by Paul Preuss
“Do I remember you?” Antreen repeated.
“Does the word SPARTA mean anything to you?” Sparta asked.
Uncertainty creased Antreen’s brow. “Is that … is that a name?”
Sparta felt her throat tighten, felt tears well in her eyes. “Good-bye, gray lady. You’re an innocent again.”
Blake Redfield was waiting in the weightless corridor outside the Ishtar Gate, mingling with the floating pack of gawkers and mediahounds who had been trailing the police in eager desperation. Sparta slipped past the yellow tape and sought him out.
When he saw her face he was surprised, then concerned. She let him study her bruises. “I watched my back, like you told me.” She tried to grin with swollen lips. “She got me from the front.”
When he held out his hand, she took it. Holding his hand, it was easier to ignore the questions the reporters were shouting at them, the curses of those who sounded like they were ready to kill for a quote. But when Kara Antreen was pulled past on a floating stretcher the photogram recorders all swung to follow the procession, and the mediacrowd swam off after them like sharks after chum. Sparta and Blake lingered behind a moment—
“Want to take the short cut?”
—and a few seconds later they had disappeared.
They darted through the darkened tunnels and conduits toward the central sphere, keeping pace with each other.
“Did you know it was Antreen all along?” Blake asked.
“No, but the first sight of her prodded my memory. Something down deep, something I couldn’t bring to consciousness made me know it was a good idea to stay out of her way. This just now was her second attempt. She was the one who used the robot on us.”
“I thought that was Sylvester!”
“So did I. Anger is the enemy of reason, and I was so mad I wasn’t thinking straight. Sondra Sylvester wanted that book more than anything, much more than she wanted Nancybeth, or even to humiliate Darlington. She never would have risked the real book, even if she’d overheard us talking and knew she was caught. It was Antreen who bugged the ship and heard us.”
They flew in silence, then, until they came to their lookout overlooking the central gardens and went to ground. Perfectly alone in the swinging cage of light, they found themselves suddenly, unaccountably shy.
Sparta forced herself to go on. “Antreen went aboard Star Queen and fueled the robot, while I was staging my show-and-tell lecture about sabotage. Setting a trap for the wrong people.” She laughed wearily. “She got the opportunity she wanted before she was ready for it. She sure didn’t expect to deal with you. When the robot didn’t do the job I think she realized how hard it was going to be to kill me outright, at least in a way that wouldn’t bring suspicion on herself. So she went for my memory. After all, it worked once before. She’d have been after you, next.”
“Did you learn anything about your parents?” he asked, quietly and urgently. “About the rest of them?”
Sparta shook her head. “Too late,” she said sadly. “Antreen couldn’t tell us anything now if she wanted to.” This time she reached out to him and gently took his hand.
He covered her hand with his, then reached to cup her chin. “Then we’ll have to do it alone, I guess. The two of us. Find them. If you’re ready to let me play this game.”
His spicy aroma was especially delicious when he was only inches away. “I should have let you before.” She leaned weightlessly forward and let her bruised lips rest on his.
EPILOGUE
McNeil told the rest of the untold truth without further hedging, the next time she confronted him. He had moved out of the clinic and rented a room in transient crew quarters, but he spent most of his time in his favorite French restaurant, on the concourse opposite the poplars of Samarkand. Recorded meadowlarks sang sweetly among the nearby trees.
“I knew you’d be back,” he said. “Will you have some of this excellent St. Emilion?”
She declined. She told him what she knew, and he filled in the rest. “And if I cooperate fully, how much time do you think they’ll give me for it?” he challenged her.
“Well, since the property was recovered…”
“Don’t forget, you’d have a hard time proving intent, if my lawyer was to be wise enough to keep me off the stand,” he said cheerfully.
“Slim chance. At any rate, we’d get you for the wine bottles.”
“Alas, the owner of all the commodities in question is since deceased.”
Sparta knew the cause of justice would not be served if she laughed out loud, so she nodded solemnly. “McNeil, you’ll be cooling your heels in a cell for at least four to six months.”
“Pity. Almost the length of a quick trip to the Mainbelt. Always tried to avoid those.”
“Perhaps I will have a glass of that,” she said.
He poured and she sipped. She thanked him. McNeil grew serious. “One thing you may be overlooking, Inspector. That is a magnificent book, not merely an object. It deserved to be owned by someone who could appreciate its contents. As well as its binding.”
“Are you suggesting you were motivated by more than greed, Mr. McNeil?”
“I’ve never told you a lie, Inspector. I admired Mrs. Sylvester. I’m sorry to see her come to ruin.”
“I believe you, McNeil. I always did.”
McNeil could take care of himself. Blake Redfield needed help. The investigation of Kara Antreen’s inexplicable pathological behavior would no doubt continue for months, if not years; it was with fleeting regret that Sparta laid sins at her door that she had not committed. Blake was never suspected of having blown a hatch, of having cut power, assaulted workers, broken into and burgled impounded government property. Instead, he faded into Sparta’s shadow…
Viktor Proboda was there at the docking bay to see them off with a bouquet of hydroponic asters. Accompanied by a chorus of mediafolk, Blake and Sparta were about to board the Helios, the first step in the long return trip to Earth.
“It was a pleasure, Viktor. If there’s any justice, it won’t be long until we…” Her commlink softly chimed. “One sec.”
She cocked her head and listened to the breathless dispatcher: “Inspector Troy! Inspector Troy! New orders from Earth Central! Your trip is canceled—you’re to report to headquarters right away.”
“What’s this about?” She looked up to see a squad of blue-suits already swimming toward them—her escort to unit headquarters.
A few seconds later, when she found time to answer Blake’s and Proboda’s insistent questions, all she could say was, “I’ll have to catch up with you later, Blake. I can’t tell you what’s happened. And you wouldn’t believe me if I did.”
Through the many-layered scandal that had absorbed their attention for the past weeks—through the burials and depositions and hearings and trials—the inhabitants of Port Hesperus had never ceased or even slowed their work. Five of Ishtar’s huge new robots had gone to the surface immediately after the Star Queen impoundment was lifted. The sixth was released to Ishtar and followed its fellows after forensic teams had lifted the last molecule of evidence from it and the ship it had ravaged.
The new robot corps was sent to explore a promising syncline on the glacis of the huge Lakshmi Plateau, in an area previously only lightly surveyed by surface rovers. Among the ore samples gathered on these prospecting expeditions was one odd fragment now residing in the Hesperian Museum—a fossil, one among only a dozen Venusian fossils.
It was not unexpected that when serious mining began in the region another fossil or two might appear. The operators on Port Hesperus had been asked to keep a close eye on their screens for just such an event.
The atmosphere of Venus is so dense at the surface and the light of the sun so diffuse that operating one of the glowing robots in many ways resembled operating a nodule miner on the bottom of Earth’s oceans. It was not always easy for an operator to know what he was seeing on the big screens. They showed him a bowl-shaped world with close
horizons tilting sharply up on every side, the sere rock everywhere glowing a dark orange. Looking at such a screen was like looking at the world through the bottom of a thick ashtray of orange glass. To drive an immense robot up a narrow canyon and under the overhang of an arching stratified canyon, sampling rock outcrops every few yards, could be both strenuous and disorienting.
So the operator of the Rolls-Royce HDVM, alert as he was, may be forgiven for not immediately recognizing that the creature’s slashing proboscis had broken into a cavern that was not, as it first appeared, a natural hollow in the cliff. So bizarre were the forms suddenly illuminated by the glare of the white-hot radiators that the operator had only moments to react—moments dangerously extended by the radio delay of the remote signal—to prevent the destruction of the lines upon lines of carved inscriptions and the gaunt, monstrous representations that loomed up suddenly on his screen.
BREAKING STRAIN
AN AFTERWORD BY
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Unlike some authors, I have not generally been given to collaborative work in the science fiction area, especially in regard to my novels which, for the most part, have been written alone. There have been, however, some notable exceptions. In the 1960s, I worked with director Stanley Kubrick on the most realistic SF film done to that time, an ambitious little project called 2001: A Space Odyssey. Over a decade and a half later, I had another close encounter with a Hollywood director named Peter Hyams, who produced and directed the visually impressive adaptation of my sequel, 2010.
Both films were rewarding experiences, and I found myself both surprised and delighted by some of the results. Now I find myself once again involved in an intriguing collaborative venture that has evolved from my original story, Breaking Strain.
The novella (horrid word!) Breaking Strain was written in the summer of 1948, while I was taking my belated degree at King’s College, London. My agent, Scott Meredith, then in his early twenties, promptly sold it to Thrilling Wonder Stories; it can be more conveniently located in my first collection of stories, Expedition to Earth (1954).
Soon after Breaking Strain appeared, some perceptive critic remarked that I apparently aspired to be the Kipling of the Spaceways. Even if I was not conscious of it, that was certainly a noble ambition—especially as I never imagined that the dawn of the Space Age was only nine years ahead.
And if I may be allowed to continue the immodest comparison, Kipling made two excellent attempts to being the Clarke of the Air Age; see “With the Night Mail” and “As Easy As ABC.” The ABC, incidentally, stands for Aerial Board of Control; we need something like that, with teeth, in this time of hijackings and air bombings.
Oh, yes, Breaking Strain. The original story is of course now slightly dated, though not as much as I had expected. In any case, that doesn’t matter; the kind of situation it describes is one which must have occurred countless times in the past and will be with us—in ever more sophisticated forms—as long as the human race endures.
Indeed, the near-catastrophe of the 1970 Apollo 13 mission presents some very close parallels. I still have hanging up on my wall the first page of the mission summary, on which NASA Administrator Tom Paine has written: “Just as you always said it would be, Arthur.”
But the planet Venus, alas, has gone; my friend Brian Aldiss neatly summed up our sense of loss in the title of his anthology Farewell, Fantastic Venus…
Where are the great rivers and seas, home of gigantic monsters that could provide a worthy challenge to heroes in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold? (Yes, ERB made several visits there, when Mars got boring.) Gone with the thousand-degree-Fahrenheit wind of sulphuric acid vapor…
Yet all is not lost. Though no human beings may ever walk the surface of Venus as it is today, in a few centuries—or millennia—we may refashion the planet nearer to the heart’s desire. The beautiful Evening Star may become the twin of Earth that we once thought it to be, and the remote successors of Star Queen will ply the spaceways between the worlds.
Paul Preuss, who knows about all these things, has cleverly updated my old tale and introduced some elements of which I never dreamed (though I’m amazed to see that The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was in the original; when I read the new text, I thought that was Paul’s invention). Although I deplore the fact that crime stories have such a universal attraction, I suppose that somebody will still be trying to make a dishonest buck selling life insurance the day before the Universe collapses into the final Black Hole.
It is also an interesting challenge combining the two genres of crime and science fiction, especially as some experts have claimed that it’s impossible. (My sole contribution here is “Trouble with Time”; and though I hate to say so, Isaac What’s-His-Name managed it superbly in his Caves of Steel series.)
Now it’s Paul’s turn. I think he’s done a pretty good job.
Arthur C. Clarke
Columbo, Sri Lanka
INFOPAK
TECHNICAL
BLUEPRINTS
On the following pages are computer-generated diagrams representing some of the structures and engineering found in Venus Prime:
Pages 2-5
Star Queen Interplanetary freighter—2 perspective views; wireframe and cut-away views of crew module; main engines; fuel tanks.
Pages 6-8
Port Hesperus Venus-orbiting space station—2 cut-away perspective views; axial components.
Pages 9-11
Mining Robot Mechanism for analysis and processing of Venusian surface elements—2 full-figure side views; individual mining components.
Page 12
Visual Feedback Enhancement A geological analysis of the Venus surface as seen by mining robot.
Page 13-16
Sparta Neuronal implant schematics—visual components; auditory components; olfactory components; tactile components.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE’S VENUS PRIME, VOLUME 2: MAELSTROM is an original publication of Avon Books. This work has never before appeared in book ten. This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
The setting and some of the events of Blake’s initiation into the Athanasian Society were inspired by the watercolor entitled “Subterranean Labyrinth for a Gothic House,” by Jean-Jacques Lequeu, reproduced on page 186 of the catalogue of the traveling exhibition Visionary Architects, by Dominique de Ménil, et al., University of St. Thomas, 1968.
Special thanks to Rena Wolner, John Douglas, Michael Kazan, Russell Galen and Randall Reich.
AVON BOOKS
A division of
The Hearst Corporation
105 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016
Text and artwork copyright © 1988 by Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Venus Prime is a trademark of Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
Published by arrangement with Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc.
Cover design, book design, and logo by Alex Jay/Studio J
Front cover painting by Jim Burns
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-91525
ISBN: 0-380-75345-6
All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc., 24 West 25th Street, New York, New York 10010.
First Avon Books Printing: September 1988
AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA REGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A.
Printed in the U.S.A.
K-R 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PROLOGUE
The thin wind whistled shrilly along the knife-edged ice. Needles of ice and scallops of ice thrust out of the compacted sand into the wind-borne grit. Gargoyles of ice hung from cliffs a kilometer high, brooding over the polar plain.
The wind was too thin to sustain a living thing but not too thin to carry the abrasive grit. The grit etched the
rock and heaped the sand and carved the ice and the hard stone into arches and buttresses and buttes. The thin wind was a digger.
The hole it was digging now, in the sand beneath the ice, had a piece of metal in it. The metal was shiny and hard, not so hard that it had not been shattered—who knows when or how—but so hard the wind-borne grit could not mar its mirror surface.
Something else had etched the metal and dug channels in it. The channels were different from each other but all the same height and width and depth. They ran in straight lines. There were three dozen different kinds of them, but they repeated themselves in various sequences until the total number of them, etched in the metal, was a thousand and more.
A Martian year after the wind dug the etched mirror out of the sand beneath the ice, a man in a pressure suit came along and found it lying exposed there and carried it away.
“You’re crazy, Johnny, you can’t keep a thing like that secret. How you gonna make money on somethin’ looks like nothin’ nobody’s ever seen before?”
“Are you sayin’ it’s not valuable, Liam?”
“I’m sayin’ it’s too valuable. It’s one of a kind. You won’t get no money fer it, under the table or over.”
This was about as private as you could get around here, in the poker nest under the pipe rack in the drill rig dome, where the booze and the dope were cached. The crew boss knew all about it; he didn’t give a squeak, as long as nobody showed up high on any company monitors. But you had to whisper in here. These damn domes carried sound from one side to the other just as good as a phone link, and you never knew who was standing over there listening in.
“Huh. Never thought I’d be accused of bein’ in possession of somethin’ too valuable.”