Pardot Kynes, o planetólogo imperial também notou isso.
“Water overshadows the other problems,” Kynes said. “This planet has much oxygen without its usual concomitants—widespread plant life and large sources of free carbon dioxide from such phenomena as volcanoes. There are unusual chemical interchanges over large surface areas here.”
E muitos visitantes perguntaram de onde vem todo o oxigênio livre.
“The Arrakeen environment built itself into the evolutionary pattern of native life forms,” his father said. “How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover. The energy sphere of the planet is there to see and understand—a relentless process, but a process nonetheless. There is a gap in it? Then something occupies that gap. Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained. I knew the little maker was there, deep in the sand, long before I ever saw it.”
Sem perceber que estava vindo do mesmo lugar que o tempero, dos gigantes vermes da areia de Arrakis.
But his inner digestive “factory,” with its enormous concentrations of aldehydes and acids, was a giant source of oxygen. A medium worm (about 200 meters long) discharged into the atmosphere as much oxygen as ten square kilometers of green-growing photosynthesis surface.
Além disso, há algumas plantas nas latitudes mais baixas, onde o ar é (relativamente) mais úmido.
“Are there any plants down there?” Paul asked.
“Some,” Kynes said. “This latitude’s life-zone has mostly what we call minor water stealers—adapted to raiding each other for moisture, gobbling up the trace-dew. Some parts of the desert teem with life. But all of it has learned how to survive under these rigors. If you get caught down there, you imitate that life or you die.”