2061 Odyssey Three

chapter 45 Mission
When people asked to see him together, it usually meant trouble, or at least some difficult decision. Captain Laplace had noticed that Floyd and van der Berg were spending a lot of time in earnest discussions, often with Second Officer Chang, and it was easy to guess what they were talking about. Yet their proposal still took him by surprise.

'You want to go to Mount Zeus! How - in an open boat? Has that Shackleton book gone to your head?'

Floyd looked slightly embarrassed; the Captain was right on target. South had been an inspiration, in more ways than one.

'Even if we could build a boat, Sir, it would take much too long... especially now that Universe looks like reaching us within ten days.'

'And I'm not sure,' added van der Berg, 'that I'd care to sail on this "Sea of Galilee"; not all its inhabitants may have got the message that we're inedible.'

'So that leaves only one alternative, doesn't it? I'm sceptical, but I'm willing to be convinced. Go on...

'We've discussed it with Mr Chang, and he confirms that it can be done. Mount Zeus is only three hundred kilometres away; the shuttle can fly there in less than an hour.'

'And find a place to land? As you doubtless recall, Mr Chang wasn't very successful with Galaxy.'

'No problem, Sir, The William Tsung's only a hundredth of our mass; even that ice could probably have supported it. We've been over the video records, and found a dozen good landing sites.'

'Besides,' said van der Berg, 'the pilot won't have a pistol pointed at him. That could help.'

'I'm sure it will. But the big problem is at this end. How are you going to get the shuttle out of its garage? Can you rig a crane? Even in this gravity, it would be quite a load.'

'No need to, Sir. Mr Chang can fly it out.'

There was a prolonged silence while Captain Laplace contemplated, obviously without much enthusiasm, the idea of rocket motors firing inside his ship. The small shuttle William Tsung, more familiarly known as Bill Tee, was designed purely for orbital operations; normally, it would be pushed gently out of its 'garage', and the engines would not operate until it was well away from the mother ship.

'Obviously you've worked all this out,' said the Captain grudgingly, 'but what about the angle of take-off? Don't tell me you want to roll Galaxy over so that Bill Tee can pop straight up? The garage is half-way down one side; lucky it wasn't underneath when we grounded.'

'The take-off will have to be at sixty degrees to the horizontal; the lateral thrusters can handle it.'

'If Mr Chang says so, I'll certainly believe him. But what will the firing do to the ship?'

'Well, it will wreck the garage interior - but it will never be used again, anyway. And the bulkheads are designed for accidental explosions, so there's no danger of damage to the rest of the ship. We'll have fire-fighting crews standing by, just in case.'

It was a brilliant concept - no doubt of that. If it worked, the mission would not be a total failure. During the last week, Captain Laplace had given scarcely a moment's thought to the mystery of Mount Zeus, which had brought them to this predicament: only survival had mattered. But now there was hope, and leisure to think ahead. It would be worth taking some risks, to find why this little world was the focus of so much intrigue.