Mike Wallingford volunteered for a dangerous assignment, a diplomatic mission beneath the red-hot soil of Venus. Locked alone in a sealed container to reach a tunnel headquarters that is far more that in seems, Mike must brave heat, pressure, radiation and the suspicions of a native clan struggling for survival. Mike's friend Ellen, bewildered by their recent encounter with the reclusive hill people and weakened by a mysterious illness, is devastated by Mike's friend Ellen, bewildered by unexpected action. Neither suspects they are being cleverly manipulated. Back on Earth, a developing plot could leave the Venture project stranded without supplies or a way off the hostile planet.

Worlds Spinning Round

Part 2: DecisionsBy T. E. GREENE

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 T. E. Greene
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-3770-7

Contents

1. Underground.................................12. None of the Above...........................323. Crisis of Response..........................394. Tangled Webs................................855. Declarations................................1176. Treks.......................................1357. Crack in the Sky............................1658. Shell Air...................................1919. Wolves among Sheep..........................2170. Generations.................................22411. Regeneration...............................26612. Nevertheless, It Moves.....................29113. Inside Loop................................33114. Slingshot..................................36415. Contract...................................38216. Bumps in the Night.........................41317. Teamwork...................................42318. Punching the Envelope......................46119. Through the Wall...........................48220. Bringers of Colds..........................52621. What Is Good...............................54022. Shadows....................................55823. Coverage...................................57324. Responsibilities...........................58925. Sheep among Wolves.........................61026. Sacrilege..................................61627. Justice....................................65428. Balance of Forces..........................67929. Extended Forecast..........................69830. Out of the Frying Pan......................70931. Times Together.............................735

Chapter One

Underground

Mike Wallingford stood balanced in his armored pressure suit on an insulated pad fitted into what was currently the bottom of a heavy-walled, steel alloy chamber. He was sealed in as not even the most paranoid coffin-nightmare victim had envisioned. Beneath ninety-two atmospheres of toxic pressure, an undetermined depth of Venusian soil, glowing orange at five hundred Celsius, lay above him. He could not see the glow, except what showed around the edge of the cover that protected the three small viewports overhead. Two ports at his waist level, one before and one behind him, had been used originally to allow a medical scanner to examine a native patient, but for this mission had been covered with heavy alloy plate and welded shut against abrasion and the reversed, outside-in pressure. Around him, the invisible soil Mike could hear scraping slowly by the chamber would have held the shell-like cover plates shut firmly enough to keep him from ever getting out had they not already been sealed and bolted from the outside. Somewhere nearby, he hoped, his construction supervisor and friend Anton Petrov rode in an identical vessel. The objective of this madness was an underground visit of Anton and Mike to the Tunnel of Meeting of the Venusian Clan Mizhban.

The plan had called for testing the pressure chambers three times before the actual descent, the first two unmanned. The first required native diggers to tow the chambers in a horizontal direction just beneath the surface of the ground, the second, a vertical run to the Tunnel of Meeting itself in order to confirm that the pressure chambers could be made to reach their destination and return while preserving the Earth-normal environment within against the weight and heat of the soil overhead. Translated, Mike thought nervously, an occupant would have survived. The third experiment was set up as a manned repetition of the first, horizontal test.

The sand squall had changed all that. The third test had been canceled when conditions on the surface became too dangerous for humans to remain outside the two fortress-like crawlers assigned to support the mission. Despite successful completion of the first two test runs with the living-space environments monitored by an unoccupied pressure suit inside each chamber, uncertainties remained. Human-excavated tunnels aside, this was the first time humans had descended beneath the surface of the planet Venus.

If only that were the sole matter occupying his mind. Ellen McFarland, the woman to whom he had proposed marriage not a week ago, had held back and seemingly distanced herself from him, because, rumor had it, of attraction to another man, the expedition doctor, Ed Shigamatsu. Not even a triangle, the relationship had become more like a sandwich with Ellen both positioned and caught between levels of age and of education. A clear enough choice, to his tortured mind. Nevertheless, Mike preferred being in his own dangerous condition, totally helpless, rather than in Ellen's apparent dilemma.

At the moment, Mike's suit was running slightly but measurably warmer than the values recorded by the unmanned suits. The change in operating level did not appear to pose an immediate threat, but any anomaly bore watching. One could get very and quickly dead down here.

He would have to watch whether the rate of consumption by his suit's fuel cells increased appreciably as the suit worked harder to maintain its original temperature setting, since fuel supply was the limiting factor to the time of the visit. His suit bore two high-pressure, liquefied-gas tanks, one filled with hydrogen for the fuel cell, the other with oxygen shared between the fuel cell and his need to breathe. There were six spare oxygen tanks racked along the sides of the pressure chamber's interior, enough, counting the one he was already using, to last about a week with active filtering. There were only two hydrogen spares. The suits were not expected to exert themselves much while underground, except for refrigeration.

Well, let's see, what's different from the unmanned tests? Himself, for one. He gave off heat. The test suits had been empty. So, how much of an effect could his body temperature have? Would it be enough to affect the air temperature in the chamber outside his suit? Mike checked the readout. Warmer than the inside of his suit, but no less livable than a hot summer day. He called up, on his suit's computer, the profiles of the unmanned tests in order to see a side-by-side comparison of temperature over time and got an unpleasant surprise. There was no data for chamber temperature.

Of all the things to leave out, he grumbled. Then he remembered. The unmanned tests had been made with vacuum in the chambers to increase the pressure difference with the outside, a safety factor before committing people to the mission. There were no readouts because vacuum has no temperature, just like space.

That could account for the temperature difference. Vacuum is also an insulator. Air conducts heat, not as quickly as metal, certainly, but a factor to deal with nonetheless.

It seemed, then, that since the air surrounding his suit was warmer than the air surrounding him, the majority of the extra heat was being conducted to the suit from the soil outside by the air in the pressure chamber and by any contact he made with the insulated walls of the chamber itself. He could increase chamber cooling, but that would use more fuel. Mike became very careful not to touch any of the ceramic-fiber-covered metal with anything but his armored and over-gloved fingertips, and then only for balance on his insulated boots as the pressure chamber scraped and shifted and sank deeper.

Mike could only guess at the temperature outside. Attempts had been made to mount external thermocouples that would be not only sensitive to changes in soil temperature but also sufficiently well-protected to survive the scraping action of the packed soil. The result was a surrounding flange that both shielded and limited the sensors to reporting a rough average between the residual temperature of the ever-present chamber exterior and that of the changing soil sliding past.

In a similar way, Mike reflected, caves on Earth, in response to average climate conditions, were generally cooler than the summertime temperatures that brought the tourists who visited underground. On Venus, the average was the air temperature, with variations so slight over a day measured in months that only a thermal imager or maybe a digital thermometer could tell. The only other factors were related to the planet's interior, which just made the subsurface hotter, but not the same in all places. Perhaps due to the depth of the soil at this location, the temperature had not risen noticeably after the first thirty minutes of the descent. Mike hoped the lack of change would continue.

The pressure chamber tilted slightly as the natives outside made a small course correction or avoided a buried rock or switched duty assignments as even their incredible stamina must require. Mike had no way of knowing, no way to ask, no way to receive an answer.

At the moment, Mike was feeling a desperate urge to talk with somebody, anybody. Even a suit-gyro-stressing palm slap with one of the low-built, heavy-framed natives, hydraulics against seemingly iron-bound muscle of obvious origin—if they dug like this all the time—would be welcome. He could call Ellen's name at the top of his lungs for all the good it would do. Maybe it would help his frustration. No one would hear him. On the other hand, if he let himself go that far, he might start screaming and not be able to stop. So he went back to forcing slow, deep, regular breaths, one at a time.

Almost out of mental resources, Mike thought back to the last meaningful communication he had initiated with another person before the departure for Earth of the Venture expedition's deep-space ship Serendipity for supplies.

John Travers had listened carefully, as he always did, while Mike told of his family's situation brought on by his father's sudden unemployment and explained his idea of sending them part of his deferred salary.

"Good idea," John replied when Mike had finished, "but it's a short-term solution. Why don't we start with your plan. Then we'll see what it takes to get your father a decent job. Good accountants are always in demand. Would it be alright for me to send him an invitation to apply for a position in our Denver office?"

Mike, in spite of twenty months of surprises, was mildly startled. "You'd do that?"

"Why not? They're your family. Venture is closer to being a family than it is to being a company the way the world in general views such things. Besides, this is not a made-up job. We need more people. He still has to interview for it. But I don't think that will be a problem. Who knows? With your sister in college, your mother might be interested in doing something, too. Maybe part time, as she is now."

That was an interesting thought. Mike also couldn't think of any problems with their moving. They had moved often. They had no particular ties to the area where they now lived. The only objection Mike could think of was one his mother would make. His sister Sam would soon be no longer living at home, but the college was only a couple of hours drive from there. Moving the household to Denver would alter that arrangement severely. Then again ...

"It's certainly worth a try. Thanks, John." Mike left the psychologist's cubicle not-quite consciously aware of a subtle but significant change in their relationship.

Speaking of changes in relationship ... Mike had picked up the folded and tape-sealed note he had found on his customary co-driver seat in the crawler Turtle as they were heading out to the site of the first test, but had not had a chance to look at it, or so he had told himself. It was from Ellen, if the way "Mike" was written was enough of an indicator. Well, no better time to read it than during this descent. He had absolute, total privacy, unless Anton's idea of God could see through meters of solid dirt—and an hour, at least, with nothing to do but worry.

Mike immobilized his suit arms in a bracing position and pulled the note from his shirt pocket. He broke the seal and held the paper against the instrument panel, the only place inside the suit both far enough for him to focus on and still in line-of-sight.

"Dearest Mike," the inside of the note began. Mike's insides squirmed as if entering free fall. This was a strange way to start a goodbye. It did not help that Ellen's voice was just as clear in his mind as if she stood next to him.

"This may seem a strange way to thank you for thinking enough of our friendship to want it to become something more. In some ways, it already has. I feel, Mike, as if I have known you a very long time, almost as if we already shared something when we first met. I think we still do, more now than ever.

"Perhaps this note is the best way to talk to you right now, although it wouldn't have been my first choice. I want to see you again soon, schedules or not." Mike looked at the date and time at the top of the note—Ellen was a scientist, after all—and blinked in surprise. This message had been left for him before his first perception of trouble between them, before he had overheard that unwelcome rumor. Perhaps she had not been avoiding him as he had come to think.

"The odd thing is, Mike, that for perhaps the first time in my life, my mind is filled with uncertainties, none of them about you. It's not even about the hill people, although that's when it all started. It was Anton, Sally and Doris, anticipating their every move and endorsing everything they said. If what I was taught is true, then what they did is impossible. So where does that leave my whole world?

"I want you in my world, Mike. I want to know what that world will be. I want us to be in the same world. Please get back to me somehow: link, note, tell a friend, anything. I miss you.

"All my love, "Ellen"

All my love. Somehow, Mike knew that Ellen was not using a figure of speech, that she meant the phrase literally. She also did not mean it the way his sister did. He swallowed deeply. Then she had been waiting for his response. For over a week. The rumors could not be true. It was his move, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Mike's tear-stained face and ragged breathing would not have seemed to match his expression. Perhaps secure in the knowledge that no one could possibly see or hear him, he broke down. Oh, Ellen. And there was no possible way to contact her.

Ellen McFarland could not sleep. It was not the location; the mobile laboratory she and Mike had named the Turtle was a second home to her. It was not the storm; the low hiss of sand pushed against the crawler's armored shell by the sluggish flow of the superdense air was already diminishing. It was not even Mike—beyond the inexplicable behavior over the past week of her more-than-best friend, in variance with the known facts. For example, allowing alien natives to bury oneself alive under the pulverized-lava soil of this furnace-like world without consulting anyone was not what Ellen considered normal behavior. Especially not for Mike.

She was scared for him, she admitted to herself. She was afraid for their relationship. She missed him terribly. But the world she knew was coming apart. Without a frame of reference, she had no way of coping with the waves of change that threatened to overwhelm her.

Ellen bit back a quiet sob in the darkness. Others were hopefully asleep in the close quarters of the bunkroom, which occupied three-fourths of the stern section left over on the upper deck by the laboratory space. The adjacent fourth was the bathroom.

Ellen slipped quietly out of her bunk and padded to the connecting door. The flatpanel readout was green, unoccupied. Once inside, she brought the lights up from full dim just enough to see and activated the tiny shower, opted for flow, steady; volume, light; texture, between fine and needle; temperature just a shade past medium-hot. Soon after the tears began, not even Ellen could distinguish them from the tempered onslaught of the recycler.

Variance with which facts? Was she sure of a contradiction? Did she lack vital information, or had she overlooked something? Perhaps something she didn't want to accept. Occam's Razor was being wielded like a machete in a rainforest this off-shift—she was afraid of cutting herself. On what? she half-cried silently. The truth? The explanations she had long accepted generated too many complications to best fit those known facts. The simple explanation was unacceptable. So, she told herself firmly, there must be additional, relevant facts. Okay, what are the relevant facts? And what don't I know?

Well, Mike wants to marry me. At least he did. I said that I'd love to, but we need to talk first. Then I don't hear from him for a whole week, and he pulls this stunt. Could my response have pushed him that far? Over an edge no one can see but me?

Has he cut me off, or is he sending me a message? Is he retreating in confusion? Or is he depressed?

Then why, she wondered, hasn't Anton seen it? Or John Travers? "Master psychologist" was an understatement. He would never have let Mike go out like this if he knew. Or is there something I still don't know? she asked herself again. When the storm ended, she told herself, she was going to start some careful investigating.

Alma. The name froze her motionless in the swirling steam. The chief scientist had been behaving atypically over the same week. Could there be a connection? Venture sponsor Theodore Fredericks' paternal niece had apparently not been feeling well, observation seemingly confirmed. Yet the timing was strangely coincidental. What could have affected both Mike and Alma?

There were those Zezmulites again. Mike had been badly shaken by the incident, as had Ellen. Alma had not been present, although usually in touch by radio link, both voice and telemetry. She had reacted adversely to discoveries before, when they had threatened her worldview. She and Ellen had disagreed professionally on a number of other occasions, but this time Ellen could identify with the likely source of her supervisor's conjectured distress.

It all seemed to boil down to a single incident in the hill people's oral history. A native who had claimed divine origin, or something, had been lynched by a kangaroo court of off-duty officials of a puppet government. The upstart movement those bureaucratic paranoids had sought to quell should have dispersed with the death of its leader. Instead, far beyond post-mortem martyr veneration, the assertion that the deceased had returned from the dead—that is, alive—which would have verified the self-proclaimed identity that had caused the split with the parent status quo in the first place, had generated an unprecedented wave of religious fervor instrumental in eventually overturning the culture of the entire region.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Worlds Spinning Roundby T. E. GREENE Copyright © 2012 by T. E. Greene. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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