Granting the need for money, a man will do
any dangerous job that comes along; Borgmann was
such a man; air lion diving off Uranus--the job!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
October 1955
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When you are only about ninety degrees from absolute zero, it is not
hot, despite the fact that the sun is shining down on you twenty-four
hours a day. The answer to this riddle is that you are on Uranus, in
the arctic circle, where the sun is a bright star almost directly
overhead. And what are you doing on Uranus? You need the money.
Nils Borgmann, however, was sweating. And the reason was that the
heating unit on his space suit, like the heating units on almost all
space suits, was not functioning properly. The breathing mechanism was
in good shape, however, and the oxygenerator on the raft pumped in
fresh air in satisfying amounts.
Nils needed money badly, for he had a wife and seven children. So he
said, "Let me down a little farther." For he saw a big, white shape
dimly through the murk--an air lion.
Up on the raft, where they heard the message, the drum went round and
paid out another twenty feet of the cable by which Nils Borgmann was
suspended in the Uranian atmosphere. Borgmann took aim and fired.
The shape kept moving. An air lion's hide is so tough that you have to
hit it right under the ribs or through the eye in order to kill it, and
Nils could not see that one clearly enough, despite the headlamp on his
helmet.
"Get it?" came the voice in his earphones.
"I'll tell you when I've got one," Nils said.
"We're sending down Petrone."
"How about running the harpoon down to where I am?"
"Okay, Nils. Sorry," the voice said.
The radio was very comforting to Nils Borgmann. Through it he felt
close to the surface, as if he had friends ready to help him at any
moment. It made him forget the real dangers of his situation.
Nils saw the harpoon come jerking down into his reach. He grabbed it
with his left hand, then held out his right for another shot at the air
lion.
"Take it easy," Petrone's voice came into his eardrums. "Don't get me
with that thing."
"Can you see it? It's getting away from me."
"I think so," Petrone said. "I think it's coming my way."
"Oh," Nils said. That was one more bonus he wouldn't get. He looked
around, hoping to sight another lion.
The sound of a muffled report came in over Nil's earphones. Then
Petrone swore in Italian. Nils always had to laugh because Petrone
would never swear in English.
And then the white shape came looming through the murkiness right at
Nils's pistol. He could even see the animal's eye, whereas usually you
were lucky if you could distinguish the head. He raised his gun and
fired and had the satisfaction of seeing the lion flounder and thrash
and finally subside, floating aimlessly in the air.
"Got it," Nils said, grinning. That was another bonus, and each time
Nils got a bonus, one of his kids had enough money to get through
college. He threw the harpoon and snagged the beast just behind it's
right foreflipper. Pulling in the harpoon cable, he made certain that
the weapon was firmly embedded in the lion's flesh.
"Pull away," he said.
"We think you'd better come up, too," they said on the raft.
"Okay," Nils said. There was only one more child to earn an education
for, and then he was going to quit.
He and the dead lion were pulled up through the atmosphere slowly and
gently, but side by side, so that he could look closely at the beast he
had killed.
* * * * *
Evolution had been kind to the air lion of Uranus. To the only animal
inhabitant of a planet whose surface temperature is -180 degrees
Centigrade, Evolution had granted the thickest fur coat of any
animal known to man and a cold-blooded circulatory system. To the
inhabitant of a planet whose atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and methane,
Evolution had given a complicated respiratory apparatus that breathed
in hydrogen and exhaled hydrogen sulfide. To retain the balance of
Uranian chemistry, Evolution had provided a brittle, yellow, rootless
plant-life that inhaled hydrogen sulfide and exhaled hydrogen. To the
inhabitant of a planet where most of the atmosphere was in a liquid
state, Evolution had seen to it that the air lion was perfectly capable
of living entirely in a liquid environment: a thick skin and heavy bone
structure enabled the air lion to withstand the heavy pressures of the
Uranian depths, gills made it possible for him to breathe liquids,
and his powerful flippers made him the strongest swimmer in the solar
system.
One would say that a bountiful Providence had been good to the air
lion. Granted the inconveniences of its environment, certainly the air
lion was efficiently equipped by Nature to live on its home planet.
But Providence also provided the air lion with a natural enemy which
bade fair to exterminate the species. And that enemy was women--the
same women (or rather, their descendants) who caused the extermination
of the egret. Women on Earth had taken a fancy to air lion coats; and,
despite the high cost of these coats (between forty and fifty thousand
dollars), the number of air lions was decreasing more rapidly than any
species could withstand.
To begin with, air lions were limited to the "northern" hemisphere
of Uranus. Uranus is a topsy-turvey planet, tipped on its axis and
rolling around the sun in the plane of its equator. The "northern"
hemisphere, then, is that side of the planet which is always turned
toward the sun--for which the sun is the pole star. This restriction on
the area in which air lions may thrive imposed a natural limitation on
the number of animals which there were in the first place. The demand
for air lion pelts--despite the fact that the beasts were so large
that an entire coat might be made from one of them--caused a dangerous
depletion.
* * * * *
Nils's helmet broke atmosphere, and then hands were grappling him,
helping him up the ladder, and pulling him aboard the "raft." The raft
actually was a well constructed metal vessel; but, as it did not need
a powerful engine, its motor was so weak that it hardly counted. Its
gunwales rose only a few feet out of the air.
Nils, as usual, fell to the deck with a clatter. One of the
space-suited men on the raft knelt down to look at him. "Hi, Borgmann,"
the man said. "Congratulations." His name was Kerr.
Nils smiled. Yes, it was worth congratulations. He was now only one
lion--only one bonus--away from his goal, and then he could quit. And
he'd be glad to quit. Dangling by a cable in liquid atmosphere is not
safe work, and Borgmann was getting old for that kind of thing.