I’m afraid: of what we’re doing, of what might, or might not, happen next.
“If you want to try, Michael, be my guest.” Helen stepped back, hoping no one realized she was giving in to the private fear that bubbled, unwelcome, out of the back of her mind.
Michael walked around the hatch. He ran his fingers over the small circle set flush against the lid. He walked around the shaft again. Finally, he grasped two of the protrusions and leaned to the right.
The hatch slid slowly, unsteadily, sideways. A huge white cloud rushed out. Michael lurched backward.
“Steam?” said Ben incredulously. “There was water in there?” There was no water on the surface of Venus. Some particles in the clouds, but other than that, nothing.
“No analysis on that,” came back Adrian. “Sorry.”
“Not your fault,” murmured Helen.
The cloud evaporated, and they all bent over the dark shaft. A tunnel sank straight into the bedrock. Their helmet lights shone on the bottom about four, maybe five, meters down. The first ten centimeters or so of rock around the mouth glowed brightly, but after that, it darkened to a shiny black, shot through with charcoal-gray veins. Thick staples had been shoved into the rock just below the glow-line, making what appeared to be the widely spaced rungs of a ladder.
Five sets of eyes stared. Three cameras recorded the ladder. One recorded the doctors as they waited. Nothing happened. Well, nothing new happened.
Helen straightened up and looked at her colleagues. Ben and Michael returned her gaze. She saw the awe tinged with ashamed fear in their eyes and felt a little better.
“All right, gentlemen,” she said. “Let’s go meet the neighbors.”
One careful step at a time, she climbed down into the shaft.
What none of them saw, not with their cameras, not with their own eyes, was how one of the outcroppings on the side of Beta Regio crawled a little closer to the hatchway, as if to get a better look.
Chapter Two
THE CLOUDS OF HOME hung low overhead, pushing thick, yellow fingers deep into the clear. Harvest flies swarmed around them, feasting on spoiling algae or floater larvae. Here and there, a solitary shade darted into the swarm, skimmed off a few flies, and soared away.
There should be a thousand of them, thought T’sha as she watched the tiny bird. Where have they all gone? Why are the flies winning?
It was not just the absence of birds that disturbed the day. It was the smell, or the lack of it. The wind supporting her body blew light and sterile. It should have been heavy with salt, sweat, and rich, growing life. The dayside currents never blew empty from the living highlands. Except, today they did.
T’sha tilted her wings to slow her flight. This was not good. According to the reports, the winds had been reseeded with nutritive monocellulars not twelve miles from here. Had the seed been bad, or had the planting failed to take? Had they underestimated the imbalance on the microscopic layers here? If they had, what else had they underestimated?
It might be something else, whispered a treacherous voice in the back of her mind.
No, she chided herself. I will not believe blasphemous rumors.
People were not straining the winds right off the highlands to take fresh monocellulars for their homes. There had been patrols. They had found nothing. No one would be guilty of so much greed, so much sin. At least, not yet. Things had not gone so far yet.
At least, they shouldn’t have. But winds that were empty of algaes and krills and other nutritional elements were becoming more common. Worse, there was word from the Polars that some of their winds were becoming currents of poison. A permanent migration down to the Rough Northerns was being debated even now if the Northerners could be persuaded to accept such a move.
Below T’sha spread the canopy, bright with its mottled golds, blues, and reds. From this distance, it looked healthy, ready for a casual single harvester or a concentrated reaping. But before too many more hours had passed, T’sha knew she was going to have to go down in there while the team confirmed what she suspected: that there would be too many flies down there too and not enough birds or puffs to clear them out. They would travel deep into the underside between the canopy and the crust and see the canopy’s roots withering.
It was just as well the area itself was lightly traveled. She scanned the horizon in all directions and, apart from her own team, saw only one distant sail cluster. Her headset told her that it was the Village Gaith. T’sha reflexively gave orders to send greetings to the city and its speakers.
The rest of her team worked less than a half mile away. Their bright-white kites and stabilizers billowed in the sterile wind. T’sha could almost feel the engineers glancing nervously toward her. She was not behaving as she should. She was not a private person anymore. She was an ambassador to the High Law Meet. Her duties, in addition to making promises on behalf of her city and representing her city to the legislature and courts, included making people nervous. She was supposed to be hovering around the edges of the team, waiting for them to give her the words to carry back to the Meet.