Jack Chalker - Melchior's Fire

An Li sighed. “I guess the next thing to do is to prep a probe and then send it down to see if we can get down and then get back up again. If we can, then some of us, at least, are going to have to go exploring. Any idea what the temperature is like down there?”

“Hot at sea level,” Nagel reported. “Thirty-six, thirty-seven on the planet side, no lower than thirty even on the night side. Estimates are you can expect as high as forty-eight to maybe even fifty on the full-sun exposed day side, going down to a chilly forty-two or so when that side’s towards the planet. The only reason it’s even within that range is because of the heavy rains that seem to happen at some point every day for ninety percent of the whole damned planet. We’ll need the probe to find out what kind of particulates are in the air. Bet on a lot, which isn’t going to be great for the lungs, so protective masks might be in order. The humidity’s going to be very high at any point where there’s vegetation or other life, so anybody without air conditioning is going to broil pretty good.”

“We could go down with full environment suits,” Randi suggested hopefully.

“No dice. With a fifteen percent average gain in weight on the surface, those suits will weigh a ton. The gravimetric ground shuttles aren’t going to be much good, either; they weren’t designed for it. There’s a surprising magnetic field, though, for being a moon. We might be able to use the maglev scooters Li got us over Normie’s yowls. We’ll see. Let’s get a probe down and back first.”

Within minutes, the probe was programmed and sent on its way by the captain.

“Jeez! I’m not sure I ever was anyplace that hot,” Lucky Cross noted.

“You have the second easiest job here, after the captain’s, at this stage,” Jerry reminded her. “I don’t think we want to keep our shuttle on the ground any longer than we need to get out and drop equipment. You’ll be our cover, shuttling between the ship and us and staying on station in case we need the navy to come to the rescue. Our greedy selves have left us with not nearly enough people for this job, so we’ll just have to suffer for money. First things first. Let’s pick our spots and then we’ll create a prospecting plan, as it were.”

“Be nice if we knew even a little of what we were looking for,” Randi Queson sighed. “In salvage, you’re just looking for the inconsistent, the artificial in a natural environment, like the colony on that wormball. Even in the old days, you prospected for gold, silver, uranium, even copper and lead. Here we’re just looking for ‘valuable things’ we can haul back. Some guidance.”

“We’ll know it when we see it,” An Li said confidently.

“Yeah? Alien changeling gems just lying in heaps all over the place, right? Yeah, sure. I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy.”

“You worry too much.”

You will, too, Randi Queson thought looking over at the small woman. You’ll worry a lot when it’s you who are down there, not safe up here, and it’s your dainty little ass on the line.

The probe did its job and quite well.

“Very low particulate readings,” Nagel reported. “Interesting. The rains must wash most of the junk out, although the winds bring some of it in and, of course, there’s always a little of it aloft and falling. Most of it is staying up there, at least in this region. That’s good. Oxygen and nitrogen content is very good, more esoteric inerts than I’m used, to but being inert they shouldn’t have any real effect. You want to get cool, climb one of those big volcanos. They’ve got snow on them, although it tends to melt when they heat up. Surface ocean water temperature is between thirty and thirty-five, almost like a warm bath. Probably as much sea life, animal and vegetable, as land life, if not more. Looks like there’s enough force for the mag bikes, like I thought, so at least we’ll be able to ride, and since their engines are encased in solid core blocks they won’t tend to get fouled, either. Too bad we couldn’t have used them back on the worm world. Not much magnetic field there.”

“And no mag lev bikes on the Stanley, either,” An Li reminded him. “This is Normie’s money.”

“You ever ridden one?” Sark asked Nagel.

“Me? Yeah, a few times, years ago. They had some in the labs where I did my training. You?”

“Never. Ladies?”

None of the three woman had ever used them.

Nagel nodded. “I see what you mean. Well, they’re not hard to learn if you don’t get overconfident,” he told them. “We’ll do a little practice before we go anywhere anyway.” He turned back to the view screen. “Take it towards the ocean, Cap. Let’s see if we can see some real live aliens close up. Keep unobtrusive, though. If we can get around them without them noticing us, all the better.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” the captain responded. “However, this is much the same sort of position as you were discussing with treasure hunting. I have no idea who or what I am looking for, might not when I find it, and certainly I do not know how they even perceive things, let alone how close is too close, how high is too high, and so on.”

“Understood. The watch phrase here is ‘Do your best.’ That goes for all of us.”

The probe rose up, then headed for the ocean near the largest volcano on the island it had been examining.

The vegetation looked to be very junglelike, although it was difficult to tell the shape or relative sizes of the plants, let alone their composition and other qualities, from the top. One thing was certain, though: the jungle was thick enough in areas not refractured or overrun by lava flows that it formed a multicolored but effective canopy over the forest floor.

“That’s where you go during the twenty hours of the sun side season when that sun’s out and beating down during the day,” Randi pointed out. “That’s shade down there. Probably makes things habitable and keeps them wet. Note, too, that the oldest growth is established on high, rolling hills. Evolution in action. The lowlands get flood surges from the storms that hit up against the mountains, and they run quickly down the lowest and sharpest slopes to the sea, taking a lot with them. Some growth survives, of course, but it’s a rough area. The old stuff that grows big and strong watches the floods go by.”

“Yesss,” Nagel muttered. “I was thinking of evolution myself. Lots of life, even if it isn’t any of the smart stuff, in a situation as dynamic as this is probably running at one hell of a pace. Say! Look at those!”

The probe was showing a grouping of what seemed to be flying creatures coming up from the ocean and diving into the jungle and back again. They were very fast, and it was tough to get a really good view that could be resolved to a decent level. They weren’t all that big, half a meter tops, most much smaller, but they did have a number of obvious curiosities about themselves. They didn’t seem to have any wings at all, for example, appearing like pear-shaped artillery shells. How they maneuvered so well, and how they flew at all, wasn’t clear.

“Well, we have flying critters here that seem natural,” Cross pointed out. “I hope they don’t drill easy into our hulls, though.”

“I hope they’re vegetarians,” Randi Queson said uneasily.

“Uh—yeah. Hadn’t thought of that .”

“I got us energy body armor,” An Li said confidently. “Those belts have enough power in their power packs to generate a protective energy barrier for over thirty standard days.”

“ If they work against the creatures here, and if we don’t need them longer than thirty days,” Randi responded.