"It reads solid," Stan said, "but the height keeps shifting." There were dark smears, like arcs of soot, under his eyes, and he had been on drugs for the last thirty hours.
"It must be liquid ammonia and methane," Nissim said. "Or semi-liquid, changing back and forth from gas to liquid. God knows, anything is possible with those pressures outside. Just under a million atmospheres. Unbelievable."
"I believe it," Aldo told him. "Can we move laterally and perhaps find something solid underneath us?"
"I've been doing that for the last hour. We either have to sink into that soup, or hop up again for another drop. I'm not going to try and balance her on her jets, not with the G's we have waiting for us out there."
"Do we have fuel for a hop?"
"Yes, but I want to hold it for a reserve. We're down close to thirty percent."
"I vote to take the plunge.” Nissim said. "If there is liquid down there it probably covers the entire surface. With these pressures and the wind I'm sure that any irregularities would be scoured flat in a relatively short geological time."
"I don't agree," Aldo said. "But someone else can investigate that. I vote to drop on the fuel situation alone."
"Three to nothing then, gents. Down we go."
The steady descent continued. The pilot slowed the immense weight of the Ball as they approached the shifting interface, but there was no unusual buffeting when they entered the liquid because the change was so gradual.
"I have a reading now," Stan said, excited for the first time. "It's holding steady at fifteen kilometers. There may be a bottom to all this after all."
The other two men did not talk as the drop continued, fearful of distracting the pilot. Yet this was the easiest part of the voyage. The lower they sank the less the disturbance around them. At one kilometer there was no buffeting or sideways motion in the slightest. They fell slowly as the bottom approached. At five hundred meters Stan turned over the landing to the computer and, hand poised, stood ready to take command should there be difficulties. The engines blasted lightly, cut off, and, with a single grinding thud, they were down. Stan flipped the override and killed the engines.
"That's it," he said, stretching hugely. "We've landed on Saturn. And that calls for a drink." He mumbled a complaint when he discovered that it took most of his strength to push up from the chair.
"Two point six-four gravities," Nissim said, looking at the reading on the delicate quartz spring balance on his board. "It's not going to be easy to work under all these G's."
"What we have to do shouldn't take long," Aldo said. "Let's have that drink. Then Stan can get some sleep while we start on the MT."
"I'll buy that. My job is done and I'm just a spectator until you boys get me home. Here's to us." They raised their glasses with difficulty and drank.
The burden of the more-than-doubled gravity had been anticipated. Aldo and the pilot changed acceleration couches so that the engineer could face the instrument panels and the MT screen. When the restraining catches were released, Nissim's couch also swung about so that he could reach the screen. Before these preparations were finished Stan had flattened his couch and was soundly asleep. The other two men did not notice: they were now able to start on their part of the mission. Aldo, as the MT specialist, made the preparatory tests while Nissim watched closely.
"All the remotes we sent down developed sigma effect before they had penetrated a fifth of the atmosphere," Aldo said, plugging in the test instruments. "Once the effect was strong enough we lost all control and we have never had an accurate track past the halfway mark. We've just lost contact with them." He checked all the readings twice and left the wave form on the scope when he sank back to rest his tired back and arms.
"The wave looks right," Nissim said.
"It is. So is everything else. Which means that one half of your theory, at least, is correct."
"Wonderful!" Nissim said, smiling for the first time since they had begun the flight. His fists clenched as he thought of the verbal drubbings he would administer to the other physicists who had been rash enough to disagree with him. "Then the error is not in the transmitter? "
"Absolutely."
"Then let's transmit and see if the signal gets through. The receiver is tuned and waiting."
"C. Huygens calling Saturn One, come in. How do you read me?"
They both watched as the transcribed tape clicked into the face of the screen and vanished; then Aldo switched the MT to receive. Nothing happened. He waited sixty seconds and sent the message again — with the same results.
"And there is the proof," Nissim said happily. "Transmitter, perfect. Receiver, perfect — we can count on that. But no signal getting through. Therefore my spatial distortion factor must be present. Once we correct for that, contact will be reestablished."
"Soon, I hope," Aldo said, slightly depressed, looking up at the curved walls of their cell. "Because until the correction is made we are staying right here, sealed into the heart of this king-sized ball bearing. And even if there were an exit we have no place to go."
Stan was still exhausted when he woke up; sleep under this heavy gravity was less than satisfactory. He yawned and shifted position, but stretching proved more debilitating than satisfying. When he turned to the others he saw Nissim working concentratedly with his computer while Aldo held a bloodstained handkerchief to his nose.
"Gravity bleeding?" Stan asked. "I better paint it with some adrenaline."
"Not gravity." Aide's voice was muffled by the cloth. "That bastard hit me."
"Right on that big beak," Nissim said, not looking up from his computer. "It was too good a target to miss."
"What seems to be the trouble?" Stan asked, glancing quickly from one to the other. "Isn't the MT working?"
"No it's not," Aldo said warmly. "And our friend here blames me for that and—"
"The theory is correct, the mechanics of application are wrong."
"— when I suggested that there might be an error or two in his equations he swung on me in a fit of infantile anger."
Stan moved in quickly to stop the developing squabble, his drill-field voice drowning out the others.
"Hold on now. Don't both talk at once because I can't understand a thing. Won't someone please put me into the picture and let me know exactly what's happening?"
"Of course," Nissim said, then waited impatiently until Aide's complaints had died down. "How much do you know about MT theory?"
"The answer is simple — nothing. I'm a torch jockey and I stick to my trade. Someone builds them, someone fixes them, I fly them. Would you kindly simplify?"
"I'll attempt to." Nissim pursed his lips in thought. "The first thing you must realize is that an MT does not scan and transmit like, say, a television transmitter does. No signal, as we commonly think of signals, is sent. What is done is that the plane of the screen of the transmitter is placed into a state of matter that is not a part of space as we normally know it. The receiving screen is placed in the same condition and tuning is accomplished once they are locked onto the same frequency. In a sense they become part of one another and the distance of the intervening space does not matter. If you step into one you will step out of the other without any awareness of either time or spatial separation. I am explaining very badly."
"You're doing fine, Nissim. What comes next?"
"The fact that spatial distance between transmitter and receiver does not matter, but the condition of that space does—"
"You're beginning to lose me."
"I'll give you a not unrelated example. Light rays travel in a straight line through space, unless interfered with in some physical manner — refraction, reflection, so forth. But — these rays can also be bent when they pass through an intense gravitational field such as that of the sun. We have noticed the same kind of effect in MT, and corrections are always made for the bulk of the Earth or other planetary bodies. Another condition affecting space appears deep in the rigid soup this planet calls an atmosphere. The incredible pressures affect the very binding energy of the atoms and stresses are produced. These interfere with the MT relationships. Before we can move an object from one MT screen to another down here we must make allowances and corrections for these new interferences. I have worked out the corrections, we must now apply them."