The Clouds of Venus: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q. Morris

  Katarina locked Maria in her room.

  “Oh, you can lock our doors?” Peter asked.

  “Marchenko gave me the codes.”

  “I have given Katarina many more authorizations because she will need them,” the AI said.

  “What authorizations?”

  “Haven’t you noticed? You two are behaving antisocially! And it’s getting worse.”

  Peter crossed his arms and pouted. “That’s not nice of you, Marchenko!”

  “Peter, there can only be one reason for all of this—you’ve both been infected with something. Although we have no idea what it is, it does seem to lead to changes in personality—in character, intellect, and eating habits.”

  “So what? Where’s my food, Katarina?”

  “Here, Peter. I brought you more dried fruit,” the robot said.

  Peter stuffed himself with the fruit as soon as she’d placed it on the plate. “Ah, now I’m full,” he said. “I’m not interested in eating any more right now.”

  “I’m worried, Peter,” said Marchenko. “Your breathing is very shallow, and your blood oxygen level is at the lower limit. It might indicate that whatever is controlling you doesn’t like oxygen.”

  “Great. Just suffocate us and the disease will disappear. Aren’t you a great doctor!”

  “No. On the contrary, we will increase the oxygen content of the atmosphere in the base to thirty percent and see what happens then.”

  “Do we have that much oxygen left?”

  “That’s the least of our concerns,” Marchenko said. “I’m much more worried about ignition temperature dropping as the oxygen content increases, which raises the risk of fire.”

  “Then try it in my bedroom first,” Peter said. “You’d better shut the door behind me, Katarina, and seal it!”

  “Peter, do you notice anything?” Marchenko asked.

  “What?”

  “Once you’re fully satiated, you remind me of the Peter I know.”

  “Maybe I’m well again.”

  “That would be nice. But it was like that with Maria, too, in the beginning.”

  Peter went to his bedroom and flopped onto his bed.

  “We are now increasing the oxygen content,” the AI declared.

  Peter listened intently to the sound of the ventilation system. It smelled fresher than before. But why was Marchenko blowing, of all things, hot air into his room? Did this sensation have anything to do with his infection?

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m getting dizzy, Marchenko.”

  “Try to breathe in as deeply as possible.”

  He leaned his head against the wall and noticed it was comfortably cool. He then concentrated on his diaphragm. Breathe in, breathe out. But every breath burned. “I can’t do it,” he said.

  “Then breathe normally, and we’ll continue to raise the oxygen level.”

  He closed his eyes. As a child, he had once ventured too close to a garden fire. The hot air had taken his breath away. Now it was ten times worse. “Dammit,” he shouted,” shut off the oxygen. I’m burning!”

  “You can’t burn from this small amount of extra oxygen.”

  “Marchenko, I’m burning up! My whole body hurts!”

  The AI had no idea what he was going through—if this continued, his skin would inevitably form blisters!

  “His breathing is getting even shallower,” Katarina intervened.

  “Peter, it’s important that you make it through this. Please!” Marchenko said.

  “No!” Peter cried.

  The fire was everywhere. He was the fire. He was going to die.

  “Stop the experiment!” Katarina cried.

  The door popped open. The oxygen content in the room immediately decreased. The fire retreated deep into his lungs.

  “I am very sorry,” Katarina said. “I would love to help you.”

  Peter shook his head. Nobody could help him.

  “Bring him dried fruit,” Marchenko said.

  “Back to square one, you mean?” asked Katarina.

  I’m hungry, Peter thought. Didn’t Marchenko just mention dried fruit?

  “Not quite,” Marchenko said. “We now know that whatever it is that has infected Maria and Peter must have gained access to their nerve tracts, and is very sensitive to oxygen.”

  “And we have also learned that it knows how to fight back,” Katarina said.

  June 15, 2079, Venusian Surface

  “Look.”

  Nuria turned the microscope so that he could comfortably see through the eyepiece. He had to start by focusing the instrument. Then he saw it—the honeycomb pattern. He raised his head and looked at his colleague.

  Nuria smiled. “You were right,” she said. “We are dealing with self-similar structures. It’s always the same shape that repeats itself at every level. Tiny honeycombs form small honeycombs, small honeycombs form larger ones, which then make even larger structures. It’s an endless series.”

  “But what does this mean?” Erik asked.

  “If I only knew!”

  “Could it be based on chemistry? Maybe the elements can only connect to form such honeycomb structures, just like hydrocarbons form rings?”

  “No. I’ve considered that. We have carbon and oxygen, which is not surprising in Venus’s CO2 atmosphere, plus hydrogen and nitrogen, and always sulfur—a surprisingly large amount of sulfur,” Nuria explained. “The components are so diverse that it’s impossible for the same structure to be formed every time.”

  “So it’s a controlled process... I mean, self-organized.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Could you call it life?”

  “We have to be careful about that, Erik. There is self-organization in non-living matter, too.”

  “But you’ve already identified life in the clouds. So, maybe there’s a connection?”

  “It’s a little too early to know.”

  “But it would be logical. Maybe there was life down there in the past. The living things on Venus built these large structures to protect themselves from the environment, structures modeled on their own attributes. And when it became too hot, they withdrew into the clouds.”

  “That sounds plausible, Erik, but we have no proof.”

  “What about the samples from the waste material?”

  “I’m still working on them. The analyzer doesn’t work that fast.”

  It was afternoon, and Erik was sweating on the bike. If he exercised aggressively, he temporarily forgot what was on his mind. It was not the first alien life-form that man had encountered in the solar system, and compared to the oceanic creature on Enceladus, life here seemed very primitive. But he was nevertheless fascinated. Was it because he was closer to the alien life here, closer than any other human being except Nuria—and because he was a co-discoverer?

  “Erik?”

  “Do you have something, Nuria?”

  “Possibly.”

  He climbed off the bike and walked across to his colleague. Nuria wrinkled her nose. He turned without a word, pulled a fresh T-shirt over his wet upper body, and reached under it to spray his armpits with deodorant. Erik hoped that would suffice.

  “Okay, what’s up?” he asked.

  Nuria pulled him to a glass box. He recognized a microscope inside. She put her arms into two holes and pulled the microscope close to her. “You can look through the magnifying eyepiece,” she said. “I’ve isolated what can be seen from the waste material.”

  He looked through the ocular and recognized the familiar shapes.

  “Now compare that to what I found in the clouds.” Nuria changed the slide. Although she had to work with thick gloves, she was amazingly adept.

  He looked again through the eyepiece. The similarity was astonishing, but the proportions were different. He had not changed the magnification, and yet the structures he was looking at were almost an order of magnitude smaller.

  “What you see here is the entity I discovered
earlier, when I demonstrated that it harvests light energy in a metabolic process,” Nuria said.

  “You mean it’s alive?”

  “Well, what I demonstrated is a sign of life, but is not proof-positive.”

  “The structures here are much smaller than those on the surface,” Erik said. “That might be an evolutionary adaptation.”

  “A necessary adaptation. What we found on the surface was too heavy to survive in the clouds in the long run.”

  “Now imagine this, Nuria. A few billion years ago, perhaps the whole surface was populated. And then the climate changed. Anything bigger than a few micrometers, and therefore too heavy to float in the clouds, became extinct, just like our dinosaurs.”

  “A possible scenario, yes.”

  “And what do you think the surface looked like? Was it some kind of bacterial lawn, or more like a meadow, or did they have something like cities?”

  “You’re getting carried away by your imagination, Erik. We may never know.”

  “But we can imagine it.”

  “Well, have fun! I prefer to continue with my analyses. And I would say you need to take a shower.”

  “Okay.”

  With eyes closed, Erik let the warm water run over his head. The drops drummed on his skull and drove away all thoughts, until there was only noise and warmth. He only stopped when the water went cold.

  Shivering, he reached for the towel and dried off. His mind was on the past. If there had been life on the Venusian surface in the past, it must have been very different from life on Earth. Life, according to the ‘Matryoshka principle’—that which was small became big. Where was the beginning, and what formed the end? Was there something like intelligence? So far, nothing had indicated that. The vast structures, whatever they had been for, weren’t proof. Even animals dug caves or built nests. And here, the Matryoshka principle was apparently ubiquitous.

  Hopefully, the wait would soon be over. Maybe they would know more once they had spent more time exploring the vast walls down there.

  Erik had a strange thought. What if...? No, that isn’t possible. He pushed the idea aside. He would not tell anyone about it. If he did, Nuria would again think he was just a crank.

  June 15, 2079, Venus Base

  He had survived, and he was glad of that. He still had a long life ahead of him. He wanted to grow. He shook his head. Now he was going crazy. Peter put a piece of dried fruit in his mouth, although he was already full.

  “How are you?” Marchenko asked.

  “I’m okay,” he replied. He hoped this was true. Somehow, he could not believe it was over.

  “I want to get out of here!” Maria screamed from the next room. “I’m starving!”

  A door creaked open. Katarina was probably bringing her food.

  “What’s this?” Maria asked.

  “This is the first batch of dried fruit manufactured by the nanofabricators,” Katarina said. “Enjoy!”

  Peter imagined Maria stuffing her mouth. He would be putting many pieces of fruit in his mouth at once. Yes, he would.

  “Don’t wolf it down like that, your stomach won’t tolerate it!” the household robot warned.

  What he had imagined was evidently true.

  “Yuck. What is this supposed to be? This is not dried fruit!” Maria cried suddenly. “This tin box wants to poison me!”

  “It has exactly the same composition as dry fruits on Earth,” Katarina said, piqued. “Only the peel is not as hard. They’re freshly made, after all.”

  “The peel was the best part!” Maria screamed.

  Peter heard something sliding down the wall.

  Maria only whimpered. “Make it again! The right way! I’m so hungry!”

  “No problem, Maria,” the robot reassured her. “I’ll be right back.”

  What would Katarina do? In another room, something closed with a loud snap. She had probably put the artificial fruit into the oven. Then he heard her heavy footsteps again.

  “Here, start with this,” she said.

  “Give it to me!” Maria cried.

  Peter heard crunching, chewing sounds. He guessed that she was eating nuts. He hoped that was not the portion that was meant for him!

  There was a buzzing sound. He was right. It was the stove. Katarina clattered about in the kitchen, then came to him with a bowl. “Isn’t this a good reproduction of the consistency of the original fruit?” she asked.

  Peter picked up a piece of fruit, felt it, and nodded.

  “Then try it.”

  He bit into it. He was overcome with disgust. “Yuck! This tastes horrible!” he said.

  “I wonder why?” Katarina asked. “Marchenko? Do you have any idea?”

  “The chemical composition is identical?”

  “Absolutely. I even had the internal consistency replicated, and the water content is also the same.”

  “Put some of the peel into the analyzer and connect me with it,” Marchenko requested.

  “Okay. There, you should be able to see the values now.”

  “Thank you. Ah, yes. The preservatives are missing,” Marchenko noted.

  “I decided to forego them. The fruits were going to be eaten immediately anyway.”

  “Then let us start a new experiment. Please give me your programming for the dried fruit. I want to modify it a bit!”

  An hour later, Maria and Peter were sitting together at the kitchen table. Katarina set down a tray with three small plates in front of them. “Please try these from left to right,” she said.

  “They still look so soft,” Maria complained.

  Peter reached for the fruit. Yes, it was just right. Katarina had finally found the perfect recipe. This was just how it should taste. “Hmm, these are so good,” he said.

  “And especially these!” Maria praised a fruit from the plate in the middle. She reached for fruit on the extreme right, bit into it, and her face registered disappointment. “Not too bad.”

  Peter also tasted from the last plate. Maria is right! “The last ones are okay. But those in the middle are superb,” he summed up.

  “The last ones,” Katarina said, smiling, “are the ones that you liked so much up until now. They are from the last bag from Earth.”

  Peter and Maria ate until all three plates were empty.

  “And now tell us the secret, Katarina!” Peter said.

  “It’s the preservative—the fruits are sulfured,” Marchenko explained instead of Katarina. “The pathogens obviously don’t care about the nutrients. The only thing they care about is sulfur.”

  June 16, 2079, Venusian Surface

  “Commander to spaceship.”

  “Yes, Chuck?” Ethan acknowledged.

  “We have a problem. I’m worried about the AVs.”

  “What’s going on?” Nuria interrupted.

  “I just flew over your area of operations. The temperature has increased significantly. Could a volcano have erupted?”

  “We didn’t notice anything, but thanks for the warning, Charles. What should we do?” Nuria asked. “After all, we’re still in the AVs’ radio shadow.”

  “I could relay your connection from the spaceship. Someone should check on the AVs.”

  “The signal propagation delay would be much too long then,” Erik said. “From the spaceship to orbit and then to the surface, that’s not real-time anymore.”

  “Well then, you will have to act with a little foresight.”

  “You’re right, Charles,” Nuria said. “We need to do something.”

  “You don’t have much time to ponder. In ten minutes, I’ll be in the radio shadow myself, and then you won’t be able to reach the AVs.”

  “Erik, come on, let’s quickly get down there,” Nuria said.

  Erik nodded. He ran to his couch, put on the BCI’s sensory hood, and lay down. There was darkness in front of his eyes. Then he was in his AV. First, he had to quit the sleep mode. His field of vision displayed the time it took the software to do this. He canc
eled all system tests, since he could perform them later. The sense of sight came on, and the environment suddenly had a reflective surface. He looked at his feet. They were standing in a shiny pool that was over 1,000 degrees. The internal cooling system switched to maximum performance.

  “What is this?” Nuria asked.

  “Must be magma. The volcano over there!”

  He pointed to the mountain over which smoke had been rising the day before yesterday. Was the magma coming from there? He found that hard to believe. The volcano was much too far away!

  Then he saw the flow. It arose on the mountain slopes. The magma must remain liquid for a long time due to the heat on Venus’s surface. It must also differ in composition from magma on Earth. The flow was moving directly toward them, so they were apparently in a depression.

  “Onto the rock!” he shouted. Erik got up and climbed onto the boulder they had been leaning against. His movements took place with a minimal delay, which irritated him enormously. The suspension must be due to the rerouting of the signal via the spaceship, he thought. He heard a smacking sound shortly after he had pulled his feet out of the hot mass.

  Nuria was still standing below him. Her AV looked strangely crooked and tilted forward.

  “What’s wrong, Nuria?”

  “My hip. Maybe it melted.”

  “That can’t be. The joint may have expanded due to the heat. That will right itself in a short while. But you can’t remain down there.”

  “I can’t move. I’m not able to climb up.”

  Erik knelt on the boulder. He reached Nuria with his right arm and managed to pull her toward himself. He then lifted her up. Her body was as heavy as his. He had to be careful not to lose his balance, but he finally succeeded in pulling her to safety. Nuria managed to kneel on the boulder in spite of her crooked upper body. Erik looked around. They were safe here.

  “I’ll be gone in four minutes,” Charles said.

  “Everything’s okay,” Erik said. “We’re safe for the moment.”