2061: Odyssey Three (16 page)

When people asked to see him together, it usually meant trouble, or at least some difficult decision. Captain Laplace had noticed that Floyd and van der Berg were spending a lot of time in earnest discussions, often with Second Officer Chang, and it was easy to guess what they were talking about. Yet their proposal still took him by surprise.

‘You want to go to Mount Zeus! How - in an open boat? Has that Shackleton book gone to your head?’

Floyd looked slightly embarrassed; the Captain was right on target. South had been an inspiration, in more ways than one.

‘Even if we could build a boat, Sir, it would take much too long… especially now that Universe looks like reaching us within ten days.’

‘And I’m not sure,’ added van der Berg, ‘that I’d care to sail on this “Sea of Galilee”; not all its inhabitants may have got the message that we’re inedible.’

‘So that leaves only one alternative, doesn’t it? I’m sceptical, but I’m willing to be convinced. Go on…

‘We’ve discussed it with Mr Chang, and he confirms that it can be done. Mount Zeus is only three hundred kilometres away; the shuttle can fly there in less than an hour.’

‘And find a place to land? As you doubtless recall, Mr Chang wasn’t very successful with Galaxy.’

‘No problem, Sir, The William Tsung’s only a hundredth of our mass; even that ice could probably have supported it. We’ve been over the video records, and found a dozen good landing sites.’

‘Besides,’ said van der Berg, ‘the pilot won’t have a pistol pointed at him. That could help.’

‘I’m sure it will. But the big problem is at this end. How are you going to get the shuttle out of its garage? Can you rig a crane? Even in this gravity, it would be quite a load.’

‘No need to, Sir. Mr Chang can fly it out.’

There was a prolonged silence while Captain Laplace contemplated, obviously without much enthusiasm, the idea of rocket motors firing inside his ship. The small shuttle William Tsung, more familiarly known as Bill Tee, was designed purely for orbital operations; normally, it would be pushed gently out of its ‘garage’, and the engines would not operate until it was well away from the mother ship.

‘Obviously you’ve worked all this out,’ said the Captain grudgingly, ‘but what about the angle of take-off? Don’t tell me you want to roll Galaxy over so that Bill Tee can pop straight up? The garage is half-way down one side; lucky it wasn’t underneath when we grounded.’

‘The take-off will have to be at sixty degrees to the horizontal; the lateral thrusters can handle it.’

‘If Mr Chang says so, I’ll certainly believe him. But what will the firing do to the ship?’

‘Well, it will wreck the garage interior - but it will never be used again, anyway. And the bulkheads are designed for accidental explosions, so there’s no danger of damage to the rest of the ship. We’ll have fire-fighting crews standing by, just in case.’

It was a brilliant concept - no doubt of that. If it worked, the mission would not be a total failure. During the last week, Captain Laplace had given scarcely a moment’s thought to the mystery of Mount Zeus, which had brought them to this predicament: only survival had mattered. But now there was hope, and leisure to think ahead. It would be worth taking some risks, to find why this little world was the focus of so much intrigue.

‘Speaking from memory,’ said Dr Anderson, ‘Goddard’s first rocket flew about fifty metres. I wonder if Mr Chang will beat that record?’

‘He’d better - or we’ll all be in trouble.’

Most of the science team had gathered in the observation lounge, and everyone was staring anxiously back along the hull of the ship. Although the entrance of the ‘garage’ was not visible from this angle, they would see the Bill Tee soon enough, when - and if - it emerged.

There was no countdown; Chang was taking his time, making every possible check - and would fire when he felt like it. The shuttle had been stripped down to its minimum mass, and was carrying just enough propellant for one hundred seconds of flight. If everything worked, that would be ample; if it didn’t, more would not only be superfluous, but dangerous.

‘Here we go,’ said Chang casually.

It was almost like a conjuring trick; everything happened so quickly that the eye was deceived. No one saw Bill Tee pop out of the garage, because it was hidden in a cloud of steam. When the cloud had cleared, the shuttle was already landing, two hundred metres away.

A great cheer of relief echoed through the lounge.

‘He did it!’ cried ex-Acting Captain Lee. ‘He’s broken Goddard’s record - easily!’

Standing on its four stubby legs in the bleak Europan landscape, Bill Tee looked like a larger and even less elegant version of an Apollo lunar module. That was not, however, the thought that occurred to Captain Laplace, as he looked out from the bridge. It seemed to him that his ship was rather like a stranded whale, that had managed a difficult birth in an alien element. He hoped that the new calf would survive.

Forty-eight very busy hours later, the William Tsung was loaded, checked out on a ten-kilometre circuit over the island - and ready to go. There was still plenty of time for the mission; by the most optimistic reckoning, Universe could not arrive for another three days, and the trip to Mount Zeus, even allowing for the deployment of Dr van der Berg’s extensive array of instruments, would take only six hours.

As soon as Second Officer Chang had landed, Captain Laplace called him to his cabin. The Skipper looked, thought Chang, somewhat ill at ease.

‘Good work, Walter - but of course that’s only what we expect.’

‘Thanks, Sir, So what’s the problem?’

The Captain smiled. A well-integrated crew could keep no secrets.

‘Head Office, as usual. I hate to disappoint you, but I’ve had orders that only Dr van der Berg and Second Officer Floyd are to make the trip.’

‘I get the picture,’ Chang answered, with a trace of bitterness. ‘What have you told them?’

‘Nothing, yet; that’s why I wanted to talk to you. I’m quite prepared to say that you’re the only pilot who can fly the mission.’

‘They’ll know that’s nonsense; Floyd could do the job as well as I could. There’s not the slightest risk - except for a malfunction, which could happen to anyone.’

‘I’d still be willing to stick my neck out, if you insist. After all, no-one can stop me - and we’ll all be heroes when we get back to Earth.’

Chang was obviously doing some intricate calculations. He seemed rather pleased with the result.

‘Replacing a couple of hundred kilos of payload with propellant gives us an interesting new option; I’d intended to mention it earlier, but there was no way Bill Tee could manage with all that extra gear and a full crew…’

‘Don’t tell me. The Great Wall.’

‘Of course; we could do a complete survey in one or two passes, and find what it really is.’

‘I thought we had a very good idea, and I’m not sure if we should go near it. That might be pressing our luck.’

‘Perhaps. But there’s another reason; to some of us, it’s an even better one…’

‘Go on.’

‘Tsien. It’s only ten kilometres from the Wall. We’d like to drop a wreath there.’

So that was what his officers had been discussing so solemnly; not for the first time, Captain Laplace wished he knew a little more Mandarin.

‘I understand,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll have to think it over - and talk to van der Berg and Floyd to see if they agree.’

‘And Head Office?’

‘No, dammit. This will be my decision.’

‘You’d better hurry,’ Ganymede Central had advised, ‘The next conjunction will be a bad one - we’ll be triggering quakes as well as Io. And we don’t want to scare you - but unless our radar’s gone crazy, your mountain’s sunk another hundred metres since the last check.’

At that rate, thought van der Berg, Europa will be flat again in ten years. How much faster things happened here than on Earth; which was one reason why the place was so popular with geologists.

Now that he was strapped into the number two position immediately behind Floyd, and virtually surrounded by consoles of his own equipment, he felt a curious mixture of excitement and regret. In a few hours, the great intellectual adventure of his life would be over - one way or the other. Nothing that would ever happen again could possibly match it.

He did not have the slightest trace of fear; his confidence in both man and machine was complete. One unexpected emotion was a wry sense of gratitude to the late Rose McCullen; without her, he would never have had this opportunity, but might have gone, still uncertain, to his grave.

The heavily laden Bill Tee could barely manage one-tenth of a gravity at lift-off; it was not intended for this sort of work, but would manage much better on the homeward journey when it had deposited its cargo. It seemed to take ages to climb clear of Galaxy, and they had ample time to note the damage to the hull as well as signs of corrosion from the occasional mildly acid rains. While Floyd concentrated on the lift-off, van der Berg gave a quick report on the ship’s condition from the viewpoint of a privileged observer. It seemed the right thing to do - even though, with any luck, Galaxy’s space-worthiness would soon be of no further concern to anyone.

Now they could see the whole of Haven spread out beneath them, and van der Berg realized what a brilliant job Acting Captain Lee had done when he beached the ship. There were only a few places where it could have been safely grounded; although a good deal of luck had also been involved, Lee had used wind and sea-anchor to the best possible advantage.

The mists closed around them; Bill Tee was rising on a semi-ballistic trajectory to minimize drag, and there would be nothing to see except the clouds for twenty minutes. A pity, thought van der Berg; I’m sure there must be some interesting creatures swimming around down there, and no-one else may have a chance of seeing them.

‘Coming up to engine cut-off,’ said Floyd. ‘Everything normal.’

‘Very good, Bill Tee. No report of traffic at your altitude. You’re still number one on the runway to land.’

‘Who’s that joker?’ asked van der Berg.

‘Ronnie Lim. Believe it or not, that “number one on the runway” goes back to Apollo.’

Van der Berg could understand why. There was nothing like the occasional touch of humour - providing it was not overdone - to relieve the strain when men were involved in some complex and possibly hazardous enterprise.

‘Fifteen minutes before we start braking,’ said Floyd. ‘Let’s see who else is on the air.’

He started the autoscan, and a succession of beeps and whistles, separated by short silences as the tuner rejected them one by one in its swift climb up the radio spectrum, echoed round the little cabin.

‘Your local beacons and data transmissions,’ said Floyd. ‘I was hoping - ah, here we are!’

It was only a faint musical tone, warbling rapidly up and down like a demented soprano. Floyd glanced at the frequency meter.

‘Doppler shift almost gone - she’s slowing fast.’

‘What is it -text?’

‘Slowscan video, I think. They’re relaying a lot of material back to Earth through the big dish on Ganymede, when it’s in the right position. The networks are yelling for news.’

They listened to the hypnotic but meaningless sound for a few minutes; then Floyd switched it off. Incomprehensible though the transmission from Universe was to their unaided senses, it conveyed the only message that mattered. Help was on the way, and would soon be there.

Partly to fill the silence, but also because he was genuinely interested, van der Berg remarked casually: ‘Have you talked to your grandfather lately?’

‘Talked’, of course, was a misnomer where interplanetary distances were concerned, but no-one had come up with an acceptable alternative. ‘Voicegram’, ‘audiomail’ and ‘vocard’ had all flourished briefly, then vanished into limbo. Even now, most of the human race probably did not believe that realtime conversation was impossible in the Solar System’s wide, open spaces, and from time to time indignant protests were heard: ‘Why can’t you scientists do something about it?’

‘Yes,’ said Floyd. ‘He’s in fine shape, and I look forward to meeting him.’

There was a slight strain in his voice. I wonder, thought van der Berg, when they last met; but he realized that it would be tactless to ask. Instead, he spent the next ten minutes rehearsing the off-loading and setting-up procedures with Floyd, so there would be no unnecessary confusion when they touched down.

The COMMENCE BRAKING alarm went off just a fraction of a second after Floyd had already started the program sequencer. I’m in good hands, thought van der Berg: I can relax and concentrate on my job. Where’s that camera - don’t say it’s floated away again.

The clouds were clearing. Even though the radar had shown exactly what was beneath them, in a display as good as normal vision could provide, it was still a shock to see the face of the mountain rearing up only a few kilometres ahead.

‘Look!’ cried Floyd suddenly. ‘Over to the left -by that double peak - give you one guess!’

‘I’m sure you’re right - I don’t think we did any damage - it just splattered - wonder where the other one hit-’

‘Altitude one thousand. Which landing site? Alpha doesn’t look so good from here.’

‘You’re right - try Gamma - closer to the mountain, anyway.’

‘Five hundred. Gamma it is. I’ll hover for twenty secs - if you don’t like it, we’ll switch to Beta. Four hundred… Three hundred… Two hundred. (’Good luck, Bill Tee,’ said Galaxy briefly). Thanks, Ronnie… One hundred and fifty… One hundred… Fifty… How about it? Just a few small rocks, and - that’s peculiar - what looks like broken glass all over the place - someone’s had a wild party here… Fifty… Fifty… Still OK?’

‘Perfect. Go down.’

‘Forty… thirty… twenty… Sure you don’t want to change your mind?… Ten… Kicking up a little dust, as Neil said once - or was it Buzz?… Five… Contact! Easy, wasn’t it? Don’t know why they bother to pay me.’