Chapter 3
▂▂▂▂▂▂CLOUD LOSES AN ARM
TELLURIAN PHARMACEUTICALS, INC., was Civilization’s oldest and most conservative drug house. “Hide-bound” was the term most frequently used, not only by its younger employees, but also by its more progressive competitors. But, corporatively, Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc., did not care. Its board of directors was limited by an iron-clad, if unwritten, law to men of seventy years more; and against the inertia of that ruling body the impetuosity of the younger generation was exactly as efficacious as the dashing of ocean waves against an adamantine cliff—and in very much the same fashion.
Ocean waves do in time cut into even the hardest rock; and, every century or two, TPI did take forward step—after a hundred years of testing by others had proved conclusively that the “new” idea conformed in every particular with the exalted standards of the Galactic Medical Association.
TPI’s plant upon the planet Deka (Dekanore III, on the charts) filled the valley of Clear Creek and the steep, high hills on its sides, from the mountain spring which was the creek’s source to its confluence with the Spokane River.
The valley floor was a riot of color, devoted as it was to the intensive cultivation of medicinal plants. Along both edges of the valley extended row after row of hydroponics sheds. Upon the mountains’ sides there were snake dens, lizard pens, and enclosures for many other species of fauna.
Nor was the surface all that was in use. The hills were hollow: honeycombed into hundreds of rooms in which, under precisely controlled environments of temperature, atmosphere, and radiation, were grown hundreds of widely-variant forms of life.
At the confluence of creek and river, just inside the city limits of Newspoke—originally New Spokane—there reared and sprawled the Company’s headquarters buildings; offices, processing and synthesizing plants, laboratories, and so on. In one of the laboratories, three levels below ground, two men faced each other. Works Manager Graves was tall and fat; Fenton V. Fairchild, M.D., Nu.D., F.C.R., Consultant in Radiation, was tall and thin.
“Everything set, Graves?”
“Yes. Twelve hours, you said.”
“For the full cycle. Seven to the point of maximum yield.”