Helen picked up a rock and showed it to Jacques. “Geologically speaking,” she said, “we're on a lava field between two volcanoes. I'll bet it slides down over millions of years and subducts just beyond the edge of the ocean."
"Then gets recirculated?” Doc asked.
Helen nodded. “I expect so, if this configuration is more or less stable over eons."
"What powers it?” Doc asked. “A world this small should lose heat faster than radioisotopes make it."
"Tides, maybe.” Helen shrugged. “I wish I could do a simulation."
"There needs to be another world, farther out, to keep the orbit eccentric,” Doc offered. A Neptune-mass giant, maybe."
"We haven't seen one,” Collette said. “I think we would have."
Jacques nodded. “That's true, though I haven't looked carefully."
Helen said, “It might be dimmer than you think. Given the air pressure and temperature, I'm thinking we get half or something less of solar insolation here. But the primary is an M dwarf, so the visual light is maybe a tenth ... half of a tenth ... the amount of visual light one gets on Earth, and maybe a sixteenth of that at the nearest plausible giant planet orbit."
Jacques agreed. “Yes. A Jupiter equivalent would be something like an eightieth as bright. That's third or fourth magnitude here—visible but not really noticeable."
"Or,” Doc said, “the planet could be closer to the star and too hard to see in the twilight."
Another, lesser quake interrupted the discussion.
"We can't stay forever,” Jacques said, voicing what they all thought, staring up at the lava tube ceiling. “We're apparently still some distance from the shuttle. The season is getting on."
"We're about forty-eight kilometers above sea level now,” Helen said. “I'm not sure it would be wise to winter at any higher altitude. What we could do is lay out supply caches at higher altitudes this summer, then make a dash up the following year."
"I should stay with Soob,” Doc said.
"We should have two able-bodied people here,” Jacques countered.
"We can rotate placing the caches,” Collette offered. “You and me, Helen and me ... you and Helen."
Did she sound just a bit hesitant about the last pairing? Jacques wondered. Helen's approach to the three men, two women thing, was to spread her attention around more or less equally. Collette had not really tried to keep up; though she had genuine affection for Soob and Doc, she had taken a proprietary interest in Jacques. This flattered and excited Jacques, but the long-term implications also worried him. Taking care of human needs was important, he thought, but in their present circumstances “keeping it professional” might be the best policy. Helen was having none of that, of course. Still, he had no complaints from others. The discussion went on to the more comfortable subject of logistics and schedule.
The result of all this was that, on what he had determined to be periastron, midsummer's day, he and Collette set out, loaded up with as much as they could carry.
* * * *
Chapter 14
Jacob's Ladder
Up and down, up and down the crews went. They could go up three terraces and back in a day, and it generally took two trips to set enough supplies for a trip to a higher stage—though on the first two stages, they found they could stretch things by foraging. As summer drew to a close, they reached the tree line at forty-eight kilometers altitude, where it was only above freezing for a few hours a day. A hardy form of tanglegrass kept on over the next three terraces, and this was grazed on by a four-footed relative of the kangasaur about six times the size of an African elephant. It didn't have a prehensile nose, though, and made do with only one flat tusk growing from the lower jaw and a talented tongue.
These were far too big to think about killing, but the “hairadactyls” that tended them were another matter. These were eagle-sized and pigeon-brained, so the staging crews came back with as much as they took up.
The terraces changed; the higher ones were no longer sheer cliffs, but more rounded and slumped, often with natural ramps on which herds had beaten paths from one level to another. Climbing cliffs became easier, but to make up for that, the slopes between them became steeper.
With the first chill of winter in the air, Jacques and Helen set out for the last foray until the next summer. They passed five depots, at fifty-six, sixty, sixty-four, sixty-eight, and seventy-two kilometers altitude—as estimated from the wrist comp's barometric readings—on the way up, overnighting in a tiny log lean-to on permafrost. They established a depot at seenty-six kilometers in a small cave on a rare outcropping of rock in a field of ice. By eighty-three kilometers the ice was gone; they'd found a small lava tube, however, and the rock below it was still warm. Wrapped in their batskin sleeping rolls, with a tiny fire guarding the entrance, Jacques felt downright cozy.
"What do you think?” Helen asked. “Only thirteen kilometers up to the one bar level.” She snuggled up to him, as natural and unconcerned as ever.
On Earth, Jacques thought, thirteen kilometers altitude gain would be ridiculous for an up-and-back. But with the gravity being only about an eighth of Earth's at this altitude, and the terrain now simply rolling hills paved with smooth pahoehoe lava, it was probably doable.
"The oxygen partial pressure is going down,” Jacques said. “It's harder to start a fire. We're still above Earth normal pressure, about 1,200 millibars, but oxygen partial pressure must be less than Earth's."
"Time to put the shipsuits on?” she asked.
Jacques thought about it. Their carefully preserved shipsuits had hoods, transparent in front, that could be sealed airtight. They were intended to serve as emergency vacuum suits on spacecraft. They could easily hold a few hundred millibars of pressure differential. They used the heat of their wearers’ bodies to power the efficient nanosystems that removed carbon dioxide, but...
"They still need an air supply, and we don't have one. Maybe we can rig up some kind of bellows for next year. But we can wear them for warmth tomorrow, along with our batskins."
"Our Cube World language is evolving."
"Huh?"
Helen laughed. “You dropped the ‘mega.’ So I'm wearing ‘batskins.’ Its a better word."
"Yeah. If Gabe and company have made a similar discovery, they'll call it dragonskin, or something like that. Then we'll argue about it."
"If we ever see them again. Or maybe if our descendants meet theirs."
He tried to envision some future Cube World with two independent cultures, not speaking the same language, not having the same values, possibly even going to war with each other. The prospect made him shudder.
"No descendants. No. We're leaving this place. We're going to recover our technology, get robots working, make spaceships and a starship, and go home."
"That's a long-term dream,” Helen said. “In the meantime, we need to settle in, build a town with enough room in it for children. We don't have robots, at least not yet. So we need more people.” She grinned at him. “I've never been pregnant before. I'm looking forward to it."
He looked at her in abject horror. “With Soob down, we can't afford to have another person disabled."
She shook her head. “Then we'd best get on with it now before we lose someone else. I don't want to spend eternity being the last person on this planet. Yes, I've opened my tubes and I'm giving it my best shot."
"You're making a big decision for all of us."
She nodded and smiled cheerfully. “I didn't think I'd win a vote. You want to kick me off the planet? It's my body."
"You're not already..."
"Could even be yours. It's hard to tell just yet.” She snuggled up to him. “Don't worry. I can't get more pregnant."
"Hey, if you aren't I don't want to...” he said.
But she sealed his mouth with a kiss and biology took over.
Afterward, as afterglow faded into sleep, he wondered about man's ability to rationalize in the face of a determined womanl
y assault. Helen, he realized, was probably in charge here, preferring to lead from behind him, almost as Collette thought Leo might have led Gabe. In an era of genetic engineering leveling, she was still clearly smarter than anyone else in their small team, but her sexuality made some people forget her mind. She was Helen Athena, all-powerful, leading him on, enticing him. Then she became Collette and they lay down together. Then Collette became Ascendant Chryse and they decided to make babies and fill this planet with them. Then they could outvote Gabe Eddie and Leo. They needed to do it quickly before Leo stopped them.
Helen woke him up with a kiss before the dream reached its climax.
"Time to get going."
* * * *
They had their tiny camp packed before sunrise and set out upward under starlight, probing ahead of themselves with their flute plant walking sticks.
Antares alone provided enough light for them to find their way.
"It's much brighter than Venus, up here,” Helen said. “I'd say about minus sixth magnitude."
"Hmm, maybe brighter than that. Almost like a crescent moon. I'll give it minus seven."
"Maybe. Lets say that's a maximum. Split the difference; since it's something like first magnitude from Earth, that would put it about 7.5 magnitudes, or a factor of 1,000 brighter than Earth. So it's thirty-some times closer, at least. Only five parsecs or so."
"About the same distance between 36 Ophiuchi and Earth,” Jacques said. “You can barely see 36 Ophiuchi at that distance; this star casts shadows."
"I wonder what happens here when it goes supernova."
"Whoever build this place may have taken that into consideration,” Jacques said, struggling to keep his mind on putting one synapse in front of the next. “Maybe they have predicted the date."
The terraces were gone, along with any hint of water. The lava field looked flat, except that they were bent over at almost forty-five degrees to the surface. Part of that was the slope of the mountain to the gravitational field and part of it was the wind they were slogging into. It was dry and cold, but Jacques thought it might change as day came. Footing was treacherous; the lava was covered with a loose grit that could slide underfoot, and thin spots in the lava could give way without warning, leaving one's foot dangling in a lava tube.
That said, they were able to maintain a fairly brisk pace without their packs, about three meters a second, Jacques thought. We're putting some distance behind us. He looked back over the featureless landscape and realized he couldn't recognize anything.
"Whoa, Helen. I can't see our camp!"
"Can you see the horizon against the mist?"
"Okay. Yes, I can see it. The bulge."
"If we've been headed directly uphill, the camp should be just below the bulge. We haven't gone too far to find it again, I think. But we should build a cairn here. A big one."
It was easier said than done. Portable rocks were hard to find in a pahoehoe field, but by stomping around they were able to collapse a small lava tube and use the pieces of its roof to build an upright pillar. ‘Upright’ proved to be about thirty-degrees to the local slope, so they called it “the leaning tower of pieces."
They found they would hike upward for about an hour before it became hard to see a cairn, so that became their routine. As dawn came, they could see farther, but could also see better and move faster, so the hour interval remained about the same. Six cairns and an hour into the trip, they realized the ground was getting warm. An incongruous cloud lay ahead of them.
"Jacques, I don't think we should try to build a cairn here,” Helen said. “Look."
He turned to where she pointed and saw a piece of lava fall with a crunch into a new hole. A river of brilliant orange light shone through it.
They went quickly right until the steam cloud was no longer in front of them, and the ground seemed cooler to the touch. Some experimental stomping found them shards for the cairn.
Jacques found he was a little short on breath, and hooked his wrist comp to the solar array. The air near the lava surface was about zero C, but if he held the wrist comp high over his head, it recorded minus twenty-five. Atmospheric pressure was down to 998 millibars.
"Up ahead ... I think the lava field stops beyond that ridge."
Jacques saw and nodded. “I don't think we can go too much farther...” He stopped to breathe deeply. “...without more oxygen. I'd guess we're getting about half what we should, partial pressure around a hundred millibars."
Helen nodded. “Just a little farther. I want to see where the lava comes from."
They pushed on for another thirty minutes and arrived at the ridge. Above the lava was a smooth band of material that looked vaguely like concrete. Beyond that, uphill was a featureless plane of gray. He boosted Helen up over the “concrete” and she pulled him up afterward. It was absolutely flat.
"Is the shuttle still there?” Helen asked.
Jacques checked. “Yes, it has a somewhat stronger signal, but...” The reading was coming from directly in front of him, but he was standing at about a thirty-degree angle, which meant that the signal was coming from below Cube world's surface. “It's below us, Helen. Ahead and somehow below—a radio propagation trick?"
"I'm not sure, but I wouldn't think so.” She pulled out the binoculars and scanned the horizon. “I can't see anything here. Maybe it's on the other side of the ridge. On the other face."
"How far to the ridge, do you think?” Jacques asked.
"Maybe a thousand kilometers. At five kilometers an hour, maybe two hundred hours."
"A week. We'd need enough oxygen for a week."
"Next year, if we can figure out how to store it,” Helen said. “I want to stand on the ridge and look at both faces."
"While breast-feeding?” Jacques quipped, and instantly regretted it.
But Helen just laughed. “There will be time."
"Time to go home now."
He saw it out of the corner of his eye when he turned around to retrace their steps. It was just a bump in the otherwise geometrically smooth curve of the lava source ridge, an indeterminate distance away.
"Binoculars, Helen. Over there—a bump on the lava source ridge."
She pulled the binoculars from her belly kit, plugged them into the solar array, and sighted in on it. “It looks like a shelf sticking out of the plain. The top is probably level, gravitationally, the front, vertical. Like a dormer window. Four and a fraction klicks distant."
"We should go for it. It probably has something to do with this place.” He stomped his foot on the surface for emphasis and almost lost his footing on the slope.
"We'd be finding our way home in the dark."
"We left that way."
They stared at each other. It was clearly more of a risk than Helen wanted, but Jacques weighed that against the potential for a breakthrough. It was a discovery that emphasized the differences in their attitudes: Helen for accepting a long stay and adapting to the world, Jacques putting almost all of his efforts into finding a way out.
"Okay,” Helen said at length. “But let's go down to the lava source ridge—it's almost level on top—easier to walk on. It looks like the front of the structure is just a few meters back from the ridge."
They reached the structure well past local noon, but Jacques figured they still had seven hours plus twilight to return and find their camp. Helen was nervous, and he had picked up the pace as much as his oxygen-starved lungs would let him. The structure proved large—maybe twenty meters tall in front—and featureless as they approached from the side. But when they got to the front they saw a huge black rectangle about twenty meters by ten in the wall in front of them.
"I'd say it's a door,” Helen said in wonderment. “A great big garage door."
They got a greater shock as they approached and it opened by simply vanishing.
* * * *
Chapter 15
Behind the Curtain
"And there we were,” Helen told the assembled group, “i
nside this enormous, enormous room with great curving arches, huge pillars—of solid diamond, I'd guess—catwalks the width of airplane runways, huge machines rolling around without making any sound whatsoever."
"It was lit inside?” Collette asked.
Jacques nodded. “There were point sources every few kilometers, I'd guess. They looked like stars, but much brighter. In the distance they kind of merged into a general glow. We only took half an hour inside—it was too cold to stay overnight and we had to get back to camp. But it looks like there's a road through to the other side of the ridge. Which is where my readings indicate the shuttle is."
He looked around the group. Soob nodded and smiled at him; he wasn't able to speak or walk without assistance, but at least the higher functions of his mind hadn't been too badly damaged by his near-suffocation. Doc said he was getting better every day.
If they had all been healthy, they might have tried for the other side immediately, but they didn't want to do that with only two people, gone into an unknown environment for the entire winter, and they couldn't bring Soob in his present state. So Eagle's Nest was getting ready for their second winter. Provisions were piled high in the ice cave. Partitions of flute plant mats broke the wind through the cave and gave them private bedrooms.
"Did anyone, or anything, notice you were there?” Collette asked. “Seems like pretty loose security to me."
"Whatever guards the door apparently didn't see us as a threat,” Jacques said. “The way it just vanished ... and it was solid before. I touched it."
"It could be some form of programmable matter,” Helen said. “People have been working on it forever. Send it one signal and it's a solid wall, send it another and it's just dust in the air."
"Which we breathed,” Jacques added. “Without, apparently, any ill effects."
"So you have alien nanites running around inside you,” Doc concluded.
Soob grunted and reached for his slate, wrote and handed the slate to Collette.
"All of us since arrival. Place is managed!” she read.
"Okay,” Helen said in a loud voice. “Whoever you are, you can stop playing with us. We have better things to do with our lives."
Analog SFF, December 2009 Page 18
