Arthur C Clarke's Venus Prime Omnibus

by Paul Preuss

  A dozen huge and spidery black marsplanes were clustered on the floor, like a nest of daddy longlegs. Khalid and Sparta crossed the floor toward the nearest.

  “This is how we get around. These are a bit like the bush planes of 20th-century Alaska.” Khalid’s voice was thin over the commlink. Their pressure suits were sealed; the wide hangar doors were closed but not sealed against the Martian atmosphere.

  “We live on a small planet, half the diameter of Earth, but it’s not as small as it might seem. Oceans take up three quarters of Earth’s surface, so Mars has virtually the same land area.” He ducked under a narrow black wing as long as a football field; the wingtips drooped to rest on the hangar floor. The plane’s slender tail fins, mounted on delicate booms, reached almost to the ceiling behind it. “Try to imagine Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, Australia, Antarctica, the major islands, all as one continent, all as one cold, dry, dusty desert—and in all this desert there are only five roads. Even to call them roads is a courtesy.”

  Sparta contemplated the marsplane whose wings now shadowed them and thought that it didn’t look at all like one of the old bush planes of Earth. It was graceful. Not graceful like a dart, as a spaceplane or supersonic shuttle was graceful, but graceful like a sea bird. The wings had narrow chords and were bent a little forward, then swept gently back, with a thick foil designed for maximum lift at minimum velocity. It was a craft made for soaring.

  Khalid opened the bubble hatch of the small fuselage, which was slung beneath and forward of the long wings. “We need wings this long to get lift in the thin atmosphere, but with carbon fiber it’s easy to build giants. Material strength here is effectively two and a half times what it would be on Earth.”

  At Khalid’s direction Sparta settled herself into the aft seat and pulled the harness over her pressure suit. “I see wings and tail booms and this little pod I’m sitting in, but what does this thing use for engines?” she asked.

  “Weather.” He bent to inspect her harness. “Plus RATO bottles to get us up if local wind conditions aren’t favorable. Once aloft, we’re a glider.”

  “Just a glider?”

  “Yes, just a glider.”

  She thought she’d said it coolly enough, but from his chuckle, he’d caught her apprehension.

  “The first explorers powered unmanned planes something like these using microwave beams: the antennas were in the wings, and onboard electric motors turned big propellors.” He finished checking her harness. His approving glance told her she’d done it right the first time. “The microwave system wasn’t efficient—the beams were sometimes blocked by dust, for one thing—and in the long run it proved unnecessary. Once there were enough satellites in orbit, the whole weather system became the engine for a fleet of planes.”

  He went forward and climbed up into the pilot’s seat. “These days, satellites communicate directly with the plane’s flight-control computers. The plane always knows exactly where it is and the best way to get where it wants to go.” He buckled his harness and tightened its straps. “We never fly in a straight line, not for long, but there’s no danger of getting lost or stranded.”

  “There is no such thing as ‘no danger,’ Dr. Sayeed.”

  “Dust storms can be a problem, as I indicated yesterday. Especially if they come up fast and grow too wide to go around and too high to climb over.” He pulled the canopy down over them. “It doesn’t happen often, but these planes are designed for that contingency. When it does happen we land and dig in.”

  “You said the storm season is approaching?”

  He turned to look at her over the high back of his seat, his hand resting on a canopy latch. “Still time to get out,” he said.

  “Even if I wanted to, Dr. Sayeed, I’m far too interested to back out now.”

  He nodded and snapped the latches shut. He turned his attention to the controls. The marsplane had a small console-mounted joystick but no pedals, for the plane had no ailerons, flaps, rudders, or elevators; subtle movements of the stick were sufficient to flex the wings and tails in a sophisticated version of the wing-warping technique invented by the Wright brothers.

  Manual control was in fact only an override mechanism. Once the marsplane had a destination entered into its computer it was happy to fly there by itself. If the pilot preferred eye-beam mode, the marsplane’s computer would readily accommodate—one could steer simply by looking where one wanted to go.

  A cluster of graphic screens displayed instrument summaries, but the pilot’s principal aid was a false-color holographic projection of the atmosphere. The hologram was constructed from onboard and satellite weather data, and as Khalid now demonstrated by switching on the projector, it completely surrounded them. No matter which way they looked, the atmosphere outside the plane seemed as tangible as multicolored smoke. Even here inside the hangar, small eddies were visible as intricate pastel spirals.

  “Tower, this is TP Five,” Khalid said. “We’re ready for rollout.”

  “Roger, Five,” said the tower’s disembodied voice. “You’ve got good weather, prevailing winds light steady at thirty knots out of the east-northeast. We’ll open the doors and hook you to the catapult.”

  Sparta looked around curiously from her high perch in the clear canopy. Pressure-suited ground crew appeared out of the hangar’s gloom, one coming to the nose and two moving to opposite sides of the plane. They took hold of the distant wingtips—the ends of the wings were so far away that they dwindled to pencil points from her point of view—and lifted them from the floor. The ground crew began walking the plane toward the hangar doors. Only a belly wheel beneath the fuselage was touching the tile.

  It seemed incongruous that three tiny humans could manhandle such an enormous contraption, but on Mars the whole plane, passengers and all, weighed about half what an antique Volkswagen weighed on Earth.

  Meanwhile the inner hangar doors were rolling back. The hangar was equipped with a primitive kind of airlock, not an airlock so much as a windlock; the space between the wide inner and outer doors was just enough to accommodate the craft’s short fore-to-aft length. When the marsplane had been rolled into the area, the inner doors rolled shut behind it, protecting the planes inside from the gusty wind.

  The outer doors slowly opened, unveiling the morning landscape of the shuttleport, the wide, wind-carved valley with its flanking cliffs. The great glider shuddered and creaked as the “light breeze” tried to lift it. Seen from the cockpit, thick pink garlands of atmosphere, coiled like the clouds of Jupiter, writhed in the computer’s holographic projection. The ground crew threw their diminutive weight on the wings. Sparta sensed the constant, instantaneous adjustments of the control surfaces which kept the plane, little more than a big ungainly kite, from flipping sideways and smashing to bits.

  One of the ground crew fastened the hook and cable of a gas catapult to a hardpoint on the bottom of the fuselage; in the catapult launch system Sparta recognized more technology borrowed from the Wright brothers. Khalid commlinked the controller—“Ready”—and then turned to look over his shoulder at Sparta. “Here we go.”

  The acceleration was gentle and quick. As the catapult drew the craft down the short track into the wind, the plane’s agile wings and tail fins kept it pointed true until it was free of the ground. Then, suddenly, they were skimming the dunes.

  Khalid quickly found an updraft over a light-colored patch of dunes in the middle of the valley. They began to ascend in a wide spiral, rising rapidly enough to feel it in the pits of their stomachs.

  “The satellite net reports there’s a steady northeasterly windstream at seven thousand meters,” he said. “That’s enough to give us clearance if we find ourselves heading down the Valles.”

  As the huge plane wheeled and banked, Sparta peered out of its bubble canopy, fascinated. Through the false holographic atmosphere she could see a faulted, cratered landscape falling away beneath her, a crisply intricate topography of tawny buttes and golden sands. A haze of f
rozen fog hung in the depths of the canyons of the Labyrinth. Overhead, the sky was rosy pink, streaked with wisps of ice-crystal cloud.

  Off to the west the Labyrinth of Night was filling with the morning’s orange light. Far to the east, the Valles Marineris widened and deepened as it dwindled toward the distant horizon. At its deepest the system of canyons descended to astonishing depths, with a vertical drop of six kilometers from plateau to valley floor, but from above true perspective was lost, and the land seemed to flatten as the plane swiftly mounted to catch the jetstream.

  Morning on Mars…

  “Checking in. The name’s Mycroft.”

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “New hire. Grade seven mechanic.”

  The phonelinks chortled continuously in rhythm with the constant hissing of the airlock, as busy men and women passed in and out of the dispatch office.

  “Look, bud, you can see we’re kinda occupied around here.”

  “Yevgeny Rostov said I was to be here by eight-thirty today and they’d put me on a crummy to the pipeline head.”

  “Rostov?” The fat clerk’s manners improved at the mention of Yevgeny’s name. “Who’d you say you was?”

  “My name’s Mycroft. Don’t mind telling you I’m glad to get this job. God knows I been lookin.’ Up on the station they…”

  “Can it, pal. I get all the soap opera I want on the viddie.” The clerk tapped a greasy keyboard and consulted a flatscreen on which, days or weeks ago, someone had spilled coffee. “Yeah, Mycroft, you’re on the manifest. Says you’re a grade eight.” The computer excreted a yellow cardboard hard copy. “Here’s your job ticket.” He handed it to Blake. “But you’re outta luck, Mycroft. No crummy today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they all friggin’ blew up, that’s why.” The lard-slick clerk showed his rotten teeth and broke into squeaky giggles.

  “They what?”

  “Little industrial accident—that’s what they’re callin’ it. All the personnel carriers are indefinitely outta commission. Doesn’t mean you don’t have a job at the line head, Mycroft. Just means you gotta get there on your own.”

  “When’s the next trip?”

  “Depends how long it takes to get new crummies down here. You happen to know the slow-freighter time from Earth these days?”

  Blake stared at him. “Slow freighter…? Oh, I see what you mean…”

  “Maybe you can talk some trucker into givin’ you a ride. But them drivers usually want plenty. Whaddya got to offer?”

  Blake shook his head and turned away, dejected.

  But when, entering the airlock, he paused to seal his helmet, he allowed himself a private smile.

  The marsplane found the jet stream and raced northeastward, in the direction of distant Cydonia. Khalid’s remarks were as neutral as a tour guide’s. “Lunae Lacus—the so called Lake of the Moon—is a depression north of here where the atmospheric pressure is high enough for water—should it ever get above freezing—to stay liquid. That’s one reason it’s been designated ground zero for Project Waterfall. Our route will skirt the Candor region. If the winds aloft hold steady, we’ll be paralleling the truck route from Labyrinth City north to the pipeline head.”

  “Are we going all the way to the Lacus?”

  “No, we’re resurveying an area just ahead of the pipeline. We could easily reach Lunae Lacus within a sol if we wanted to—our ground speed right now is over five hundred kilometers per hour—but if we went that far, with present weather conditions we’d probably have to circle the entire planet to get back.”

  “How far’s the pipeline?”

  “About three thousand kilometers.”

  “So we could get there in six hours at this speed.”

  “At this altitude, yes. But when we drop to make the sensor runs we’ll lose ground speed. We’ll spend most of our time on this trip working our way back, moving across the wind at low altitude. Could be two or three days. We’ve got plenty of time to talk.” He laughed. “Maybe Candor will inspire us.”

  She laughed dryly. “If Candor inspires you, Dr. Sayeed, then tell me why you really wanted me with you on this flight.”

  “So that we could talk,” he replied instantly. “Talk openly. The hotel is a sieve of information. Name any group or individual with an interest in your investigation, and you can bet they have a recording of our luncheon conversation.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if you had made your own recording,” she said. Sparta herself recorded everything that interested her in her memory; she needed no machinery to do it for her. “And this plane’s black box is recording what we say now. Why should either of us be concerned?”

  “I want to warn you.”

  “Of what?”

  “I think someone is trying to kill you.”

  There was no hint of melodrama or insincerity in his voice, but her flesh tingled. “Who and why?”

  “I don’t know who. I hear things.”

  “From whom?”

  “Nothing specific, and perhaps I’m reading in meaning where none exists. Prott has made some remarks…”

  “What remarks?”

  “To the effect that he hopes you watch your back.”

  “You think he wants to kill me?”

  “No… I don’t think so. I don’t know. As for the why, now that I’ve met you I would guess that it has something to do with your identity.” He turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Your holos didn’t give you away, but as soon as I saw you yesterday, Linda…”

  “You mustn’t call me that,” she said.

  “If you prefer—”

  “The record of this portion of the flight will be destroyed,” she said. It was an order.

  “Fine. But it isn’t only me. I doubt that any of us who were in SPARTA could fail to recognize you.”

  For a moment she said nothing. She remembered that Blake too had recognized her easily, that day in Manhattan—from a city block away. Had SPARTA formed a bond among its members that neither Sparta’s cosmetic surgery nor her acting could disguise?

  “Are you transmitting now?”

  “Only telemetry.”

  “Khalid, do you understand why we must erase this conversation?”

  “Yes, and I’ll help you. I’ll use side channels to fill the hole with background—the wind on the wings, cockpit noises. Chances are, nobody will listen to the black box anyway, and if they do they won’t notice, unless they already know what they’re looking for.”

  “They tried to kill me, Khalid. They tried to kill my parents.”

  “We heard your parents died in a helicopter crash.”

  “Maybe. I didn’t see their bodies. I’ve never met anyone who did, and I’ve spent a lot of time looking.”

  “You mean they’re still trying to kill you? Who are they?”

  “I’m in this plane because I hope to prove that you aren’t one of them.”

  He jerked around to look at her. “Me?”

  Again his surprise seemed genuine. If he had not really recognized her, though, if instead he had known all along who she was, then there was no mystical SPARTA bond, and he was one of the prophetae and an accomplished liar.

  “Yes, you. Ten years ago, Jack Noble was one of your sponsors to the SPARTA project. Did you know that? And he’s on the board of the Mars Terraforming Project.”

  “What does that have to do with your situation?”

  “I have evidence that he’s one of them. No proof, only suggestive evidence. The group that sponsored you, the Tappers, has ties to the prophetae of the Free Spirit. And I do know that it’s because of SPARTA that the Free Spirit wanted my parents out of the way.”

  Khalid was turned around in his seat, watching her intently, letting the plane fly itself.

  “And that they want me out of the way,” she said—

  —and then she screamed. The pain that went through her head originated in the middle of her spine and shot upward. Suddenly her
torso was on fire from her belly up, and the fire was spreading to her rigid, trembling arms, which thrust themselves outward of their own accord. Her hands curved into hooks as if to seize the ether.

  Sparta began to tremble. Her teeth chattered and her eyes rolled up in her head until only the whites showed between her trembling lashes. Thirty seconds later she collapsed.

  9

  A skinny black shadow tumbled pell-mell from the sky. Contending winds, invisible in the clear pink sky, tossed the stricken plane first one way and then another across the wrinkled desert that rapidly rose to swallow it. The marsplane’s slender wings fluttered and twisted and bent back on themselves so far it seemed they would crumple and snap.

  Radar, satellite radiolink, holo projection, onboard computers, even the commlink—everything had failed at once. Without computers to continuously warp and trim its control surfaces, the marsplane flew no better than a torn scrap of paper.

  In the lurching cockpit Khalid tapped switches and tweaked potentiometers as calmly as he could while being tossed from side to side in his harness. What had been thick colored air all around him, the construction of the holo projector, was now a view of real sky and sand and rock swirling sickeningly across the plastic arc of the canopy.

  Auxiliary power from shielded batteries came back online. The control computers had lost the flight destination program and many of their other functions; Khalid had to remind the amnesiac electronics that their primary job was to keep the plane upright and aloft. Another minute passed as he worked at the programs.

  Finally the plane recovered from its violent and irregular plummet.

  The scarp of an awesome cliff rose before them, black with basalt, red with rusty iron. The plane flew straight toward it, undeviating. With fatalistic calm, Khalid watched the impenetrable barrier approach.

  The plane was seeking an updraft. Finally it found one, a dozen meters from the vertical rise of rock. As swiftly as it had fallen the plane mounted, but its long wings brushed the cliff twice before it reached the rim and won through to free air. Khalid took control of the craft then and flew it by joystick.