not the most efficient system which could have been devised; it would have been ludicrous on Earth. But on Triton, terminal of nowhere, men had necessarily sacrificed some engineering excellence to the stiff requirements of transportation and labor.
And after all, it had worked without a hitch for many years on Saturn's largest moon. It had worked for two years on Neptune's—
Samuel Vesey drummed on his desk with nervous fingers. ”

“ It's the gas there and in our pipes which has gotten cold and ... radioactive."
"Have you looked directly in the pile room—actually entered?" demanded Alemán.
Jahangir lifted his shoulders again. "My dear old chap," he murmured. "At a temperature of 500 and a pressure of 600?" After a moment, he frowned. "I do have some men modifying a trac so it could be driven in there for a short time. But I don't expect to find anything. It's mostly to keep them busy."
"How about the pipes, then?" asked Gilchrist.
"Internal gas pressure and velocity of circulation is just about what it always has been. ”

“ Part of its energy was diverted to the mercury-vapor turbines which furnished electricity. The rest went to heat the domes above.
Now travel across trans-Jovian spaces is long and costly; even the smallest saving means much. Very heavy insulation against the haze of neutrons which the pile emitted could scarcely be hauled from Earth, nor had there been any reason to spend time and labor manufacturing it on Triton.
Instead, pumps sucked in the hydrogen air and compressed it to about 600 atmospheres. There is no better shield against high-energy neutrons ”

“ It's ... never been enough to matter."
"Somehow, the pile's beginning to make more H-3, then." Gilchrist sat down on a bench and stared blankly at the floor.
"The laws of nature—" Alemán had calmed down a bit, but his eyes were rimmed with white.
"Yes?" asked Catherine when he stopped. She spoke mostly to fend off the silence.
"I 'ave sometimes thought ... what we know in science is so leetle. It may be the whole universe, it has been in a ... a most improbable state for the past few billion years." Alemán met her gaze as if pleading to be called a liar. ”

“ That won't be fun, but we can stand it till the difficulty has been found. Everyone is advised to dress as warmly as possible. Food and air plant crews are going on emergency status. All projects requiring energy sources are cancelled till further notice.
"According to the meters, there's nothing wrong with the pile. It's still putting out as much heat as it always has. But somehow, that heat isn't getting to us as it should. ”

“ After a moment: "Naturally, this combination decreases the total volume of gas; so the pump has to pull in more hydrogen from outside to satisfy its barystat, and more nitrogen is welling from below all the time. We've been operating quite an efficient little ammonia factory down there, though it should reach equilibrium as to pressure and yield pretty soon.
"The Haber process catalyst, incidentally, is spongy iron with certain promoters—potassium and aluminum oxides are excellent ones. ”

“ The bar was crowded, this was cocktail hour for the swing shift and—popular opinion to the contrary—a scientist likes his meals regular and only lives off sandwiches brought to the lab when he must. They found a table and sat down. Nobody had installed dial units, so junior technicians earned extra money as waiters. ”