Attached to her ACHILLES unit’s waist was a small quadcopter drone. The robot was heavily modified with thermal coverings and redundant electronics for use in the harsh Venusian environment. They were expensive, too — Pham had told her the total cost for the six quadcopters on the ILIAD mission was $100 million, roughly the same price as an F-35A stealth fighter.
She took a deep breath and pulled up the map. Just like in the planning session, the waypoints were clearly marked. Parkowski had to walk the length of the ridge towards the volcano and then climb it — the only difficult part of her mission — and then quickly move to another parallel canyon that would take her closer to the shield volcano’s crater so she could release the drone.
After that, Parkowski would turn around and travel back through that canyon until her shift was over and another operator would take over the ACHILLES units’ operations.
The engineer began walking at a good pace, the ACHILLES robot mimicking her every move. The ground was slightly inclined, boulders the size of a minifridge littering the path, but Parkowski was able to make good progress as she continued to the next waypoint.
The ridge started to narrow as she progressed onwards. Parkowski began to notice the gigantic shield volcano, named for the famous Native American explorer, off on the horizon. It wasn’t a particularly tall volcano, but it was wide, stretching hundreds of miles across at the base.
At one point, the ridge almost turned into a tunnel before opening back up. Parkowski’s progress slowed as she had to squeeze the ACHILLES unit between boulders, but sped up as the path widened.
She came to the first waypoint; a blue dot superimposed by the UI on the ridge wall. The top of the ridge was about fifteen feet off of the ground in the direction of the volcano.
The next canyon was only a quarter-mile from the current ridge but the surface between the two was a “hot zone” from a temperature standpoint. It was potentially from the volcano’s thermal activity, but more likely from tectonic activity underneath Venus’ crust. The ACHILLES robot was rated to operate at high temperatures, but these were at the high end of that range.
The Aering engineers who had done the initial thermal engineering and analysis on the two units had been contacted for this mission. They told Pham and Parkowski that if she spent less than four minutes in that zone, there would be no lasting damage to the heat shielding on the robot. Any more time than that might leave some permanent impact.
Parkowski at first laughed at that requirement. While she wasn’t in as good shape as her soccer days, four hundred meters should be a joke. But when she went back and looked at her top speed from the previous mission, she was going to have to push to keep it under four minutes.
First, though, she had to climb. She stood against the wall and found a decent path up, then started free-climbing. Parkowski was no rock climber, but the nimble ACHILLES unit and the low gravity of Venus made it fairly easy to get to the top.
As soon as she made it up, Parkowski started sprinting, or as close to it as she could manage in the VR setup. It was weird running in place, but the display’s screen showed her perspective continually moving forward. She wished she had set a timer, but then remembered how distracting the UI was — maybe it was a blessing in disguise.
Per her calculations, Parkowski made the quarter-mile in just over three minutes. “Done,” she said over the net, which had been fairly quiet the whole mission. Maybe this time she would be able to finish without any incidents. She dropped down about four feet into the canyon, the ACHILLES leg joints absorbing the impact.
“Good job, Grace,” Pham said in response.
Parkowski checked her mission clock. She had four hours from the start to get the drone launched, and she hadn’t even used up one. Plenty of time.
She started down the canyon. The sides grew taller as she got closer to the volcano and the width narrowed. It reminded her of slot canyons like the one time she had gone hiking in New Mexico. Thankfully, there were no rocks or boulders like the previous ridge. Rather, the ground was soft and dusty, which the system had enough fidelity to display in great detail around her.
It took an hour, but Parkowski reached the next waypoint, a fork in the canyon where the ancient lava flow had split into two. She had to take the left fork, towards the volcano.
The incline started to increase as the path widened. It gave her a beautiful view of the ancient volcano; the gigantic shield’s size was now apparent and its brown color a sharp contrast to the green-yellow alien sky.
Parkowski was now completely enthralled by the simulation. She and the ACHILLES unit were one and the same, the lag between Venus and Earth was negligible, and the jarring anomalies of the previous mission seemingly a thing of the past. She loved every minute in the VR setup.
She came to an overlook where the canyon’s walls towards the volcano were just a few feet high. “Can I launch it here?” Parkowski asked. It wasn’t where the mission plan had called for it, but it looked like a good spot.
“Standby,” Pham replied, “let me talk to the drone operators.”
Parkowski stood still for a few minutes, catching her breath from the long journey. The senior engineer called back after a minute of waiting. “Negative, Grace, they want you to continue and release at the preprogrammed route.”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“There’s an internal GNC sensor that is already programmed,” Pham explained, “and it can’t be changed at this point. Just keep going, Grace, you’re over halfway done with the mission.”
Parkowski put her head down and continued down the path. It was another half-mile or so before the “real” waypoint where she would release the drone. She took her time, walking slowly and carefully, before reaching it after another fifteen minutes of walking.
She took a deep breath. Now, the hard part. Parkowski took the small quadcopter off of her ACHILLES unit’s waist and placed it on the ground. It had a small control panel on its top. Parkowski ensured that the communication channel was the same and took a step back, away from the four blades.
“Ready to launch,” she said over the voice net.
“Copy,” Pham replied. There was a brief pause. “Go ahead and take off when you’re ready.”
Parkowski pulled up the drone controls from within the UI and coordinated them to her right VR controller. A small picture-in-picture display from the quadcopter’s video sensor appeared in the upper left corner of her VR display.
She moved her hand up and the drone’s blades began to spin as it started to slowly rise. Parkowski waited until it was ten to twelve feet above the canyon wall before moving her arm forward in the direction of the Sacajawea volcano.
Pham broke in a few minutes later. “Transferring control to the pilot in three, two, one, break,” he called out. Parkowski could still see the display, but no longer controlled the drone’s movements.
She finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“Ok, great job, you’re doing great Grace,” Pham said to her. “Now head around and get to the last waypoint.”
“Thanks,” she said and turned the ACHILLES unit around to go back the way she came.
It was almost over.
But, after only a few minutes of walking down the canyon, Parkowski started to see some graphical artifacts, much like those in her last mission. The terrain went from a high-resolution model to one with lower fidelity, and the boulders and rocks were missing meshes or textures.
The issues from last time had returned.
“Hey boss, seeing some weird stuff,” she told Pham. “What’s my lag?”
“One minute, forty seconds,” the older man replied. “Everything should be nominal.”
“It’s not,” she breathed. There was lag somewhere that drove the graphical anomalies.