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 sight-seers.
“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, 37000 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, hopefully, 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. ...
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