The Frozen Sky

by Jeff Carlson

  Maybe she’d been luckier than she thought.

  18.

  Her suit scampered into a hole like a storm pipe. Then her right knee gave out. Vonnie smashed into the rock and bounced away. In the air, she tensed, fighting to keep her face from hitting next.

  Her suit hurt her neck when it contorted like a cat. Lam patted her left heel and one hand against the wall, correcting her spin before he regained speed and clawed up through the maze with her bad leg trailing awkwardly, protecting it.

  “Lam?” she said. “Thank you.”

  —Are you injured?

  “No. Uh, no. Don’t interface with the med systems. My leg’s okay. Tell me about the suit.”

  —Every anterior cable in the knee snapped and one medial.

  They were falling apart. Her armor had never been intended to take this kind of abuse. Vonnie wasn’t doing much better. She was punch-drunk on stress and stimulants. It had been sixty-one hours since she’d slept. She didn’t want to make the wrong decision.

  “How long for repairs?”

  —Without the proper tools, our best option might be to scavenge material from the ankle, weld it solid, and restore some function to the knee. I estimate that would take an hour.

  “No. Keep going.”

  If they stopped, she was afraid she’d close her eyes. She should rest, but closing her eyes would feel too much like being blind again.

  According to his sims, they were approximately two kilometers down. Soon they needed to transition from rock to ice. This mountain rose up like a fin, always narrowing, disappearing before it neared the surface — but there would be islands suspended in the ice, free-standing hunks as large as Berlin and gravel fields like sheets and clouds. The trick was to find a gas vent that went all the way up. The trick was to ascend without touching off a rock swell.

  Vonnie avoided the thought. Too much planning would overwhelm her.

  They ducked a bulge in the ceiling and the gap opened into an ancient volcanic bubble. Half of it was glutted with ice, but just to look across three hundred meters of open space was disorienting. Vonnie felt the same uncertainty in Lam. The ghost scanned up and back.

  “What do you think?” she said. “There’s definitely some new melt over there. If we dig, we might get into a vent. We could leave this mountain and close the hole behind us.”

  He lit her visor with radar frames.

  —Look.

  “Oh.” Vonnie surprised herself. Even now, after everything, she felt excitement.

  There were more carvings on the far side of the cavern, at least ninety columns of eight chiseled into the rock. Lam detected no organic pellets like they’d found in the trench where they’d made camp, but the information or messages contained in the symbols tantalized her.

  “How fast can you record it?”

  —The degradation to this site appears significant. Detailed recordings may require hours.

  Vonnie limped across the cavern and pushed against a rock slab. The decayed fragments of the wall had shifted as water and ice intruded, retreated, and came again. Some wild feeling in her was able to guess which pieces were useless debris and which held carvings on one side or another.

  The feeling made the hair stand up on her arms and neck. It felt exactly like… “Wait.”

  —Sonar.

  Somehow she’d sensed those voices before Lam, but there was no time to speculate at the weird, creeping changes in herself. “How close are they?”

  —A thousand meters. What we’re hearing are echoes. They’re deep in the tunnels. They may not know we’re here.

  “They know.”

  —Their voices aren’t directed this way.

  “They will be. Can you pull up this piece? I think it came out of that corner of the wall. If we can scan whatever’s left on it, we’ll have most of this section.”

  The suit hobbled forward. How would it hold up in combat? Vonnie knew she didn’t want to fight in the open. She’d have a better chance if she found a hole and used her explosives to create a perimeter.

  “It’s not sunfish, is it?”

  —No. It’s the other lifeforms.

  Vonnie shoved at the rock, moving feverishly now. It felt good and right to stay. She was glad to have purpose again. She would kill as many of them as she had to, but she was more than a rat in a trap, running mindlessly.

  She’d worn down to the bedrock of herself and found what she needed, a last supply of courage and determination.

  Seven hundred carvings would be priceless in translation efforts. This wall might be their Rosetta Stone. Vonnie couldn’t abandon it. If she ran, even if she survived, the ESA might never find their way to this cavern again. And if she died… well, if she died, some day their probes might venture close enough to communicate with her suit. It would transmit her files even if she was buried and lost.

  Vonnie realized she was crying again and wasn’t angry with herself. She wasn’t ashamed. She’d done her best. Maybe that was enough.

  She dropped the rock and pushed over a smaller boulder with a chipped half-sun of a carving on the underside. “Got it?” she asked, feeling close to him again, the real him and the ghost. He was a potent friend.

  —They’re within six hundred meters.

  “You got it?”

  —Yes. There are more of them this time. Twelve. They’re moving faster.

  “Help me with this big rock.”

  The truth was she scarcely knew which questions to ask. She wasn’t puzzled that there were sunfish carvings in territory that was no longer theirs. These catacombs must have changed hands regularly or were deserted and reclaimed as the years passed, but she wondered why she hadn’t found more carvings, air locks, or reservoirs.

  Even if the sunfish had been exiled from this area for centuries, shouldn’t she have seen other signs of activity?

  Some part of the secret might be here. Vonnie was willing to defend it. In fact, she might find the answers she needed in the sunfishes’ rivals.

  Was it possible that Europa had given rise to more than one intelligence species? If so, where was the evidence of a second civilization? If not, what sort of animal was strong enough to drive off a thinking race?

  —I’ve finished recording this section.

  “Good,” Vonnie said.

  Then she swung to face the approaching voices with an excavation charge in either hand.

  19.

  The cavern seemed to stretch as her fear grew. She stayed near the carvings, trying to anchor herself. Deep radar let her track the new creatures while they were still out of sight. There were twelve bodies in the swarm, banging off the walls and ceiling of a gap.

  —Sixty meters. Fifty.

  Vonnie held her explosives. There were too many entrances, and she had only four half-sticks. She couldn’t throw one until they were almost on top of her. Otherwise they might get away, leaping back into the chasms on the far side.

  —Forty.

  They would catch her if she ran. She knew she had to stand her ground, but her adrenaline felt like a hundred chittering mice. She felt untamed and inhumanly quick.

  —They’re in the third tunnel.

  As soon as there was less rock in the way, Lam drew each body into clear resolution. They were no longer twelve overlapping blobs. They were sunfish.

  “Christ, you said…”

  They were different. These sunfish were larger, with longer arms and different skin, like cousins of the ones she’d fought. Cousins, yet a separate breed. To creatures who saw and spoke in sonar, the new sunfish would stand apart from the others if for no other reason than their size.

  As they flitted in and out of sight, Vonnie saw they were darker, too. But they didn’t enter the cavern. Were they trying to envelop her?

  Like the smaller sunfish, they must not have any idea what to make of a bipedal creature wrapped in metal and glass. That they hesitated was a positive sign.

  Vonnie spoke in a whisper. “You’re recording their sona
r calls, correct?”

  —Yes.

  “Get ready to broadcast some of those calls on my command. Can you tell me what they’re saying?”

  —The pitch and intonations of their voices are different than those of the smaller sunfish, although the body shapes they use are similar.

  Neither breed would be aware of their skin color. Maybe they smelled or tasted differently, but Vonnie reached one conclusion immediately because she could see. The increased mineral absorption in the skin and defensive spines of the larger sunfish suggested that they lived in the caustic waters of hot springs or the great salt ocean, unlike their smaller cousins, who might be limited to fresh water reservoirs.

  Their race diverged, she thought. They grew apart, each kind finding its niche like dark-skinned human beings in Africa and pale-skinned in Europe. What if their differences are more than cosmetic? Can they crossbreed with each other?

  More interesting, it wasn’t the larger sunfish who’d written on this rock wall. The size of the carvings was wrong. So was the surface texture, which matched the pebbly skin and spines of the smaller breed. The carvings belonged to the smaller sunfish. So did the nubs of cartilage Lam had identified in the feces they’d discovered.

  Vonnie’s thoughts crashed together as the elusive, feinting sunfish revolved around her like a living hurricane. They dodged in and out of the gaps surrounding the cavern.

  They’re eating each other! she realized. The two kinds of sunfish are at war.

  Were both breeds really intelligent? Did she want them to be? If not, the situation was akin to gorillas hunting people, a larger species preying upon its weaker, smarter relatives. That by itself was horrific. But if yes — if both breeds were sentient — they were cannibals.

  Yes, she thought. The word held a gruesome finality. I think the answer is yes.

  The larger sunfish used group tactics like the smaller breed. These weren’t animals. Their voices rose and fell, calling to each other as individual members of the pack maneuvering for position.

  They’re analyzing me. Confusing me.

  Eating their cousins was disgusting, but their war with each other was the more despicable crime. It was why she’d discovered so few traces of social organization. Instead of building more safe areas, instead of farming or writing, they fought.

  Their competition had been more than either side was able to withstand. In fact, she couldn’t be certain if the smaller sunfish she’d encountered were members of a single tribe or two or more. How far had their race lapsed into anarchy?

  “Broadcast your sonar calls,” she said. “Let’s talk to them. You said you can…”

  —Here they come.

  The new sunfish sprang into the cavern, a dual wave of bodies high and low. Vonnie’s chance to kill them cleanly would be gone in seconds. She had learned not to wait, but she’d also remembered who she was and why she’d come to Europa.

  “Lam, talk to them! Try to talk to them with body shapes!” she yelled.

  Her suit dropped down as the sunfish flew closer. Lam greeted them by altering his stance, lowering one shoulder and waggling her hands alongside her stomach.

  It was the right decision. Vonnie believed it. These sunfish were a new, separate population. She hoped they would answer her.

  20.

  The new breed reacted to Lam’s posture as they soared across the cavern. With a ripple of motion, their bodies shared an idea. Was it astonishment at Lam’s attempt to communicate? Vonnie realized they also used the fine pedicellaria beneath their arms to convey information. Lifting one arm or more, they showed each other dense, writhing patterns.

  Many of those arms were damaged. With radar targeting, Lam identified dozens of old scars and deformities. Vonnie had seen similar gashes among the smaller sunfish. She’d thought they’d sustained those wounds on the lava rock.

  The injuries were beak wounds.

  When the sunfish fought, they led with their undersides, snapping and slicing at each other. In all likelihood, the smaller sunfish were better at getting inside their cousins’ reach. They would sustain more deaths, yet left more marks on their adversaries.

  “Lam, hurry!” she shouted.

  He was limited by her form. He was also canny enough not to try to replicate the carvings or mimic what they’d seen of the smaller sunfish. The warring breeds might have separate languages, so Lam improvised, holding Vonnie in an uncomfortable ball as he stuttered her fingers against her torso. Her visor flickered with sun-shapes as he compared these twelve individuals with sims and real data.

  There was another ripple among them as Lam shifted and flexed. Did they understand?

  Please, Vonnie thought. Please.

  But he’d kept the half-sticks against her forearms with magnetic locks. Now he released two with a click.

  —Watch out.

  The dual waves of sunfish struck the ceiling and floor. They bounced toward her, intersecting with each other to create a single group.

  “Please!”

  They came with their beaks open, shrieking. They came with their arms thrown wide to grasp and tear.

  —Auto assault.

  Vonnie wept for them, monsters all of them. The intelligence she knew existed here was stunted and cold like everything inside Europa.

  Lam bashed her fist up through the first sunfish, then turned to swat the next. The rest never reached her.

  “Fire,” she said.

  He put both charges in the wall and shattered the carvings, ducking beneath a blast of rock.

  Then she turned and ran.

  The four survivors kept after her, of course. She’d dreamed the show of force would be enough, but these sunfish were no different than the smaller breed. Even with two-thirds of their group dead or bleeding out, they were relentless.

  Vonnie reached a tunnel and drove herself into the ceiling, crushing a sunfish on her shoulder. Lam pulled at the rock with both hands and cancelled her momentum, flinging debris back over her head. The shower hit the next three sunfish and Lam kicked downward with the suit’s arms out, clubbing them.

  She left the wounded to live or die, knowing it was a mistake to let them summon more of their tribe. She knew she would always be wrong for trespassing.

  For nearly an hour, Vonnie heard them behind her, crying into the mountain. The echoes faded as she climbed, except once when there were fresh voices. Had the larger breed brought reinforcements? Was there a third kind of sunfish? Their sonar calls were too diffuse to know for certain, and she was glad, dimly, muffled in exhaustion and grief.

  She climbed.

  She climbed without end.

  Even carried by the suit, she passed her limit, her tendons straining. Something in her back gave out above her pelvic bone, grinding with each step — and in her mind it was the same, one hurt which was more exquisite than the rest.

  She dug her way into a vent, leaving the monotony of the catacombs. But there was no escaping her sorrow.

  The leaning shaft up through the ice looked like the sink hole where Lam and Bauman had died, although her radar showed no dust and few mineral deposits within the melt. That was a positive sign. Geysers and swells meant instability. This vent looked solid. Vonnie thought she could ascend without bolts and wire, although her hands were sore and beaten.

  She climbed.

  She climbed slowly, evaluating the ice, scanning ahead. Suddenly there was a new sound. Dit dit dit dit dit dit. It was the rescue beacon of a probe overhead.

  Vonnie rasped out a noise like laughter as Lam returned the probe’s signals in the only manner available to him, a cacophony of terahertz and radar pulses. He repeated the chatter until the probe answered in the same way.

  —We made it, Von.

  “Yes.”

  —Let’s wait here. Can you wait? Seven bones and tendons in your hand are damaged, and your elbow isn’t much better. I don’t want to risk a fall.

  “Yes.”

  —They need fifteen minutes. Can you sle
ep? You should eat and rest.

  “No.” She couldn’t relax, hanging on the ice several hundred meters up with another quarter-kilometer to go. She kept one file open on her visor and let the data burn into her, staring through it even when she tipped her head to watch above.

  Lam had put together a preliminary transcript of the carvings. With it, they had an explanation.

  She was wrong.

  The error made her feel not like a teacher but like a student again, because just as Scandinavian and Inuit peoples had developed multiple words for snow, the sunfish had thirty-two stances to indicate surprise and danger. Sixteen more postures spoke of moving inward to protect the pack.

  Their all-or-nothing behavior wasn’t sadism or the result of animal stupidity. It was premeditated. It was a survival trait.

  The sunfish possessed more imagination and mental agility than she’d believed. Like every culture on Earth, they wrote stories of other worlds and nightmares. Their carvings hinted at places and legends similar to Atlantis, vampires, and poltergeists, but their past was saturated with real-life encounters with ancient ruins and strange creatures from distant pockets in the ice and separate lines of evolution.

  The sunfish had been confronted with aliens throughout their existence. That they’d never met anything like Vonnie before, that she mimicked their language and wore metal and carried tools — none of this would stop them.

  To the sunfish, everything beyond the pack was a competitor for safe zones and oxygen. Everything was food. By necessity, most lifeforms in the ice had learned the same vicious reflex.

  The sunfish attacked even when they were outsized or outnumbered. They’d learned to put the fight on their own terms. If they won, the pack expanded its territory. If they lost, not only did they have less mouths to feed, their dead became food for the survivors.

  Until they could conceive of anything else, until they were able to conceive of anything else, their first response would always be violence.

  The warring breeds she’d met seemed to be the remnants of an empire that had spread to the top of the frozen sky. Millennia ago, there had been a dormant period in Europa’s volcanic activity. Maybe someday there would be again. The carvings were short histories intended to aid the next alliance to rise from the chaos, offering commandments to share and proven methods to govern themselves in a hierarchy of scouts, warriors, workers, and breeding pairs.