Hal Clement: Hot Planet

“Not as far as I can tell. As with your cone samples, there are practical difficulties,” replied Zaino. “I haven’t quit yet, though.”

“I should think not. If some of us were paid by the idea we’d be pretty poor, but the perspiration part of genius is open to all of us.”

“You mean I should charge a bonus for getting this call through?” retorted the operator.

Whatever Burkett’s reply to this might have been was never learned; her attention was diverted at that point.

“We’ve just come in sight of the flow. It’s about five hundred yards ahead. We’ll get as close as seems safe, and I’ll try to make sure whether it’s really lava or just mud.”

“Mud? Is that possible? I thought there wasn’t — couldn’t be — any water on this planet!”

“It is, and there probably isn’t. The liquid phase of mud doesn’t have to be water, even though it usually is on Earth. Here, for example, it might conceivably be sulfur.”

“But if it’s just mud, it wouldn’t hurt the ship, would it?”

“Probably not.”

“Then why all this fuss about getting the tractors back in a hurry?”

The voice which answered reminded him of another lady in his past, who had kept him after school for drawing pictures in math class.

“Because in my judgment the flow is far more likely to be lava than mud, and if I must be wrong I’d rather my error were one that left us alive. I have no time at the moment to explain the basis of my judgment. I will be reporting our activities quite steadily from now on, and would prefer that you not interrupt unless a serious emergency demands it, or you get a call from Eileen.

“We are about three hundred yards away now. The front is moving about as fast as before, which suggests that the flow is coming only along this valley. It’s only three or four feet high, so viscosity is very low or density very high. Probably the former, considering where we are. It’s as black as the smoke column.”

“Not glowing?” cut in Zaino thoughtlessly.

“Black, I said. Temperature will be easier to measure when we get closer. The front is nearly straight across the valley, with just a few lobes projecting ten or twelve yards and one notch where a small spine is being surrounded. By the way, I trust you’re taping all this?” Again Zaino was reminded of the afternoon after school.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied. “On my one and only monitor tape.”

“Very well. We’re stopping near the middle of the valley one hundred yards from the front. I am getting out, and will walk as close as I can with a sampler and a radiometer. I assume that the radio equipment will continue to relay my suit broadcast back to you.” Zaino cringed a little, certain as he was that the tractor’s electronic apparatus was in perfect order.

It struck him that Dr. Burkett was being more snappish than usual. It never crossed his mind that the woman might be afraid.

“Ren, don’t get any closer with the tractor unless I call. I’ll get a set of temperature readings as soon as I’m close enough. Then I’ll try to get a sample. Then I’ll come back with that to the tractor, leave it and the radiometer and get the markers to set out.”

“Couldn’t I be putting out the markers while you get the sample, Doctor!”

“You could, but I’d rather you stayed at the wheel.” Hargedon made no answer, and Burkett resumed her description for the record.

“I’m walking toward the front, a good deal faster than it’s flowing toward me. I am now about twenty yards away, and am going to take a set of radiation-temperature measures.” A brief pause. “Readings coming. Nine sixty. Nine eighty. Nine ninety — that’s from the bottom edge near the spine that’s being surrounded. Nine eighty-five—” The voice droned on until about two dozen readings had been taped. Then, “I’m going closer now. The sampler is just a ladle on a twelve-foot handle we improvised, so I’ll have to get that close. The stuff is moving slowly; there should be no trouble. I’m in reach now. The lava is very liquid; there’s no trouble getting the sampler in — or out again — it’s not very dense, either. I’m heading back toward the tractor now. No, Ren, don’t come to meet me.”

There was a minute of silence, while Zaino pictured the space-suited figure with its awkwardly long burden, walking away from the creeping menace to the relative safety of the tractor. “It’s frozen solid already; we needn’t worry about spilling. The temperature is about — five eighty. Give me the markers, please.”

Another pause, shorter this time. Zaino wondered how much of that could be laid to a faster walk without the ladle and how much to the lessening distance between flow and tractor. “I’m tossing the first marker close to the edge — it’s landed less than a foot from the lava. They’re all on a light cord at ten-foot intervals; I’m paying out the cord as I go back to the tractor. Now we’ll stand by and time the arrival at each marker as well as we can.”

“How close are you to the main cone?” asked Zaino. “Not close enough to see its base, I’m afraid. Or to get a sample of it, which is worse. We — goodness, what was that?’

Zaino had just time to ask, “What was what?” when he found out.

For a moment, he thought that the Albireo had been flung bodily into the air. Then he decided that the great metal pillar had merely fallen over. Finally he realized that the ship was still erect, but the ground under it had just tried to leave.

Everyone in the group had become so used to the almost perpetual ground tremors that they had ceased to notice them; but this one demanded attention. Rowson, using language which suggested that his career might not have been completely free of adventure after all, flashed through the communication level on his way down to the power section. Schlossberg and Babineau followed, the medic pausing to ask Zaino if he were all right. The radioman merely nodded affirmatively; his attention was already back at his job. Burkett was speaking a good deal faster than before.

•“Never mind if the sample isn’t lashed tight yet — if it fails off there’ll be plenty more. There isn’t time! Arnie, get in touch with Dr. Mardikian and Dr. Marini. Tell them that this volcano is explosive, that all estimates of what the flow may do are off until we can make more measures, and in any case the whole situation is unpredictable. Everyone should get back as soon as possible. Remember, we decided that those big craters Eileen checked were not meteor pits. I don’t know whether this thing will go in the next hour, the next year, or at all. Maybe what’s happening now will act as a safety valve — but let’s get out. Ren, that flow is speeding up and getting higher, and the ash rain is getting a lot worse. Can you see to drive?”

She fell silent, Zaino, in spite of her orders, left his set long enough to leap to the nearest port for a look at the volcano.

He never regretted it.

Across the riven plain, whose cracks were now nearly hidden under the new ash, the black cone towered above the nearer elevations. It was visibly taller than it had been only a few hours before. The fountain from its top was thicker, now jetting straight up as though wind no longer meant a thing to the fiercely driven column of gas and dust. The darkness was not so complete; patches of red and yellow incandescence showed briefly in the pillar, and glowing sparks rather than black cinders rained back on the steep slopes. Far above, a ring of smoke rolled and spread about the column, forming an ever-broadening blanket of opaque cloud above a landscape which had never before been shaded from the sun. Streamers of lightning leaped between cloud and pillar, pillar and mountain, even cloud and ground. Any thunder there might have been was drowned in the howl of the escaping gas, a roar which seemed to combine every possible note from the shrillest possible whistle to a bass felt by the chest rather than heard by the ears. Rowson’s language had become inaudible almost before he had disappeared down the hatch.