Trapped on Venus (3 page)

 
“Scott, I know how
much this means to you – to all of you – but, darling....” Her voice cracked a
little from the strain, her throat constricted. She was near tears thinking
about him so many millions of miles away on a planet shrouded in mystery;
strange, unpredictable, perhaps the place where he would die trying to find
answers to questions which were still barely understood. But, she loved him,
she cared about him, and wanted him here, where it was safe, where they could
live the rest of their lives together; but now was not the time to tell him all
that. She knew that he was troubled enough. The tone of his voice, the slight
hesitation between words, the subtle humor inserted into his sentences meant to
disguise his fear – she understood what he was going through, how he felt. She
braced herself. “...Darling, remember that we believe in you, that we love you.
And, be careful, Scott. You’re all we have....”

 
Scott paused as he
listened, his hands still on the wheel of the hatch. Just hearing her voice had
a sobering effect on him, somehow giving more meaning to the mission and a
greater reason for caution. He looked at the hatch door blankly, remembering,
then continued.

 
“I’ll be careful,
Barbara, believe me I will....”

 
Scott turned the wheel
until the latch clicked and the door again separated from the hull. He slowly
pushed it open, letting first a sliver, then a wedge, then a flood of light
pour into the cabin. It seared through the passageway in an unrestrained
torrent, feeling as if an oven door had been opened; a very hot oven! Scott was
the first to feel the heat spray over his suit.

 
“Whew!” he breathed,
astonished by the tremendous force of the sunlight. “It sure wouldn’t take long
to get a tan out there!...”

 
There was no laughter
in response to Scott’s remark. Stimson, Grayson, Barbara, and hundreds of
millions of others listening to this moment in history were still holding their
breath in silent prayer. They waited.

 
Scott stood up through
the hatch, peering through his thick, green tinted visor at the landscape
below. The ladder stretched beneath him to the surface, its disk-like legs
seeming to float in the crusty powder like buoys on a lifeless sea.

 
It was a tense moment
for Scott, a moment filled with both apprehension and excitement. As he looked
down the twenty-three and a half feet to the surface, it looked even farther
than it ever had before. Perhaps it was the increasing tempo of his heartbeat
or the dryness of his mouth which made the moment so emotional. Or, maybe it
was the realization that, as he descended the ladder to the surface and stepped
onto the crust, he would become the first human ever to do so. But, it was an
inspiring vision, a thrill which he hoped he could one day communicate to
others – man’s first step onto a completely alien environment, a place barren
of sound and movement. And, though he would be taking the steps, he knew that each
heartbeat, each breath, each tremor of his lips was shared by all of humanity.
It was a MAN who was now about to set foot on Venus. He turned to descend the
ladder – slowly, hand-over-hand.

 
His pudgy form looked
almost like a walking refrigerator from a distance, wobbling slightly with each
step as he felt the heavy pressure of the planet’s gravity. Yet, without the
liquid nitrogen cooling unit, the specialized coils and heat transfer units
strapped to his back, he would have suffocated in seconds under the scorching
Sun.

 
Slowly he continued
down the ladder, stealthily shifting his weight from one foot to the next to
keep his balance, until he paused at the last rung, looking up to see Marty’s
bulky frame poised in the doorway of the craft. Marty was waiting, not for
safety reasons, but to allow Scott the honor of this one, first moment on the
planet’s surface alone. Scott understood the gesture, and reached down with his
right foot to place his boot on the virgin soil.

 
He tested it for
firmness before transferring his weight to it, and it held. The scaly clay was
firm, yet rustled beneath his boot. He stepped down with the other foot, and
held his breath. Marty and millions of others listened, waited, hushed to
silence as his weight shifted entirely to the surface. He was now standing on
the planet Venus!

 
Scott slowly released
his hands from the ladder then turned to look back in the direction of Earth.
He was filled with emotion as he looked over the landscape, noting its soft
knolls and gentle ridges, and the words he then spoke resounded with the awe of
his vision. They were the first words ever uttered from the planet’s surface.

“Without sword I come to this noble place; staring with awe at that which is so
magnanimous, so rich in beauty and spirit so free from pain and bitterness.

“Yet, I come not as conqueror but as discoverer and
friend. And, always the skies shall be my goal; their beauty my measure, their
freedom my quest, for, now, I am a traveler of the stars.”

 
Many months earlier,
these words from Davis Trevor’s famous poem, “The Voyager”, had been selected
as the first to be spoken from the planet’s surface. It was a tribute to a man
who had not only seen beauty on Earth and in the Heavens, but who had brought
beauty to millions, as well, before his death. It seemed almost as if he had
written them for this purpose, for this moment, with this vision in mind.

 
The words echoed
through television sets, radios, and over newspaper presses around the world.
Even a live stream from the internet kept millions informed of their progress.
Scott was but one man, an American at that, but through the concern of all
races, creeds, and nationalities – the unshakable concern of all people for the
safety of a fellow human being willing to risk his life, his future, perhaps
his very existence for the advancement of science – he represented the first
infant steps of all men who seek to reach beyond the boundaries of their world.
The moon had been the touchstone, then Mars which had only been visited by unmanned
landings, but Venus was now a giant stride forward toward manned interplanetary
travel. Man was now a creature of the skies as well as of the Earth.

 
Marty looked out over
the Venusian terrain from the hatch of the ship, lingering momentarily before beginning
his descent. His steps were carefully chosen, slow and meticulous, yet as he
approached the last few rungs, Scott cautioned him further.

 
“Watch that last step,
Marty. There’s some of this powder on it, and it’s a little slippery.”

 
Fisk stepped carefully
over the rung and onto the planet’s surface. He shuffled to where Scott was
standing, and the two of them looked out over the barren landscape ahead. They
were astounded by its bleak, hostile, and lifeless features.

 
“Sure doesn’t look
like much, does it?” Scott said, panning the area in front of him. They both
swiveled to their sides in a slow, encumbered rotation, then turned to one
another. It was a desolate feeling, knowing that they were the only living
things for millions of miles, and they shared the seclusion of the moment in a
breathless undertone. Nothing moved, nothing stirred, only the steady hiss of
oxygen into their suits filled the vacancy of solitude.

 
“Well, if this is home
for the next couple of weeks, I guess we’d better get organized,” Marty
remarked in a breathy, humid tone. “Let’s get the equipment set up, Scott. I’ve
got to run some tests on this stuff – it’s really got me baffled. I can’t tell
if it’s some kind of rock, clay, or what it is. See how it bends when we walk
through it?” He pointed down at Scott’s feet moving through the powdery
substance. “It bends, but it really isn’t soft. It... it’s almost like a
reaction to our weight, or the friction of our boots. But, I can’t be sure
until I run some tests. Still... it seems almost like... well, like copper...
the way copper reacts when you heat it. It sort of bends, or curls.”

 
“What was that,
Marty?” Stimson asked from Earth Control One. “Did you say it was like copper?”

 
“No, not exactly
copper. It’s just that... well, I’m trying to describe it and it does seem to
have some of the characteristics. Then again, maybe that’s just the heat
influence. I can’t say for sure. I’ll be able to tell you more after I’ve done
some tests. That’s why I want to get started.”

 
“Roger,” Stimson
answered. “Keep us posted.”

 
Together, Scott and
Fisk dragged the instrument package from the ship. They unfolded the silver
liner protecting it as they would a picnic blanket, then removed the
experiments one at a time. Scott moved the first one a short distance away, and
activated it.

 
“The gravitometer is
in place, Earth One. Are you getting a signal?”

 
“Affirmative, Scott.
It’s working perfectly.”

 
He then dragged out
two other experimental packages meant to measure the planet’s composition, radioactivity,
atmospheric pressure, temperature changes, rotational fluctuations and other
properties, activating them as well. They functioned perfectly.

 
A little over half an
hour had elapsed by this time, and with both Scott and Fisk well-rehearsed in
the procedures, wasting a minimum of time and energy in setting up the
experiments, they were now able to begin their individual studies. There was no
specific objective for this, their first excursion. They were merely to gather
as much information as possible, familiarizing themselves with the terrain,
recording data, gathering samples, making tests, investigating anything which
seemed of interest in determining the nature of the planet. They were eager to
begin.

 
Marty was already busy
taking surface samples for his tests when Scott replaced the liner in the
ship’s storage compartment. He carried a small drill with him which he twisted
into the surface with several quick, thrusting turns, finding the Venusian
crust firm, yet not entirely solid. It seemed to have body, but offered little
resistance. The drill bit slicked through the powder with little effort and
made his work much easier than he expected. In fact, it was almost too easy.

 
As the drill plunged
the shallow six to ten inches into the soil, a tiny housing in the shaft
retained a sample of the substance for analysis. Marty twisted the rod as it
reached the proper depth, then extracted the sample and placed it into a
canister where it could mix with other chemicals and give him a reading. He was
surprised that he got an almost immediate reaction. The powdery substance
sloshed like mercury in the container and he held it up, overjoyed at the
success.

 
“Scott!” he exclaimed.
“Scott, I got a reaction already!”

 
Scott had returned to
one of the experiments only a few hundred feet away, but stopped to awkwardly
turn in Marty’s direction. The bulky suit and soft, almost mushy topsoil made
it a cumbersome movement, but habit forced him to want to see as well as hear
Marty’s good news.

 
“A reaction?” he asked,
somewhat startled by Marty’s excitement. “What kind of tests are you running?”

 
“The Aqua Rigia
series. The stuff seemed to dissolve almost immediately. It... it’s reading out
at...” He held the container closer to his helmet to make out the small digits
on the face of the scale. “It’s reading out at just between 8.0 and 5.6 on the
analyzer. I’d say it... it’s some kind of unstable, water soluble substance.
It’s even showing traces of smectites and zeolites.”

 
“Are you sure, Marty?
Check the scale again.”

 
Marty checked. “Yes,
I’m sure. The reading’s still holding.”

 
“Then... that would
mean that the surface isn’t solid at all, but...” He hesitated a moment, awed
by the significance of the discovery. “...but, a liquid!”

 
It was a remarkable
scientific find, yet came as a shock to both astronauts. How could the very
substance they were standing on, which supported their space craft and the
experimental packages, be a liquid? A hard liquid, Scott thought? Or, maybe a
crystallized substance like ice, hardened by extreme heat rather than cold? It
was incredible! This one, small piece of data would now revolutionize
everything that had ever been thought or written about Venus. But, what did it
mean?

 
“Fisk... We copy your
reading,” Stimson interrupted from Earth Control One. There was a note of
skepticism, of disbelief in his voice. “But, are you certain the analyzer is
working properly? We have no data to confirm.”

 
“Affirmative, Earth One,”
he replied. “I can’t explain it, either. But my instruments are functioning
perfectly.”

 
Scott was still
bewildered. “What do you make of it, Marty?”

 
“I don’t know. I don’t
know what to make of it. But, if I’m right, Scott, this whole planet may be just
one hardened ball of liquid spinning in space.... Kind of like an egg – a soft,
liquid center, and a hard shell around the outside. I know it sounds bizarre,
but what other explanation could there be? I know my instruments are right.”

 
Realizing that they
were moving over such precarious terrain flushed a silent chill through Scott’s
limbs. It was like walking over newly-formed ice – not knowing where the soft
spots were or whether it would hold their weight. But, the mission was too
important to abort. Even this startling discovery was not sufficient to deter
the effort that had brought them here. It had taken over three years of work
and countless hundreds of billions of dollars to bring them to this planet;
they couldn’t turn back now. The mission would have to go on, but perhaps with
a greater degree of caution.

 
“Can you give us
anything more?” Stimson asked. “We would like to know the structural
composition if you can give it to us. Have you got anything, Marty?”

 
“Negative, Earth one.
I’m going to continue with my tests, though, to substantiate. There’s an area
off to my right that I’d like to check. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”