Kim Robinson - Blue Mars

“I’m going to see if the AI can get us into Arigato Bay,” he shouted in Ann’s ear. She nodded that she had heard. He shouted the instruction right into the AI’s pickup, and the computer heard and understood, which was good, as it would have been hard to type accurately with the boat soaring and plunging and shuddering as it slammed into the ice. In all that jarring it was not possible to feel the boat’s engine, which had been running all along, but a slight change in their angle to the groundswell convinced him that it was pushing harder as the AI tried to get them farther west.

Down near the point of the Sinai Peninsula, on the southern side, a large inundated crater called Arigato made a round bay. The entrance of the bay was about sixty degrees of the circle of the crater, facing southwest. The wind and waves were both also from the southwest; so the mouth of the bay, quite shallow, as-it was a low part of the old crater rim, was bound to be broken water, a difficult crossing no doubt. But once inside the bay the groundswell would be cut off by that same rim, and both waves and wind much reduced, especially when they got behind the western cape of the bay. There they would wait out the howler, and be on their way again when it was done. In theory it was an excellent plan, although Sax worried about conditions in the mouth of the bay; the chart showed it was only ten meters deep, which was certain to cause the groundswells to break. On the other hand, in a boat that became a kind of submarine (and yet drawing less than two meters of water for all that) negotiating broken surf might not be much of a problem; just go with it. The AI appeared to consider his instructions within the realm of the possible. And indeed the boat had pulled in the sea anchor, and with its powerful little engines was making its way across the wind and waves toward the bay, which was not visible; nothing of the lee shore could be seen through the dirty air.

So they held to the cockpit railings and waited out the reach, speechless; there was little to say, and the booming howl of the howler made it difficult to communicate. Sax’s hands and arms got very tired from holding on, but there was no help for that except to abandon the cockpit and go below and strap himself into his bed, which he did not want to do. Despite the discomfort, and the nagging worry about the bay entrance, it was an extraordinary experience to watch the wind pulverize the surface of the water the way it was.

A short while later (though the AI indicated it had been seventy-two minutes), he caught sight of land, a dark ridge over the whitecaps to the lee side of them. Seeing it meant they were probably too close to it, but there ahead it disappeared, and reappeared farther west: the entrance to Arigato Bay. The tiller shifted against his knee, and he noted a change in the boat’s direction. For the first time he could hear the hum of the little engines at the sterns of the two hulls. The jarring against the ice got rougher, and they had to hold on tight. Now the groundswells were getting taller, their crests torn off, but the bulk of every wave remaining, its face surging up as it encountered the sea bottom. And now he could see in the foam rolling over the water ice chunks, and larger bergy bits — clear, blue, jade, aquamarine — pitted, rough, glassy. A great deal of ice must have been driven against the lee shore ahead of them. If the bay mouth was choked with ice, and waves were breaking over the bar nevertheless, it would be a nasty passage indeed. And yet that looked like what the situation would be. He shouted a question or two at the AI, but its replies were unsatisfactory. It seemed to be saying that the boat could sustain any shocks the situation could inflict, but that the engines could not dnve it through pack ice. And in fact the ice was thickening rapidly; they seemed in the process of being enveloped by a loose mass of bergy bits, driven onshore by the wind from all over the gulf. Their grinding and knocking was now a big component of the overwhelming noise of the storm. Indeed it looked like it would now be difficult to motor out of the situation, straight offshore into the wind and waves and out to sea. Not that he really wanted to be out there, tossed up and down on waves that were growing ever larger and more unruly; capsizing would be a very real possibility; but because of the unexpected density of ice inshore, it was beginning to look like getting offshore had been their better option. Now closed to them. They were in for a hard pummeling.

Ann was looking uncomfortable in her restraints, holding to the cockpit rail for dear life, a sight that gave part of Sax’s mind satisfaction: she showed no inclination to let go, none at all. In fact she leaned over so that she could shout in his ear, and he turned his head to listen.

“We can’t stay here!” she shouted. “When we tire — the impacts are going to tear us up — ah! — like dolls!”

“We can strap ourselves to our beds,” Sax shouted.

She frowned doubtfully. And it was true that those restraints might not be any better. He had never tried them out; and there was the problem of getting secured in them by oneself to consider. Amazing how loud the wind was — shrieking wind, roaring water, thunking ice. The waves were growing larger and larger; when the boat rose on their faces, it took them ten or twelve heart-stopping seconds to shoot to the crests, and now when they got up there they saw chunks of ice being thrown clear of the waves, thrown off with the flying foam to crash down into their fellows below, and sometimes into the boat’s hulls and decking, and even the clear thin cockpit shell, with a force they could feel all through their bodies.

Sax leaned over to shout again in Ann’s ear. “I believe this is one of those situations in which we are meant to use the lifeboat function!”

“… lifeboat?” Ann said.

Sax nodded. “The boat is its own lifeboat!” he shouted. “It flies!”

“What do you mean?”

“It flies!”

“You’re kidding!”

“No! It becomes a — a blimp!” He leaned over and put his mouth right to her ear. “The hulls and the keels and the bottom of the cockpit empty their ballast. They fill with helium from tanks in the bow. And balloons deploy. They told me about it back in Da Vinci, but I’ve never seen it! I didn’t think we’d be using it!” The boat could also become a submarine, they had said in Da Vinci, quite pleased with themselves at the new craft’s versatility. But the ice packing against the lee shore made that option unavailable to them, something that Sax did not regret; for no particular reason, the idea of going down in the boat didn’t appeal to him.

Ann pulled back to look at him, amazed at this news. “Do you know how to fly it!” she shouted.

“No!”

Presumably the AI would take care of that. If they could get it into the air. Just a matter of finding the emergency release, of flicking the right toggles. He pointed at the control panel to mime this thought, then leaned forward to shout in her ear; her head swung in and banged his nose and mouth hard, and then he was blinking with bright pain, the blood running out of his nose like water from a faucet. Impact, just like the two planetesimals, he grinned and split his lip even wider, a painful mistake. He licked and licked, tasting his blood. “I love you!” he shouted. She didn’t hear him.

“How do we launch it?” Ann cried.

He indicated the control panel again, there beside the AI, the emergency board under a protective bar.

If they chose to try an escape by air, however, it would bring about a dangerous moment. Once they were moving at the wind’s speed, of course, there would be very little force brought to bear on the boat, they would simply blimp along. But at the moment of liftoff, while they were still nearly stationary, the howler would tear hard at them. They would tumble, probably, and this might disable the balloons enough to cast the boat back into the ice-choked breakers, or onto the lee shore. He could see Ann thinking this through herself. Still — whatever happened, it was likely to be preferable to the bone-jarring impacts that continued to rack them. It would be a temporary thing, one way or the other.