Spindrift (36 page)

Much to his surprise, it did. Holding its nozzle close to the ground and slowly weaving back and forth, Harker whisked away most of the dry ice before them, forming a narrow trench through which they were able to walk in single file. He used the snow-blower sparingly, firing it in short spurts in order to conserve the first tank as long as he could, but because the halon froze instantly, he found that he was able to build embankments that would restrain the powder from cascading back into the trench.

They'd almost reached the crater's center when the first tank finally gave out. By then the trench was almost thigh deep; Ramirez and Cruz followed him, carrying their equipment. “Still getting a heat signature?” Harker asked as he plugged the second tank into the blower and knocked the nozzle against the ground to clear away the frozen halon that had built up around it.

“
Uh-huh. We're almost on top of it.
” Putting down his case, Cruz raised his visor, then checked his spectrograph. “
Funny, no more CO
₂
emissions. Like it just shut off.
”

“
If it's an exhaust port of some kind, it may open only periodically, to prevent itself from freezing.
” Ramirez was becoming impatient. “
If we hurry, we might be able to find it before it closes completely.
”

Harker turned to look at him. Through Ramirez's faceplate, he caught an expression of determination. “You're quite certain of this, aren't you?”

“
Never been more certain of anything in my life.
” Raising his right hand, he took a step forward. “
Allow me, please. With all due respect, I think I know what we're looking for a little better than you do.
”

Harker hesitated, then extended the snow-blower to him. “Careful. We've only got one tank left.”

“
Thank you. I'll try to be conservative.
” Taking the blower in the both hands, Ramirez edged past Harker. He shut his visor, touched the helmet stud to activate the infrared option, then aimed the nozzle low to the ground and fired a short burst to clear away the snow. “
Jorge, get up here with me. Keep an eye on the spectrograph and tell me if you spot anything unusual.
”

Cruz moved around Harker and fell in beside Ramirez. Together, they slowly advanced toward the center of the crater, the geologist aiming his instrument past Ramirez's shoulder as the astrobiologist cleared a path. Harker watched Ramirez for a few moments, then followed them. He seemed to know what he was searching for, even if he didn't care to share his insights with anyone else.

They'd walked only ten more meters when Cruz abruptly came to a halt. “
Metallic trace!
” he yelped, his voice rising in excitement. “
Some sort of ferrous compound, about ten degrees to the right!
”

Ramirez raised his head, looked in that direction. “
Same place as the heat source
,” he said quietly.

Harker quickly lowered his visor and activated the IR. Just as Ramirez said, the translucent column of hot yellow was emerging from the ground less than five meters away. “Go that way,” he said unnecessarily, because Ramirez and Cruz were already moving toward the source.

The trench was almost deep enough for him to touch its top with his fingertips when Ramirez suddenly came to a halt. “
There it is
,” he said, then he aimed the blower straight down and gave it a prolonged burst. A cloud of crystallized dry ice rose around him like fog. “
Ted! Get up here! I've found it!
”

Ignoring the path the others had blazed, Harker plunged through the waist-deep drifts. All at once, the surface became slippery beneath the soles of his boots, as if he'd just found a hidden layer of ice. He lost his balance for a second and almost plunged face-first into the snow before he managed to recover himself. Taking advantage of the lesser gravity, he resorted to bunny hops much like he'd learned to use during basic training on the Moon; inefficient, but it seemed to give him better traction.

In three short leaps, he was beside Ramirez and Cruz. Ramirez had cleared away a broad patch of snow; both men were staring at the spot in silence. Looking past them, Harker found himself gazing at a hole in the ground.

No. Not just a hole. Perfectly circular, a little more than a meter and a half in diameter, the edge of the aperture had the unmistakable smooth, dull grey surface of a metallic object. No question about it, this was the mouth of an exhaust shaft.

“I'll be damned,” Harker muttered.

Ramirez looked up at him. “
Believe me now?
”

Harker didn't respond. Instead, he stepped closer to the hole. Raising his visor, he leaned over to peer down into the shaft. Almost at once, his faceplate was fogged over by a blast of warm air, but not before the twin beams of his helmet lamps touched upon something deep within the well. He had a fleeting impression of thin lateral bars, like the slats of black window shades, before his faceplate froze up.

Blinded, he hastily backed away, raising his hands to his faceplate to scour away the thin patina of frost. “
Ted! What's going on out there?
” Emily's voice in his headset, and concerned for his safety.

“Nothing.” Then he laughed out loud. “No…it's everything. Jared was right. This isn't a natural vent, it's…it's…”

“
A radiator shaft.
” Ramirez was oddly detached, almost as if he was describing a normal architectural feature found on any high-rise building. “
The CO
₂
exhaust vent should be somewhere nearby, but…
”

His voice trailed off. “
But what?
” Cruz demanded. “
Do you realize what we've found?
”

“
Of course I do.
” Distracted, Ramirez regarded the vent for another moment. Then he turned toward Harker. “
When you came over here, you almost fell over. Like you slipped on something.
”

“Yeah, sure.” Harker finished clearing his faceplate. “I hit some ice beneath the snow…”

“
Uh-huh…but I don't think it was just ice.
” Stepping away from the vent, Ramirez followed Harker's tracks to the place where he'd slipped. Stopping there, he spread his arms wide. “
All right, now, everyone fan out. Use the shovels, your hands and feet, whatever. Dig out as much snow as you can. It must be here somewhere.”

“It?” Harker stared at him. “What are you looking for? The carbon-dioxide vent?”

“
Forget the vent
,” he said. “
We're looking for an airlock
.”

 

Moving in a circular pattern that gradually expanded away from where he'd almost fallen, Harker and Ramirez used shovels and the snow-blower to clear away as much particulate as they could, while Cruz used the spectrometer to search for more metallic traces hidden beneath the dry ice. Their method soon paid off, for it wasn't long before they located the carbon-dioxide vent.

As Ramirez predicted, the vent was shut, sealed by a pie-wedged hatch nearly two meters in diameter. Although they dug out the snow around it, there seemed to be no way to open it from the outside. Cruz took photos of the vent cover, which he transmitted back to the shuttle, then they continued to search for an airlock.

Although Harker had come to realize that Ramirez's theory was correct, he remained unpersuaded that they would find an entrance to Spindrift's interior in the same place where they'd found exhaust ports. Yet Ramirez insisted that this was the most logical place to look. “
Look at it from an engineering point of view,
” he said while they took a break from searching and digging. “
If you've built vents for carbon dioxide and radiators for excess heat, wouldn't it make sense to provide service hatches to maintain them from the surface? Especially when they're spread so far apart?
”

“
Then why haven't they been used?
” Cruz was skeptical. “
The snow is more than a meter thick. There's no sign that anyone…or anything, whatever…has come out here in ages.
”

“
I don't know…I mean, I can't answer that.
” Ramirez let out his breath. “
But that's not to say that it isn't here.
”

“
Well, if they're aliens, then why should we assume that they'd do things we do?
”

“
Why assume that they wouldn't?
”

While the two scientists continued to argue, Harker checked his chronometer. They'd been on EVA for four and a half hours already. Their rebreather units were good for eight hours; he estimated that it would take an hour for them to return to the
Maria Celeste
. An hour and a half if he included a safety factor. That, along with the fact that they were hungry and tired, meant that they couldn't stay outside very much longer.

“All right, okay,” he said. “That's all well and good, but we've got to head back soon.”

“
Second that.
” Emily came over the comlink. “
You guys need to wrap this up.
”

“Oh, for God's sake!” Ramirez was clearly irritated. “
We're on the verge of one of the greatest discoveries ever made…
”

“That's right, and I think we need to sleep on it.” Harker grunted as he bent down to pick up the blower. His back was sore, his eyes itched from reading the heads-up display, and he desperately wanted to scratch his nose. “We've made good progress, but…”

“
Give us another two hours.
” Ramirez's tone became pleading. “
An extra hour, that's all. Then we can set up markers, go back to the shuttle, and return tomorrow to pick up where we left off. Is that too much to ask?
”

Harker was already inclined to order an end to the sortie and return to the shuttle. But if he did that, he'd hear no end of grief from Ramirez. “
I can work for another two hours.
” Cruz sounded just as tired as he was, yet was willing to suck it in. “
I think…I mean, we've got enough air left, don't we?
”

Before Harker could answer, Emily stepped in. “
Go ahead, guys. I can hold it down for a while longer.
” She'd been watching the clock just as much as he had. “
Your call, Ted.
”

Harker sighed, then nodded within his helmet. “All right, then…two hours, then we head back.”

 

In times to come, Harker would reflect upon that fateful decision and wonder whether it had been fortunate or fortuitous. Had he saved lives, or cost them? Had he changed history for better or for worse? If he'd ordered the exploration party to return to the
Maria Celeste
, would all of them have survived, or would they have perished on Spindrift, their demise a mystery to the rest of the human race? Or had this one small, seemingly trivial choice opened the doors to the cosmos?

He could only second-guess the outcome, for the fact remained that, less than a half hour later, they discovered the very thing for which Ramirez had been searching.

“
Holy crap!
” Cruz yelped. “
Hey, guys…I think I've found a hatch!
”

By then, Cruz had taken his turn at the snow-blower, and had been using it to clear away a patch of ground at the third point of a triangle whose legs were formed by the locations of the carbon-dioxide vent and the radiator shaft. Even though they were down to the last tank of halon, Harker hadn't cared very much by that point who used the snow-blower; all he really wanted to do was make the long hike back to the shuttle, where he could peel off his skinsuit, have a cup of coffee, and fall out in his hammock for a few hours.

Yet it'd become clear, judging from the readings of Cruz's spectrometer, that they were standing on top of a metallic plate about twenty meters in diameter. If Ramirez's hypothesis was correct, then a service hatch should be located somewhere within the proximity.

And so it was. Dropping his shovel, Harker bounded away from the area where he'd been digging to the place that Cruz had used the blower to remove the dry ice. Before he got there, though, Ramirez took the blower away from Cruz. Aiming it at a patch of ground, he blasted away the particulate. A thin white fog rose, then slowly settled, and now they were looking at…

“Oh, good heavens,” he murmured.

“
What's there?
” Emily's voice came over the comlink. “
What did you find?
”