Starborne (37 page)

The year-captain says to Huw, finally, “
Do you think the damned place can possibly be o
f any use to us?”

“
Who can tell, unless we go down for a look?”

“
I can tell from here. So can you. You know you can.”

Huw acknowledges the point with the most minute of nods. “
It seems definitely unusual, I admit.”

“
Too hot for us. No useful metals. No fre
e water. Some kind of probably impenetrable jungle covering the whole thing. “

“
We
’
ve come a long way to find it. Are we just going to move along without even sending out a drone probe?”
Huw asks.

Once again the year-captain falls into unresponsiveness.

Hu
w says, “
And, truth to tell, a drone probe isn
’
t what I have in mind. We need to get someone down there and check out Giovanna
’
s theory about the angels.”

“
What theory is that?”

“
You don
’
t remember? That the angels want us to get out of their te
r
ritory alt
ogether, and so they
’
ve not only fouled up Noelle
’
s transmi
s
sions but also did that job on Marcus and Giovanna and me when we landed on Planet B.”

The year-captain has locked himself behind some sort of wall and will not come out. “
The very existence of th
ese so-called angels is an unproven concept at this point,”
he says.

“
So it is, old brother. But by landing a couple of people on this planet in front of us, we can at least begin to get some determination of whet
h
er it
’
s going to be possible for us to occ
upy any planet at all without somehow first obtaining the blessing of these troublesome beings. If they exist, that is. What I
’
m saying is that if some of us go down there and we
don
’
t
happen to hit the same problems that were encountered on
—”

“
I know wha
t you
’
re saying, Huw.”

“
We need to go and find out, wouldn
’
t you agree?”

The year-captain shuts his eyes for a moment. “
Who do you propose for such a mission, then?”

“
You, of course. Now that you have the legal right to go. And yet you don
’
t seem to want t
o, which I confess I can
’
t understand at all, old brother. You ought to be climbing all over yourself in your hurry to get down there.”

“
I want to go, yes. If anyone goes. But the planet is probably useless for our purposes. Is it not a waste of time and p
erhaps lives to bother looking at it at close range?
—
Who else would you want to suggest for the mission?”

“
Myself.”

“
Yes. That goes without saying, Huw. Who else?”

“
Nobody else.

“
Just you and me?”

“
That
’
s right, old brother.”

“
You argued for the necessity
of a three-person expedition to Planet A
’
s surface,”
the year-captain says.

“
So I did. But just the two of us was enough for Titan and Ganymede and Callisto,”
Huw replies. “
We should be able to manage things pretty well by ourselves here too. We don
’
t nee
d to put anyone else at risk. Look here, old brother, let
’
s send a probe down today and take some samples. And then you and I will descend and expose ourselves to whatever spooks may be in charge of things down there, unless there are no spooks, in which
c
ase we can begin to assume that even though Pla
n
et A flamed out for us, there is no reason to expect the same effects everyplace we happen to wander. What do you say, captain-sir, old brother?”

“
Let me think about it,”
the year-captain says.

***

In fact the year-captain most passionately wants to visit the surface of Planet B, and has been in the grip of that passion since long before the
Wotan
’
s latest emergence from nospace. He has been fighting against the idea, though, because he knows that hi
s desire is a purely selfish one, and he feels that he
’
s had his quota of selfishness for the time being.

Obviously the planet is useless for the purposes of colonization. The year-captain knows that already, even if most of his fellow voyagers don
’
t. It h
as some bare possibility of being suitable for human habit
a
tion, yes, but the year-captain is certain even without first-hand on-site data that life down there would be endlessly difficult, uncomfortable, and challenging for them. A certain degree of chall
enge is a valuable stimulus to the growth of civilization, he realizes, but there is a point beyond that at which the human spirit is simply crushed by overwhel
m
ing struggle. That is what probably would happen here, the year-captain thinks. Better to write
the place off without bothering with it further, and go in search of some other less difficult world.

And yet
—
and yet
—

A planet, a unique unknown planet right out there within his grasp, a planet that beyond much doubt has given rise to
some sort of life-
form
completely beyond human experience
—

He wants it. He can
’
t deny it to himself, not after the battle to win the right to take part in reconnaissance missions outside the ship. And, in the end, he allows Huw
’
s use of Giovanna
’
s variant on the angel theor
y to sway his decision. They do need to find out whether some omnipotent external force has decided to block their access to the worlds of space, and a landing on Planet B would shed a little light on that. Might shed some, anyway. A positive finding in t
h
at area might help to compensate for the letdown that people are going to feel when Planet B fizzles out, as the year-captain is sure it will, as a potential settlement site. So he authorizes the sending of one of the drone probes to collect a little more
direct information about conditions down there, and lets it be known that a follow-up manned expedition will be the next step, if warranted by the drone
’
s findings.

Huw, operating the drone by remote control, puts it in an orbit a thousand kilometers outsi
de Planet B
’
s murky atmosphere and does some infra-red eyeballing to get a clue to what
’
s underneath the cloud layer. His cameras are capable of peeling away thicker fog than that, and they pierce right through, providing him with new mystifications.

“
Look
there,”
he tells the year-captain. “
Those hot lines everywhere. It
’
s like a big ball of twine down there. Or a lot of rubber bands wound round and round the whole place.”

“
Vines, I think,”
the year-captain says.

“
A planet entirely tied up in a wrapping of
vines? Vines two hundred kilometers thick?”

“
We
’
ll need to take a closer look at it,”
the year-captain says.

“
I already have.”
Huw kicks the imaging magnification up a couple of levels and cuts in an ultra-violet filter. “
Now we
’
re looking just b
e
low the
surface. You see the dark lines between the hot ones?”

“
Tunnels?”
the year-captain suggests.

“
Tunnels, yes, I
’
d say.”
Huw indicates the infra-red readings. “
And things moving in the tunnels, no?”

The year-captain peers closely at the screen
’
s blue-green su
rface. Dots of hot purple light, the purple indicating a temperature different from the temperature of the tightly wound lines, are slowly traversing the long darknesses that they have identified as tunnels.

“
How big, would you guess?”
he asks.

Huw shrugs.
“
Twenty meters long? Fifty? Big things, anyway. Very big. I don
’
t think we have a civilization down there, old brother, but I think we do have something.”

“
Which requires investigation.”

“
Absolutely.”

Huw grins. The year-captain does not. They understand
each other, though. They will be shameless. Irresponsible, even. This is a useless world. But they want to see what
’
s down there; and so they will. They have earned the right. Curiosities must be satisfied. And
—
who knows?
—
they may even be able to answer s
o
me questions that very much need to be answered before the expedition can proceed to its next destination.

So the word goes forth to the ship
’
s community that it has been d
e
termined that a landing is desirable
—
no details about
why
that might be felt to be
a good idea
—
and therefore a landing will be made, and that Huw and the year-captain will be the landing party, and Huw sets about once more readying one of the probes for a manned voyage. And if a
n
yone aboard the
Wotan
thinks that the year-captain is needl
essly expo
s
ing two of the most valuable members of the expedition to great risk, that person does not share those thoughts with anyone else.

Huw winks broadly and does a thumbs-up as he and the year-captain secure themselves in their acceleration chairs. I
t
’
s a long time since th
e
se two have undertaken a mission of exploration together.

“
Well, old brother, shall we shove off?”
Huw asks.

“
Whenever you
’
re ready, Huw. You
’
re the captain aboard this ship, you know. You make the decisions.”

“
Right. Right.”
Huw p
uts the little vessel under the control of the
Wotan
’
s drive intelligence and the mother ship
’
s main computer takes charge, easing the drone out of the bay. When they are a safe distance from the
Wotan
the drone goes into powered flight and begins its d
e
sc
ent from orbit.

The spider-armed lopsided awkwardness of the
Wotan
quickly gets smaller behind them. The cloud-swaddled face of Planet B expands with breathtaking swiftness.

Then they are inside the cloud layer, which the probe has previously determined to
be nothing at all like the ghastly sulfuric-acid wrapper that covers Venus, but just a lot of plain H
2
O and some CO
2
, your basic veil of ordinary clouds, very, very dense but chemically harmless. They drop down through it and find themselves in the mother
of all rai
n
storms, a planetary deluge of extraordinary intensity. It falls in green loops all around them, thick, viscous-looking rain. Now they understand where this world
’
s oceans are. They are in constant transit through the atmosphere, going up in the
form of evaporation and coming down in the form of rain, and never once pausing to accumulate on the ground.

“
It is a bitch of a place for certain, old brother,”
Huw declares, as he takes over from the drive intelligence and begins to seek a decent lan
d
ing-place.