Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  “All right. We should be able to do that. How much time are we going to have?”

  “Pinpoint. A couple of seconds. We’ll have everything timed so it arrives exactly where it’s supposed to, when it’s supposed to. But it’s just going to be passing through. You get one shot at it. It comes in, it goes down, it starts back up. After that it’s gone.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be with you the whole way. Even if I’m not, you’ll be fine.”

  “Glad to hear it. I was starting to worry. Why might you not be?”

  “There’s a good probability we’ll lose communications with you as the weather deteriorates. But you’ve got the details, and whatever else happens, you’ll still be able to see the net coming in. Okay?”

  “Yeah. That’s good.”

  They listened while Beekman and his team hammered out the method of converting the metal webbing in which the asteroid was encased into the sack that would be used to pick up the lander. In flight. And they heard a recording of the meeting at which the volunteers voted to call themselves the Outsiders. Marcel apparently thought the enthusiasm of their rescuers would help morale on the ground. It did.

  Marcel explained that most of the volunteers were passengers from the cruise ship. A few were Kellie’s colleagues from Wendy. Hutch’s passenger Tom Scolari was among them. (“Are you serious?” she replied.) Almost none had ever been outside before.

  Hutch was surprised to see Kellie surreptitiously wipe away a tear. “They’re really trying,” she commented.

  Some of the Outsiders working along the assembly heard that the lander was on the circuit and could hear them. “We’re coming,” they said. “Hang on.” And “Don’t worry. We’ll get you out.”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  Outside, the wind continued to howl, and the snow piled up. Even with the transmissions, rescue seemed impossibly far away.

  They woke in late morning to clearing skies. The blizzard had blown itself out, and a heavy blanket of snow sparkled under a bright sun. They broke out the last of their stocked fruit, which consisted of almost tasteless pulp protected inside a hard shell. They talked about how good it would be to have a real breakfast again, and agreed it was time to take a look at Mt. Blue. One way or the other, this would be their last full day on Deepsix.

  “What’s the top of the mountain look like?” Hutch asked Marcel. “What do we know about it?”

  “Okay. You know it’s been sheared off. The peak’s gone. It’s absolutely flat up there. Looks as if somebody took a scythe to it. But you can’t see it because it’s always wrapped in clouds.”

  “The building’s on the summit?”

  “Right. It’s a ruin. Several stories high. With dishes. Probably solar collectors, although God knows how it would get any energy through all those clouds.”

  “Maybe they didn’t used to be there,” said Nightingale.

  “Probably. Anyhow it’s a big place. The building is a hexagon, roughly two hundred meters on a side. And I should add that everybody here’s convinced it was the base of the skyhook.”

  “Why?” asked MacAllister.

  “It’s directly on the equator. And the sea to the west is full of debris.”

  “The elevator,” said Hutch.

  “Yes. It looks as if the elevator either broke apart or was deliberately cut. Our best guess is that it was severed at about eleven thousand meters. The upper section was dragged into space; the lower broke off the base and fell into the ocean.

  “Is there a place for us to land?”

  “Oh sure. No problem about that.”

  Well, it was nice to have something that didn’t come with a problem. “All right,” Hutch said. “We’ll do it, Marcel. We have to stop first to pick up some food. And it would probably be a good idea to top off the tanks. Visibility up there is…?”

  “Zero.”

  “Of course. Keep in mind we have no sensors. How am I supposed to land if I can’t see?”

  “I’ll guide you in.”

  “I can’t believe I’ve agreed to this,” said MacAllister, as she took her bearing from the superluminal and turned onto her new course.

  Nightingale cleared his throat. “It’s why we’re here,” he said. “If we don’t get some answers, we’ll never hear the end of it.” He looked directly at Mac.

  Kellie laughed, and the momentary tension fell apart.

  When Beekman’s people named the various continents, seas, and other physical features across Deepsix, they’d called the range along Transitoria’s western coastline the Mournful Mountains. It contained several of the highest peaks on Deepsix, soaring to seven thousand meters above sea level. At sixty-six hundred, Mt. Blue was not quite the tallest, but it was one of the more picturesque. A bundle of white clouds enclosed the upper levels. Granite walls fell away at sharp angles for thousands of meters, before mutating into gradual slopes that descended into foothills and forest.

  Marcel had assigned Mira Amelia to provide weather updates and tracking information to the lander. She also kept them updated on the rescue effort. Mira maintained an optimistic front without becoming annoying. Kellie commented that Mira was a good analyst and that she wouldn’t sound that way unless the program was very likely to work. It was an interpretation that they all needed to hear. Even MacAllister, who was visibly shaken at the notion of flying into a midair net, seemed to take heart.

  They’d been aloft an hour and a half when Mira reported that the river they were now approaching eventually passed close to Mt. Blue. “There’s some open country nearby. This would be the place to refuel. And maybe stock up.”

  Hutch went down through heavy weather (“It’s worse everywhere else,” said Mira) and landed in a driving rain on the south bank. The trees were loaded with fruit. They picked some pumpkin-sized delectables that they’d had before. The edible part was quite good, rather like a large dried raisin encased within a tough husk. They hurried back into the lander with them, out of the downpour. And ate up.

  The simple pleasures of being alive.

  They stored a hefty supply in cargo. Optimistically, Mac pointed out. Then they ran out the hose and refilled the tanks. When the job was finished they lifted off again.

  Mt. Blue was on the coast. To the west, offshore, the sea had withdrawn and left a vast expanse of muddy bog.

  “The water’s on the other side of the world,” Mira explained. She provided a course correction and instructed Hutch to go to sixty-eight hundred meters. She also relayed pictures of the mountain, taken from satellite.

  “Here’s something odd,” she said. The north side was sheer precipice, from summit to ground level. A ninety-degree drop.

  Nightingale stared at it. “That almost looks artificial.”

  “That’s what we thought,” said Mira. “Here’s something else.” She zeroed in.

  Hutch saw vertical and horizontal lines along the face of the cliff. A framework of some sort. It ran from the summit all the way to the base, at ground level.

  “What is it?” asked Kellie.

  “We have no idea. If you get a chance, take a look.”

  Then she showed them what the scanners had seen at the mountaintop: The summit was perfectly flat. And there, in the middle, was the hexagon.

  Mira enhanced the image. The structure was enormous, occupying perhaps sixty percent of the total available ground space atop the mountain. It was half-submerged in a tangle of vegetation. But they could make out windows and doorways. Hutch noted an almost classical symmetry, unlike the overblown and overdecorated styles currently favored by her own civilization. The corners were flared. Otherwise, the structure was unadorned.

  The top was jagged, as if upper levels had been broken off. On average it was about six stories high, less in some places, more in others. The top—one couldn’t really call it a roof since it appeared the upper level was exposed to the sky—was covered with snow.

  “Here’s what it looks like under the snow,” said Mira. She
removed it, and they were looking down on chambers and passageways and staircases. All in a general state of collapse.

  Mira sent them a reconstruction, revealing its probable appearance in its early years. The computer replaced the bushes and weeds with sculpted walkways and gravel courts, and installed gleaming windows and carved doors. The roof became an oval gridwork that rose into the clouds. It was magnificent.

  “We think we found the missing pieces, by the way.”

  “You mean the mountaintop?”

  “And the north side of the cliff. They’re a group of hills about twenty klicks east. It’s all a big river valley now. Most of the granite is covered by forest.”

  “So that means—”

  “It came off a very long time ago. At least a thousand years. Probably a lot more.” She paused. “Okay, if you’re ready, I’m going to take you in.”

  “We’re ready.”

  “There’s plenty of room to set down,” Mira said.

  “Doesn’t the cloud bank ever go away?” asked MacAllister. He meant the one that shrouded the mountaintop.

  “We don’t have any records that go back more than a few weeks,” said Mira. “But it’s been a permanent feature during the time we’ve been here. Several of the other peaks in this area are the same way.”

  She provided a course correction. Hutch slowed and eased into the clouds.

  “Doing fine,” Mira said. “No obstructions ahead. You’re two hundred meters above the rock.”

  The mist grew dark.

  Hutch turned on the spike. The seat pushed up slightly against her spine. She continued to reduce airspeed, lowered her treads, and put the thrusters into vertical mode.

  Snow began to fall across the windscreen, and they picked up some interference.

  Mira’s voice disappeared in a burst of static.

  Hutch switched to another channel and recovered the transmission.

  “You’re now approaching the lip of the plateau,” Mira said. “You’ve got plenty of clearance, so there’s nothing to worry about. Give me a descent rate of five meters per second.”

  Hutch complied.

  Thunder rumbled below them. “Thirty seconds to touchdown, Hutch.”

  She watched them tick off on her counter, fired the thrusters, reduced airspeed to zero, and drifted in.

  “Priscilla,” asked MacAllister, “what happens if we lose radio contact?”

  She was too busy to answer.

  “No problem,” said Kellie after a moment. “We just go back up. Sky’s clear overhead.”

  “Fifteen seconds. Go three-quarter spike.”

  They dropped slowly through the mist. And touched down.

  Hutch resisted the impulse to take a deep breath. She looked out through the side window but couldn’t see more than a few meters into the fog. “Mira,” she said, “thanks.”

  “My pleasure. I’ll notify Marcel.”

  The four superluminals, directed by the Star’s AI, assumed their positions along the assembly, in each case drawing up at one of the four locations marked with yellow dye, facing the asteroid. The smallest of the four, the Zwick, halted approximately thirty-eight kilometers from the rock. The others were spaced over the next 332 kilometers, Wildside second in line, followed by the Star, which could generate far and away the maximum thrust of the group, and finally, Wendy.

  The positioning of the ships had been the most difficult part of the problem for John Drummond and his team. Posted in a shuttle drifting across the rocky surface of the asteroid, he went over his numbers one last time and found everything in order.

  Janet Hazelhurst sat beside him to provide technical assistance to the Outsiders. And Miles Chastain, the skipper of the media ship, was in a shuttle roughly midway between the Star and Wildside, prepared to come to the assistance of anyone who got in trouble. Other shuttles were strategically placed to help. Each person who had gone outside was being tracked by one of the attending vehicles, which would immediately sound an alarm if anyone drifted away, or if any indication of distress or undue difficulty showed itself.

  With so many inexperienced people trying to perform their work in a hostile environment, it seemed inevitable that someone, somewhere, would get hurt, would walk off and try to go into orbit, or would slice off somebody’s foot with a cutter.

  The e-suits were reliable. They would not shut off in a vacuum unless one knew a very complicated protocol. They were not subject to leaking. And they handled life support very effectively. Nevertheless, Drummond remembered his own experience outside, and he was worried.

  Wildside, empty save for the onboard Outsider team and its AI, drew alongside the assembly, its nose pointed forward, and stopped where its sensors detected a yellow splotch of dye. The dye marked the site that Wildside would take up during the operation, and it also marked Alpha, the target shaft.

  Bill rotated the vehicle until its underside snuggled within centimeters of the assembly. Its cargo airlock opened and a two-person team emerged. Wearing dark lenses, they selected an unmarked shaft and cut eight pieces from it, each about six meters long.

  They returned to the Wildside with them. They put two inside the ship for future use and set six in place on the hull directly adjacent to the Alpha shaft. This would be, in Janet’s welding terminology, their filler.

  They changed the settings on their lasers, substituting a heat beam for the cutter. They turned the beams on the filler. Sparks flicked off. The metal began to glow, and then to melt. Working quickly, they welded the filler to the hull, using scoops and riggers and other makeshift tools. Under Janet’s watchful eye, they combed the now-pliant metal into place, creating saddles and links in the way they’d been shown.

  One of the welders, whose name was Jase Power, commented that he thought the work was pretty professional. That drew cautious agreement from Janet. “You’ve got a career, Jase, if you want it. When we get home, I’ll be glad to provide a recommendation.”

  When they’d finished preparations to make the attachment, they retired inside the ship, and the Al withdrew to a safe distance.

  “What can you see?” Marcel asked Hutch. “What’s out there?”

  “Fog,” said MacAllister.

  “We can’t see anything from here,” said Hutch. “The mist is too thick.” The visibility was about five meters.

  “Okay. Let’s talk about where you are. You already know the mountaintop is sawed off. You’re on the eastern side, fifty meters from the edge. That’s to your rear. I don’t need to tell you not to go that way.

  “One side of the hexagon looks as if it juts out a little bit over the precipice. That’s on the north, where the sheer face is. Did Mira show you? Four thousand meters or so straight down. So if a floor gives way or you walk through a door without looking, you could get a god-awful surprise. I suggest you stay away altogether from the north side. Okay?”

  “We’ll be careful,” Hutch said.

  “The structure is directly ahead of you. Just follow the lander’s nose. About thirty meters.” He hesitated. “We think we’ve put you down immediately outside the main entrance. Look for a set of steps. Bordered by low walls.”

  Hutch acknowledged.

  “Good luck,” he said. “I’d appreciate a visual link when you have a minute. And I’ll be back with you shortly.”

  Hutch activated her e-suit, pinned a microscan on her vest, and turned it on. “Anybody want to come?”

  “Not me,” said MacAllister. “I’ve had enough walking for this trip.” He had the grace to look embarrassed. “This is a game for younger folks.”

  Kellie volunteered, but Hutch signaled that was not a good idea. “If you and I are both out there, and something happens, there’s nobody left to fly the lander. So you have to stay. You can go in after I get back, if you want.”

  “I guess that leaves me,” said Nightingale.

  “Unless you’d rather not.”

  “No.” Nightingale was reaching for his vest. “To be honest, I wouldn’
t miss it.” He picked up one of the harnesses. “Do we need air tanks? We’re up pretty high.”

  “No,” said Hutch. “The converters’ll work a little harder, but that’s okay. They’ll be fine.”

  They took lasers, plastic bags, and notebooks, and inserted them into their vests. They picked up backpacks, into which they could put artifacts. She strapped a lamp onto her wrist, spotted the rope she’d carried through the forests, and looped it over one shoulder. “You never know,” she told Kellie.

  “You look like Jack Hancock,” said Kellie, referring to the popular adventurer-archeologist of the sims.

  They opened up, and Hutch looked out, saw nothing but fog, and climbed down the ladder. Nightingale adjusted the temperature in his suit and followed. Kellie asked them not to fall off the mountain. Then she shut the airlock behind them.

  The cold hardscrabble ground crackled underfoot. The air was absolutely still. Snow continued to fall.

  Hutch felt alone. Nightingale had never been much company, and now he rambled on about the general gloominess of the place, how difficult it was to see anything, and how easy it would be to walk into a ditch. He was right about the visibility. The mist pressed down on her, squeezed her, forced her to look inward because she could not see out.

  Kellie had asked at one point whether anyone believed in an immortal soul. Certainly Hutch didn’t. The world was a cold mathematical machine that produced hydrogen, stars, mosquitoes, and superluminal pilots without showing the slightest concern for any of them. But now, as she stumbled through what might be her last hours, it was painful to think that if she got unlucky she could end in the bosom of that monster in the sky, her atoms floating in gray soup for the next few billion years. If you’re there, she murmured to no one in particular, I’d love some help.

  “There’s a wall,” said Nightingale.

  “I see it.” It was flat, plain, a little more than shoulder-high. The surface was rough against her fingertips. Probably granite.

  They saw the steps Marcel had described and were surprised to discover they were close to human dimensions. Beyond, Hutch could see an entrance. If there’d been doors, they were missing. The entrance and the interior were piled high with snow and earth. Tough bristly shrubbery grew on both sides of the threshold.