Short Fiction · The Vibration Wasps (1/3)

The Vibration Wasps

I

Out in Space

I was out in space with Joan for the sixth time. It might as well have been the eighth or tenth. It went on and on. Every time I rebelled Joan would shrug and murmur: “All right, Richard. I’ll go it alone then.”

Joan was a little chit of a girl with spun gold hair and eyes that misted when I spoke of Pluto and Uranus, and glowed like live coals when we were out in space together.

Joan had about the worst case of exploritis in medical history. To explain her I had to take to theory. Simply to test out whether she could survive and reach maturity in an environment which was hostile to human mutants, Nature had inserted in her makeup every reckless ingredient imaginable. Luckily she had survived long enough to fall in love with sober and restraining me. We supplemented each other, and as I was ten years her senior my obligations had been clear-cut from the start.

We were heading for Ganymede this time, the largest satellite of vast, mist-enshrouded Jupiter. Our slender space vessel was thrumming steadily through the dark interplanetary gulfs, its triple atomotors roaring. I knew that Joan would have preferred to penetrate the turbulent red mists of Ganymede’s immense primary, and that only my settled conviction that Jupiter was a molten world restrained her.

We had talked it over for months, weighing the opinions of Earth’s foremost astronomers. No “watcher of the night skies” could tell us very much about Jupiter. The year 1973 had seen the exploration of the moon, and in 1986 the crews of three atomotor-propelled space vessels had landed on Mars and Venus, only to make the disappointing discovery that neither planet had ever sustained life.

By 2002 three of the outer planets had come within the orbit of human exploration. There were Earth colonies on all of the Jovian moons now, with the exception of Ganymede. Eight exploring expeditions had set out for that huge and mysterious satellite, only to disappear without leaving a trace.

I turned from a quartz port brimming with star-flecked blackness to gaze on my reckless, nineteen-year-old bride. Joan was so strong-willed and competent that it was difficult for me to realize she was scarcely more than a child. A veteran of the skyways, you’d have thought her, with her slim hands steady on the controls, her steely eyes probing space.

“The more conservative astronomers have always been right,” I said. “We knew almost as much about the moon back in the eighteenth century as we do now. We get daily weather reports from Tycho now, and there are fifty-six Earth colonies beneath the lunar Apennines. But the astronomers knew that the moon was a sterile, crater-pitted world a hundred years ago. They knew that there was no life or oxygen beneath its brittle stars generations before the first space vessel left Earth.

“The astronomers said that Venus was a bleak, mist-enshrouded world that couldn’t sustain life and they were right. They were right about Mars. Oh, sure, a few idle dreamers thought there might be life on Mars. But the more conservative astronomers stood pat, and denied that the seasonal changes could be ascribed to a low order of vegetative life. It’s a far cry from mere soil discoloration caused by melting polar ice caps to the miracle of pulsing life. The first vessel to reach Mars proved the astronomers right. Now a few crackbrained theorists are trying to convince us that Jupiter may be a solid, cool world.”

Joan turned, and frowned at me. “You’re letting a few clouds scare you, Richard,” she said. “No man on Earth knows what’s under the mist envelope of Jupiter.”

“A few clouds,” I retorted. “You know darned well that Jupiter’s gaseous envelope is forty thousand miles thick⁠—a seething cauldron of heavy gases and pressure drifts rotating at variance with the planet’s crust.”

“But Ganymede is mist-enshrouded too,” scoffed Joan. “We’re hurtling into that cauldron at the risk of our necks. Why not Jupiter instead?”

“The law of averages,” I said, “seasoned with a little common sense. Eight vessels went through Ganymede’s ghost shroud into oblivion. There have been twenty-six attempts to conquer Jupiter. A little world cools and solidifies much more rapidly than a big world. You ought to know that.”

“But Ganymede isn’t so little. You’re forgetting it’s the biggest satellite in the solar system.”

“But still little⁠—smaller than Mars. Chances are it has a solid crust, like Callisto, Io, and Europa.”

There was a faint, rustling sound behind us. Joan and I swung about simultaneously, startled by what was obviously a space-code infraction. A silvery-haired, wiry little man was emerging through the beryllium steel door of the pilot chamber, his face set in grim lines. I am not a disciplinarian, but my nerves at that moment were strained to the breaking point. “What are you doing here, Dawson,” I rapped, staring at him in indignation. “We didn’t send for you.”

“Sorry, sir,” the little man apologized. “I couldn’t get you on the visiplate. It’s gone dead, sir.”

Joan drew in her breath sharply. “You mean there’s something wrong with the cold current?”

Dawson nodded. “Nearly every instrument on the ship has gone dead, sir. Gravity-stabilizers, direction gauges, even the intership communication coils.”

Joan leapt to her feet. “It must be the stupendous gravity tug of Jupiter,” she exclaimed. “Hadley warned us it might impede the molecular flow of our cold force currents the instant we passed Ganymede’s orbit.”

Exultation shone in her gaze. I stared at her, aghast. She was actually rejoicing that the Smithsonian physicist had predicted our destruction.

Knowing that vessels were continually traveling to Io and Callisto despite their nearness to the greatest disturbing body in the Solar System, I had assumed we could reach Ganymede with our navigation instruments intact. I had scoffed at Hadley’s forebodings, ignoring the fact that we were using cold force for the first time in an atomotor propelled vessel, and were dependent on a flow adjustment of the utmost delicacy.

Dawson was staring at Joan in stunned horror. Our fate was sealed and yet Joan had descended from the pilot dais and was actually waltzing about the chamber, her eyes glowing like incandescent meteor chips.

“We’ll find out now, Richard,” she exclaimed. “It’s too late for caution or regrets. We’re going right through forty thousand miles of mist to Jupiter’s solid crust.”

II

Through the Cloud Blanket

I thought of Earth as we fell. Tingling song, and bright awakenings and laughter and joy and grief. Woodsmoke in October, tall ships and the planets spinning and hurdy-gurdies in June.

I sat grimly by Joan’s side on the pilot dais, setting my teeth as I gripped the atomotor controls and stared out through the quartz port. We were plummeting downward with dizzying speed. Outside the quartz port there was a continuous misty glimmering splotched with nebulously weaving spirals of flame.

We were already far below Jupiter’s outer envelope of tenuous gases in turbulent flux, and had entered a region of pressure drifts which caused our little vessel to twist and lunge erratically. Wildly it swept from side to side, its gyrations increasing in violence as I cut the atomotor blasts and released a traveling force field of repulsive negrations.

I thanked our lucky stars that the gravity tug had spared the atomotors and the landing mechanism. We hadn’t anything else to be thankful for. I knew that if we plunged into a lake of fire even the cushioning force field couldn’t save us.

Joan seemed not to care. She was staring through the quartz port in an attitude of intense absorption, a faint smile on her lips. There are degrees of recklessness verging on insanity; of courage which deserves no respect.

I had an impulse to shake her, and shout: “Do you realize we’re plunging to our death?” I had to keep telling myself that she was still a child with no realization of what death meant. She simply couldn’t visualize extinction; the dreadful blackness sweeping in⁠—

Our speed was decreasing now. The cushioning force field was slowing us up, forcing the velocity needle sharply downward on the dial.

Joan swung toward me, her face jubilant. “We’ll know in a minute, Richard. We’re only eight thousand miles above the planet’s crust.”

“Crust?” I flung at her. “You mean a roaring furnace.”

“No, Richard. If Jupiter were molten we’d be feeling it now. The plates would be white-hot.”

It was true, of course. I hadn’t realized it before. I wiped sweat from my forehead, and stared at her with sombre respect. She had been right for once. In her girlish folly she had outguessed all the astronomers on Earth.

The deceleration was making my temples throb horribly. We were decelerating far too rapidly, but it was impossible to diminish the speed-retarding pressure of the force field, and I didn’t dare resort to another atomotor charge so close to the planet’s surface. To make matters worse, the auxiliary luminalis blast tubes had been crippled by the arrest of the force current, along with the almost indispensable gravity stabilizers.

The blood was draining from my brain already. I knew that I was going to lose consciousness, and my fingers passed swiftly up and down the control panel, freezing the few descent mechanisms which were not dependent on the interior force current in positions of stability and maximum effectiveness, and cupping over the meteor collision emergency jets.

Joan was the first to collapse. She had been quietly assisting me, her slim hands hovering over the base of the instrument board. Suddenly as we manipulated dials and rheostats she gave a little, choking cry and slumped heavily against me.

There was a sudden increase of tension inside my skull. Pain stabbed at my temples and the control panel seemed to waver and recede. I threw my right arm about Joan and tried to prevent her sagging body from slipping to the floor. A low, vibrant hum filled the chamber. We rocked back and forth before the instrument board, our shoulders drooping.

We were still rocking when a terrific concussion shook the ship, hurling us from the dais and plunging the chamber into darkness.

Bruised and dazed, I raised myself on one elbow and stared about me. The jarred fluorescent cubes had begun to function again, filling the pilot chamber with a slightly diminished radiance. But the chamber was in a state of chaos. Twisted coils of erillium piping lay at my feet, and an overturned jar of sluice lubricant was spilling its sticky contents over the corrugated metal floor.

Joan had fallen from the pilot dais and was lying on her side by the quartz port, her face ashen, blood trickling from a wound in her cheek. I pulled myself toward her, and lifted her up till her shoulders were resting on my knees. Slowly her eyes blinked open, and bored into mine.

She forced a smile. “Happy landing?” she inquired.

“Not so happy,” I muttered grimly. “You were right about Jupiter. It’s a solid world and we’ve landed smack upon it with considerable violence, judging from the way things have been hurled about.”

“Then the cushioning force field⁠—”

“Oh, it cushioned us, all right. If it hadn’t we’d be roasting merrily inside a twisted mass of wreckage. But I wouldn’t call it happy landing. You’ve got a nasty cut there.”

“I’m all right, Richard.”

Joan reached up and patted my cheek. “Good old Richard. You’re just upset because we didn’t plunge into a lake of molten zinc.”

“Sure, that’s it,” I grunted. “I was hoping for a swift, easy out.”

“Maybe we’ll find it, Richard,” she said, her eyes suddenly serious. “I’m not kidding myself. I know what a whiff of absolute zero can do to mucous membranes. All I’m claiming is that we’ve as good a chance here as we would have had on Ganymede.”

“I wish I could feel that way about it. How do we know the atomotors can lift us from a world as massive as Jupiter?”

“I think they can, Richard. We had twelve times as much acceleration as we needed on tap when we took off from Earth.”

She was getting to her feet now. Her eyes were shining again, exultantly. You would have thought we were descending in a stratoplane above the green fields of Earth.

“I’ve a confession to make, Richard,” she grinned. “Coming down, I was inwardly afraid we would find ourselves in a ghastly bubble and boil. And I was seriously wondering how long we could stand it.”

“Oh, you were.”

“Longer than you think, Richard. Did you know that human beings can stand simply terrific heat? Experimenters have stayed in rooms artificially heated to a temperature of four hundred degrees for as long as fifteen minutes without being injured in any way.”

“Very interesting,” I said. “But that doesn’t concern us now. We’ve got to find out if our crewmen are injured or badly shaken up. Chances are they’ll be needing splints. And we’ve got to check the atmosphere before we can think of going outside, even with our helmets clamped down tight.

“Chances are it’s laden with poisonous gases which the activated carbon in our oxygen filters won’t absorb. If the atmosphere contains phosgene we’ll not be stepping out. I’m hoping we’ll find only carbon monoxide and methane.”

“Nice, harmless gases.”

“I didn’t say that. But at least they’ll stick to the outside of the particles of carbon in the filter and not tear our lungs apart.”

“A thought, Richard. Suppose we find nickel carbonyl. That’s harmless until it is catalyzed by carbon. Then it’s worse than phosgene.”

“There are lots of deadly ingredients we could find,” I admitted with some bitterness. “Gases in solid toxic form⁠—tiny dust granules which would pass right through the filters into our lungs. Jupiter’s atmosphere may well be composed entirely of gases in solid phase.”

“Let’s hope not, Richard.”

“We’ve been talking about lung corrosives,” I said, relentlessly. “But our space suits are not impermeable, you know. There are gases which injure the skin, causing running sores. Vesicant gases. The fact that there are no vesicants on Io and Europa doesn’t mean we won’t encounter them here. And there are nerve gases which could drive us mad in less time than it takes to⁠—”

“Richard, you always were an optimist.”

I stared at her steadily for an instant; then shrugged. “All right, Joan. I hope you won’t fall down on any of the tests. We’ve got to project an ion detector, a barometer and a moist cloud chamber outside the ship through a vacuum suction lock, in addition to the atmosphere samplers. And we’ve got to bandage that face wound before you bleed to death.”