Tales of the Grand Tour

by Ben Bova

  I handed him one end of my right-hand tether. He clipped it a rung beside his own.

  “Okay now, just the way we did in the sim. Come on out.”

  The good thing was we were enveloped in the cloud, so I didn’t have to worry about looking down. There was nothing to see out there except a blank yellow-gray limbo. But I could feel the ship shuddering and pitching in the currents of wind.

  “Just like rock climbing,” Rodriguez said, with an exaggerated heartiness. “Piece of cake.”

  “When did you do any rock climbing?” I asked as I planted one booted foot on a rung of the ladder.

  “Me? Are you kidding? When I get up more than fifty meters I want an airplane surrounding me.”

  I had never gone rock climbing, either. Risking one’s neck for the fun of it has always seemed the height of idiocy to me.

  But this was different, I told myself. There was a job to be done. I was making a real contribution to the mission now, not just cowering in my bunk while others did the work.

  Still, it was scary. I suppose Rodriguez could’ve done it all by himself, but long decades of experience dictated that it was far safer to have two people go out together, even if one of them was a neophyte. Besides, with me out there we could cut the time for the inspection almost in half; that in itself made the whole job a lot safer.

  In a way, the pressure of the Venusian atmosphere helped us. In space, with nothing outside a space suit’s fabric but vacuum, a space suit tends to balloon up and get stiff. That’s why we had the miniature servomotors on the suits’ joints and gloves, to assist our muscles in bending and flexing. Even at this high altitude, though, the atmospheric pressure was enough to make it almost easy to move around in the suits. Even the gloves flexed fairly easily; the servomotors of the spiny exoskeleton on the backs of the gloves hardly had to exert themselves at all.

  One by one, Rodriguez and I checked the braces and struts that held the gondola to the gas envelope. All the welds seemed solid, to my eyes. Neither of us could find any sign of damage or deterioration. One of the hoses that fed hydrogen from the separator to the envelope seemed a bit looser than Rodriguez liked; he worked on it for several minutes with a wrench from the tools clipped to his harness, dangling from a support strut like a monkey in a banana tree.

  As I watched Rodriguez working, I checked the thermometer on the wrist of my suit. To my surprise it read only a few degrees above freezing. Then I remembered that we were still fifty-some kilometers above the ground; on Earth we’d be high above the stratosphere, on the fringe of outer space. Here on Venus we were in the middle of a thick cloud of sulfuric acid droplets. Not too far below us, the atmosphere heated up quickly to several hundred degrees.

  Dangling out there in the open reminded me of something but I couldn’t put my finger on it until at last I remembered watching a video years ago, when I’d been just a child, about people hang gliding off some seaside cliffs in Hawaii. I had burned with jealousy then, watching them having so much fun while I was stuck in a house almost all the time, too frail to try such an adventure. And too scared, I’ve got to admit. But here I was, on another world, racing in the wind fifty klicks high!

  “That’s done,” Rodriguez said as he returned the wrench to its place on his belt. But he fumbled it and the wrench dropped out of sight. One instant it was in his hand, then, “Oops!” and it was gone. I realized that’s what would happen to me if my tethers failed.

  “Is that it?” I asked. “Are we done?”

  “I ought to check the envelope for any signs of ablation from the entry heat,” Rodriguez said. “You can go back inside.”

  Without even thinking about it I replied, “No, I’ll go with you.”

  So we clambered slowly up the rungs set into the massive curving bulk of the gas envelope, with that wind gushing past us. I knew the atmospheric pressure was too thin up at this altitude to really push us, yet I felt as if I was being nudged, harried, shaken by the wind.

  It was slow going, climbing one rung, unclipping one tether and snapping it on a higher rung, then stepping up again and unclipping the other tether. Just like mountain climbers, we never moved a step until we had both tethers locked on safely. I could hear Rodriguez’s breathing in my earphones, puffing hard with each step he took.

  Duchamp was listening in on everything, of course. But I knew that if we got into trouble there was nothing she or anyone else could do about it in time. It was just Rodriguez and me out here, on our own. It was frightening and kind of exhilarating at the same time.

  At last we got to the long catwalk that ran along the top of the envelope. Rodriguez knelt down and activated the switch that raised the flimsy-looking safety rail which ran the length of the metal mesh walkway. Then we fastened our tethers to the rail; it stood waist-high all the way down the catwalk, from nose to tail. A row of cleats projected up from the edge of the walkway, like the bitts on a racing yacht where you tie down the lines from the sails.

  “Top of the world,” Rodriguez said cheerfully.

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice definitely shaky.

  Together we walked to the bulbous nose of the envelope, where the big heat shield had been connected. I could see the stumps of the rods that had held the shield in place, blackened from the explosive bolts that had sheared them off. Rodriguez bent over and examined the nose region, muttering to himself like a physician thumping a patient’s chest during a checkup. Then we walked slowly back toward the tail, him in the lead, our tethers sliding along the safety rail.

  I saw it first.

  “What’s that discoloration?” I asked, pointing.

  Rodriguez grunted, then took several steps toward the tail. “Hmm,” he mumbled. “Looks like charring, doesn’t it?”

  I suddenly remembered that these clouds were made of sulfuric acid.

  As if he could read my mind, Rodriguez said, “Can’t be the sulfuric acid, it doesn’t react with the cermet.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. It can’t even attack the fabric of your suit.”

  Very reassuring, I thought. But the charred stains on the cermet skin of the gas envelope were still there.

  “Could it be from the entry heat?”

  I could sense him nodding inside his helmet. “Some of the heated air must’ve flowed over the shield and singed the butt end of the envelope a little.”

  “The sensors didn’t record a temperature spike there,” I said.

  “Might’ve been too small to notice. If we expand the graph we’ll probably see it.”

  “Is it a problem?”

  “Probably not,” he said. “But we oughtta pressurize the envelope to make certain it doesn’t leak.”

  I felt my heart sink. “How long will that take?”

  He thought before answering. “The better part of a day, I guess.”

  “Another day lost.”

  “Worried about Fuchs?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, he’s likely got problems of his—Hey!”

  The safety rail alongside Rodriguez suddenly broke away, a whole section of it flying off into the yellowy haze, taking one of his tethers with it. He was yanked off his feet, flailing his arms and legs, the remaining tether anchoring him to the still-standing section of rail, the other one trying to pull him off the ship.

  I lunged for him but he was already too far away for me to reach without taking off my own tethers.

  “Pull me in!” he yelled, his voice bellowing in my earphones.

  “What’s happened?” Duchamp asked sharply in my earphones.

  I saw him unclip the one tether from his belt. It snapped off into the clouds. I grabbed the other and began hauling him in.

  But the railing itself was wobbling, shaky. It was going to tear away in another few seconds, I realized.

  “Pull me in!” Rodriguez shouted again.

  “What’s happening out there?” Duchamp demanded.

&nbs
p; I unclipped one of my own tethers and fastened it onto one of the cleats set into the catwalk. Then, with Duchamp jabbering in my earphones, I unclipped Rodriguez’s remaining tether before the railing broke off and he went sailing into oblivion.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled.

  His sudden weight almost tore my arms out of their sockets. Squeezing my eyes shut, I saw stars exploding against the blackness. With gritted teeth, I clumped down onto my knees and used all my strength to clamp the end of his tether to the cleat next to mine.

  I saw that the broken end of the railing was fluttering now, shaking loose. And my other tether was still hooked to it. Instead of trying to reach its end I simply unsnapped it from my belt and let it flap loose, then turned back to hauling in Rodriguez’s line.

  He was pulling himself in as hard as he could. It seemed like an hour, the two of us panting and snorting like a couple of tug-of-war contestants, but he finally planted his boots back on the catwalk. All this time Duchamp was yelling in my earphones, “What is it? What’s going on out there?”

  “We’re okay,” Rodriguez gasped at last, down on his hands and knees on the catwalk. For an absurd instant I thought he was going to pull off his helmet and kiss the metal decking.

  “You saved my life, Van.”

  It was the first time he’d called me anything but “Mr. Humphries.” It made me feel proud.

  Before I could reply, Rodriguez went on, in a slightly sheepish tone, “At first I thought you were going to leave me and go back to the airlock.”

  I stared at the blank fishbowl of his helmet. “I wouldn’t do that, Tom.”

  “I know,” he said, still panting from his exertion and fear. “Now,” he added.

  Captain Duchamp and Dr. Waller were waiting for us when we came through the airlock. I could hear her demanding questions, muffled by my helmet, directed at Rodriguez.

  “What happened out there? What was that about the safety rail?” And finally, “Are you all right?”

  Rodriguez started to explain as I lifted my helmet off. Waller took it from my trembling hands and I saw Marguerite hurrying up the passageway toward us.

  While we both worked our way out of the space suits, Rodriguez gave a clipped but thorough explanation of what had happened to us. Duchamp looked blazingly angry, as if somehow we had caused the trouble for ourselves. I kept glancing at Marguerite, standing behind her mother. So much alike, physically. So strikingly similar in the shape of their faces, the depth of their jet-black eyes, the same height, the same curves of their figures.

  Yet where the captain was truculent and demanding, Marguerite looked troubled, distressed—and something else. Something more. I couldn’t tell what it was in her eyes; I suppose I subconsciously hoped it was concern for me.

  Duchamp and Rodriguez headed for the bridge, Waller went without a word back toward his cubbyhole of an infirmary, leaving Marguerite and me alone by the racks of empty space suits.

  “Are you all right?” she asked me.

  Nodding, I said, “Fine. I think.” I held out my hand. “Look, I’m not even shaking anymore.”

  She laughed, a delightful sound. “You’ve earned a drink.”

  We went down to the galley, passing Waller’s closet-sized infirmary. It was empty, making me wonder where the doctor might hide himself.

  As we took cups of fruit juice and sat on the galley bench, I realized that I did indeed feel fine. Was it Churchill who said that coming through a brush with death concentrates the mind wonderfully?

  Marguerite sat beside me and took a sip of juice. “You saved Tom’s life,” she said.

  The look in her eyes wasn’t adoring. Far from it. But there was a respect in them that I’d never seen before. It felt terrifically good.

  Heroes are supposed to be modest, so I waggled my free hand and said merely, “I just reacted on instinct, I guess.”

  “Tom would have been killed if you hadn’t.”

  “No, I don’t think so. He—”

  “He thinks so.”

  I shrugged. “He would’ve done the same for me.”

  She nodded and brought the cup to her lips, her eyes never leaving mine.

  I had to say something, so I let my mouth work before my brain did. “Your mother doesn’t seem to have a molecule of human kindness in her. I know she’s the captain, but she was practically chewing Tom’s guts out.”

  Marguerite almost smiled. “That’s the way she reacts when she’s frightened. She attacks.”

  “Frightened? Her? Of what?”

  “Tom nearly got killed! Don’t you think that scared her? She is human, you know, underneath the stainless steel.”

  “You mean she really cares about him?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Do you think she’s sleeping with him merely to keep him satisfied? She’s not a whore, you know.”

  “I . . .” I realized that I had thought precisely that. For once in my life, I kept my mouth shut while I tried to figure out what I should say next.

  The speaker in the ceiling blared, “MR. HUMPHRIES WANTED ON THE BRIDGE.” Duchamp’s voice.

  Saved by the call of duty, I thought.

  I sat scrunched down on the metal deck plate of the bridge between Duchamp’s command chair and Rodriguez’s. Willa Yeats, our sensors specialist, was in the chair usually occupied by Riza, the communications tech.

  The four of us were staring hard at the main display screen, which showed a graph of the heat load the ship had encountered during entry into the atmosphere.

  “No blip,” Yeats said, with an I told you so tone. She was on the chubby side, moon-faced and pale-skinned, with the kind of dirty blond hair that some people charitably call sandy.

  “There was no sudden burst of heat during the entry flight,” she said. “The heat shield performed as designed and the sensors show all heat loads well below maximum allowable levels.”

  Duchamp scowled at her. “Then what caused the charring on the envelope?”

  “And weakened the safety railing?” Rodriguez added.

  Yeats shrugged as if it weren’t important to her. “I haven’t the faintest idea. But it wasn’t a pulse of heat, I can tell you that.”

  She had a very proprietary attitude about the ship’s sensing systems. As far as she was concerned, if her sensors didn’t show a problem, no problem existed.

  Duchamp obviously felt otherwise. The captain looked past me toward Rodriguez. “I suppose we’ll have to go out there again and see just what those charring marks are.”

  Rodriguez nodded glumly. “I suppose.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said. Before either of them could object I added, with a pinch of bravado, “I’m an experienced hand at this, you know.”

  Duchamp did not look amused, but Rodriguez chuckled and said, “Right. My EVA lifesaver.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Yeats said, obviously disappointed at our obtuseness. “If you simply pressurize the envelope the sensors will tell us if there’s a leak.”

  “And what if we rip the damned envelope wide open?” Duchamp snapped. “Where are we then?”

  Yeats looked abashed. She didn’t have to answer. We all knew where we’d be if the envelope cracked. There was the descent module, the bathysphere-like craft that was designed to double as an escape pod. But the thought of all eight of us crammed into that tiny iron ball and rocketing up into orbit was far from comforting.

  “Inspect the charring,” Duchamp said with finality. “Then we can pressurize the envelope.”

  “Maybe,” Rodriguez added, morbidly.

  Gripping the arms of their two chairs, I pulled myself up to my feet. “Very well then, we’d better—”

  Marguerite burst into the bridge, nearly bowling me over.

  “Life!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide and shining. “There are living organisms in the clouds! Microscopic but multicelled! They’re alive, they live in the clouds . . .”

  She was babbling so hard I thought she was close to hy
steria. Her mother snapped her out of it with a single question.

  “You’re sure?”

  Marguerite took a deep, gulping breath. “I’m positive. They’re alive.”

  Rodriguez said, “I’ve gotta see this.”

  I took Marguerite’s arm as gently as I could and maneuvered her out into the passageway. Otherwise there was no room on the bridge for Rodriguez to get up from his chair.

  We trooped behind Marguerite to her cubbyhole of a lab. As we stopped there I realized Duchamp had also left the bridge to accompany us. We stared at the image from the miniaturized electron microscope displayed on the wall screen. I saw some watery-looking blobs flailing around slowly. They were obviously multicelled; I could see smaller blobs and dividing walls pulsating inside them. Most of them had cilia fringing their outer edges, microscopic oars paddling away constantly. But weakly.

  “They’re dying in here,” Marguerite said, almost mournfully. “It must be the temperature, or maybe the combination of temperature and pressure. It’s just not working!”

  Straightening up from the microscope’s eyepiece, I said to her, “By god, you were right.”

  “It’s a major discovery,” Rodriguez congratulated.

  “Send this to the IAA at once,” Duchamp commanded. “Imagery and every bit of data you have. Get priority for this.”

  “But I’ve only—”

  “Do you want a Nobel Prize or not?” Duchamp snapped. “Get this data to IAA headquarters this instant. Don’t wait for Fuchs to get in first.”

  Marguerite nodded with understanding. For the first time since she’d burst into the bridge she seemed to calm down, come back to reality.

  “I’ll get Riza to establish a direct link with Geneva,” Duchamp went on. “You bang out a written statement, two or three lines will be enough to establish your priority. But do it now.”

  “Yes,” Marguerite said, reaching for her laptop computer. “Right.”

  We left her there in her lab, bent over the computer keyboard. Duchamp headed back toward the bridge, Rodriguez and I went toward the airlock, where the space suits were stored.

  “RIZA,” we heard Duchamp’s voice over the intercom speakers, “REPORT TO THE BRIDGE AT ONCE.” She didn’t have to repeat the command; there was no room for doubt or delay in the tone of her voice.