CHAPTER 36.
Joe sat up suddenly. “I think I see something.”
Helen squinted up. There did seem to have been a couple of very, very dim flickers. “I think so too.”
“Please,” she heard him murmur, so quiet she suspected he didn’t intend it to be heard. “Don’t care about me, but…please have gotten there in time.”
Helen refrained from pointing out that this also implied he didn’t care what happened to her; instead, she patted the shoulder of his suit. It was bad enough for her, sitting in the cold darkness of Zarathustra with no word from above (since neither Maddie nor Larry could afford the energy for the lights). She couldn’t easily imagine what it must be like for Joe. He’d kept sending pulses periodically up, maybe just to say “I’m here” to Maddie and Larry, keep them from being in utter blackness all the time. But as days wore on he’d checked the time more frequently, redone calculations, and she knew he had realized that the suits had to be running low, perhaps had already run out, of power.
Even if the others had gotten Athena working perfectly, even if no more disasters had struck, the others still might simply be too late.
And then words came in a blaze of almost-painful light like the dawn of the first day. “Helen, Joe, you guys both still with us?”
“A.J.!” Both of them said the same thing simultaneously, and she felt a tremendous wash of relief at the sound of that much-loved voice. Though she’d never tell him—A.J.’s ego didn’t need any more inflation—just hearing him made her sure that things were going to be all right.
But Joe was talking. “Maddie! MADDIE! Is she—”
The familiar warm soprano answered immediately. “I’m here, Joe. Larry’s passed back out, but we’re both going to be all right.” Madeline Fathom’s voice was exhausted, a little shaky…but alive.
Helen saw Joe sag back onto the vertical seats, tears of relief running down his face. “Thank God, thank GOD she’s all right.”
“And Larry,” Helen added, but she knew that even Dr. Conley wouldn’t be particularly surprised that Joe wasn’t thinking about him at that point.
“And Larry,” he agreed, voice a bit thick from the quiet tears. “A.J., cutting it a little fine, aren’t we?”
“That’s in my contract. Thrilling last-minute rescues, desperate improvisations, heroic wisecracks a specialty.” Despite his usual lighthearted tone, Helen could hear the unsteadiness of tension and relief in her husband’s voice as well. “Give credit, or blame, to Athena, who spent a lot of time balking us before finally giving up her secrets so we could make her move forward at double-time. And a lot of credit to everyone else, especially Mia. She managed to coax another twenty percent speed out of Athena in the last stretch, getting us here something like a half hour faster—which made all the difference.”
“Then thank you, Mia.” Helen had never heard those words invested with such intensity before.
“You’re welcome, Joe,” Mia answered simply.
For a few minutes Joe seemed content to just relax, letting the tension of the last few days drain out of him. The others weren’t quiet, though, so Helen had to respond.
“Is everything all right with you two?”
“So far, yes,” she said. “Temperature in the cabin’s been holding fairly steady. No leaks yet, thank every god out there.” She glanced down. “Native life activity has come and gone; a couple of times both Joe and I thought we saw something else, something much larger, but if so it never came very close, and to be honest right now I really don’t want to see anything bigger. As a biologist it would be amazing, but…”
“No need to explain, Dr. Sutter,” the General said. “I do not think any of us want any unexpected visitors of any size right now, regardless of the wonder they might inspire. Now, you understand it will take time to effect your rescue, yes?”
“Yes,” she answered. “It’s not comfortable in here, I’ll admit, and Joe says he has no guarantee the seals somewhere won’t fail in the next twenty minutes, but as far as we can tell we should be fine for at least a few weeks.”
“It may take almost that long,” Jackie said. “You understand the basic procedure we have to set up?”
“I think so. The idea is that you can’t crack the ice over us without bringing the area up to pressure at, or extremely close to, that which the ocean’s at at this depth. So you need to make an atmosphere in there with Athena.”
“Right, but it’s a lot harder than that. First we have to seal off as much of this room as possible, since we want to minimize the size of the pressurized area—easier to hold pressure that way. Then we need to create some kind of airlock, because we can’t just blow the seal to leave; that might trigger a rupture and all of us get caught in the uprush. Then finally we have to make the atmosphere and pressurize it to a pretty impressive level, which probably means that this place has to be warmed up to something vaguely earthlike in temperature before the ice stops precipitating out automatically.”
“Can we do that?”
“Brett helped model the design; we’ve unshipped and modified two of Odin’s internal pressure-breach doors from areas we aren’t planning on using. We’ll embed them in ice a short distance apart, and some simple piping embedded around them that can be used to flood or depressurize the chamber. That gives us our airlock. Sealing the rest of the cave…if we can get the volume down to something reasonable.Parts of it are close to collapse already. The real tricky part is letting that collapse happen without taking the whole cave with it. Sealing can be accomplished with enough ice—probably just boiling water near it will accumulate quite a seal as it vents and precipitates, but we’ll try more direct means.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Joe entered the conversation. “Did I hear that right? You’re going to try to collapse more of the cavern?”
“The areas that are unstable already, yes. We need to minimize the volume. If I dared I’d want to just cap off this center depressed area, but I don’t think we can manage that,” Jackie said. “It’s too small for me to feel comfortable operating Athena in it without being sure of missing you guys. But I’m going to have A.J. use the rest of his Dust to give us a perfect-as-possible picture of the exact structure in those areas; if it’s actually more stable than we think we’ll have to live with the volume.”
“The rest?” Helen blinked. “Have we used it all?”
“Damn near. Oh, I recover some whenever I can, but the fact is we’re often using it for things that either destroy it, or that turn out to need it to be left there, like Athena. Until we’re done using Athena down here she’ll have to keep a lot of Faerie Dust instrumenting her. Every little bit piles up, and this maneuver will need a lot. And more than likely I’ll NEVER get most of that back. So yes. We’ll have plenty of the El Cheapo knockoff version that was being used for drive dust, and I can make that do a lot of interesting tricks, though. But I’m going to lose at least a couple of wizard levels for a while after this.”
“Hey, A.J.,” Joe said, “your transmission’s showing a 5% decrease. Are you using lower-powered lights or something?”
There was a pause. “No…and you’re showing the same dropoff.”
Joe’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly he stood up, reaching the back of the control chair and lifting himself into it. He reached out, controlling the manipulators. A moment later he spoke. “Okay, guys, you’d better get cracking. I can see the problem, and it’s not pretty.
“The ice is getting thicker.”