Pohl, Frederik - The Gateway Trip

"Yeah. Those five big mascons close together. No diggings indicated. Is that where we're going?"

"In a general way, yes."

"Why in a general way?"

"Well," I said, "there's one little thing I didn't tell you. I'm assuming you won't jump salty over it, because then I'll have to get salty, too, and tell you you should have taken the trouble to learn more about Venus before you decided to explore it."

He studied me appraisingly for a moment. Dorrie came quietly out of the shower in a long robe, her hair in a towel, and stood near him, watching me. "That depends a lot on what you didn't tell me, friend," he said-not sounding friendly.

"That part there is the South Polar Security Area," I said. "That's where the Defense boys keep the missile range and the biggest part of their weapons development areas. And civilians aren't allowed to enter."

He was glowering at the map. "But there's only that one little piece of a mascon that isn't off limits!"

"And that little piece," I said, "is where we're going."

VI

For a man more than ninety years old, Boyce Cochenour was spry. I don't mean just that he was healthy. Full Medical will do that for you, because you just replace whatever wears out or begins to look tacky. You can't replace the brain, though. So what you usually see in the very rich old ones is a bronzed, muscular body that shakes and hesitates and drops things.

About that Cochenour had been very lucky.

He was going to be abrasive company for three weeks. He'd already insisted I show him how to pilot an airbody, and he had learned fast. When I decided to use a little flight time to give the cooling system a somewhat premature thousand-hour check, he helped me pull the covers, check the refrigerant levels, and clean the filters. Then he decided to cook us lunch.

Dorrie Keefer took over as my helper while I moved some of the supplies around, getting the autosonic probes out. At the steady noise level of the inside of an airbody, our normal voices wouldn't carry to Cochenour, a couple of meters away at the stove. I thought 0f pumping the girl about him while we checked the probes. I decided against it. I already knew the important thing about Cochenour, namely that with any luck he might be going to pay for my new liver. I didn't need to know what he and Dorrie thought about when they thought about each other.

So what we talked about was the probes. About how they would fire percussive charges into the Venusian rock and time the returning echoes. And about what the chances were of finding something really good. ("Well, what are the chances of winning a sweepstakes? For any individual ticket holder they're bad. But there's always one winner somewhere!") And about what had made me come to Venus in the first place. I mentioned my father's name, but she'd never heard of the deputy governor of Texas. Too young, no doubt. Anyway she had been born and bred in southern Ohio, where Cochenour had worked as a kid and to which he'd returned as a

billionaire. She told me, without my urging, how he'd been building a new processing center there, and how many headaches that had been-trouble with the unions, trouble with the banks, bad trouble with the government-and so he'd decided to take a good long time off to loaf. I looked over to where he was stirring up a sauce and said, "He loafs harder than anybody else I ever saw."

"He's a work addict, Audee. I imagine that's how he got rich

in the first place." The airbody lurched, and I dropped everything

to jump for the controls. I heard Cochenour howl behind me, but

I was busy locating a better transit level. By the time I had climbed

a thousand meters and reset the autopilot he was rubbing his wrist

and swearing at me.

"Sorry," I said.

He said dourly, "I don't mind your scalding the skin off my arm. Ican always buy more skin, but you nearly made me spill the gravy.

I checked the virtual globe. The bright ship marker was two-thirds of the way to our destination. "Is lunch about ready?," I asked. "We'll be there in an hour."

For the first time he looked startled. "So soon? I thought you said this thing was subsonic."

"I did. You're on Venus, Mr. Cochenour. At this level the speed of sound is a lot faster than on Earth."

He looked thoughtful, but all he said was "Well, we can eat any minute." Later he said, while we were finishing up, "I think maybe I don't know as much about this planet as I might. If you want to give us the guide's lecture, we'll listen."

"You already know the outlines," I told him. "Say, you're a great cook, Mr. Cochenour. I know I packed all the provisions, but I don't even know what this is I'm eating."

"If you come to my office in Cincinnati," he said, "you can ask for Mr. Cochenour, but while we're living in each other's armpits you might as well call me Boyce. And if you like the fricassee, why aren't you eating it?"

The answer was, because it might kill me. I didn't want to get

into a discussion that might lead to why I needed his fee so badly. "Doctor's orders," I said, "Have to lay off the fats for a while. I think he thinks I'm putting on too much weight."

Cochenour looked at me appraisingly, but all he said was "The lecture?"

"Well, let's start with the most important part," I said, carefully pouring coffee. "While we're inside this airbody you can do what you like-walk around, eat, drink, smoke if you got 'em, whatever. The cooling system is built for more than three times this many people, plus their cooking and appliance loads, with a safety factor of two. Air and water, more than we'd need for two months. Fuel, enough for three round trips plus maneuvering. If anything went wrong we'd yell for help and somebody would come and get us in a couple of hours at the most. Probably it would be the Defense boys, because they're closest and they have really fast airbodies. The worst thing would be if the hull breached and the whole Venusian atmosphere tried to come in. If that happened fast we'd just be dead. It never happens fast, though. We'd have time to get into the suits, and we can live in them for thirty hours. Long before that we'd be picked up."

"Assuming, of course, that nothing went wrong with the radio at the same time."

"Right. Assuming that. You know that you can get killed anywhere, if enough accidents happen at once."

He poured himself another cup of coffee and tipped a little brandy into it. "Go on."

"Well, outside the airbody it's a lot trickier. You've only got the suit to keep you alive, and its useful life, as I say, is only thirty hours. It's a question of refrigeration. You can carry plenty of air and water, and you don't have to worry about food on that time scale, but it takes a lot of compact energy to get rid of the diffuse energy all around you. That means fuel. The cooling systems use up a lot of fuel, and when that's gone you'd better be back in the airbody. Heat isn't the worst way to die. You pass out before you begin to hurt. But in the end you're dead.

"The other thing is, you want to check your Suit every time you put it on. Pressure it up, and watch the gauge for leaks. I'll check, too, but don't rely on me. It's your life. And watch the faceplates. They're pretty strong-you can drive nails with them without breaking them-but if they're hit hard enough by something that's also hard enough they can crack all the same. That way you're dead, too."

Dorrie asked quietly, "Have you ever lost a tourist?"

"No." But then I added, "Others have. Five or six get killed every year."

"I'll play at those odds," Cochenour said seriously. "Anyway, that wasn't the lecture I wanted, Audee. I mean, I certainly want to hear how to stay alive, but I assume you would have told us all this before we left the ship anyway. What I really wanted to know was how come you picked this particular mascon to prospect."