The Age of Discovery, Chapter 9: A Gift of Diatoms

Day 8: 1415 hours…

Diatoms, Lyra informs me, are a very common and successful alga, and I am glad to hear it.  The sooner we begin harvesting them for their oil, the sooner we will be out of danger.  Lyra continues her diatomaceous diatribe, revealing that this family of algae has been on Earth approximately two hundred million years.  It is adapted to fresh and saltwater environments, and is most noted for the houses of glass that enclose each single-celled individual.  Diatoms thrive in the sunlit water just beneath the surface, where conditions are ideal for photosynthesis and nutrient absorption.  Lyra suggests that we would likely find all the diatoms we need clinging to the stems of aquatic reeds and grasses. 

“Sounds like we have a classic paradox,” announces Barron.  “The oil we need to break the surface tension is with the diatoms… below the surface that we can’t penetrate without the oil.”

“I have a thought about that,” muses Lyra. “One of those pond rushes could be the solution to our way down.  If we cut a hole through the epidermal cell layer, then crawl through, we should have access to any number of vallecular canals – vertical shafts if you will – giving us an unimpeded descent down through the stalk.  We descend about a centimeter, cut another hole back out through the epidermis, and start pulling in as many diatoms as we need.”

“A sound plan,” I add.  “But if possible, let’s try to extract the oil without mortally wounding the organisms.”

“But skipper,” complains Barron, “that will slow us down.  These are just diatoms.  Wouldn’t it more efficient to bring them up and, well…process them on the surface?”

I appreciate Barron’s use of polite vocabulary.  He is correct.  It would be faster and more efficient to leverage open the cells’ glass cases, tear open their cell membranes, and collect the oil globules within.  These microscopic organisms are plentiful… ubiquitous even.  They are no more complex than a single cell in a blade of grass.  Sacrificing a dozen won’t have the slightest effect on the local micro-habitat. But it is a waste, and I have to admit that my own microscopic condition has altered my perspective.  Are my crew and I any more important, or more valuable, than these denizens at the bottom of the food chain?  I’ve made my decision.

“While we don’t know what happened with the algal protist in our lab, I’m not going to risk another incident.  We will carefully extract the oil from the diatoms without seriously harming them.”

“So be it,” adds Barron compliantly.  “I’ll set up a rope and pulley. It will make dropping down through the stalk and getting back up much easier.  And on the return trip we will have the oil to carry as well.”

I watch with pride as my crew dives into the task.  A short hike from the stranded Cyclops Lyra find a suitable rush protruding up from the glassy surface.  She circles it quickly and returns to us with a look of surprise.  “You’ve got to see something,” she says mysteriously.  “Follow me.”

Lyra leads us around the huge green trunk of the rush stalk.  It rises up to meet the sky, vanishing indistinctly where its tip becomes lost in the blue dome of celestial blur.  The stalk’s skin is rough with a waxen cuticle that covers thousands of brick-work like plant cells about the size of barrels – to us.  I run my fingers over the cuticle layer as we circumnavigate the rush.  Spines the length of my arm protrude out from the fibrous covering at random intervals, which likely served to make it unpleasant as a food source for small pond arthropods. 

As we round the backside of the stalk Lyra halts, indicating a section of the green wall with her outstretched hand.  “Have a look at this.”

It is a doorway. 

A rectangular opening has been cut into the stalk, just about knee height above the smooth water surface.  In shape and proportion, the opening is uncannily ideal for micro-scale humans.

“The cuts that made this entrance look fresh,” reports Barron as he inspects the doorway.  “And you may not like hearing this, but the work is too precise to have occurred naturally.” 

So obvious is the truth of Barron’s statement, that it hangs ominously in the air, and none of us can reason a proper response.

Finally, Lyra, running a hand along the deep incision, invokes professional analysis:  “A hole this small would normally heal over in minutes, but the opening has been treated with a metabolic retarding agent to keep it from closing back up, probably a hormonal growth inhibitor.”

“But left open for what reason,” asks Barron.  Then voicing what Lyra and I are thinking, he continues. “Whoever made this opening wanted it to stay open.  Did they do it for us?  Or do they have their own reasons for going inside a pond rush?”

Time is short, and my skipper’s intuition senses no peril. Barron and Lyra are looking at me, awaiting a risk assessment and a decision. “We are facing a matter of survival.  We have to retrieve the oil from the diatoms and get the ship back in the water.  Whether this opening is natural, or made for some other purpose seems irrelevant at the moment.  We have an easy way inside and we’re going to use it.”

1440 hours…

Over the opening Barron has assembled a block-and-tackle rigged with hemp lines dangling down into the greenish dark of the rush’s inner shaft.  He fashioned a pair of flat horizontal seats for Lyra and I, then began lowering us down that vertical tube, slow and steady.  A third seat conveys cutting tools, dive suits, and a small quantity of olive oil.  Saw and chisels will allow us to cut our way through the outer wall of the rush, and the dive suits and olive oil will let us slip through the air/water interface to collect diatoms for rapid oil extraction.

Lyra and Barron have invented a solution for collecting the oil from the algal cells both simple and inspired.  Without harming the organisms, we will insert an arm-length section of microtubule through a pore in the cell’s glass case and exploit the physics of capillary action, wicking the oil out.  The oil globules will then rise to the surface on their own, where Barron will collect them for transport back to the stranded Cyclops. 

The descent through the interior of the enormous pond plant is an almost serene experience.  It is as if being inside a huge cathedral, illuminated from all sides by endless stained glass columns of repeating geometry.  Such precise orderliness can only be found in the exacting replications of biological processes.  Cell after identical cell, without end, forms a breathtaking biochemical latticework.  Occasionally a shadow rises beyond the cellular tapestry – cast by a midge pupa rising up from the bottom – a sober reminder that our ship and our mission are still in peril. 

The luminous green hues of filtered sunlight from the surrounding plant tissue become incrementally dimmer as we are lowered further and further down the vallecular canal.  When roughly ten minutes elapse, we arrive at our destination.  It seems that our arrival has been anticipated.

Our feet come to rest on a solid surface – a platform made of cellulose planks of meticulous craftsmanship.  The floor fills the shaft wall to wall.  A doorway, similar to the one on the surface, is cut into the outer wall of the rush, but unlike the one above, this one has already healed over, leaving only a door-shaped patch of scarring and fresh cuticle.  But we won’t be needing the door for recovering diatoms this day, for the work had already been done: glass cylinders, three-dozen in total, each filled with amber tinted diatom oil – stacked with precision beside the healed-over doorway. 

Lyra whispers:  “This isn’t possible.  Am I imagining this?”

“Oh it’s real, but I am at loss to explain it,” I muse.  “And while every possible explanation is mind boggling, one thing is clear… this cannot be a natural phenomenon.”

I can hear Lyra forcing back laughter.  “Oh, you think?  The only thing missing is a red ribbon on top.”

“And that is precisely the question: is this a gift, or an invitation to be gone,” I counter.

Lyra lifts the fitted glass lid from one of the cylinders.  She dips a finger into the oil inside, rubs it between her thumb and forefinger, works it into the skin of her knuckles with a pleasurable sigh.  “It’s pure.  It’s perfect.  Jonathan… who did this?”

“Who, or what.”  I am trying to control my racing mind and its wild theories.

“Jonathan,” Lyra begins carefully, “do you suppose whoever did this – or whatever – is the same thing that came aboard the ship and removed the remains of that algal protist?”

Of course I was considering this very possibility, a likelihood that had been foremost on my mind since discovering the doorway into the rush.  If I accepted as truth that something had come aboard my ship and taken away the dead protist for reasons as yet unimagined, it was no leap at all to believe that the same intelligence was at work here as well.  Had this mysterious party foreseen our need for a surfactant, and made it available? But why?  Did they reason that helping us was a way to spare the lives of the diatoms it believed we would slaughter?  Based on our prior handling of pond life, it could not have known that our intention was to extract the oil without harming the organisms.  Were I to invoke the rigors of the scientific process I would conclude that my imagination was getting the better of me.

“That is a tempting deduction …” I muse, “but there is insufficient evidence to connect the two events.   Scientific discipline holds that we acquire more data before we embrace such a conspiratorial concept.”

Lyra assessed the canisters, their flawless construction, their perfect orderliness.  “I think the most powerful evidence is sitting right in front of us.  This diatom oil… it’s the exact quantity, down to the last canister, that we need to get the Cyclops back in the water.  Whomever did this had to make a precise calculation…”

“Or has comparable insight or behavior.”  I am reflecting on the animal world, on how a Pacific salmon knows the very stream where it emerged from the egg, then stores just the right amount of fat to fuel a one-time upstream swim up that very stream for its final act of life.  Or Monarch butterflies, that migrate thousands of miles every year to the same groves in California and Mexico, to escape the deadly chill of winter.  Or herds that follow the east African monsoons….

My ruminations were interrupted with the unannounced sideways lurch of the chamber.  The rush is swaying.

“It’s a wave!” announces Lyra. 

“Probably just a ripple,” I reason.  “A frog probably jumped in.  Hang on!”

We lean into the tilt of the room, grab onto the loose ends of microfibers that formed a furry covering on the inner wall of the plant’s shaft. 

Lyra lifts a concerned face. “I hope they’re okay up there.”

As the wave passes and the floor level and solid once again, my thoughts go to our fellow shipmates.  I know that Barron and Gyro are well-trained, and that each man has the requisite skills to survive in this world, even if, perish the thought, the Cyclops were scuttled.

A massive shadow swallows the gentle filtered light that we have enjoyed in this verdant sanctuary.  The wave has awakened something.  An ear-splitting scraping sound accompanies the silhouette of some monstrous arthropod crawling up the outside of the rush.  Three body sections are unmistakable through the green walls of the plant’s inner shaft – an insect!  Its many legs move in slow, mechanical fashion, as it scratches and claws its way toward the surface.  Then the light returns and the insect gone.

Lyra and I quickly load as many of the oil containers onto Barron’s elevator sling, about half the total number.  Getting them all to the surface will take two trips up the vallecular canal.  To signal Barron we are ready, I give the line three short tugs.  I wait.  I wait too long.  There is no response, no slow ascension of the sling, no counter-tug of acknowledgment.  I try again, with greater force.  And still, no sign from above that Barron received the signal.  We are stranded.