Quiet Invasion(7)

“Venera Base,” said Kevin in the general direction of the radio grill. “This is Scarab Fourteen.” It was somehow comforting to see he was staring, as was Adrian. As are we all. “We have the…target in sight. Are you getting our picture?”

“We’re getting it, Boss.” Helen almost didn’t recognize Charlotte Murray’s voice, with its undertone of uncertainty, as if she were torn between fear and awe.

Helen understood the feeling. Her own eyes ached from staring at the brightly shining artifact. It was a perfectly circular shaft, about two meters across, that protruded half a meter out of the rugged surface. It glowed red hot, like its surroundings. Its lid had a series of, what?—handles? locks?—spaced evenly on all the sides she could see.

She glanced at Ben and saw his thoughts shining plainly on his face. It had to be a hatchway. It couldn’t be anything else. Someone had built it there. That was the only explanation.

She knew he was not about to say any of that out loud, however. It wouldn’t do. It was bad science and poor leadership, neither of which Ben would tolerate.

“Well”—she straightened up—“who’s coming out to take a look?”

“Dr. Failia, you’re not—” began Kevin. Helen silenced him with a glance. He was probably right. It probably was not a good idea for an eighty-something who was behind on her med trips to don a heavy hardsuit and go outside on Venus for a bit of a ramble.

But I’ll be damned if I’m staying behind to watch this through the window.

“Right behind you, Helen,” said Ben. Michael didn’t say anything. He just headed down the narrow central corridor toward the changing area at the back of the scarab.

Helen rolled her eyes and followed, with Ben and Adrian filing after her. As copilot, Adrian’s primary job was monitoring, or baby-sitting, any extravehicular activities. The EVA staging area took up most of the scarab’s wide back end. Still, there somehow never seemed to be quite enough room for even three people to get into the bulky hardsuits.

The hardsuits themselves consisted of two layers. The soft, cloth-lined inner suit went directly over a person’s clothes. This layer carried the coolants circulating in microtubules drawn from tanks which were pulled from the freezer and strapped, along with the O2 packs, over the shoulders.

Then the pressure shell was assembled. Based on the hard-suits used in very deep industrial sea diving, it kept the user’s personal pressure at a comfortable one atmosphere. It was also heavy as all get-out. Despite the internally powered skeletons, every time she put one on, Helen felt like a clunky monster from outer space.

But it was all necessary. The best simulations they had suggested that a person exposed to Venus’s surface temperature and pressure would flash-burn a split second before any remaining chemical residue was squashed flat.

Finally, Helen locked down her helmet. The edges of the faceplate lit up with the various monitor readouts and the control icons. Helen had never liked the icons. They were line-of-sight controlled and she found them clumsy to use. Adrian looped the standard tool belt around her waist and stood back.

“Check one, check one, Dr. Failia.” Adrian’s voice came through her helmet’s intercom. Following routine, Helen waved her hand in front of her suit’s chest camera. “Reading you, Scarab Fourteen,” she said. The monitors in each hard-suit were slaved to the scarab for earliest possible detection of mechanical trouble.

“And we have you, Dr. Failia,” replied Adrian, glancing at the wall monitors. “Check two, check two, Dr. Godwin.” The routine was repeated with Ben and Michael. Helen leaned against the wall and tried not to think too much about what waited outside. The picture had burned itself into her mind. It was an artificial structure, no question there. She couldn’t wait until the rest of the solar system saw it. Good God, they’d say, there was somebody else out here or there had been. Her Venus, her beautiful, misunderstood twin to Earth, housed or had housed intelligent life….

Steady Helen. Remember, you still don’t know anything.

The checks on Ben’s and Michael’s suits came up green, and Adrian let them all move into the airlock. He swung the hatch shut behind them. The suits maintained pressure for their inhabitants, but the airlock had to equalize the pressure inside and outside before the hatch would open. That meant pumping the room up to a full ninety atmospheres worth of pressure.

As the pump started chugging, Ben turned toward Helen. “Well, it’s either aliens or the biggest practical joke in human history.”

“If we open it up and a bunch of those springy worms fly out, we’ll know, right?” said Michael, carefully bending his knees to sit on a bench he couldn’t quite see.