by Carl Conrad
“Affirmative, Earth One,” he replied. “I can’t explain it, either. But my instruments are functioning perfectly.”
Scott was still bewildered. “What do you make of it, Marty?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to make of it. But, if I’m right, Scott, this whole planet may be just one hardened ball of liquid spinning in space.... Kind of like an egg – a soft, liquid center, and a hard shell around the outside. I know it sounds bizarre, but what other explanation could there be? I know my instruments are right.”
Realizing that they were moving over such precarious terrain flushed a silent chill through Scott’s limbs. It was like walking over newly-formed ice – not knowing where the soft spots were or whether it would hold their weight. But, the mission was too important to abort. Even this startling discovery was not sufficient to deter the effort that had brought them here. It had taken over three years of work and countless hundreds of billions of dollars to bring them to this planet; they couldn’t turn back now. The mission would have to go on, but perhaps with a greater degree of caution.
“Can you give us anything more?” Stimson asked. “We would like to know the structural composition if you can give it to us. Have you got anything, Marty?”
“Negative, Earth one. I’m going to continue with my tests, though, to substantiate. There’s an area off to my right that I’d like to check. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
“Affir...... ive...” There was a skip in the communications, but Fisk went on with his work.
“Scott,” he said. “watch your step. If it looks like it’s soft anywhere, try to avoid it. I’ll run a few tests over here and see if the whole surface is like this. It may not be.”
“Roger, Marty. I’ll keep my eyes open.” He took a few more steps. “Marty? Are you getting any static over your receiver?” There was a short, intermittent crackle inside Scott’s helmet.
“Negative,” Marty replied. “Why? Aren’t you picking me up?
“Yes, I’m picking you up, all right, but it seems to be coming from the hook-up with Stimson.... Stimson? Are you reading me? Stimson? Earth One? Do – you – read – me? he said slowly.
The signal was faint, almost as if he were talking in a whisper. “Af... rma...tive. We read.... but.... sig.... getting weak.... Seem.... losing.... Over?” Even the static was fading now.
“Stimson? Stimson, I repeat, are – you – reading – me?”
“Sig.... not clear.... trouble as before. Do you...... see.... might...... jump circuit.... Ov..r.”
“Earth One? Stimson? Do you read me?” Scott repeated.
There was no answer, only a hum as if a circuit was open but no voice coming over it.
“Something must be wrong with the hook-up, Marty. Are you getting a signal? Maybe it’s only my receiver.”
“Negative, Scott. But, I’m reading you all right. It could be the relay in the ship again. There’s no telling what this heat could be doing to it. All I could do before was splice around the relay. It may not have held.”
“Stimson?” he said once more, but there was only silence.
Scott turned to look back at the ship, weighing the alternatives. Did they dare continue their explorations without being in contact with Earth Control One? If they ran into trouble, there would be no way to ask for help, to get advice. They would be on their own with no way to communicate with Earth Control One or Grayson in the command module. They were cut off. But, as he continued to ponder the dilemma, Marty interrupted.
“Scott, I know what’s on your mind, and I think we should keep going. I’m not so sure I can fix it again, anyway – it may be out for good.”
“That means we’ll be out here alone, Marty – no way to communicate with Earth Control or Grayson.”
“I know. But, if we scrap the walk, it’ll throw the whole mission off schedule. Beside that – as I said – there’s no way to guarantee that I can get it fixed again.” He paused. “We might as well look at this realistically, Scott. We’ve got a job to do, and a lot of work ahead. The longer we wait, the less we can get done. I say we keep going. We’ll be back to the ship in another...” He glanced at his watch. “...in another hour and a half, anyway.”
“Yes, I know, I’ve been considering that. But, what if they think something’s happened to us? You know how Stimson was when we lost contact during the flight.”
“But, do you think he would’ve wanted us to turn around and go back?”
Marty waited for an answer. He knew the decision was Scott’s. Scott was the Mission Commander and had been on two previous flights to the moon. He knew what the consequences of turning back would be; lost time, an overcrowded schedule, work that would have to go unfinished. But, Scott also knew that going ahead without a hook-up to Earth Control One and its hundreds of advisors, scientists, and computers could be running an unwarranted risk. There could be trouble, other failures, and their lives might even be in jeopardy. It was a difficult decision, but one he had to face.
Scott knew how much this mission meant to all of them – Stimson, Grayson, everyone at NASA, millions of people around the world, even himself and Marty – and knew that Marty was right; they had to go on. If the situation were reversed, if any other people at Earth Control One were here instead of them, Scott knew he would expect them to go on as scheduled despite the communication difficulties. The important thing was that they were alive and could continue. Still hesitant, Scott agreed.
“All right, Marty, let’s keep going. But,” he added, “if anything else happens, we’ve got to go back to the ship.”
“Roger,” Fisk replied, a note of elation in his voice. He had already begun to resume his tests. There was still a tremendous amount of information to gather, and they had barely started their investigation of the surface.
Chapter 4 – No Communication
But, back at Earth Control One, the situation was much more frustrating.
“Jennings? Fisk? Do you read me?” Stimson repeated over and over again. “We can hear you, but you don’t seem to be picking up our transmissions. Do you read us, Probe? Over...” There was no answer. The astronauts continued with their work, unable to hear Stimson’s message. “I repeat, do you copy us? Probe, this is Stimson. Over?...” There was no reply.
Stimson whirled in his chair, casting an anxious glance at his Chief Technical Officer, Adam Prescott. The engineer stood calmly at a console behind him, monitoring a board full of data, intently analyzing what he could of the communications failure.
“Prescott? What is it? What’s gone wrong? Can we get through to them?” Stimson asked, hopefully.
“I don’t think so, John. It looks like the failure is on their end. We’re getting a strong signal here, and all systems show fully operational – it must be that Fisk didn’t get the receiver modulator hooked up properly. They’re still transmitting, but they can’t receive."
“Well, isn’t there anything we can do? What about the booster assembly? Can’t we bypass into the backup unit?”
“Negative, John. The backup was burned out when Fisk rewired the modulator. All we can do is wait until they repair it. That is, if they can...”
“Well, keep trying, anyway. Maybe you can patch in through Grayson.”
Stimson knew as well as anyone else that Grayson, too, had no way of communicating with the astronauts while they were on the planet’s surface if their receiver was out. The system wasn’t designed that way. The power generator was on board the probe so that all communications had to first go through the ship before being broadcast elsewhere. Had it been otherwise, the astronauts would have been so bogged down with radio equipment, they couldn’t have carried other things. But, the failure of the probe’s receiver, which now prevented Earth-to-probe communication, made John regret the decision.
He knew there was nothing more he could do, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to sit idly by while his friends, his associates, probed the mysteries of a planet 26 million miles away – alone. It was
a frustrating predicament, sitting at his control panel listening to their conversations, unable to ask questions or clarify data, unable to advise or direct them, but Stimson knew it would be even harder on others in the room.
He glanced over his shoulder to see how well Barbara and Carol, the astronaut’s wives, were holding up under the strain. Their faces revealed little emotion but the intensity of their eyes, focused on the overhead board which posted updated physiological information – blood pressure, respiration, pulse, body temperature, and several other indicators – betrayed their concern. He wished there was something more he could do for them.
“Scott, there seems to be an awfully high concentration of nitrogen in this crust layer,” came Marty’s voice over the loudspeaker of the laboratory. Stimson watched the women’s faces light up at the sound of his words. Even this piece of technical data had a tone of reassurance in it for them. They knew everything was still all right.
Stimson turned back to his console to monitor the conversation. All around him people were reviewing data as it appeared, trying to follow everything the astronauts were experiencing.
“It could be because of the ammonia in the cloud layer,” Marty continued, “but, I can’t be sure. It might be the other way around – the nitrogen in the crust may be giving off the ammonia in the air.”
“Roger, Marty. Keep checking. I’m going to try over this way.”
Stimson continued to listen, trying hard to visualize from their words and descriptions what the planet was like – how it was formed, what it was composed of, how dense the ammonia vapor was, what could be learned from it? Still, if only he could reach them, get through to them, there were so many questions they could answer. But, as Prescott had told him, there was nothing more they could do. Their job, now, was to wait and watch and listen – and pray.
Another thirty minutes passed as the astronauts scoured the area, taking samples, photographs, recording their impressions of the terrain on the audio recorders built into their backpacks, not knowing that their every word, their every heartbeat, was still being closely monitored at Earth Control One. But, it was an exciting venture, and one they wished they could share.
The surface of Venus and the atmosphere proved an inexhaustible source of information for the astronauts, revealing little tangible data – as everything was so strange and different from anything they’d ever seen before – yet, opening a whole new vista of questions. What gas was present that could support combustion, but would not ignite under the intense heat of the Sun? What accounted for the very aggressive Venusian winds? How deep was the crust of the planet, and what held it in such geometrically-bonded patterns?
Each of these questions ran through Scott and Marty’s minds as they attempted to gather information for further study when they returned to Earth. But, there was so much to choose from, so much that might be irrelevant or useless in a laboratory, that they moved farther and farther from the capsule, trying to take only the very best samples. Then, Scott stopped.
“Marty, I think I’ve found something,” he remarked as he approached something smooth and well-shaped jutting from the ground. “It... it’s some kind of – well, it’s like a cone or something. I can’t really tell what it is.” Near his feet was something like a bush or shrub, yet it grew upside down with the fatter portion on top as if to shade its lower parts from the Sun. He stared at it in amazement. “I don’t know what it is or where it came from, but it’s just sitting here, all alone. There’s nothing else around it, so it couldn’t have come from anything else, from a pod or seed or.... I don’t know what to make of it!” He looked at it a moment longer, then reached for the extractor rod attached to his suit. “I’m going to take a sample.”
“Roger, Scott. But, make sure to label it.”
“Don’t worry, I will. This is one sample I want to get a better look at myself!”
Scott removed the long-handled rod from the side of his suit and flexed its prongs open near the outgrowth. But as he moved it closer, the cone shriveled into a rope-like stalk of ten or twelve inches and withered into the ground.
“It’s gone, Marty! The thing just disappeared... like it was alive!”
“What?” Marty asked, astonished. “Are you certain?”
“Yes, yes. I watched it with my own eyes. It just folded up and disappeared!”
“What was it? A plant?”
“I don’t know. It looked almost like it was made of sponge, or something. It was kind of light-colored, grayish, but I couldn’t tell if it was skeletal or leafy. It was gone before I could get my extractor on it.”
”Try digging into the topsoil,” Marty suggested. “Maybe it’s just below the surface.”
Scott again extended the pronged tool, scratching, through the surface layer as if he were using a rake. The clay-like substance broke away in small chunks, getting moist and malleable as he dug only a few inches into it.
“No, it’s not here,” he said, continuing to dig. “But, it’s getting wetter the deeper I go. Seems kind of mushy and soft. It’s almost like it... Marty!” His voice betrayed a hint of alarm. “Marty, it... it’s like a... lake beneath here! I’ve broken through! There seems to be a....” His breathing deepened, as much from the excitement as from the labors of his work. “There seems to be a heavy, kind of oily liquid beneath the surface layer. It...”
Suddenly, the ground around him began cracking wildly into sections. Three, four, five lines spread beneath his feet, crisscrossing in jagged segments like an iceberg splitting.
Scott’s initial response was to back away. But, the slow and awkward shuffle of his feet barely escaped the ridge of earth forming behind him. He continued his retreat, watching the ground divide and shift before his eyes.
Marty, a short distance away, had heard him break off his silence. “What’s the matter, Scott? What’s happening?” He was confused. He turned in an effort to see more clearly what was going on, but all he could make out was Scott’s rapidly backpedaling figure.
Scott’s breathing was heavy and strained from the exertion. “The... ground... It’s breaking up in front of me, Marty.... It... it’s cracking everywhere – like ice! It... It...” He was nervous, confused.
“Just keep backing up, Scott! It’s clear behind you! I’m on my way over!”
“I think I can... make it... back out of the way, Marty. Don’t come too close. It.... it’s still splitting. I don’t know how... how far it will go, but I... I think I... I think I’m clear now.”
Scott had backed beyond the surface cracks now, and stood on firm ground. His next impulse was the camera. He swiveled it from the side of his cooling pack and fired off a succession of twelve frames. This was something new and exciting, unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, whetting his scientific curiosity even more than the further thought of his safety. The ground cracked a few feet more, trembled, then froze in a rigid kaleidoscope of lines. Scott was stunned.
“Are you clear, Scott?” Marty asked, a mere twenty-five feet away. He continued to shuffle closer, moving in an awkward hopping motion until he was alongside Scott. He could see for himself that the danger had subsided.
“Yeah, I’m all right, Marty. Kind of shook up, but I’m all right.” He turned to face him. “You should have seen it! All of a sudden, everything just started breaking up! It happened so fast, it caught me by surprise.”
“Could you stand on it? Would it support your weight?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know for sure – I was too busy backing up.”
Marty looked out at the area where the ground had split.
“Are you sure you didn’t just imagine it, Scott? I mean, it looks all right now. Maybe the Sun...”
“No! No, I’m sure of it, Marty! All of a sudden, everything started cracking up...” His tone began to change as he pieced things together, remembering. “I was digging for that bush, digging through the crust to look for it.... It started getting wet... mushy. Then, all of a sudden, there were crack
s all around the hole. It started splitting everywhere! I backed up, kept backing up, and...”
Despite the swiftness with which everything took place, its uncanny nature, somehow it all began to make more sense to him. Scott began to understand what had happened. He stopped in mid-sentence.
“Marty,” he said. “Suppose it is like ice. Suppose this crust is nothing more than a shell, just a hard layer of some kind, baked hard by the Sun. When it cools off, it melts or turns to liquid. It’s the hot Sun that holds it together. And, while I was digging through it, the combination of my weight, my shadow, and the hole caused it to separate, to split. It began cracking up! Then the Sun could’ve welded it back together, fused it, sort of burned it together like two matchsticks. That’s why there’s no trace of it now – the Sun hardens it!”
Marty stood silently staring out over the Venusian surface as he listened. It seemed preposterous, so ridiculous to think that these things could be happening – yet, Scott’s explanation sounded plausible. It is possible, he thought, and it does answer a lot of questions; Venus, a giant ocean of some oily kind of liquid, a thick crust baked hard by the Sun. But... He remained uncommitted.
“I don’t know. I really can’t say, Scott. I guess almost anything is possible here. I haven’t even been able to determine what it’s composed of, yet! I suppose nothing would surprise me.”
The two stood silently for a moment, staring out at the area in front of them. It was all so new, so strange, so unpredictable, so overpowering. As Marty had admitted, almost anything was possible here. They knew very little about it – its composition, its structure, the behavior of its elements, the vast influence of the Sun burning so bright and so near to it – yet, it held its own quiet mystique. It was barren and desert-like, stretching endlessly before them in all directions; uncharted, unsoiled, and unknown. It appeared so harmless, so docile; yet so much had happened. There was a great deal yet to learn.
Marty glanced down at his watch.
“We’d better head back to the ship now, Scott. We’ve got a little less than forty-five minutes of oxygen left, and it’ll take us a good fifteen to get back. Besides, maybe I can fix the receiver and get Stimson’s men working on it.”