Portal-eARC (36 page)

Everyone froze; even from above came a faint “What was
that?”
from Jackie.

Helen was not surprised to see Nemo recover first. The Europan swam quickly over and saw her back at the rear port, holding the display, pointing to it. The creature stared with all three eyes at what was there for a moment, then rushed up, flashing to the others. The other Europan people hesitated, then jetted over to
Zarathustra
, examining it carefully. Then, as two of them began to start their beasts battering the ice again, the other five—Nemo included—began pushing on
Zarathustra.

“Whoa! What the—Helen, what did you tell them to do?”

She turned the display toward him.

He stared at the outline of
Zarathustra
, the radiators prominently blinking, and at the animation of the radiators being pushed up.
“Helen, you genius!”

She laughed. “You think it could work?”

He grinned savagely. “I think I can give us a better chance.” He activated the comm. “Mia! Mia, I need the access code to the direct reactor controls.”

“What? Why do you need that?” Her voice was exhausted and concerned.

“Because that thump you just felt? That’s the radiators of
Zarathustra
getting pushed against the ice, and I want—”

She let out an expression in Norwegian that
had
to be one of surprised joy, but Helen couldn’t even guess at the words. “
Ya, Ya
, of course, you want to run the reactor as hot as possible! Wait!”

A few moments went by, and then Mia was back. “Here, Joe!” She rattled off a series of numbers and instructions. “That should do.”

Helen took the display and marked the radiators as glowing even brighter, pushed it to the window. One of the other creatures—she thought it was the big one, the boss—saw, flashed
yes
back. The Europans moved their grip to a bit farther away.

A faint squealing noise became audible, vibrating through
Zarathustra
like fingers on a blackboard. It deepened, and she could now see small bubbles coming from the edge of the radiators visible in the cameras. “Joe, I think it’s starting to
boil
!”

“Ha! The hotter the better! I think I can crank this until we’re a little over two hundred C!
THAT
should get us through!”

“Better than that, Joe!” A.J.’s voice was excited, confident now, and just hearing that made Helen feel better. “With
that
much hot water around, there’s
no
way it’s going to keep building up more ice in that area. Matter of fact, now that I look at the old display, the ice was a little thinner right about the area that the upwelling plume from the radiators probably was most of the time.”

Zarathustra
jolted, dragged forward a couple of meters. “Now what are they up to?”

Helen looked. “I think…Joe, they’re moving the radiators so that it’s weakening the ice in a wider area.”

“They’re smart. These people are
very
smart. And even with their metal-trees or whatever, they’re probably not very far past the tribal stage. I’m not sure human beings would be this smart in the same situations.”

“Don’t underestimate your own kind, Joe,” Helen said, shaking her head.

“We still need to hurry this up,” Joe said. “Pressure’s almost five atmospheres, and now I
do
see a humidity rise in the inner seal.”

“Damn.” That was Madeline’s voice. “We need some way to take advantage of the weakened ice. I can set the winch pulling—”

“Wouldn’t hurt, as long as you can keep it from burning itself out pulling.”

“I don’t care if it catches
fire
as long as it runs until you’re up, or…or time runs out.”

“Yeah, but with my luck it would catch fire, explode, and blow up Europa just
before
you got me up. So be careful.”

She heard A.J. grunt. “That’s not bad, but that thing isn’t going to put much stress on something this big. You need something that covers this whole
area
to push you up, and—”

“
Athena
!” Larry Conley shouted suddenly. “Mia, shut
Athena
down for a few seconds!”

“What? Larry, are you insane?”

“No, I’m completely sane!” The astrophysicist’s voice was earnest. “Let the pressure drop, just a little! Even a
tenth
of an atmosphere will be something like
eighty tons
of force pushing up in the area we’re digging!”

There were a few moments of tense silence, then Hohenheim’s voice came through clearly. “Stand by to do as he says, Dr. Svensen. Mr. Tamahori, can you give us a timing estimate based on the model we now have refined of the behavior of this chamber? How long should we shut
Athena
down for in order to produce a short drop in pressure without risking a catastrophe?”

“Ha. General, everything you’re
doing
down there risks catastrophe. But hold on…” A few more tense moments passed. “Mia, I make it five minutes, thirty-three seconds optimum.”

“Understood. General?”

“Are we ready, Agent Fathom?”

“As ready as we can be, General.”

“Then proceed, Dr. Svensen.”

Athena
’s roar suddenly ceased. Helen felt as though she’d been struck deaf for a moment; she hadn’t realized how
accustomed
she’d become to that rumbling background to everything. Despite the change, the Europans barely bobbled
Zarathustra
, keeping the furiously boiling radiators pressing against the ice, which was eroding at a visible rate.

“Okay, listen, Joe. Brett says that if this works at all, it’ll happen right around the end of the period, probably about the time we have to restart. That’s when the upward pressure will peak.” This was Madeline’s voice, the voice of the agent in control of a situation. “When that happens, if it works, there will be short surge upward that will let us pull you out. You
must
shut down the reactor, put it back to standby power, because you don’t want to burn any of
us
, as soon as that movement starts. Set it up now, a deadman switch, so you just have to let go.”

“On it.”

Now it was back to waiting, but Helen felt the press of time less. She’d thought of something that helped, she’d taken action, and now the only question was if it would work in time.

“Pressure’s five point two atmospheres. Humidity really starting to climb. If I start to see water for real in there, Helen, I want you to get up here
right away
, understand?”

She nodded. She had no desire to be in the way of a piledriver of water with the alloy and carbonan door as a leader.
In fact
, she thought,
why take chances?
She climbed up to the copilot seat and strapped in, making sure her helmet was secure.

Zarathustra
quivered, jolted upward, even as they heard the bellowing rumble of
Athena
begin. “Are we…”

And suddenly it was the earthquake in reverse, as the huge rover
heaved
up, icy blocks rising, shifting, cracking, Nemo and its fellow Europans streaking away, the mounts halting their charge and retreating, then everything dissolved in spray and ice chips and foam.
Zarathustra
was moving, tilting up and then tilted
down
as a tremendous, broad surge of icy water shoved everything aside with implacable, irresistable force—and then began to subside, a little, faster, and the ice collapsed, a shattering, crushing force banging on the sides of the rover, and she heard herself curse and covered her head instinctively as
Zarathustra
rolled—

and the rolling stopped.

Silence, marred only by the distant rumble of
Athena
and creaking, crackling noises faintly coming through the hull. She opened her eyes and looked.

Zarathustra
was stuck, half-in, half-out of the ice.

But the rover’s hatch lay just above the frozen surface.

Chapter 46.

Every ache in A.J.’s exhausted body vanished as he saw the familiar suit emerging from the hatch. He grasped Helen’s hand, pulled her to him, and for long minutes the two of them stood there, holding each other, and to him there was nothing else in the whole universe except knowing she was finally with him again.

Finally he let go, just enough for her to pull away a bit and look up. He knew he had as many tears on his face as she did on hers. “Doc, you did damn good.”

“And you.”

Glancing over, he saw that Joe and Maddie were just releasing their own embrace,and became aware of clapping all around them.

“Mr. Baker,” General Hohenheim said, with a broad grin that made him look ten years younger, “Dr. Sutter, Dr. Buckley, and Agent Fathom. It is good to see we are all reunited. It is time, I think, for us to stop pushing our luck and get back to the surface, would you agree?”

“Almost, General,” Helen said. “But I’ve got to thank our new friends, if I can.”

A.J. blinked. He’d almost forgotten about the fact they’d discovered
aliens
. “Holy Jebus. I’m losing all my geek points. Hold on, Helen!”

He saw her hesitate on the threshold of
Zarathustra
.
Can’t blame her; I don’t know if you’d get
me
back into this thing if I’d just been stuck in it for that long.

Zarathustra
now sat with its rear wheels in the air, the formerly-boiling radiators held three meters above the floor. The forward port was now far below the surface. “It’s starting to re-freeze now.”

“That’s
good
,” said Helen. “Don’t you see? If we can keep
Zarathustra
running—if I can leave the computer plugged in, put the display in the front port, we can keep communications going!”

He
had
thought of it, but only as she was saying it. But he
could
go one farther. “And now we can download some of the real First Contact packages and load them into
Zarathustra
. Get some of the experts on Earth working on this and combine it with the contact you guys already made? We’ll be
talking
with these guys in no time.” He looked down. “Oh my God.”

Hovering only a short distance away was something so like the models of
Bemmius Secordii Sapiens
that he had a chill pass over his whole body. It was like looking back in time, or through a portal to an alternate world.
Maybe it’s
exactly
like that.

Helen had retrieved her portable screen from the far end of
Zarathustra
and placed it on the forward port;
Zarathustra
’s front console screen lit, showing the display as the Europans would see it.

It showed
Zarathustra
half-through the ice, and a repeating animation of two figures getting out and being greeted by others. Along with this, Helen kept flashing the signal for
Yes.

The aliens watched for a few minutes, and then A.J. saw one—that he guessed
had
to be the one Helen called “Nemo”—flash
yes
.

All seven aliens slowly reached out and linked tentacles like grasping hands, until all seven were twined into a single line. They raised their third arms, pointing up, and in unison, flashed YES.

“General,” A.J. said, “They get our thanks, and seem pretty glad that we succeeded. And Helen’s right, this is
the
opportunity…not just of a lifetime, of all our lifetimes. I want to leave one of the big displays here, one that’s big enough to cover the whole front window.”

“I cannot think of a better use. But how can we make them understand that we still want to talk?”

“Helen’s already shown us how smart they are. I’ve got an idea. Let me work on it a little”

“We’re all just about at the end of our strength,” Maddie reminded him.”And we have to get out of here soon.”

“These guys deserve my last efforts today,” A.J. said. “Larry had one hell of a last-ditch idea, but I don’t think it would’ve worked without these people pitching in and doing
their
best.”

“I can’t argue there.”

God, I’m tired. Not twenty anymore. Not even thirty anymore. But I’m not dropping off yet. It’s not too hard, not with all the tools I have available…

It took him only fourteen minutes; he figured at the top of his game he could have done it in ten. But the animation playing now showed the people leaving
Zarathustra,
but leaving a big display which showed the people on it. Then it showed the Europans leaving, with the big rover staying alone on the screen.

Then, in the animation,
Zarathustra
started pounding on the ice in a pattern: one, two three…one, two, three…After several repetitions of the pattern, Europans swam up, and the display was shown flickering as though talking to them.

“Please understand,” he murmured, as the animation played again and again. He heard Helen murmuring the same thing. “You guys have figured out everything else we threw at you, just this last one…”

It was a complicated idea to try to get across with pictures, especially when it was hard to know what those pictures
looked
like to their opposite numbers. But obviously they looked like
something
because the communications had gone well enough before.
They must use their own light a lot. I wonder…could
Bemmie
, the original group, have tried to make biological replacements for all the things an amphibious being might be giving up—like fire, reliable light, and so on?

The biggest creature gave the single long flash that meant “stop” or “no” in the impromptu code; A.J. stopped the display.

The aliens conferred for a few moments, then one swam over and examined the manipulator, pushed at it gently; A.J. let them maneuver it. They pushed it toward
Zarathustra
’s hull until it rapped three times.

“Oh,
I
get it. Yeah, you’re probably right. Hold on, guys…”

“What is it?”

“Uniqueness of sound. The signal has to be something they can hear a long way away
and
be able to tell it’s us, not something else.” The modified animation showed
Zarathustra
banging on its own lower hull in the one-two-three rhythm. “Carbonan hitting ice might not be quite so obvious, but carbonan hitting metal alloy? You’re not getting
that
sound anywhere else.”