Maelstrom by Paul Preuss Read Free Book Online

taking time to rearrange the debris. The deeper into the mound she went the more she risked being buried herself. On Mercury, on Mars, on Earth’s Moon, on any of the asteroids or outer moons, it would have been different, but Venus was Earth’s sister. A block of basalt on Venus weighed nearly what it would have weighed on Earth.
    “Troy, this is Azure Dragon. Dragon Base HDVMs are no more than twenty minutes from your position.” Dragon Base was Azure Dragon’s robotic ore-processing complex and shuttle station on the heights of the Lakshmi Plateau. “Back off, will you? Let the robots do the heavy work.”
“Good thought,” she said. “I’ll just keep at it until they get here.” “Inspector Troy . . .” the controller began. He gave up.
    Sparta began to sweat. It seemed natural that with all this effort she would work up a sweat. Except that she was only providing the will, she wasn’t doing the work. Why was the air getting hot? Was something wrong with the AR suit’s heat exchangers? She flicked the helmet to internal display . . . no evident problem. Unless there was something wrong with the internal cooling system of the rover itself.
    This machine, along with its twin, had been built for the first manned exploration of Venus a quarter of a century ago. Both of the giant steel bugs had landed successfully on the planet in tubby shuttles, and both had been retrieved. But when they were opened the occupants of one of them–this one–had been found baked alive.
    That lesson sank in: remote-controlled robots had taken over the exploration and exploitation of Venus. This was the first mission in two decades that had warranted a human presence on the surface. Most of the past three months had been spent overhauling and refurbishing the two rovers and outfitting a shuttle to accommodate humans.
All known problems had been corrected. Which left only Murphy’s Law.
    Her titanium arm pulled loose another boulder and on the next stroke hooked into Rover One’s aft port strut. The rock fall had crushed the bug’s hind legs as well as its wings. The men inside were alive by courtesy of a superconducting refrigerating system that kept liquid metal coursing through the white-hot coils belting the pressure sphere.
    Cautiously, as quickly as she could, she removed the overlying rubble from the front of the rover, exposing one side of the pressure bell’s shining sphere. The refrigerator coils were still functioning, but the rover’s antennas had been sheered by falling rock. Sparta fixed acoustic couplers to the outside of the bell to establish communication.
    The visual scene changed as sharply as a cut in a holo viddie. Rover One’s pressure bell was suddenly sheared open, as if she were peering directly into it from where she sat. There were three men inside the bell: the pilot, hunched forward and completely sheathed in a shiny black AR suit and helmet like her own, and two men in overalls behind him. They were obviously cramped, but they all appeared healthy.
“Ohayo gozaimas ’, Yoshi. Dewa ojama itashimasu.”
     
The pilot chuckled. “Don’t mention it, Ellen. Drop in any old time.” Because he was wearing the AR helmet he was the only one of the three who could see her, but all of them could hear her through the acoustic links.
    “You’re here at last,” said the shorter of the two passengers, peering peevishly in Sparta’s direction. He was a tiny bright-eyed fellow in his mid-fifties, a banty rooster caught in a crowded cage–Professor J. Q. R. Forster. A believer in natural authority, he did not hesitate to speak for the three of them. “It’s vital we communicate our records to Port Hesperus without further delay.”
Sorry I’m late , Sparta thought, but she said, “Sorry your work was interrupted, Professor.” To the pilot Sparta said, “Your frame is crushed aft of the bell, Yoshi. To get you out of there we’re going to have to drag you back to the shuttle. We’d better sit