The smoke reappeared and grew thicker as he lifted it toward his face port, but he had several seconds to examine its structure before the smoldering wood burst into flame. Although this startled him almost as much as the earlier phenomenon had, he retained his hold on the fragment. He watched with interest as the main branch curled, blackened, glowed, and flamed away, the drier leaves following suit while the green ones merely browned slightly. He made an effort to capture some of the traces of ash that remained when the process was completed, but all he was able to save were some bits of charcoal from the less completely burned portions. This he also stowed in the torpedo, Feth guiding the little vessel over to him in response to spoken directions.
A bit of soil, scraped up from beneath the plant, smoked but did not burn. Ken obtained a number of airtight cans from the cargo compartment of the torpedo and spent some time scooping bits of soil up in these. He also compressed some of the air into a cylinder, using a small piston-type pump from which Feth had carefully removed all traces of lubricant. It leaked a trifle, but its moving parts moved, which was a pleasant surprise.
“There,” said Ken, when the task was completed. “If there are any seeds in that earth, we should be able to build a little vivarium and find out at least something about this life and its needs.”
“Do you have a balance between makers and eaters?” asked Feth. “Suppose these plants are all — what would you call them? oxidizers? — and you don’t have the corresponding reducers. I should think you’d need a balance of some sort, with any sort of life — otherwise you’d have perpetual motion.”
“I can’t tell that, of course, until we try. Still, I might go down this mountain a little farther and try to pick up a wider variety. There are still some empty cans.”
“Another point — I don’t recall your making any arrangement to keep them at the proper temperature. I know they’re almost as cold as outer space, but there’s a difference between almost and all the way.”
“We’ll leave the cans in the torpedo until we get back to One. With no air, they’ll change temperature very slowly, and we can leave the torpedo somewhere on the twilight zone of One where it’ll stay about the right temperature until we can build a chamber with thermostats and a refrigerator — it won’t be very large; I have only a couple of cubic yards of air.”
“All right, I guess you win. If it doesn’t work, it will be small loss anyway. Are your feet getting cold yet?”
“Not so far — and believe me, I’m looking for it!”
“I’m not sure I believe you. I have a pretty good idea of where most of your attention is. Have you seen any animal life? I’ve heard the old buzzing once or twice.”