SF Trope: Isaac
Asimov’s Three Kinds Of Science Fiction: “Gadget sci-fi: Man invents car, holds
lecture on how it works.”
Khünbish Qureshi said, “Once
we drill through the ice, we can begin extract the uranium. But we have to do
it fast.” He tapped the wide pipe with his heavily armored hand. While there
was no true atmosphere and the surface of the moon was exposed to the radiation
sleet from Jupiter, they both wore flexible suits and had ridden to the surface
on little more than a hovering plate.
“You think extracting a few
metric tonnes of uranium from this moon would have any kind of effect at all?”
asked Yelizavta Zaya. She bounced a few meters back after stomping her foot.
“I can’t say for sure.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a geologist...”
“You mean a Eurologist?”
“That makes me sound like a
bladder specialist!”
“Well, it’s not Earth, so you
can’t be a ‘geologist’.”
“There’s not a bladder in
sight, either!”
Beneath their feet, the ice
sang. On any other world, it would have been a quake, but here the ice
vibrated, shifting, sliding along cracked edges. Immense crevasses sang bass
that shook the world like a drum head; smaller ones sang faint hymns of joy;
the smallest sang beyond the hearing of Humans.
Khünbish slapped the pipe
again and said, “If there were living things under the surface, maybe my
sucking the lifeblood from the water will make them sit up and take notice.”
“I doubt there’re sitting
beings under our feet, Khun.”
He grimaced at the diminutive –
Americans and Loonies made a habit of lopping parts of people’s names off
willy-nilly – and said, “Whatever they’re doing, I’m hoping they notice.”
“And if there’s nothing under
our feet but ice, water, uranium?”
“Then we stand to make a
fortune and retire wherever we want to.” He bounced back as the ice began to
sing again. As he fell to the surface, he grimaced and said, “Can you hear
that?”
Names: ♀ Russia, Mongolian; ♂ Mongolian, Pakistan
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