Portal-eARC (34 page)

She repeated this several times, until suddenly Nemo spun around, flashing once, then a long flash, a pause, one flash, long flash.
Yes, yes!

Nemo streaked up to the port, closer than it had been before. One arm pointed directly at Helen, and then pointed at itself. One of the others, simultaneously, was spreading, touching
Zarathustra
, then pointing off into the deep at the hovering larger Europan creature.

These things are the same. You and me.
Zarathustra
and my riding beast.

She laughed for the sheer joy.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Nemo seemed to feel the same thing, and Joe laughed as well, watching the creature go through a gem-sparkling dance. Then Nemo zipped around, moving away from the window, surveying the
Zarathustra
. She could see it dodge away
quickly
when it approached the radiators too closely.
Didn’t have to learn that predator’s lesson; he felt the heat and avoided it.
It came to the front window, touched the manipulators very gently, brushed the front port, tugged cautiously at the rope that tethered them. Nemo seemed very interested in that, enough so that both Helen started to wonder if Joe needed to make him back off.
If he decided we’re somehow stuck, he might try to
help
by cutting the line. I don’t know if he could break that stuff, but we sure as hell don’t want anyone trying.

But just as Joe started slowly reaching for the manipulator controls, Nemo backed off, flickering with many colors in patterns similar to the ones she’d seen in his earlier “thinking” moments. He drifted cautiously, very slowly, towards
Athena
, and his extended tentacles began to riffle in the disturbed water.

The alien backed away very quickly, then came back to the rear port and hovered there, waiting, or thinking.

Helen was trying to think of what else she could communicate.
Damn. We never expected in our wildest
dreams
that we’d end up in a…a “first contact” situation. I know people have devised all kinds of programs and plans for this, but none of that was loaded on
Zarathustra
…and we haven’t got the bandwidth to transfer much of anything. What else can I
say
to him with what little we have?

Nemo’s arm reached out, encompassed itself, then pointed into the depths. Then it reached farther, touched
Zarathustra…

…and pushed the craft up slightly.

She stared. The creature repeated the motions twice.

Nemo’s figured it out. Maybe from
Athena
’s presence. Maybe from the way we’ve clearly been fastened to something that goes up
through
the ice. But Nemo has it.

The gestures were clear.
I come from down below. You come from up above?

Yes,
she sent.

She could only imagine what the Bemmie-like creature must be thinking. The spear showed some level of civilization, but there must be limits; here was a being on, at best, the level of one of Earth’s most ancient civilizations, discovering an entirely new order of life, one that lived above the roof of the world. As great a shock as an ancient Inca or Roman encountering a fallen spaceman—perhaps even more, because while many religions taught that the heavens were a bowl over the world, the limits of that bowl were not obvious and tangible, cold and indestructible.

Whatever else it was thinking, it seemed curious now about the ice above. It drifted up, and pulsed, and flinched several times. “What
is
Nemo up to now?”

Joe rubbed his chin. “I really don’t know.” He watched the creature move along above them, occasionally twitching sharply. Joe stiffened. “Hold on a sec…”

He touched the controls, brought up the record of the cameras on that side, played it back. Suddenly she understood. “The digging sounds. It’s flinching whenever the ice is getting hit heavily.”

“Yep. You told me these things would probably be sensitive to sound and vibration, and between
Athena
and our friends with the power tools, it must sound like a factory on overload around here.”

Nemo of Europa swam quickly back to the viewport, made multiple gestures; pointed to them, pointed up, pointed to himself, and down, then opening its tentacles wide, finally moving the expanded arm up. It repeated that sequence twice, then flashed
yes. Yes.

That enigmatic communication finished, Nemo moved swiftly off and hooked himself to his patient steed. An instant later, the larger creature lunged downward and disappeared into the gloom.

First contact was over.

But what have we started?

Chapter 43.

“We can’t put this off any longer,” Madeline said, finally.

“But you said—”

“I
know
what I said!” She sighed, shook her head. “Sorry, A.J.; we’re all on edge, and exhausted, and that’s part of the reason I’ll have to try it now. Brett checked the trend for me, and it’s clear. There’s no way we can keep up this pace much longer, not with the sleep limitations and physical stress this work’s putting us under.”

She gestured, and saw A.J. and the others finally really
look
around, not just let their eyes drift over the slow, steady change they’d been making, and she could hear little murmurs of startlement, even awe.

The bottom section of the ice was chopped down more than a meter lower, over an area wider and longer than
Zarathustra—
eighteen meters by four. Far above were scattered vast amounts of ice, dug out over the last twelve hours by the absolutely incredible effort of seven people who knew they were running out of time.

“You’ve all done
miracles
here. All of us have. That’s something like a hundred tons of ice we’ve broken, chopped, dragged, thrown, somehow gotten out of the way. We’ve made Europa’s weak gravity work for us, we’ve found a possible way to rescue our friends, and we’ve all pushed ourselves to our uttermost limits. We just can’t keep it up for another six hours. Even the General is slowing down, and to be honest, sir, I thought you might be a machine for a while there.”

General Hohenheim chuckled. “I am, alas, only too human, as our current predicament rather proves.”
He’s still carrying that guilt. I suppose he always will.
“But you are, as usual, correct. You are not in top shape yourself. The ice is getting slowly thicker beneath us, and while we have been keeping ahead of that, I presume we will not much longer?”

Even as they were talking, Jackie had triggered another series of hammering impacts from the jury-rigged jackhammer array. Horst, Mia, and A.J. stumbled down, sweeping up the fragments, throwing them as far as their weary arms could manage. Madeline could see that now even the smaller pieces were not clearing the high edge; the far side of the depression was starting to pile up with debris, and there wasn’t all that much distance between that and the edge of the hole they were digging. “No, General. According to the plot, we’re just about holding even now. Oh, we could probably drive ourselves a little harder and keep going for an hour or two more…but we may need those reserves when we
do
get
Zarathustra
up. She has her own problems.”

“As you say. Very well. Cease operations!”

Madeline had to admire the General’s tone of command; the others stopped instantly. “Please clear the area
immediately
,” the General continued. “Agent Fathom will be setting her charges and we will have to detonate as soon as possible.”

A.J. stood for a moment, alone in the center of the hole they had made, and she winced for a moment at how even his
pose
showed his exhaustion and worry, the clenching of his hand as though he would try to pound his way through the ice by main force. Then he turned and walked in slow, floating steps to the far side and ascended.

Last shot.

She weighed her options, then called the doctor over. “Petra, I need to be very sharp right now, and I don’t have time.”

Petra Masters frowned, then shrugged. “You know, of course, all the reasons not to do this. But I can’t argue the situation is not dire. I’ll give you a
very
small dose of the stimulant. It will take the edge off your exhaustion, clear your mind.”

“That’s all I ask. I don’t need excess energy for this, I just don’t want to be foggy while I’m working with explosives.”

She barely felt the injection, which Masters administered through the designated area of the suit. “Thank you, Dr. Masters.”

“Good luck, Maddie.”

The others were silent; she wouldn’t have been very surprised to find they were holding their breaths, except this would take too long.

“A.J., Brett, you’ve been taking the impact echo data, correct?”

“As much as we could,” A.J. answered. “I think there’s still a meter and a half to go.”

“Pretty close. There’s a small area where it’s a little thinner,” Brett said, “but a couple others where it’s a little thicker. There are a few weaker lines, though, places I think where the crack was originally and the ice formed around the old ice. I think your best chance is to take advantage of that.”

“Can you send the data to my suit, so the VRD will do an augmented reality overlay?”

“Can do,” A.J. said. A pause. “There, try overlay file code ‘Icebreaker.’”

She smiled. “I will.”

The ice suddenly glowed with color at the code activation. She could see complex lines of various shades—red, blue, green—making a ghostly X-ray vision of the structure of the ice.
God, it’s thick. These charges…if I don’t put them in the right place, I’ll barely
dent
this ice.

They were running out of the self-embedding spikes, too, but there would be more than enough; she had twelve of those, and only seven charges, designed to be placed in the holes the spikes made. She surveyed the whole area carefully, conferring with Brett’s models, while the others waited, silent. “Joe, Helen, are you there?” she said.

“Still here. Pressure in the lock is three point one atmospheres. Still holding, though, no sign of the inner seal weakening yet.”

“How about your…visitors?”

“No sign since he left a few hours ago.” Helen’s voice was wistful. Maddie couldn’t imagine what it must be like to, in effect, have come face to face with the creature that changed your entire life, but it must be something incredible.

“I’m setting the charges. With luck, we’ll break up the ice over you and be able to haul
Zarathustra
up through the hole. At the least we should make big enough cracks that we can widen the hole and
then
get to the point we can haul you out.”

“Hey, I’m all for that. Dibs on Hotel Europa’s shower.”

“Joe? The universe may not be able to kill you, but I can,” Helen said darkly.

“Save the murder of my husband for later,” Madeline said. “Stand by. I’ll give a countdown to the detonation when I’m ready.”

There.

Seven tiny points, now illuminating her vision, scattered at what would to someone else seem almost random across the hole the combined available crew of
Nebula Storm
and
Odin
had dug. But they were placed as well as both she and Brett could guess to produce maximum effect.

Quickly she moved to each point, drove in a spike, removed it, put in the miniature shaped charge, set the remote detonator, moved to the next. It seemed to take forever; she almost
sensed
the ice below her, slowly but surely adding another millimeter of thickness every few minutes.
Why
it was getting thicker she had no idea—Larry and Andrew hadn’t figured out a good model yet, either—but the fact was it
was
getting thicker, and she had to hurry.

But only an idiot hurried with explosives. So she hurried only in her heart, but took all the time and care she needed with the charges.

Finally
.

She bounded up the terraces to the top. “Everyone down behind the barriers.” She surveyed the area, made sure everyone was, in fact, behind the barriers before going there herself. “Joe, Helen, we are about to detonate. Fifteen seconds.”

She triggered the arming signal. Seven dots in her display went from amber to red. “Ten seconds. Nine. Eight…”

Please. Any power that’s listening…please let this work.
She suspected there was nothing listening, and a part of her chided herself for even
thinking
such nonsense which was probably left over from her horrid childhood…but at this moment, she didn’t care. “Three. Two. One. Detonation.”

There was sound now, carried very well by air vastly thicker than Earths. A blurred stacatto of quick sequential blasts, jets of pulverized ice and white-gray smoke of the explosives themselves shot into the air. Fragments rained down around the edges of the depression, skittering across the ice towards their barricades, but nothing actually reached them except tiny pieces.

She was up and moving instants later, skidding to a halt at the edge, looking down.

Seven circular holes were clearly visible, and there were cracks showing across the surface. But the telemetry showed that only a few cracks really went all the way through…and they would freeze back up, very soon.

No.

“Come on, everyone! Let’s finish breaking this up and get
Zarathustra
out!” she called, forcing as much optimism into her voice as she could manage. But inside, she was already feeling the cold, cold certainty.

We’ve failed.

Chapter 44.

“It didn’t work.”

Joe could hear the certainty in Helen’s voice. He nodded. “Yeah. They didn’t send down the data, but I can see that there’s only a few cracks that got through. The chances they can finish breaking all that up…aren’t good.”

Zarathustra
swayed slightly. Joe had gotten used to this over the past days; he figured that it came from a current that ran along under the ice. The current wasn’t terribly fast, but then with Europa’s gravity and the buoyancy,
Zarathustra
wasn’t very heavy, so they swung somewhat to and fro on the rope that it was suspended from.

I’d worry about that wearing through the rope, if we had to hang here for a few more weeks. But at least that’s not a worry anymore.