Rift (11 page)

“I don’t have a gun,” Mitya said, hoping for an instant that that might be an oversight.

“No.” Tsamchoe didn’t pursue the topic, but finished up with: “This is volcano country. We’ll be seeing lots of hot springs, which means there’s magma near the surface, and maybe in pipes. Sometimes the flows crust over at the surface so you can’t see them, and your foot could break through into a stream.” He looked sideways at Mitya, a flicker of a smile playing at the edge of his mouth. “Watch where you step.”

“Why don’t we use a shuttle, Lieutenant? Are we short on fuel?”

“The shuttles make a lot of noise, Mitya. Draws attention to us.” He left unsaid,
Orthong attention
. “We’ll use them when the time comes.”

Tsamchoe clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Meanwhile, we hike.” They walked in silence a few moments, and then Tsamchoe said in a different tone of voice, “I had many long talks with your father, Mitya. He and I worked on the geophysical survey a few years ago. A good man. I’m sure you miss him. If you feel like talking sometime … you let me know.”

Mitya couldn’t depend on his voice just then. He nodded quickly, hoping it wasn’t rude. Mercifully Tsamchoe left just as tears started to sprout from Mitya’s eyes. He swiped his arm across his eyes and picked up his pace. Behind him were Jess and Theo, bringing up the rear, rifles slung over their shoulders.

Climbing now, they threaded their way among deeply folded ridges. Mitya had been hearing skittering noises ever since they reached the valley floor. Now he came nose-to-nose with the likely source of these
scratchings, a many-legged, reddish-brown insect hugging the side of a rock. It was about the size of his boot, shaped like a tube with dozens of overlapping carapaces. He recognized it as a cousin of the visitor he’d had at the dome: A bony strut extruded from behind its head to in front of its mandibles, suspending a glowing point like a tiny lantern.

“Look, Oran,” Mitya said to the older boy, who’d passed the creature without seeing it.

Oran turned and clambered back to see the specimen. “Ugly son of a bitch,” he said. Then, peering around the rock, Oran said, “Here’s another.”

Mitya joined Oran at his vantage point, and his heart lurched. There in the next fold of the hillside were hundreds of the creatures, milling in the eroded crack of the hill, making a rustling sound as their shells jostled against each other.

Oran gave Mitya a little shove toward them, grinning. For a split second Mitya wondered how mean Oran might get, but the older boy was already heading back up the path. Theo and Jess, behind them, frowned at their breaking of ranks.

“That’s who inherited Lithia,” Oran said. “The bugs. Only ones that could adapt fast enough. Them and the plants.”

“From what I’ve seen of the place so far, the bugs can have it,” Theo commented.

Mitya wondered if the bugs were collecting in that hillside crack because it contained a slipstream of chlorine gas moving down the ridge … in which case the bugs were the least of his worries. He found himself moving a little faster up the slope. From time to time, the air sparkled as the sun reflected off droplets of water and sulfuric acid, forming a shimmering curtain all around them. But step by step as they ascended the hill, the pocket of vapor burned off until, standing at the crest, they looked down at a perfectly round basin several miles wide.

“Volcano,” Oran said. “This whole bowl’s nothing but a volcano.”

Now Mitya could see it, the blue-black curved rim, so far away it didn’t register right away as a ring. A small lake formed the center of the bowl while, nearby, mists rose from yellow pockets in the caldera floor and raced along the ground in the breeze.

“The volcano blew out the whole bowl?” Mitya asked nervously.

Jess snorted. “No, it’s a pit crater, dummy. It collapsed.”

Mitya nodded, as though that answer were more reassuring.

“Close your mouth, or you might catch a flying bug,” Oran said. He carried what looked to be an eighty-pound pack, with a bundle of long cylinders strapped to the top of it. Still, he was cheerful despite his burden, and Mitya was glad to take some ribbing of this sort. It helped ground him, here where the view was larger than he was used to, and where the other rim of the crater looked like the end of the world away.

They descended the steep curve of the caldera, zigzagging their way down, their shoes slipping on the slaggy ground, which crumbled at the slightest touch. With this first clear view of the planet’s terrain, everyone was staring. Whether or not they felt queasy, their heads were turning, taking in the sweep of the panorama. Drifting carpets of grass and lichens formed an abstract painting in red, purple, and brown, Lithia’s signature colors, a result of the evolutionary quirk of old Lithia’s biota: Its photosynthetic process reflected red wavelengths, not green.

Up ahead, the expedition had bunched up for a moment. As Mitya joined them, Tsamchoe was pointing out a sputtering waterfall as tall as he was. It erupted from the side of the hill a stone’s throw away. “Care to take a quick shower?” Tsamchoe asked the crew.

“Mitya smells like he could use one,” Oran ventured, and a few of the team chuckled.

“He’d get clean all right,” Tsamchoe said. “That water’s boiling.”

The crew eyed the sputtering water as they filed past, proof positive that the ground harbored magma not far below.

As midday approached, they stopped for lunch next to the algae-choked end of the central lake. Here flocks of birds—deep yellow creatures—strutted through the shallows on long, stalky legs. The birds’ color looked as though it might come from the yellow pigment in the algae, which in turn, Tsamchoe said, fed on soda, a product of magmas high in alkaline carbonates. Dotting the landscape were short mineral spires where steam condensation created lopsided chimneys. Mitya and Oran broke out tubes of re-meat and canteens of purified water and unabashedly gaped. The congregation of bright-plumed birds confirmed Mitya’s impression that, on Lithia, animals came in clumps. So they munched on their rations and stared at this place of wonders. It was one way to avoid looking up. Over their heads, the transparent lid of the sky beckoned wickedly for their attention.

He noticed Oran massaging his temples. “Me too,” Mitya said.

Oran frowned over at him.

“I have one too,” Mitya said. “Headache.”

Oran nodded ruefully. “Comes of breathing planet farts.”

As Mitya laughed, the near edge of birds rose into the air, flapping their amber wings.

By late afternoon they had climbed the opposite side of the caldera, where the group gathered in a line to view the stupendous main branch of the central Rift Valley. Far in the distance, the Gandhi River pooled into a great lake, flashing in the sun. It lay embedded in a valley floor black with old basaltic lava deposits,
which in turn smoked from fumaroles like the cookfires of giants. Their masks were helpless against the onslaught of acrid fumes.

There was no mistaking their goal. A great line of vents some two miles off belched steam and gases in a gigantic curtain, at the foot of which, red lava pulsed as though from a severed vein.

“Now we make quick work of what we came to do,” Tsamchoe said, leading the group into the valley.

Even with a reengineered breather, the fumes made Mitya’s throat feel like he’d swallowed bleach. Mitya held the reflector steady for the laser gun, while Theo, having circled around to the other side of the vent system, shot a beam to record the distance. The crew hurried to complete their work as the ground trembled in a series of microearthquakes. Lieutenant Tsamchoe said that was from magma moving through the chambers below ground and cracking adjacent rocks—though if that was supposed to be reassuring, no one felt any calmer.

Some of the fissures in this part of the valley were emitting spatter, forming cinder cones as high as twenty feet. They had passed one of these, and its roar still echoed in Mitya’s ears. Tiny shards of volcanic glass had fallen on them and they’d had to pull up their hoods for protection.

But this section of the vent was relatively quiet, except for an unnerving sound of crinkling, as though something very heavy were treading on the broken lava. Oran claimed it was just the sound lava made as it cooled, but Mitya kept looking over his shoulder as he held the reflector. Next to him, stalks of burned trees protruded from the black rocks. Some fifty feet away, a pond of lava was overtopping the roof of a collapsed lava tube. The lieutenant explained that the magma likely to erupt explosively, but would well up
slowly; more explosive volcanic activity came from stickier magma, caused by a higher silica content. But even if the vent here got worse, he said, the crew could easily outrun the lava. Nevertheless, the crew kept a watch on it, as they hurried to finish.

One team permanently mounted some equipment at the site to measure ground deformation and give warning of increased volcanic activity. Others took seismic readings to map the magma chamber, a complex configuration of reservoirs, pipes, and conduits on an enormous scale relative to the small visible crack before them. These measurements would be used to program the geo cannon and also to design the superstructure for the cableway used to bring the cannon to bear on its target. Two short towers anchored in solid ground on either side of the fissure would form the braces for the cable system to move a specially designed truck into position over the vent. The truck would carry the geo cannon and keep it stable during firing.

Theo was waving from the other side. With the readings taken, Tsamchoe ordered crew to pack up. By the time they finished, Mitya was drenched in sweat and nervous as a cadet on his first coldwalk.

They hiked out over dunes of rock, the ground quieter now, and more solid-seeming, though Mitya knew that a mile or two below, the great magma chamber still pulsed with red rivers of stone.

5
 

1

Day eight
. They had been heading south for three days, through the rolling, grassy hills. Reeve could have been on a treadmill for all he knew, and crossing the same gully hundreds of times. It was almost easier to believe than that the world held such monstrous spaces, had so little need for frugality that it could roll out these plains forever.

“You said
two
days,” Marie groused at Spar. But she set one foot in front of the other and never asked for rest. Marie was on the mend, to Reeve’s relief, despite a lingering sallowness to her complexion.

“Depends on if you’re runnin’ or walkin’,” Spar said, without turning around. Despite a persistent, soft cough, the man set a relentless pace. Like all clavers, he’d grown accustomed to the poisons he breathed—poisons that would make him old at thirty, dead at thirty-five. The girl was off somewhere, hunting, exploring, or whatever she did in her long absences from the group. They were headed for the Inland Sea, where Spar said they could raft westward and speed their journey. Mam’s journey, that is. The girl was in charge, without a doubt, and Spar was on a mission to
follow her to kingdom come, it sometimes seemed. They were both as odd as space wind.