CHAPTER 45.
“Holy shit!” Helen heard A.J. say. “I felt that! What the hell’s going on?”
“It’s the native Europans, the…the oceanic Bemmies, whatever we should call them!” she answered, feeling a grin spreading across her face. “Or, I should be accurate, it’s their riding beasts charging into the ice.”
In the background she heard a barely-audible murmur from what sounded like General Hohenheim. If I heard right, I think that was German for “God be thanked.”
“That…just might do it, Helen, Joe.” Madeline’s voice was filled with genuine hope. “At the least it might keep the cracks we already made from permanently freezing.” She raised her voice. “All right, everyone, this is it—we’ve got to give whatever we’ve got left!”
The light-radio link went silent, the others now driving themselves to match—maybe even exceed—their earlier pace for one last burst. The echoing thud of the multi-jackhammer alternated with duller, heavier impacts as the riding creatures struck the underside of the ice.
Joe watched, too; there was a bemused expression on his face. “Not to look a gift worker-squid in the tentacles,” he said, “but they haven’t known us more than a few minutes. Why the hell are they working so hard to try to help us?”
“Why do human beings work so hard to save a beached whale—a whale that might die anyway?” she retorted. “Because you feel a kind of kinship, and if you can help, why not at least try?” She felt a strange surge of feeling that combined empathy with joy and the terrible tension of hope, felt tears sting her eyes.
“Well…I’d better do what I can. I don’t know how long the manipulators will take it, but no point in trying to save them for later.”
Joe locked himself in the control seat again and started methodically hammering at one spot in the ice above them, one impact after another, punching rhythmically and steadily.
And now I sit and wait. She tried to fight off the feeling of helplessness; it was stupid and counter productive. So was that vague feeling that she was being useless, sitting there waiting for everyone else to get her out. You made contact with them. You started the whole thing. You got lucky, of course—lucky that a local genius like “Nemo” was the one that found you—but you didn’t do half bad, Dr. Sutter.
But it was still terribly hard to just sit, and wait, as the ice stubbornly repelled every attempt to break it, silently and steadily trying to rebuild itself from the ocean around them.
She watched the next creature gather itself, launch upward, slam into the ice. Perhaps that’s one of their normal defensive—or offensive—tactics. Still, I simply can’t imagine they can keep doing that very long. They were still living flesh—flesh, based on her own analyses, not much different from their own. Animals had limits like everything else, and she doubted that even Nemo would risk damaging his mount too much for these strange creatures he had found.
But they didn’t stop, and she saw cracks now, slowly expanding. They’re doing it!
She repeated the thought to Joe. “They’re doing it, Joe! I see the cracks from the underside now. If they can meet our people in the middle—”
Joe grunted, jabbing again with the manipulator. “Maybe…they will. Damn. Next time,” he punched with the other side, “I’ll put an automated punching function into this thing. The designers simply neglected some of the most basic capabilities!”
She tried to keep her face serious. “Oh, yes, Joe. We’ll have to submit a critical report to the designers when we get home.”
He glanced back with a grin, but then looked back and to his side. “Damnation. Four point seven atmospheres.”
“Any sign of the inner door weakening?”
“The humidity sensors twitched on one side. I think it’s starting.”
Her hope was suddenly dwindling. “We don’t have much time left, do we?”
He shrugged. “An hour, maybe. Maybe as much as an hour and a half. I wouldn’t worry about it; the way everyone’s driving themselves, either we’ll be out of here in that time, or they’ll all collapse before it happens.”
One hour. She sat silently, watching the frantic motion outside, hearing the unceasing pounding from above and below. But the ice was hard, it was thick, it was tough. It was the armor of a world. And there’s nothing that can soften it.
She suddenly sat fully upright, so suddenly she bounced off the seat. “Of course!!”
“Of course? Of course what?”
She paid no attention, dropping down to the display screen. She linked to the drawing application again, sketched furiously, then put the display up to the window.
But no one was looking. Joe was still hammering away at the ice above. Nemo and the other Europans were stubbornly jabbing at the ice with their spears as they sent their mounts against the impregnable roof of the world. No one’s going to see this!
She glanced up. Oh, but I can make them look.
She bounded up beside Joe, who glanced over but kept up his work. “Helen, what—whoa!”
The rear lights flared, a detonation of brilliance that illuminated the Europan ocean for a moment with light that it hadn’t seen in all its aeons, a light that seemed to suspend each Europan and its mount in empty space, sharp-edged shadows racing away into the infinite darkness, all pointing back towards Zarathustra.
Everyone froze; even from above came a faint “What was that?” from Jackie.
Helen was not surprised to see Nemo recover first. The Europan swam quickly over and saw her back at the rear port, holding the display, pointing to it. The creature stared with all three eyes at what was there for a moment, then rushed up, flashing to the others. The other Europan people hesitated, then jetted over to Zarathustra, examining it carefully. Then, as two of them began to start their beasts battering the ice again, the other five—Nemo included—began pushing on Zarathustra.
“Whoa! What the—Helen, what did you tell them to do?”
She turned the display toward him.
He stared at the outline of Zarathustra, the radiators prominently blinking, and at the animation of the radiators being pushed up. “Helen, you genius!”
She laughed. “You think it could work?”
He grinned savagely. “I think I can give us a better chance.” He activated the comm. “Mia! Mia, I need the access code to the direct reactor controls.”
“What? Why do you need that?” Her voice was exhausted and concerned.
“Because that thump you just felt? That’s the radiators of Zarathustra getting pushed against the ice, and I want—”
She let out an expression in Norwegian that had to be one of surprised joy, but Helen couldn’t even guess at the words. “Ya, Ya, of course, you want to run the reactor as hot as possible! Wait!”
A few moments went by, and then Mia was back. “Here, Joe!” She rattled off a series of numbers and instructions. “That should do.”
Helen took the display and marked the radiators as glowing even brighter, pushed it to the window. One of the other creatures—she thought it was the big one, the boss—saw, flashed yes back. The Europans moved their grip to a bit farther away.
A faint squealing noise became audible, vibrating through Zarathustra like fingers on a blackboard. It deepened, and she could now see small bubbles coming from the edge of the radiators visible in the cameras. “Joe, I think it’s starting to boil!”
“Ha! The hotter the better! I think I can crank this until we’re a little over two hundred C! THAT should get us through!”
“Better than that, Joe!” A.J.’s voice was excited, confident now, and just hearing that made Helen feel better. “With that much hot water around, there’s no way it’s going to keep building up more ice in that area. Matter of fact, now that I look at the old display, the ice was a little thinner right about the area that the upwelling plume from the radiators probably was most of the time.”
Zarathustra jolted, dragged forward a couple of meters. “Now what are they up to?”
Helen looked. “I think…Joe, they’re moving the radiators so that it’s weakening the ice in a wider area.”
“They’re smart. These people are very smart. And even with their metal-trees or whatever, they’re probably not very far past the tribal stage. I’m not sure human beings would be this smart in the same situations.”
“Don’t underestimate your own kind, Joe,” Helen said, shaking her head.
“We still need to hurry this up,” Joe said. “Pressure’s almost five atmospheres, and now I do see a humidity rise in the inner seal.”
“Damn.” That was Madeline’s voice. “We need some way to take advantage of the weakened ice. I can set the winch pulling—”
“Wouldn’t hurt, as long as you can keep it from burning itself out pulling.”
“I don’t care if it catches fire as long as it runs until you’re up, or…or time runs out.”
“Yeah, but with my luck it would catch fire, explode, and blow up Europa just before you got me up. So be careful.”
She heard A.J. grunt. “That’s not bad, but that thing isn’t going to put much stress on something this big. You need something that covers this whole area to push you up, and—”
“Athena!” Larry Conley shouted suddenly. “Mia, shut Athena down for a few seconds!”
“What? Larry, are you insane?”
“No, I’m completely sane!” The astrophysicist’s voice was earnest. “Let the pressure drop, just a little! Even a tenth of an atmosphere will be something like eighty tons of force pushing up in the area we’re digging!”
There were a few moments of tense silence, then Hohenheim’s voice came through clearly. “Stand by to do as he says, Dr. Svensen. Mr. Tamahori, can you give us a timing estimate based on the model we now have refined of the behavior of this chamber? How long should we shut Athena down for in order to produce a short drop in pressure without risking a catastrophe?”
“Ha. General, everything you’re doing down there risks catastrophe. But hold on…” A few more tense moments passed. “Mia, I make it five minutes, thirty-three seconds optimum.”
“Understood. General?”
“Are we ready, Agent Fathom?”
“As ready as we can be, General.”
“Then proceed, Dr. Svensen.”
Athena’s roar suddenly ceased. Helen felt as though she’d been struck deaf for a moment; she hadn’t realized how accustomed she’d become to that rumbling background to everything. Despite the change, the Europans barely bobbled Zarathustra, keeping the furiously boiling radiators pressing against the ice, which was eroding at a visible rate.
“Okay, listen, Joe. Brett says that if this works at all, it’ll happen right around the end of the period, probably about the time we have to restart. That’s when the upward pressure will peak.” This was Madeline’s voice, the voice of the agent in control of a situation. “When that happens, if it works, there will be short surge upward that will let us pull you out. You must shut down the reactor, put it back to standby power, because you don’t want to burn any of us, as soon as that movement starts. Set it up now, a deadman switch, so you just have to let go.”
“On it.”
Now it was back to waiting, but Helen felt the press of time less. She’d thought of something that helped, she’d taken action, and now the only question was if it would work in time.
“Pressure’s five point two atmospheres. Humidity really starting to climb. If I start to see water for real in there, Helen, I want you to get up here right away, understand?”
She nodded. She had no desire to be in the way of a piledriver of water with the alloy and carbonan door as a leader. In fact, she thought, why take chances? She climbed up to the copilot seat and strapped in, making sure her helmet was secure.
Zarathustra quivered, jolted upward, even as they heard the bellowing rumble of Athena begin. “Are we…”
And suddenly it was the earthquake in reverse, as the huge rover heaved up, icy blocks rising, shifting, cracking, Nemo and its fellow Europans streaking away, the mounts halting their charge and retreating, then everything dissolved in spray and ice chips and foam. Zarathustra was moving, tilting up and then tilted down as a tremendous, broad surge of icy water shoved everything aside with implacable, irresistable force—and then began to subside, a little, faster, and the ice collapsed, a shattering, crushing force banging on the sides of the rover, and she heard herself curse and covered her head instinctively as Zarathustra rolled—
and the rolling stopped.
Silence, marred only by the distant rumble of Athena and creaking, crackling noises faintly coming through the hull. She opened her eyes and looked.
Zarathustra was stuck, half-in, half-out of the ice.
But the rover’s hatch lay just above the frozen surface.