"Cold it is equally resistant," Doc remarked. "Especially when its vital fluid, moistening it inside and out, is changed to something with a lower freezing temperature than water. Alcohol, for example, or liquefied air or ammonia gas. Then its chemistry, and the flow of energy continue on a different temperature plane, for it is supremely adaptable, Charlie."
Dr. Lanvin's sly expression matched the chill along my back.
"Okay," I growled. "Now tell me what you're really thinking."
He shrugged. "Oh, nothing definite, Charlie. Someday reaching the stars in another figurative sense, maybe. As is, this stuff isn't of much use. Call it 'protoplast' as its creators do—a tougher, upstart brother of protoplasm—life. It isn't molded. But what if, in a vastly improved form, if could be someday?"
I frowned. "An animal?" I questioned. "Artificially made? Or—a man? An android, that is? Pure fantasy, of course, yet. A robot, with a robot's ruggedness, but made completely in human form. Servants maybe?"
Doc Lanvin's mild grin turned crooked. "Servants?" he challenged. "Is that all? What if we were living the last century of man's existence as original man? No, I don't necessarily mean the often dreamed-up possibility of a robot conquest of humanity by force! But what of the 'improved model' principle, applied by humans to themselves, with the transfer of mind and ego to a body that could live without harm in the cold vacuum between the planets, or in an inferno; a body unaging, and destructible only by absolute violence? No, Charlie, this development must normally be a long ways ahead. But what if?"
A cold tingling had started around my heart, spreading inexorably to the tips of my fingers, toes, and tongue.
"Doc, I don't know," I said slowly. "To the flexible of viewpoint—wonderful. But it might be the ultimate shock to those who want tomorrow to be understandably and reliably like today and last year. To them it might be a hell; the death of everything reasonable, and a catastrophe to resist with all the weapons in the modern armory, and with the last fury of dying brain and muscle."
"I thought you'd react something like that," Doc sighed.
My laugh was unsteady. "Then why don't scientists stop digging? Nature can bite back."