LINKS
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The Christa Affair
Chapter Fourteen
The airlock cycled, and the outer door slid silently open in the vacuum; Jashi, Karli, and Rang dropped to the hostile surface of the dead planet they had dubbed "Eight-Ball."
The frozen body still rotated slowly on its axis. Their landing site was on the side currently facing outward, away from the galaxy; overhead, the enveloping darkness was broken only by the faint smear of light from the Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda Nebula. (.... "I think we're behind the eight-ball, Jashi! ....") quipped Karli as she stared upward.
This far from any star, the surface of the planet was warmed only by residual internal heat and the thermal output of the unknown power source beneath the surface. Although the vacuum surrounding their pressure suits made a near-perfect insulator, allowing only a tiny amount of heat loss due to radiational cooling, the bitterly cold surface conducted away heat thru the soles of their boots with every step. The trio had gone only a few yards before their feet began to feel the bite of the cold and the internal environment controller in each suit was operating at full capacity. Jashi watched in alarm as the temperature read-out inside his helmet began to decrease from the normal forty-two degrees Federation-Standard automatically maintained by the suit's lifesupport system. Only the mesh of flexible thermal superconductor woven into the suit's inner lining kept their feet from being instantly frozen.
(.... !!!!!!! .... "My feet are cold, Jash ....") Karli spoke in his head. (.... "Shoulda worn thicker socks! ....")
(.... !!!!!!! ....) "Step lively, guys," ordered Jashi. "I don't like the way the temp's dropping. Watch it close. If we're not inside before it gets to twenty degrees, we'll head back to the ship. These suits weren't designed for these conditions."
The suits were Hitachi model 263/SC-D, designed for operations on hostile planets or for external repairs to a ship in transit. Planets were \supposed\ to orbit around a nice warm star, and even when it was between star systems, the hull of a ship was never \this\ cold -- it was warmed by heat from within.
"I don't think we should let it get that low, Jashi," said Rang, as they quickened their pace. "I'm already down to twenty-nine degrees, and my feet feel much colder... Remember, that's where we're losing the heat, and these suits only have delta-grade equalization."
(.... "Mine hurt, Jashi ....")
(.... "Mine too! ....") "How much farther, Toko?" Jashi asked over the suit comm. His own temperature showed twenty-six.
"Twenty yards, dead ahead," came Toko's reply from the \Klondike\. "Sensors show the temperature of the door to be only minus one hundred twenty-eight degrees, well within the operational parameters of the suit. Computer says the deterioration will reverse, if you stand on the door."
(.... "How we gonna open it, if we're standing on it? ....") Karli's thought pattern conveyed intense pain.
(.... "We'll stand on it till we get warm, \then\ we'll open it! ....") They covered the distance quickly. "Where is it, Toko? Nothing visible here." Beneath their feet was only the same smooth polished surface they had just crossed. Jashi's temperature readout now showed only twenty-two degrees; his feet were starting to get numb.
"You're standing on the corner of it, Jashi... Four feet ahead and to your right, and you'll be right in the middle of it," came Toko's tense reply.
The trio moved quickly to the spot Toko had indicated and stood huddled together in the center of the invisible door; they could detect no break of any kind in the smooth surface around them. The pain in their feet persisted, though the air temperature inside their suits ceased its alarming decline.
"I'll be damned if I see anything that looks like a door," said Jashi, "but it must be here... My suit temp's stabilized, but I think my feet are frozen."
(.... Cold .... pain .... "I'm hurtin, Darling! Let's get back to the ship ....")
(.... "Never make it, Karli. We're stuck here ....") Jashi spoke into his suit comm, "Roi, depressurize, and pick us up. Stat!"
Both Roi and Lito were wearing light pressure suits in case of hostile action and the need for quick pickup. Overhead, a cloud of vapor burst from Roi's landingcraft and quickly turned to ice crystals in the vacuum, as he dumped the boat's internal atmosphere and swooped down to pick up his stranded shipmates.
*********
Back in the \Klondike\, Jashi, Karli and Rang discovered that indeed their feet \were\ badly frozen. Ten minutes each in the tissue regenerator repaired most of the damage, and the entire crew gathered again in the control room for a strategy meeting.
"Pressure suit operations on the surface are obviously impossible," said Jashi as Suu poured coffee for them. "Anybody got any ideas?"
"Couldn't we rig up some external insulation for the boots of the suits?" proposed his brother.
"Made out of what?" responded Toko. "Any kind of fabric would shatter like glass at that temperature."
"What good would it do anyway?" interjected Mowii sarcastically. "You \said\ there wasn't any door there. Let's just forget it and go home!" Rang shot her a withering stare; Mowii lapsed into silence.
(.... Exasperation .... "I know she's my bond-sister, but I'm gettin a little tired of this ....")
(.... Empathy .... "Easy, Kitten. What do you want me to do, send her to her room? ....")
(.... Laughter .... "Not a bad idea! ....")
"I didn't say there wasn't a door there... I said there wasn't a door \visible\ there." Jashi's carefully controlled voice belied his frustration. "Scanning showed a door, with an atmosphere and heat on the other side -- whatever forces polished the surface smooth have just obscured it."
"Why don't we just lie off a few hundred yards and blast it open with ship's Carlsons?" offered Roi.
"Explosive decompression could destroy everything inside. There's an atmosphere. Remember?"
"It's gotta have an airlock."
"You don't even know if this is the right one. What about the others? The computer said they no longer had atmosphere."
As usual at these meetings, they were all trying to talk at once and seemingly were getting nowhere; Jashi got up from the table and walked to the computer console. (.... "Where you going, Jash? ....") Karli remained seated.
(.... "Let em talk, Karli. Flag me if you hear anything that sounds useful. I'm gonna see if the computer has any ideas we haven't tapped yet ....")
*********
Jashi queried the computer via keyboard entry; it offered nothing but more details. There were six other sub-surface habitations spaced around the planet -- none of them contained atmosphere, although scanning had shown the doors of all but two of them to be intact. One of these two lay inside what appeared to be an impact crater, the other showed signs of having been blasted open. The machine offered one last detail -- the blasting was recent.
Surprised, Jashi returned to the table; the little group fell silent as he approached, looking at him expectantly. (.... "Hope you've got something, Jash. We're gettin nowhere ....")
"This place has been visited, guys." Jashi dropped the verbal bombshell without bothering to sit down. "Computer says the habitat on the far side of the planet was blasted open sometime during the past year. There is evidence of explosive decompression as a result of the blast; someone wanted in, and didn't mind how much damage they did to get there. I think we'd better go have a look."
They upped-ship, and jumped to the far side of the planet. Two hours later the \Klondike\ hung on her anti-gravs a few hundred feet above a huge blast crater. In the center of the crater, high-power scan plainly showed a tunnel leading down into the planet.
Jashi spoke to the computer, "Analysis, please... Use all scan modes."
The \Klondike\ maneuvered slightly as the computer took control, jockeying the ship into the best position to scan the crater and tunnel below. "Captain, the shaft in the center of the crater goes straight down almost twenty thousand feet," said the computer pleasantly. "There it enters the main habitation. The habitation is circular, measuring..."
"Stop!" ordered Jashi. "You said the shaft is vertical... Twenty thousand feet straight down?"
"Nineteen thousand, nine hundred, seventy-six point three feet to be exact, Captain... The shaft is perfectly vertical."
"Any evidence of a lift device?" questioned Jashi.
"None, Captain. Below the blast damage it is a smooth polished shaft all the way to the bottom. The temperature of the walls of the shaft is..." Jashi slapped the off switch in disgust, without letting the machine finish.
"Well, we can forget about this one, guys," he said in disappointment. "We're certainly not equipped for a twenty thousand foot descent in pressure suits! I wonder if whoever blasted it open got inside... We'll have to go back to the one we just left and find a way to get in without blasting."
"What makes you think we can get down that one any better?" asked Mowii.
"My guess is that the shaft is either for an elevator, or it's some kind of anti-gravity drop-shaft," replied Jashi. "There had to be an entrance chamber and airlock just below the surface that was destroyed by the blast. Let's scoot back to the landing site and see what we can figure out."
*********
Two hours later the \Klondike\ grounded again at the original landing site. This time Jashi put her down closer to the point where scanners showed the hidden door -- it lay almost under her starboard airfoil.
"What about a dome?" suggested Toko as they stood looking out the viewport at the hostile surface. "We could blow in an atmosphere and rig in all six heaters... Shouldn't take too long to warm the surface inside to within the operational limits of the suits."
"Might work," Jashi replied, and headed toward the computer console. "But I'm worried about fuel. The FPG can't keep up with the demand of the ship's systems in this low-density magnetic field. The main powerplant is still running, even with the ship grounded."
Under ordinary conditions, the flux-powered generator could supply plenty of power to run a grounded ship. Here, its maximum capacity was barely half what was required; the ships main fusion-reaction powerplant took up the slack. "Those heaters use a lot of hydrogen." Jashi concluded.
The heaters \burned\ hydrogen, rather than fusing it -- wasteful but necessary, since it eliminated the need for the shielding and external containment field required to make a hydrogen reactor safe. Fusion heaters were practical only for permanent installations.
Jashi turned away from the console. "Computer says we can do it. It will take fifty-six hours to bring the surface inside a forty foot dome up to minus one hundred seventy-five degrees. We can maintain that only an additional fifty hours and still have enough fuel to return to Ultazari-Seven with a ten percent safety margin."
"How do we rig a dome, when we can't walk on the surface?" asked Suu.
"I doubt the generator will work in contact with the surface," interjected Toko. "Too cold."
"Use a sled," offered Roi. "Hover it just above the surface and leave the generator on it. We'll remote control the generator from here, then bring in the heaters and the atmosphere plant with a second sled after the dome is secure."
"Should work, but it'll mean a larger dome and higher fuel consumption," observed Rang. "We'll have to use a class B airlock to get the sleds in and out."
"No, no. Leave the sled with the generator inside," Roi countered. "It'll be a bit cramped, but if we place it just right, the door will fit between the sled and the wall of the dome. If we use grav-plates on the heaters and the atmosphere plant, we can move them inside by hand within the allowable time before we get our feet damaged."
"Why not put the dome generator on a grav-plate?" asked Mowii.
Jashi looked at his bond-sister in astonishment -- they had all missed the obvious solution! \One\ grav-plate wouldn't support it -- even in a normal-density field -- but they had twenty of them on board. (.... !!!! ....) came Karli's surprise in his mind.
"Sis, I think you just saved the day," answered Jashi gratefully. "I still think we ought to go home," Mowii muttered in reply.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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