The Clouds of Venus: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q. Morris

  “Everything went well. I had to drop the lava slab at the end. Otherwise it would have hit you.”

  “Thank you, Marchenko.”

  He should have thought of that himself! The oversight could have cost him his life! Just as he took a deep breath he heard a crack. “What is that?”

  “Relax,” said Marchenko, who was monitoring his heartbeat. “The edge of the hole is stable now, so you can climb out.”

  He reached for the rope and climbed up the cave wall to the redemptive exit. Although the exoskeleton was helping him, his back hurt, and his knee also seemed to have been injured. As soon as he reached the surface, Peter had to sit down. One robot pulled the rope out of the hole, and another one sprayed glue onto the edge of the opening.

  “Good news,” Marchenko reported. “The crack has been sealed, and we are beginning to restore the atmosphere. You just had the bad luck to fall into a lava tube below the surface.”

  “The robot responsible for removing the waste material should distribute all that material far away from the wall,” Peter said. “And it should also take the opportunity to search for traces of the wall on the surface.”

  “A good idea, Peter. But first, the two of you need to return. We have to examine your suit, or we could have another emergency on our hands.”

  “Where’s the crack?” Peter asked. Together with Maria, he was just leaving the airlock. The position appeared as a blinking dot on his helmet visor display. “Thank you, Marchenko,” he said as he walked toward the spot.

  There was nothing to see. Only when he zoomed in with the optical sensors did he spot the small crack on the ceiling, which was now filled with glue. It was not even ten centimeters long, and yet it had been a deadly threat to the base. It was created by the shock that occurred when the cave ceiling collapsed under Peter.

  “I’ve already cleaned up the sediment that was pushed through the crack,” reported the household robot. “But you’ll need to remain in your suits for a while, until the room conditions are optimal for humans again.”

  “Peter, you should go to the room where the nanofabricators are to get your suit fixed,” the AI said.

  Peter followed Marchenko’s advice and lay down on the sloping treatment and repair panel. The nanofabricators began their work, analyzing the damage to his suit. They then started the process of repairing it. At the same time, the inner suit adapted to the new position of his body and heated the sore spots.

  Peter’s back and knee pain decreased significantly at once. He fell asleep.

  Hours later, Peter woke up. Wonderful! His back felt almost normal again! He hastily took off the suit. A warm shower—that would be perfect now. He made his way to the hygiene facility.

  “What’s the latest update, Marchenko?” he asked after showering.

  “You were right. The wall reaches to the surface. I’ve asked the robot to dig into the depths, and the structure is still there, even 25 meters down.”

  Maria looked up from her screen. “We should first let the robot finish its work,” she suggested. “We can examine the wall on the surface.”

  “Fine, but let me first quickly have something to eat and drink,” Peter said.

  “You must both be patient. Peter’s suit is damaged. The exoskeleton is misaligned and slightly bent in two places. Katarina will repair it.”

  “Where’s the fourth suit?” Peter asked.

  “We left it in the transporter, which is currently on its way into orbit,” Marchenko said.

  “Then I’ll take Katarina’s.”

  “That’s not a good idea, because then nobody can help you in an emergency,” Marchenko said.

  “We should remain here for a while and take a closer look at the results obtained from the sample the robot took from the wall,” Maria said. “I have the feeling that the sample is more interesting than I’d previously assumed.”

  June 11, 2079, Venusian Atmosphere

  Erik was developing cabin fever. He was aching to be allowed outside, but that still had not been approved by CapCom. The NASA scientists were supposedly looking for a strategy—trying to agree on one, he surmised. They wanted to be able to conclusively find life in the clouds. In the meantime the crew was to remain here, inactive. But they were just wasting valuable time! After all, their expedition was limited to one month. Wouldn’t it make sense to get some new samples? he wondered.

  Erik got up and walked through the cabin. Nuria was sleeping, because Charles had ordered her to get some rest. She had been lying there for 10 hours with her eyes closed. She moved so little that one might think she was dead. Erik had to convince himself—twice—that she was still breathing.

  “We’re getting a message from Tarasov,” Ethan whispered.

  Finally something is happening! Erik pointed at the screen attached to his chair. He placed himself in front of it and opened the message that Ethan had relayed to him. The Russian scientist had kept his word. What he wrote, however, sounded incredible. The RB expedition was allegedly extracting raw materials. The group did not even have a mining license for Venus—nobody had such a license, because Venus was a protected zone. And what resources could this planet have, which could not be obtained with far less effort on Earth or an asteroid?

  Unfortunately, Tarasov refused to be more explicit in his message. He would otherwise get into lots of trouble, he wrote. Thus, the mission really must have been approved by the highest authorities and must be of the utmost importance. Maybe it was about an exotic material not found anywhere else, formed by the hellish conditions on Venus’s surface. However, it was not hot enough on the planet to expect unusual chemical reactions.

  It’s no use, Erik thought. He would have to do his own looking. Perhaps he would manage to add the missing pieces of the puzzle to Tarasov’s remarks? They had already automatically mapped Venus’s surface in high resolution in the past few days.

  He would search for the Russian base in the pictures. Then he would at least have something to do.

  June 11, 2079, Venusian Surface

  Self-similar structures, sulfur-based quasicrystals. Peter’s mind was racing as he walked with Maria to the end of the wall. He had heard of such materials on Earth, but not based on sulfur. Why had someone built such a massive structure made out of that particular substance, of all things?

  “And what if it isn’t an artificial structure?” Maria asked.

  Peter shrugged. “Do you think it could be life? I don’t know. You can’t rule out the possibility, especially since NASA has found life in the clouds.”

  “Do you think Valentina is annoyed by the hype surrounding the NASA expedition, given that RB has achieved far more on Venus?”

  “I don’t think she is. But she might be worried that soon more expeditions to Venus will be launched, which could uncover the true nature of RB’s activities here. Maybe that’s why we flew here so quickly, so that RB could continue to pretend that their goal is scientific research?”

  “Then she merely used us. I wouldn’t put it past her!”

  They reached the end of the wall. With precision, the robot had uncovered at least 10 meters of wall on either side of the initial exposure. It looked like it was constructed as opposed to naturally formed. Peter measured its thickness. It varied between 18 and 21 centimeters.

  “Look at the surface,” Maria said. “The carved lines are all gone. The robot must have worked too energetically on unearthing the wall.”

  “Maybe there never were any of the carvings up here.”

  With a chisel, Peter exposed the material below the track of the robot until he nearly reached the wall. “You’re right. The robot has milled off the carvings. I’ll have to re-measure the wall thickness later.” He cleared the remains of the waste material with a blower.

  “That’s strange!” Maria said. She pointed first to the left, then to the right.

  Peter turned off the blower. “You mean I blew more material away on one side than on the other?” he asked.

 
; Maria nodded.

  “I must have performed the task imprecisely.”

  “Just measure the hardness!” she ordered.

  He directed the measuring instrument toward the area in front of the wall and toward the wall itself, and read the values while Maria looked over his shoulder. The deposits on one side of the wall were harder than on the other. The material inside the wall itself was the hardest.

  “Hmm,” he said. “We should take another sample.”

  “I’m already doing that. Any idea what this means?”

  “No. If we’re standing on the ceiling of a building, it should not be softer than the walls.”

  Maria scraped off material from the wall and filled a metal tube, which she stowed in her belt. Peter watched her and had to smile in spite of himself. At that moment he was very attracted to Maria. It was a good thing that she could not see his face. By now, he liked her a lot.

  Peter forced himself to stop thinking about her and started the blower. Meter by meter, he exposed the wall. “This is where the wall bends,” he pointed out.

  Maria unpacked the laser protractor. “One hundred seven point eight degrees,” she said.

  “Yes, the internal angle of a regular pentagon.”

  “But not precisely. It should be a hundred and eight degrees.”

  “Well, buildings aren’t very precisely constructed, Maria. Would you please take over from me and use the blower?”

  Maria took the device from him and continued the task.

  “Too bad we don’t have a second blower,” he said. “Otherwise I would expose a line perpendicular to the wall. Maybe there are differences in hardness there, too.”

  “Let’s first find out how long the wall is up to the next corner. I bet we’ll find a regular pentagon. And we can easily determine its side length up here.”

  “One hundred and twenty-five meters!” Peter exclaimed.

  Maria had reached the next corner with the blower. “Don’t yell like that! I can hear you over the radio,” she replied.

  “Sorry. I’ll come to where you are.”

  They met in the middle. There, Peter programmed his helmet visor to show him a line perpendicular to the wall and followed the arrow with the blower. He directed the airflow toward the ground. The further he moved away from the wall, the more material he stirred up. The ground was thus getting softer and softer.

  “This is as far as I go,” he finally said. “If we were to break in or sink in here, nobody would be able to help us.”

  “I agree that we should not take any chances,” Maria replied. “Right now, there’s not much more to be seen up here. Let’s take a break in the base. I’m not feeling well.”

  June 12, 2079, Venusian Atmosphere

  Venus’s surface slowly moved past below him. Erik already had hip pain from sitting around for so long, so he was lying on his belly across the bed. He had put his tablet on the floor next to the head of his resting place so that he could see it comfortably and scroll with his fingers.

  He had first thought he should search the radar images. It must be possible to find signs of the Russian landing capsule, or perhaps even a base. But Nuria had immediately convinced him otherwise. The radar image was problematic due to the dense cloud cover they were sailing through. And of course, she was right. He should have thought of that himself.

  But luckily, there were alternatives. The upper soil layers emitted both gamma radiation and low energy neutrons that could be measured with spectrometers, providing him the added advantage of being able to peer a bit into Venus’s interior. The gamma radiation came from the top 10 centimeters, the neutrons from the top 40. If the Russians had built an underground base, he might be able to trace them using these measurements—assuming that the resolution of the two spectrometers was sufficient. Digging up the soil changed its radiation signature.

  The amount of data they had collected in the meantime, after circling Venus nearly three times, was extensive. The data had only been gathered within a range of 20 degrees on either side of the equator, but that was, after all, where the Russians had landed. Erik had already gone through the recordings at low resolution without finding any sign of the Russians. But it was impressive to see how well gamma spectrometry worked. It was based, among other things, on radiation emitted by natural radioactive decay.

  The outermost-layer concentration of elements such as uranium or thorium should have decreased after Venus had been around a few billion years. But, unlike on Earth, this was not the case. The surface of Venus, as furrowed as it looked, was still unusually young, and only volcanic activity could be responsible for that. Erik could see Venus’s surface shining with a particular intensity in the gamma spectrum, especially near the giant shield volcanoes.

  In the second go-round, he wanted to increase the resolution tenfold. That means that he would need ten times the amount of time. He thus decided to ignore the very bright areas surrounding the volcanoes, because the fresh deposits there probably obscured the patterns he was looking for.

  On the one hand, he was looking for signs of the Russian crew, who certainly hadn’t land on an active volcano. On the other hand, it would be great to find clues to a fertile past on the planet.

  The question that Nuria could not answer was: Had life in the clouds arisen there, or had it just retired to the clouds billions of years ago when it became too hot on the ground? In that case, traces of Venus’s former climate should be visible—river systems, ancient oceans, or even glacial moraine deposits. If he could prove that, it would perfectly complement Nuria’s discoveries.

  Patiently, Erik scrolled through page after page. Moving westward, he circled the planet once. He then shifted southward by one degree and circled the planet again. However, as soon as the measured intensity rose above a set value, the software automatically skipped that area. Erik was thus able to avoid wasting time on the volcanic regions.

  Even so, the second go-round alone lasted just under four hours. Afterward, Erik stood up and got something to eat. He took a drink, shook his limbs to stretch them, and began with the third survey, tripling the resolution this time. He would not be able to complete this task today.

  It did not take him long to notice a structure that could be a crater. It was about ten kilometers in diameter and had no central elevation. That meant that either the crater was old or it was not a crater, but some other type of terrain.

  Erik increased the resolution and inspected the edges more closely. The crater was radially symmetrical. The meteorite that caused it would have had to fall vertically from above onto the ground. But that was very unlikely. One of the edges seemed to have been broken by something—was it perhaps an outlet? Had he discovered a prehistoric lake? He could hardly believe that he had succeeded so quickly.

  It would be a good idea to ask his colleague. “Can I interrupt you for a moment, Nuria?”

  “If you have to.” She was smiling, so she did not seem to be angry.

  Erik got up, picked up the tablet, and carried it to her. “This could be a prehistoric lake.”

  “You mean that’s the outlet?” Nuria pointed to the spot he had also noticed.

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry. You probably misinterpreted the gamma intensity,” she said.

  What did Nuria mean? He looked at the image. Then he remembered. It was a novice’s mistake. Where the picture was darker than the surroundings, he suspected a depression that lay deeper. But here, the opposite was true. At this spot, fresh material was covering the normal subsoil, making the image appear darker. This was not a drain, but a kind of elongated mountain.

  “Thank you, Nuria,” he said. “How very embarrassing.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nuria said as she placed an arm on his shoulder.

  Oh well, that didn’t turn out to be anything interesting, he thought. Well, it was too good to be true, anyway. He lay down on the bed again and continued to gaze at the tablet as the software guided him around the glowing planet.r />
  Wait. Erik tapped the screen to stop the flow of images. Then he jumped back to the strange crater from earlier. He now knew that what he thought was a depression was an elevated area. He superimposed the measurements of the neutron spectrometer onto the image. What this device measured had nothing to do with volcanic activity. The neutrons it detected were created purely by the interaction of cosmic radiation with the surface.

  Due to Venus’s dense atmosphere, not much cosmic radiation reached the ground, but the elevation visible in the gamma image still stood out. That meant it did not have a volcanic origin like almost all other types of terrain on Venus. The elevated area must be relatively narrow and formed what was mostly a straight line. Earth’s Great Wall of China would probably produce a similar image. But surely nobody had built a wall here—after all, who could have built it?

  Erik followed the course of the structure. The line divided after a few hundred meters. It split into two branches with a 90-degree angle between them. Afterward it consisted of two lines. No, he was wrong once again. It was not a right angle—it must be well over 100 degrees, probably almost 110 degrees. He followed the upper line, which divided again after several hundred meters. Erik compared the lengths of the line sections, which seemed to be identical. Also, the angle where the lines split was, as previously, about 110 degrees. This was getting exciting!

  The line, which he now followed with his gaze, suddenly stopped. He kept looking in the same direction—and the line reappeared. Something seemed to have interrupted it. Maybe it was already partially eroded? Again, the line split into two. This time, Erik measured the angle more accurately. It was exactly 108 degrees. Multiplied by five, that was 540 degrees—the sum of the internal angles of a pentagon. What on Earth had he found here? His palms became moist. Was it possible that the surface of Venus was covered by structures that looked like pentagons from above? And why had nobody noticed that before him?