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Article Excerpt
Many years have passed since the last time we serialized a story in this magazine. But this new planetary romance by Terry Bisson hearkens back to the glorious days when science fiction magazines were really pulps (experts' definitions of a real pulp mag vary, but yes, they were really pulps then and we're not, now) so well that it just felt right to publish this adventure in two parts. So strap yourselves in, cadets, and brace for lift-off as Commander Bisson launches us towards the cloud-covered second planet in our solar system....
ONE
THERE SHE WAS: AS BEAUTIFUL as Hall had always imagined she would be; as mysterious, as veiled and seductive....
"Venus."
"How's that, Cap?"
"Just talking to myself, Chang. Sorry."
"Roger, Cap."
And please stop with the Cap, Hall wanted to add, but didn't. "What's our ROD?"
"Rate of Descent, ninety meters per second. We are now eleven seconds from atmospheric insertion, Cap."
"Right on time. Loosen your collar."
"Collar, sir?"
"It's going to get hot." Were the Chinese all so literal? No matter: everybody knew hot. Venus was 500 degrees Celsius at the surface, under the thick, heat-trapping atmosphere.
Which was less than a kilometer below--a sea of white clouds, approaching fast. "Collins, you still have visual?" Hall asked, switching to open feed.
"Affirmative, Venus lander," a tiny female voice replied from high above. Ever since Apollo 11, every orbiter pilot had been called Collins. "I'm carrying a live video feed to both Houston and Burroughs. I hope it looks as good to them as it does to me."
"If they're watching, Collins," Hall muttered. Forty, fifty years ago, and the whole world would have been watching. Now, Hall knew, the first Venus landing would be lucky to make the nightly news.
"We're ten seconds from atmospheric insertion, Cap," said Chang. "Nine, eight, seven...."
"Just lost visual, Venus lander," said Collins. "You're in."
As if I didn't know, thought Hall, watching the white clouds whip past his viewscreen, thickening to a milky paste, like chowder. Only not so tasty: sulfuric acid, a bitter froth on the poisonous atmosphere below.
Flying blind. They would be blind from here on in. With no visible light penetrating the thick cloud layer, Venus wasn't a planet for sightseers.
"Temperatures in the envelope, Cap," said Chang. "Want the numbers?"
"No need." The heat-shielded nose of the lander, through the windscreen, was glowing a dull red. Dull was good. The lander was dropping and losing speed at the same time. Hall could feel the first stirrings of gravity in his bones, a welcome feeling after nine months of weightlessness, like falling into a parent's open arms.
Or a lover's.
"You're go for final burn," Chang said. Hall nodded, punched in the GO sequence, and leaned forward to tighten his restraining belts. Beside him, reflected in the instruments, hung the solemn moon of Chang's broad, serious face. This was it. If the next twenty-odd minutes went well, he and Chang would become the first humans to set foot on the second planet.
Venus.
For Hall it was the realization of a lifelong dream. He had sacrificed much of his childhood, most of his adolescence, and all of two marriages, working his way through the ranks of the Chinese-American Space Service, to get this berth as Commander of the Venus expedition.
For Chang, who knew? Even though they had slept side by side for nine months in ursa-sleep, as intimate as lovers, Hall hardly knew his Engineer. Just as he hardly knew his Pilot, Collins, who had slept on his other side.
Chang had drawn the slot because of his work building the last ill-fated robot probe.
Perhaps it's appropriate, Hall thought, as he braced against the deceleration. The dreamer and the engineer--
A mighty roar filled the cabin.
The lander shuddered and the white mist rushing past the windscreen turned orange, in a swirl of chemical exhaust. Hall braced his feet against the floor; Chang did the same, his eyes tightly closed.
The burn was vicious. The gentle stirrings of gravity gathered into a brutal punch as the deceleration yanked both men forward against their straps.
Then, six seconds later, it was over. The roar was replaced by the faint whistling of the atmosphere.
Chang's eyes were open; his voice was matter-of-fact. "1922 kph; we have 1878, 1833...."
"Perfect," breathed Hall. They had scrubbed off almost 3000 kph, right on target. And the trim little Venus lander was flying. It had been transformed from a clumsy rocket to a sleek, swift glider. Hall waggled the wings, just a little, and grinned at Chang.
"Down we go," he said.
The display projected on the windscreen showed the rolling hills of the planet, 37,000 meters below. It was a simulation, of course. No details, only outlines. Hall couldn't actually see through the thick, poisonous atmosphere, nor would he be able to see when they emerged into the perpetual night below the clouds. But the planet had been mapped by radar from several orbiters since 1978, and it was now being remapped in realtime by the lander's sensors. The contours on the screen showed little deviation from the maps. Somewhere over the simulated horizon line (already losing its curvature) was the dry lake bed that would receive their historic first footprints.
Bootprints, rather. At 500 degrees, the surface of Venus was hot enough to melt most metals; but not, he hoped, their thermolite suits or the titanium hull of the lander.
"1355," said Chang. "Go for spoilers, Cap."
Cap again, thought Hall grimly as he snapped open the hydraulics. The lander shuddered, more gently this time, and the speed dropped to just under 1250--jet plane speed.
So far, all go. "Collins, you still there?"
"For another few minutes, Commander. I'm over the horizon in fourteen, but you're landing in eleven. Can you see the lake bed yet?"
"Not yet," said Hall, studying the outlines on the simulation, looking for the oval that had been identified as a dried-up methane sink. "It should be coming over the horizon soon. What's our temp, Chang?"
"There's a problem, Cap. I'm getting some funny readings."
"Funny?"
"We're at, uh--whoa!"
Whoa, indeed. The windscreen had filled with light, dimming out the display. And suddenly, instead of the slowly shifting lines of the simulation, Hall saw rolling hills far below, dun colored, dotted with dark spots that looked almost like trees.
"We're under the cloud layer," Hall said.
"Cap, I can see!" breathed Chang.
"Me too," said Hall.
But how could that be? The clouds were supposed to cover a dark soup of superheated carbon dioxide. And yet--there was the surface, a few kilometers below.
"Elevation?" Hall asked.
"7000 meters. Cap, there's something strange here."
"You're telling me. Rate of drop?"
"Twenty-two."
"Collins, can you hear me? This is unexpected. We're under the clouds, and it's light. We can see the surface. Can you hear me?"
"I can hear you, Commander," said Collins. "But I don't think I'm hearing you right."
"You're hearing me right. I'm looking at the surface of Venus. We're under the clouds and the atmosphere is clear. And there's light! Clouds above. Hills below. There's the dry lake, just came over the horizon."
A real horizon. Sharp, clear, and no longer curved. Under a pearl-gray sky.
"The atmosphere is much cooler than it ought to be," said Chang. "I'm reading nitrogen. And oxygen!"
"Something is wrong with your instruments, Venus lander," said Collins, her voice already fading into static as she approached the horizon. "XZXZXZXZXZX ready to abort?"
"Negative," said Hall. Abort meant giving up the mission--and the dream of a lifetime. One burn would send the lander back up, into orbit, to reunite with the Venus Wanderer. There would be no second try at a landing. Not in this lifetime.
"Commander, the protocols say abort if XZXZXZX instrument problems--"
"I'm losing you," said Hall, switching off the open line. He adjusted the flaps and picked up a little airspeed. "Chang, what do you say?"
"Nothing wrong with my instruments, Cap."
"Not about your instruments. About landing."
"Me? It's not up to me, sir. It's your decision."
"Exactly," said Hall, turning back to the task of flying the lander down toward the dry lake. "Collins, this is Venus lander. Negative on abort."
"You turned her off, Cap. Remember?"
"You're right. So I did. Grab your balls and pray."
"Sir?"
"I'm taking her down," said the dreamer to the engineer.
Hall threw the lander into a long turn. A long, slow, sweet turn. In the thick, if transparent, air, the stubby little craft was handling like a sailplane. It was like flying over the California hills on a summer day, even to the trees below. Could they be trees? Still too high to tell.
The lander dropped slowly, too slowly, through the thick air, and Hall had to turn back and circle over the dry lake, losing speed and altitude with each long pass.
They were trees. But they couldn't be. And Hall had to concentrate on the dry lake: an elongated oval, silver amidst dun-colored hills, straight ahead and only a thousand meters below. Eight hundred, seven hundred....
He switched on open feed. "Collins, we're on approach."
"She's gone, Cap. She won't be back over the horizon for another hour and a half. This circling took more time than we thought."
Oh well, thought Hall. The landing wouldn't be transmitted in real time anyway, with Mars forty minutes away by radio, and Earth fifty-five. What was important was the event itself. The touchdown, moments away. First men on Venus. He trimmed and straightened, preparing to pancake down on the dry lake bed.
"Cap, I'm getting another funny reading."
"Funny?"
"The dry lake. It's not dry--"
Hall saw it at the last instant: ripples, waves on the smooth surface. It was too late to pull up, and the lander hit not dry gravel but a shimmering liquid. It skipped, once, twice, then nosed down, enveloping the windscreen in silver spray.
"Hang on, Chang!"
The nose plowed under, plunging the cabin into darkness. Then it bobbed back up and light flooded the cabin.
The lander was rocking gently, like a boat.
"Chang, you okay?"
"Affirmative, Cap."
"What is this stuff?
"It is too thin for molten lead or mercury, and the temp's all wrong. Could be polymeric water, or water eleven, that funny stuff the Russians claim to have discovered back in...."
"Save it for later, Chang. Screw on your helmet. This thing's not designed to float, even on funny water. We'd better equalize pressure and get out while we can."
Both men scrambled out of their barcas and fastened down the helmets of their space suits. Hall turned the valves to equalize cabin pressure with the ninety-plus atmospheres of Venus, but the pressure had barely started building when the door popped open with a sigh that he could hear even through his helmet.
Chang climbed out onto the wing. Hall started to follow when he heard a hissing behind him. He turned and saw the instruments, flashing like casino lights.
Water, flooding the chips, thought Hall, as the panel threw off a shower of sparks. He watched with an odd, detatched, uncanny calm as the instrument lights flared and blinked out, one by one. It was an almost festive performance.
Marooned.
"Cap!" Chang's voice sounded strange. It was coming from outside, not through the suit radio.
Marooned but still in command. "Coming."
Hall pulled himself through the door and stepped out onto the wing. The gravity felt almost Earth normal. He was not as weak as he thought he would be, after the long months of weightlessness in ursa-sleep.
Chang was standing on the wing, grinning.
He was holding his helmet under one arm while he peeled off his thick gloves. He was shouting:
"Cap, the atmosphere! It's Earth normal!"
Chang's voice was faint through Hall's helmet. Hall's first impulse was to order Chang to put his helmet back on so they could talk.
Instead, he took off his own helmet.
"Impossible," Hall said, the word sounding weak and naked in the open air. Impossible? He took a deep breath. It was the first fresh air he had breathed in nine months.
"Impossible," he said again, more firmly.
"This stuff is aitch-two-oh!" Chang was kneeling at the trailing edge, splashing one bare hand in the waves.
Hall knelt beside him but didn't pull off his gloves. It didn't seem right.
"It's water, and it's only a couple of feet deep, Cap. I can see the bottom."
"I know." At least the lander wasn't sinking. Maybe they weren't marooned after all. Chang was a wizard with chips, and--
Hall...
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