The Clouds of Venus: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q. Morris

  “Good. What was wrong?”

  “I’ll tell you later. I must first disable the sleep mode. If the AV shuts down its systems, it may topple back into the magma.”

  “Magma?”

  “Later, Charles. Nuria, you have to turn off sleep mode on your AV as well.”

  “I’m already working on that. The option is a little hard to find.”

  “Yes. Don’t search under system administration. The programmers placed it under developer options.”

  “Thanks, Erik...”

  The radio connection broke off. Erik heard Nuria’s last words from her own mouth.

  “... I found it now.”

  Erik had rarely waited so eagerly to finally slip back into the AV. They now had two days to get to the bottom of the mystery of the strange structures. He awakened on the boulder. The magma was still flowing, but that was not a problem, since they had their jetpacks after all.

  Fortunately, the area where they dug up the wall was a bit elevated. “Let’s fly over there,” he said.

  Nuria nodded. She, too, was standing straight again. Her hip joint had apparently cooled off and righted itself.

  They almost simultaneously ignited their jetpacks, shot upward next to each other, and landed at the excavation area.

  “Do you want to go back down there, or should we trade?” Nuria asked.

  “Thanks, but I would like to continue to excavate at the wall base.”

  “Sure. It was your idea, after all.”

  Erik climbed down into the pit and switched on the light. Nothing had changed. He knelt in front of the wall and continued to hack into the hard ground. He was happy, because immediately a particularly large piece separated from the rest of the ground. He carefully picked it up and examined it, immediately noticing that the bottom was quite smooth.

  He illuminated the ground. They had made it! If they had known that they were so close! “We’re at the bottom,” he shouted.

  “Hey, congratulations,” Nuria replied.

  “I will try to expose as much of the floor as possible.”

  Two hours later, about three square meters of the same material as the side wall lay at his feet. The patterns were also repeated on the floor. “Do you know what this means?” he asked.

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t think this is a house or something like that. In my opinion, we have the largest version of the same organism that you found in the waste material and in the clouds.”

  “Would that not be a bit unimaginative of evolution, to simply copy everything on a larger scale?”

  “Why does evolution have to come up with something complicated, if there is a simple option? Maybe the conditions here were ideal for this kind of development. Giant animal species went extinct on Earth due to a lack of food. But if evolution here laid all its bets on sulfur, there would always have been enough.”

  “Do you mean that once upon a time, hundred-meter-long worms crawled around here?”

  “Probably not. I think they were stationary, like plants. Or just like giant versions of unicellular organisms. Who says that unicellular organisms need to be small?”

  “That’s right,” Nuria said. “Caulerpa taxifolia, a species of algae, can grow to several meters. You hardly find single-celled organisms larger than Caulerpa on Earth. But that gives me an idea.”

  “What?”

  “Biologists always thought that individual cells could not grow very big because the nucleus would not be able to exert its effects at a distance. Caulerpa taxifolia solved this problem by allowing many cell nuclei to swim around in one cell. Maybe things are similar here, and what we found in the waste material were the cell nuclei.”

  “I have an even crazier idea,” Erik said. “One that only a non-biologist would come up with. What if life here has consistently implemented the Matryoshka principle? Every living thing might be the nucleus for a larger organism at the next level, while its own cell nucleus is, in fact, a smaller organism at a smaller level of life, and this continues down to the microscopic level.”

  “That would definitely make life very flexible. When enough food is available, one of the cells grows to the next higher level. If not, at least the smaller versions have a chance of survival.”

  “They could even feed on the higher levels. That would automatically regulate the population. Whenever a creature no longer finds enough food, it is eaten by its own cell nuclei from within. And when they themselves don’t have enough to eat, their smaller cell nuclei eat them up in turn, and so on, until there is once again enough food.”

  “That sounds pretty crazy,” Nuria said.

  “No crazier than the marvelous hodgepodge that evolution has wrought on Earth.”

  “That’s true. Your idea is actually pretty simple, and it meets the condition of Occam’s razor. Unfortunately, that does not tell us whether it’s true.”

  “The hypothesis could be tested,” Erik said. “If we assume that the tiny cells that you have discovered in the clouds represent the miniature versions that cannot grow any smaller, we would only need to provide them with enough food, and they would grow into something bigger.”

  Nuria did not answer.

  “Do you have a problem with that?” he asked.

  “You want to breed alien cells aboard the spaceship. Dammit, that reminds me a lot of a horror movie I saw as a child.”

  “That was Hollywood, Nuria! It wasn’t a scientific documentary. We will let them grow in a sample container with a Venusian atmosphere. If they somehow escape, the oxygen in our air would kill them anyway.”

  “Well, we do have a security lab on board, a prerequisite for such experiments. But even then, the people at NASA will give us hell when they find out.”

  “Not if we succeed.”

  “You mean, the end justifies the means?”

  “They need mission successes. And let’s be honest, the risk is minimal, or do you see it differently?”

  “No, Erik, I too think the creatures would just as surely die in our atmosphere as we would in theirs.”

  “There you go.”

  “Then all we have to do is find out what we could feed them,” Nuria said.

  “I don’t know why, but I’m guessing elemental sulfur.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s so hot down here that it immediately sublimates. That’s why everything is dead. In the clouds, however, sulfur can arise during reduction reactions. We have enough sulfuric acid there as the starting material.”

  “You may be right. If that doesn’t work, we’ll just have to improvise.”

  “Well, we are masters of improvisation.”

  Erik’s AV raised its left hand, and Nuria’s machine slapped a high five against it.

  June 16, 2079, Venus Base

  Maria slept, ate, then slept again. One could no longer hold a rational conversation with her. Peter was glad that he was feeling better. After all, he could still think reasonably clearly, as long as he regularly ate dried fruit. He no longer liked the sticky-sweet stuff, but he couldn’t stop eating it, either.

  “How are you?” Katarina asked.

  “I’m doing amazingly well. Certainly better than Maria,” he said.

  Katarina was taking care of them with angelic patience. It was a good thing that she had come along on this journey. If it had been only Marchenko. Peter did not want to imagine that. He and Maria would presumably have killed each other long ago, fighting for the last dried fruit. Katarina was always busy replenishing supplies.

  “The pathogens are having a hard time in your case for some reason,” Katarina said. “You could try lowering the dose, Peter.”

  “No. As long as I get enough sulfur I feel reasonably mentally fit, and I want to stay that way. Especially now. What is this disgusting crap?” Peter groaned softly and pushed another piece of dried fruit into his mouth.

  “There are a few parallels to parasites on Earth,” Marchenko explained. “For example, there is a fungus that grows in
the bodies of ants and turns them into zombies without a will of their own. And the fluke worm Euhaplorchis californiensis manipulates the brain function of fish so that they swim to the surface and wriggle around until birds, the worm’s final host, become aware of them. Or even—”

  “Thanks, Marchenko, all of that sounds very discouraging.”

  But Marchenko was not to be distracted. He continued, “There’s a brain parasite called Toxoplasma gondii that infects rats and mice and whose end-host is cats. It makes the rodents lose their fear of cats, much like the worm in the case of the fish—with only one difference.”

  Why does Marchenko always have to be a mystery-monger? “And that would be?”

  “Toxoplasma gondii can also use humans as intermediaries, except that infection usually goes unnoticed by us. But we make antibodies.”

  “You mean, I had such an infection in the past, and the antibodies help me against this stuff? What is the probability of that?”

  “High. It is estimated that about half of all people in Europe have already come into contact with it.”

  “Not bad. How can we be sure?”

  “Quite simple. Katarina takes a sample of your blood and we examine it.”

  Peter was skeptical. Why would antibodies to an earthly parasite work against something completely unknown from Venus?

  “We have no equipment for that,” Katarina said.

  “No problem. I’ll get the blueprints, and the nanofabricators will build it,” Marchenko suggested.

  “That would take too long,” Peter said. “The probability is only fifty-fifty, and how do we know that Earth antibodies have any effect here? Let’s try something different. Whatever it is, I put myself at your disposal as a guinea pig.”

  “I can’t allow that!” Katarina said.

  “Please, I am asking for your permission.”

  No one had ever worried so much about me, not even my mother. This thought startled him. After all, Katarina was a robot. But he nevertheless felt grateful to her. “What options do we have, Marchenko?” he asked.

  “If we fight it, we have to assume that the pathogen will again fight back. But if we feed you more sulfur, the parasite will probably not fight back. Maybe it will then grow, and we can finally locate and analyze it.”

  “Isn’t so much sulfur extremely unhealthy?”

  “We will give you elemental sulfur. Normally, the body excretes most of it.”

  This meant Marchenko wanted to let an alien parasite grow in him. Peter had a lump in his throat. He felt his stomach and imagined an alien penetrating and bursting forth from his abdominal wall. He felt sick. “Is there any other option? Who knows if we can control the thing if it grows too big?”

  “Of course,” Marchenko said. “We starve it. But it will certainly be unpleasant for you, because the parasite won’t put up with that.”

  Peter once again felt his stomach. Hadn’t it grown significantly since yesterday? He shouldn’t have watched so many old horror movies on the outbound flight. “So I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “Well then, I choose starvation.”

  Nevertheless, he could not suppress the urge and ate two more pieces of dried fruit.

  “I’d better prepare a sulfur compound for an emergency,” Katarina said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Marchenko replied. “Well, then let’s get started.”

  Peter lay down on a sloping metal ramp, which was usually used for repairs.

  “I’ll tie you down now,” Katarina announced. “It’s necessary so that you do not hurt yourself.”

  “Inject him with a sleep aid. That may help him to get through the worst stretches,” Marchenko suggested.

  Peter nodded. If Marchenko suggested it, it could not be a bad idea. Maybe the alien baby in his stomach would then fall asleep, too.

  Katarina got a syringe and gave him an injection. Peter stroked his stomach again. It was just as big as yesterday and the same as the day before that. He mustn’t drive himself crazy. Life was not a cheap horror movie.

  “Now it’s time to keep our fingers...” he heard Marchenko say, and then sank into a gray, cotton-like darkness. He could not move.

  “We’re here,” the taxi driver said.

  Peter opened his eyes. They were standing in front of the branch of a supermarket chain. It had snowed outside. He gave the driver his name so that he could deduct the fare. He then opened the door of the vehicle and stepped out. The walkway was slippery. Why hadn’t someone scattered some gravel here? And what did he want here?

  He was hungry. Exactly, that was it. His fridge had been empty. Maria had eaten everything he had stored in it, even the pineapple that she didn’t like. What had she been doing in his apartment? It didn’t matter. He was here because he was hungry. He entered the supermarket, found the shelf with the sulfurized dried fruit, and ate, but the hunger remained. Peter shouted in the store. A siren could be heard outside. The manager must have called the police. An official wanted to arrest him.

  “I’m just hungry,” Peter cried, his voice echoing in the huge room. The other customers turned to look at him. They showed him their huge bellies in which something was clearly moving, but he was not afraid of it. He was angry with them, for they had eaten up the dried fruit that he had wanted! He wanted to flee, but he could not move his legs. Someone was holding him down.

  “Let me go! Let me go!”

  The police opened fire. His body was riddled with bullets. He was not worried about his life, but about his stomach. He must not burst! He was getting hotter and hotter.

  “I’m burning. I can no longer bear it. I...”

  Peter fell silent. He was lying on an uncomfortable sloping metal panel. Katarina was standing in front of him. He said softly, “I can’t feel anything anymore.” This was far more frightening than anything he had dreamed.

  “Wonderful!”

  “No, Marchenko, you misunderstood me. I can’t feel anything anymore. I can’t even move my fingers.”

  He was wheezing. What was wrong with his chest? Was it still rising and falling with his breath? He tried to look at himself but didn’t succeed. Was he in the process of suffocating? Was this what it felt like when one was suffocating?

  “Marchenko, we have to stop this. Peter is dying,” Katarina protested.

  “Give him the drug.”

  Katarina dribbled a solution onto his tongue, which followed gravity and ran down his throat. He swallowed with his last strength.

  Things improved immediately. “More!” he whispered.

  Katarina gave him the whole bottle.

  Feeling returned to his limbs. He was back, and he was relieved. “I can feel again,” Peter said. “What was in the solution?”

  “It was a suspension of elemental sulfur, to which I added something,” Katarina replied.

  “Antibiotics?”

  “No, they’re optimized for carbon-based pathogens. I mixed common antiparasitics into the suspension. When these parasites are starving, they will accept anything that smells like sulfur.”

  “But weren’t these drugs designed for Earth’s parasites?”

  “Unfortunately. But if we’re very lucky, your parasites may still respond.”

  June 17, 2079, Venusian Atmosphere

  Today they could finally return to the spaceship. In the meantime, Erik was anxiously sitting on the surface. Further excavation hadn’t yielded any new results. It now depended on the experiment.

  Ethan would inform them when they needed to start.

  Erik had performed a complete system test. The AV, and especially its jetpack, were in good condition, as was Nuria’s AV. Actually, nothing could go wrong.

  And yet, they were, of course, not on Earth on a summer vacation, but on Venus. While it was almost calm down here, there was a storm blowing where they wanted to go, stronger than any hurricane on Earth. They would be voluntarily flying into the hurricane.

  “I’m not too happy about this,” Erik said.


  “You mean the experiment we planned?” Nuria asked.

  “No. I’m talking about the storm up there.”

  “We came down through the storm, didn’t we?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Ethan, what does the weather report say? Our lad here is a bit scared.”

  “All within the limits of the expected,” Ethan said. “You’re lucky that we’re at the equator. Near the poles, there are nasty downdrafts.”

  “That makes me feel better,” Erik said.

  “Good. I’ll display the countdown for you now. You already have the acceleration profile for the jetpacks. You probably don’t have to do anything.”

  “Probably?”

  “Such a storm is a chaotic system, and there can be unexpected cross currents.”

  “Understood.”

  The countdown began. At zero Erik mentally gave the start signal. The AV obediently took off. At first the flight was surprisingly uneventful. Erik was able to study the volcanic eruption. There were magma flows on three slopes, and several plumes of smoke were still visible. But there had been no explosive events. Visibility deteriorated as they approached an altitude of about 30 kilometers. Erik didn’t remember encountering this mist during the descent.

  Then they encountered the first gusts of wind.

  Erik’s AV shuddered in the wind. “Quite turbulent here,” he said via radio.

  “Yes, you’re in a major weather region. That’s normal,” Ethan answered. “But watch out, it’ll start soon.”

  The stream of air became stronger as each second went by. It pulled him along, and he could not fight back, even if he’d wanted to.

  “You two are doing well,” Ethan reassured him.

  Ethan was probably observing their heart rates. He must not become too stressed out. After all, he was safe on his couch. Only a ‘tin can’ was in jeopardy.

  The storm strengthened, and at the same time the temperature dropped. They were approaching the area where the spaceship was traveling. They must not miss it. That’s why the plan was to play the role of hitchhiker. They would fly to a spot that the spaceship was supposed to cross, then let themselves be gently pulled along.