Perilous Planets

by Brian Aldiss

  Half an hour later ‘Ossnal gave a shrill cry, which could be heard in the others’ earphones, and went into some sort of fit. Fortunately his suckers held.

  ‘We must get him up somehow. Can we move him foot by foot?’ shouted Mehhtumm. He felt curiously carefree and regarded the crisis as an interesting abstract problem.

  I’m not going up!’ snarled Ghuddup.

  ‘You can’t go down and you can’t stay here. Our only chance is to try and get him up bit by bit. Maybe he’ll come to or faint, and we can manage him that way.’

  Tm not losing our only chance of seeing what’s below,’ snarled Ghuddup again. ‘The hell with ‘Ossnaal, and the hell with you too. You’re yellow, that’s what you are, a yellow skunk, a yellow Paisley skunk!’

  Mehhtumm, in a dream, saw Ghuddup, who occupied a central position, saw quickly with a knife through the ropes on his either side. The long ends flailed down. ‘Ossnaal’s twitching body hung from three suckers of his four. Ghuddup spidered nimbly down and was soon virtually out of sight, but his muttered obscenities could be heard in Mehhtumm’s radio. Mehhtumm tried to collect his thoughts, still dream-like. Finally he arrived at the conclusion that he must go for help, as he could certainly not manoeuvre the sick man by himself, and together they would probably perish uselessly. He pushed ‘Ossnaal’s left hand hard against the rock to fasten the sucker, tested the other three and shifted one. There was nothing to belay to. Extracting a luminous-dye marker from a pocket, he splashed the dye vividly over ‘Ossnaal’s suit and around him. He waited close to ‘Ossnaal for two minutes, trying to arouse him by shouting his name. Finally the man quietened, and muttered something in response to Mehhtumm’s shouts of ‘hang on; don’t move!’

  Mehhtumm began clambering upward, marking the rocks with the dye-splasher. Half a minute afterwards a sound and a movement beneath caught his attention, and he looked down in time to see the body of’ Ossnaal plummeting into the abyss. An invisible Ghuddup was still muttering in Mehhtumm’s radio, and it was half an hour before his voice faded.

  The rest of the upward journey was a nightmare, and took Mehhtumm far longer than he expected. After about three hours his head began to clear as his body reverted to normal, and the full realization of what had happened came to him. The first terrible doubts of his own action flooded in. There was nothing to be done now but to make as good speed as he could to the camp.

  He had been calling for an hour before he was heard on their radios. Kettass sent Laafif and ‘Afpeng to collect him. They managed to rendezvous by radio, and brought him back, weeping like a child, in darkness.

  ‘Sounds like some sort of gas narcosis to me,’ Kettass said later to a recovered Mehhtumm.

  ‘Yes, could even be nitrogen narcosis; except for ‘Ossnaal. There could have been something else wrong with him—would you think?’

  ‘I should never have let him go. He looked peculiar for some time… We shall have to write off Ghuddup as well, poor fellow, if we can’t trace him in the morning.’

  Next day in the early sunlight Mehhtumm, Laafif and Kettass went down unroped, and marked with dye. The oxygen apparatus of each was adjusted to give them a continuous supply as a high percentage of their inspiration total. They followed Mehhtumm’s markings. It was agreed that the first man to notice any specially alarming symptoms, or to have any detected by the others, was to climb up at once, but that till then they would keep close together, and that the remaining two must come up together as soon as either began to succumb. What happened was that Laafif, becoming confused despite the oxygen about 100 metres above the fatal spot, started to ascend. Mehhtumm passed the spot and, despite a persistent impression that he had become a waterfall, silently climbed on down, passing Kettass rapidly. He was 400 metres below, muttering to himself and glaring about him, when he and Kettass heard something between a sob and a laugh on their radios, and Laafif’s body passed them, a few feet out, turning over and over. It became a speck above the carpet of coiling vapour which had replaced yesterday’s colour pattern The cries were still sounding in their radios minutes later when reception faded.

  Kettass, dimly retaining a hold on sanity, eventually persuaded Mehhtumm to return, convincing himself and the other through a swirl of sensations, that it would be no use searching for yesterday’s madman over several thousand vertical metres of rock. Mehhtumm said later that at that depth he had kept on seeing little images of Ghuddup, brandishing a yellow knife, hovering around him.

  They got back in the late afternoon, and next day a silent expedition set off for home, one man per vehicle.

  ==========

  It took five years for authority to build two suitable vtol craft capable of flying and taking off efficiently in both normal and high-pressure air, and fully pressurised within. Mehhtumm was dead, killed in a climbing accident on’ Mogharitse, but Kettass secured a passage as film-taker and world radio-commentator on one craft, and Niizmek on the other. The broadcasts were relayed from a ground station set up on the plateau, which picked them up, or rather down, from the ionized refleeting layer of the atmosphere, since the basin depth would cut off direct craft-to-layer-to-receiver broadcasting; even so, only about a quarter of the material came through.

  The two craft landed in summer on the plateau near the 15deg slant zone. Flight between about 11 am and midnight was considered meteorologically impossible owing to the severe up currents and the electrical disturbances. They took off at 7 am just before dawn, using powerful searchlights. Kettass’ craft, piloted by an impassive veteran of thirty named Levaan, was to sink down past the rock wall near the original descent. The other craft sped west looking for a change in the geography. The two were in continuous communication through the pilots’ radios (on a different wavelength).

  Levaan tried his radar on the invisible floor of the basin. ‘You won’t believe this—we have 43 kilometres beneath us.’

  Kettass was speechless.

  ‘There’s a secondary echo at 37 km or so—could be the cloud layer below. Let me try the lidar.’ He aimed the unwieldy laser ‘gun’ downwards. ‘Yes, that’ll be the cloud layer all right. And that blip over there, that’s the roller cloud, or rather an incipient roll—I don’t think there’s anything visible to the eye.’

  ‘The—the ground echo: what does that make it in depth?’

  ‘Given our altitude above msl that makes the basin floor over 41 km below sea, and nearly 42 beneath the bevel of the plateau.’

  They began to descend. All trace of the event of five years ago was lost. The craft sank nine or ten kilometres, as indicated through the vertical radar. Kettass informed the world that the tinted rock was continuing and took a few film sequences. The sun poured across over the impossible vertical face. At fifteen kilometres down the colours had broken up into isolated dots and patches. The empty parts of the sky which had turned a milky white, now began to change to brazen yellow. There was still no visible sign of a bottom, none of the patternless pattern described by Mehhtumm, but the fog below was brilliant in sunlight, yellow sunlight. Even in the air-conditioned cabin it was exceptionally hot wherever the sun struck.

  ‘Perspective makes the wall appear to curve in above us and below us,’ Kettass was saying to his microphone. The view was indeed rather like that seen by a midge dancing a few inches in front of a wall made of barrel-staves curving towards him, except that the ‘midge’ would have been no thicker than a fine hair. The sky met the cliff line dizzyingly far overhead. No less than three parallel lines of black roller-cloud (very slender) were now silhouetted against the yellow sky, while a fourth roll was indicated by an Indian file of fish-like silhouettes alongside them. Not very far beyond hung the shaggy charcoal bases of the first cumuloids, behind which the brassy sun beat down. Black ghosts of the clouds grew and gestured, many kilometres high, on the cliff wall. At times Kettass had the illusion that the craft was flying banked sideways, and that the cliff wall was the horizontal floor of the world.

  Descent began to b
e very bumpy. The other craft reported no change at 50 km west. At 36 km down the open sky was now a blood-orange hue. The fog, which had become exceedingly turbulent, was close below, and after cautious exploration Levaan found a hole through which pink, green and indigo masses could be dimly seen, crawling in the quivering air-currents. At 38 km down, battling against strong updraughts, they sighted far below a vast vista of dully red-hot lave, cold greenish lava, and what looked like violet mud, in apparently kilometres-wide slabs and pools, lapping right up against the thirty-to-forty-km high vertical wall on one side, and ending in pitch darkness many kilometres southward. Occasional flashes of forked lightning played near the cliff base. Besides the distortions of the air-currents, the whole floor was in slow motion, spreading, rocking, welling, bubbling.

  Levaan broke in on Kettass’ commentary to say he dared not stay longer, as the updraughts were becoming too violent and the fabric was groaning. The other craft had just sighted the end of the basin and wished to make its own commentary. Risking a breakup in the turbulence near the roller cloud level, Levaan’s craft rose to pass it, and swung back to rendezvous. Niizmek and his pilot Fehos had sighted a step-like formation closing in the western end.

  Next morning the two craft switched roles. Fehos and Niizmek descended into the pit, some way out from the wall, while Levaan’s craft flew east to find how the basin ended on that side. But Fehos’ transpex imploded at 39 km down, with a crack heard on the radios of the world, and the craft, a squashed insect, plunged into the magma. After that Levaan would not fly his craft below 25 km down.

  They established that the cliff line stretched 163 km east to west, or rather slightly north of east to slightly south of west, and that the western end, later known as the ‘Terraces’, con-fisted of a series of nearly vertical cliffs of from 2,000 metres to 3,000 metres high each, separated by sloping shelves and screes several kilometres across. The eastern end, the ‘Staircase’ or ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, proved to be a rather similar formation like a file or grid whose ridges or bars were 5oo-metre-high 3Odeg-lean overhangs (over the basin) of hard rock, alternating with boulder-and-gravel-filled hollows of soft rock, the whole system being tilted down southwards at an angle of 35deg. The southern edge was a vertical wall like the northern, nearly parallel to it, but peak-bordered, higher by several thousand metres, 146 km long, and some 200 km away. After a few months press and radio exhausted their superlatives and wisecracks (‘Nature’s Mohole’ was the type) and took up ‘Slingo’, a new parachute waltzing craze sweeping the world.

  ==========

  Thirty years later Kettass, a hale septuagenarian, was taken down the ‘Terraces’ pressurized cable railway by his son-in-law, daughter, and three grandchildren, and, looking through the triple transpex wall, gazed in silence upon the oozing magma from 700 metres’ range. He did not live to travel the tourist rocket route built five deaths and 83 strikes later down ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, but two of his granddaughters took their families down the North Wall lift. That was the year Lebhass and Tollhirn made their fatal glider attempt. By this time three other deaths and 456 strikes later, heat mills, for the most part automatically controlled and inspected, were converting a considerable fraction of the thermal energy in the basin to supply two continents with light, heat and power. A quarter of the northern plateau was given over to their plant, another quarter contained a sanatorium and reserve for hardy tourists, and the other half was a game reserve and ecological study area; but the jagged mountains of the south, scoured by their own murderous southerly winds, resisted general exploitation.

  * * *

  Sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do—twice—

  BRIGHTSIDE CROSSING

  by Alan E. Nourse

  ==========

  James Baron was not pleased to hear that he had had a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman had flagged him as he came in from the street: ‘A thousand pardons, Mr Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by eight.’

  Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time without justifying it.

  Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still healing.

  The stranger said, ‘I’m glad you waited. I’ve heard you’re planning to attempt the Brightside.’

  Baron stared at the man for a moment. ‘I see you can read telecasts,’ he said coldly. ‘The news was correct. We are going to make a Brightside Crossing.’

  ‘At perihelion?’

  ‘Of course. When else?’

  The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment without expression. Then he said slowly, ‘No, I’m afraid you’re not going to make the Crossing.’

  ‘Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?’ Baron demanded.

  ‘The name is Clancy,’ said the stranger.

  There was a silence. Then: ‘Clancy? Peter Clancy?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger gone. ‘Great balls of fire, man—where have you been hiding? We’ve been trying to contact you for months!’

  ‘I know. I was hoping you’d quit looking and chuck the whole idea.’

  ‘Quit looking!’ Baron bent forward over the table. ‘My friend, we’d given up” hope, but we’ve never quit looking. Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.’ His fingers were trembling.

  Peter Clancy shook his head. ‘I can’t tell you anything you want to hear.”

  ‘But you’ve got to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the story you cleared for the news—it was nothing. We need details. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?’ Baron jabbed a finger at Clancy’s face. ‘That, for instance—epithelioma? Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? We’ve got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make it across where your attempt failed—’

  ‘You want to know why we failed?’ asked Claney.

  ‘Of course we want to know. We have to know.’

  ‘It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Baron declared. ‘We will.’

  Claney shrugged. ‘I was there. I know what I’m saying. You can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting. It was the planet that whipped us, that and the Sun. They’ll whip you, too, if you try it.’

  ‘Never,’ said Baron.

  ‘Let me tell you,’ Peter Claney said.

  ==========

  I’d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as I can remember (Clancy said). I guess I was about ten when Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attempt—that was in 2082,I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.

  I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a terrible tragedy. After th
at, I followed Sanderson’s work in the Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my blood, sure as death.

  But it was Mikuta’s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever know Tom Mikuta? I don’t suppose you did. No, not Japanese—Polish-American. He was a major in the Interplanetary Service for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up his commission.

  He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days, did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.

  I’d always liked the Major—he was big and quiet and cool, the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck, with no judgement. The Major had both. He also had the kind of personality that could take a crew of wild men and make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.