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still had.
I didn't have to interrupt a conversation to take it. Joey wasn't writing, and
Marie wasn't talking.
Apparently nothing at all had been said during the crisis in the operating
room  we'd have heard
Marie's voice even there, and Joey's three words of a few minutes before were
still on the pad. Marie was looking at him through the port, and he was
looking everywhere but at her. I didn't pause to do any analysis. I just took
the pad from Joey and swam back to the table.
The doctor called Bert's attention to the blood connections between him and
the machine, but made no real effort to stop him from writing. Bert nodded an
acknowledgment of the warning and went ahead with the stylus. He wrote
briefly, and handed the pad to me.
'I'm sorry, but I can see when I'm checkmated. I hope your luck is better,
though now that she knows
Joey is alive I wouldn't bet on it. Tell her she didn't kill me, if you think
the possibility is bothering her.
I'd better not see her again myself.'
That was an eye-opening paragraph. Suddenly I saw just why Bert had been
trifling with the truth, why he had concealed Joey's presence from Marie, why
he had decided to go back to the surface on such short notice, why he had been
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so far from completely frank with me - and even why the local Council had been
so reluctant to let us both leave.
I also saw that I was in no position to criticize him for any of it. There was
not a word to be said against him which didn't apply with equal force to me.
The only reason I hadn't done as much, under exactly the same motivation, was
that I'd been in no position to.
I couldn't blame him, or even criticize him. I have failings, but I'm not that
much of a hypocrite. I could be sorry for him; as he'd said, his chances were
gone.
Marie might conceivably come to realize that Joey was a hopeless case as far
as she was concerned, even after this discovery that he was alive after all.
She might possibly settle for me if that happened.
But after the last few weeks and the discoveries of the last few minutes she'd
never, never have any use for Bert.
I gave him as sympathetic a look as I could as all this dawned on me, but I
could think of nothing to write. He answered with a bitter grin and waved me
toward the door. I went. The others, except the doctor, followed me.
Chapter Twenty-four
I wasn't through learning for the day, though. As I went through the huge
valve and became visible from the tunnel outside, Marie's voice met me. It had
sharp edges, but otherwise it resembled a heavy club.
'Just where did you come up with the idea that these people weren't getting
oxygen through their lungs?
If I killed Bert I'm not too sorry, but it's your fault.'
Even I had had time to see that this question would be coming, but I'd had no
chance to work out a very good answer. While the doctor had been working on
Bert I'd been doing the same with my memory. It was evident enough that my
theory of oxygen-food was out the window, but I still wasn't able to find a
better one.
All I could do was repeat the theory and my reasons for it. I also assured
Marie that she hadn't actually killed Bert. Somehow my reasoning didn't look
as airtight written out as it had felt when I was thinking it through in the
first place - quite aside from the fact that it was now obviously wrong. In
spite of this, Marie seemed to calm down as I wrote page after page, let her
read each, and cleared it and went on to the next. The forced pauses may have
helped.
I admit you convinced me before,' she said when I was done, 'and I don't see
what the hole is myself.
Joey, in the time you've been here have you found out enough to let you tell
us what's wrong with this notion?'
'I think so,' he wrote. He paused, and positioned himself outside the port so
that Marie could read as he wrote. I swam to a spot a little further above and
behind him, so I could do the same.
'Your big mistake was natural. You were quite right in observing that we
aren't breathing, as far as chest motions go. But in spite of that we are
getting oxygen from this liquid. It's wonderful stuff. You might regard its
molecular structure as vaguely comparable to hemoglobin in that it binds
oxygen molecules loosely to its surface. I don't know just how many, but the
number is large. It doesn't have the porphyrin groups of hemoglobin; they went
to great lengths to make it transparent to visible light. I couldn't draw you
its structural formula from memory. But I've seen it. It's perfectly
understandable.
'Now, think a minute. Liquid oxygen has a molecular concentration about four
thousand times that of the gas we normally breathe. The reason we have to
breathe is that diffusion, at sea-level concentrations, won't get enough
oxygen through your windpipe to keep an animal as large as a human being
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going. You can't live in liquid oxygen, of course, because of temperature
problems. However, in this liquid the concentration of almost-free oxygen is
far, far higher than in the atmosphere - a long way short of what it is in
LOX, but very high. That was another problem; while they were at it, they made
the kernel of this molecule with a structure which would break down
endothermically at temperatures above a few hundred degrees. A fire will tend
to damp itself out, therefore. But that's a side issue, as far as breathing is
concerned.
'When molecules of the stuff give up their oxygen in your lungs, nearby
molecules pass on more O to
2
the ones which have lost it; others replenish those, and so on. It's a
bucket-brigade situation, but it's described by just the same equations that
you'd use for a diffusion problem. The rate of oxygen transport depends on the
concentration difference between the inside of your lungs and outside, and on
the area of the barrier through which the diffusion is taking place  in this
case, the smallest cross-
section area of your windpipe. In this case, the oxygen concentration around
us is enough to keep us going by diffusion down our windpipes. I'm not sure
about carbon-dioxide elimination, but I believe your theory is more nearly
right there; it's taken care of by binding into insoluble carbonates in the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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