Nuria sounded very enthusiastic. Erik waited for relief-bringing words from the pilot. They really should not get much closer to the volcano.
“Thirty-six kilometers. We’re floating now,” Ethan said.
“That means we made it?” Erik asked.
“If nothing untoward occurs...”
Erik then felt it, too, as they were pulled upward very gently. The spaceship had, by that point, been inflated far enough. Soon clouds were once again moving below them, obscuring their view of the surface. Nuria leaned back in her seat. Her disappointment was visible.
“We’ll explore the surface in a few days using the AVs,” Erik said comfortingly.
“But until then I can only study the surface using radar.”
“That was the plan, Nuria. We first get an overview, and then study particularly interesting areas with the AVs.”
“But the cabin was easily able to withstand the pressure at thirty-eight kilometers,” Nuria insisted. “We’d just need to let out a little air and let the ship sink.”
“That’s out of the question,” Ethan said. “We were lucky that nothing happened down there. And now we are holding at a safe altitude.”
Thanks, Ethan, Erik thought. He was growing fonder and fonder of the man. Back during training at Havre Volcano, Erik had always been the daredevil. But that was probably because he had known that his biological body was safely aboard the ship during their excursions.
“I think we should call it a day, don’t you?” Erik asked.
Ethan shook his head. “First, we need to clarify an important issue. Why was our parachute torn away? That was not supposed to happen.”
Eric sighed. That meant they would have to evaluate some log files. It would probably turn out to have been a material defect not visible from the outside.
“Spaceship to Chuck, spaceship to Chuck,” Ethan said.
“Charles here.”
“You heard everything. We’ve reached an altitude of fifty kilometers.”
“Congratulations, you three. Everything is quiet up here, not to mention, boring. I envy you guys.”
“Well, you have the whole ship to yourself while we have to sleep in one room.”
“You poor things. Incidentally, you will soon be out of radio range. Bye for now.”
“Bye, Chuck, and remember, when Chuck Norris is bored, he crochets tanks,” Ethan said, and Erik and Nuria waved.
Carried away by the 360 km/h storms of Venus, their almost 130-meter-long spaceship dove into the darkness of night.
June 4, 2079, Venusian Atmosphere
“Hey, what smells so good?” asked Nuria.
Erik turned to her. She was lying in her sleeping bag on her mattress, just now unfastening the safety belt. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said. “Breakfast will be served in ten minutes.”
“Look at Ethan. He’s still asleep.”
“He’s earned the privilege after his late shift,” Erik said.
They alternated being on watch every six hours. Erik didn’t see how that was supposed to support a healthy circadian rhythm, but he would get through the one month. The earplugs with active noise cancellation worked well, but he found the sleep glasses uncomfortable.
“I’ll be right over,” Ethan said.
“You can remain in bed,” Erik offered. “We’ll keep something for you.”
“That’s okay, four hours of sleep suffices.”
How long had he slept today? Had he managed three hours? He rubbed his temples, hoping the pressure behind them would not grow into a headache. The best thing would be to take a pill right away. Erik stooped, rummaged in the compartment labeled with a red cross, and took out a packet with painkillers.
“Pling.” That was the oven. Erik straightened back up. Dammit, he thought with a short yelp. His head had hit the edge of the stove, which jutted forward a few centimeters. At least the pill would come in useful now.
“Are you all right?” Nuria asked. She was standing under the improvised shower, hidden behind a curtain.
“I’m perfectly fine. The rolls are ready.”
“Be right with you,” she said.
Five minutes later, they were sitting side by side on low stools along a narrow wall-mounted board, having breakfast. They could choose between various pastes they could smear on the still warm rolls. Some tasted of fruits, others of cheese or sausage, but the consistency was nearly always the same.
With his eyes closed, Erik bit into his bun and imagined he was sitting in a café. He had never succeeded while on the spaceship. There, the smell of machine oil and sweat always brought him back to reality. But here, with real gravity and in a nearly pristine cabin, he almost managed to escape to Oslo. It would be winter outside. At least the lighting here matched that.
It was currently nighttime and would remain so for more than 24 hours. The spaceship was racing across the side of the planet that was facing away from the sun. They didn’t notice the ship’s motion much, however. No matter how fast the wind drove the cloud layer, one could not hear the ship’s movement. The cabin only rolled slightly now and then. It felt like a ship crossing the wake of another marine vessel.
“Poor Charles,” Nuria said. “He has to have breakfast all by himself.”
“Speaking of Charles, have you heard the one about Chuck Norris and Jesus?” Ethan asked.
“Yes, you already told us that one,” Erik said.
“And the one about the eye drops?”
“Yes, Chuck Norris uses Tabasco,” Nuria replied.
“Okay, we’ve already been traveling together for too long,” Ethan said, laughing.
“Since when have you been calling Charles, ‘Chuck?’” Erik asked.
“Oh, come on, with that name? Everyone does that!” Ethan said.
“But Chuck Norris has been dead for a long time.”
“No, Erik, Chuck Norris doesn’t die because death is afraid of him.”
Erik yawned. Ethan really had a retro tic. He also liked movies with, what was his name—was it Arnold Schwarzenberger? “What are we doing today?” he asked.
“Getting everything ready, testing systems,” Nuria said. “We already discussed this.”
She was right, they had. He would take a look at the AVs.
Nuria hailed him in the afternoon. She was standing by a machine at the back of the cabin, holding up a flap.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Are the AVs in good condition?”
“Yes, they made it through the descent in good condition, both of them,” he said.
“I need you for a small test.”
“As long as it doesn’t hurt...”
“You just have to breathe in here,” Nuria explained, pointing to a flexible, metallic tube that looked like a hose from a hand-held shower. It had an opening in front with a porous membrane.
“What does this do?” Erik asked.
“It’s a gas analyzer,” Nuria explained.
“A chromatograph?”
“That, too. Think of it as a combination of a liquid chromatograph, mass spectrometer, and spectrometer. It separates the chemical components of a substance, and determines their properties and their proportions.”
“Why do you need my breath?”
“To practice. I have already analyzed the room air, my urine, and my own breath. If you had cancer, we could detect it on this occasion.”
“Great.”
“Come on. You definitely don’t have cancer.”
Erik lowered his head to reach the opening of the input hose.
“Just blow hard,” Nuria urged.
Erik blew as hard as he could.
“Thanks, that’s enough.”
“Doesn’t the room air that also gets into the hose interfere?” he asked.
“I’ve already analyzed that, so it’s not a problem. When I examine real samples later, they will be in glass tubes like these.”
Nuria held up a tube as long as her arm and as thick as her thumb.
It had a metal flange at one end.
“When you use that, you will need a lot of material for analyzing,” Erik said.
“The more, the better.” Nuria manipulated the device, which made a high-pitched humming sound. Numerical values could be seen on a small screen.
“Do we already have the first results?” he asked.
“No, that will take a few minutes. The device works like a filter, but chemically instead of mechanically. The individual molecules are now reacting with different substances in there, and therefore take different amounts of time to appear at the exit. This way I can study them separately.”
“Sounds complicated,” Erik said.
“Oh, not for me. The software makes all the decisions. I’m just the slave who operates the machine and obtains the results that it spits out at the end. By the way, you don’t have cancer, that’s pretty clear.”
“How does the apparatus know?”
“It’s not a single substance that reveals the presence of cancer, but certain combinations and patterns. The software knows what’s normal for humans and alerts one to deviations.”
As if the device had been waiting for this keyword, it started to beep. Erik was startled. “Cancer after all?”
Nuria placed her hand on his shoulder. “No, this was to be expected. The device has discovered life. You, of course, breathed lots of bacteria into the apparatus. And the main purpose of the apparatus is to detect signs of life. That’s another reason why I have to train the device first. Otherwise it will register every unicellular organism from Earth, even though we are not interested in them.”
“Couldn’t this have been done on Earth?”
“That would have been impractical. We have far fewer species of bacteria creeping and crawling on board than on Earth.”
“Very reassuring,” Erik said.
“There are still enough to kill you if they get any ideas.”
June 5, 2079, Venusian Atmosphere
The view from the roof of the cabin was breathtaking. A fine mist enveloped him, giving his headlamp’s light cone a well-defined structure. But the fog was not as dense as he had expected. They were, after all, in the middle of a cloud layer that spanned many kilometers. It was for that reason that the light beam reached particularly far.
Erik sat on the front edge of the roof and looked down. The light followed his head movement. It cut a white cone in the clouds. The cone became broader—because of dispersion—and then narrowed again—because of the perspective. The beam couldn’t reach the surface, since it was much too far away. It looked as if there was a kilometer-deep well below him, the bottom of which seethed mysteriously.
He was alone out here. Nuria was still busy with her apparatus. He had managed to persuade Charles to approve this excursion, because Nuria needed more samples for calibrating the analyzer. For this reason, her own AV was still attached to the roof of the cabin, while Erik was clambering about here. Of course, his biological body was safe—he was lying in his armchair, down below in the warmth of the cabin. No, in the cold, compared to out here where it was 75 degrees.
He slowly turned his head upward. It had been so long since he had been in his AV that it seemed strange to him once again to be so flexible. He turned his head until he was looking straight up. The beam of light shone onto the mighty spaceship above him. Erik knew it was lighter than the surrounding atmosphere. Nevertheless, it looked like a massive rock, hanging only a few meters above him and threatening to fall on top of him.
He pulled himself up on one of the cables. The cabin hung on six cables that were at most finger-thick. The engineers said they could easily support ten times the weight of the cabin. However, in Erik’s eyes they did not inspire confidence. He unhooked his safety line and attached it again some distance in front of him. If he fell, he would not die, but it would be a significant loss for the expedition. And for himself—after all, he hoped to soon be the first person to step on Venus’s surface via the AV.
“Are you all right out there?” Ethan asked.
“I’m fine. I feel great. You should see the view!”
“I can. Your pictures are being live-streamed via the main computer.”
“But it’s different to be out here personally,” Erik said.
Suddenly, his shoulder hurt.
“Nothing of the sort. You’re not outside,” Ethan said, laughing, and pinched Erik’s biological shoulder again.
“Hey man, stop that, I could lose the connection. You’re just jealous,” Erik retorted.
“I admit it. Yes, I’d like to be climbing up there now.”
“Then just come out. Your spacesuit can no doubt withstand the temperature.”
“Chuck would be furious. I can’t do that, especially due to the risk of contamination. There’s a reason why the AVs never enter the cabin,” Ethan said.
“That’s right,” Erik admitted.
“I’m reluctant to interrupt your friendly chat, you two buddies,” Nuria said, “but Erik has a job to perform out there.”
She was right, as always. Erik suppressed a sigh and went to the other end of the cabin, where he found a round hatch cover. He unscrewed it and lifted it up to open the airlock. He could climb down using a ladder on the wall, but that would be counterproductive. It was better if the AV remained up top.
Instead, he reached for the metal rack hanging from the ladder. It looked like a crate for drinks, but it was not made of plastic, which would—of course—melt up here. Inside were three glass sample containers, similar to the ones Nuria had shown him yesterday. He placed the rack on the cabin roof, where it stuck, magnetically. He lifted out the first glass cylinder.
Erik needed to concentrate. The material that he held in his hands felt different to the AV’s fingers than it would to his real fingers. The thermal sensors and the tactile sensors measured the surface structure, and their measurements needed to be converted into human sensations in such a way that he could handle them. The metal at the end of the glass cylinder, for instance, had quickly become as hot as its surroundings. But if his brain was given the impression of a temperature of 75 degrees, he would feel pain and instinctively drop the sample containers. To prevent losing anything, the metal closure felt warm, but not too hot.
Slowly, Erik opened the seal, being careful not to use too much force. After all, he must not break the glass tube. There was some resistance when he tried to pull off the cover, probably due to lower pressure inside the tube.
He held the cover in his left hand and held the tube aloft. “Is that enough?”
Nuria was watching him via the outdoor cameras, as they had previously agreed upon. “Excellent. Please continue to hold it up and close it again.”
He followed the instructions and then put the glass tube back into the rack. “And now?”
“Repeat two more times, please,” Nuria said.
He took the second tube out of the rack and tried to open it.
“Wait,” Nuria said. “A different height would be nice for comparison.”
“How can I do that?” he asked. “Should I climb up to the spaceship?”
“Don’t you dare,” Ethan said. “I’ll let some air out first so we’ll sink. Then I’ll add some, and we’ll rise again.”
A pity, Erik thought. He would have enjoyed a little climbing excursion.
“You’d better hold on tight.”
Ethan’s warning came just in time, because the cabin sank and swayed in the process. It then stabilized again.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said. “The currents flow a bit differently here.”
“Everything’s okay,” Erik said. He opened the glass tube’s metal cover and waited until it had filled with air from the environment. “Actually, how long do I have to wait?” he asked.
“A few milliseconds,” Nuria replied.
“Good, then I’m done here.” Erik closed the tube and held on tightly. They would be rising again soon.
But nothing happened. “Umm, Ethan?”
“Yes, just a moment. There’s an obstruction to the flow of gas to the spaceship.”
“Should I repair it?”
“It’s okay. I’ll do that from down here.”
“Ethan, you know that a good kick can sometimes work wonders.”
“We’ll use that option in a true emergency, okay? I think I found it. The security system detected a foreign object on the roof of the cabin and wanted me to investigate it first.”
“I’m still up here,” Erik said.
“I should hope so. Hold on.”
Erik grasped one of the cabin’s suspension ropes. They were rising. This time the cabin didn’t sway. “Just how did you persuade the security system?” he asked.
“I turned it off for the moment. But don’t tell Chuck.”
“I can hear you,” their commander said. “You’ve been out of the wireless shadow for an hour already.”
“Oh, great.” Ethan coughed.
“Good morning, by the way,” Nuria said. “But now, please, the third sample, Erik.”
He took the glass tube out of the rack, opened it, waited briefly, and placed it back. “Done,” he said.
“Come back in,” Ethan commanded.
“If we have left the wireless shadow from Charles’s perspective, it will not be long before the sun comes up,” Erik said. “I would like to stay out here until then.”
“I envy you, but I can’t forbid it,” Ethan replied. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you. You can view it through my eyes on the screen.”
“That’s not the same thing, but that’s okay. Have fun.”
Erik sat on the front edge of the cabin with his face turned toward the direction in which they were flying. He let his legs dangle and made sure that he was properly secured. Then he looked at the horizon. A yellowish spot had formed there, in the shape of a horizontal crescent moon. It was the sun, slowly pushing upward as he flew toward it. It was much larger than he had ever seen from Earth. The veil of clouds it wore hid the fact that it radiated far more heat here than at home.
The Clouds of Venus: Hard Science Fiction Page 14
