Fiasco (2 page)

Goss spoke in a calm monotone. London stood at the glass, his back to them. The pilot listened.

"In the same copter, with the operators, came Pirx. He had landed his
Cuivier
at Grail and wanted to see me. We've known each other for years. The copter was supposed to take him back in the evening. It didn't arrive, because Marlin had sent out everything available in the search. Pirx didn't want to wait. Or he couldn't. He was supposed to take off the next day and wanted to be on hand for the clearance of the ship. Well, he pressed me to let him return to Grail using one of the Diglas. I made him give me his word that he would take the southern trail, which was longer but avoided the Depression. He gave me his word—and broke it. I saw him, on the patsat, descending into the Depression."

"The patsat?" asked the pilot. He was pale. Sweat beaded on his brow, but he waited for the explanation.

"Our patrol satellite. It passes overhead every eight hours. It gave me a clear picture. Pirx went down and disappeared."

"
Commander
Pirx?" asked the pilot, his face changing.

"Yes. You know him?"

"Know him!" cried the pilot. "I served under him as an intern. He signed my diploma… Pirx? For so many years he managed to extricate himself from the worst—"

He stopped. There was a pounding in his ears. He lifted the helmet with both hands, as if to hurl it at Goss.

"So you let him go alone in the Digla? How could you? The man's a commander of a fleet, not a truck driver."

"He knew these machines when you were still in diapers," replied Goss. It was obvious that he was trying to defend himself. London, stony-faced, went to the monitors, where Goss sat with the earphones around his neck. In front of Goss's nose, he knocked the ashes from his pipe into an empty aluminum drum. London examined the pipe, as if not knowing what it was, then took it in both hands. The pipe snapped. He threw away the pieces, returned to the window, and stood motionless, clenched fists held together behind his back.

"I couldn't refuse him."

Goss turned to London, who, as if not listening, looked through the glass at the shifting skeins of red mist. Now only the prow of the rocket occasionally emerged from them.

"Goss," said the pilot suddenly, "give me a machine."

"No."

"I have a license to operate thousand-ton striders."

There was a brief glitter in Goss's eyes, but he repeated:

"No. You never operated one on Titan."

Saying nothing, the pilot began to take off his suit. He unscrewed the wide metal collar, unfastened the shoulder clasps, the zipper underneath, then reached deep inside and brought out a folder bent from being carried so long under the heavy padding of the suit. Its flaps opened as if ripped. He went to Goss and placed papers before him, one by one. "That's from Mercury. I had a Bigant there. A Japanese model. Eighteen hundred tons. And here's my license. I drilled a glacier in Antarctica, with a Swedish ice-strider, a cryopter. Here's a photocopy of my second-place in the Greenland competition, and this is from Venus."

He slapped down the photographs as if playing trumps.

"I was there with Holley's expedition. That's my thermoped, and that's my colleague's. He was my alternate. Both models were prototypes, not bad. Except that the air conditioning leaked."

Goss looked up at him.

"But aren't you a pilot?"

"I transferred, got my qualification, with Commander Pirx. I served on his
Cuivier.
My first command was a tug…"

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-nine."

"You were able to switch like that?"

"If you want to, it's possible. Besides, an operator of planetary machines can master any new type in an hour. It's like going from a moped to a motorcycle."

He broke off. He had another packet of pictures, but didn't produce them. He gathered the ones tossed on the console, put them in the worn leather folder, and returned them to his inside pocket. In the opened suit, a little red in the face, he stood near Goss. Across the monitors ran the same streaks of light, indicating nothing. London, sitting on the handrail by the glass, watched this scene in silence.

"Suppose I were to give you a Digla. Let us suppose. What would you do?"

The pilot smiled. Drops of sweat glistened on his forehead. The fair hair bore the mark of the helmet's pads on top.

"I would take a radiator with me. A gigajoule, from the ship's bay. The helicopters at Grail could never lift that, but for the Digla even a hundred tons is nothing. I would go and have a look around… Marlin's wasting his time searching from the air. I know there's a lot of hematite there. And mist. From the copters you can't see a thing."

"And you'll take the machine straight to the bottom."

The pilot's smile widened, showing his white teeth. Goss noticed that this kid—because it was practically a kid, only the size of the suit had added a few years—had the same eyes as Pirx. A little lighter perhaps, but with the exact same wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. When he squinted, he had the look of a large cat in the sun—both innocent and crafty.

"He wants to enter the Depression and 'have a look around,'" Goss said to London, half as a question, half ridiculing the audacity of the volunteer. London didn't blink. Goss stood, removed the earphones, went to the cartograph, and pulled down, like a blind, a large map of the northern hemisphere of Titan.

He pointed to two thick lines that curved on a yellow-purple field cut with contour lines.

"We are here. As the crow flies, it's 110 miles to Grail. By this route, the black, it's 146. We lost four people on it when the concrete was being poured for Grail and ours was the only landing field. At that time, pedipulators on diesels were used, powered by hypergols. For local conditions, the weather was perfect. Two teams of machines reached Grail without a hitch. And then, in a single day, four striders disappeared. In the Depression. In this circle. Without a trace."

"I know," said the pilot. "I learned that in school. I know the names of those people."

Goss put a finger on the place where, along the black trail north, a red circle had been drawn.

"The road was lengthened, but no one knew how far the treacherous terrain extended. Geologists were called in. It would have made just as much sense to call in dentists—they're experts on holes, too. No planet has traveling geysers—but we have them here. The blue in the north is the Mare Hynicum. We and Grail are deep inland. Except that this is not land—it's a sponge. The Mare Hynicum does not flood the depression between us and Grail, because the entire coastline is plateau. The geologists said that this so-called continent resembled the Baltic plate of Finno-Scandinavia."

"They were wrong," the pilot put in. This was beginning to sound like a lecture. He set his helmet down in a corner, sat back in the chair, and folded his hands like an attentive student. He did not know whether Goss intended to acquaint him with the route or scare him away from it, but the whole situation was to his liking.

"Of course. Beneath the rocks lies a slush of frozen hydrocarbons. An abomination discovered by the drills. A permanent ice, treacherous, made of polymers. The stuff doesn't melt even at zero Celsius, and the temperature here never gets higher than ninety below. Inside the Depression, there are hundreds of old calderas and extinct geysers. The experts said that these were the remnants of volcanic activity. When the geysers came back to life, we received visitors with higher degrees. Seismo-acoustics discovered, far beneath the rocks, a network of caves that branched to an extent never before seen. There was speleological research—people perished, and the insurance companies paid. Finally the Consortium, too, opened its pocket book. Then the astronomers said: When Saturn's other moons are between Titan and the Sun, and the gravitational pull reaches its maximum, the continental plate crumples and the fire beneath the mantle expels magma. Titan still has a hot core. The magma cools before it rises from the depths in vents, but, cooling, it heats all of Orlandia. The Mare Hynicum is like water, and the bedrock of Orlandia is like a sponge. The plugged subterranean channels soften and open. Hence the geysers. The pressure reaches a thousand atmospheres. One never knows where the damned thing will erupt next. But you have your heart set on going there?"

"I do," replied the pilot in a studied manner. He would have liked to cross his legs, but could not in the suit. He remembered how a colleague of his once tried that and fell over, taking the stool with him. "You mean Birnam Wood?" he added. "Am I supposed to flee now, or can we talk seriously?"

Goss, ignoring this, continued:

"The new trail cost a fortune. One had to nibble away, with successive charges, at that ridge of lava—the main flow from the Gorgon. Even the Mons Olympus of Mars can't compare with the Gorgon. Dynamite proved too weak. There was a guy with us, Hornstein—you may have heard of him—who proposed that instead of breaking through the ridge they should cut steps in it, make stairs. Because that would be cheaper. In the U.N. Convention there ought to be a rule barring idiots from going into astronautics. The Typhon Ridge, anyway, they breached with special thermonuclear bombs, after digging a tunnel. Gorgon, Typhon—we're lucky the Greeks have so many monsters in their mythology for us to borrow. The new trail was opened a year ago. It intersects only the southernmost extension of the Depression. The experts pronounced it safe.

"Meanwhile, the migration of underground caverns is everywhere—beneath all of Orlandia. Three-quarters of Africa! When Titan cooled, its orbit was highly elliptical. It approached the Roche Zone, into which a multitude of smaller moons had fallen. Saturn ground them up to make its rings. So Titan cooled while boiling; great bubbles were created in the perisaturnium of the orbit, and they froze in the aposaturnium; then came sedimentation, glaciations, and this bubble-ridden, sponge-like, amorphous rock was covered and pushed underneath. It's not true that the Mare Hynicum flows in only during the ascension of all the moons of Saturn. The invasions and eruptions of geysers cannot be predicted. Everyone who works here knows this, and the carriers, too, including pilots like yourself. The trail cost billions, but it ought to be closed to heavy machines. All of us keep to the sky. We're in heaven here. Look at the name of the mine: Grail. Except that heaven has turned out to be damned expensive. The whole thing could have been set up better. The bookkeeping is a nightmare. Payments for those who die are hefty, but less money than it would take to reduce the danger. That's about all I have to say.

"It's possible for the men to crawl out, even if they're submerged. The tide is receding, and the armor on a Digla can take a hundred atmospheres per square inch. They have oxygen for three hundred hours. Marlin sent out robot hovercraft and is having two superheavies repaired. No matter what you can accomplish, it's not worth it. It's not worth risking your neck. The Digla is one of the heaviest—"

"You said you were finished," interrupted the pilot. "I have only one question, all right? What about Killian?"

Goss opened his mouth, coughed, and sat down.

"It was for this, wasn't it, that I was supposed to bring him?" added the pilot.

Goss tugged on the bottom edge of the map, which made it roll up with a flutter, then took a cigarette and said over the flame of his lighter:

"That's his specialty. He knew the terrain. Also, he had a contract. I can't forbid operators to do business with Grail. I can hand in my resignation, and I will. Meanwhile, I can send any hero packing."

"You'll give me the machine," the pilot said quietly. "I can talk with Grail right now. Marlin will jump at the offer, give me the job, and that'll be that. You'll get an official pat on the back. Marlin doesn't care whether it's Killian or me. And the instructions I've memorized. We're wasting time, Mr. Goss. Give me something to eat, please. I'll wash up, and then we can go over the details."

Goss looked to London for support, but found none in that quarter.

"He'll go," said the assistant. "I heard about him from that speleologist who was at Grail last summer. This one's cut from the same cloth as your Pirx. Still waters. Go and wash, hero. The showers are below. And come right back up, or the soup will get cold."

The pilot left, giving London a grin of gratitude. On his way out, he lifted his white helmet with such energy that the tubes slapped the sides of his suit.

As soon as the door was closed, London began clattering pots and pans by the hot plate.

"What good will this do?" Goss threw the question angrily at his back. "You're a big help!"

"And you're spineless. Why did you give Pirx the machine?"

"I had to. I gave my word."

London turned to him, a pot in his hand.

"Your word! You're the kind of friend that if you give your word that you'll jump in after me, you keep it. And if you swear that you'll stand there and watch me drown, you jump in anyway. Am I right?"

"Who knows what's right?" Goss said, defending himself halfheartedly. "How will
he
be able to help them?"

"Maybe he'll find tracks. He'll be taking a radiator—"

"Stop! Let me listen to Grail. There might be some news."

Dusk was still far off, although the clouds settling around the illuminated mushroom tower made everything dark. London set the table while Goss, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his earphones on, picked up the small talk between the base at Grail and the tractors that had been sent out after the copters returned. At the same time, he thought about the pilot. Hadn't the pilot changed course too readily, without questions, to land here? A twenty-nine-year-old captain of a ship, licensed to operate long-range spacecraft, had to be tough, hot-blooded. Otherwise he would not have risen so quickly. Danger was a lure to plucky youth. If he, Goss, was to blame, it was for an oversight. Had he asked about Killian, he would have sent the ship on to Grail. Chief Goss, after twenty hours without sleep, was unaware that in his thoughts he had already laid the newcomer to rest. And what was the kid's name? He'd forgotten it, and took this as a sign of advancing age.