The Clouds of Venus: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q. Morris

  He answered his own question—so far, no one had taken measurements on Venus in this fashion. The lines he considered to be walls were no doubt not visible in the optical spectrum. Perhaps the quasicrystalline ‘honeycombs’ that they formed had long since been filled in with sand or lava during the relatively more recent history of the planet, and were only visible if one analyzed the composition of the surface?

  Wait! He must not be wrong again. This could also be an effect that arose during the measurement itself. He had to take a closer look at the values. Perhaps combining data from different areas caused spurious effects at the edges. Erik studied the algorithm responsible for combining the data. No, it was analyzing the surface in rectangular sections. If the algorithm were to blame for the structures, they would not have the pentagonal shapes—they would be rectangular.

  Good, so that can be ruled out, he thought, realizing he was on the trail of something. Erik followed the lines until they encountered a volcano, which was where the structures ended. The volcano must have come into being after the structures, and therefore the honeycomb-forming walls must be at least 500 million years old, the age of this volcano according to the astronomers’ calculations, based on its expansion. The volcano was still active, as evidenced by the high level of activity in the gamma spectrum.

  “Nuria?”

  “Yes?”

  Erik got up and stooped to retrieve the tablet. “I’d like to show you something,” he said, letting the software highlight the lines to make them stand out.

  Nuria sighed. “Okay, show me what you have.”

  He gave her the tablet.

  She looked, raised her eyebrows, and cleared the highlighting. She then raised her eyebrows higher. “This is incredible!” she said. “Ethan, come here. You have to see this!”

  The pilot joined them, and Nuria handed him the tablet with Erik’s work. Ethan scratched his forehead. “That’s really strange. Why didn’t we notice this earlier?”

  “The honeycombs are only visible in the gamma spectrum,” Erik answered, “not on the radar. I was bored—otherwise, the astronomers would not have looked at this data until after we returned.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with the Russians, does it?” Ethan asked.

  “Impossible,” Erik said. “There were no Russians five-hundred million years ago.”

  “I see. And they cannot have manipulated our data?”

  “No, Ethan. To do that, they would have had to scatter radioactive material on Venus over a large area. We would have seen that.”

  “Then there’s only one conclusion,” Ethan said.

  “And that would be?” Erik asked, although he had an inkling of what the pilot was going to say.

  “You need to view this up close,” Ethan said.

  “You mean, we should go down there?” Nuria asked. She looked anything but enthusiastic.

  “I was hoping you would say that,” Erik said. “Nuria, you can stay up here. I’ll manage on my own.” She mustn’t dare to spoil this for him with some security concerns! He wouldn’t put it past the people at NASA to agree with her. Don’t you dare, Nuria, he thought.

  “It’s out of the question for me to let you go alone,” she said. “We could lose you if I don’t go along to hold your hand.”

  June 12, 2079, Venus Base

  Maria had been sleeping for 14 hours now! Was that normal? Had the stress of the last weeks been too much for her? “Katarina, can you check on Maria again, please?”

  “Don’t panic, Peter. All her values are fine. I haven’t found anything that would give cause for alarm.”

  “And the sleep rhythms? You said they looked strange four hours ago.”

  “Yes, but I have no reference values for such a long duration of sleep under these conditions. Your biorhythms are in complete disarray, after all. What’s with the samples on the table?”

  “Maria can evaluate them. She started doing so, and I do not want to appropriate her task.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you also lie down?”

  Peter shook his head. He was tired, but he was too worried about Maria to fall asleep now. “I’ll take another look at the wall. Maybe the robots have uncovered something exciting.”

  Peter exited the airlock. The robots had dug a sloping plane into the rock, making it easier for them to get rid of waste material. The path was three meters high and ran close to the intact wall. A few remnants still stuck to it that he could clean off with the high-pressure blower. He slowly cleaned the first piece of wall until the surface he had blown clean appeared large enough to him.

  “Analyze lines,” he ordered.

  ‘Fitting error found’ appeared on the display.

  “Show fitting error.”

  Peter saw a red line superimposed on the original image. He stepped back a bit so that the spot was at eye level. Hmmm, an interface between two pentagons is noticeable here. The gap was closed, but not perfectly. Either the builders had not worked accurately here, or... He couldn’t think of any other explanation. Bungled construction—that was the obvious explanation.

  “Marchenko? Look what I unearthed here with the blower.”

  “Interesting. It looks like it’s grown.”

  “You mean a piece has been glued on, right?”

  “No, I mean, really grown!” Marchenko announced.

  “I can’t believe that,” Peter said. He remembered that Maria spoke of life yesterday. But it all sounded so improbable!

  “Then keep looking. We can’t base a new theory on just a single anomaly.”

  Peter used the blower to uncover a 50-centimeter-wide strip on the wall along the inclined plane and asked the computer to analyze the carvings.

  ‘Fitting error found!’ the software reported. This time he found the flaw without the help of the computer. “Here’s the next error,” he said over the radio.

  “At what distance from the first?”

  “Wait a minute. About four point two meters,” he finally said. “I can’t measure it more precisely with the tools I have at my disposal.”

  “I see. I’ve already compared both fitting errors,” Marchenko said. “They are similar, but clearly not the same, which reduces the probability that this was an artificial construction.”

  “Dmitri, have you ever seen a Russian carpenter at work?”

  “Why?”

  “They never make the same mistake again, but always new ones.”

  “But the wall cannot have been built by Russians. We’re the first Russians to arrive here, after all.”

  June 13, 2079, Venusian Surface

  At last, at last, at last! Erik stood at the edge of the cabin roof and looked down. The descent was not a piece of cake, but as long as he was in his artificial body, he wasn’t afraid. Only the tingling sensation in his spine remained when he looked down. Luckily, the clouds were so dense that it looked as if he would have a soft landing.

  This time he did not need the line he used when he collected the samples. It would undoubtedly not have been long enough, and it probably would not be able to cope with the biggest problem of descent. They had to slow down from their current speed to zero before stepping onto the surface. The jetpacks built into the AVs could cope with this, but they, too, would be close to reaching their limits.

  “Are you ready?” Nuria asked. She stood next to him.

  He gave her the okay sign with his right hand.

  “All right then, let’s go,” she said, and jumped immediately.

  Erik swayed for a moment, then got to his knees and jumped after her. He pulled his body into a face-down position. He could thus better control his flight—or should he call it a plunge? Nuria had already disappeared into the dense clouds.

  Erik had asked the computer to display the altitude in his field of vision. He did not have an infinite amount of time. The computer had calculated a flight parabola for them that would enable them to reach the structures he had spotted. From the point of view of their destination
, they had just jumped out of a moving plane—the lower their altitude, the slower the speed of the cloud layer that was carrying them along. The computer model that simulated their plunge used values as input that Erik himself had measured while hanging from the rope. But further below, the model depended on estimates.

  If they ended up a far distance off, they could either walk—or manage with the jetpacks. However, they would need them again for the ascent so they must be economical with fuel.

  “Is everything all right?” Erik asked.

  It felt strange, because Nuria was beside him right now, answering in her own voice.

  “Everything’s fine. I’m on course,” she said.

  “Guys, please abide by the rules. Short channel only in case of emergency. Otherwise it’ll throw you out of the system,” Ethan warned.

  His voice reached him via the short channel—that was for normal conversation. But the awareness that you were not in the AV, but in the spaceship, could ruin your focus on being one with the machine. Erik had often talked to Nuria directly like this, but he knew that Ethan was right. Too much depended upon this excursion. If he lost the AV, this would be his last assignment at NASA.

  Erik oriented himself. If the computer simulation was right, he just needed to drift most of the time. He was now five kilometers below the spaceship. Visibility was still poor, but his speed had already decreased by a few kilometers per hour. The cloud cover would soon open up, and that was when it would become fascinating. Wasn’t that Nuria in front of him? He thought he recognized the flashing red position-lights on her feet.

  “I can see you,” his AV said via radio. The voice synthesis sounded amazingly real. Sometimes Erik wondered when humanity would be replaced with these AVs.

  “That can’t be right,” Ethan said. “Nuria is right under you, perhaps 40 meters away.”

  Then what had he seen? Suddenly the whole world appeared dark red. The phenomenon went away in a split second. Now his surroundings were turning gray. Then the flashing red returned, for just half a second again, no longer.

  There was crackling on the radio channel. “I register discharges,” Ethan said.

  “It must have been some kind of lightning,” Erik posited. “The cloud cell discharged.”

  “At last we can see these flashes up close,” Ethan replied. “Up till now I only saw them on satellite photos of the night side.”

  “It’s always been clear that they have to exist on the day side as well,” Nuria said.

  “But it didn’t look like the classic form of lightning,” Erik said. “More like heat lightning.”

  “Maybe a collective stimulation of the molecules here,” Nuria said.

  “Or the dense fog covered the spark canal,” Ethan said.

  “It certainly looked beautiful,” Erik said.

  “You old romantic,” Nuria said. “You’d better pay attention to your trajectory. You’re pretty much breathing down my neck.”

  Erik checked his altitude. Nuria was only five meters below him. Local differences in density seemed to play a significant role here. They mustn’t forget that this was a dynamic system.

  “I don’t see any problem due to that yet,” Ethan said. “If the simulation is correct, you will soon be pulled backward, Nuria.”

  “Thank you. I’m excited,” she said.

  Now the cloud cover opened up. Erik could see Nuria’s AV directly below him. And there was the grayish-brown Venusian surface. He still couldn’t recognize any details. But Venus seemed to be glowing of its own accord, or was that an optical illusion?

  “Do you see the glow, too?” he asked.

  “I can see you’ve activated your infrared sensors.”

  Of course! Erik wanted to slap his forehead, but that would change his trajectory. He studied the information from the thermal imaging camera, translated into the red spectrum for the benefit of his human senses. Where Venus’s surface glowed dark red, the temperature was 460 degrees. Where it was bright red, it was even hotter, probably due to volcanic activity.

  “Wheeee!” Nuria cried.

  He looked down. She was gone. Then he felt it, too, the force that pulled him backward. He must have just crossed a layer boundary. Here, the atmosphere was moving significantly slower. His excess speed was bled off by the atmosphere, which was increasing in density with every second.

  “Looks good,” Ethan said. “So far I’ve only seen slight deviations from the simulation. If this continues, you’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.”

  Erik checked the AV’s systems. The exterior of his body had warmed up. But the high temperature of 260 degrees had not yet been able to heat the interior. The insulation withstood a lot. The computing core in the abdomen was cooled using several redundant systems. The joints were the most vulnerable, but even they should be able to deal with an outside temperature of up to 800 degrees without encountering any problems. Of course, he must not fall into a magma lake, but their destination was far enough away from all the active volcanoes near the equator.

  Just then a few flakes whirled through his field of vision. What was that? There couldn’t be any snow in this heat. Erik pulled his arm toward his body and inspected where a flake had settled. He watched as it dissolved into thin air. This must be elemental sulfur! The clouds consisted partially of drops of sulfuric acid. Apparently, reactions took place that caused sulfur to precipitate.

  But at these temperatures? Of course! He would have to say goodbye to his earthbound ways of thinking, and to the phase diagrams that applied to normal conditions on Earth. Here active chemistry took place in an energetic glowing hell. He was floating through an enormous laboratory. For chemists, this would be a true paradise! Erik tried a few times to take samples of the flakes, but he didn’t succeed. Perhaps later on he could justify a second trip with the intent to take samples of the flakes. They would still spend some time up here until they needed to fly back.

  “Erik, are you daydreaming?” Nuria asked.

  Instead of being behind him, she was now far ahead and above him. This time he recognized her position lights. “Sorry,” he said.

  He had forgotten that the time was now approaching for them to slow down their plunge. After all, they did not want to hit Venus’s surface at high speed. But there was a range of time during which he could slow down. If he started later, he just needed to increase the thrusting force of the jetpack a bit. He turned to a vertical position and switched on the jetpack. He slowed down immediately.

  Half a minute, that should be enough. And it was—he was once again floating next to Nuria. Without the clouds, which were no longer floating past them, their speed was no longer noticeable. The ground was still too far away, and there was no sound. Erik wondered why. He turned on the exterior microphone, which transmitted a high, whistling sound to his sense of hearing. He then clapped his hands. This, too, sounded a bit higher-pitched than usual.

  “What game are you playing now?” Nuria asked. She spread her arms and turned back onto her stomach.

  He followed her example. “I was not playing. I was experimenting.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “I was investigating the influence of medium and temperature on the speed of sound.”

  “Great.”

  Erik did not like the disdainful tone she sometimes used.

  “You’re quite lucky,” Ethan said. “The computer gave us almost perfect values.”

  Erik ordered his computer to display the forecast in his field of vision. Yes, they would only have to walk three kilometers to the designated destination.

  “Looks good,” Nuria said.

  Erik superimposed their landing coordinates onto his spectrometer images. They were even luckier, because one of the strange lines was no more than a hundred meters away. He sent the composite picture to the others.

  “Oh, looks even better,” Nuria said in praise.

  Erik moved back to the vertical position. Their destination was not far away. In the meantime, the volcan
o to their east towered above them. They were still flying toward it, but they wouldn’t reach it. It was becoming more and more obvious that their descent was, in fact, a free fall. Erik ascertained the steps he needed to take. He would have to brake soon. Three, two, one—and the jetpack ignited.

  Nuria was not yet initiating the braking procedure. She disappeared below him because he was slowing down. “Nuria? What’s wrong?”

  “I... this piece of crap isn’t starting.”

  Erik didn’t hesitate. He turned on his head and accelerated, quickly catching up to Nuria. “Wait,” he said, hooking his tool belt onto her. He then slowed down. His suit’s jetpack easily held both of them aloft.

  “Thanks,” Nuria said.

  “Don’t mention it. Good thing that there are two of us.”

  “Yes, for a short while I was afraid I would lose the AV.”

  “That would not have been your fault.”

  “You know how it is. In the end, they would have proved that I made maintenance errors. They would have said the jetpack could not possibly have failed of its own accord.” Nuria pushed a few buttons on her belt. “Look, now it’s working again,” she said.

  “All the better,” Erik replied. “After all, I’m not sure if we would have managed to bring both AVs up to the clouds with just one jetpack.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Nuria said.

  “You two had better prepare yourself for landing,” Ethan announced.

  “Sure, boss,” Nuria replied.

  Erik unlatched his belt from hers again. He moved away from Nuria with a few swimming motions. The ground was now approaching rapidly. The terrain seemed to be quite level, as he did not detect any larger rocks. Erik put the AV into landing mode. The heavy machine itself now decided how hard the jetpacks needed to thrust, so that it could land softly.