The engines labored and groaned. A new source of fear crept into my guts. Could this ship do what I was asking of it? What was the escape velocity of this world? At this depth in the atmosphere, I wasn’t sure how much power it would take to fly upward. With around three hundred times the mass of Earth, I knew the gravity well was a vicious thing this near a gas giant.
When we’d pulled up higher in the atmosphere, the indentation in the ceiling faded and smoothed away to a perfect curve again. I wanted to scratch the sweat away from my face, but didn’t dare remove my helmet to do so. I heaved a sigh of relief.
Was this as far down as I could go? I didn’t think that made sense. This ship, if it had originated from this world, should be able to take the natural pressure. In fact, I’d long ago reasoned that several key technologies existed aboard these ships, such as powerful stabilizers, because they had to be able to deal with the harsh environment of their homeworld.
I frowned, and decided to try to talk to the Blues. I sent a variety of messages, howling out into the external winds. Marvin’s system played the noises in the cockpit. To me, they sounded like a cross between a herd of trumpeting elephants and a tornado. Maybe it was sweet music to a Blue-I had no idea.
After half an hour of cruising around at a safe altitude and crooning for Blues, I received no response. I sighed, knowing I was going to have to go deeper down into the soupy atmosphere.
What was really down there? No one knew. We’d had space flight for quite a while back home, and our system had four gas giants, but no one had ever bothered to plumb the depths of one. Astrophysicists generally figured they were gas all the way down, but who really knew? I knew from experience that scientists often took a theory and ran with it. They always scoffed at new ideas, and only embraced them when faced with undeniable truth. They also tended to laugh at the mistaken beliefs of their predecessors just decades past. Since we’d never actually been to a planet of this type and our best instruments only penetrated this type of murky world to a depth of maybe three hundred miles, there were sure to be a few surprises in store. After all, the planet had a radius of nearly forty thousand miles. I was only about a thousand deep now, and I really couldn’t expect the Blues to living be at the very outer upper fringes of the atmosphere. I sincerely hoped they weren’t all the way down at the core, however. Whatever it was that core consisted of.
“Alamo, do you have another configuration? A form suitable for entering high-pressure environments?”
“Yes.”
I smiled. “Of course you do. This was your home once, so you have to be capable of maintaining stable structure at a great depth. Transform into your standard configuration for gas giant atmospheric conditions, please.”
The response was immediate, and non-verbal. The walls began crushing in on me. It was impossible, seeing the compressing volume of space around my helmet, not to feel uncomfortable. My eyes roamed the room, watching as the bubbling surface of nanites thickened and the command module deflated. I became alarmed when I saw the ceiling was less than a foot from my visor. I’d sort of expected it to halt by this time. But it didn’t. It kept going, and if I let it finish, I figured the tuba-like translation device would be shoved directly into my person. I’d soon be wearing it on my battle suit’s chest plate like some kind of obscene corsage.
“Halt transformation! Freeze current configuration.”
The surfaces around me were all uneven, like a limestone cave. I could tell the smart metal was much thicker. It had to be two inches thick or more. I nodded my head inside my helmet, looking around at the walls. I was beginning to understand. This ship had come from very deep inside the planet. Perhaps from a crust of some kind at the core.
“Alamo, is there any command module at all in your fully transformed design?”
“No.”
“Where the hell am I supposed to sit, then?”
“At the point of departure, no biotics were in the command module. It had not yet been deployed.”
“Ah, I see. You were built under great pressure, and designed to fold out when you reached space. Like some kind of giant solar sail.”
“Reference unclear.”
“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. What I want to know is if you can reshape yourself with a small, but effective command module. I need an egg-shaped region of airspace around me-let’s make it about three feet from my person in every direction. That should be enough room for my seat and the translation device.”
At length, I got the ship reconfigured into a tight, coffin shape that had a hull several inches thick. I was certain it could withstand tremendous pressure-but could I? The jury was still out on that point.
I ordered the ship to descend gradually, not wanting to crash into anything. Every five hundred miles, I stopped and made a communications attempt. There was plenty of howling wind out there, but I never heard an intelligible response.
The more I thought about the structure of this world, the more sense the deep-planet theory made. This ship was made of metal, and if it came from this world, there had to be a source of metal somewhere to build it. I decided to ask Alamo.
“Does this world have a rocky core?”
There was a slight hesitation. “No.”
I was surprised to get a direct answer. These Nano ships had always been reluctant to reveal any information concerning their origins. I thought perhaps by being here, and asking about the world I was on, rather than the world of its creators, I’d bypassed some of these defenses.
“But there is some metallic content somewhere, right? Something a vessel like yours could be fashioned from?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have a molten core?” I asked, frowning.
“Yes.”
I didn’t like that. A hot, metallic, molten core? Was walking on the so-called surface of this planet really going to be more like walking on a lava flow? I recalled the unexpected thermal flux. External readings indicated the atmosphere was indeed getting warmer as I descended.
I continued falling deeper. Hours passed. I was surprised when I reached six Gs, because I could still breathe and even move about. I could feel the weight, but it didn’t crush me. I’d allowed the pressure inside the ship and my suit to build up as I went down, naturally. I didn’t want to cause it to implode due to low pressure on the interior and higher pressure outside.
Another five thousand miles down, I began to feel my breath coming in ragged heaves. I didn’t ask about Gs or pressure ratings anymore. I didn’t want to know-I might panic, if I knew the truth. I did know no normal human could have survived it. My eyes swam with golden flecks. Frequently, my vision was blocked and it often dimmed in waves. When I became worried I might pass out, I stopped descending.
“Let’s cruise at this depth,” I said thickly.
The only good thing was the change in turbulence. The gusting winds of the upper atmosphere had died down. It was relatively smooth sailing deep within the planet, inside a poisonous soup of gases that were almost liquids, they were so thick. I had set up a repeating message by this time, and I let the brainbox operating the bassoon-like translation system sing its strange song as we traveled.
More hours passed. Had the Macros attacked by now? Had Sarin declared me lost, and ordered Star Force to pull out? I didn’t think my officers would let her get away with that so soon. Maybe a week from now, but not just a day or two after I’d taken the plunge.
As the first day in the gas giant’s atmosphere slipped into a second, the novelty had begun to wear off. I no longer felt like an intrepid explorer. Instead, I felt like a fool who had to go to the bathroom all the time. The pressure in my bladder was particularly annoying. Every time I drank a cup of liquid, I felt like I was going to explode. I suspected it had to do with the alterations to my density Marvin had made with the nanites. My nerves still felt the pressure in some key areas.