CHAPTER 43.
“We can’t put this off any longer,” Madeline said, finally.
“But you said—”
“I know what I said!” She sighed, shook her head. “Sorry, A.J.; we’re all on edge, and exhausted, and that’s part of the reason I’ll have to try it now. Brett checked the trend for me, and it’s clear. There’s no way we can keep up this pace much longer, not with the sleep limitations and physical stress this work’s putting us under.”
She gestured, and saw A.J. and the others finally really look around, not just let their eyes drift over the slow, steady change they’d been making, and she could hear little murmurs of startlement, even awe.
The bottom section of the ice was chopped down more than a meter lower, over an area wider and longer than Zarathustra—eighteen meters by four. Far above were scattered vast amounts of ice, dug out over the last twelve hours by the absolutely incredible effort of seven people who knew they were running out of time.
“You’ve all done miracles here. All of us have. That’s something like a hundred tons of ice we’ve broken, chopped, dragged, thrown, somehow gotten out of the way. We’ve made Europa’s weak gravity work for us, we’ve found a possible way to rescue our friends, and we’ve all pushed ourselves to our uttermost limits. We just can’t keep it up for another six hours. Even the General is slowing down, and to be honest, sir, I thought you might be a machine for a while there.”
General Hohenheim chuckled. “I am, alas, only too human, as our current predicament rather proves.” He’s still carrying that guilt. I suppose he always will. “But you are, as usual, correct. You are not in top shape yourself. The ice is getting slowly thicker beneath us, and while we have been keeping ahead of that, I presume we will not much longer?”
Even as they were talking, Jackie had triggered another series of hammering impacts from the jury-rigged jackhammer array. Horst, Mia, and A.J. stumbled down, sweeping up the fragments, throwing them as far as their weary arms could manage. Madeline could see that now even the smaller pieces were not clearing the high edge; the far side of the depression was starting to pile up with debris, and there wasn’t all that much distance between that and the edge of the hole they were digging. “No, General. According to the plot, we’re just about holding even now. Oh, we could probably drive ourselves a little harder and keep going for an hour or two more…but we may need those reserves when we do get Zarathustra up. She has her own problems.”
“As you say. Very well. Cease operations!”
Madeline had to admire the General’s tone of command; the others stopped instantly. “Please clear the area immediately,” the General continued. “Agent Fathom will be setting her charges and we will have to detonate as soon as possible.”
A.J. stood for a moment, alone in the center of the hole they had made, and she winced for a moment at how even his pose showed his exhaustion and worry, the clenching of his hand as though he would try to pound his way through the ice by main force. Then he turned and walked in slow, floating steps to the far side and ascended.
Last shot.
She weighed her options, then called the doctor over. “Petra, I need to be very sharp right now, and I don’t have time.”
Petra Masters frowned, then shrugged. “You know, of course, all the reasons not to do this. But I can’t argue the situation is not dire. I’ll give you a very small dose of the stimulant. It will take the edge off your exhaustion, clear your mind.”
“That’s all I ask. I don’t need excess energy for this, I just don’t want to be foggy while I’m working with explosives.”
She barely felt the injection, which Masters administered through the designated area of the suit. “Thank you, Dr. Masters.”
“Good luck, Maddie.”
The others were silent; she wouldn’t have been very surprised to find they were holding their breaths, except this would take too long.
“A.J., Brett, you’ve been taking the impact echo data, correct?”
“As much as we could,” A.J. answered. “I think there’s still a meter and a half to go.”
“Pretty close. There’s a small area where it’s a little thinner,” Brett said, “but a couple others where it’s a little thicker. There are a few weaker lines, though, places I think where the crack was originally and the ice formed around the old ice. I think your best chance is to take advantage of that.”
“Can you send the data to my suit, so the VRD will do an augmented reality overlay?”
“Can do,” A.J. said. A pause. “There, try overlay file code ‘Icebreaker.’”
She smiled. “I will.”
The ice suddenly glowed with color at the code activation. She could see complex lines of various shades—red, blue, green—making a ghostly X-ray vision of the structure of the ice. God, it’s thick. These charges…if I don’t put them in the right place, I’ll barely dent this ice.
They were running out of the self-embedding spikes, too, but there would be more than enough; she had twelve of those, and only seven charges, designed to be placed in the holes the spikes made. She surveyed the whole area carefully, conferring with Brett’s models, while the others waited, silent. “Joe, Helen, are you there?” she said.
“Still here. Pressure in the lock is three point one atmospheres. Still holding, though, no sign of the inner seal weakening yet.”
“How about your…visitors?”
“No sign since he left a few hours ago.” Helen’s voice was wistful. Maddie couldn’t imagine what it must be like to, in effect, have come face to face with the creature that changed your entire life, but it must be something incredible.
“I’m setting the charges. With luck, we’ll break up the ice over you and be able to haul Zarathustra up through the hole. At the least we should make big enough cracks that we can widen the hole and then get to the point we can haul you out.”
“Hey, I’m all for that. Dibs on Hotel Europa’s shower.”
“Joe? The universe may not be able to kill you, but I can,” Helen said darkly.
“Save the murder of my husband for later,” Madeline said. “Stand by. I’ll give a countdown to the detonation when I’m ready.”
There.
Seven tiny points, now illuminating her vision, scattered at what would to someone else seem almost random across the hole the combined available crew of Nebula Storm and Odin had dug. But they were placed as well as both she and Brett could guess to produce maximum effect.
Quickly she moved to each point, drove in a spike, removed it, put in the miniature shaped charge, set the remote detonator, moved to the next. It seemed to take forever; she almost sensed the ice below her, slowly but surely adding another millimeter of thickness every few minutes. Why it was getting thicker she had no idea—Larry and Andrew hadn’t figured out a good model yet, either—but the fact was it was getting thicker, and she had to hurry.
But only an idiot hurried with explosives. So she hurried only in her heart, but took all the time and care she needed with the charges.
Finally.
She bounded up the terraces to the top. “Everyone down behind the barriers.” She surveyed the area, made sure everyone was, in fact, behind the barriers before going there herself. “Joe, Helen, we are about to detonate. Fifteen seconds.”
She triggered the arming signal. Seven dots in her display went from amber to red. “Ten seconds. Nine. Eight…”
Please. Any power that’s listening…please let this work. She suspected there was nothing listening, and a part of her chided herself for even thinking such nonsense which was probably left over from her horrid childhood…but at this moment, she didn’t care. “Three. Two. One. Detonation.”
There was sound now, carried very well by air vastly thicker than Earths. A blurred stacatto of quick sequential blasts, jets of pulverized ice and white-gray smoke of the explosives themselves shot into the air. Fragments rained down around the edges of the depression, skittering across the ice towards their barricades, but nothing actually reached them except tiny pieces.
She was up and moving instants later, skidding to a halt at the edge, looking down.
Seven circular holes were clearly visible, and there were cracks showing across the surface. But the telemetry showed that only a few cracks really went all the way through…and they would freeze back up, very soon.
No.
“Come on, everyone! Let’s finish breaking this up and get Zarathustra out!” she called, forcing as much optimism into her voice as she could manage. But inside, she was already feeling the cold, cold certainty.
We’ve failed.