The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  So the General probably made a pretty good career choice if he didn't want to sit in the Pentagon and shuffle paper clips or in Jerusalem with the International Force.

  Still, he was intelligent and hardworking and a good commander, if a little fond of thinking of himself in the history books. Right now he was playing Man of the People, with a Hawaiian shirt under his coat. His enthusiasm for the gumbo as they moved to the table was probably genuine, though. Jamestown's food tended to the three B's: Big and Bland or BBQ. You could get decent ribs, but the main alternatives to military-flavored American were Aussie Vegemite and Brit meat pies and soggy sprouts. And he was a fascinating conversationalist, particularly when he got on to the first couple of years here at Jamestown and the desperate struggles involved, which he made seem heroic and funny at the same time.

  When the fruit tarts were there and the zulk-tea poured, Clarke's manner changed. "You heard about the EastBloc shuttle that went down two months ago. Venusian months, that is—forty days."

  Everyone around the table nodded. Strictly speaking, it had been the upper stage, not the whole shuttle, but without the rocket-plane that rode it piggyback, the first stage was simply a big supersonic jet without much purpose in life. The loss hadn't been quite the disaster it would have been for Jamestown; the Sino-Russian base was bigger and had four surface-to-orbit craft to Jamestown's pair. It was still a massive setback; a new one would have to be shipped from Earth by solar-sail freighter, assembled in orbit, piloted down… and the loss of the highly trained crew had been almost as bad. Even just in money costs, sending three more people to Venus would cost nearly as much as the rocket-plane.

  Clarke went on: "Well, my counterpart at Cosmograd, General Wang Enlai—amazing how the Chinese tail is wagging the Russian dog these days, isn't it?—has given me some news."

  Dr. Feldman snorted. "That's a first. Usually they treat the sun setting in the east as a state secret."

  Clarke gave him a quelling glance. "They've heard from their crew. They're still alive, out there in the far west. The radio beacon was triggered last week."

  "They want us to help, and they're offering something in return?" Marc said.

  Everyone looked at him, and then Clarke smiled grimly. "Bingo. In fact, they're offering to share their biological and geological research files."

  "I'm surprised," Marc said. "We had that potain with them just before I left, when they tried to say we should 'discuss' our operations on Venus with them before we did anything, because they got here first."

  "By six months," Clarke snorted. "And President Dole told them to go pound sand. Which is why I'm not surprised they're being reasonable. To them, reasonable is what you do if you can't get away with barking out orders. Push back, and they respect you; act soft, and they push harder."

  Sam Feldman looked as if he were going to drool into his empty plate. "They've been operating in the interior highland, which means they're observing different strata and a different local ecology. Getting their data would more than double our knowledge base overnight," he said. "That's a prize worth having."

  "How exactly do they want us to help them, sir?" Chris Blair said.

  Brownnoser, Marc thought. Although the Englishman might just be formal by reflex.

  "Nothing they have has the range; the crash site's way out at the western end of Gagarin, six thousand miles from here," he said. "That's a bit far to walk."

  Everyone nodded or murmured agreement. The equivalent of New York to San Francisco and back, across trackless wilderness swarming with savages human and quasi-human, not to mention a bellowing profusion of wildlife like nothing Earth had seen in geological ages. Clarke continued:

  "They want us to send one of our blimps for their people. None of theirs have the range; they're all turbine-powered. I'm inclined to agree. I need two lighter-than-air-qualified pilots and an information and power systems specialist. Volunteers, of course."

  Marc and Blair looked at each other; for once they shared a thought, and a quick slight nod. Cynthia was grinning openly.

  "Sir," Marc said, sincerely. "I got into the volunteering habit thirty million miles away and it's too late to change."

  "That's good," Clarke said. "I hope you get along with the EastBloc member, too." He laughed at the fallen faces around the table. "Be glad I hung tough. They wanted to put a whole crew of theirs on our airship!"

  "Oh, great, some stone-faced Slavic goon with degrees in engineering and toenail-pulling," Cynthia said.

  Clarke shook his head. "I think you might be surprised. For one thing, she's qualified as lighter-than-air crew—they've got a blimp of their own, even if it isn't as long-ranged as ours."

  "For one thing?" Marc said curiously.

  "Ah, caught that, did you? Well, her last name is Binkis—same as the pilot of the Riga. Guess they picked someone with real strong motivation to help the mission."

  The Vepaja was six hundred feet long where she swung against the west wind at the mooring mast over the gathered crowd. The airship was a smooth orca shape two hundred feet through at its thickest point a third of the way back from the blunt prow, with an X of control fins at the rear and the gondola built into the lower hull. The frame was a geodesic mesh of shamboo sheathed in varnished parachute cloth—and you needed tough cloth to brake a cargo pod coming down from orbit. The upper half was covered in a shiny black material, amorphous-silicon solar collectors originally developed for the space program and adapted to power the four ducted-fan electric engines slung on either side of the hull's centerline; fuel cells inside ran on hydrogen and provided backup for night work or in cloudy weather. In the bright morning sunlight the airship looked light and festive for all its bulk, the colors and lines of it bright and sharp.

  "Home sweet Grand Beede" Marc murmured, looking up.

  "As in?" Cynthia asked, seated next to him on the bench.

  "Big, clumsy guy," he replied. "Or in English, a blimp."

  "Rigid airship, old boy, not a blimp," Blair said from Cynthia's other side. "And could we be spared the backwoods pidgin French just for once?"

  "Weh." Marc said amiably, being rewarded with a slight grinding of perfect white teeth and a chuckle from Cynthia.

  Jadviga Binkis just looked at him, blinked once, and then looked away, but the EastBloc observer hadn't said much except in the line of business and not much then. She was a round-faced blond woman of about thirty, looking stocky and competent in her green overalls, and she'd checked out well at everything she was supposed to know. Everyone assumed she was secret police, but Marc had his doubts.

  Of course, they have to have multiple specialties, too, I suppose. They're not quite as shorthanded as we are, but its close.

  Captain Tyler silenced his crew with a glare and got ready to clap. The General was finishing his speech at the podium in front of the shamboo bleachers, usually used for the audience at pickup softball games and now holding most of the adults in Jamestown not busy with something that couldn't be put aside. He did it rather well—invocation of international friendship away from Earth's rivalries, praise of the volunteers, reminding God that help would be welcome right now, and a spare ironic joke that got a ripple of laughter from the bleachers. Then the crew filed down in front and he went down the line of them, with a firm meet-the-eyes handshake and a bit of talk for everyone who'd be going.

  "I envy you, Lieutenant," he said to Marc. "This will be one for the history books—the first round-trip to the western tip of the continent. Lewis and Clark all over again. No relation," he added with a grin. "Mostly my ancestors were tailors in Lithuania back then."

  "I'd envy me myself if I wasn't going, sir," Marc said in reply, and felt his answering grin get broader.

  It wasn't the first time he'd flown out in the Vepaja, of course. That was one of his rated skills; he'd helped take her out to the islands, south to the mountains, and east and west on field trips—but never more than a few days overall. He'd enjoyed it thoroughly, and seen a fair numbe
r of things no Earthman had before. You couldn't explore a planet the size of Earth in a hurry; the policy was to build capacity and do things methodically. Which was sensible… but the General was right: This was one for the history books.

  Marc went on aloud, keeping the impulse to burble with enthusiasm under firm control: "But we'll be flying, not walking, sir, and it shouldn't take more than a month."

  He was glad when the brief ceremony was over and there was only Sam Feldman left to say good-bye. "Yes, I'll remember to keep an eye out for specimens," Marc said. "Keep up the good work, boss. You've got the honor of Brooklyn to think about, you."

  "And you be careful, you bayou rat," the older man said gruffly, slapping him on the shoulder and then surprising him by a swift, hard hug.

  "Hey, that's my job!" the General's wife said.

  Captain Tyler had a fond father's pride in his eyes as he looked at his command and a look of resignation as he glanced back at his scratch crew: Cynthia Whitlock, Christopher Blair, and Marc Vitrac. Tyler was older than the other men by about five years, with a leathery-tanned face and sun-faded sandy hair cropped short, an old Venus hand who'd landed with the General and lived in a grass hut while they struggled to get things going.

  Two rated lighter-than-air pilots, one of them a Ranger, and a qualified power systems specialist, Marc thought, reading his mind. Enough for a long trip—just. Oh, well, it's not as if we can afford a standing crew anyway. And the EastBlocker, for what she's worth.

  "Let's go," Tyler said, in a neutral Californian accent—his family was from San Diego, something involved with shipping, though he was an Annapolis ring-knocker himself.

  There were enough of them to stand watches on a long voyage, and less of a loss to Jamestown than the regular full-time crew if the Vepaja was lost on its long, long voyage. Its sister-ship the Duare was in the hangar for maintenance at the moment, and there were enough spare parts and local supplies to build another at a pinch. They absolutely needed at least one professional airshipman, so Captain Tyler had to go along; apart from him all of them were about as expendable as people who were worth shipping out from Earth could be, which was a testimony to the General's judgment, in a rather disagreeable way.

  "Heel, boy!" Marc said, as the four of them started up the curling spiral staircase within the mooring tower.

  Tahyo came over, tail wagging slightly, wedge-shaped black head up and yellow eyes gleaming with interest. Captain Tyler gave him a glance then shrugged; the issue had been settled some time ago. Blair's lips tightened. He just didn't like the young greatwolf, but he was too smart to make much of it. Cynthia gave the beast a thump on the ribs and was rewarded with a head-butt under her hand.

  The staircase went up and up, until the little adobe town was laid out like a diorama below, with the ragged circle-shaped crowd of humans below reduced to waving dolls. A hundred feet up, the docking ring at the Vepaja's nose slotted into the movable collar of the tower, and below it, a strip of the forward hull lowered to make a catwalk leading into the gondola. They walked along that in a creak of bending shamboo and into the gloom of the interior keel deck, then up a short ladder to the rear of the control bridge. That was brightly lit by the inward-sloping windows that surrounded the U-shaped chamber on three sides; there were railings all along the edge except where the three workstations and the helm stood, so you could look down. Behind them were the living quarters and galley; the level below held the batteries, storage, and ballast, and there were hatches up into the main body of the craft and the gas cells made of 'saur intestine, as well as another ladder to an observation bubble on the top of the hull.

  It all had a faint odor of ozone now, and fresh paint from the touch-up, and the pleasant almost-cedar smell of well-seasoned shamboo. By now, after a week of intensive refresher-training, they all knew where to go; even Tahyo headed straight for his padded basket and curled up. Jim Tyler cracked his fingers and smiled as he sat down at the consol at the apex of the control deck, glanced either way, and began to press switches. Marc sat and strapped himself into the copilot's position to the right of the helm, with Blair at the navigator's console on the other side, and Cynthia behind him holding down the flight engineer's station. In theory, one man could handle the Vepaja; the controls were all fly-by-wire through the ship's computer. In practice, for such a long journey…

  Mais, me, I'm even glad we've got Jadviga along. It's going to be a risky trip.

  Cynthia's voice was firm. "Power systems on. Solar collector input at ninety-nine-point-seven percent of optimum for ambient light. Batteries at full charge. Fuel cells active on trickle and all nominal. Hydrate reserve fully charged."

  "Navigation and communication systems are green to go," Blair said crisply. "Wind seven knots, north-northeast. Visibility unlimited…"

  "I confirm all systems ready," Marc said, after the Englishman had finished listing the barometric pressure and the rest of the data, his eyes flicking over the boxes and alphanumeric readouts on his own screen. "Captain, the ship is cleared to go."

  "Prepare to cast off," Tyler said. "Prepare to valve ballast." He touched a button, and his voice boomed out through the speakers below: "Clear the launch tower! Clear the area unless you want a shower, people!"

  Marc glanced aside; the crowd below was dispersing nicely. Tyler's right thumb moved a wheel set into the joystick, and there was a whine from behind them as the four engines pivoted, then a rising hum as the propellers built speed. The Cajun kept his hands firmly clamped to the armrests of his seat; they itched to be on the controls themselves. The captain's left hand tapped deftly at the panel.

  "Casting off!"

  A thunk-chunk! as the docking collar released.

  "Valving ballast! Netural buoyancy at three thousand feet."

  A deep rumbling sound as water spewed out of the valves set into the ship's keel. There was a sudden rising-elevator feeling, and the ground grew farther away, people shifting from full-sized to dolls and then ants.

  "Left full rudder, up all, all ahead one-quarter," Tyler continued, using the trigger-throttle set into the joystick and twisting it to control the rudder-elevators.

  The Vepaja's nose turned upward, pressing them back as they rose. The engines gradually tilted back to the horizontal as they leveled off, and then Tyler brought the craft onto its course. With the wind behind them on their right, they had to head a little north of west to keep from making leeway; the coast headed that way in any event. Marc watched the captain set the course into the autopilot—that was something he needed a little more work on—and lean back. He turned and grinned at each of them in turn.

  "Prepare for boredom," he said.

  "I thought this was supposed to be an adventure?" Cynthia asked, raising a brow.

  "Adventure is what happens when someone fucks up, pardon my French," the airshipman said. "Like someone in Maintenance was doing, given all the things that went wrong before we got this tub ready. Boredom is what happens when everything goes right."

  He pointed down below. The rectangle of Jamestown with its fields and pastures and the three-quarter-circle bay it sat on were falling behind them… slowly. The white sand of the beaches stretched in either direction, green water curling in silver foam, shading out to deep blue on their left. Ahead, the coast stretched out, green-and-tawny grass, tendril-like lines of forest along watercourses that glinted silver when the sun struck them, and other copses standing tall on the north-facing slopes of hills. The road heading west dwindled away into a game trail; the tharg and churr of the nomads were ant-tiny, hard to distinguish from the wild game that swarmed over the rich savannah, but now and then they could see the circle of a thornbrush enclosure and tents within. Off to the south, the white peaks of the Coast Range showed at the blue edge of sight: the Mother Ocean stretched to the north. Between here and there was a chaos of forested hills.

  "We're making,"—Tyler glanced at the instrument board—"thirty-two mph ground speed. We can't go much faster than that witho
ut a boost from the fuel cells—which would mean running down our hydrogen, which would mean stopping in one place and cracking more, right?"

  Marc and the others nodded. Marc was a little annoyed; Tyler was coming at it as the heavy old Venus hand, repeating commonplaces. Solar collectors just weren't very energetic, even a rectangle five hundred feet by a hundred, even this much closer to the sun, and even the highly efficient variety made in orbital fabricators.

  "So we can't go faster than about thirty miles an hour—we're getting two from the tailwind. So, we're going six thousand miles—call it seven with the way we'll have to jig out around those mountains two thousand miles west of here—at thirty miles an hour. Call it fifteen, because we can't travel at night on the collectors… so that's four hundred hours of flying, and four hundred hours of mooring at night, plus additional unscheduled downtime, and so, my children, prepare to be real bored."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Encyclopedia Britannica, 16th Edition University of Chicago Press, 1988

  THE SPACE RACE

  The history of the space race is marked by a very high degree of parallelism. The early EastBloc lead in heavy multistage rockets and the early American perfection of reusable two-stage winged shuttles were both temporary. Given that both competitors were operating within the same framework of natural law, and that both were prepared to commit very large resources, this was perhaps inevitable. On Venus, the United States even planted its initial manned base (Jamestown) fairly close to that of the EastBloc (Cosmograd), and within a year of the founding of the latter. Ostensibly this was to leave the possibility of mutual support open, though there was widespread speculation that the real goal was to limit any possible EastBloc territorial hegemony.

  The EastBloc has never revealed why it decided on a location for Cosmograd so far from the landing sites of its initial probes…