Authors: Ben Bova

Venus (36 page)

BOOK: Venus

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Marguerite pointed to a boxlike metal contraption off by the far bulkhead. “We’ll have to get the portable airlock set onto the pod’s hatch,” she said.

Obviously she had been thinking out this job, step by step, while I had been wrapped up in the emotional turmoil of wondering what to expect once we looked inside.

So we rolled up the portable airlock. The pod’s hatch was too low to the deck for the airlock to connect against it.

“We’ll have to move it,” Marguerite said.

She went to the power cables stored against the cargo bay bulkhead while I climbed back into
Hecate
’s cockpit. It seemed somehow roomier than before, even though the spacesuit I was wearing must have been almost as bulky as the heat-protection suit I’d been in.

The control panel’s plastic had not melted, as I thought it had. That must have been due to blurry eyesight and more than a little panic.

“Power’s connected,” Marguerite reported as the control panel lit up before my eyes. Gingerly I maneuvered the
manipulator arms until the pod’s hatch was lined up with the portable airlock. Then I shut down
Hecate
’s systems, but not before I gave her control panel a gentle pat and whispered, “Good girl.”

I was getting positively maudlin, I thought. But it felt appropriate. It even felt good.

Once I climbed out of
Hecate
, Marguerite and I connected the airlock to the hatch, then tested the seals to make certain that the air inside the pod would not escape into the cargo bay.

“I think we’re ready to open the hatch,” she said at last.

I nodded inside my helmet, my insides quivering.

Handing me a small case of sensors, Marguerite said, “These are to analyze the air inside the pod. I’ll bring the other sensors with me.”

“You know how to handle them,” I said. “Why don’t you bring them?”

“You should go first,” she said.

Yes, I thought. She’s right. Alex was my brother. It’s my place to go in there first.

Nodding again, I ducked into the coffin-sized airlock. I found myself licking my lips nervously. I saw that the indicator light was red; the airlock was already in vacuum, so that when I opened the pod’s hatch, no contaminating atmosphere would mix with the air inside.

I had to open the hatch manually, since we did not want to power up the pod’s internal systems. We didn’t even know if the systems would come on-line, after more than three years of baking on the surface of Venus. The manual control was stiff, but the servomotors on my gloves and the arms of my suit multiplied my muscular strength by a factor of five or more. Slowly, grudgingly, the little wheel turned as I grunted and strained with both hands.

The hatch cracked open. Inside my spacesuit I couldn’t feel the puff of air that must have sighed out into the airlock. We’ll pump it back into the pod afterward, I told myself. There wasn’t room in the airlock to pull the hatch
open all the way, but it swung back enough for me to get into the pod.

Picking up the sensor case, I lifted one booted foot and stepped over the sill of the circular hatch. It was very dark inside, of course. I switched on my helmet lamp and saw two bodies sprawled on the metal deck.

No, not bodies, I immediately told myself. Spacesuits. Fully sealed spacesuits. The two people, whoever they were, had had enough time to get into their suits before the final disaster struck them.

Both suits looked strangely crumpled, shriveled, as if the bodies inside them had melted away. More than three years in the roasting heat of Venus, I thought. The monomolecular fabric of the suits looked oddly gray, discolored. I understood why. They had been baking in the scorching heat of Venus for more than three years. It’s a wonder that the fabric didn’t burn up entirely, I thought.

Their suits may have been filled with an Earth-normal mix of oxygen and nitrogen at first, but that searing heat would break down any organic molecule and force who knows what kind of hellish chemistry inside the suits. It would turn the suits into slow-cooking ovens.

God! The enormity of their death agonies struck me like a hammer between my eyes. Baking to death, literally cooked inside their own suits. How long did it take? Did they undergo hours or days of that torture or, once they realized what they faced, did they cut off their airflow and asphyxiate themselves?

There were tears in my eyes as I bent over awkwardly in my own suit to examine the names stenciled onto the suits’ torsos: L. BOGDASHKY, said the one closest to me. I had to step over it to read the other name: A. HUMPHRIES.

It was Alex. Or what was left of him.

Fighting back an almost overpowering feeling of dread, I peered into the tinted visor of Alex’s helmet, more than half expecting to see a skull leering at me. Nothing. The helmet looked empty. I pushed my own fishbowl right up against
the visor so my lamp could shine into Alex’s helmet. There was nothing inside to be seen.

“Is that him?” Marguerite asked, in a hushed voice.

Startled, I turned to see her standing behind me.

I said, “It was him. It was.”

THE CYCLE OF DEATH

T
here is a powerful difference between knowing something intellectually, up in the front of your brain, and seeing the truth of it with your own eyes. I had known Alex was dead for more than three years, yet when I finally saw that shriveled, seared spacesuit, saw his name stenciled on its chest, saw that his helmet was empty, I knew finally and utterly that Alex was dead.

“I’m sorry, Van,” Marguerite said gently. “For what it’s worth, I know what it’s like.”

I nodded inside my helmet. She had lost her mother. I’d lost the man who’d been a brother to me all my life.

But there was no time to mourn him.

“We’ve got to get inside the suits and see if there’s any organic material still remaining,” Marguerite said. To her, this was not a personal loss, not a tragedy like her mother’s death. This was a problem in biology, a chance to learn something new, an opportunity for adding to the human race’s store of knowledge.

“When bodies are cremated in high-temperature furnaces,” she told me, “there are always bits of bone and teeth in the ashes.”

“Even when they’ve been burned for more than three years?” I asked.

“We won’t know until we’ve opened the suits and looked,” she said firmly.

It would be best to open the suits in vacuum, she said. That would keep the level of contamination down as low as possible.

So, keeping my sorrow to myself, I started to help Marguerite pump the air out of the pod, to turn it into an airless biology laboratory. It actually helped, having something to do, a goal to work toward. In a way, it eased the pain of Alex’s death for me. A little.

But we had hardly begun the work when our helmet earphones blared out, “DUCHAMP AND HUMPHRIES, REPORT TO THE CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS IMMEDIATELY.”

We were both outside the pod, on the floor of the cargo bay. I glanced at Marguerite, who had turned to look up at the loudspeakers even before the echoes of Fuchs’s demanding voice died away.

“Let’s seal the pod first,” I said.

“He said ‘immediately.’”

“Immediately—after we seal the pod,” I insisted. “I don’t want to take the slightest risk of contamination.”

She agreed, reluctantly, I thought. Then we left the airless cargo bay, peeled off the spacesuits, and jogged up to the captain’s quarters.

I was shocked by his appearance. His face was gray, pallid, his right eye nearly closed. He looked tired, weak, as he sat behind his desk. His bed, which had always been made with military precision, was a wrinkled mess, covers thrown back, pillows sagging. I noticed that his dog-eared copy of
Paradise Lost
was open in front of him.

He looked up from it as Marguerite and I took chairs before the desk.

“How’s it going with the bodies?” he asked, in a low, weary voice.

It seemed obvious to me that he’d had another stroke, perhaps more than one. I glanced at Marguerite; she did not seem surprised at his condition as she told him what we were planning to do.

“Look for remains, eh?” Fuchs muttered. “Present an urn with his ashes to his father? Is that what you want to do?”

Marguerite flinched as if he’d slapped her. “No. But if the prize hinges on finding Alexander Humphries’ physical remains—”

“An empty spacesuit with his name on it won’t do; yes, I see your point.” Fuchs turned his gaze to me. “It would be just like Martin Humphries to renege on a technicality like that.”

I saw pain in his eyes. They were rimmed with red, sleepless. In my mind’s eye I saw that molten chasm splitting open down on Venus’s surface.

But before I could say anything, Fuchs straightened himself in his chair and announced, “We’re climbing into the clouds. In another eleven hours we’ll be entering the top cloud deck, the one with your bugs in ’em.”

Marguerite said, “They’re not
my
bugs.”

He gave her a sardonic smile. “You discovered them. You named them. You’ll get a Nobel Prize for them … if they don’t chew us to pieces on our way up.”

“Is that a real danger?” I asked.

He shook his head, just the barest movement. “Not if we go through at maximum ascent rate. We’ll drop all remaining ballast and climb through that layer as fast as we can.”

“Good,” I said.

He glared at me. “I’m so pleased that you approve,” he said, with something of his old sarcastic fire.

“We should rendezvous with
Truax
,” I said. “My medical supplies—”

“I’ll put you off on
Truax
all right,” Fuchs said. “But that escape pod and your brother’s remains stay here, on
Lucifer,
all the way back to Earth.”

Nodding, I replied, “Understood.”

“I’m going to need you on the bridge, Mr.—” He stopped, made a face that might have been a grin or a grimace, it was hard to tell which. “—Mr. Fuchs.”

I felt my cheeks flush, but I managed to say, “Yes, Captain.”

He stared at me for a long, silent moment, then turned back to Marguerite. “Can you carry on with your biological studies by yourself for a day or so?”

“If I must,” she said, almost in a whisper.

“It’s only until we establish orbit,” Fuchs said. “Then you can have him back until he’s ready to transfer to
Truax.
”

I said, “Perhaps I could stay here on
Lucifer
and have
Truax
ferry my medical supplies to me. That way I could continue to assist Marguerite.”

Fuchs arched his left brow at me. “Perhaps,” he conceded.

“I’ll suspend the bio work until we’re in orbit,” Marguerite said.

“Why?” he asked.

“To attend to you,” she answered.

“I’m all right.”

“You’re dying and we both know it.”

“Dying?” I gasped.

Fuchs gave a snorting laugh and gestured toward me. “Now he knows it, too.”

Marguerite said, “He’s had at least two minor strokes while you were down on the surface. I’m doing all I can for him, but if he doesn’t rest he’ll—”

“I’ll rest when we reach orbit,” he said. “Now get to your duties: Van, to the bridge; Marguerite, back to the cargo bay and that pod. It’s my ticket to ten billion dollars.”

We both stood up, but Marguerite said, “I’m going to the sick bay and you should come with me.”

“Later. Once we’re in orbit.”

“Your strokes are getting worse each time!” she railed at him. “Don’t you understand that? It’s only a matter of time before you have a fatal one! Why won’t you let me help
you? I can bring your blood pressure down, put you on blood thinners … .” She ran out of words, and I saw tears brimming in her eyes.

Fuchs struggled to his feet, or tried to. He got halfway up, then sank back into his chair again. “Later,” he repeated. “Not now.” And he waved us toward the door.

Outside in the passageway I whispered to her, “Nobody dies of strokes anymore!”

“Not if they have proper medical care,” Marguerite agreed. “But I don’t have the experience or the facilities or even the proper medical supplies to take care of him. And he’s too stubborn even to let me do what little I can for him.”

“He’s got to run the ship, I suppose.”

She shot me a furious glance. “That Amarjagal woman can run the ship! But he doesn’t trust her to get us through the bugs. He doesn’t trust
anyone!
”

Before I could think of what it meant, I said, “He’ll trust me.”

“You?”

“I’ll take over as captain,” I heard myself say, as if I believed it. “You get him down to the sick bay and do what you can for him.”

She stared at me disbelievingly. “You can’t …” But she didn’t finish the sentence because I was already stepping back to the captain’s door and rapping on it.

Without waiting for him to answer, I slid the door back and strode into his quarters. “Captain, I—”

I stopped dead in my tracks. He was still in his chair, but bent facedown over the desk. Unconscious. Or dead.

BOOK: Venus

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