Arthur C Clarke's Venus Prime Omnibus

by Paul Preuss

  She was glad she’d let Randolph bully her into this—literally canned!—tourist adventure. She smiled and let her eyes wander from the ruddy moon. Her gaze lingered fondly on his craggy looks.

  He seemed lost in thought, his own eyes not focused on the landscape of Io but somewhere infinitely far beyond.

  A voice she had learned to regard as background noise interrupted her thoughts: “Four active volcanos are visible from the current range and position of your Moon Cruiser, with plumes ranging from thirty to over two hundred kilometers in altitude…”

  Mays managed to keep his inner concentration even when the robot voice of the capsule chimed in with one of its periodic sightseeing lectures. He was like a Zen monk, sitting calmly, thinking nothing, knowing nothing but the incoming and outgoing of his breath.

  “…the most easily visible in the lower right quadrant of your screen, near the terminator. Observe the umbrella-shaped plume of material, ejected from the vent at a velocity approaching one kilometer per second, more than a third of Io’s escape velocity. If you wish to see the larger globe of crystallized gases surrounding the volcano’s inner solid plume, tune your videoplate to the ultraviolet spectrum…”

  Now their capsule was approaching Io so fast that their movement toward it was perceptible. What had been a detailed and fascinating but still-distant landscape took on a new dimension; Marianne was reminded of her visit to the Grand Canyon on Earth, standing at an overlook, admiring distant vistas of buttes and mesas, when suddenly the gravel beneath her foot slipped and carried her a few inches toward the edge…

  She was seized with terror. “Randolph, we’re falling!”

  “Mm, what’s that, dear?”

  “Something’s wrong! We’re falling right into it … into that volcano!”

  Mays suppressed a smile. “If for a moment you can tear your eyes away from our impending doom, let me switch to the schematic.”

  Idealized graphics replaced the more immediate reality on the screen. He tapped the controls, adjusting the scale to include the surface of Io.

  The green line of their planned trajectory brought them to within three hundred kilometers of the surface of Io. At this scale the blue line of their actual track could have deviated from the green line by no more than the width of a pixel or two, for it was still identical.

  Their velocity was impressive, however—the blue line crept along the green at several millimeters per second. And still Marianne’s heart was pounding; she couldn’t get her breath.

  “We’re falling, you might say,” Mays conceded. “But we’re falling past the volcano, not into it. We’re falling past the surface of the moon. And then, of course, we’ll be falling toward Jupiter.” He enlarged the scale of the graphic swiftly—the familiar green ellipsoid was still there where it had been, looping around and eventually back toward Ganymede. “With any luck, we’ll miss it, too.” He smiled at her, and it was a smile with enough warmth in it to be what she needed, truly comforting.

  Marianne studied the graphic as if her life depended on it. Her pulse slowed; she could feel the tension draining away. “I’m sorry, Randolph,” she said weakly.

  “No need to apologize. Such a rapidly changing perspective is frightening indeed.”

  “It’s just that … it’s clear enough when it’s explained to me, but I feel… I think I should have done my homework.”

  “Indeed, intuitive physics is usually wrong”—he emitted his history professor’s throaty chuckle—“as Aristotle repeatedly demonstrated.”

  She didn’t think it was all that funny, but she forced herself to smile. “We can turn the picture back on now. I’ll try to overcome my … intuition.”

  She switched back to realtime. The picture was strikingly different. Gripped by Io’s gravity, they were falling now at 60,000 kilometers per hour, an astonishing speed this close to a fixed surface. Her facial muscles tightened, but she held her smile and made herself watch.

  The volcano’s copious outpouring was as dark and as fluid as blood, a translucent mound of soft red spreading outward from the dark vent at its center in a symmetry that was almost voluptuous. Their capsule was a missile homing on the center of the plume’s creased pillow, which swelled as if to take them in. All around them rose soft mountains the color of flesh.

  Then everything curved away, dropped away.

  The voice of the capsule said, “Your Moon Cruiser’s videoplate field of view is no longer selecting the surface of Io. If you wish to continue viewing Io, you may easily adjust your viewpoint by selecting ‘autotrack’ on your video console.”

  “No thank you,” Marianne said softly.

  “It’s all going into memory,” Mays said. “We can play it back later if you’d like. When we’re well away.”

  “Randolph,” she said, in a voice that was low, almost angry, “can’t we get out of these stupid suits? I want you to hold me.” She didn’t wait for his answer before slapping at the clasps of her harness to free herself from her acceleration couch.

  He said nothing, but he followed her example. By the time he’d released his harness she was out of her suit; she helped him get out of his, kneeling on top of him in his couch, as weightless as he was.

  She helped him catch up; then she continued with the rest of her clothes. Before long they were both tumbling naked in the feeble light of the screen, the dark and supple young woman, the hard-muscled, odd-angled, definitely older man.

  In her urgency she paid no attention to the faint rumble of the capsule’s maneuvering system. Since she had done no homework, and currently had no interest in schematics, she had no way of knowing that the trajectory program had scheduled no course adjustment for this moment.

  “It’s happening,” said Sparta. Ever since Mays and Marianne had launched for Io, Sparta had haunted the firefly darkness of the AJE, the Space Board’s Automated Jupiter Environment traffic control center, whose green screens and trembling sensors tracked every craft in Jupiter space.

  “What is happening, Inspector?” demanded a young German controller, her white-blond crew cut as square and shiny as the epaulets on her blue uniform. With audible contempt the controller said, “No alteration in the trajectory of the tourist canister is visible.”

  Not to you, thought Sparta, but she said only, “While you’re watching and waiting, I’m putting our cutter on alert.”

  Five minutes later the controller finally noticed a tiny discrepancy in the Moon Cruiser’s course, as yet within the limits of uncertainty of the tracking system; meanwhile Sparta took a call on her personal link.

  “Awkward moment, Ellen,” the commander growled at her.

  “Sorry, sir,” she said cheerfully. “Catch you in the john?”

  “Caught me as I was recording a smuggling operation going down at Von Frisch’s place. Now I’ll have to leave it to the locals.”

  “All the better for Space Board public relations. I need your chop for the cutter to get me to Amalthea, ASAP. I’ve already got the crew hopping and a shuttle standing by to get me up there.”

  “All right, I’ll confirm your arrangements. Mind telling me what’s happening anyway? Case anyone I answer to wants to know?”

  “Looks like Mays could be making a move.”

  “What? Never mind, I’ll be with you in half an hour.”

  “Better that you stay on Ganymede, sir. Cover our rear.”

  He laughed. “All I’m good for in my old age.” He sounded uncharacteristically weary.

  “Cheer up, boss. The war’s not over yet.”

  In the Moon Cruiser, time passed unnoticed.

  “You’re not sleeping,” Marianne whispered fiercely.

  Mays opened his eyes. “On the contrary, dear,” he said, only slightly less energetically than usual. “You invigorate me.”

  “And certainly you don’t think I’m done with you yet.”

  “Oh I certainly … hope not.” He hesitated. “But I’m selfish. I like to mix my pleasures.”

&n
bsp; “Sounds interesting.” Her words were halfway between a purr and a growl.

  “Yes. I mean, we wouldn’t want to miss our view of Europa—we’ll be approaching it within the hour”—he hurried on as he saw the cool shock on her face—“and I do want to savor you at leisure.”

  Her expression softened again. He wasn’t pushing her away, but she realized she really would have to make some allowance for his … maturity. “But do we have to put our clothes back on? Is there any reason we have to wear those smelly things in this perfectly cozy little steel container?”

  He looked at her in warm Jupiter-light from the viewscreen, at her grainless skin and supple curves and glossy black hair floating weightless, and then at his own body, nobbed and irregularly textured. “There is no reason for you to do so, but unfortunately my appearance…”

  “I want to look at you.”

  “I don’t want to look at me. I gangle. I am too long-limbed to avoid seeing at least some part of myself every time I move.” He plucked his floating trousers from the air and began to struggle into them.

  Marianne watched a moment, then sighed expressively and reached for her jumpsuit. “I guess I have to get dressed too. I refuse to be held at a disadvantage. Even a symbolic one.”

  “Wait ’til after Europa, dear.”

  Her ardor had cooled, and she said nothing more until she was fully dressed. For his part, Mays seemed once more lost in thought. Marianne floated toward her acceleration couch, not eager to strap herself in again, and looked at the huge curve of Jupiter against the field of stars on the videoplate.

  She studied it more closely, and a tiny crease formed in her brow. “Randolph, you said Europa in an hour. Shouldn’t it be visible on the screen?”

  “Why yes, certainly…” He flinched as he studied the screen. Jupiter was there, but none of its moons were evident. Without a word, he switched the image to the flight-path schematic.

  “My God, this can’t be right.”

  Since shortly after they had left Io, the blue line of their path through space had been steadily diverging from the green line planned for them. The angle was small, but their velocity was large—and growing larger. They were no longer headed away from Jupiter, outward to Europa, but instead were spiraling lazily inward toward the huge planet.

  “There was no warning! How could there be no warning!” Mays’s voice was rich with outrage.

  The capsule’s robot voice chose the moment to speak up. “Please relax and prepare for the next thrilling episode in your Jovian excursion. Your Moon Cruiser is about to fly past the world of buried oceans—Europa!”

  Marianne was staring at the schematic. “Randolph, we’re falling right into Jupiter.”

  “We’ve got lots of time before that happens,” Mays said. “And it needn’t, if I can get to this machine’s control circuitry. This is all probably a pretty simple thing. But…” His voice faded out abruptly, as if he’d been about to say more than he should have.

  “Tell me what you were going to say,” she said. She looked at him steadily, full of courage.

  “Well, we’re already in the radiation belt. Even if I can correct our course, we will … absorb a very large dose.”

  “We may die,” she said.

  He said nothing. He was thinking of other things.

  “Don’t give out on me, Randolph,” she commanded. “I don’t intend to die until I have to. You either—I won’t let you.”

  17

  “Manta, come in please.”

  The Manta had disappeared from the bright screens on the flight deck of the Michael Ventris. The sonar channels gave out nothing but the deep throbbing of the core, underscoring the watery sounds the crew had grown used to.

  “Professor Forster. Blake. Please respond.” When there was no reply, Josepha Walsh turned to the others and said, almost casually, “We’ve lost them in the thermal turbulence. Not unexpected.” The tension in her voice was barely a notch above business-as-usual.

  Tony Groves was sitting in at McNeil’s engineering console; McNeil and Hawkins had come into the flight deck still in their spacesuits, helmets loose, to follow the progress of the Manta on the high resolution screens. They matched the captain’s mood—alert, serious, but not alarmed. They’d heard Blake’s and the professor’s descriptions as they dove, seen the fitfully transmitted images from the old sub, read the sonar data. They knew the core was shielded from their sonar probing, and that at any rate communication with the Manta might be difficult in the vicinity of its boiling surface. There seemed no good reason to fear mishap.

  “At any rate, the last message was they were coming up. Angus, you and Bill might as well head for the lock; it can’t be long before…”

  A sudden loud wailing from the radiolink interrupted her.

  We are receiving an emergency signal. A space vessel is in distress, the ship’s urgent, dispassionate computer voice announced. Repeat. We are receiving an emergency signal. A space vessel is in distress.

  “Acknowledged,” Jo Walsh told the computer. “Vector coordinates on graphics, please.”

  The big video screen switched to a map of near space. The distressed craft was seen creeping in from screen left, on a projected course that was bringing it into the lee of Amalthea—where, it appeared, it was on a collision course with the moon.

  “I’d give it three hours to get here,” said Groves.

  “And who the hell would that be?” demanded McNeil. “Nobody could have got this close without sector I.D.”

  “Computer, can you identify the distressed vessel?” Walsh asked calmly.

  The vessel is an automated tour capsule, registry AMT 476, Rising Moon Enterprises, Ganymede Base, presently off its pre-set course…

  “You don’t say,” Groves muttered.

  The vessel does not respond to attempted radio contact, said the computer.

  “Silly question perhaps, but are we sure it’s occupied?” Blake demanded.

  “Computer, can you confirm that the capsule is occupied?”

  According to manifest the vessel is occupied by two passengers: Mitchell, Marianne; Mays, Randolph.

  McNeil looked at Groves and before he could help himself, he laughed a half-embarrassed laugh. Groves nodded knowingly.

  Bill Hawkins looked at him in shocked disapproval. “They’ve been in the radiation belt for hours! In a minimally shielded … canister. We’ll be lucky to reach them alive!”

  “My apologies,” McNeil said. “But Mays—what an extraordinary man! What gall!”

  “What the hell are you going on about, McNeil?” Hawkins yelled at him.

  “Later, gentlemen,” said Walsh. “We’ll have to see to them.”

  “What do you want to do, Jo?” asked Groves.

  “You guys jettison the hold, along with everything loose. I’ll need you with me, Tony, to run the trajectories.”

  “All right, but what then?”

  “Stripped, this ship’s got the delta-vees to cut a low orbit around Jupiter, match orbits with the capsule, take them aboard. Reach them in under three hours, do another go around, get back into the shadow in maybe another four, with maneuvers—before we take too many rads.”

  “We’ve got a duty to a vessel in distress—but we’ve got a duty to the mission as well,” said McNeil reluctantly. “If we use all that fuel to rescue them, we’ll be stranding ourselves here.”

  “What the hell are you talking…?” Hawkins interjected again, his clear English skin turning bright red.

  “No excuse, Angus,” said Walsh, cutting Hawkins off firmly. “The Space Board will take us off. Before then, a few hours in radiological clean-up should do for us.”

  “For us, maybe,” said McNeil, persisting. “What about them?”

  Groves said, “He has a point. Add three hours to their exposure, even partially shielded, and they’ll be pushing the limit. We’ve got the delta-vees to do what you suggest, Captain,” Groves added quietly, “but not enough time.”

 
“We’re wasting what time we’ve got, talking,” Walsh said. She ran her hand through her brush-cut red hair; others had long ago learned to read this unconscious gesture as her way of displacing anxiety when she needed to concentrate. “We do it my way unless you’ve got a better idea.”

  “One idea, anyway,” said Groves. “That capsule is incoming with about three hundred meters per second delta with respect to Amalthea. If it’s as well-aimed as it appears to be…”

  “Yes?”

  “Let it crash.”

  “What!” Hawkins was quick to react. “Let them die…?”

  “Oh, do be quiet, Hawkins,” Walsh snapped at him. Like the others, she had responded to the navigator’s suggestion with thoughtful silence.

  “Listen, Walsh… Captain Walsh… I insist…”

  “Hawkins, we’re not going to let them die. Now either keep quiet or leave the flight deck.”

  Hawkins finally perceived that the others knew something he didn’t and wanted silence in which to think about it. He shrank back into a corner.

  “The sublimed ice is about ten meters deep,” said McNeil. “That will take up some energy.”

  “Yes, that’s a plus. Given the snow density—what’s your guess, maybe point four gee-cee?—and their inertia”—Groves was bent over the navigator’s board, tapping keys—“they should experience instantaneous deceleration of … oh, about forty gees. We’ll have to look up the specs, but it’s my impression those Moon Cruisers are built to maintain structural integrity well beyond that.”

  “And the people inside?” Walsh asked.

  “Tied in properly … they can survive it.”

  “Assuming they’re eyeballs-in,” McNeil added. The engineer seemed almost diffident. “Should they have the unfortunate luck to come in upside down…” He left the rest unsaid.

  “Right,” said Walsh. “We’d better have a look through the telescope.”