Worlds Spinning Round: Part 3: Destinations

By T. E. Greene

Mike and Ellen are stranded near the peak of a newly erupting volcano along with Anton who is severely injured and cannot be moved. Their exploration vehicle is disabled and dangerously overheating. Isoke has gone on foot for help, but the air and fuel he can carry may not be enough to get him within range of a support team, nor in time to help his friends. The forces of a native army continue their advance in their quest for territory. Venture's rival group on Earth has extended their reach to two other worlds, leaving the Venture project uncertain whom to trust and pressing for intervention by the courts to avert a planetary disaster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546217916

T. E. Greene

T. E. Greene lives in Connecticut with his wife and frequent visits with their children. He holds a masters degree in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a teaching certificate from Eastern Connecticut State University and a bachelors degree in mathematics and general science from Barrington College. Moving on from a career teaching high-school math, science and computer programming, he enjoys music, coaching, travel and research "in just about anything." Current projects: fractal-based structures and a computer-generated timeline. "Math you can’t use is just pretty."

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This book, Worlds Spinning Round: Destinations, is a work of fiction. All the characters, companies and events portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination. Other than references to obvious historical figures and events, any resemblance to people living or dead, or the circumstances of their lives, is strictly coincidental.

© 2017 Timothy E. Greene. All rights reserved.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/22/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1790-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1792-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1791-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017917807

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover design and sculpture by Sarah L. (Greene) Korzeniowski

Author photo by Jonathan T. Greene

Front cover landscape photo by T. E. Greene

Manuscript text, puzzles, graphic renderings, alien languages, alien fonts and alien number systems by T. E. Greene

Cover graphics are based in part on images courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech. Thank you for making this vast treasure house of knowledge available to the public.

PREFACE

This volume is the third in a trilogy. It may be read as a separate work if Volumes One and Two are hopelessly unavailable by the time you read this, otherwise I would recommend starting at the beginning.

While the events and characters in this book, with the exception of obvious, historical references, are fictitious, this work was based on factual research and checked by specialists in their various fields. However, much of the material is speculative, as is the nature of science fiction. Any errors, therefore, are mine, and mine alone.

Volume Three contains the remaining material not included in the first two volumes from the text of the original, single-volume version (unpublished) first put to paper beginning in 1978. The final expansion developed as the seeming immediacy of what were once seen as distant dreams began to raise questions of ethical responsibility in space: of the things we could do, what should we do when we get where we are going? Where will our response send us next?

The world has been changing rapidly. I have been trying just to keep up with writing about possible, future events before they happen. Of course, when it comes to general principles, the more things change, as they say, the more things stay the same. So bear with me when a future event or invention has already come to pass. Or if something came out differently or not at all. That is part of the risk of the adventure that is science fiction.

Volume Three has been subject to sensitive dependence on initial conditions. As the story acquired its own life, certain plot elements that were part of the original text are no longer possible or have had to be modified, while other scenarios came into being to supplement and/or enhance the revised text. Some elements had to be removed to, hopefully, a future book, since they would no longer fit in the time frame of the present story.

Now that most of the characters have well-developed personalities, I no longer make them do anything. As the events and situations of the story progress, seemingly under their own momentum, sometimes, I simply follow the characters around and observe what they naturally do. Hopefully, this produces a more-realistic story and avoids, to a greater extent, the pitfalls of the contrived plot. Thank you, Miss Fox, for that early insight.

Sometimes, this methodology has its hazards, for example, watching a potentially unpleasant scene unfold, not because I wanted that result, but because that is what would have most likely happened under those circumstances. It can be unsettling when none of my proofreaders object to these indirect commentaries on the darker aspects of human nature.

With as few exceptions as possible, everything that happens is recorded as experienced by a character in the scene. I try to maintain an emotional connection between the characters and their situation by writing out through each of their faces to obtain the multiple viewpoint perspective I have always preferred. Thank you, Mr. Sunderland, for encouraging me to continue developing this technique.

Many of you will disagree with one or more of the ideas that are expressed in this book. You may even find errors in my use of the background material. I hope so. This writing is intended as a springboard for constructive discussion, the exchange of ideas, not the last word on everything. The collision of ideas is the foundation of creativity, after all.

I know there are bound to be mistakes in here. Well, non-fiction writers are entitled to upgrades. Maybe this is the solution to the literary, post-partem blues. In any case, if I held out for perfection first, nothing I write would ever get published. Who knows? There could be a second edition.

I would love hearing from you.

Readers’ comments may be directed to:

[e-mail] or

http://totalcontext.net-->contact or

http://tegworlds-->contact or

through the publisher.

Readers’ comments may be read at:

http://totalcontext.net-->tegworlds-->thoughtpool-->feedback or

http://tegworlds-->thoughtpool-->feedback or

http://timlynn2.wixsite.com/tegworlds/-->thoughtpool-->feedback

or Search: tegworlds totalcontext (various search engines)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank all the friends who allowed me to bounce ideas off them in putting this story together. I am especially grateful to those who consented to examine the text regardless of whether it might agree with their own views. Their expertise included, but was not limited to: aviation, biology, chemistry, computer science, English, ethnic culture, geology, law enforcement and youth services, law, linguistics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, music, nursing, robotics, science research and teaching in various disciplines.

The list of those who have influenced my reaching this point in what may yet turn out to be a much larger story is far more extensive than the individuals named in the introductions to the previous two books and referenced here. Many teachers, colleagues, friends and family members have contributed to the life experiences that shaped this narrative. Most notably, I wish to thank my parents Leon and Dagny (Gabrielson), whose own story is as least as fascinating as this one.

Finally, I want to thank my wife Lynn, without whose loving forbearance this endeavor would never have seen completion.

To those who have gone before

We cannot help but speak of the things that we have seen and heard. – Acts 4:20 (composite paraphrase)

Everything is impossible–until someone does it for the first time. –

Robert A. Heinlein / Nelson R. Mandela (combined paraphrase)

Earth is the cradle of man, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.

The most important things still lie ahead.

– Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky

CAST OF NAMED

CHARACTERS FROM DISCOVERIES AND DECISIONS

GLOSSARY OF TERMS FROM

DISCOVERIES AND DECISIONS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part Three–Destinations

1. Descent

2. Airlift

3. Medivac

4. Set Pieces

5. Works in Process

6. Medium Well

7. Simplexity

8. Judo Moves

9. What Goes Around

10. Balance of Trade

11. Myopia

12. Hanging Separately

13. Native Soil

14. Lessons of History

15. Flyswatter

16. Growth

17. Backflip

18. Diplomatic Indemnity

19. Customs

20. All’s Fair

21. Places

22. Times

23. We Were From Here

24. What They Seem

25. Parade

26. Theory of Nothing

27. Blood and Turnips

28. Served Hot

29. Cradle of Man

30. But...

CHAPTER ONE

Descent

Isoke Ngozi clambered down an old lava flow, the clawed pads of his pressure-suit armor the only thing holding him from crashing down the torturous slope. He had been alone on the mountain for hours.

The faded yellow-gray of the night sky of Venus, unbroken cloud cover tinted orange by the dull glow of the ground, only emphasized that isolation. No one knew exactly where he was. Few knew he was out here at all.

The bulk of the improvised equipment rack he wore warred with his climbing reflexes, but he needed the survival gear, especially the spare pressure tanks. His friends, trapped in their tank-like crawler high on the slopes of this sporadically active volcano, were depending on him to find a support camp at the base of the mountain and start a rescue operation. Whether they could hold out longer than he was in doubt.

Two of his oxygen tanks and one containing hydrogen fuel had been emptied and discarded. The numbers should have been equal. He shared the oxygen with the fuel cell that powered the hydraulics, instrumentation and the cooling system that provided his only active defense against the heat under pressure surrounding him. Only the fuel cell used hydrogen, although in double the quantity of oxygen. His own body was consuming the additional oxygen through the effort of his descent. He was attempting to maintain the greatest pace he could without overexerting himself and wasting that oxygen. Using manual steering with the walker program would cut back on his own consumption, but the robot-control software would not be able to negotiate the broken terrain quickly enough to be of any use.

If he selected fully autonomous navigation, and it ran into a dead end, the computer would begin to trace one edge of traversable territory in an attempt to regain the original course setting. If the way was passable, and Isoke had no assurance of that, the method would work, eventually. Unfortunately, the suit instruments had no ability to detect a navigable route at any great distance or beyond visual obstructions, just as the navigation program lacked the imagination to take shortcuts over unmapped territory.

The only known course, the route of their ascent along a ridge of the mountain, had been cut off by the first eruption, a pair of lateral outbreaks bracketing their position. The meandering alternative the navigator would choose would take far too long. Not only would he be finished but the others as well.

The lava formation spread into a fan over a relatively level area and abruptly gave out. Isoke began a lope on the loose gravel left exposed while trying to keep from slipping. He noticed with alarm that the uncertain footing was causing him to use far more oxygen than he could allow. Reluctantly he slowed to a walk.

The navigator program could handle this stretch. He fed in the course, requested maximum reasonable speed and settled back in his harness. The robot began to run, covering three meters with each low, leaping stride through the dense air. Isoke could see no obstacles ahead, either through his viewport or on his radar display. He checked all his instruments and, though his instincts rebelled, closed his viewport shields against both possible mishaps and the temptation to watch the bounding landscape and wearily succumbed to troubled sleep.

An alarm snapped him into panicky alertness. The window visors flipped open automatically before his vision cleared. He was charging headlong down a crazily tilted wall of bare rock that dropped away sharply to his left. He almost terminated the navigation directive before he realized that the alarm had not been caused by the hair-raising descent. In order to avoid the cliff edge, the robot had been forced to change course.

Isoke silenced the alarm. Almost afraid to watch, he forced himself to endure the plunge. The slope steepened until a second signal sounded. The walker program had finally agreed with his nervous system and was starting to slow the suit down.

Not long afterward, a third warning heralded a sharp change in course. Unable to look for holds, the software was directing the robot along the best path it could handle, in this case, almost back the way he had come.

Isoke canceled the order to the navigator. The machine slowed to a halt. Using the manual controls, he began to climb sideways on the nearly featureless rock in search of a ledge. There was one, a hundred meters below. He angled his way down, picking his footholds with extreme care. The artificial feet seemed suddenly much too large and far away. The rack assembly holding the spare tanks made him feel as if he were strapped into a bookcase. The rough stone left scratches in the protective coating on the arms and legs of his suit but it didn’t matter. By the time the corrosives in the atmosphere could eat through that armor, he and his friends would all have been dead for days, at the least. And if he slipped.... He could spare neither the time nor the effort nor the attention from his meticulous descent to care. He scrambled painstakingly on. He had just reached the ledge and was trying to catch his breath when there was a rumble on the mountainside far above him.

Isoke had never heard an avalanche before, but he was certain of its identity. He felt equally certain of its path. He was like a beetle pinned to a display card. There was no place to hide on the ledge.

What about below? The ledge formed the top of an overhanging cliff. Kneeling awkwardly beneath his supply rack, Isoke spotted a small crack just below the edge and fired a piton bolt into it. The rumble became a roar. He hooked his belt winch to the padeye and tugged at it. The radar unit clamored for attention. He looked up to see the sky above his hatch viewport transform into a rapidly descending ceiling of broken rock.

Desperately he hurled himself headfirst over the edge of the precipice. The anchor hookup immediately flipped him upright. The spare pressure tanks strained momentarily against the equipment netting, but the improvised restraint held. As Isoke’s hatch rim clanged against the cliff, he released the safety-cable brake.

A cataract of debris thundered past him as the winch spun out. He dropped like a frightened spider between the two deadly walls, one solid, bleak and unyielding, the other a churning mass of fragments ranging from fine particles carried along by the backwash of the fall to boulders the size of jeeps. He was enveloped in a cloud of swirling dust.

Small rocks began to batter his armor. Isoke realized that the avalanche was spreading by internal turbulence as it fell. He tapped the center of the winch control graphic to halt his descent before he reached a region where larger pieces could strike him.

Before the winch brake could bring him to a full stop, a heavy blow glanced off his shoulder and spun him around. Like a pendulum, he swung dizzily away from the rockfall and as inexorably returned.

He was still trying to drag the winch slide bar to an ascent setting in the wildly spinning suit when a pair of concussions shook him, the first bouncing him high in his harness as the cable sprang back, the next slamming the corner of his forehead against the radar unit.

He regained consciousness with a strange feeling of displacement. The first thing he noticed was the silence. Looking out through his forward viewport, he could see only dull, yellow-gray sky. He turned his head and saw the cliff face hanging beside his left viewport like a giant, rocky curtain about twenty meters away. The movement brought on a sudden lightheadedness.

The hatch. Apprehensively, Isoke strained his head backward for a look at the overhead viewport. It was shuttered. He must have instinctively closed the protective cover during his frantic descent before the rockfall reached him. The corrosion-resistant coating of his suit’s head-and-shoulder region was probably badly damaged, but that aspect of his protection would last far longer than the rest of his life-support system.

Isoke looked for the ledge, but it was lost in the heights above him. Moving his head more slowly, he checked the winch reading. Over two hundred meters. Maybe he still had enough cable left on the winch reel to get down. He looked down and wished he hadn’t. The cliff simply faded from sight into the thick air below.

Hands clammy from unaccustomed acrophobia, he checked the radar. It was another three hundred fifty meters to the bottom and overhung all the way. Much too far. He was about to reel in when a chilling thought struck him. Suppose his suit was damaged? One unexpected failure could be fatal. He had better check everything first.

The readouts were all within normal limits, and the suit coordination felt good, but the horizontal gyro was starting to run a couple of degrees warmer than usual. Any change could mean trouble, but so far, everything looked all right.

Regretting the fuel the action was costing him, he winched his way back to the ledge.

Five minutes later, he was frustrated and angry. The ledge had turned a corner and given out. He had no choice but to climb back up the mountain and try again. He looked back the way he had come. A chill shot through him. The debris-cluttered trail twisted along the cliff toward an exposed shoulder and terminated abruptly in a fresh, jagged scar where it had been smashed by a giant boulder. There was no way out.

Unless, he thought, he could find another ledge lower down. He returned to his original jumping-off place and hooked up again. This time he descended slowly, checking for ledges, cracks, anything. Three hundred meters later, the cable ran out. He could see one dark line far to his left and slightly above him. The rest of the wall was bare.

He thought of drilling an anchor hole, but he would have to swing to reach the cliff face. He could never hold himself there while he set the bit. What if he tried firing a piton into the surface in front of him? Most rock on the overheated surface of Venus was relatively soft.

He started pumping his legs as if on a child’s swing. When he had worked close enough, he kicked hard against the cliff. The next swing would bring him into firm contact.

The recoil of the gun almost stunned him. The bent piton fell away from the nick it had made in the cliff face and disappeared into the depths.

Most rock. Whatever minerals composed the monolith before him must have metamorphosed in this harsh environment, he realized, or they would never support a cliff this high. The slightly cooler air temperatures at this altitude might also have allowed the altered rock to harden to a greater degree than it would have in the lowlands.

He had to try for that black streak. Changing the direction of his swing, he continued pumping until he was rising just beyond the spot he wanted. It appeared to be an igneous intrusion. Hopefully, it was made of softer material than the adamant that surrounded it.

He was having trouble positioning himself on the oscillating cable. Each time he passed the intrusion, he was twisted in a slightly different direction. The drag of the thick air wasn’t helping either. Isoke tried to hold his body perfectly still and wait for the right moment. Motion sickness grew stronger with each giant sweep past the mountain face.

He fired. Unable to plant himself as before, he was sent spinning wildly while the pendulum motion continued in interminable swoops. Vertigo closed in around his head and slammed a sudden blow to his nauseated stomach. The severity of the attack doubled him over as far as his harness would allow, sparing his instrument panel the fate of the foot controls. The twisting cable wound up and spun back again and again.

At last the motion damped out. A weakened Isoke cast tear-drenched eyes up toward the starting point of his misery. The bolt was still there.

Once again Isoke pumped his way up to the new anchor point, his stomach too exhausted to protest further. As soon as he was close enough, he grabbed for the piton at the point where it entered the cliff face. It held but shifted slightly with a crunch. It had not penetrated deeply enough. Holding his position with one hand, he set another bolt half a meter farther down. The new anchor gripped firmly.

Feeling considerably better, Isoke fastened his short belt hook to the secure piton and worked the first bolt free. He had others, but they might be needed later. Finding another likely anchoring spot, he replanted the first piton and fastened the short safety line to both. He then activated the fail-safe combination that released the primary cable hook and started to reel it in as it fell past him on the side away from the cliff. Isoke finished reeling in the long cable. The hook mechanism came back up covered with dirt. Isoke looped the cable up through the piton eyes, pulled the loop over and down and tugged the cable hook up. Fastening them together in that way would permit remote release from both pitons. He then released the short safety. Soon he was ready to descend again.

He landed in a niche between the base of the cliff and a long talus pile formed from countless avalanches. Having retrieved his cable, he walked along this corridor, thus shielded from possible additional rockfalls by the towering overhang.

Ahead, a break appeared in the ridge of smashed boulders. Some feature on the slope above the cliff had apparently channeled most of the falling material away from that point. His chance of not being hit by a falling rock would also be improved by his crossing there. Isoke scrambled through, starting several small slides into the outfall side of the pile.

Before him, a relatively gentle slope led downward toward the murky haze of the lowlands. Isoke set the robot controls once more and, overpowered by his own fatigue, collapsed into a stupor.

An alarm woke him. He found himself crossing a level plain with no hazards immediately visible. He checked the display panel. The gyro bearing he had noticed earlier was overheating. He deactivated the navigator and cut power to the horizontal gyro.

The only other way to operate the navigator automatically was with the radar. The mountain would make a handy reference as he moved. He stepped up the power for long-range scanning and was rewarded with a puff of acrid smoke that burned his eyes and made him cough. The unit, apparently weakened by the encounter with the avalanche, had burned out.

Now he was really in trouble. With neither the gyrocompass nor the radar for reference, the robot navigator was useless. He would have to make it out of there himself.

Isoke looked around. The mountain had disappeared into the murk of the lowlands. All he could see was the ground around him fading into the drifting microscopic clutter. He would be lost in a few minutes if he tried to navigate by dead reckoning. He had to keep to a constant heading or he would miss his goal. But how? The planet didn’t have enough of a magnetic field to operate a compass.

Harry had told Mike something about that, once. Something about a pine tree. It didn’t matter. There were no trees here.

But there were rocks. Rocks worn by the wind. Some had limpetweeds growing on their lee sides, even at this altitude. Isoke remembered the native saying, The rocks show which way the prevailing wind blows even when the wind is not blowing. Or even blowing in a different direction. He was on the upwind side of the mountain in terms of the prevailing planetary wind. The slow planetary rotation would minimize the Coriolis effect on curvature of wind currents. The wind in the vicinity of the volcano would be drawn toward the broad peak by convection updrafts generated above the huge caldera and increased by the heat of the current eruption. At his present location, one condition would only reinforce the other. He had only to circle partway around the mountain to find a support camp. The nearest boulders all seemed in agreement. He started off, letting the robot do the walking to save oxygen while he did the steering.

The necessity of remaining awake and the monotony of the task of guiding the machine left Isoke time for reflection. As the kilometers fell behind him and the air and fuel tanks were expended with the hours, he became increasingly apprehensive. Chief Scientist Alma Fredericks had moved the advanced laboratory Crawler Six toward the base of the far ridge. Suppose she had also relocated the support camp? He could not walk that far with the supplies he had.

Isoke cut back on his environmental oxygen feed rate in order to keep the fuel cells running for locomotion and refrigeration. To save on the latter usage, he raised the thermostat setting and compensated for the increased temperature by drinking more of the water that was accumulating in his supply tank. He had plenty of water. Too much, really, from the fuel cells and his own metabolism. The by-product of the fuel cells supplied the drinking water. The invisible evaporation from his skin and lungs was scavenged by the scrubber and diverted to the cooling system, which ran the vapor through the heat exchange before flushing it to the outside.

Now that he was off the mountain, Isoke had time to recall as he steered that his own crawler chief Anton Petrov had required all the pressure suits to be equipped with a second safety line. Otherwise, it would not have been possible for Isoke to complete his descent of the cliff. Right now, though, the construction foreman lay injured and perhaps still unconscious from impacts received in a rockslide. What was the precaution against that?

Not that Anton would have avoided his task had he known the outcome. The man had never, to Isoke’s knowledge, uttered a single word in his own behalf. Their two companions, also, had apparently never considered an alternative to the current arrangement, although Isoke had, for other valid reasons, agreed with them. If one stayed, they both stayed.

Ellen’s parting remark haunted him. Even if we don’t make it, we’ll be alright. That simple confidence brought him to face himself honestly. He was not lacking in bravery–he had proved that to himself many times over–but he was afraid to die. Not only was it an animal reflex but, he realized, it reached his intellectual being as well, an aspect of his personality he had always proudly considered to be firmly objective in any situation.

His conversation with meteorologist Saul Rabinowicz came back to him. To trust the old way is to distrust the new. Isoke’s parents and their parents had adopted Christian practices while retaining traditional rituals, whereas he had remained the quiet skeptic. Saul had put into words what Isoke had subconsciously felt. Combining belief practices to garner favors from both was to reject both. You could choose one, or neither.

The last spare hydrogen bottle was swapped in, allowing Isoke to duck out of the rack he had carried down the mountain. Only the two equipment bags remained. His efficiency would increase from reduced weight as it had every time he left one of those pressure tanks out in the desert. Expensive, considering transportation from Earth, but less expensive than dying. Maybe they could be recovered. Maybe they would be if someone used their successive locations to estimate his course.

He only knew that he was heading, on the average, at right angles to limpetweeds growing in the lee of thermals pointing to an intermittent shield volcano. Those vectors would be biased by morning storms, to what extent, he didn’t know. If he was directly upwind of the mountain, as he believed he was, then his heading was fairly accurate. His positioning, though, could not be determined in the same way. He could easily pass the installation to either side, and no one would know, himself included. And still the gauges crept toward zero.

So did his chance of survival. Isoke started to record a message, flagged, Public, Automatic Transmit, Repeat concerning the accident. He gave as much detail as he could remember: the route, place descriptions, dates and times, the conditions and circumstances and speculations as to cause.

There was no signal on any of the radio channels. Either he was out of range or the unit was inoperative. Whether broken or disconnected from the antenna mattered less than the lack of the time he would need to find the problem, let alone fix it, if that were possible. If the camp had moved, the condition of the transceiver was immaterial.

He took care to adjust the oxygen flow lower whenever its consumption outpaced that of the hydrogen. It was getting harder to concentrate...unconsciously lapsing into his household tongue as awareness faded of everything but completing the description of where his friends were...did God speak Bantu....

*      *      *

Hey, Bill, do you see something down there? Ten o’clock, about two kilometers.

Yeah, I see it, now. It looks like something wandering around, heading mostly crosswind toward where our camp used to be. Let me get some more magnification on my screen. That’s funny, it’s one of our own suits. No spare tanks–might be a robot. No radio signal, either, not even a locator pulse. Wonder what it’s doing out here?

It looks broken down to me. We’d better pick it up and get it fixed. You know what those things cost.

Hey! There’s a guy in there. He’s unconscious. Help me get him up the ramp.

Let’s switch the tanks, first. He might be out of air.

Oh, yes. Empty as a lunar fishpond.

Enough of the weird stuff. We’ve got to get him to altitude. From his side port, I can see a message flashing on the instrument panel, but I can’t make it out. We’ll have to get his helmet open to read it.

There is a message recorded on the suit computer. He didn’t finish it; with the radio not working, it was never sent. It switches to another language, right in the middle. Some kind of African, I’d say. No idea what it says except his crawler was wrecked, high on the mountain. More English. Someone was hurt. Bill replayed the file. Lava flow on ridge...They’re higher than that. ’Nother lava flow. The message would send an aerial search party in the right direction. It would save time, but it was not specific enough to pinpoint the crawler. He linked to ground support. Who’s ahead of us?

Nine, I think, the Crawler Six operator replied. Send them a copy. We’ll have them head that way, but you’ve got to wake him up.

I’m trying.

The dry, cold flow of pure, bottled oxygen made Isoke cough and gasp under the respirator. He tried to figure out where he was, too weak even to sit up. The suit harness he hadn’t noticed would have stopped him, anyway.

Try not to move; you’ve had a concussion, came a voice. We found the message you started. Where’s your crawler?

Memory came rushing back. Number Three, he forced past a choking cough. On the mountain. Trouble. Came for help. He sank back inside his suit, exhausted. Must hurry.

The voice again. Can you tell us exactly where they are? Take your time, we’re recording.

*      *      *

The survey plane bucked in the swirling air currents. The spotter muttered, Can’t we get any closer, Frank? I can’t see much of anything with this yellow film sticking to the windshield.’

Not a chance. That last downdraft almost got us. The air is so thick it just pushes us around. Remember what happened to Don and Charlie. I’m climbing above this branch of the volcano. Try turning on the heat sensor. They’re not too far from a fresh lava flow.

Okay, it’s on. They flew around a shoulder of the mountain.

Look at the height of that cliff! You don’t suppose that’s the one Isoke climbed down?

Could be, there’s a hot spot ‘way beyond the top of the slope above it. Might be lava. You’ve got to get closer.

Next, month, Angela, you pay the insurance. You asked for it. To its occupants, the craft appeared to settle lower as it circled toward the upper slope. The mountain was big, Frank thought, much bigger than it seemed from even a moderate distance. Now if Isoke gave us the right altitude...

The instrument panel beeped.

We’re getting a phased-array transmission from directly downwind, the pilot reported. Appears to be atmospheric-sensor data. Either it marks a scientifically interesting spot....

Or it’s a distress beacon, Angela finished.

Either way, they were there once. I’m following it in.

I see something! Half buried in the rocks!

CHAPTER TWO

Airlift

Man, it’s hot in here. And this steam. Like a Finnish bathhouse. If we’re going to check all the living spaces, we’ll have to move fast. Angela started to pop her suit hatch, but a warble from her instrument panel stopped her. There’s only twenty percent pressure in here. Strange. Don’t open up unless you equalize your suit first. Angela followed her own advice while clearing her ears frantically and worrying about the bends. Maybe if she didn’t wait too long to repressurize…and started to climb into the lab area. Ow! Hey watch it, this deck is hot!

So warned, Frank tiptoed his own suit cautiously up the first short ladder from the cross-corridor and peered from behind the cockpit seats back along the laboratory deck, afraid of what he was almost certain he would encounter. But he saw nothing but a few scattered mattresses and a pair of heavy work gloves lying by the suit access hatches. He squeezed headfirst partway into the darkened bunkroom and scanned it with his suit lights while Angela, suit closed again against the heat, peered into the engine room, noted the large, empty hammock. Both engines were running at low power. Back into the lab area, Frank eased open the bathroom door and was greeted by a gush of steam. He linked to Angela climbing the ladders.

There’s no one here.

*      *      *

Ellen gave Mike’s extended hand a gentle squeeze from across the engine-room hammock, felt a tremor of response, then nothing. She eased Mike’s forearm around the ice bucket between them so the rapidly warming meltwater wouldn’t spill while it did its small part in slowing his overheating, then carefully sat up. A wave of heat washed over her as she eased out of the hammock to stand unsteadily on the even hotter floor. Even so, she was more tolerant of high temperature than either Mike or Anton. If either was to survive, she had to act immediately.

The best place for Mike was in his suit, as long as they could keep charging the pressure tanks it used. He would want to protest that such a move was not fair, but improving his condition would take nothing from Anton, who could not be safely moved, anyway, while the nature and extent of his internal injuries remained unknown. In fact, two working crew would be to the disabled foreman’s greater potential benefit. Ellen stared through the open doorway at the access to the upper deck. Without an overhead lift, she could not see how she could ever get Mike up there and into his suit without injuring him. Best revive him first.

Despite its proximity to the lava flow that had forced them onto a basalt formation at the edge of the ridge, the coolest spot in the crawler was the starboard side of the bottom deck where Anton lay. As long as the heat pump they had constructed from the disabled airlock on that side kept running, it should stay that way. She would have to improve that advantage to include Mike.

First, she had to get him there. Ellen carried the ice bucket back into the cross-corridor and placed it between their injured crewmate and the heat exchange that was attempting to cool the crawler’s hull. She hurried upstairs and grabbed the edge of a bunkroom mattress drying on the deck following saturation with hot water vapor from the bathroom. She pulled the mattress down the half-ladders after her, fighting to get it around the corner without its hanging up on the railing. Once across the corridor, she positioned the mattress under one side of the hammock. Tugging on Mike’s arms and shoulders rolled his limp form to the edge. Either he was getting heavier, or the heat was getting to her, too. The strength of desperation got him out of the hammock. Gravity got them both to the mattress. She managed to avoid hurting either of them as they fell, and received only a mild reminder of the danger of touching metal surfaces as she pushed away from an exposed part of the engine housing to guide their fall. Her husband barely reacted to the bumpy ride. From there, she towed the mattress like a sled. Passing the doorway was the most difficult part, turning Mike’s conveyance in the limited space beyond without pulling him against the hot doorframe.

Once in the cross-corridor, Ellen pulled Mike alongside Anton with what little spacing the corridor width would allow. She stepped out between their bedding and panted in the hot air, hands on knees. Mike had thicker insulation under him, but Anton was nearer the cooler flooring. Unless the air temperature followed its underlying influence toward more-livable conditions, the difference wouldn’t mean much.

Not that the floor was all that cool. And underneath was a large pair of fuel tanks separated from semi-liquid lava rock by only a generous thickness of steel alloy, an equally thick layer of insulation and, between them, some circulation tubes filled with lukewarm water. Ellen ran back upstairs, gasping in the heat, and flipped open the floor hatch, without which there would be a hole in the floor every time someone went outside, then her suit hatch. The cover and rim were painfully hot, but the suit was still powered up. Ellen dropped into the harness, closed the hatch and disconnected from the docking frame. She immediately turned and ducked into the engine room.

Only the Zezmul’s starboard engine was running. Mike had started it to recharge the fuel-cell supply. The regulated temperature of an engine was hundreds of degrees less than the outside air. The lava-saturated ground surrounding the stranded crawler was hundreds of degrees hotter than even the air. The sustained temperature immediately within the radius of the engines’ fuel-injection ports was even hotter than that, although the temperature of the lava beneath them would be quite sufficient to ignite the fuel vapor building up in the tanks. So, using fuel that could otherwise explode and kill them would activate the refrigeration-enhanced heat exchanges that would keep the engines from overheating.

Ellen had had only a rudimentary introduction to crawler mechanics, but it was a beginning. She started the portside engine. As the turbine disks whined up to speed, the auxiliary tank above the stern end of the engines caught her attention. She rapped it experimentally. It sounded empty. The engines drew their fuel from the original, bottom tanks, replenished from the add-on by gravity feed. If she reversed the process, pumping from the upper tank, would the fuel be drawn up from below by suction?

It sounded good, at first. Ellen looked for a way to reroute the fuel. Then a science demonstration she had seen a long time earlier reminded her. Independent of the reduced atmospheric pressure she had achieved inside the crawler, but proportional to the density and subsequent column weight per cross-section of the fuel, the suction necessary to displace the fuel vertically between tanks would generate twenty tons of pressure on the welded sheet-steel walls of the auxiliary tank and crush it within seconds. That was at the starting distance, the minimum pressure, when the bottom tank was full and the top one was empty. By the end of the procedure, the column height would more than double, from the bottom of the main fuel tank to the top of the auxiliary container. And as with a deep well on Earth, where a pure vacuum would be insufficient to pump water from a depth of more than ten meters, at twenty percent of normal atmospheric pressure in the room, there would be barely enough suction to pump the fuel up to the bottom of the upper tank, anyway.

But that was why an artesian well pump pushed the water up from the bottom. The electrically powered fuel pumps in the crawler were bolted to the deck, as close to the main tanks as flammability would allow. Ellen shut down the port engine, disconnected the fuel line from that engine’s intake port and closed the valves connecting the auxiliary tank to the main fuel storage. A length of flexible tubing from a supply cabinet across the corridor completed the connection from the fuel line into the fill port of the upper tank. She flipped the override to the portside fuel pump.

When the upper tank was half filled, Ellen reconnected the fuel line to the engine and restarted it. She repeated the procedure for the starboard side. If the greatly reduced fuel supply in the main tanks ran out, she would tap the auxiliary tank directly for more.

Unless she discovered a new principle of physics in the next twenty-four hours, none of them would be alive to make the adjustment. Ellen began walling off the starboard part of the cross-corridor with anything she could find, boxes of supplies, mostly, bulky and minimally heat-conducting preferred. A small gap remained near the ceiling, but the barrier didn’t have to be airtight as long as it discouraged the free exchange of air with the rest of the crawler. In place of a door, she brought two more of the mattresses down from the laboratory deck and jammed them vertically into the opening that remained near the forward bulkhead. She draped a tarp over the face of the collection as a final barrier.

That was all she could think of for inside the crawler at the moment. Ellen refilled the ice bucket from the tray beneath the airlock heat exchange and wiped down