Jonah sat up.
“What was that?”
“I do not know. There was a sharp sound. The ship hummed a bit, and now the floor no longer tilts.”
“No longer—”
Jumping up with a shout, he hurried over to the gauges, then cursed low and harsh.
“What is it, Jonah?”
“Quick—wake all the adults and get them to work pumping!”
She wasted no time demanding answers. But as soon as crews were hard at work, Petri approached Jonah again at the control station, one eyebrow raised.
“The remaining stone ballast,” he explained. “It must have been hanging by a thread, or a single lashing. Now it’s completely gone. The sub’s tilt is corrected, but we’re ascending too fast.”
Petri glanced at two Sadoulites and two Laussanites who were laboring to refill the ballast tanks. “Is there anything else we can do to slow down?”
Jonah shrugged. “I suppose we might unpack the leaky bearing and let more water into the aft compartment. But we’d have no control. The stream could explode in our faces. We might flood or lose the chamber. All told, I’d rather risk decompression sickness.”
She nodded, agreeing silently.
They took their own turn at the pumps, then supervised another crew until, at last, the tanks were full. Bird could get no heavier. Not without flooding the compartments themselves.
“We have to lose internal pressure. That means venting air overboard,” he said, “in order to equalize.”
“But we’ll need it to breathe!”
“There’s no choice. With our tanks full of water, there’s no place to put extra air and still reduce pressure.”
So, different pumps and valves, but more strenuous work. Meanwhile, Jonah kept peering at folks in the dim illumination of just two faint glow bulbs, watching for signs of the bends. Dizziness, muscle aches, and labored breathing? These could just be the result of hard labor. The book said to watch out also for joint pain, rashes, delirium, or sudden unconsciousness. He did know that the old dive tables were useless—based on Earth-type humanity. And we’ve changed. First because our scientist ancestors modified themselves and their offspring. But time, too, has altered what we are, even long after we lost those wizard powers. Each generation was an experiment.
Has it made us less vulnerable to such things? Or more so?
Someone tugged his arm. It wasn’t Petri, striving at her pump. Jonah looked down at one of the children, still wearing a stained and crumpled bridesmaid’s dress, who pulled shyly, urging Jonah to come follow. At first, he thought: it must be the sickness. She’s summoning me to help someone’s agony. But what can I do?
Only it wasn’t toward the stern that she led him, but the forward-most part of the ship … to the view patch, where she pointed.
“What is it?” Pressing close to the curved pane, Jonah tensed as he starkly envisioned some new cloud of debris … till he looked up and saw—
—light. Vague at first. Only a child’s perfect vision would have noticed it so early. But soon it spread and brightened across the entire vault overhead.
I thought we would pass through the therm-o-cline. He had expected a rough—perhaps even lethal—transition past that supposed barrier between upper and lower oceans. But it must have happened gently, while he slept.
Jonah called someone to relieve Petri and brought her forth to see.
“Go back and tell people to hold on tight,” Petri dispatched the little girl, then she turned to grab Jonah’s waist as he took the control straps. At this rate they appeared to be seconds away from entering Venusian hell.
Surely it has changed, he thought, nursing a hope that had never been voiced, even in his mind. The ocean has burgeoned as life fills the seas …
Already he spied signs of movement above. Flitting, flickering shapes—living versions of the crushed and dead specimens that sometimes fell to Tairee’s bottom realm, now undulating and darting about what looked like scattered patches of dense, dangling weed. He steered to avoid those.
If the sea has changed, then might not the sky, the air, even the highlands?
Charts of Venus, radar mapped by ancient Earthling space probes, revealed vast continents and basins, a topography labeled with names like Aphrodite Terra and Lakshmi Planum. Every single appellation was that of a female from history or literature or legend. Well, that seemed fair enough. But had it been a cruel joke to call the baked and bone-dry lowlands “seas”?
Till humanity decided to make old dreams come true.
What will we find?
To his and Petri’s awestruck eyes, the dense crowd of life revealed glimpses—shapes like dragons, like fish, or those ancient blimps that once cruised the skies of ancient Earth. And something within Jonah allowed itself to hope.
Assuming we survive decompression, might the fiery, sulfurous air now be breathable? Perhaps barely, as promised by the sagas? By now, could life have taken to high ground? Seeded in some clever centuries delay by those same pre-Coss designers?
His mind pictured scenes from a few dog-eared storybooks, only enormously expanded and brightened. Vast, measureless jungles, drenched by rainstorms, echoing with the bellows of gigantic beasts. A realm so huge, so rich and densely forested that a branch of humanity might thrive, grow, prosper, and learn—regaining might and confidence—beneath that sheltering canopy, safe from invader eyes.
That, once upon a time, had been the dream, though few imagined it might fully come to pass.
Jonah tugged the tiller to avoid a looming patch of dangling vegetation. Then, ahead and above, the skyward shallows suddenly brightened, so fiercely that he and Petri had to shade their eyes, inhaling and exhaling heavy gasps. They both cried out as a great, slithering shape swerved barely out of the sub’s way. Then brilliance filled the cabin like a blast of molten fire.
I was wrong to hope! It truly is hell!
A roar of foamy separation … and for long instants Jonah felt free of all weight. He let go of the straps and clutched Petri tight, twisting to put his body between hers and the wall as their vessel flew over the sea, turned slightly, then dropped back down, striking the surface with a shuddering blow and towering splash.
Lying crumpled below the viewing patch, they panted, as did everyone else aboard, groaning and groping themselves to check for injuries. For reassurance of life. And gradually the hellish brightness seemed to abate till Jonah realized, It is my eyes, adapting. They never saw daylight before.
Jonah and Petri helped each other stand. Together, they turned, still shading their eyes. Sound had transformed, and so had the very texture of the air, now filled with strange aromas.
There must be a breach!
With shock, still blinking away glare-wrought tears, Jonah saw the cause. Impact must have knocked loose the dog bolts charged with holding shut the main hatch, amidships on the starboard side—never meant to open anywhere but at the safety of a colonial dock.
With a shout he hurried over, even knowing it was too late. The poisons of Venus—
—apparently weren’t here.
No one keeled over. His body’s sole reaction to the inrushing atmosphere was to sneeze, a report so loud and deep that it rocked him back.
Jonah reached the hatch and tried pushing it closed, but Bird of Tairee was slightly tilted to port. The heavy door overwhelmed Jonah’s resistance and kept gradually opening, from crack to slit, to gap, to chasm.
“I’ll help you, Jonah,” came an offer so low, like a rich male baritone, yet recognizably that of his wife. He turned, saw her eyes wide with surprise at her own voice.
“The air … it contains …” His words emerged now a deep bass. “… different gases than … we got from pinyons.”