by GARY DARBY
“Stay on this course and speed,” Bianca directed. “When you get to the beginning of this finger lake, peel off and head up the lake to this location. Once we make our turn, the other ships will make theirs and proceed to their designated landing sites.”
She pointed to a spot where a cluster of three volcanoes formed a rough shoreline. “Look for a landing spot near the base of this mountain, but I don’t want to go too high up its flank. Any questions?”
Dason shook his head, forgetting to ask about the two scouter craft he had noticed on the radar. With the ship on autopilot for now, he was absorbed in what he could spot through the sylcron window.
Though Stygar Six seemed to be an empty, lifeless world; nonetheless, other than Alistar, it was Dason’s first alien planet as a novice scout and that made it exciting.
A little over an hour later, Dason could see the volcanoes’ cone-shaped tops peeking over the horizon. Just ahead, a carrot tint in the landscape materialized. Dason called out, “Lake coming up.”
“Got it,” Bianca responded and came forward to sit in the copilot’s chair.
Sticking his head into the pilot’s pod, Sami waved a hand toward the view. “What’s in those lakes? Certainly not good old aitch-two-o?”
Bianca shook her head. “No water down there. Calling them finger lakes is a bit misleading. These are more like catch basins for a corrosive mixture that resembles hydrochloric acid.
“From our spectra-analysis, the acidity level is off the pH scale. Since these trenches sit just below the volcano string, it’s possible that the liquid is spewing out from underground vents.”
“Terrific,” Sami grumbled. “And we’re going to fly over a whole lake of the stuff.”
Bianca’s mouth lifted in a slight smile. “If we lost power and hit the drink, even if immersed, the ship’s titanium-sylcron frame would withstand the liquid’s corrosive effects. But not your flex-suit. It might take a little while, but it’ll eat right through.”
With a little laugh, she said, “This is not where you’d want to hold a beach party.”
She gestured toward the upcoming lake while saying to Dason, “Pilot, we’re coming up to our divergence point.”
Turning to Sami, she directed, “Take the copilot seat. I’ll be aft catching a few winks.”
She looked at both with a fixed expression. “And with one hand on my laz-gun. I sleep light, shoot without hesitation, and never miss. Understood?”
Dason and Sami both nodded in answer, very sure that she meant every word. After Bianca had slipped past to enter the troop compartment, Sami settled into the copilot’s chair. “Whew, she is one tough lady.”
“Lady?” Dason countered. “She’s female all right, but I don’t see any ladylike qualities in her.”
“Guess that depends on your perspective,” Sami replied. “Where I come from, she’d be one desired lady. With her on your arm you could strut tall and proud and nobody is gonna mess with your house.”
Dason stared in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right? I’ll grant you she’s tough, but she hasn’t any sense of loyalty to anyone or anything other than herself.
“If I had her on my arm, I’d have my other hand holding a cocked laz-gun just waiting for her to stick a knife in my side.”
A tiny squawk from the nav computer reminded Dason that it was time to make his course correction. He opened the comms channel to the trailing scouters.
“All craft, this is three. We’re changing course to our set-down site. Begin your individual runs.” One by one the others acknowledged and peeled off to each side.
Making his turn over the basin, Dason could see that the acidic liquid ranged in color from an almost gold like tint near the cliff’s base to a dark orange, tinged with traces of crimson, in the lake’s center.
In some places streaks of shimmering yellow and thick reds swirled through the liquid in changing patterns as if someone dragged a finger through multicolored finger paint.
Gesturing toward the liquid, Sami asked, “Wonder how deep it is?”
Dason shook his head. “Don't know, but I'm more interested in knowing if there's alien life swimming around down there.”
“In that stuff? It would need armor plating two meters thick.”
“Yes, but remember what the Scoutmaster said, ‘The chance of life in any environment is possible, if life is given a chance to survive in any possible environment.’”
“Yeah, well, you're not going to get me to do no Seek and Locate in that goop.”
“Not to worry,” Dason replied. “Bianca’s only interested in her quadro-diamonds, so I'm sure we're not going to take a dip. But,” he continued giving Sami a sideways glance, “there isn't any reason why we can't drop lower, just in case something does pop its head up.”
With a grin, he whispered, “Who knows, maybe this is the Loch Ness monster’s real hiding place.”
“And make the Scots hopping mad?” Sami stammered. “No alien in his right mind would be so stupid.”
Dason grinned again and guided the ship down until it was just meters above the swirling eddies. He locked in the altitude settings and put the craft on autopilot.
Minutes went by while he scanned the flat, wave less surface but except for the occasional orange or yellow swirl of color, the acid lake seemed almost featureless.
Dason glanced over at Sami, who had lost interest in the terrain and now fiddled with the control board.
Shifting around in his seat to get more comfortable, Dason started to make a comment when the autopilot’s robotic voice blared out.
“Warning! Adjust altitude. Adjust altitude. Safety zone violation. Adjust altitude.”
“What did you touch?” Dason yelled at Sami.
“Nothing!” Sami yelled back. “I swear. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Dason shouted, “but we’re going down!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Star Date 2433.057
Stygar Six
“Going down!?” Sami bawled. “What do you mean we’re going down?”
“Check your panel!” Dason ordered while he worked his own controls to stop their impending crash before they slammed into the burnt-orange acid.
Dason had programmed an altitude alert if the craft dropped to within five meters of the lake. Scanning his height-above-surface display, he found that the scouter had lost several meters of height in mere seconds.
“That can’t be . . .” he began when Bianca almost jumped into the pilot pod.
“What’s wrong?!” she demanded.
Rechecking his flight controls, Dason replied in a puzzled tone, “Nothing, I guess. I set the autopilot at ten meters’ altitude with a safety limit of five meters.
“We lost six, almost seven meters of altitude and the alarm started sounding. But I didn’t feel a thing when we dropped and now we’re back at the preprogrammed height.”
Bianca motioned Sami out of his seat and sat down. She scanned the pilot board, her fingers tapping on several instruments as she read the displays.
The ship flew smoothly along, nothing seemed amiss. Shrugging her slim shoulders, she observed, “I didn’t feel anything either. Get some altitude and run a diagnostic.”
“Roger,” Dason replied and brought the little craft up to fifty meters above the lake.
With swift fingers, he ran a computer scan on the shipboard controls. He turned to Bianca. “Everything checks out, within standard parameters.”
She tapped on the armrest. “Never known one of these ships to give a false alarm.”
Bianca leaned forward and brought up Dason’s last order to the compu on the display. Studying it if for a second, she leaned back with a smile.
She turned to the two scouts. “It’s possible that the alert was correct, that we actually lost those meters, but not from the scouter dropping, but the other way around.”
Sami asked from behind, “Huh? You mean the surface rose six meters?”
“But” Dason p
rotested, “I didn’t see a wave, and I was looking forward the whole time.”
She peered at the two with an amused expression. “You’re the two smart scouts—if it wasn’t a linear wave that set the alarm off, then what was it? And don’t take all day to figure it out, either.”
Dason and Sami exchanged glances. Sami frowned and gave a big shrug. Dason spoke as if thinking aloud.
“Well, if it wasn’t a wave, then it must have been something similar, like a large up swell or one huge bubble. Both of which would have to be sizeable enough to trip the altitude safety warning.”
He furrowed his brows as another thought struck him. “Is it possible for the whole lake to rise?” Dason asked.
Bianca tilted her head and glanced at the roiling surface below. “Anything is possible out here. On Terra, there are documented cases of substantial rises in the water level of ponds and wells prior to major earthquakes.
“But we’re talking Terran geology, which is not always a good model to use in the Out Lands. To raise a liquid body of this mass up several meters would take a titanic event.
“But you’re right; we probably went over a giant gas bubble, perhaps from chemical reactions in the acid. But that’s only part of the reason.”
She tapped on the console. “I suggest you check out the flight parameters you gave the compu to work off.”
Puzzled, Dason leaned forward, brought up his own compu event screen and scanned it for several moments. Then, he leaned back red-faced.
“I forgot to tell the auto-brain to account for surface height changes. It was using the same altitude when I inputted the command.”
“That’s right,” Bianca affirmed. Her forehead creased and her lips tightened. “You did solo qualify on these craft?”
“Yes,” Dason murmured.
She glanced over her shoulder at Sami. “From now on, you two double-check each other or else Jy and I’ll take over and you two can be sightseers.”
Dason didn’t quite understand why Bianca wanted the two scouts to pilot the craft anyway, but he would rather have something to do than sit in the back and twiddle his thumbs.
“It won’t happen again,” Dason muttered.
“Good,” Bianca replied before peering out the window on her side. “Why were you flying so low, anyway?”
“Because,” Sami quipped from behind, “our pilot thought that this could be a hidey-hole for the Loch Ness monster. He wanted to get up close for a better look.”
Bianca turned to Dason. “You're not serious?”
Dason glanced at Sami and growled, “Thanks, Sami.”
Bianca lifted the corners of her mouth slightly and whispered eerily as if she were telling a ghost story. “No, me hearty lads, Nessie doesn’t live here.
“But just below the surface lies the giant Korffish with its glowing red eyes and slimy tentacles hunting for a meal.
“And it loves nothing better than to snack on young scoutees!”
She laughed to herself, rose and returned to the mid compartment.
Dason and Sami glanced at each other, shaking their heads. “If I thought it was bad before,” Sami muttered, “it’s gonna be a looong week if we have to listen to anymore of that.”
“Stupid on my part,” Dason acknowledged, jutting his chin at the command console. “I know better than that.”
“Hey,” Sami replied, “at least you didn’t plow us into a mountain . . . or a greenhouse for that matter.”
Minutes later, Dason flew the scouter up and over the chalky white cliffs that marked the finger lake’s terminus and put the scouter into a slow glide toward a flat, boulder-free spot on the volcano’s craggy flank.
Bianca poked her head into the pilot’s compartment, and Dason motioned toward the gray-black site. “You want to check this out?” he asked.
She gave it an approving nod. “Looks good. Set her down, pilot.”
Dason used his belly thrusters to hover just above the gritty terrain. Giving the ground a final once-over, he eased the ship down. The vessel swayed for a second before three steady green lights shone on Dason’s flight board indicating his landing struts were on solid ground.
Cutting his thrusters, Dason placed the ship into standby mode while Bianca ordered, “Sami and Jy, you’re up for the first survey. Dason and I will take the second shift.”
As Sami adjusted his suit he said to Dason, “Hey, log the exact second that I hit dirt.”
Puzzled, Dason asked, “Sure, why?”
“Little wager between TJ and me. She bet that she would be the first to set foot on a noncolonized alien planet. I said I would. Looks like I’m going to win the bet.”
Dason gave Sami a shrug and asked, “What’s the payoff?”
“If she wins, I sing ‘You’re the only fiery comet I’ll ever need’ at graduation.”
“And if you win?”
“She sets me up with a date with her younger twin sisters.”
“Not bad,” Dason returned. “Which sister?”
“Not which,” Sami replied with a wink. “Both. Same date, same time, just me and the twins.”
Dason tried not to laugh, while Jy let out a full belly laugh. Bianca said with a snap to her order, “Knock it off. Socialize on your own time. Right now you’re on mine.
“Sami, check the airlock, manual test-cycle. Inspect the seals, disinfectant spray, and blower. Dason, man your pilot board and monitor ship’s systems. Jy, break out the collection kits.”
Dason turned to have a good look at the terrain. Around them, threadlike curls of smoke and steam wafted out of small depressions that looked like craggy dimples dotting the mountain flank.
At times, rolling wisps of gas obscured his sight, but above, set almost equidistant apart loomed three giant volcanic peaks. The two flanking summits of the threesome appeared dead while the one in the center had a long, thin column of smoke curling upward.
Dason knew from geology coursework that on Earth so-called extinct or dormant volcanoes might still harbor eruptive forces, but as Bianca had noted, Terran geology was a poor guide for OutLand worlds.
Dason had just fine-tuned a control when he felt the little ship rock from side to side. “What was that?” Sami asked through the comms.
“Remember those ground shifts that I told you about?” Bianca answered. “Well, the ground just shifted.”
Dason frowned at her reply, thinking it would take quite an earth movement to cause the ship to pitch that much.
Just then, Jy reported over the communicator, “We’re cycling through, stand by for external hatch opening.” A red light appeared on Dason’s nav console indicating that the outer door was now open to Stygar Six’s poisonous elements.
Dason soon spied two figures walking across the desolate landscape. A figure turned and waved. He could see it was Sami and waved back.
Over the comms Jy explained to Sami, “We’re looking for obsidian-like material interlaced with white flakes. The mineral analyzer will read between plus four and plus six on the carbon scale.”
“Got it,” Sami replied. “Hard, shiny black rocks with white freckles.”
Dason watched as the two toiled up the mountain’s steep flank, on occasion losing their footing in the gravel-like dirt. They crisscrossed the slope until they stopped some twenty meters above the landing site.
Without warning, the craft lurched from side to side. He rose out of his seat when Sami and Jy lost their footing and in awkward positions slid downhill.
Dason’s eyes widened slightly as he watched tiny seismic waves course through the soil sending a small avalanche down the steep slope.
Bianca called over the communicator, “Jy, Sami. Status.”
“We’re okay,” Jy grunted. “Just knocked us down the hill a bit.”
“Yeah,” Sami quipped, “Jy’s fine since he rode most of the way down sitting on my chest.”
Bianca turned to Dason. “Inject a ground motion sensor through the number one underbelly port. We need to mon
itor this seismic activity. That was a pretty strong jolt.”
“Stand by,” Dason responded. He entered the commands and fired the super hardened boron nitride ram several meters deep into the ground.
Looking at his control display, he affirmed, “Sensors operative.”
“What are the readings?” Bianca asked.
Dason scanned the data and answered, “Tremor harmonics are up and down the scale. The seismic scan shows the longest at about twenty seconds in duration. Strong primary waves followed by significant secondary waves.”
“Strongest P-wave depth?” she asked.
“Five kilometers.” He paused and then offered in a pensive tone, "From what I remember, that usually means magma displacement and not tectonic activity, and it’s pretty close to the surface."
"You remember correctly," Bianca replied tersely.
Bianca started to speak again, but Dason held up a hand. “Hold on, here comes another one.” For several seconds, the scouter swayed and rocked from the ground motion.
Dason, watching the data stream from the sensor spotted a worrisome sign that caused him to say, “Bianca, the readout shows a double, perhaps even a triple oscillation.”
Bianca leaned forward to stare at the readings. “We must have multiple pressure points, all convulsing upward.”
The tremors’ intensity scale rose even higher. “I don’t like this,” Bianca remarked with an edge to her voice. “The amplitude and frequency are increasing and the activity is way too shallow. We may have landed on a ticking bomb.”
With a fierce grip, Bianca clamped her hand down hard on Dason’s shoulder. “The lake rise!” she exclaimed. “I’m an idiot.”
Over the communicator, she ordered, “Jy, Sami. Get back to the ship now!”
“Coming,” Jy answered.
“Get the ship powered up,” she ordered Dason. “When they’re in the airlock and sealed, power us out of here, away from this volcano line, full thrust.”
Dason’s hands flew over the console powering the ship up, ready to jet away at a single command. He understood Bianca’s urgency.