CHAPTER 29.
No.
That was the only word in Madeline Fathom’s mind as she saw the rover with Helen and her husband in it beginning to sink into the endless Europan depths, even as the fairyland formations around her whipped slowly around and then disintegrated in a shower of shining fragments.
The whole thing had seemed a dream; the monster quake beginning, the shock felt through her feet of something collapsing—and not far away—then the deadly surge of water that she was sure would envelop them all in seconds. At this pressure, the water should blast from the ocean of Europa and drag everything with it in a surge of unstoppable fury, a freezing tsunami that would solidify in a few more seconds, trapping all of them forever like flies in amber.
But for some reason that didn’t happen, the iron-straight columns wavering, foaming furiously like monstrous fountains of soda, and she neither watched Zarathustra battered to scrap nor watched black, freezing water engulf her.
Just watched as the rover plunged into the jagged, boiling, gnashing chasm.
No.
She looked sideways, up, down, judging angles, distances, gravity, while a crack lazily traced its way along the side of the massive cavern and, in the very dim distance, she saw slow, ponderous movement of a fall on a scale she didn’t want to contemplate. At the same time the water boiled up again, buoying the sinking rover momentarily, rising higher, and incredulously she realized she was hearing hisses. The vapor’s filling the cavern faster than it’s leaving. For a few minutes, we have a water atmosphere in here! But even through the steam, the shimmering icy dust that was condensing everywhere, she had to keep looking…
There.
Madeline Fathom-Buckley launched herself from the blue-white shining wall, ignoring the now-incomprehensible babel of questions, shouts, screams, from those nearby and those far away. I have one chance.
Even as she leapt, Zarathustra sank lower, unmistakably, inexorably. Designed with mass to maintain stability, the tires made of solid if deformable material, the overall density of the rover was considerably greater than that of the water she was now in, and though the water was rising she was sinking, and there was nothing now to stop her.
Nothing except me. Larry was too far away, and frozen with shock. But he has to move now! “Larry! Catch my line!” she shouted; out of the corner of her eye she saw Larry shake himself and move towards the wall she’d just left. The line anchors released their grip on her line at her signal, and she was in midair now, a human arrow, her own focus narrowing to a single target, the hold-down eyelet under Zarathustra’s prow, exposed now that the rover had temporarily completely inverted.
Exposed but not stable. Even as she passed through a shimmering mist of shattered ice-dust and entered the roiling fog of erupting molten water not ten meters from Zarathustra, the rover started to roll again, the ice gaping wider and allowing center of gravity to take over.
But the roll wasn’t fast, not with Europa’s puny gravity the only driver, and she was close now, line in hand, a meter of it held out in front of her, one of the explosive hold-down spikes she had on hand as pitons in her other hand. Don’t let me miss this one, please. It was a silent prayer to whatever might be listening, that her training and practice would let her pull off the impossible just one more time.
The stiff line bumped the edge of the eyelet, which was now coated with ice, narrowing its diameter, and for an instant her heart stopped. But it bent, twisted, and went through, almost half a meter through, three quarters, let go, grab again on the other side.
She twisted her body around, faint crunching-crinkling sensations echoing through the suit as a thin coating of ice she’d gained in her passage through the mist shattered. She reached out, hooking the hold-down onto the line, and then feeling her boots touching down, her body almost parallel with the ice-cave’s floor, slowing, slowing, tension starting on the line, now!
She triggered the hold-down spike and its focused-energetic charge hammered a long sharp anchor into the rock-hard ice. Please hold, please hold…She skidded, hit the opposite wall, rebounded across the cavern in a great leap even as Larry grabbed the rope and pulled desperately, fighting with all the pathetic friction he could achieve to keep the rope from loosening, from letting Zarathustra sink farther.
But she was sinking farther and they had to stop it, had to, the rover was settling, less than one-quarter of it still above water. The water was subsiding now, layers of new ice added to each terrace as it descended, dropping, Zarathustra pulling more and more line down with it, down, down to the original level, settling. Why is it settling? It shouldn’t be dropping…Traceries of ice began to form around the open crack, then shatter as the shudders of movement continued, as Zarathustra continued to descend, and her radio suddenly went deathly quiet, as thought not merely Helen and Joe, but all the rest of the Europan survivors had sunk into the black depths.
She couldn’t think of that now, couldn’t even contemplate it. There was an unbroken ice column there, not too far, “Hold on, Larry!” she shouted, and as she reached him she grabbed, swung around, kicked off the ground sideways, and the two of them moved laterally and inward in a low, curving arc as the sinking rover pulled the rope down.
But they were swinging now around the icy column, all the way around, crossing just over the rope on the other side, and she grabbed the length of rope behind Larry who grunted in understanding as she kicked off from his suit.
The rope’s tension slowed Larry, began to draw him back in a deadly whipping motion, but in that instant Maddie passed just under the part of the rope they’d just gone over, and with bare inches to spare bounced upward, pulling the line through.
Larry Conley released his part of the rope and joined her, pulling, drawing in the slack on the improvised knot, backs to the Zarathustra as they braced and pulled harder.
The line went rigid, and through the line she felt a vibration. Maddie shot a terrified glance back, and the Zarathustra was almost gone now, only a fraction visible, but the little hold-down spike held, showed no sign of movement.
She braced her feet against the column along with Larry, pulling harder. The movement of the rope slowed…ceased…and the knot pulled in on itself, tightening. The cavern’s shaking was subsiding, and the knot was tense…and holding.
It was holding.
But when she turned around, all she could see was the rope disappearing sharply into the water from both sides—water that was changing now, shimmering with white and diamond sparkles as crystalline ice formed and raced out from every side, a frosting windowpane in demonic fast-forward, solidifying, hardening, even as she shouted “JOE!”
“Hold on, hold on,” Larry said, grabbing her arm. “The line’s not moving, it’s got them. You did it, you crazy woman, you actually pulled that off!”
She took a deep, shaky breath and allowed herself to lean against Larry for just a second. “I had to, so I did.”
“You sure did.” He shook his head and frowned. “Things sure ain’t good, but man they could’ve been a lot worse.” He looked around apprehensively. “This whole cavern could’ve come down on us. Still might if we get another shock like that.”
“That was the worst we’ve had, by a long shot, though. Look at how many of those formations came down. They’d never have grown out that far if quakes even close to that level were common. Am I right, A.J.?”
Silence.
She looked at Larry, who looked back and shrugged. “I dunno,” the astrophysicist said. “The comms went out while all that was going on.”
Madeline thought a moment, then managed a smile. “Ah. Of course. We were relaying through Zarathustra’s transmitter for power and range—and to save our own radios’ power. We did drop relays every so often along the way, though. Let’s see…”
After a moment she managed to figure out how to get her radio to stop looking for Zarathustra’s network signal and scan for one of the relays. Nothing.
“I think,” Larry said slowly, “there’s a default power saver limit on these things?” He said it as a question.
Yes, there is, she thought. A.J. and Horst had mentioned something like that. A quick search through the control menu and she found it, turned it off, scanned the airwaves again. Got one!
“Nebula Storm, this is Madeline Fathom, do you read?”
“Maddie!” Unsurprisingly it was A.J. who answered first. “Thank God, when the connection went dead I thought…” His voice wasn’t entirely steady.
Other voices started, and then Hohenheim’s overrode everyone. “Let us quiet down and get a report. Agent Fathom, are your people all right?”
“I…believe so, General.”
“You believe so?”
She had to believe so. “I presume everyone above felt that quake.”
“Worst we’ve ever had,” A.J. confirmed.
“We received the readings, yes,” Hohenheim said dryly, “but that is not an answer to the question, I believe.”
“General, when the quake hit, it…” She took a breath. “No point in all the details, but Zarathustra went through a crack in the ice which went straight to the Europan ocean. We have managed to catch the rover with a belaying line and Zarathustra appears to be stable at this time.”
There was a moment of silence. “Was anyone…in the rover?” A.J. said slowly.
“I’m afraid Helen and Joe were both inside when she went under.”
“GodDAMN.” She knew he must be already half-standing, trying to do something, then realizing he couldn’t actually do anything now.
“Which brings me to the most urgent question, General, everyone: is Zarathustra watertight to a depth of…” she eyeballed the line, calculated the angles she saw, “…of between five and ten feet in the Europan ocean?”
“Brett?” A.J. said tensely. “You’ve got the full models.”
“Hold on a minute.”
The minutes seemed to pass like hours. Maddie found herself shifting in her suit, and the crinkling noises—along with a rapidly-obscuring view—warned her that she’d better keep doing that. “Larry, turn up your heaters and move around. The water vapor’s condensing back out and solidifying on everything—including us.”
“Yow!” Larry actually found it momentarily difficult to move; some of the ice had started to affect the suit joint areas. “Never a dull moment here. Hey, am I nuts or have I been hearing stuff from outside?”
She checked her suit readouts and history. “No, you aren’t. We just went through a huge pressure cycle. Pressure in here peaked at…” she blinked. “That can’t be right.”
“About one point three megapascals?” Larry asked.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“When that hole opened up, the water vaporized while it welled up and pressurized the area until the pressure was enough to keep the water from coming through, or at least let stuff start freezing and slowing the flow.” Larry grimaced. “That also means that we’re sealed off, because the pressure wouldn’t have built rapidly enough to save us from being all embedded in ice otherwise. Must’ve caved in not far up and then the water vapor condensed, sealing any leaks. One in a billion chance, let me tell you. I’m surprised those radio relays are working at all right now, but I’m not looking a gift communicator in the mouth or whatever.”
“That will make this whole operation…interesting,” Maddie said slowly. “If I understand you right, that means that if we do break through to get Zarathustra out, the water’s going to do the same thing again.”
“Yeah,” agreed Larry, “And that’ll be a bitch and a half. Well, we could just drill a hole and let the water vaporize to fill it, but I wouldn’t want to chance whatever it was sealing us again.”
“Okay, everyone,” Brett’s voice said. “The answer is yes, Zarathustra can hold the pressure at that depth, at least for a while. It was designed with both positive and negative pressure seals for use in a wide variety of environments, ranging from Europa to Titan or pretty much anything else the designers could reasonably foresee, and with very hefty safety margins. It’s pushing the limits heavy, and if she got damaged on the way down…but let’s assume not. The environmental systems are going to be strained—temperature issues when you’re surrounded by water instead of vaccum mean it’s going to stay very chilly inside, but their suits can take up some of the slack.”
Maddie felt a huge knot in her stomach relax. We’re not out of the woods yet…but there’s still a chance.
There’s still a chance to save them both.