Half Life (23 page)

“That couldn’t have been why they stuck. Surface tension won’t hold any size water-drop liquid down at ninety K. And pressure would work the other way on most other things.”

Maria again ended the debate without suggesting this was not the time for it; she was interested in the reason herself, but had not needed any of the recent reminders about her suit’s depletion or what work had to be done.

“I’m jumping—now!” There was a silence of two or three seconds.

“Make it?” asked Belvew.

“Not quite. High enough, but I bounced off the fan of vapor—it’s all right, I was able to land on my feet. It must have been a matter of armor shape; I should have been pulled into the stream.”

“Pushed.” This was Martucci.

“Don’t be a purist. Here I go again… I’m in this time. Bouncing around, as someone suggested, a meter or so above the top of the scarp. I can regulate my height with arms and legs—there. Now—blast, up again. I’m oscillating. I can vary the rate and amplitude by reaching—there. Resonance. I’m out, and on the right side. Oops—there’s a breeze trying to push me back into the current—”

“I told you so,” said Martucci, violating Rule X, which was not military but dated in its original form from sometime before Archimedes. Maria ignored him.

“No traction to speak of—wait, I’m all right—I’m away from it now. The wind is noticeable only within a couple of meters of the edge. You were right, Gene; don’t try to land here. The visibility isn’t very good, either. I’m heading right to look for the pool.”

“It’s only about seventy meters,” Martucci informed her.

“You can see me?”

“Sure. There’s contrast again, now that your whitewash is off. Head along the edge to your right till I tell you to stop, then turn straight away from it and hike about thirty meters. Not too close to the edge; remember that Bernoulli wind.”

“Is the seeing worse than outside?” asked Belvew. “That west wind is covering the hexagon with fog, or dust, or whatever’s blowing up on that side. Is the stuff blowing along the surface, or overhead?”

“Surface or both, I’m afraid. I can see the rim, but not the pool yet.”

“It’s time to turn,” called Martucci. “Right angle, left turn, away from the edge. Tell us when you see the pool, so we can give Gene a real measure of the visibility.”

There was a brief silence.

“I think it’s there… yes, I can see its near edge.”

“Sixteen meters,” muttered one of the watchers.

“The color is funny, a lot redder than any I’ve seen. Certainly redder than the one you got stuck in, Ginger. I can see a lab now; I hope it’s working. I’m right beside it now. The color isn’t the same all over; some of it, away from the rim, is almost black, and there are a few spots where the snow seems to be sticking. They’re all several meters from the edge, and no lab is anywhere near one; shall I get a sample to bring up?”

“No!” cried Ginger and Gene together. “All we need is to get you stuck the way I was,” added the former.

“This is just another tar pool, and you got loose.”

“From stuff that looked different and could behave differently. Don’t take any chances. Pick up a lab and toss it onto the white, but keep your feet out of trouble.”

Maria followed this suggestion, and scored a center hit the first time. She was getting used to the gravity.

The lab sank at once: Seichi said promptly that it was still transmitting.

“I won’t step on it, but I’m going to get a sample from the lake to take up. It’s only a few meters, and I know which way. We can do more with it in the station than the labs can manage down here.”

“Be careful!”

“Relax, Sergeant. I didn’t step in the pool, did I?” There was silence for over a minute, a tense one for the watchers in the station; real-time instrument resolution wasn’t good enough to show what parts of Maria’s suit were above the liquid, especially when another shock tossed her upward.

She landed feet down half a meter past its edge. It turned out to be only a few centimeters deep where she arrived, and she waded ashore with neither trouble nor delay.

“Now,” Maria said firmly enough to prevent even Belvew from arguing, “I also get a sample or two from Arthur’s Pool. Then I’ll meet you, Gene.”

There was silence for several minutes.

“I have a chunk,” she called at last. “It’s gooey, like the stuff that caught you, Ginger. I don’t have anything to put it in, but I can carry it in one hand—the piece is about
fist
size. I’ll leave the digger. I don’t know why I carried it this far. We can—”

“Better not,” countered Seichi. “It has nearly a tenth of our available iridium in its teeth.”

“Right. I should have thought. Now, Gene, I’m willing to make you happy. Where
can
you land?”

“Closer than I thought. If I go into the wind, though that isn’t really fast enough to matter, I can touch down half a kilometer from the corner at the east end of your edge—you’re near the west end, about the same distance from it. Go back to the edge, turn right, start hiking, and please don’t let any new cliffs form in the next few minutes. I’ll skid to about three hundred meters of the corner, and drive closer on rockets. Jump through the updraft when you hear I’m down. Don’t do it any sooner; if I have to abort and land somewhere else, it’ll be quicker for you to cross the hexagon than go around it. I’m lining up now… slowing down near pipe stall… letting down slowly… I don’t want to get too low until I cross the crater rim.” There was half a minute of silence while the commander walked lakeward. “Over the rim. Rocket mode. Height one fifty… one hundred…” The pilot ceased’ reporting for several endless seconds. “Touched down, sliding as usual. I’m coming into the fog and can’t see very far ahead, but I made the approach a little north of your edge so there’ll be no trouble if I slide too far. There—stopped. Pete, how far am I from Maria? Should I push a bit closer?”

“You can go another hundred meters. Maria, you know about where you are.”

“Yes. Be patient, Gene.”

“All right. You’ll get to the edge
pretty
soon.”

“Wait a minute, please. This tar sample—”

“As sticky as mine?” asked Ginger.

“I’m afraid so. Wait a minute—I’d better not put my hands together. I’ll be jumping in a few seconds.”

“All right,” replied Martucci. “Just concentrate on getting down on your feet. Good. Don’t hurry. Watch the edge. Getting picked up again by the updraft would waste time.”

“Your suit has seventeen point six hours.”

At least walking was now easy, between tremors. “Recalculation based on recent usage. Your suit has seventeen point four hours.”

Martucci’s voice again: “You’re there, Commander. Go ahead and jump. Try to land so you don’t pick up another coat of paint.”

“The updraft will have more to say about that than I, but here goes. I’m backing off… picking up speed as fast as I can—thank goodness ice isn’t slippery
here—there!
I’m through, but I’m somersaulting—don’t know how I’ll land—got a fair kick upward—coming down now—feet first but leaning forward—good; I caught myself with one hand. Pete, I can’t see the jet. How far and which way?”

“One hundred thirty meters, the way you were traveling when you jumped—about forty degrees north of east. Just keep going as fast as you can.”

“That’s not very fast. The ground’s shaking again.”

“So the accelerometers say,” Belvew agreed. “Status, record their readings. They should help make sense of the can reports.” Maria silently gave thanks that he could work as well as worry.

“I see
Theia
,” she called as the dark bulk loomed in front of her. “Good guiding, Pete. Twenty meters… the fog’s thinner now… ten… I’m there. Climbing aboard… hatch open… inside, sealed up.”

“You want to fly out yourself?” asked Gene.

“No. You keep it.” The commander let it be assumed that she was acknowledging Belvew’s piloting skill; she was not going to mention any other troubles yet. Worry might interfere with his piloting, and he was almost as good at worrying as at flying.

“Fine. I can’t see ahead well enough to risk a westward takeoff. It’ll have to be downwind. No matter, with that wind speed.” The left engine roared, and
Theia
slid slowly forward, turning gradually to the right until her nose pointed back along the landing approach. “Ready, boss?”

“When you want.”

Both pipes thundered, and Maria gratefully felt the acceleration which Gene could only read from his instruments far above. Her coffin screen showed little detail, though it was set in a wave band which gave several hundred meters of fog penetration, and she tensely watched the center of the Mollweide ellipse.

The ground was fairly smooth, but with enough bumps to let her tell by their cessation when
Theia
was airborne. Her tension remained; the crater rim couldn’t be very far ahead, she knew. How far had the run up to flying speed taken?

She remembered the flight instruments, and glanced at them. Less than two kilometers even now, and it had been a little over three to the rim—good—altitude fifty meters… a hundred… a hundred twenty as the wall flashed into view below the center of her screen. At the same moment she felt, just barely, the slight jolt as Belvew let ramjet take over.

“Want to fly now, Maria?” he asked.

“No, you’d better keep it. I’m not sure I can.”

“Why not? Fatigue again?”

“A little, but that’s not the problem. I can’t get this sample of the pool off my right glove and for some reason I can’t feel the hand. Do you think it would be smart to let this compartment warm up?”

“Commander!” Martucci cut in excitedly. “We wondered why you were tossed upward from the low side of those faults. It’s just friction! The rising side dragged the other with it for a moment! It probably snapped down again while you were still in the air. Ice isn’t slippery there, as we’ve all been telling each other!”

Belvew, speechless for once, gave his attention to
Theia
. It was left to Maria to point out as tactfully as possible that this suggestion had been made earlier. Martucci didn’t seem bothered.

“I know. I couldn’t think of any other idea though, so I tested that one. I had radar covering the top of the prism and a dozen points around it. The prism went up nearly a meter again just after you left the ground, and the surrounding area followed it—I had enough spots covered so I could tell that the surface actually
bent
up for a couple of hundred meters out and then snapped back.”

“Good work. I shouldn’t have put you down so fast. So ice is rock even under those pressures and motions. Note it, Status. Is the lake still there, Pete? I got samples, but maybe we’ll want to get more.”

“It’s there, but doesn’t look the same anymore. It’s a
lot
smaller.”

“It is spilling off the north edge of the plateau,” reported Status. “Correlation with stream flows will no longer be possible.”

“And Arthur’s Pool?”

“Still there, unchanged in shape, color change continuing.”

“Are the labs there still reporting?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then we come back to the question of what we do about the tar in my hand, or the tar my hand’s in. I remember now there’s no choice about its heating up here in the coffin. I’ll try to get
some
of it into a specimen locker, but there isn’t much room to move here. And the hand’s still numb for some reason.”

Actually, the main difficulty was not getting some of the stuff into the locker, but getting her arm out afterward. This specimen was far stickier than Ginger’s had been.

No one suggested that Arthur’s remains were in any way responsible, at least not aloud or directly.

Radiocarbon dating was mentioned briefly, but Belvew pointed out stiffly yet again that no one had any idea of the rate at which the isotope formed in Titan’s atmosphere, so only relative comparisons between Collos patches could be made; absolute dating was not yet possible. This was common knowledge which had been covered in earlier discussions, and the discussion ended; diSabato, who had made the suggestion, lacked whatever nerve or insensitivity was needed to point out that relative measures might tell all they needed to know this time.

Martucci changed the subject. He called attention to the pictures he had obtained of the stratified side of the lifted prism with
Theia’s
camera, using carefully chosen wavelengths during the rescue of the commander. This definitely ended the radiocarbon discussion; Mastro and lePing were still dominating the debate when
Crius
and Maria reached the station.

No one, not even Major Xalco herself, thought of her as being in her own quarantine section
within
meters of everyone else, though they all knew she was. For all practical matters except vulnerability she was driving
Theia
, seven hundred kilometers below and a third of the way around Titan’s globe from the station’s present orbital position, trying to hold the jet at the official, standard observation true airspeed of one hundred meters per second.

Even after weeks the illusion of actually being in the aircraft tended to take over at dangerous moments, with resulting panic. The fact that occasionally the pilot was really on board probably made matters worse. The optimists who had believed at first that random reality reminders from Status would eventually cease to be needed had by now given up the hope.

Ginger Xalco had never been an optimist. She was commonly one of the first to comment whenever things seemed to be getting worse, and her voice now was practically a snarl.

“I don’t—know what would—constitute a K-T catastrophe on this—silly moon.” She got the words out in spasms, when some of her attention could wander briefly from piloting.
Theia
at the moment was not so much flying as being blown around, four kilometers above the smog-stained ice and ice-patched smog of the surface.

Turbulence was not new; it had been met by all the pilots in reasonable places, mostly within and under the thunderheads which commonly grew over Titan’s numerous lakes. Horizontal winds of more than a meter or two a second, however, had originally been rare. Recently they had become routine. So was the seismic—actually now volcanic—activity which had ended the first attempt to set up a surface base and was now racking at least four new areas on Titan’s surface.