Portal-eARC (25 page)

Maddie winced. “I…hadn’t really thought of that, but conditions here simply aren’t the ones I was trained for. Andy?”

“Brett, allow me the use of your models, yes?” A few moments passed. “I believe yes, they are under, suspended in liquid water. Your records showed how thin was the layer beneath, and more importantly we should remember that
Zarathustra
is herself generating much heat. The water surrounding her, that will be a degree or more warmer than the normal. Yes, they will be in liquid water.”

“Still doesn’t help much,” A.J. said. “The real problem is that if we
do
manage to break through to them, we’ll just have a repeat of that explosive pressure release—and no guarantee you’ll get lucky a second time. Do we even
know
why you all didn’t get inundated?”

“I think—” “Yes, maybe—” said both Anthony and Brett simultaneously. Brett chuckled, as did Anthony. “Go ahead, Anthony, it’s really your field; I just ran the models.”

“Well, we have taken A.J.’s sensors’ data, and combined it with what we have learned so far, and models of various material behaviors,” Anthony said. “What happened is that the crack Madeline saw, and into which our friends have fallen, was not the only opening. From the pressure waves there were at least five simultaneous openings which were releasing into the tunnels a huge amount of vapor.

“That vapor, most importantly, was
not
just water. You recall, I think, the appearance of the water? It was foaming a great deal, yes?”

Madeline nodded, remembering the white-brown surge of destruction. “Yes, a lot—like a shaken soda bottle.”

“That, it is a very good example. It is precisely correct. From the readings, at least the top portion of the Europan ocean is saturated with both carbon dioxide and ammonia. When the pressure was relieved, all of these, plus water, vaporized into the surroundings. The volume released, it was
immense
—and because of expansion, it was also
dropping
temperatures drastically.

“At the same time, movement of the surroundings uplifted most of the cavern system, crushing much of it, compressing the atmosphere within.”

His image smiled. “This was most fortunate for all, as the compression, it heated the mixed vapor, kept most of it from condensing out immediately, maintained and even increased the pressure for those few critical moments. But more was boiling out and cooling at the same time, so the end result was that the water subsided and solidified swiftly, partially by self-cooling, rather than continuing to expand.”

“One in a billion, like I said,” Larry commented. “Good work, Anthony.”

The thought she had set aside was starting to grow. “So if I understand correctly, normally once the pressure reached some—much lower—level the water wouldn’t have continued boiling off, so without the external compression it would not naturally reach a high enough value to keep things stable?”

“Unfortunately, yeah,” A.J. said. “I think a few kilopascals would be enough to stop the boil if it was pure water; it’s a lot higher with the other gases, but still, you need over a megapascal to keep the pressure equalized. If you were thinking of punching controlled holes to give you a constant equalized atmosphere, it won’t work.”

“But,” she said, slowly, “when
Athena
is drilling, she’s giving us liquid water, not steam, right?”

“That’s because
Athena
is sealing the area and draining it as she goes,” Mia said. “No chance for the water to depressurize and boil off.”

“But what if there
was?”
Madeline asked.

The airwaves went silent for a few moments. Then Mia said, “That…might just work.”

“You’d have to keep her moving constantly, feeding in more ice—”

“Seal the entrance, too, and really solid—”

“—get the control and power cables stacked up in there—”

Madeline laughed. “Slow down, slow down. Do you really think it could work?”

“It’s not entirely impossible, anyway,” Jackie said, her voice as well as her transmitted face echoing her relieved smile. “If you can keep vaporizing water into the cave—water with its extra cargo of carbon dioxide and ammonia, too—and it stays sealed, you’ll be creating a pressurized atmosphere. Do it long enough, you’ll also make it significantly warmer in there which will keep the stuff from immediately trying to solidify out.
Athena
puts out a hellish amount of heat, so you might actually be able to keep that area pressurized long enough. Then you could try to break through to
Zarathustra
.”

“Which,” A.J. said, grinning, “would be dead-easy with
Athena
.”

“No, no, bad idea,” Mia interjected, making A.J.’s face fall. “
Athena
is not a precision instrument, and down there you’ll be trying to control her by hand, in extremely non-optimal conditions. If
Athena
were to drop onto
Zarathustra
for even a moment, the rover would be severely damaged. This leaves aside the even greater danger of the heat affecting the cable that is currently holding
Zarathustra
in place.” Mia shook her head. “No, we will have to try to break through with the tools we can bring down with us.”

“Still,” Maddie said, “that’s a much better situation than we were seeing a short time ago. We need to work out some way to communicate, to find out if,” her voice hesitated the merest moment, “find out if Joe and Helen are still all right, but the rest…at least we have a course of action. Since most of it will have to be on your end to begin with, Larry and I had better rest and conserve our energy—literally.”

The others agreed. “Then we shall begin, Agent Fathom, and in a day or so we should be on our way to Europa. Good luck.”

“Thank you, General.”

Madeline made herself sit down against one of the icy columns and relax. That was, at least, possible now.

We’re not dead yet. And we’re not giving up.

Ever.

Chapter 32.

Joe sighed loudly, then glanced with concern in Helen’s direction. Fortunately, she showed no sign of waking up.
She needs her rest, and I damn well better not deprive her of any.
Joe had insisted she rest once she’d filled an entire archive chip with ultra-high-detail images of the tiny creatures which had danced—were still dancing—in front of the windows of
Zarathustra.
She’d dropped off to sleep almost instantly, showing that the panic and stress of the day had definitely taken a toll on her.

“They’re not good for
me
either,” he muttered. But he had to admit that one advantage of apparently being God’s chew-toy was that you got used to perilous situations. He didn’t feel utterly strung out yet. Of course, he’d also had that nap in preparation for driving them back.

But that doesn’t solve any of the immediate problems
. He grimaced and finally dismissed the suit radio’s option menu. After he’d recalled some of the design and instruction work, he’d managed to figure out how to call up the customization functions, but the lowest he could reasonably configure the radio for was about 150MHz, which at the power he could generate—even with the power he could relay through Zarathustra, if her antennas were still intact—would never penetrate the four meters of ice and water that he estimated lay between them and the surface.

Assuming that there
was
a surface above. He winced and tried to shove the thought away, but he remembered the last glimpse he’d had of the cavern, tons of ice formations crumbling and dropping in slow-motion catastrophe. There wasn’t any guarantee that the entire cavern hadn’t collapsed afterwards; they might be suspended here because the mass of all Europa was holding those ropes in place.

He shook his head. If that was true, they were dead right here; even if
Athena
could be pointed directly at them, it might take longer than their supplies would hold out to get that far down, and even if it did, what then? If she punched through,
Athena
would most likely end up getting shot up her own bore like a bullet from a cannon, or would have to
stay
there as a plug. Which would make a rescue…rather difficult.

Communication’s the key
. He had to find a way to talk to the surface. If Maddie was alive (the
if
hurt more than he really wanted to think about), or if A.J.’s sensors were active above, any reasonable signal would get through. They’d figure out a way to understand him, however he did it.

“Okay, Joe, think,” he mumbled to himself. “Radio’s out. I’m sitting in salt water, no transmission I can make will get six inches in this crap. Never deployed the umbilical, so we’ve got no direct connection to…”

And he trailed off, gaze resting on the perfect “V” of carbonan-reinforced line holding them suspended in the ocean.
There’s a connection, all right. But can I
use
it?

He considered using it as a transmission line somehow.
Electrical won’t work. There’s a carbon core, but soaked in water I’d never get a signal through. Besides, I’d have to run a line to it.
That would require him to go outside.
Zarathustra
did have an airlock, but he seriously doubted that the pumps could handle water, or the extreme pressure needed. It was something of a miracle that the seals were holding as well as they were.

But it still was a connection, and a tight one. He connected his suit to the controls and slaved the forward manipulators to his arms. Now when he reached out, the manipulators moved with him. He could also switch his helmet view to
Zarathustra
’s external cameras.

He reached out and plucked at the cable. Zarathustra weighed in at about ten metric tons, but it wasn’t
that
much more dense than water given the large volume of air inside, maybe one point fifteen or so. That meant that buoyancy supported eight point seven tons of her mass, leaving one point three tons to exert a downward force; in Europa’s gravity, that meant the equivalent of a hundred seventy four kilos weight, or a little over three hundred eighty pounds. That made the slender line pretty taut; a faint, deep thumping twang thrummed through the ship. He tried plucking and striking the line in different ways. He was pretty sure that this sound would carry a long, long way in the water, but the problem was, as he thought about it, that the two meters of ice it was sealed in would probably damp out the vibrations.
Maybe
A.J. could pick it up, but probably not.

Still, that wasn’t the only way. The line would be very poor at transmitting energy from one side to another. But it could have another use.

The manipulator arms were rated at a pull-and-lift capacity of well over a ton, earthside; that meant that a hundred seventy kilos was easy. Joe reached out and grabbed the line and pulled gently.

Zarathustra
rose slowly in the water, closer to the icy surface. Holding with one manipulator, Joe pulled the other back and then punched forward.

Tactile feedback gave him the feel of punching through water, but there was a significant jolt from the impact with the icy surface. He struck several more times, then turned on the external microphones.

The result startled him. Instead of the effectively dead silence, there was a sensation of
sound
everywhere, a background level that was like standing in a forest with breezes going through the leaves. Faint sounds that grumbled or moaned or squeaked, with a rumbling tone behind it. The sounds were almost familiar.

After a moment, Joe recognized it. The sounds were similar to recordings he’d heard from near the “black smoker” vents on Earth, places where the magma below the crust came in contact with seawater and vaporized it, sending boiling water at hundreds of degrees, filled with dissolved minerals, spewing back into the chilled ocean above.
That explains a life cycle here where no sunlight will ever penetrate. But it still doesn’t—

He froze, then smacked his forehead.
That’s it!

Once more he levered
Zarathustra
up, up until the nose was almost touching the ice above…and then he triggered the headlights, on, off, on, in the old pattern that even the most casual fan of adventure novels had to know: three short bursts, three long bursts, three short.

S. O. S.

He repeated it three times, waited. Then did it again.
Even two meters of cloudy ice can’t stop those lights completely, not when everything above’s going to be blacker than Hades.
Wait. Still everything above was dark as pitch.

A third time he triggered the cycle, but in spite of himself he was feeling his gut tighten.
Anyone up there would see it, see it pretty easy. They’d have to.

If there’s anyone there.

The third repetition ended and he stared up into velvet darkness.

And then the darkness flickered. Flickered again, and again, in a rhythm too fast to easily follow. But he had the signal processing on board to do vastly harder problems, and old Morse Code was in
Zarathustra
’s onboard library. Decoded, the flashes read:

Thank God. Are both of you all right? End.

He barely restrained a whoop of triumph combined with relief. He realized also that Maddie—it almost
had
to be Maddie, he doubted Larry knew Morse code—was using “end” somewhat the way old telegrams used “stop,” except here it also signaled the other person that they could send—since if the two of them were to try to signal at once, the reflection of their own light from the surface would drown out the fainter signal from the other.

Both fine. Line holding us. No leaks yet. How are you? End.

Larry and I both fine. Cave-in trapped us. Plan to get us out. Maybe you. Take time. End.

Get A.J. to rig comm scan and code,
he sent back.
Use different light wavelengths, modulate signals, can talk after that. End.

He can’t program
Zarathustra
. End.

Tell him simple encoding, send me parameters. Can tweak
Zarathustra
’s systems myself. End.

Understood. Wait.
A few minutes went by.
A.J. says will have answer in ten minutes. End.