Free Last Gasp by Trevor Hoyle Page B

“I may get my continents mixed up, but I’m not completely stupid.”
    “Well, ‘plankton’ is a general term for all floating plant and animal life in the seas and rivers. My speciality is Halosphaera, Phaeocystis, silicoflagellates, and Bacillariophyceae.” That’d teach her to be such a smart ass.
    But apparently that hadn’t dampened her interest, for she asked him to tell her more about them, which Chase found difficult. The alcohol didn’t help. To simplify it, he said, “They form the basic diet for most fish—phytoplankton, that is, the plant forms. If you look at a pond you’ll see the bottom carpeted with the stuff, with millions of tiny silver bubbles clinging to it. That’s oxygen, which phytoplankton releases after splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. They’re a very primitive organism, been around for, oh, two thousand million years or more. But for the phytoplankton we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
    “Why, are they that important?”
    “You have to breathe, don’t you?”
    “That’s where we get our oxygen from?”
    Chase nodded. “There wasn’t any around to begin with. Most people think it’s always been a constituent of the atmosphere, but when the planet was formed the atmosphere was highly poisonous—to us, that is. Mainly hydrogen, ammonia, and methane. Then the early primitive forms of algae came along and started releasing oxygen, which eventually formed the ozone layer, protecting the early animal life from ultraviolet radiation. So it does two crucial jobs: gives us oxygen to breathe and prevents us from frying.”
    Jill looked thoughtful for a moment. “I always had the idea that the trees did that—gave us oxygen. You know, all this fuss about the rain forests in South America and Southeast Asia. They’re destroying millions of acres and burning them, which apparently does something to the climate.”
    “That’s true. All green plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, but the best estimates we have suggest that the phytoplankton in the oceans provides roughly seventy percent of the recycled oxygen. Sure, the trees are important, but if we didn’t have phytoplankton there wouldn’t have been any trees in the first place.”
    “It isn’t dull at all,” Jill said reprovingly. “Why do you pretend it is?”
    “Do I?” Chase shrugged. He swirled his whiskey, making the ice cubes clink. “I suppose it’s because most people never give a second thought to the way the biosphere works. They just take it for granted. They don’t understand that the whole bag of tricks depends on microscopic plant life, so when you start talking about it they just turn glassy-eyed and drop into a doze. You have to be a genius like David Attenborough to make them see and understand.”
    “What about Sir Frederick Cole?”
    “What about him?”
    “You’ve heard of him, I take it?”
    There was a gleam in her brown eyes and an underlying hint of mockery in her tone, as if it were his turn to be patronized. He chided himself for taking Jill at his own estimation—a shallow media person, all mouth and trousers—when clearly she had more up top.
    “He was one of my lecturers at Cambridge. We used to call him ’Firebrand Fred.’ ”
    “You actually know him then? He’s coming into the studio next week to give a talk for a schools program. We’re taping it next Wednesday afternoon and I’m the gofer.”
    “I should think he’d be rather good on the telly,” Chase said, thinking about it. “Blunt northern humor, straight from the shoulder. An instant TV guru.”
    Jill laughed. “We’ve made him buy a new suit. He turned up at the office wearing a pullover with holes in it and the crotch of his trousers somewhere level with his kneecaps. If I hadn’t met him at the station I don’t think the doorman would have let him into the building. ‘Firebrand Fred,’ ” she said, giggling. “That suits him. I’ll call him that next time I see