Ishtar Rising Book 1 Page 6

  Corsi’s eyebrow rose, and she nodded slowly. Something had been nagging at the back of her mind, and it had finally crystallized. Looking across the room, she saw Dr. Saadya and waved him over.

  “I have a concern, Doctor,” she said.

  “Well, now’s the time to voice it,” he said, obviously feigning an air of conviviality. She could tell he was hiding a tremendous amount of stress. Or attempting to hide it.

  “You’re using the linked force fields to push the atmosphere upward, but asymmetrically, correct?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Pushing the gases into space on the night side of Venus will not allow them to dissipate. So, we are forcing them to flow toward the sunlit side, where the heat will help burn them off. The overall shape of the combined force fields will be similar to that of a pear.”

  “So, the stress from the atmospheric pressure will be greatest on the sunlit side, under the apex of the wide part of the pear?”

  Saadya smiled. “Exactly. The strain of the dataloads being carried by the dayside ground stations, atmospheric probes, and force-field relays will also be greatest.”

  Corsi nodded slowly. “So, once you start the process, it’s all or nothing, right?”

  “That’s what all these simulations are for. If it doesn’t go smoothly, we risk the destruction of some of the surface stations, almost as if the atmosphere were a tidal wave crashing down.” Saadya looked around the room, beaming. His gaze stopped for a moment on the Bynars. The pair was now working at one area, while Soloman was set up nearby at a similar station. Assisting, he had told her, with the Bynar pair’s dataloads in a “merely superhuman” capacity, rather than trying once again to engage in a three-way link with them.

  “With luck,” Saadya said, “this will be the final simulation.”

  “Have you planned a retreat?” Corsi asked.

  “Excuse me?” Saadya looked momentarily bewildered.

  “If there is a problem, do you have any way to reverse the procedure safely during the blow-off?”

  Now Saadya blanched. “Reverse it? Not precisely, no.”

  “Well, I think it would be a good idea to run some simulations for that possibility,” Corsi said, noting from the corner of her eye that Stevens was nodding.

  Saadya regarded her for a moment, silently. Then, with a curt nod, he said, “Yes, well, thank you for that bit of advice, Security Chief Corsi. But I think I’ll take it up with the engineers if we can’t perfect our calculations on this run. In the meantime, I prefer to look at this project somewhat more positively than you do, rather than with a defeatist attitude.” He began to turn away. “If you’ll excuse me, Commander, I think we’re ready to begin.”

  Corsi watched him walk away toward some of his technicians. She turned to Stevens, and in a low voice said, “That could be a big problem. If he hasn’t built in enough margin for error, he’d better hope there aren’t any more errors. Otherwise, we just might find ourselves trying to run from that tidal wave.”

  * * *

  Perfection, Saadya thought forty-five minutes later, as a cheer rang out across Ishtar Station’s holodeck. This time the simulation had not only gone without a hitch, it had also moved the bulk of the holographic Venusian atmosphere into space with minimal strain on either the force-field network or the ground station shielding. And it had done so with vast amounts of power to spare.

  As his technicians cheered, hugged, and mobbed each other happily, Saadya scanned the room. Catching the eye of the dour security officer he had spoken with earlier, he gave her a large grin, and an exaggerated thumbs-up sign just as someone popped a champagne bottle.

  Corsi smiled back politely as glasses clinked and the spontaneous cheers, applause, and embraces continued. After the demonstration he had just delivered, surely even the hard-nosed Lieutenant Commander Corsi had to be a believer now.

  Tomorrow, his work here—the real, nonvirtual work—would prove just as successful as had today’s demonstration. And he would enter the history books as the man who tamed Venus.

  Chapter

  7

  It seemed to Soloman that the transporter took an extraordinarily long time to reassemble him inside Ground Station Vesper. He wasn’t surprised, however, given the unusually dense Hadley cell—in essence, a hemisphere-spanning bubble of slow-moving, superheated, convection-lifted carbon dioxide—that had been observed hanging directly over the station for the past several days.

  The moment the transporter beam released him he tapped his combadge. “Soloman to da Vinci. I have arrived safely.” Aware that the safe operation of the transporter depended upon perfect targeting of the narrow gaps between the networked force-field nodes, Soloman hoped that no hasty departures would be needed. In that eventuality there was no guarantee that the “node gap” necessary for transport would be available.

  “Understood, Soloman,” responded the voice of Captain Gold, somewhat distorted by its passage through the thick atmospheric blanket. “We’re maintaining a transporter lock on you and everyone else in your ground station. And we’re prepared to assist Station Ishtar in evacuating any of the other ground stations, if they should run into any serious problems. Just in case.”

  “Acknowledged,” Soloman said. “However, the last round of simulations indicates that you might be taking an overly cautious approach.” I hope.

  “Maybe so. But considering what became of Ground Station Hesperus, Gomez and Tev are recommending we wear a belt and suspenders both. Gold out.”

  From directly behind him, a pair of voices spoke up.

  “So. You have—”

  “—come back—”

  “—to shame—”

  “—us further.”

  Turning to face 1011 and 1110, Soloman felt his face flushing to a temperature that rivaled the air outside the station dome. Nevertheless, he remained determined not to react overtly to the expressions of naked contempt etched across the smooth, pallid faces of his fellow Bynars.

  Only then did Soloman notice the presence of members of the ground team’s human staff.

  “Listen, guys,” Adrienne Paulos said, looking tired and harried as she scowled at each of the three Bynars. “I don’t know what sort of grudges you’re carrying around and I don’t care. But in spite of our success in the simulator yesterday, our margin for error is still way too slim to allow for anybody’s private hissy fits. Understood?”

  The Bynar pair said nothing. They merely continued staring impassively at Soloman.

  “I came here to assist Dr. Saadya with work that will benefit our people, as well as the people of Earth,” Soloman said carefully, his eyes alternately boring into 1011’s and 1110’s. “I trust that my conspecifics feel the same way. Unless I missed the point of all those atmospheric simulations we’ve been running in preparation for today’s task.”

  The Bynar pair continued their stony silence. Moving as one, they turned their attention to a tandem console situated amid a complex cluster of computer terminals that lined the small room’s cramped center. As one, the pair began interfacing with the computer, speaking to it in high-pitched, rapid-fire ululations of vocalized machine code.

  Soloman felt a surge of envy for the rich dataflow in which the other Bynars immersed themselves with such apparent ease. So much like what 111 and I shared—

  With a supreme effort of will, he forced the thought from his mind, as though purging a computer of a damaged file.

  “I’m glad that’s settled,” Paulos said, a sour half-smirk crossing her face as she crossed to one of the other nearby consoles, where a trio of human technicians busied themselves with similar tasks. She quickly examined her readouts, then paused to confer with the other human staff members.

  Feeling even more awkwardly alone than usual, Soloman took his seat at a console adjacent to the one being used by the Bynar pair, neither member of which deigned to look in his direction. Working in silence, Soloman summoned several columns of figures to the touch-sensitive display screen.


  Turning his chair slightly away from the other Bynars, Soloman was relieved to note that only the other humans now lay within his immediate line of sight. Let 1011 and 1110 think whatever they wanted about him. He was determined to put their ill will out of his mind, concentrating instead on monitoring and checking their dataflow, which roared through his terminal like the desert winds of Bynaus.

  Then he noticed one of the human technicians, a female, glancing at him and shuddering, evidently involuntarily. Though the incident occupied only some small fraction of a second, Soloman thought the woman might have tried to do a better job of concealing her revulsion.

  The woman’s reaction brought to mind a warning that Fabian Stevens had once given him. Some humans, Stevens explained, felt uncomfortable around members of the slight, large-brained, computer-dependent Bynar race. “Creeped out” was the expression he had used to describe this unconscious flinching reaction.

  I truly am at home nowhere, Soloman thought, sparing a quick glance at his—thankfully preoccupied—Bynar brethren.

  “Aphrodite Ground Station ready,” declared a voice carried over the comm speakers. The scratchy message instantly brought Soloman’s entire concentration back to the mission before him.

  “Helel Ground Station, check,” another distant voice reported.

  “Ground Station Sukra, ready to go,” came the next.

  One by one, each of the thirteen remaining staffed ground stations, distributed at even intervals around the planet’s equator and along its prime meridians, reported their status to the central surface-based hub at Ground Station Vesper. Each of these facilities were virtually identical, and each now stood ready to link its technological capabilities to all the others.

  1011 and 1110, looking through Soloman as though he weren’t even present, exchanged nods with Paulos and one of the other human technicians.

  Soloman swallowed. The moment of truth was fast arriving.

  Paulos punched a key on her console and leaned forward. “Paulos to Ishtar Station. Vesper reports ready as well. All other stations showing green for go.”

  “Saadya here. Everything looks good from up here.”

  Soloman felt his pulse beginning to race, and his rate of breathing increasing. This was no simulation.

  Then he noticed 1011 and 1110 watching him with narrowed eyes.

  “Try to—”

  “—keep up—”

  “—with the dataflow—

  “—singleton.”

  Say nothing to them, Soloman thought, trying to ignore the slur.

  His jaw tightened as he returned his attention to the ranks of marching figures. So far, nothing in the sensor readings appeared to necessitate making any new adjustments to the force-field network parameters. Field strengths were holding, and remained in balance. All was proceeding as planned, and the numbers attested to it.

  The behavior of numbers, unlike that of flesh-and-blood beings, had the virtue of being understandable, logical, and predictable. But the figures were moving so very quickly. Nearly as fast as the dataflow to which he and 111 had been long accustomed…

  Concentrate on the numbers. Nothing exists except for the numbers.

  Saadya’s voice came over the speakers again, via a somewhat atmosphere-distorted signal. “I wish I could be down there with you, Team Ishtar.”

  “We’ve been over this a million times, Pas. You’ve got to delegate. And who better to get a God’s eye view of things than you?”

  “All right, Adrienne,” Saadya said, still sounding wistful. “I promise to stay up on Ishtar Station and just watch. Now go ahead and raise the roof.”

  Soloman saw from his readouts that the so-called “roof-raising” was already well begun. He stared into his terminal, whose edges soon grew indistinct and vanished altogether, leaving nothing in his sight but the figures that expressed the shape, ebb, flow, and strength of the force-field network that strained and flexed in its effort to cage the broiling Venusian sky.

  Wading alone into the rapid information torrent, Soloman exulted wordlessly in his ability to let the numbers occupy all of his concentration. He no longer had time to consider his outcast status, nor to ponder the enormity of what he and Team Ishtar were undertaking as they guided the bulk of the Venusian atmosphere away from the planet’s surface and toward the endless gulf of space.

  But somewhere deep within him burned the persistent hope that these understandable, logical, predictable numbers would take no unexpected turns into chaos.

  * * *

  Pascal Saadya stood in his office, having had far too many cups of coffee to remain in his padded chair for very long. He leaned against the transparent aluminum window, watching the stately yellow world that turned below him.

  “The force fields are networking nicely,” said Adrienne, her voice crackling with static no doubt exacerbated by the increasingly complex interplay among Project Ishtar’s artificial energy fields, atmospheric probes, and the planet’s high-pressure, acid-laden air. “We’re detecting no node failures, power surges, or significant deviations. And the probe network shows the atmosphere behaving exactly as the models predicted.”

  So far. Saadya stood in silence, his mouth forming a grim slash as he stared down at Venus. After having worked so long and hard planning for this day, he could scarcely allow himself to taste of his triumph now that it had finally arrived.

  Then he saw it. The first tangible, undeniable sign of his success. Venus, a world that had been utterly changeless for hundreds of millions of years, now appeared to be…

  …bulging.

  Saadya grinned, elated. It really is working!

  * * *

  With most of the da Vinci’s senior staff present, the small bridge seemed crowded enough to make David Gold reminisce about his youth. He recalled the time he had stuffed himself into a small hovercar along with eleven other first-year Starfleet Academy cadets.

  Gold sat in the captain’s chair, watching the forbidding hellworld that filled the viewer, along with everyone else present. The tension in the air was palpable, and he realized too late that his biosynthetic fingers had dug themselves completely through the upholstery at the base of the chair’s left armrest. Instinct can get too big a push from technology sometimes.

  He hoped Pas stopped to consider such things occasionally.

  “The procedure seems to be working well,” Tev said, grunting in apparent disbelief as he leaned over the engineering console.

  “Has anybody noticed the predicted expansion effect yet?” said Gomez, who had situated herself at one of the science stations, across the bridge from Tev. “It’s already measurable and it’s steadily increasing. Looks like those newest atmospheric models were pretty accurate.”

  Gold turned and glanced around the rear of the bridge. Abramowitz, who stood between Corsi and Stevens, watched the forward viewer closely, squinting as if to tease out every possible detail.

  “Looks the same as ever to me,” Abramowitz said. “Of course, I suppose I must be the proverbial untrained eye.”

  “Then consider this your training,” Stevens said. “Keep watching the cloud bands near the equator. We’re in for quite a show.”

  Corsi remained silent, her body taut as a bowstring. Her gaze was riveted to the screen as though she were seeking a target onto which to lock every weapon in the ship’s arsenal.

  Gold turned back toward the screen and continued watching in silence. At first he thought it was his imagination, but as the minutes piled up, he knew there could be no denying it.

  Venus was growing, especially in the middle.

  “Look at that,” Corsi said.

  Abramowitz whistled. “I’ll be damned.”

  Gold pushed a button on the arm of his chair. “Gold to Saadya.”

  “Saadya here. Ishtar is finally rising, David. I’m glad you’ve come to assist in her ascent.”

  “Me, too, Pas.” Gold watched as the planet’s atmosphere continued pushing outward and upward, like a river flood
ing and overflowing its banks. The normally slow-moving cloudtops had begun whipping themselves into a frenzy, and golden streamers of gases were reaching spaceward, delicately tapered fingers probing the shallow shoreline of the cosmos. As they rose, the plumes of vapor lengthened, attenuated, and vanished in brilliant, thousand-kilometer-long streaks of auroral blue, violet, and magenta, scattered and ionized by the fierce onslaught of the solar wind. The rising gaseous traceries began appearing—and vanishing—faster and faster as the force-field network gradually ramped up its power output, pushing oceans of atmosphere to higher and higher altitudes.

  Through the gathering brilliance of the ionized atmospheric “blow-off,” Gold could see that the planet’s sweltering carbon dioxide blanket had to be dissipating at a phenomenal rate, like a balloon whose air was being abruptly released. He could only watch in wonderment.

  Gold was startled, just for an instant, by an alarm Klaxon from the science station from which Gomez was monitoring the proceedings. Noting that his channel to Saadya was still open, he momentarily interrupted the audio feed.

  “Report,” Gold said, turning his chair toward his first officer.

  “This can’t be good,” Gomez said. “Maybe Dr. Saadya should have spent more time running geological simulations.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m reading a massive geological upheaval occurring beneath the tessera of Alpha Regio. About twenty degrees south latitude.”

  “What could be causing it?” Gold wanted to know.

  “We know that the Venusian surface lacks plate tectonics,” she said, lifting her gaze from her readouts. “And that causes the planet to experience torrential eruptions of liquid magma every half-billion years or so because of the seismic stresses that accumulate without there being any plate motion to relieve them.”

  Gold blinked at her. “And this has exactly what to do with the price of halvah?”

  “My point is that the last time this happened was about five hundred million years ago. Venus is due for another large eruption right about now.”