Ocean Under the Ice

by Robert L. Forward

  The icerugs were silent for a long moment. “I do not understand,” said Pink-Orb finally.

  ^Maybe translation unclear…^

  *Here, taste!* said Little Red impatiently, opening his suit and moving a fleshy red pseudopod to within reach of the alien astronomer’s tentacles. Slowly, hesitantly, the velvet-furred plummy tentacle arose and met the glistening-wet red pseudopod, and, for an eerie instant, the two representatives of such different and alien species touched each other.

  “There was a strong and very complex taste, but that’s all,” said Pink-Orb flatly, who, unlike the flouwen, was unable to pass on information by taste chemicals.

  ^It is so beautiful,^ pleaded Little White, frustrated. ^Simple nth root dimensional space! It makes difficult equations easy.^

  “I do not understand.” Pink-Orb’s bass voice took on a deeper growl. Little Purple, remembering the injunction of the humans not to overstay their welcome, decided it was time to leave. Pacifically returning to discussion of their shared interest in what might lie beneath the surface of the ocean, the flouwen chatted a few moments longer, promising to share further information later.

  “I must say goodby now,” said Pink-Orb. “I have a very long way to travel. Please inform the humans that I will be returning to my assigned area in the city, from where I will inform the Presider and the Governing Council that they may expect a visit from the humans shortly.”

  Gray-Mote and Yellow-Stare parted their carpets along their adjoining edges, leaving a narrow path of ice, and Pink-Orb’s pedestal started down the path, a surging wave of plum-colored flesh preceding the node as it laid down a carpet for the pedestal to travel on. Long after the node had passed on, the stream of velvety flesh flowed out of the field that Pink-Orb had been inhabiting. After the last portion of Pink-Orb’s body had disappeared, the gap between Gray-Mote and Yellow-Star closed, and the two icerugs glided silently away over their colored carpets into the Gargantuan-lit gloom of the nighttime to return to their own affairs, while the flouwen plodded back to the lander, burdened with sample bags. There, night-watchman Thomas, with the aid of the Christmas Branch, hauled them back up on the winch and sucked them back into their habitat where they refreshed their bodies with crystal-clear ammonia-water.

  * * *

  At first light, Josephine awoke the crew with her accustomed gentleness. “Rise and shine, my dearies.”

  Deirdre, accustomed to rising quickly to attend to Foxx’s few needs, was startled to find herself a trifle stiff in movement. A moment later, Richard groaned, and after climbing out of the hanging harness of his vertical bunk, designed more for free-fall than gravity, he bent double several times in the narrow aisle, twisting as he did so.

  “Boy, you think you keep in shape, working out in the gym on Prometheus, but then you do real work, in real gravity, and find some surprised muscles.”

  The rest discovered their own sore spots quickly, but the small aches were soon dissipated in activity. Since there was hard work coming up, they settled down to Josephine’s “cooked breakfast” of cereal, juice, scrambled algae-egg, pseudo-sausage or slices of real ham from Hamlet; toasted algae-flour bread; broiled mushrooms and cherry tomatoes from the hydroponics gardens on Prometheus; and a hot beverage.

  As they ate, scattered here and there in the lounge and galley stools, George went over their plans, the flouwen in their tank being connected to the discussion through George’s imp.

  “According to Josephine, by the time we get suited up and down on the surface, we’ll have about three hours of light, which we’ll use to get the Dragonfly down and ready. Then it’s going to get really dark for about an hour and a half, and we’d better not try to take off until that’s over. Do you Littles want to suit up? While we work on lowering and assembling the Dragonfly, you could go visit the icerugs, with one of us along if you want.”

  Little Purple considered. #Not worth it. Takes time to get there. Then, when deep dark comes, they do nothing, like when you sleep. They told us that.#

  Here was a new fact for Deirdre, Cinnamon, and Katrina to mull over.

  “Photosynthesis cuts off?”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “No energy input, so they have to shut down.”

  Little Red was eager to get into the water and start exploring. *Don’t want to talk to icerugs any more. Icerugs not dumb, but not as smart as flouwen, either.*

  ^I think,^ said Little White mildly, ^We wait here while you get Dragonfly ready.^

  Little Red was disappointed. *I come out and help!*

  “I know, ol’ buddy, you want to do what you call helping,” said Richard. “But it’ll go a lot faster if you stay put this morning!”

  After passing in their trays to the galley imp to clean, all the crew except Cinnamon climbed into their exploration suits. Cinnamon was scheduled for shift duty inside Victoria, monitoring the activities outside, making sure all the communication links back to Prometheus and Earth were functional, and ready at any time to activate the Ascent Propulsion Stage of Victoria for quick takeoff, in case they had to leave in a hurry.

  By the time Barnard rose in the east, eight suited figures were gathered on the ground at the base of the lander looking up at the task that lay before them. In a long crease that went up the side of the forty-six-meter high cylindrical lander, was an airplane with clipped off wings, Dragonfly III. On the top and bottom of each of the wing stubs was a circular cover that protected the two-meter-diameter VTOL fans underneath. Shirley was now in her element, supervising the lowering and assembly of the Dragonfly.

  “Thomas!” Shirley called through her imp. “Is the upper nose winch hook in place?”

  “Yes,” replied Josephine, echoed by Thomas.

  “Okay, Josephine, release the hold-down lugs!” The strong claws of the holding clamps opened all along the side of the Dragonfly in a rippling clank, and the airplane tilted free of the elastomer seals and hung, swinging slightly, from its nose, with its tail root still fastened firmly to the top of the landing strut.

  “Let out the top winch!” Josephine started the nose winch rotating, paying out cable. Slowly the long vehicle, part airplane and part spacecraft, tilted away from the side of the lander, pivoting around its tail, still fixed at the base of the lander. As the nose of the Dragonfly came clear, the watchers on the ground could now see the triangular windows on the flight deck. Behind them were the bulbous hemispherical glass domes on each side of the airplane that together allowed the port and starboard science scan platforms a view in nearly every direction from the ship. It was partially the bulbous eye-like domes that gave Dragonfly its name, plus, when its wings were on, and its engines were powered up, the airplane — like a dragonfly — could not only use its jets to fly at high speed, but use its VTOL fans to hover motionless.

  “Now, Josephine, let out both winches at the same time!” Deep inside the Victoria, the two winches, one up near the nose and one down near the tail, rotated in synchronism, slowly letting out more cable. Then, tilted at a thirty degree angle, the Dragonfly slid on its tail down the lowering rail built into the landing strut. As the rear of the airplane came free from the crease in the lander, the watchers could see the tall tail rudder come into view. On either side of the rudder could now be seen the two sets of tapered hollow wing sections.

  When the tail root reached a point about two meters from the end of the lowering rail, Shirley called a halt. Then, after checking everything once more, she started the upper winch again. Slowly the winch, squeaking slightly in the frozen air, lowered the nose of the plane down, and the long fuselage rotated about the pivot point near the tail until it was horizontal. Thomas, high up on the engineering deck, held onto the handholds in the open airlock as the lander tilted noticeably under the load.

  “Lower landing gear,” said Shirley, peering beneath the belly of the plane. Three slots opened, releasing the metal struts with skids on the bottom.

  “Lower away!” commanded Shirley, and the winches, slo
wed even further by Josephine’s sure touch, gently deposited the Dragonfly onto Zulu’s surface, its smooth duralloy surface submitting unmoving to Arielle’s tender pats. With the body of the aerospace vehicle on the ground, but still wingless, Arielle and David cycled through the airlock of the Dragonfly, woke up Joe, and started taking the computer and the vehicle through its self-check routine.

  “That’s got it!” shouted Shirley. George and Richard, who had been waiting at each end, undid the hooks at the ends of the lowering cables, and the winches began to retract the cables. Shirley used the hook retreating into the lower winch to hoist herself up into the base of the lander where the wing sections were nested.

  “Right. Now everyone out to catch the wing pieces! Thomas, man the winch up there!”

  Thomas pushed out, on its rollers, the beam in the ceiling of the airlock, until the winch on the end of the beam hung over the side of the lander. Josephine sent the Christmas Branch down the hanging cable to the hook at the end, looking like a giant glittering spider climbing down its thread to get a fly at the end. The Christmas Branch attached the hook to a lifting lug on the inner piece of the nested wing sections. The sections were hollow graphite-fiber composite structures designed without internal bracing, with their inner and outer contours shaped so they would nest together into a compact package. With Shirley shouting instructions and guiding the sections out of their storage position, Thomas and Josephine used the upper winch to slowly pull each section out one at a time and lower them down to teams of waiting crew members.

  With uplifted arms the humans received them, minding Shirley’s admonitions: “Slowly, now! Let the winch bear their weight. Guide them into their proper position on each side of the Dragonfly, slowly, slowly…”

  “You’d think we hadn’t done this before,” grunted Richard, his arms outstretched to help Sam, George, and Katrina as the four of them swiveled the five-by-six-meter section of wing into position.

  “She acts the same way every time, too,” said George. “She sure likes playing crew chief.”

  “Boss lady, you mean,” muttered Katrina under her breath, so softly even her imp missed it. Normally cheerful and eager to help, Katrina found her lack of inches to be a real handicap in operations of this sort. She was happy to step away when the load was on the ground, and reach for the descending packages of struts and telescoping poles.

  Paying only moderate attention to Shirley’s shouted directions, the crew moved into their well-practiced drill of assembling the wing sections on the airplane. Using the telescoping poles, they erected a tripod over the first wing section with a winch at the apex. With a boost from Richard, Shirley climbed up on top of the stub of wing on Dragonfly, and operated the winch control from there, lifting the wing section up by its central lug set over its center of mass, while Richard, George, Sam, and Deirdre guided the wing section until the edges of the larger of its open ends was matched up with the opening in the wing stub. Inside the hollow wing stub waited the Christmas Branch assigned to the Dragonfly, holding an internal strut Katrina had handed it. Once the new section of wing was nearly in place, the Christmas Branch jumped the narrow gap and installed the strut inside the new wing section. With the sparkling motile still inside, helping to guide the edges together, the tall humans swung the hollow wing section gently into its proper place. Just before the moment of contact, the imp removed the protective covering from the seals on either side of the joints. At this point, Shirley straddled the narrowing joint herself, and used her own considerable strength to bring the two sections closer with the aid of a long, pointed pry-bar. As the sections clicked together, and were fastened internally by the Christmas Bush rotating lag screws into place, Shirley slapped a gloved hand with her pry-bar and gave a satisfied snort.

  “Her favorite tool,” said Sam. “Did you ever move too slowly for Shirley?”

  “No,” replied Richard, slightly puzzled.

  “I did,” said Sam, reflectively rubbing a spot high up on his long thigh. “Once.”

  Deirdre, working beside him, said nothing, but glinted a bright glance up at Sam.

  Shirley looked up at the sun. It was more than halfway between the horizon and Gargantua overhead. “Keep it moving!” she demanded. “We’ve only got a little daylight left!”

  The work continued without interruption or flaw. Finally, the last two outer wing tip sections were installed. Joe, under Shirley’s close scrutiny, pumped the air from the wing tanks and verified that there were no leaks. Then, while Cinnamon monitored Josephine’s gauges, and Arielle monitored Joe’s gauges, the wing tanks on Dragonfly were filled with the residual monopropellant fuel left in the oversized attitude control fuel tanks inside Victoria.

  As Barnard set behind Gargantua, and the noon-day eclipse darkness fell, the crew left the Dragonfly waiting on its skids on the snow-blown rock and clambered back up into the Victoria for one last meal together. In the afternoon they would separate into two teams, one team of four people to stay with the lander and carry out exploration missions from that fixed base, and the other team of six people who would go off in the airplane and explore more distant sites. As they came out of the airlock into the engineering deck and took off their helmets, they could smell fresh-baked rolls being cooked in the tiny galley in the crew deck above.

  “Smells good,” Richard hollered up the passway ladder. “What are they — cinnamon buns?”

  “Just for that crack, you don’t get any,” came Cinnamon’s retort back down the passway. “They’re just plain hot-dog rolls. We’re having pseudo-wieners and carrot sticks for lunch. Even you should be able to eat those without spilling food inside your suit.”

  Since the crew assigned to the Dragonfly were going right back out after lunch, they didn’t bother to take off their exploration suits, but sprawled out, tired, on the engineering deck. Cinnamon and the Christmas Branch brought the food down and they had a picnic on the floor. Sometime during the meal, however, they each took turns using the special extractor on the engineering deck to empty out the urine collectors in their suits.

  “Say,” said Richard, after he finished using the extractor. “I was wondering how the flouwen manage in their suits. How often are we going to have to bring them back to the habitat tank?”

  “They can last a long time, but if it becomes urgent, they just unzip their fly and let it fly,” replied Shirley.

  “You’re kidding!” said Richard. “They don’t have a…”

  Cinnamon, who had made a detailed study of the flouwen needs, gave Richard a lecture on flouwen physiology. “The flouwen, because their body is made of undifferentiated cells, and because of the highly varied environment they evolved in, have a lot of ability to control their body chemistry. Although they require some ammonia, and prefer water with ten percent ammonia to ninety percent water, their ocean on Eau varies from extremely cold ammonia-rich water near the poles to extremely hot ammonia-free water near the vent fields. So, they’ve evolved an internal chemistry that is tolerant to large temperature variations and chemical concentrations.”

  “Including waste products?” asked Richard.

  “Yes,” she replied. “The metabolism of their individual cells produces waste, and since the lifetime of the cells is only a few weeks, when the cells die they become waste too. Normally, in the ocean of Eau, the flouwen body just transports those wastes to its surface, and dumps them. When they are in their suits, however, they just concentrate the unwanted compounds in a globule somewhere in their body. Since we have asked them to avoid polluting this planet, they will normally wait until they return to their habitat to void the contents of their waste globule. But, if necessary, as Shirley said, they can just unzip their suits, and bring the globule to the surface and expel it.”

  “I’m glad they’re house-trained!” Richard said with relief. “I’d hate to smell what they are trying to get rid of. They smell bad enough fresh.”

  *Hey!* came Little Red’s voice over Richard’s imp.

&nbs
p; As the crew finished eating, George reminded them of their plans for the afternoon.

  “As soon as you’ve finished eating, head back outside. Even though it’s still dark, we can use the outside lights on the two vehicles while we transfer personal belongings, supplies, tools — everything Josephine has listed — into the airplane. Then, all we’ll need to do at daylight is a walk-around inspection, then go aboard and take off. Our first and most important mission is to find a good spot to put the flouwen into the water.”

  *Good!* interrupted Little Red’s voice. *About time!*

  “May take us a while,” warned Richard. “We need a hole in the ice, but not a boiling geyser, interesting though it might be to drop you into the pot, Little Red.”

  *Hunh,* said Little Red, unworried.

  “So, flouwen,” George continued, “It’s back into your suits, so you can fly with us in the Dragonfly.” He turned to look at the assembled crew. “As planned, Thomas, Sam, Cinnamon, and Katrina will be staying here with the lander at the main base, taking shifts at the communications center.”

  “Good,” said Katrina. “That’ll give me and Cinnamon time to put some of those samples we collected under a good microscope.”

  “And I’ll be wanting to explore the geology around the landing site,” said Sam.

  “Of course,” replied George. “And all of you can take turns getting to know the local icerug community better. We need to know what life is like, out here in the icerug equivalent of ‘the sticks’, as well as what goes on in the big city. Make sure, however, that one of you is always at the communications console.” He got up and reached for his helmet. “The remaining six of us assigned to the Dragonfly had better start packing.”

  “Good!” said Thomas. “The sooner you guys go, the sooner we can take apart your bunks and arrange them into something more comfortable to sleep in than a hanging harness.”