Poseidon's Wake

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Mposi was not yet committed to entering the thresh of moons, but it would not be long before they ran out of time to turn around. ‘We can go a little deeper,’ Vasin said, ‘but it’ll gain us very little in terms of our view and it probably won’t help them at all. The best we can do — the only responsible thing — is document their actions from this distance, so that at least we have a chance of telling someone else about them.’

‘You’re not dead,’ Eunice said, ‘until you’ve left a crater big enough to stick a name on.’

‘They won’t leave much of a crater on a waterworld,’ Vasin replied brusquely. ‘Anyway, what do you propose? This is a heavy lander, built like a squared-off brick. We are not remotely atmosphere-capable. And that’s not a question of skill or daring — it’s a basic limitation of the vehicle. Drop it into air, it’ll rip itself to pieces.’

‘If we keep our speed low, we can hold the aerodynamic stresses at a safe level.’

‘Perhaps. But the engine’s not rated to run in atmosphere, and we’d need to fire it continuously to keep our speed low enough to avoid structural overload — basically we’d be descending on a pillar of flame. That’s fine in the upper atmosphere, but as soon as it thickens up, we’d run into significant thermal transfer. We’ll superheat the air we’re descending into, and on top of that, our exhaust plasma will back up all the way to our tail quicker than you can blink. It’s easy to say that we should have brought something that can fly in air — but when we left Travertine, this wasn’t exactly where we thought we’d wind up.’

Eunice absorbed this without further argument — it was clear to Goma that she accepted the essential truthfulness of Vasin’s statement; just as it was clear that Eunice would not have rested without exploring all the options, however slight they might appear.

‘Then there’s nothing aboard — no escape pod or capsule — that we can send down into the atmosphere?’

‘Nothing,’ Vasin said. ‘And believe me, I wish it were otherwise. But if they can hold out long enough for Nasim to get here, maybe we can do something for them.’

‘You should see this?’ said Loring.

Vasin looked more irritated than intrigued. ‘Will it change our options?’

‘Not certain? Changes something, for sure.’

Ve had arranged a display of the space around Poseidon, collating data from both Mposi and Travertine. It was as up to date as the latency of time lag and sensors allowed, showing the relative positions of the moons and spacecraft with high accuracy.

Something was happening to the moons.

‘Kanu passed through,’ Loring was saying. ‘We all saw it? Happened just as Eunice warned us? One of the moons chased down his ship, swallowed it, put them through… what did you call it?’

‘The Terror. The ultimate line in the sand, which the moon clearly deemed Kanu fit to pass.’ Eunice was rubbing at the welts on her wrist where she had been restrained. ‘But that didn’t surprise me — Dakota had already made the crossing, so why would it turn her back now?’

‘A million reasons,’ Vasin said. ‘Still — what’s the significance of this? Have you seen anything like this before?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘At my age, you become forgetful. But no, I believe this is new to me. Shall I speculate?’

‘The floor’s all yours,’ Vasin said.

‘Kanu was scanned by the M-builders the way the Trinity was and they’ve allowed him safe passage to Poseidon. But the moons see us as more of the same — just another extension of the same interested intelligence. They must recognise some basic kinship between us and them — something that indicates we share the same biological concerns and imperatives — for now. It’s allowed him through, so for the moment the gates are open. The moons are giving us clear passage.’

‘You can’t know that for sure,’ Ru said.

‘And your contribution to this debate is… what, exactly?’

Still, it was true about the moons — they were not following their usual orbits, or rather their orbits had begun to bend, lining up into a single flat ecliptic. They had not yet settled into that configuration — it would take hours at the present rate of change — but the end-state could be easily predicted.

‘Ru’s right, though,’ Goma said. ‘That could just as easily be a final “keep out” as an invitation.’

‘Thank you,’ Ru answered, pushing her words through clenched teeth.

‘It’s of theoretical interest,’ Vasin said, ‘but it changes nothing. We haven’t suddenly become a different ship, and all the barriers to landing on Poseidon I’ve already mentioned still apply.’

‘Then we don’t,’ Eunice declared. ‘You said the ship isn’t built for atmosphere. But we could land on top of one of those wheels, couldn’t we? Give me a reason why that wouldn’t work.’

‘How about because it’s totally pointless? We still wouldn’t be able to get help to Kanu.’

Eunice looked around the room, eyes wide with disbelief. ‘Give me a break, Gandhari. This ship is stuffed with supplies.’

‘Which would still be a hundred kilometres from the surface. The time it would take to climb down… if there was a way to do that… and then what?’

‘Lower supplies to them — rations, clothing, medical gear, whatever they need. Enough to keep them going until Travertine arrives. And if that doesn’t work, they can tie themselves to the rope and let us haul them back into space.’

‘One hundred kilometres?’

‘Why not?’

Vasin sighed. ‘Because I reviewed the equipment manifest myself so I know exactly what we have aboard. We have docking tethers, surface-penetrating grapples and power winches. But the tethers won’t reach that far — we brought them to help us hook onto Zanzibar, if it came to that. I saw no need for longer lines on this trip, and I’m not even sure Travertine could have supplied them if I had.’

‘How long,’ Goma said, ‘is the longest tether?’

‘Forty, fifty — no more than that. They’re not made to be joined together, either.’

‘It’s not enough,’ Ru said.

‘Next time you put together a supply manifest,’ Eunice said, ‘ask for some help.’

‘Nobody could have anticipated this,’ Vasin said. ‘Not even you.’