The Salamandrion: Short Reads, #14

By Mike Adamson

In the late 25th century, a systems analyst is called in to diagnose a strange instability in the computers of a base established on the most volcanically active planet ever encountered.
 

What he finds shakes his understanding of reality, because this planet is not as dead as it seems, and it wants humans gone—for their own sake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Hare Press
• Release date: Jul 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201511852

Book preview

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Chapter One

Ihad never felt a planet more aptly named than when I—Delmar Bantry, systems analyst—first saw Seraphina from orbit. There were 176 active volcanoes on Seraphina, and to look down on them from Vesta Station made one rethink ever coming to this wild, strange world. The money was good—that was all I could keep telling myself as I waited for the Koorland and Jarrow Corp. shuttle that would take me down to Vulcania Outpost where, I hoped, I would solve the problem vexing their computers.

‘Seraphina’ is a Hebrew word, meaning burning fire; some say there was once a goddess by that name, and if so then to look down upon her namesake is to stare into the heart of an inferno dwarfing Dante’s imagination.

The station’s cool silence mocked the fury below. To stand by long windows as Vesta raced across the night side of the planet was to be presented a pyrotechnic display of fountains and outgassing, agitated auroras, and calderas filled with the glowing guts of this tortured world. I cradled a cool drink and glanced at a time display, wondering how long I had before a shuttle would take me from comfort to Hell itself. The staff left me alone; they had seen enough technical experts come and go for one more to be less than a curiosity. I sank into a seat, its purple upholstery matching the carpet in some geometric pattern that made the eyes ache, and pulled up a data package on my wristie. I had looked over the specs on the ship on the way from Gagarin’s World, but now I was actually looking at the burning ball, a morbid fascination awoke in me, and my eyes drifted along lines of symbols projected above the gadget.

Heat. Seraphina was a massive heat engine a little smaller than Venus, whose 0.72 Earth-normal gravity was enough to hold most of its ejecta on the planet, despite eruptions sometimes rising thirty thousand metres high. After billions of years of violence, however, the eruptions had become strangely clean—they were typically fountaining effects on the Surtseyan model, rather than the gas explosions of a Strombolian type. There were extinct shield volcanoes like semi-healed scabs in a dozen places on the planet, whose seas, if they ever existed, had long evaporated. Lines of crustal spreading lay raw on the globe as rift eruptions, lines of fire on the dark side where the incredible stresses inside the planet continued to ever-so-slowly drive its solid crust in circulation patterns as if it were liquid.

My eyes reflected the burning panorama as I frowned. I knew then I had made a mistake taking this job, but it was too late to back out. Damn, I thought silently. Damn your ego, damn your need to be the fixer with the perfect record! Be more careful in future. And hope like hell you make it back from this heaving ball of slag.

A soft voice sounded over the PA. Mister Bantry, please make your way to docking point 4 for expeditional equipment, your shuttle is ready.

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Chapter Two

Stay focused, I told myself as I felt the shuttle buck in the corrosive, unbreathable atmosphere.