The starchild compact, p.20
The Starchild Compact, page 20
"Jon, it's Ginger," she said, facing the pinhead-sized set of holocams on Demitri's helmet.
"I have you five by," Jon's holographic image in her heads-up display responded, seeming to be sitting in a chair about a half-meter from her position.
"This is Demitri," the Russian said to Ginger's holocams. Jon's holoimage appeared in Demitri's display. The duplex booster unit was designed to recognize when participants on the net were physically in each other's presence, so that their heads-up displays did not become cluttered with multiple images of participants in their immediate presence.
"We're in business, guys. Come on back for something to eat, and some rest before we do it," Jon said.
#
The following "morning" Jon assembled the team inside the pressure tent for a final briefing. "We've gone over it a dozen times already," he said, "but one more time won't hurt. Remember, we are assuming that the shaft is some kind of vertical transportation route. We don't pretend to know for what or how it worked. So, we're going to the bottom to see what we find. All of us will suit up, including TBH boots – and don't forget your outer soles."
Saeed looked at Ari with questioning eyes. He knew about the TBH boots, but Ari had to explain the function of the outer soles that slipped over the boots and protected the recessed nozzle in each boot from walking damage.
"Ari," Jon said, "make sure Saeed understands the boots and covers." Then he continued his instructions. "Once everybody is suited up, we'll depart for the opening.
"Now remember, you guys have experience with the TBH boots, but your experience was in free-fall. We're dealing with gravity here, even if it is just a whisper. I've limited rappels to one hundred meters a fall. That gives us a pretty good safety margin, since you will be falling at only about seven meters a second when you reach the end of your safety line. We know the shaft is about five kilometers deep, and appears to be perfectly round and smooth all the way down. We've already dropped a rappel line to the bottom. Ari, you'll go first, taking a glow tube with you, and stream the fiber-optic thread. You'll take no risks, no chances, and you will stop without my order at the slightest indication that something is wrong. Under no circumstances will you remove your safety line, since that is our only way of retrieving you should something go wrong, short of another team member going down to get you. Once established on the bottom of the shaft, you'll run a short test of the TBH boots. Ascend ten meters or so, and then drop back down. Your trip down will take at least thirty minutes.
"The women will follow you down – Elke and Carmen, belayed by Noel; Michele and Ginger belayed by Chen. Chen will go next, belayed by Noel, then Noel, belayed by me, and finally I will descend, belayed by Demitri. Remember, each trip is about thirty minutes with no stops, so we will need over four hours for all of us to reach the bottom. While the folks on the bottom wait for the rest of us, look about you. You might discover something. But no risks – take no risks!
"Our first sortie might be very short, if we find no penetration. Then we'll work our way back up, looking more closely for any kind of penetration. If you see anything on your way down, of course, stop your rappel and let us know. We'll hang off a glow tube at that level." He paused as the team members donned their suits. "Any questions?"
When nobody spoke up, he added, "Remember, we are entering a total unknown. We have no published guidelines, no protocols, no established procedures. All we have is common sense. Be careful, and heed my instructions – but follow your gut instinct!"
#
Saeed was excited by the events unfolding before him. Allah had graciously extended the Jihad time schedule so that he, a Muslim, could participate in this exciting enterprise, to the glory of Muslims everywhere. But these thoughts immediately engendered a fierce internal conflict, because Saeed had no doubts about Allah's ultimate intentions toward the Infidels on this expedition, may He be forever blessed.
So, Saeed learned everything he could about everything he saw and did. He was especially intrigued by the TBH boots. It seemed to him that they could give him the kind of mobility he might need later, when he took advantage of the opportunity he knew Allah would present to him, praise be to Him.
#
Ari had never rappelled five kilometers – nobody had, ever! He stood at the edge of the shaft looking down. Unlike Michele, Ari did not suffer from even a vestige of vertigo. He tried to see details on the shaft as far as the light allowed – nothing, nothing at all, just a smooth, unbroken surface.
The fiber-optic reel was attached to his tank pack. It was designed to feed the nearly invisible cable through a tiny hole in the center of the pack. The cable didn't unwind. Instead, it fed from the center of the reel through the tiny hole, almost without friction. To further enhance the feed, the hole was lined with a special ceramic ferrule that had been rendered nearly frictionless by an application of nanotechnology that gave the ceramic a very dense, slick surface. Attached to his midriff, Ari carried a pouch filled with glow tubes, with a variable output of up to 5,000 lumens in any desired angle of spread. In a leg pocket he had a tube of quickset vacuum adhesive that he could use to attach a glow tube to the shaft wall, or even a hook located in his other leg pocket from which he could suspend himself, should that become necessary. His rappelling hardware differed little from typical alpine rappelling hardware, except that it was designed to be used in the extreme temperature fluctuations of an airless world, and to use smaller polyaramid lines with friction characteristics very different from standard alpine climbing rope.
When he was ready, Ari signaled to Jon, leaned back into his rappel line, and slowly fell away from the edge in a graceful arch. It was the closest thing to flying he had ever experienced. During the thirty-second fall he experimented with various body positions, turning at the last instant to land his soles squarely against the shaft wall a hundred meters down. He pushed off into a second arch, and while in mid arch, attached one of his glow tubes to the wrist of his guide hand on the rappel. He set it to illuminate away from his body so as not to blind him, and set the lumens to max. The fifty-meter wide shaft lit up brightly, revealing its completely featureless surface.
"You getting this, Jon, Demitri?" Ari asked as he pushed off at 200 meters.
"Nothing to see," Demitri muttered.
At 500 meters, Ari paused to attach a glow tube to the wall, and tilted back to look up the shaft. The fifty-meter circular opening looked small from his perspective. It was only a tenth of his vertical displacement, and he could nearly cover it with his hand. Still nothing on the shaft wall…completely featureless. Five hundred meters later, he still saw nothing to relieve the featureless monotony of the shaft wall, and now – at a kilometer down – he could cover the opening with his thumb. He attached another glow tube, and dropped again. He attached glow tubes at 500-meter intervals, and when he looked up, their illumination sharply outlined short segments of shaft. And yet, in the clear vacuum the distant opening remained clearly visible as well. Three kilometers, four, and then finally, Ari saw the bottom rising to meet him.
"Visual on the bottom," he reported. "I can see no debris. Appears perfectly smooth, like the wall." He paused his description, slowing to meet the bottom with zero velocity…and plunged right through the bottom, continuing to fall, but this time through a slightly viscous dust. "Did you guys get that?" he asked as he turned around to check the visibility. "I'm still dropping slowly…ah…the bottom. I must have fallen through about four meters of fine dust."
Ari probed around himself, and then set out on a course to what he hoped was the closest shaft wall, holding his hands in front of him. Five seconds later his hands bumped the wall. He followed the wall to the floor level, and to his surprise, the wall did not meet the floor. Rather, the wall continued past the level of the floor, and the floor itself, curved down, starting about twenty centimeters from the wall. At first, he was unable to determine what he was feeling through his pressure gloves. He worked his way around the wall for several meters – exactly the same, and then it struck him. He was on the top of some kind of elevator.
"You're not going to believe this, Jon. I'm standing on top of a fifty-meter wide elevator that's covered with four meters of dust." He paused, deep in thought. "I don't really know if the elevator is at the bottom of the shaft or not. Pull me up slowly, Jon until I break the surface. You can follow on your monitor." He immediately felt himself rising through the dust. Within a few seconds the dust sluiced off his helmet. He looked around in the bright light from the glow tube. "The girls probably don't want to hear me say this, Jon, but I really don't want to send them down into this stuff."
Jon started to interrupt, but Ari continued. "Hold on, Captain. I have an idea. Nobody makes an elevator you can't get out of, especially if you are on an airless world in a five-kilometer deep shaft…or deeper. Hell, I don't know! There has to be an escape hatch somewhere on the elevator top."
"If it's an elevator," Jon commented wryly. "You're down there, so check your theory out. And by the way, I suspect Ginger and Elke would disagree with your earlier comment."
Ari grimaced as he sank back down through the viscous dust to the top of the "elevator." He commenced a circular search, letting his suit system guide him. He moved to the approximate center of the surface, and then moved around in increasingly wider circles. The surface was smooth in exactly the same way as the shaft wall, until about three meters out from the edge, Ari encountered a two-meter wide circular bulge. "Got something here, Jon. I think it's a hatch of some kind."
"Proceed with caution."
"You got that!" Ari felt the bulge carefully. "Think about this, Jon. If this is an escape from whatever is inside, I would think it is a lock rather than just an opening." He continued probing. "Oh my gosh! Jon, I just found a fist-sized depression in the bulge, big enough to comfortably receive a space-suited fist. And it has a grip inside."
#
Topside, the entire crew was hanging on Ari's every word. "I've just worked my hand into the depression," Ari said over the circuit, but since there was no visual at all, the crew had to make do with the verbal report.
On the surface Demitri and Saeed were listening intently to Ari's report, and the rest of the crew clustered around Jon at the edge of the shaft.
"O-oh!" Ari's voice carried a bit of tension. "Shit Jon! The sonofabitch is turning! It's acting like it's servo assisted. I put a gentle pressure to the left, and it started to rotate. When I removed the pressure, the rotation stopped." Then there was a pause, and then Ari said, "I feel a lip completely around the bulge. It's screwing out of the elevator top – if that's what it is, of course." Another pause. "Well, I'll be damned…it just opened completely on some kind of spring or hydraulic hinge. I can feel the dust flowing into the space below…Oops! The dust flow just stopped. It's got to be a small chamber, and it's chock full of dust. It's a lock…I told you so! It's a lock! I'm going inside…"
"Hold it, Ari. You'll do nothing of the kind until someone joins you there." Jon pulled the support rope, retrieving Ari from the dust. Ari swung gracefully to the wall at the end of his belaying line. "Put up your hook, and wait for me."
Jon switched to a private circuit with Demitri – his second in command. Since he was about to make a major decision, he wanted Demitri's input. "Demitri. I'm considering bringing all of us down the shaft, including you and Saeed, if this turns out to be a way inside. What are your thoughts?"
"I think we should test a TBH ascent from the bottom before we put everyone down, but otherwise, I agree."
Demitri's voice sounded thoughtful to Jon. "Okay, let's do this. You and Saeed remain topside for the time being. We'll send down some sheets and braces that we can use to construct a caisson around the opening to hold back the dust. I will descend to assist Ari in the construction. Then he and I will enter the lock to see if there is a way into the interior of the elevator." Jon smiled to himself, noting that no matter what the machine really was, they were now calling it an elevator. "Send Elke with Saeed to get the sheets and braces. I don't want him alone, and I want you supervising while I am descending and on the bottom. Elke is the strongest of the women. She can handle him."
Elke climbed to the surface to replace Demitri, and then headed back to the Base Camp with Saeed in tow. Meanwhile, Jon prepared to descend, while Demitri took over. As Jon briefed everyone, Elke and Saeed returned with several collapsed and rolled braces wrapped inside a rolled polyaramid sheet. Jon attached it to his utility belt. It was a bit bulky, but had virtually no weight in the low gravity of Iapetus. When Jon was ready, he leaned back over the shaft, and let himself fall, belayed by Noel.
During his half-hour descent, he kept a sharp eye out for any deviation in the smooth surface of the shaft. At about three kilometers down, he stopped his descent to examine what appeared to be a faint border that outlined an oval about two meters high and one-and-a-half wide. He swung over to the side where he had seen it, but up close, he could see nothing. He let himself swing back. Starting about ten meters from the wall, the marking began to appear again. He completed the swing cycle, this time planting a glow tube on the marking. "I don't know what it is," he reported, "but it definitely is there." He continued his descent, and on his signal to Noel, finally coming up short in front of Ari.
"Not bad for an old man," Ari said.
"And don't you forget that!"
They opened the caisson material with difficulty, because they had no solid surface to work from.
"I been giving this some thought while waiting for you," Ari said. "Let's make a cylinder just wide enough to fit in the hatch opening."
"If this really is a lock, then it will be interlocked. The lower door won't open till the upper door is shut. So the cylinder has to encompass the hatch," Jon responded.
"Yah, I guess so." Both men remained silent, searching for a solution. "How about this," Ari said after about a minute. "We form the largest possible cylinder, and then drive it down to the elevator by holding the top edge on opposite sides and activating our TBH boots. We tack it in place with adhesive – just enough to hold it, until we can get a better, dust-free bond, and then install a brace around the outside of the top. After that, we can figure out the next step."
Jon looked up at the successive light rings and tiny bright spot that marked the fifty-meter wide opening five kilometers above them. "Did you ever see such a sight?" he asked Ari as they turned to the task at hand.
Chapter 20
The first thing they did was relocate the topside team so that the ropes dropped directly over the location of the lock. Once in position, Jon and Ari had a terrible time forming the polyaramid sheet into a cylinder. Their problem was lack of traction. After several fits and starts, they managed to form a loop at the end of one of the ropes, which they passed around the sheet, pulling into a cylindrical shape. As they worked on the project, it became clear that they needed to install a brace around both top and bottom before they attempted to push the cylinder through the accumulated dust atop the elevator.
Once the cylinder was completed, they had to determine exactly where they would push it through the dust. Ari dropped through the dust layer with an extended brace that he attached to the back of the open hatch with a dollop of adhesive. When Demitri hoisted him above the dust layer, he and Jon manipulated the awkward cylinder until they were able to push it down over the extended brace. Then they each removed their outer soles to expose the jet nozzles, and positioned themselves on opposite sides of the cylinder. Jon had thought there might be some awkwardness in getting their feet above them, but that turned out to be easy. A simple tuck and roll brought their feet above them in a gentle arch, and at the right moment they both tapped their big toes.
The effect was immediate and startling. Nearly simultaneously, they both tapped again to shut off the jets as the cylinder moved smoothly through the dust to rap against the hull below them.
"We're gonna bounce back," Ari warned, and they both tap-tapped again, which effectively removed the upward momentum.
Intellectually, Jon had known that visibility would be zero, but it still came as a surprise to find nothing at all…total absorption of all light. He could feel Ari on the other side moving to the base as he did. When he reached the elevator hull, he felt around for anything that would orient him to his position, but there was no way. "Ari," he said, his signal traveling up to the surface through the fiber-optic thread trailing behind him, and back down through the thread attached to Ari's suit, "let's move the cylinder until it backs against the hatch, and then let's manipulate it until we are certain that the hatch is square against the inside. Then we can pull it back a short distance, and we should be fine."
"Works for me," Ari answered, grunting with effort.
It took them about fifteen minutes before they both were convinced that the cylinder was positioned as accurately as possible for the time being.
"Bring us above the dust, Demitri," Jon ordered.
"Guess what?" Ari said. "This isn't going to be as easy as we imagined. We're going to have to ascend a bit, and then attempt to rappel down into the cylinder mouth."
"So, why didn't we attach a line to the cylinder edge?"
"Didn't think of it, I guess."
