Gold Rush, page 31
“But why would they care about the two of us?”
“Because they heard us. Because they want to talk to someone who agrees with their position, someone who understands, someone without an agenda, someone who’s not looking to manipulate their arrival and capitalize on First Contact.”
“But how could this be directed at us?” Jill asks, pointing at the screen.
“AU FAST,” Aaron says. “Gold Rush.”
“No, no, no, no, no.”
“AU is the scientific designation for gold.”
“I know my chemistry,” Jill replies, folding her hands across her chest. “But this isn’t it.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’d have to be saying more than this.”
“They are,” Aaron says. “I think they’re smart. I think they’re far more intelligent than they’re letting on, but they’re worried about upsetting the balance on a world with eight billion intelligent beings sitting on a powder keg of conflicts between politics and religion. They don’t want to be misunderstood.”
Jill narrows her brow and points at the screen again.
“Sacrifice is hard to misunderstand. How does sacrifice fit into your theory? What does that tell us about them?”
“Hmm.” Aaron rubs the stubble on his chin. He can feel his thoughts coalescing. Talking his ideas through with Jill helps his thinking take shape. He waves his hand in a circle over the screen, saying, “This. All of this. It’s all coming through in less than a second. But us. We look at each line separately and treat each of them as though they were a stilted conversation stumbling over five different ideas. But what if they’re not? What if I’m right and this is all actually very clear? What if it is designed to be understood without causing widespread panic?”
“I don’t know about that,” Jill says. “Sacrifice is kind of a panicky word.”
“Yes, but it’s simple. They’re trying to be clear. They’ve kept the terms precise to avoid ambiguity.”
Jill reads the screen, saying, “Emissary contact question. Abandon emissary. Emissary sent okay. Au fast emissary—gold rush emissary. Sacrifice emissary.” She leans back in her chair, taking a deep breath. “No. Nope. I don’t get it. I don’t see it.”
Aaron grins. The act of talking through the conversation with her has allowed a deeper sense of realization to bubble through to the surface of his mind.
“Think of this like a game of chess—a game where you need to describe the move of each piece on the board.”
“So the emissary is like… a knight? A pawn?”
“Damn,” he says, shaking his head, barely able to believe the words coming out of his mouth but knowing they’re the only logical conclusion. “They’re describing their rationale. They’re telling us what they’re going to do.”
“And what are they going to do?”
“They’re going to grab him.”
“Who?”
“Dice Newman.”
Jill’s eyes go wide. She sits forward in her chair. “What???”
“Don’t you see? He’s the emissary. He’s right there in orbit above them. They think we’ve abandoned him. They think we’re sacrificing him.”
“And?”
Aaron points at the screen. “And they’re tired of waiting. They think the person we’ve already sent them is okay. Project Aphrodite was part of Gold Rush. And now, they want him. They don’t want anyone else. They’re going to take him. And they want us to accept that. They want us to sacrifice him.”
A single word slips from Jill’s lips, “Fuck.”
“We need to talk to the White House.”
Sacrifice
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Dice mutters, lying on his back within the Dragon space capsule. A sense of gravity is building. Dice has been through enough spaceflights to know the difference between a rocket engine firing and the iron-like grip of gravity. They’re both forms of acceleration, but the first is an exothermic chemical reaction roaring within the confines of an engine bell. It’s violent, but controlled. Reentry, though, is turbulent and untamed. It’s chaotic.
Dice knows what is coming. He spreads out, lying on his backpack with his legs out wide, pushing his boots against panels on the side of the capsule. With his arms out, he grabs at inset sections of the floor, struggling to get a handhold. The padding on the inside of his helmet is minimal. At a guess, it’s about half an inch thick, taking the edge off the shockwaves coming through the superstructure of the capsule, but the erratic thumps jar his skull.
Without a seat, Dice is forced to lie down. He can’t lie on his stomach, as with the increasing gee force, the perceived weight would grow and grow, crushing his chest. Lying on his back isn’t any better, as the backpack props up his torso, causing his arms, legs and head to hang awkwardly. He’s been able to position himself near the lip of the bulkhead, resting his helmet there and reducing at least some of the angle, but his neck hurts.
“This is bad.”
No one can hear him, but hearing himself speak is a soothing mechanism. Dice keeps his voice flat, mimicking one of the controllers back in Houston as he tries to remain calm. Calm? Who is he kidding? He’s falling into another world.
“You’ve done this before… Control your reactions. Stay focused. Stay conscious.”
Dice reminds himself that reentry—or in this case, his initial entry into another planetary atmosphere—is technically a braking maneuver. It’s like those old gravel ramps set on the side of the highways traversing the Appalachians. If an 18-wheeler loses its brakes while coming down a mountain pass, it can veer off the freeway and hit a ramp going up the opposing slope, plowing through loose gravel to come to a halt.
Losing 25,500 kilometers per hour of orbital velocity in just a few minutes is insane. Going from 16,000 miles per hour to just a few hundred is absurd. On both Earth and Venus, the upper atmosphere is tenuously thin, but that’s where the similarities end. Earth’s lower atmosphere is thick, but the Venusian atmosphere is almost a hundred times thicker, which means the Dragon will slow down quicker and at a higher altitude. The lowest level of the atmosphere on Venus is almost as dense as water and as hot as a raging inferno. Dice has heaven above and hell beneath him.
He looks at the metrics projected onto the heads-up display on the inside of his helmet visor. He may be in a dead spacecraft, but his suit is still measuring vital stats. Lying there, his heart rate is already hitting 140 beats per minute. His pulmonary system is fighting the pressure building up due to the increasing gee force. His spacesuit has a built-in accelerometer, designed to measure shock during a fall. It tops out at five gees. No one thought an astronaut would ever experience anything more than that during an EVA and survive. His eyes watch that static number without wavering as the intensity builds.
He mumbles, “Six gees,” sensing he’s hit that if not more. Breathing is becoming difficult. It hurts to expand his ribs. Dice feels as though he’s back in the gym, pumping iron, lying on his back on a bench press, working to lift somewhere between two and three hundred pounds, only all the weight is on his chest, not his arms. He purses his lips, breathing in short bursts. Sweat beads on his forehead. His head jerks around within his helmet as the craft is buffeted by high-altitude winds.
“Seven.”
The accelerometer still reads five, but that’s laughable. Dice feels as though someone’s sitting on his chest. The sensation reminds him of college football. The quarterback has been sacked and every goddamn linebacker on the field is piling in on top of him. Breathing hurts. He focuses on the top of his chest, trying to fill his lungs as his ribs expand, fighting against his chest collapsing.
Outside, the black of outer space is fading. Streaks of light tear past the windows. Flashes of red and orange flicker, causing the interior of the capsule to take on a golden hue. Glowing embers fall away behind the Dragon, shining like stars. The spacecraft shakes violently. Shudders rumble through the floor, causing his vision to blur.
Out in front of the blunt base of the Dragon, the temperature is building. A plasma has formed well ahead of the heat shield. As the Venusian air is compressed, it forms a buffer, helping to protect the capsule from temperatures normally found on the surface of the Sun. Molten lava would be cool by comparison. Parts of the heat shield break off, fracturing and splintering, sending showers of particles streaming past one of the windows. They shine like sparks falling from an overhead welder.
Dice wonders if the shield will hold. If it doesn’t, the superheated plasma will cut through the spacecraft like a hot knife through soft butter. All it needs is one point of entry, one area of weakness, one place where the plasma can get past the ceramics and reach the aluminum frame. From there, it’ll fan out within milliseconds, consuming the vehicle. Given that aluminum melts at 1,200°F and the heat outside is in the range of 5,000°F, the capsule will burn up within seconds, transforming into a glowing ball of molten metal.
“Eight.”
Dice breathes rapidly. He’s hyperventilating, struggling to draw in air. His vision narrows. Out on the fringe of his view, the interior of the Dragon fades from white to black. Flames roar past, flickering within the cabin, but he can no longer see them directly. He can only see the way the light plays on the main hatch immediately above him—the hatch that wouldn’t open.
“N—Nine.”
Dice struggles to remain conscious. His head hurts. His brain is being squished into the back of his skull. The shaking of the capsule reverberates inside his head. He clenches his teeth, breathing rapidly through his nose. Blood pools within his body, on the underside of his back, arms and legs, leaving his fingers and toes tingling. The skin on his cheeks is pulled backward, stretching away from his eyes, nose and mouth.
Reality reduces to a single point of light in front of him, narrowing to a white dot. A dark haze surrounds him, fading to black. Dice flares his nostrils, struggling to breathe. He’s immobile, flattened, pinned to the deck of the Dragon. He couldn’t raise his arms if he wanted to. Dice blinks, and his blinks take ever longer to come to an end. Darkness washes over him, and then… release!
A burst of light and color floods his eyes. Air fills his lungs. Blood runs to his numb fingers and feet. The capsule slows, falling deeper into the Venusian clouds. The Dragon shakes, but this time it’s different. A tremor runs through the capsule, but he recognizes the feeling. Thick vulcanized ropes are unravelling. A drogue chute is deploying, stabilizing the Dragon. Thirty seconds later, there’s another familiar feeling, the jolt of more ropes unfurling, followed by multiple canopies opening.
From where Dice is lying, he captures a glimpse of a parachute flaring as it expands. As these are high-velocity parachute canopies, they’re designed to inflate over five to ten seconds, reducing the whiplash of deployment. Each of them cushions the fall of his capsule a little more until the Dragon is sedate, hanging in the air beneath them. That the surface of Venus is a raging 460°C or almost 900°F and a crushing 1,350 PSI is irrelevant at that moment. If he reaches the surface, it will be the equivalent of sinking half a mile beneath the ocean on Earth, only to burn alive in a furnace. Regardless, Dice can’t help himself. He smiles. He’s survived—for now. And that’s cause for celebration. He gets to his knees and staggers to the nearest window within the capsule. He’s made it. He’s lived through something no one else has ever attempted.
Dice peers up. He has to see the Venusian sky before he dies.
The Dragon dangles beneath three fully formed parachutes. Dice finds that perplexing. If he’s being sent down here by intelligent extraterrestrials, why did they mimic a spacecraft from Earth? As much as he wants to follow that train of thought, he can’t. He’s too exhausted. His muscles ache. And the sky… the sky…
The sky is the color of polished copper glistening in the sunlight. It’s insanely bright. White clouds stretch overhead, curling with the curve of the atmosphere. On Earth, the Dragon’s parachutes would have been automatically deployed at around 15,000 feet. From there, it would take about 8 minutes to splash down in the ocean. He figures he should have even more time on Venus as the parachutes would have opened at a much higher altitude. If he’s going to die, he’s going to take in as much of the experience as he can.
On Venus, with its thicker atmosphere, he knows the parachutes would naturally deploy at a similar altitude with an equivalent air pressure, so he figures he’s probably still well over 100,000 feet up. That would explain why he can still see the curvature of the planet and the gradient of color from bright copper above him to light brown near the horizon.
White clouds swirl beneath the capsule. Dice can see formations that look like thunderheads rising from the depths.
As he’s standing there, he notices scuff marks on the plastic surround beside the window. On closer examination, there are thousands of scratches and dents on the plastic, which confuses him. A few inches away, he sees the telltale sign of wear near one of the anchor points for the canvas storage bags he used while in transit from Earth, highlighting how they moved around during flight.
“Jesus,” he mumbles, examining the marks closer. “This… This is Vulcan…”
He turns and looks at where his seat was positioned. The bolts holding it in place came loose as the icy tail of the comet pummeled him, so it’s been removed.
Dice staggers to the other side of the capsule and examines the section where the hull was torn open by comet fragments while rounding Venus. It has been rebuilt based on the same design, but without any of the original functionality. It’s clean and pristine compared to the other side.
“The navigation light,” he mumbles to himself, remembering there was at least some power within his spacecraft. None of the computer systems or internal lights were operating, but there was a trickle of power to core systems. Although he thought his spacecraft was dead, low-level systems were still functioning, including the mechanical pressure switches and fail-safe releases on the parachutes. And as the heat shield is entirely passive, all it needed was to be pointed in the correct direction.
“They rebuilt Vulcan,” he mumbles to himself. “But why?”
As the Dragon descends on its parachutes, it passes through numerous cloud layers. Some are wafer-thin, others are as thick as fog, and it feels as though they’ll never end, but eventually they part to reveal layers of clear air.
The capsule tilts. It’s being dragged sideways by the jet stream. Dice can feel the floor moving beneath his feet. He stabs with his boots, struggling to keep his balance. The orientation of the Dragon shifts as the capsule twists beneath the bands of elastic rope reaching up to the parachutes high overhead.
Looking out of the window, Dice can see the canopies swaying. One of them becomes compressed on one side as the wind roars into it. These chutes may look simple, but they’re marvels of engineering, and yet they weren’t designed to withstand the wind shear force on a planet like Venus. If they fail, he’ll plummet to his death.
Looking down, Dice sees something unusual. Something unexpected. Land. He blinks. It’s not possible. Not this high up. His Dragon still hasn’t descended beneath the thick cloud cover that swamps the planet, hiding the surface in utter darkness.
A smooth black surface looms below the Dragon in the cloud bank. Mist rolls over the edges. It’s in motion. It’s moving beneath him. It’s going to catch him.
“Oh, fuck,” he mutters, realizing the Dragon was designed for a splash down in the ocean. Hitting a solid surface without any padding could break bones. Even if with a flight seat, landing in the Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico is akin to being slapped on the back by a linebacker celebrating a touchdown. The impact of the water is enough to knock the wind out of an astronaut. Dice crouches. Mentally, he tries to figure out his rate of descent and the distance to the smooth black surface. At a guess, he spotted it at a distance of about a thousand feet. He’s probably got less than thirty seconds.
Dice kneels and then rolls on his back, lying on his life support pack once again. He spreads his arms and legs, bracing for impact, resting his helmet on the curved bulkhead behind him. Dice closes his eyes and grits his teeth, knowing there’s a very real danger of biting his tongue if he’s not careful. Not knowing what’s happening outside is torture. He’s waiting to be sucker punched from behind. It feels as though he’s about to be mugged. He pushes his head back into the padding of his helmet, wanting to absorb as much of the impact as he can without a jolt.
Nothing.
Seconds pass. Then minutes. Dice opens his eyes. A shadow passes over the window, blotting out the light. It flickers and flaps, dimming the sunlight. It takes him a moment to realize one of the parachutes has come to rest on the capsule, draping itself over the windows.
Slowly, Dice gets to his feet, putting his hand out and feeling the floor pushing back, only this isn’t what he felt when under acceleration or while striking the atmosphere. This is gravity. This is the pseudo-force he’s felt every day of his life, only it’s different. It’s slightly less than what he’s used to on Earth. Even with his weakened muscles after months in space, he feels a spring in his step as he stands.
The parachute flaps in the wind, being drawn to one side, slowly blowing off the Dragon. The capsule is upright, which isn’t something he expected. As the base is a curved heat shield, he expects the craft to be unstable and leaning to one side, shifting as he moves around.
Dice turns the latch on the side hatch. It moves. He can feel the gears catching within the lock. Before he can open the hatch, the remainder of the parachute falls from the capsule, sliding to the slick black surface beneath the Dragon.
There’s a man out there, standing roughly forty feet away on the smooth black floor. He’s wearing skin-tight grey clothing, starting below his knees, reaching up over his waist and chest and forming a polo collar around his neck. The grey spandex, for lack of a better word, reaches down to the middle of his forearm. From this distance, it appears as one piece, wrapping over his body and revealing a slim figure, a muscular chest and a slight bulge in the center of his groin. The man has a neutral expression on his face. He’s European. He’s not. Dice knows that. He’s an alien. And yet he looks European. His hair is a soft brown color, neatly cut with a side part. It’s windy outside. The parachute ruffles on the ground, but the man’s hair never moves.
