Jack Chalker - Melchior's Fire

“Interesting,” Jerry Nagel said. “So they could take off from here if they wanted to?”

“Maybe. You are assuming that the ship is actually spaceworthy without maintenance, without seals checks, and for who knows how long? Even if it could, though, where would it go? It’s clearly interplanetary. There’s nothing there that could attain the speed, power, and stability to keep from being crushed in a wormhole, and if they have another way of traveling, then why are they still here living a basic life? And if it did work in-system, where here? Kaspar? I wonder what their temperature range for survival is? And if they go to Balshazzar, they get trapped on the surface there. No, I think they have kept it primarily as a resource and perhaps as a way to contact home if somebody from home ever shows up, just like Woodward’s ship on Balshazzar.”

“Well, let’s go before somebody notices,” An Li prompted nervously. “We’ve seen our creepy-crawly aliens, now we have to decide where we are going to set down and, when we do, determine that we can get back up.”

“Head towards more recent volcanic activity,” Queson told her. “I think that anything that’s valuable and near the surface is going to be in new areas not yet flooded clean. Head for that gigantic island to the northwest. It’s pretty well out of the clouds but it has a lot of recent volcanoes from the looks of it.”

The probe left the heavily populated area and headed towards the one their part-time geologist suggested. It didn’t seem inhabited, probably due to the more recent activity and the amount of dust all over half the island, but it looked pretty mean.

“You don’t think we can turn up anything in a place like that, do you, Doc?” Lucky Cross asked skeptically.

At almost that moment the probe came over a rise and looked at a huge volcano with a massive and impressive caldera smoking and grumbling away. Flows came from all points on its sides, but were a combination of old and new.

Randi almost jumped from her chair. “ There! Look at that! ”

An area of the volcano had apparently broken away in a recent eruption, and part of the side had collapsed down into rubble, revealing a great expanse of reflective wall, very light brown in color and translucent but glassy smooth. It was the largest obsidian wall she ever remembered seeing, even in pictures.

“If we’re going to find anything unusual and valuable created by these, it’ll be near or around a formation like that,” she told them.

Precious metals weren’t exactly in great demand; there was a lot of almost everything on otherwise dark and useless rocks within range of most ships back home, but jewel-quality gems of unique types were something else, depending as much on the very different combinations possible on other worlds and unique conditions for getting them out onto the surface.

“How hard can it be to find Magi’s Stones?” An Li mused. “I mean, almost every ship that got back, no matter how wrecked, had a couple at least, and even if they’re extremely rare back home they have to be kinda obvious to pick up here, right? I don’t see things like that forming easily on Kaspar, they couldn’t’a gotten ’em off Balshazzar, so they’ve got to be here.”

“They’re here,” Randi assured her. “They just might need to be examined close up by hand. This is a tremendously dynamic place, changing constantly, and it’s not likely to keep things obvious and on the surface for any length of time. Look at the volcanic dust alone here.”

“Well, all the same—hey! What’s that? ”

An Li’s cry drew all their attention to a small but obviously artificial structure, vehicle, or whatever it was, sitting there atop the rubble near that vast obsidian cliff.

It looked to be about twelve meters long by six meters around, a cylindrical body pierced on the bottom by big, oversized wheels on a covered but obvious axle assembly that allowed the wheels near-total independence. The wheels themselves were grooved, almost like tank treads, but these were no tires or treads but single integrated structures, each rising almost to the top of the central cylinder.

“It’s an exploration vehicle of some sort,” Nagel commented, staring at the image. “I’ll be damned. How old do you think it is, Doc? Cap?”

“Impossible to say,” Randi told him. “It’s clearly not one of ours, so who or what made it is unknown, and so’s its composition. There’s ash piled up on the top and on the top of the wheels, so it’s been there awhile, but it definitely is newer than the rockfall that began exposing the obsidian. Captain, any signs of life or energy?”

“Negative, but that just may be because what I have can’t penetrate the cylinder. Still, educated guess would say that it’s abandoned in place.”

“That’s where we start, then,” Randi Queson told them. “If this area attracts me, and it attracted others, then I can’t see how we can find a better place to start. Any objections?”

“Let’s see if we can get the probe back, first,” An Li suggested.

That was easy to find out, and within a half an hour the captain reported that the probe was safely back and in containment and analysis aboard ship. This area was strictly automated; no probe could be permitted to bring back any nasty little things that might not be anticipated and loose them aboard ship. The whole lab, in fact, could be ejected into space and destroyed by remote command should something show up in the probe that they could not otherwise contain or analyze.

“Analysis looks okay from this end,” the captain told them. “You are right—take a simple breath mask to keep out the big volcanic dust particulates and you should be okay. How much equipment do you want to break out for this?”

“Four sets,” Randi Queson told her. “I think we need as much cover as we can for each other on our first trip down. Lucky can cover from the shuttle. And bring up Eyegor. This time the little bastard is going documenting with us, like it or not!”

“They’re really not that tough, and they have one big advantage,” Jerry Nagel said as they stood around the maglev scooters dropped off with the packs, before Lucky Cross took the shuttle back up to a low orbit to sit and be ready just in case a quick extraction was needed.

All four below were in excellent physical shape, and all looked like they were ready to pass out even as it was, although Nagel and Sark were trying to keep up a brave front.

First, it was hot . Hotter than the worm planet had been cold, if not quite as windy, at least at the moment. The handhelds made the surface temperature where they stood at an almost exact thirty-seven degrees centigrade; not enough to cause physical problems for the healthy, only to make them feel like it would, particularly with a humidity level hovering in the eighty percent range. The light was also a bit strange and caused some disorientation. It was reflected light from the gigantic gas ball in the sky rather than direct sunlight, and, while it was bright enough, it was still less than optimum for eyes designed to see best in full daylight.

When the additional fifteen percent in weight was added, they all felt tired from the moment they hit the ground, and found it hard to move and difficult to do even routine things quickly. This world would take some getting used to.

Eyegor hovered a bit above the ground and griped, as usual. “I should not be exposed to this dust and these potentially harmful radiations,” it complained. “I am not designed for this sort of thing.”

“We don’t know what you are designed for,” An Li snapped, “but if it isn’t for this, then what good are you? Keep quiet and keep up or you can just stay here!”