The oxygen barons, p.14
The Oxygen Barons, page 14
Pain bounced off his skull like an echo. Galvanix spread his arms and other leg, arresting a slide that had left him somehow facedown. His calf muscle seemed to be trying to peel away from the bone.
Taking stock, Galvanix turned his head slowly, studying his position in the dim glow of the head light. He was perhaps halfway up, high enough to injure himself gravely if he fell. Wriggling his back muscles to squirm higher, he carefully tried to heel-and-toe his good foot up the wall without lifting it. It worked, but the progress was ludicrously small. This is called inching, he thought, wondering how many centimeters made an inch.
Shifting his weight to either hip as his muscles tired, Galvanix strained upward, a morsel supplying its own peristalsis. He suspected he was describing a slow spiral in his progress up the shaft, but could see no reference points on its featureless surface. Sometimes he pressed his fingertips against opposite sides, seeking a balance between the pain it spurred in his chest and his need to relieve his leg.
Pain lanced through his breast without warning. Galvanix ordered his arms to hold fast, but felt the wall sliding past his fingers. He kicked out hard, slamming his coccyx against the wall. One hand was pressed to his chest before he knew his leg would hold.
For several minutes he remained bent over his cantilevered leg, waiting out the slowly diminishing pain. He brought his hand away reluctantly, raising his head as if to look about. There was no determining how much ground he had lost.
No more mistakes, he told himself, as though from a distance. It was a way of diffusing the ego, that catchment for fear. Galvanix tried to wipe his hand on his clothes, which proved to be wet and filthy. Carefully he licked each finger clean, men blew on his hand to dry it.
Just go slowly, he told himself. Rest frequently. Galvanix moved his limbs with the deliberation of a spider, never two at once.
When something brushed his shoulder he froze, his thread of concentration snapped. After a moment he resumed climbing, and felt an object bounce lightly against his collarbone. Galvanix hung motionless for a second, then turned his head toward the distraction. In the narrow beam, the curvate tines of Beryl’s anchor gleamed, its barbs bent inward like retracted claws. Galvanix looked at it uncomprehendingly.
The anchor spun slowly, its four tines twinkling in turn, then paused and rotated backward with equal languor. The thing was dangling on its superthin line; it had been lowered. Or it had hung some time, he had climbed up to it. Each thought filled Galvanix’s mind, and presently gave rise to another. It was there for him.
Galvanix took the device gingerly in his hand and tugged at it. The line immediately jerked upward twice. The surprise snapped Galvanix into a semblance of wit: he had assumed Beryl had left the anchor behind.
Arms trembling, Galvanix wound the line several times about his wrist. A fingertip pressed one barb, and Galvanix felt a thrill run straight to his chest. Confirming that the anchor could not swing loose and catch him, Galvanix let his full weight gradually depend onto the line. It immediately began to draw him up.
How much line did Beryl have? Galvanix could already feel the twin beats of her hand-over-hand rhythm beneath the steady pull. Looking up, he saw a smudge of grey in the darkness, too indistinct to have shape. If Beryl didn’t have her light on, Galvanix reflected in a final surfacing of consciousness, then neither should he. Galvanix extinguished his helmet light just as a glimmer of movement crossed its reach.
“Took you long enough, though I’m not surprised,” Beryl said, taking his arm as he braced his legs. Galvanix gasped as she tugged, but said nothing. “We climbed farther than I expected, so we may be over a built-up area.” Galvanix unwound and released the anchor, which disappeared into Beryl’s clensuit.
Above them stretched a ring of dull light, which Galvanix realized was a sleeve of mesh open to the air. He squeezed past Beryl and looked out. The shaft rose a meter above ground level — as a safeguard against flooding? — and was capped like a mushroom to keep out rain. The cap obscured most of his view, and Galvanix could see only a few meters of flat surface. Air currents curled past his face, and a gust of rain drummed loudly against the cap.
Galvanix slid back down to face Beryl. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Over the shore, I think. Probably an industrial facility — some gusts carry a whiff of smokestack oxides.”
“Pollution?” Galvanix was appalled.
“Never mind that. I’ve heard no human activity in forty minutes, but we may be in a line of sight.”
Galvanix edged back up and pressed his nose to the mesh. Someone could be standing six meters away, looking in their direction. He felt Beryl squeeze in behind him.
“I sawed through the struts fastening the shaft cap,” she whispered. “When I raise it, you look around.”
Maneuvering carefully, Beryl got her hands beneath either side of the lid, which she slowly lifted like an enormous hat. Galvanix ducked his head and scanned the surrounding area.
“Nothing,” he said. “We seem to be far from any building. I see lots of pipework and some holding tanks.”
“Is there a close one you can run for?”
Galvanix looked again. “About ten meters.”
The lid rose higher, until half a meter of clearance separated it from the sleeve. “Go.”
Galvanix squeezed through the opening, ignoring a blossoming of pain in his chest. Cold rain pelted him, and something acrid blew past his face. He drew up his legs and leaped, sailing through the storm as though windswept. A second bound took him to a cylindrical tank, and Galvanix dove behind it. He crouched in the rain, pulling the headpiece of his clensuit over his scalp.
The airshaft was indistinct in the clouded rain, and Galvanix watched for a minute before he saw that Beryl had raised the lid enough to swing her legs away from the shaft. Holding it as carefully as a tray, Beryl slid out from beneath and slowly replaced the lid, her silhouette indistinct to any eyes more distant than Galvanix’s. She was beside him in two bounds.
“Onward.” They ran through the pelting rain, hopping low. Galvanix adjusted his faceplate, then put the respirator into his mouth and blew air through his suit. A warm band tightened across his chest.
“There,” said Beryl, pointing toward a murky middle distance. Galvanix followed without wondering what she saw. After a dozen leaps further he could make out a low railing, the edge of a platform he now realized they stood upon. Glancing behind him — there was nothing but darkened outlines and mist — Galvanix approached the railing and looked out.
Ten meters below, black waters swirled around the structure’s slender pilings. A swollen torrent cut through banks of scarcely eroded lunar stone, widening as it coursed past other buildings perched on stalks.
Beryl pointed to the horizon. Beyond the drowned land, the line of the world’s end glittered through the mist, unbroken and faintly convex. Galvanix stared with wild surmise past the veil, where sunlight fell on the arching meniscus of the Far Sea.
FIVE
They descended the nearest piling, incised so faintly with footholds that Galvanix slipped and plunged straight into the water. He was immediately thrust to the surface, but strong currents grasped his ankles and pulled him swiftly away.
Water streamed down his faceplate, blurring vision more thoroughly than rain upon his unprotected eyes would have done. Galvanix was reaching up when something crashed into him. He was hurled underwater once more, pain lost in the spray of bubbles. Hands grabbed him before he surfaced: Beryl, who had judged and leaped, and now held him like a pet owner determined to avoid another chase.
Kicking hard, Beryl angled toward the near bank. Galvanix obligingly went limp until he felt ground drag beneath his boots. He scrambled for traction, then slogged ashore against a current that continued to snatch at his footing. Their shore, he discovered, was a spit of land cut off by the flooding of low ground behind an embankment.
“This is not a normal noonday storm,” Beryl shouted.
Galvanix nodded, a gesture lost under the circumstances. “The shores of the Near Sea have never been like this, even since the destruction of the Mirrors. It must be the extra water dumped by the comet into the atmosphere.”
“It’s our salvation.” Beryl was looking toward the complex they had just fled. “There is a boatyard four kilometers distant, and a craft can be stolen in such weather.”
Weariness suddenly weighed at him. “I don’t know how we — “
“You wait here, of course. Traveling through storm waters requires training.” And perhaps sensing protest, she added, “It’s quite safe, especially in a clensuit. I can throw my anchor like a grapple.”
Galvanix shuddered. Beryl took out her anchor and whirled it overhead. Released, the projectile flew into the darkness. Beryl reeled the line back for a few seconds before encountering resistance, then nodded once to Galvanix and waded stolidly into the water.
Galvanix lay on his back, head turned toward the dim outline of buildings. No lights shone. A shift in the wind brought more rain pelting against his faceplate, and he raised his hand to shield it. What was happening with the world’s weather? Galvanix imagined the millions of tonnes of water sprayed onto the atmosphere, not as a missile but still all at once.
Abruptly he wondered about the gases dissolved in the comet’s ice. Had they reached the surface too, or were their lighter molecules scattered into their own lunar orbits? Galvanix felt a pang at the thought of that oxygen dissipated beyond recovery, circling the Moon in a wasted haze.
The air filling his clensuit cushioned him, and he realized too late that he was falling asleep. He woke as something shuddered beneath him, and raised a hand to feel a smooth bulkhead beside him. The deck began to vibrate more quickly, then lurched hard. Sliding backward, Galvanix flung out his other arm and struck someone’s foot.
“Don’t thrash.” Beryl was facing forward, piloting — it came slowly together — some kind of craft. Galvanix raised his head, and a wave of nausea rolled over him. He lay back, curling on his side as the ship began a slow turn that dragged at his entrails. The engine’s purr rose to a whine, creating the distressing sense (though Galvanix knew better) that acceleration was also increasing. He was trying to sit upright to avoid vomiting when the acceleration ceased, releasing him as though into free fall.
Galvanix rolled onto his back, breathing deeply. After a second he realized what else had suggested the rocket analogy: the vibrations had cut off with the acceleration. Only a faint hiss came through the deck, although the craft seemed to be maintaining speed.
He sat up slowly. “What is now driving the engine?” he called over the wind and rain.
Beryl glanced over her shoulder. “Steam, you will be happy to hear.”
Galvanix was standing now, looking over the gunwale of a launch scarcely larger than a bed. Spray flew in twisting chevrons along either side of the prow. He leaned further and bumped his head against a clear substance. Looking up, he could make out the faint iridescence of the microthin canopy over the cockpit, its outer skin streaming with rain.
“This is not a mooncraft,” Galvanix said, lifting his hand from the gunwale.
“Indeed. It is something your Farside shogun got from one of his high-orbital allies, though probably assembled here.”
Galvanix looked alarmed. “What is its power source?”
“Once the electric engine puts us up to cruising speed, a fission micropile cuts in. It doubtless requires a rapid flow of water to operate. — And don’t be such a fool as to look shocked. Did you think it would burn charcoal like your telephones?”
Galvanix was looking around frantically, as though finding himself in a dragon’s mouth. “Can you operate such a thing?”
“The onboard intelligence handles the details. I believe that’s it over there.” Beryl pointed to a raised area on the console the size of a small book.
Galvanix shifted his feet, looking down. “And the irradiation of the flowthrough is held merely to ‘acceptable’ levels, since a craft this size cannot have full shielding. So your self-propelled coracle is putting radiation into the Far Sea.”
“This craft is not one of ‘ours.’ If it were, the onboard would occupy a thousandth the space, and would have killed me when I tried to slip it out of the Farsiders’ paltry security loop.”
Galvanix sat down abruptly on the deck. The radiation, he thought in a mordant flash, at least could not harm him. “There is no reason for a craft this small to have long-distance capacity. And while it cannot hold equipment, it could still unfurl a dish and receive beamed energy instead of carrying a pile. Its design for long unsupported missions marks it plainly as a warship.”
“True, but like most warcraft, it has a first-aid kit.” Beryl produced a flat case from beneath the control board. “You have already been dosed for pain and shock, otherwise you would not be standing now.” Beryl popped open the case, which caught the dim light like the mirror of her sudden smile. “This will buy us days of life. The chances of our completing the mission have gone way up. We may truly make it.”
This succession of news was too much for Galvanix, who tried to assimilate it but could only sit back. He watched without comment as Beryl produced a tiny diagnostic device with wire-thin legs extending in all directions, which at her urging Galvanix allowed to crawl the length of his digestive tract. Beryl retrieved it after an uncomfortable hour and slid it back into the case, which promptly lit up with displays. “Your intestinal lining is completely moribund, worse than mine. It didn’t measure your marrow stem cells, but this tells us enough. We will make it to the Pole, if barely.”
Galvanix slept on that. He woke once to a sensation of swaying, and found the ship in virtual darkness. “Storm?” he murmured.
Beryl looked at him ironically. “No, a too-clear sky, which is why I submerged the vessel. The canopy makes the ship extremely buoyant, so I had to flood it.” And indeed Galvanix looked down to see his suited limbs bobbing in a meter of dark water, moonlit by the console’s pilot light.
Beryl took them up an hour later, anxious to return to cruising speed. They broke through a green skin that clung to the canopy in tatters. “The exuberance of this seacover bothers me,” said Beryl. “The water is too warm.”
Galvanix watched the rain push a ragged scrap of algae along the canopy’s frictionless surface. “Won’t it smother the marine life?”
“Stuff breaks up regularly,” said Beryl. “Or should. I’m more worried about the cooling system, which is being overtaxed.”
“The reactor cannot cool itself?” Galvanix turned on Beryl, incredulous. “Why then are we racing?” Anger made him suddenly weak, but a giddy rush seemed to lift his chest even as his hand groped for a gunwale.
“… Because we must fly,” he heard Beryl say from a distance. Galvanix could not make out his own reply. He tried to concentrate, and found himself lying on the deck. The rolling swells beneath him seemed to produce contrary tides in his own bodily fluids.
“Beryl.” His voice croaked, and Galvanix drank from his helmet tube. He began to pull himself up, and gasped as cramps raked his arms. The sky remained disconcertingly dark, although the sun must by now be almost overhead.
Galvanix bumped against Beryl as he pulled himself to his knees. “How are we doing?” he asked.
Beryl did not turn. “The algae cover is thicker, and it’s clogging the intakes. It’s also slowing us up.”
“If the ship had a hydrofoil, that would not matter.”
“Yes, but a hydrofoil would lift the hull, and we need the flowthrough. The water isn’t cooling enough as it is, and the onboard has had to release two long ribbons of superconductor to bleed the heat off. The damned things radiate in the infrared like jet trails, and increase our chances of detection.”
Galvanix looked out. Patches of algae slid over each other as swells rose beneath them. Water streaming down the canopy obliterated detail, but Galvanix could sense the varying force of the rain from its irregular drumming overhead. A sudden burst rattled hard, forcing the ship deeper into the water like a compressing hand.
“Downdraft,” said Beryl, seeing Galvanix’s expression. “The Far Sea is a huge tidal bulge, but the atmosphere remains nearly spherical under the rounding effects of its circulation patterns. In mid-sea the wind hits the water as it would a hillside.”
“Of course,” muttered Galvanix, abashed.
“Damn it!” Beryl shouted. Galvanix started, realizing he had fallen asleep. His head had been resting against Beryl’s leg, which had now gone rigid as steel.
“I have been monitoring the water temperatures two hundred meters down. It rose for ten minutes and now is dropping. We passed a heat source — they are warming the ocean!”
Galvanix was having more trouble focusing his thoughts than he liked. “How were you measuring that?”
