Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  "But not all of us are listening to God's word." Stuart gestured at one of the closest domes. "We're here, among God's other chosen people. All of us will be restored to our own sparkling clean worlds. But not if we tamper. Not if we're disobedient.

  "God obviously wants us to stay here until He is ready for us to go back. God has obviously put His word over our heads. But there are people who are trying to escape this enclosure, trying to pretend they are on an equal footing with God. And they're trying to interpret God's word with no assistance from the religious community that surely is ready to help.

  "Even as I talk to you, these people, with the mayor's consent, are putting us at risk. Their egotism, their sheer arrogance, is going to make God decide He has made a mistake—–that none of us should be allowed to return to a pristine Earth. If they continue, they will kill us all!"

  #

  Abby walked beside Matt as he looked for Rudy. They found him finishing a conversation with a couple of workers.

  Rudy looked up, saw them, and smiled. "We're just about at the surface," he said. "Come on and take a look."

  Matt glanced at her, and she nodded. Matt said, "Lead on."

  Rudy guided them past the motor–driven winch and toward the tunnel mouth. "Since you were here last, we added the winch to help bring out the stuff we've dug and to carry up more wall lining material."

  "Wow," Abby said as they got into the tunnel.

  "Some view, huh?" Rudy said. "This will take us a few minutes. You're looking at about a ten–story climb." The tunnel ran straight through the gray goo, climbing at a thirty–percent grade.

  It reminded Abby of a long escalator tunnel, but this one was longer than any she'd been in. From here, the top of the tunnel was just a point of light.

  The trio passed an empty wheeled cart as it rolled down the tunnel floor, bouncing lightly from one plastic beam to the next. Cables at both ends connected its handles to a line overhead.

  Rudy said, "Walking up and down this kind of a grade without stairs will use some muscles you might not normally use. Don't be too surprised if you're a little sore tomorrow."

  "That seems funny," Abby said. "With the light gravity it's hard to imagine anyone straining a muscle."

  "Yeah, that's what I thought, too."

  They finally reached the top of the tunnel, where it widened into a square room about three meters on a side. A horizontal brace at waist height spanned the room. One end of the brace met the plastic beams forming the wall. The other side of the beam braced a large square panel on the opposite wall. Protruding from the ceiling was a periscope. The level floor and ceiling were lined with plastic beams. At the base of two of the walls, steel beams rested on the floor.

  Rudy went to the periscope and swung the eyepiece toward Matt and Abby. "Want to take a look around?"

  Matt gestured to Abby to go ahead.

  Through the periscope Abby got her first view of the Manhattan dome from the outside. By turning the periscope, she saw a ground–level view of the flat gray plain and a couple of other domes in the distance. She let Matt take his turn.

  Abby looked back down the tunnel while Matt was occupied. It somehow looked even longer from this perspective.

  "What are the I–beams for?" Matt asked when he finished with the periscope.

  Rudy glanced at one of the beams. "To keep us from floating to the top. I didn't think about that right away, but when we first got this section completed, the ceiling was about a meter under the surface. When we checked again, the distance had shrunk to about ninety centimeters. Then I finally got smart. Especially with this top section having a bigger volume, we're essentially a big bubble in molasses. As long as what's in the bubble weighs less than the same volume of goo, we slowly float upward. If we load this place down too much, we'll sink. Get it just right, and we'll float at a constant depth."

  An idle cable suddenly tightened, then started to move, and a pulley mounted to the ceiling braces began to rotate as the cable reeled, bringing something up from the bottom.

  "Time for my surprise," Rudy said. "Help me move this beam."

  As Rudy spun a handle several turns, the beam across the room loosened. Matt looked puzzled as he helped Rudy move the beam to the edge of the room. Rudy moved aside the plate covering most of one wall and exposed a large circle of gray goo almost as tall as the room itself.

  Abby looked down the tunnel. Something large was blocking most of the light, leaving only the occasional overhead lamps to show where the tunnel was.

  As the shape coming up the tunnel grew larger, Rudy said, "Okay. Now you've got two choices. We can cut through the roof here according to plan, and start walking on the surface. And then we run the risk of sinking slowly into this stuff if we're forced to stop for a while. And we run the risk of being detected.

  "Or we can get there beneath the surface with the borer."

  Matt looked as though he was about to start asking questions when Rudy waved him silent. Seconds later, an enormous contraption with a round plate on the front end swung slowly from the tunnel into the room. Rudy clicked a button on a small box in his pocket and the contraption came to a halt.

  Abby and Matt walked slowly around the machine, in spots having to squeeze between it and the wall. The thing, a modified compact tank, was about the size of a car, but more boxy and windowless. At the front end were two huge disks, taller than the rest of the contraption, even taller than Abby, and about a half–meter thick, mounted adjacently like two large truck tires on the same axle. At the back Abby could see tank–like treads. Shiny tubing ran from a large tank forward into a maze of pumps and cables. Near the lower rear was a huge box labeled "Fuel Cell."

  Rudy cautioned them to back into the tunnel for just a minute. He reached up and unsnapped a clasp, and the device settled onto the floor. He pushed some more buttons on his remote, and the tank–like thing went into action, moving toward the circular surface of gray goo. The huge round front of the contraption lined up with the exposed round patch of goo, and a long plunger slowly telescoped from the rear of the unit until it started to push against the braced wall and then halted. A mechanical whine grew louder, and Abby realized the outside disk on the front of the contraption was being pushed into the exposed goo.

  Several seconds later, the front disk had pushed directly into the goo, and less than a minute later the disk behind it was covered, also. Rudy pushed some more buttons, and the plunger retracted into the body of the machine. Abby and Matt came back into the room.

  As a couple of Rudy's crew silently joined them in the room, the contraption suddenly moved farther into the wall for half a meter, stopped, then resumed, again tunneling through the goo. She smiled at Matt's expression of wonder.

  "Rudy, you're a genius," Matt said softly.

  The borer was disappearing into the round tunnel it created. Someone had stuck a bumper sticker on the rear end. "I brake for aliens."

  Rudy looked as pleased as a kid who'd just learned to ride a bike. "Thanks. We don't know for sure yet, but it should be able to do about a kilometer an hour. The front disk contains a piston. The back disk expands when it stops, to anchor the unit, and it heats the goo around the perimeter, making it tough enough, we think, to maintain the tunnel shape. While it's anchored, the piston pushes forward to make the tunnel slightly longer. When that cycle is complete, the piston retracts, the back disk compresses, and the treads take it forward for the next step. When we heat the goo, it oxidizes, turning darker and getting more dense. It also flows and expands very slightly, so I think we've found the best way to move through it."

  "You're really a genius," Matt said again.

  "I didn't do this on my own. I just helped design it. With the entire resources of Manhattan available, there isn't much we can't do. We think that with this size of tunnel, surrounded by the much denser rubbery goo that we get when we heat the stuff, that the tunnel will float just below the surface. So, if you want, you can tunnel to the next dome. What we'll ha
ve to be a little careful about is not letting it sit in any one place too long, because it's so heavy."

  Rudy grabbed a hand–drill with a long bit, entered the round tunnel, which was already a few meters deep, and waved them in. It was darker since no lights had been installed, but Abby could see circles around the perimeter every half–meter or so. Rudy drilled straight up through the roof of the tunnel. Moments later came a whoosh of escaping air.

  Rudy hurried back into the room and retrieved a gray pipe with a knobby end. He pushed the plain end into the hole, and then aimed his hardhat light at the end sticking out. "Since the atmosphere out there is tolerable, we'll put a pressure seal in this room, and all you need to do is every once in a while put in one of these ventilation fans so you'll have breathable air no matter how long the tunnel gets. We've got two models: a blower and a sucker. This one's meant to suck air into the tunnel. And it's got a built–in light. The pipe itself is a wrapped up sheet battery.

  "The blower model is similar, but it has a tube that drops to the floor, so those will handle carbon dioxide exhaust. Even though carbon dioxide's heavier than oxygen, the air mixes enough that you won't actually have a carbon dioxide layer at the bottom of the tunnel. If we put these in a little closer together than necessary to get just enough oxygen, it should all work out fine."

  The borer had continued to move while Rudy explained. Abby was sure it was moving at the equivalent of a very slow walk.

  Matt's grin was infectious. "Rudy, you're a nuking genius." He looked into the darkness of the tunnel the borer had left in its wake. "I guess we're about ready for the strangest journey we've ever had."

  Abby looked at the disappearing borer and felt a tiny chill. "Or maybe the second strangest."

  #

  Ten days after the capture, Dorine Underwood gave the team a brief send–off. "I want you to remember that we'll have a large, heavily armed team ready to follow you if you run into trouble."

  "We appreciate that," said Matt. "I know you'd like to send a larger team to begin with. In some ways I agree, but I have to admit, I'm a little glad the oxygen limitation forces us to go with a small number. That puts fewer people at risk, and it should lower the chances of our being detected." Despite some strong opinions among Dorine's advisors, he had successfully argued for his choices on the team, justifying Rudy on the basis of having been the key designer of the borer, plus his general engineering and military skills. Contacting the residents of other domes without someone like Abby would have been pointless. Bobby Joe would be there for help with electronics and science, since some of the communication attempts might well need to tap a common understanding of how the universe worked.

  Julie and several other journalists stood at the rear of the conference room, capturing events on video for the rest of the population.

  Dorine looked at the map on her wall. It showed the intended route through the domes. With her concurrence, the path headed toward the dome that was transmitting, veering near some of the domes between Manhattan and the destination dome, mainly domes the telescopic survey had told them contained civilizations that looked the most similar to human life.

  #

  Matt used his walkie–talkie to tell the people back in Manhattan all was well. In the darkness ahead, the borer continued its jerky assault on the goo. Behind him was Abby, lit by the headlights of a small electric cart driven by Bobby Joe Brewster. And behind Bobby Joe was the longest pipe Matt had ever seen. Far in the distance, Rudy's hardhat lamp bobbed as he walked toward them, catching up fairly easily. The limited space overhead denied him the low–gravity lope, but he was doing fine with the lean–way–forward– and–keep–from–falling gait. Everyone wore a knife, to be used to cut themselves out if the tunnel walls collapsed. Their shirts and pants sported numerous small pockets, each with a snapping flap.

  Abby's soft voice rose above the mechanical noises from the borer and the electric cart. "Too bad Rudy didn't design a borer that cut square tunnels. I keep turning my ankle." The tunnel walls absorbed the sound, unlike an actual pipe that would have generated metallic echoes.

  "You could drive," Matt said.

  "And deprive Bobby Joe?"

  Matt could feel her smile in the dim light. Driving for hours at parade velocity would be grating for him, too. But Bobby Joe had been an urbanite for so long that driving was a change of pace.

  Rudy caught up and sat on the rear deck of the small trailer towed by the cart. He put the drill back in a tray on top. "Okay. The last air pump seems to be working fine. And the readings say we still have plenty of oxygen."

  The smell of the air in the tunnel made Matt think of a clear, warm day high enough in the mountains that the pollutants were rarer than they were in the city. They had all adjusted easily to the reduced pressure, since the oxygen content of the gas outside was slightly higher than on Earth. Fortunately it wasn't enough higher to make fire a severe risk. The air temperature was a few degrees higher than the new Manhattan norm, but with short sleeves and limited exertion that wasn't a problem either.

  "Great," Matt said. "Bobby Joe, how much farther?" One of the things Matt had learned so far was that Bobby Joe didn't like being called BJ.

  Bobby Joe consulted a small display resting on a ledge near the steering wheel and added, "Just about a kilometer."

  That meant they'd covered almost nine kilometers, or roughly twice the east–west width of Manhattan. Matt's legs felt tired despite the low gravity. He probably wouldn't have been that tired if they had walked briskly the whole way, but somehow the shopping–mall pace fatigued him more.

  They could have let the borer continue ahead unattended and then catch up from time to time, but Matt didn't have enough confidence in it yet. If the heating element failed to operate for some reason, the borer might just start to sink into the depths of the goo, a submarine with no ballast tanks.

  From time to time, Matt pushed hard on the tunnel walls to convince himself they were indeed the stiffer form of the gray goo, and that they wouldn't soon start closing in. The warmth left behind by the borer was comforting. The human body was heavier than the goo, so without that barrier they would eventually sink to the neutral buoyancy depth, however far down that was, but not before they were left trying to breathe gray goo.

  Half a kilometer later, they stopped long enough to unfold the porta–potty for those in need and to drill another air pump hole. By the time they caught up with the borer, they were almost at the dome.

  "How about if you let me take the lead?" Rudy asked.

  That was fine with Matt. He and Abby followed as Bobby Joe called out distances and Rudy controlled the borer's path, trying to guide it into a curve that just touched the dome.

  "I've probably got up to thirty meters of slop in these readings," Bobby Joe said.

  Rudy said, "That's all right. If we have too hard a time, we can drill another air tube and take a closer look."

  "Fifty meters…forty meters."

  The tunnel began to curve noticeably over the next couple of minutes, bearing right, so they could graze the side of the dome.

  Matt looked back and decided the tunnel had curved about thirty degrees and risen slightly. A moment later, the nearest light behind them winked out as they continued the curve. The cart's headlights illuminated Rudy and the borer.

  "Thirty meters…twenty meters."

  They curved still more.

  "Ten meters. We're turned eighty degrees."

  Rudy kept the tunnel straight from that point. Seconds later the noise from the borer shifted. It seemed to be slowing down for ten or twenty seconds, and then resumed its normal noise.

  "I think we're there," Rudy called back.

  As Matt and Abby came forward, the tunnel began to curve slightly to the left, following the edge of the dome. Rudy stopped the borer and backed it up a couple of meters. Bobby Joe stopped the cart, and Matt and Abby crawled past the trailer and the cart to get up to where Rudy stood.

  A couple of swat
hs of black showed at about shoulder height on the wall nearest the dome. Matt looked closely, and his hardhat lamp illuminated the familiar black barrier texture.

  "Time to surface, Captain?" Bobby Joe asked.

  "Actually it's 'Colonel,'" Rudy corrected.

  "That's right? You're really a colonel?"

  Matt said, "Yes, but I'm a little out of my jurisdiction. 'Matt' will do just fine. And, yes, I'd say it's time to surface."

  "All right! I'll get the stuff."

  Matt and Abby exchanged grins.

  Moments later Bobby Joe was back with a kit of tools. Rudy put on a pair of goggles, and then grabbed the drill. At the top of the tunnel, he drilled a vertical hole. Moments later, light filtered through the small hole. Rudy inserted a periscope and took a brief look. "Want to see?"

  Abby and Bobby Joe took the next looks. When they were finished Matt put his eye to the periscope. Directly in front of him, less than a meter away was the edge of the bubble. "Great work, Rudy."

  Rudy picked up a circular saw and plugged it into the extension cord from the power supply on the cart. The other three backed up as Rudy applied the saw to the tunnel ceiling. In less than a minute, he had a rectangular piece of goo cut loose, and diffuse light made the tunnel brighter. They could see the dome rising and curving out of sight from where they stood. Rudy applied a torch to the edge of the goo to keep it from spilling into the tunnel, and Matt had Bobby Joe get the cart so they could stand on it.

  Matt pulled a gray tarp from a bag of supplies. When the cart was in place, he climbed up on it, holding the tarp over his head as he rose. A moment later, his head and chest were above the plain. He reached up and taped two corners of the tarp to the outside of the bubble, then pulled the other two corners away from his body. In the distance was the Manhattan dome looking quiet and calm. He heard nothing except his own breath. The sheer distance of flat nothingness felt eerie.