Ocean Under the Ice

by Robert L. Forward

  ^Good! When do we leave?^ said the flouwen.

  Deirdre chuckled, and said, “I don’t know, it’s not been decided, but we will go, and how can I keep from singing?” The phrase hit her memory, and, still softly, her voice rose in the clear pure notes of an old song, gliding effortlessly through the Celtic grace-notes and accents:

  “It sounds an echo in my soul…”

  Little White’s voice blended in, in gentle chords, and David, silent just outside the doorway, felt the hairs rise along the back of his neck. He had known for years that Deirdre sang, but he also knew, somehow, that if he ever spoke of it, he’d never hear her sing again: so now, as always, he listened without daring to breathe, and slid silently out of sight when she stopped, quieted by her own music.

  CHAPTER 04 — LANDING

  Now that the destination had been decided, the entire crew of Prometheus moved smoothly into a routine that assured nothing was left unplanned. Reiki, David, and Arielle spent their working hours on Surface Lander and Ascent Module III. SLAM III had been named “Victoria” after the one ship in Magellan’s initial fleet which had made it all the way around the globe and back to Spain again. This powerful chemical rocket was designed to take the crew down to explore the surface and back up again to Prometheus at the end of the mission. It was shaped like a tall cylinder, with four descent engines and two main cryogenic tanks which now held liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, recently electrolyzed from water taken from the consumables tanks on the top decks of Prometheus. Until it was activated, Victoria had been waiting its turn, silent and empty, upside down on the top of the hydroponics deck. Although its condition had been monitored ceaselessly by James over the decades, and repairs made as necessary, it was nevertheless important that everything onboard the lander was in top condition. Assisted by the Christmas Bush, the three humans double-checked every command Victoria‘s computer could expect, and every mechanical action which resulted from the commands.

  In a long slender crease that ran down the SLAMs length, nestled the Surface Excursion Module, Arielle’s beloved aerospace plane, Dragonfly III. Arielle checked out its flight controls, while David took the computer hardware and software through its selfcheck procedures, and Shirley exercised the life support subsystems while monitoring the Christmas Branch as it checked the exterior of both the SLAM and the SEM.

  Later, while replenishing her energies with a sandwich, Arielle encountered Deirdre, and smiled happily.

  “Maybe geysers make updrafts, and we can have ride down there!”

  “Like a hot-air balloon, would it feel?” asked Deirdre.

  “More like roll-coaster — swoooop!” Arielle’s free hand described an impressive curve through the air. Deirdre’s own smile was less enthusiastic.

  Thoughtfully she returned down through the SLAM III airlock and went to the corridor where the flouwen were swirling in their tank. Caroline, with the assistance of James and the Christmas Bush, was modifying the flouwen drysuits, with much advice being given them by the flouwen themselves. She was adding the communications equipment which would be needed to ensure that when the flouwen were deep under the ocean or ice, they could stay in contact with Prometheus and the exploration vehicles, as well as any humans outside on the ice. That meant installing an underwater sonar transmitter and multimode communications software, which would provide a high reliability link to a sonar-to-radio transponder floating on the surface of a nearby open body of water, which in turn would provide a radio link to one of the communication relay spacecraft above.

  ^Make sure we can talk to everyone,^ said Little White.

  #Not just each other, but humans too, when we go below surface.#

  “The underwater relay system is built right into the backpack of your drysuits; you can just speak as you usually do,” Caroline promised.

  ^And we can hear like we do here too?^ Little White had no desire to lose contact with his human friends.

  “Even while you are swimming at the bottom of the ocean, you will be in close touch with James and all the humans, through sound if not sight,” Caroline reassured them. “It will even work in the dark, so you can keep working away at collecting data day and night.”

  Little Red was not quite so pleased. *We not work all the time! We play some time! Geysers sound like fun place to play!* Deirdre admonished him in stern tones. “You’ll be doing nothing of the sort! It would be terrible bad if you got caught in that thing — sucked up and tossed out like a wee toy — helpless and all…”

  Little Red was undismayed. *Surf back down!*

  Josephine, the computer persona of Victoria, was endlessly patient, as the various members of the crew plied her with questions and requests. With precision, she used her Christmas Branch to shift and stow the oncoming bulk of supplies for the most efficient use of her capacity. Programmed by Reiki with the voice of a kindly British nanny, she made use of the indirect question when a dubious suggestion was made.

  “But, Richard, if you bring along your own favorite trenching tool, and Sam brings his, you’ll be duplicating one item unnecessarily, won’t you? And that’s what we’re trying to avoid, isn’t it?” The descending inflection was difficult to argue with.

  Joe, the persona for the computer aboard the Dragonfly airplane, was, in contrast, optimistic and confident, with just a hint of Scots in his “voice”. Designed by Reiki in an unaccustomed mood of mischief, his performance was as impeccable as his voice was unmistakable, and everyone had adjusted to being regarded as “bonny lasses and lads.”

  As they progressed through the routine check-out, each member of the designated landing crew had reason to speak with both computers. Sam and George listened, with delight, as Deirdre was explaining to Joe and Josephine the necessity for a restraining strap on Foxx’s cage during flight.

  “There’s a suitable clamp, already installed in the tool cabinet, y’know. It could be utilized for this mission, couldn’t it?” Josephine was determined to save mass.

  “What I’m wantin’ is a lighter, temporary sort of thing, which I can use to fasten Foxx in with me in both in the lander and the plane, not some great flipping iron belt in a cabinet with the heavy tools!” Deirdre tried to remain cool. Being Irish, she resented, ever so slightly, the British tones with their trace of superiority.

  “The mission is involving a great deal of my capacity, y’know”.

  Deirdre understood perfectly. Josephine’s reply was said in the classic manner of “I’ve only got two hands, y’know!”, but she responded patiently.

  “It’s not a big thing I’m askin’, is it? I’m sure you or Joe can rig up something perfectly lovely, with no trouble a’tall,” she coaxed, the Irish lilt becoming positively honeyed. “Aye, lass,” spoke up Joe comfortably. “I think I can fashion a wee strappie to hold down the cage in your bunk. Come and show my Christmas Branch just where you want it to go.”

  * * *

  Within a few days, humans and computers agreed that full preparations had been made. Every cubic centimeter of the Lander had been packed with carefully chosen supplies, and the crew members’s private allocations were no less carefully decided. Thomas’s agony over the choice between an extra-long zoom lens and clean shirts remained private, and he made the final decision only two minutes before the deadline. Foxx’s needs had to be fitted into Deirdre’s allotment, but she shrugged away any difficulty; her own austere tastes in dress made it easy for her to leave behind everything but essentials.

  A few hours later, George and Jinjur received a report from Splish. “Some twenty kilometers away from the Manannan geyser lake, there is a mound of volcanic basaltic rock about four hundred meters in diameter,” reported Splish. “It must have happened in recent geologic times, since the rock is still internally warm and any snow falling on it melts. A number of the aliens normally occupy this area in order to collect sunlight from Barnard. They have vacated it to make room for your landing. The basalt should be unaffected by your rockets.”

  “Hu
nh, basalt. Yes, that’ll be unaffected, but will we? Stuff can be pretty lumpy.” George called Sam, to get his opinion of this landing pad.

  “Sounds fine by me,” Sam assured him. “Basalt is real stable stuff — long as it’s the same as earthly basalt!” James, consulted, compared the spectral data of the rock composition it had received from Splish and assented.

  “Victoria‘s landing legs have enough adjusting capacity to handle three meters of variation in terrain; my laser topography mapper has measured the variations of the ground in that area as less than one meter.”

  “Well,” replied George with rising anticipation. “It looks like we’ve got a safe place to land.”

  “I have received word from Josephine and Joe that all equipment is installed and all supplies stowed,” James announced.

  Jinjur looked over to Elizabeth at the planetary science console.

  “What’s the status of the geysers, and the prognosis, Red?” Jinjur was pretty sure of the answer, but as Commander, she always collected all available advice before making a decision.

  “Major eruptions are over, following that recent quadruple conjunction. Things are settling down rapidly now. No large eruptions are expected until the next Barnard-assisted Zuni conjunction, which will take place in sixteen Zulu days. Ten Earth days, that is.” Red’s normally neat red hair was tousled, as though she had gotten out of bed too late to leave time for her imp comb it. She must have spent most of her sleep shift saying goodbye to someone.

  George and Jinjur exchanged a long look between themselves. There was little need for further talk, and their own farewells had been said last night. George nodded, and Jinjur spoke decisively, through James, to the entire ship. “The landing party will assume their stations on Victoria!”

  Immediately, the smooth routine began. Tony, at the navigation console, stabilized Prometheus into the proper orientation and acceleration level for SLAM separation, while Red, at the planetary science console, kept in contact with Splish at the landing site.

  “You’re in charge of the bridge, Mr. Roma,” Jinjur said through their imp link as she left the control deck with George. “I’m going up to the airlock to see the landing party off.”

  The others who were to remain on Prometheus slipped, with the ease of long practice, into their supporting roles; Reiki gave David a quick hug before she took control of the computer operations console; Carmen left the sick bay, where she’d been talking quietly with John, and went swiftly to the communications console, and Caroline settled in at the little used airlock control console to monitor the airlock between Victoria and Prometheus. Linda, technically off duty, went down to the docking airlock to assist in any way necessary. Her normally bouncy cheer was subdued, just a trifle, by the magnitude of this goodbye; she had time to hug everyone, most thoroughly, before they went through the airlock.

  Back in one corner of the hydroponics deck, Cinnamon touched Nels’s shoulder as he half-reclined in the fluid of the regeneration tank. His new legs were growing nicely, and he had only two months to go. He would be out of the tank and walking before Cinnamon returned from Zulu. He glanced briefly up from the console screen at her touch.

  “Everything’s going fine on the hydroponics deck,” she reported. “While we are gone, James will run the lab as usual. Shall I bring you back a snowball?” The tone was joking, but Nels looked at her blankly.

  “How? Why?”

  “Never mind,” said Cinnamon, and sighed. Impulsively, she stooped and lightly kissed the cheek of the big man, sitting so patiently in the tank. Then she was gone, in a swirl of black hair like the turn of a raven’s wing. Nels stared, puzzled, and then shrugged.

  Their last task was to transfer the three flouwen from their tank on Prometheus to the smaller tank on Victoria. It would take a number of days for Victoria to set up the communications net around Zulu and do a last minute low altitude detailed survey of the landing site, so the flouwen couldn’t just travel in Victoria in their drysuits. They needed a place with food and fresh ammonia-water. Running down the center of Victoria was a central column which contained the tanks for the consumables — air and water. To accommodate the flouwen, Shirley and the Christmas Bush had shortened both, leaving room for a habitat tank where the flouwen could relax and eat. Inside the tank was a built-in underwater taste screen similar to the one on Prometheus, and a small porthole in place of what used to be an inspection plate, so they and the humans could see each other as the humans climbed the passway ladder. They didn’t have the luxury of a volcanic vent, however, and had to make do with the flouwen equivalent of back-packing food — a net containing storage bags of thick, partially dried chunks of their various favorite foods. To get the flouwen on board, the pumps and hoses which had previously been used to transfer the flouwen from the habitat tank to their suits had been rerouted to connect the tanks.

  Shirley sent Richard on board Victoria to look through the porthole to observe the flouwen’s safe arrival, while she monitored the larger tank on Prometheus.

  “Are you ready to be ‘piped aboard’?” she asked the flouwen through her imp.

  *I go first!* roared Little Red, swimming to the end of the input hose on the wall of the habitat tank, and surrounding it with its fluid red flesh.

  “Pump away, Josephine!” said Shirley through her imp, and in less than a minute, the red flouwen had been sucked into the hose and was gone.

  “Everything OK, Red buddy?” came Richard’s query over the imp link, followed by Little Red’s complaining voice.

  *Dark! Small!*

  “It’ll be only for a few days,” reassured Richard. “Then you can have a whole ocean to explore.”

  It didn’t take long to repeat the process for the other two flouwen. It was now time for the humans to board.

  Minds filled with their wide variety of concerns and hopes, the ten members of the crew received a parting word from Jinjur. Those staying behind at the consoles on the control deck were too busy with the count-down procedures to give more than a wave over the cameras, as they rather wistfully watched the adventurers clamber aboard and settle into their stations, which because of Victoria‘s inverted stowage position above the hydroponics deck, were upside down in the low acceleration field of Prometheus. Arielle and Thomas somersaulted into their stand-up harnesses and buckled themselves in, Arielle in the red copilot harness and Thomas in the blue pilot one. Hanging upside down, Arielle’s mind instantly zeroed in on the flight ahead of her, to the exclusion of everything else, except, possibly, the sandwich she was finishing. Beside her, buckled upside down into her seat at the communications console, Cinnamon felt the old joy rising in her again — she loved to fly! even if she wasn’t at the controls.

  George, the last aboard, closed the airlock door and walked across the ceiling of the bridge to his console, being careful not to step on the glass docking window. Swinging himself upward until the sticky patches on his uniform grabbed the loop pile of the seat at the command console, he buckled himself in. Setting up the icons on the screen in front of him, he took the command program through its paces, checking and double-checking with the two pilots, Arielle and Thomas, and the two ship computers, James on Prometheus and Josephine on Victoria.

  The six not directly concerned with the flying of the SLAM had already strapped themselves firmly into place in their bunks, and adjusted their own view-screens in their Sound-Bar doors for the journey. Deirdre wriggled her booted toes on top of the sturdy padded cage strapped in at the bottom of her bunk, in which Foxx drowsed, tranquillized and content. All of them listened, intently, as the take-off procedure followed its orderly course.

  “Airlocks emptying.” Caroline’s cool voice spoke into her imp, as she used the airlock imps to survey the seals around the small connecting area between Victoria and Prometheus. One by one, the indicating lights flicked on to complete the check.

  “Docking port secure. Clearance for breakaway.” reported Caroline.

  “You are cleared for
breakaway, Victoria,” said Jinjur.

  “You guys have a nice trip, y’hear?” came Linda’s voice.

  Cinnamon grinned and glanced at Arielle, motionless beside her. Arielle reached to a red switch cover, raised it, and both she and Thomas looked over at George at the command console.

  “Take her away, Captain St. Thomas,” said George.

  Arielle flicked the mechanical switch inside the switch cover. There was a series of metallic clanks vibrating through the hull, indicating the opening of the clamps which had held the SLAM in place on Prometheus. The Victoria remained motionless, held in place only by the slight acceleration of the lightsail. Then Thomas gently eased forward the controls to the cold gas jets, and the ponderous cylinder tilted and started to move.

  “Now at a half-meter a second,” Arielle reported, watching the indicator on the co-pilot screen.

  The hissing of the jet stopped. They were now in free fall. Instantly, the four on the deck experienced a change in their point of view. They were no longer upside down in Victoria‘s bridge, they were right side up, and Prometheus was upside down.

  Thomas and Arielle looked up through the docking window as the edge of the hydroponics deck slid slowly past above them. As soon as they were clear, Thomas would activate more powerful jets and fly them out between the shrouds and away from the sail.