Hal Clement: Hot Planet

Six hours after the blast it had stopped with its nearest lobe almost a mile from the ship, less than two feet thick at the edge.

When Mardikian’s tractor arrived, Burkett was happily trying to analyze samples of the flow, and less happily speculating on how long it would be before the entire area would be blown off the planet. When Marini’s and Harmon’s vehicles arrived, almost together, the specimens had been loaded and everything stowed for acceleration. Sixty seconds after the last person was aboard, the Albireo left Mercury’s surface at two gravities.

The haste, it turned out, wasn’t really necessary. She had been in parking orbit nearly forty-five hours before the first of the giant volcanoes reached its climax, and the one beside their former site was not the first. It was the fourth.

“And that seems to be that,” said Camille Burkett rather tritely as they drifted a hundred miles above the little world’s surface. “Just a belt of white-hot calderas all around the planet. Pretty, if you like symmetry.”

“I like being able to see it from this distance,” replied Zaino, floating weightless beside her. “By the way, how much bonus should I ask for getting that idea of putting the seismic charges to use after all?”

“I wouldn’t mention it. Any one of us might have thought of that. We all knew about them.”

“Anyone might have. Let’s speculate on how long it would have been before anyone did.”

“It’s still not like the other idea, which involved your own specialty. I still don’t see what made you suppose that the gas pillar from the volcano would be heavily charged enough to reflect your radio beam. How did that idea strike you?”

Zaino thought back, and smiled a little as the picture of lightning blazing around pillar, cloud and mountain rose before his eyes.

“You’re not quite right,” he said. “I was worried about it for a while, but it didn’t actually strike me.”

It fell rather flat; Camille Burkett, Ph.D., had to have it explained to her.