Analog SFF, March 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Search and rescue,” Bart shouted. “I'll assemble our gear.”

  “Roger that,” I said.

  “It's been too long, Rick.” Trev gave us the particulars, and Bart and I both ran some quick mental calculations.

  “She could possibly be alive,” Bart said.

  “You're joking. Listen, fellows, I know you came out all this way and are bored crazy from the trip, and I'm very sorry, but—”

  “Bart's right,” I said. “If she managed to reach one of the P&A caches, there's a fair chance she's okay.”

  Bart flexed his knees and hit his fists together, his whole body chomping on a bit. I nodded, and he rushed off to assemble our gear. I lingered with Trev, to hear some details.

  “No,” he said.

  “Trev, it's Colleen.” To me, just the mention of the name should have had an effect. In a field of mostly men, we tended to pamper the women, even though they were usually made of stronger stuff then we. It's not that they needed special treatment; it's that we needed to give it. And it wasn't just Colleen. One of the engineers was missing too, some guy named Miller.

  Trev's face fell. He'd grown some gray around the temples, which made him tired-looking. “She wasn't supposed to go down there again. None of you were. We're officially closing down.”

  I swallowed hard. Bart and I had just returned to Callisto for what we heard was a major discovery, only to learn on the way that the operation was dismantling. Colleen made a last-ditch effort to find her diamonds before the entire outpost was decommissioned.

  Trev turned his back, looking at a chart on the wall. It was a map of the Devil's Throat—a natural cavern system that only a handful of living people had visited. “It's too dangerous,” he said. “We're on a skeleton crew as it is.”

  “Listen, Trev. This is eating me up. Every second we waste...” I couldn't help but feel that Colleen's timing was no accident. She knew we were nearing the Jupiter system when she entered the Throat yesterday. It would be like her to milk the eleventh hour preparing for us.

  Trev nodded his head in sympathy, but persisted. “There's a very good reason why you shouldn't go down there. She said that if she ever got lost in the caverns, no one should come after her.”

  “That's ridiculous. Of course she knows we'd rescue her.”

  “It sounded more like a warning than anything noble. My answer is no.”

  My head grew hot. “Come on, Trev!” I stepped near, almost getting in his face. He stepped back. “I don't know what went wrong, but I swear, I'm going to find out.”

  Trev held up a hand to stop me and rubbed his eyes with his fingers across the bridge of his nose. He shook his head. But then he slowly came closer, leaning to my ear so as not to be recorded by the ubiquitous WyrdNet.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Go.”

  “Roger that!” I whispered back.

  * * * *

  Bart had his metallic silver-skinned pressure suit, a Reynolds, and I had my mustard-yellow-and-black Armstrong. Colleen's was designer metallic green and magenta, a gift from a manufacturer I was under contract not to name. We helped each other put on the equipment, pants first, tops, then air cyclers, power packs, and spare kits. Then boots, gloves, and finally helmets. Even Bart's narrow skull became spherical when he put his helmet on, and with his deep acne scars, he looked like the pocked moon we were on.

  We checked each other's systems. I've never been anywhere where the need for redundant equipment was as great as the caverns of Callisto. On this trip, Bart was my ultimate redundancy. It felt strange without our third. Colleen was the best damn cavernaut that ever was.

  We checked our com channels and synchronized slew-up algorithms. By tradition, we exchanged a silent thumbs-up, the standard signal for dead radio situations. Then a “let's roll” with wheeling fists.

  The airlock filled with cold water melted from a frozen subsurface lake. When it was full, the hatch on the top opened, and Bart started up the short ladder. The liquid airlock served to rinse dust from the suits upon return and to reveal any air leaks in our suits. If there's a leak, you'll see bubbles. I followed Bart over the top of the airlock and down the outer ramp. Our suits steamed as they quickly dried.

  I threw the switch on a post by the ramp, and the lights came on. There was a brief flicker that most would not have noticed, but Bart and I exchanged looks. Probably corrosion in the switch from the occasional vapor vented from the bowels of this moon. If this was not our last trip down, we'd have replaced the switch immediately.

  The Devil's Throat was now hit by a floodlight—a doctor's light peering into a patient's mouth. The throat image was pretty obvious when the cavern was discovered, and the inevitable names given by the exploration team stuck. We were operating inside a dangerous, if not malevolent, body.

  Off the narrow ramp and into the Devil's Throat, we passed a hanging outcropping called the Epiglottis. This was not a true stalactite, but we called it that. We were cavernauts, not geologists. Our job was to get the geologists into the cave, install their gear, and get them out safely. We left the science to them.

  “Pressure check,” Bart said over the radio. “I'm at point three one atmospheres and change.”

  “Point two niner niner,” I said, miffed that Bart preempted my lead. This was his way of asserting himself. It didn't matter, really; our search and recovery plan was a good one, and Bart knew that a little breach of protocol was okay once in a while. Bart, Colleen and I were well oiled, and Bart knew just how far he could get under my skin without endangering us. My tendency was to let him, and when I thought about it, I had probably been trying to show Colleen that I was taking the higher ground.

  It's a little complicated, but while I was officially the Team Lead, I deferred to Colleen as the expert and almost always yielded procedural decisions to her. Bart knew this and respected me for it.

  “Okay, Chief,” he said. Sensing tension, he'd backed off.

  We rounded the Epiglottis, leaving behind the last traces of the holographic, wireless WyrdNet, that “web of synchronicity and reciprocity” named from some Norse weaving myth. Here was blessed solitude, quiet like the muting of a sound system that had blared static at full volume. No more inquiries for status, subtle warnings, transaction updates, confirmations of messages blocked, and other electronic leeches. And no more belated messages from my pregnant Sharron.

  A personal theory of mine. Something happened to people when virtual computers were invented. Other than a terminus and the occasional plexer, they had no hardware at all. It became easier for people to accept a system as part of themselves when it was not intrusive. This caused a shift in focus away from the physical body. People became more interested in the spirit, or the mind, or the community. Things like tanning salons and fad diets were replaced by philanthropy on AngelWeb, and infoleaks from Mensanet. Throughput addiction became an acceptable lifestyle. You were old-fashioned if you didn't flash on a holoweb, and you were antisocial if you unplugged.

  Something about the startling information silence down here made me feel we might hear Colleen at any moment, calling for help. She wasn't dead, not yet. I knew I wasn't in denial, but that's the rub, isn't it?

  From the Epiglottis, we had installed a fixed line that branched through the most heavily traveled passages. Originally it was wired for lights, but the acidity of the occasional venting caused the system to fail more often than it was worth. A complicated pattern of weak tides from Jupiter and the other large moons kept some little fires burning at Callisto's core.

  Global positioning and NORAN were also useless down there. Suit telemetry worked, at close range. Everything has to be carried, and everything can fail. During the worst incident, each of us had a light fail at nearly the same time. We had spare lights, but Colleen invented a rule on the spot: Always stay arm's length from the line. That way you could find it in the dark and follow it out. We also started using chemical Glo-Boyz.

  The lights had failed due to corrosion, in partic
ular because the rubber seals were not durable. They were artificial rubber, made on Mars from human fingernails and body oils extracted from laundry. We switched to real rubber, even though it was more expensive.

  I ran my glove along the fixed line, and it vibrated up my arm. All the lines were coded. They were made of braided nanotubes, coated with some kind of highly reflective plastic. This coating was ribbed so that if you rubbed it the wrong way, it vibrated in your hand. If you ran your hand along it in the direction of the cavern exit, it did not stick like that. Every ten meters there were waffle ridges on the line, alternating from smooth to rough. Rough sections every hundred meters and finer ridges every ten marked the distance. In total darkness, you could tell where you were and stumble your way out.

  There was no signal from Colleen or Miller. Any telemetry in the line would register on my console, so clearly they were not on the main line.

  My shadow from Bart's light bobbed on the brown rock wall that curved away to the right. The line branched at Left Lung, and we headed down Line 1 at a pretty good clip. The other path was a shortcut to a lift we'd made, but it was for lowering equipment, not people. The last glow from the lamp above the Epiglottis vanished, so that the cavern was sculpted only by our lights. The fissure slanted steeply left, but you could lean a hand on the smooth wall and walk more or less upright.

  We were both silent. Colleen would sometimes hum old show tunes or talk her batteries to death. Callisto was her rebound relationship. Her marriage had torn her up—I know, because I trained with her in the underwater caves of Florida during that time—and she needed something impossibly difficult to get her mind off her ex. She found it here.

  “Where do you think she is?” Bart said.

  “Probably in the Bowels.”

  We approached the first cache of air with hope. Though we were getting no line or radio telemetry, there was a chance she was there. The bottles appeared in our lights, but there was no one there. The cache was untouched, reducing the chances that Colleen and Miller were alive.

  We jumped from Line 1 to Line 2, trying not to think about her. This was a shortcut to the Bowels, which we also called Devil's Anus to make the geologists think it was really dangerous. We didn't want to have to rescue them.

  I began the climb over the Gallstone. Bart waited until I was safe on top. It wouldn't do if I fell on top of him; one accident needn't become two. There wasn't room on top for both of us, so I continued under Pinched Nerve.

  There were many such tight spots, but this one had a nasty dip in the middle of it, so you really had to work it. Those of us who were experienced had techniques. Mine was to make sure I entered the dip with my right elbow. Then I'd swivel my right hip, roll halfway in, scuffle my right leg through, and then roll back to my original attitude. If I was carrying an extra air bottle, I'd strap it on my left side so it wouldn't get in the way. All the work was with the right side; the left stayed limp.

  Previously, two men had died here, Ron and Kanuit. Ron got stuck, and Kanuit was trapped behind him.

  “I'm through.”

  “Okay,” said Bart. “I'm in.”

  While I waited, I recorded an audio log entry on our progress. Bart caught up and we drifted in microgravity down Gallstone on a rope ladder. When I got to the bottom, I held the ladder for Bart.

  “Hey, look at that!” he said, aiming his wrist light at the ground.

  A glint caught my eye, and there sat an object, covered with ice, but clearly artificial. About the size and shape of a bread loaf. I picked it up.

  “Termite.”

  A termite was a boring robot, made to cut through soil and ice and send back telemetry. Useful to get around hard objects that were impractical to bore through. They were named termites because actual termites had discovered the largest diamond mines on Earth.

  “Looks like this one was digging for diamonds and found water.” Bart took it from me to have a closer look. “Doesn't look damaged, but it's out of power. It must have bored all the way through the lake, and then through the bottom.”

  It seemed to me too much a coincidence that it was so close to the trail, until I recalled Colleen's fascination with diamonds. Her helmet faceplate was a slenter of some kind, and her corneas had diamond coatings. I also knew her pain in giving up the rock on her ring finger. I wouldn't put it past her to place this termite where we would find it, maybe as a sign that she had found what she was looking for.

  We continued on the line. Everything looked different from the reverse angle. The shadows made the formations look completely different. In effect, Colleen and Bart and I had memorized the tunnels twice, once as they appeared going down, and once as they appeared going out.

  A distant booming sound froze us in our tracks. We felt it through our boots. Though this moon wasn't quite geologically dead, it was comatose. There weren't quakes.

  “That felt like an explosion.”

  I shook my head, exaggerating the motion as one does to be understood in an environment suit. “No one should be blasting while we're down here.”

  “It felt like it came from above.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I should think.”

  There was no more sound or vibration, so we continued on. This was the Esophagus, and it was by far the easiest traverse at this depth. Three thousand meters below the Alchemetrix water and oxygen extractor, several thousand from the geo station, the Esophagus was wide and flat, a stroll through a black gullet of a canyon. Alchemetrix sat on an underground layer of ice, typical of this moon. Unlike most moons out here, Callisto was not well differentiated into geologic layers. It was a frozen stew.

  “What say we switch places?”

  “No, thanks.” I wondered why Bart had asked. Was he bucking for the lead?

  “Okay, Chief. Just thought you might be getting tired.” That rankled me, partly because of the way he said it, but mostly because he said it.

  The Esophagus narrowed to a V. We straddled it for about fifty meters, until it ended in a sharply pocked wall. It's to climb for.

  “Still want to go first?” He really sounded like he wanted to lead this time.

  I hooked my right arm around the line and found a foothold. “Yes,” I said, not wanting to give up the lead, if only because he kept mentioning it.

  I stepped up and found handholds. I'd been on Earth for a while and had built my muscles back up. Callisto's gravity was as feeble as a baby tugging on your finger.

  A baby. For a moment, my thoughts were again whisked away to Sharron. Her baby was due any day, and it was hard to forget that, even under the circumstances. As I lifted my foot, my arm whacked against one of my spare air bottles, and my wrist computer went out.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Console?”

  “Yeah. The LED, at least.”

  There was no way to repair the console down here so I switched to my spare, a semi-integrated computer in my left chest pocket. I clipped it to a ring and turned it on. It blinked, and a shaking-hands icon verified that it had connected to my internal computer via radio. I left the broken console in place—I've seen them get whacked a second time and come back to life.

  Bart bent backward to look up at me. “Want to call the mission?” Was that a sneer in his voice?

  “No.”

  “Protocol?” asked Bart. Was he challenging me to breach Colleen's rules? I got the feeling that Bart was somehow pitting me against her. Without her there, would I follow her protocol or assert my own judgment?

  “We lose one more vital, we abort. Or did you have a better idea?”

  “No, no. Of course not.” So Bart was not about to deny her, either. Either of us bucking protocol would have implicitly excluded her as part of the team. We were still a team of three; neither of us had given up on her yet.

  We scooted on our butts about ten meters to Fatboy's Lap. Bart cleared his throat and all but insisted on taking the lead. This was about the third time he'd asked to go first, so there had to be a
pretty good reason for it. Colleen had always gone along with me being in charge, but now I gathered that Bart had been jealous.

  Everyone loved Colleen. Dark auburn hair, widely set eyes that scrunched when she smiled, handsome square chin, strong body proportioned for hard work. She had a hit-and-run friendliness that made you feel briefly cared for, and then you'd have to work hard to get her to notice you were even alive. Like me, Bart got past that, into her inner sanctum. What did he have to prove now?

  “What is this with you taking the lead?” I said.

  “I'm thinking to check the Sinuses, instead of the Bowels.”

  “Is there something about all this that you're not telling me?”

  “You know, Chief, there just might be.”

  With that tart remark, I wasn't about to let him go in front. If he had something to say, he'd damn well better say it. He didn't, so I led on, striking up a harmless conversation.

  “What did you think of The Men and the Mirror ?” I said.

  “Is that a movie?”

  “No, the book we read on the Ozark.” The Ozark was originally named after some place in the Midwest, but the joke was that the Ozark was an ark from Oz, carrying assorted munchkins, witches, flying monkeys, and tin men like us.

  “Was that on textnet?”

  “No,” I said. “Dead tree. Your initials were in the back of it.” Paper books will always be on spaceships. There's nothing worse than amp rationing, and no entertainment for days on end. By tradition, we signed the books we read, like carving our initials in a real tree.

  “The Men and the Mirror ? I never read it. That was probably Bill McKinney. He reads a lot and has my initials. What was it about?”

  “Nineteen-thirties science-fiction stories by some guy named Rocklynne. Dated, but wild ideas. This space detective chases a brilliant criminal to a new moon or something in each story. They invariably get trapped in some landscape feature or alien artifact. There's no way out, and they'll both die, unless they work together.”