I began to see why as soon as we were inside the atmosphere. Visibility went down to zero. We were descending through thick smoke-like dust and flickering lightning. I switched to radar vision, and found I was looking down to a murky, surrealistic world, with a shattered, twisted surface. Heavy winds (without an atmosphere? — what were winds?) moved us violently from side to side, up and down, with sickening free-fall drops arrested by the drive as soon as they were started.
Thirty seconds to contact, and below us the ground heaved and rolled like a sick giant. Down and down, along the exact center of the black funnel. The pod shook and shivered around us. The automatic controls seemed to be doing poorly, but I knew I’d be worse — my reaction times were a thousandfold too slow to compete. All we could do was hold tight and wait for the collision.
Which never came. We didn’t make a featherbed landing, but the final jolt was just a few centimeters a second. Or was it more? I couldn’t say. It was lost in the continuing shuddering movements of the ground that the pod rested on. The planet beneath us was alive. I stood up, then had to hold onto the edge of the control desk to keep my feet. I smiled at McAndrew (quite an effort) as he began an unsteady movement towards the equipment locker.
He nodded at me. Earthquake country.
I nodded back. Where is their ship?
We had landed on a planet almost as big as Earth, in the middle of a howling dust storm that reduced visibility to less than a hundred yards. Now we were proposing to search an area of a couple of hundred million square miles — for an object a few meters across. The needle in a haystack had nothing on this. Mac didn’t seem worried. He was putting on an external support pack — we had donned suits during the first phase of descent.
“Mac!”
He paused with the pack held against his chest and the connectors held in one hand. “Don’t be daft, Jeanie. Only one of us should be out there.”
And that made me mad. He was being logical (my specialty). But to come more than a light-year, and then for one of us go the last few miles… Jan was my daughter too — my only daughter. I moved forward and picked up another of the packs. After one look at my face, Mac didn’t argue.
At least we had enough sense not to venture outside at once. Suited up, we completed the systematic scan of our surroundings. The visual wavelengths were useless — we couldn’t see a thing through the ports — but the microwave sensors let us look to the horizon. And a wild horizon it was. Spikes of sharp rock sat next to crumbling mesas, impenetrable crevasses, and tilted blocks of dark stone, randomly strewn across the landscape.
I could see no pattern at all, no rule of formation. But over to one side, less than a mile from our pod, our instruments were picking up a bright radar echo, a reflection peak stronger than anything that came from the rocky surface. It must be metal — could only be metal — could only be Jan’s ship. But was it intact? Lightning-fused? A scoured hulk? A shattered remnant, open to dust and vacuum?
My thoughts came too fast to follow. Before they had reached any conclusion we had moved to the lock, opened it, and were standing on the broken surface of Vandell. McAndrew automatically fell behind to let me take the lead. Neither of us had any experience with this type of terrain, but he knew my antennae for trouble were better than his. I tuned my suit to the reflected radar signal from our pod and we began to pick our way carefully forward.
It was a grim, tortuous progress. There was no direct path that could be taken across the rocks. Every tenth step seemed to bring me to a dead end, a place where we had to retrace our steps halfway back to our own pod. Beneath our feet, the surface of the planet shivered and groaned, as though it was ready to open up and swallow us. The landscape as our suits presented it to us was a scintillating nightmare of blacks and grays. (Vision in nonvisible wavelengths is always disconcerting — microwave more than most).
Around us, the swirling dust came in shivering waves that whispered along the outside of our helmets. I could detect a definite cycle, with a peak every seven minutes or so. Radio static followed the same period, rising and falling in volume to match the disturbance outside.
I had tuned my set to maximum gain and was transmitting a continuous call signal. Nothing came back from the bright radar blip of the other pod. It was now only a couple of hundred yards ahead but we were approaching agonizingly slowly.
At fifty yards I noticed a lull in the rustle around us. I switched to visible wavelengths, and waited impatiently while the suit’s processor searched for the best combination of frequencies to penetrate the murk. After half a second the internal suit display announced that there would be a short delay; the sensors were covered with ionized dust particles that would have to be repelled. That took another ten seconds, then I had an image. Peering ahead on visible wavelengths I thought I could see a new shape in front of us, a flat oval hugging the dark ground.
“Visible signal, Mac,” I said over the radio. “Tell your suit.”
That was all I could say. I know the profile of a pod, I’ve seen them from every angle. And the silhouette ahead of us looked wrong. It had a twisted, sideways cant, bulging towards the left. I increased pace, stumbling dangerously along smooth slabs and around jagged pinnacles, striding recklessly across a quivering deep abyss. Mac was following, ready to help me if I got in trouble — unless he was taking worse risks himself, which was certainly not beyond him. I could hear his breath, loud on the suit radio.
It was their pod. No doubt at all. And as I came closer I could see the long, gaping hole in one side. It takes a lot to smash a transfer pod beyond repair, but that one would never fly again. Inside it would be airless, lifeless, filled only with the choking dust that was Vandell’s only claim to an atmosphere.
And the people inside? Would Jan or Sven have thought to wear suits before descent? It would make a difference only to the appearance of the corpses. Even with suits, anything that could kill their signal beacon would kill them too.
I took my final step to the pod, stooped to peer in through the split in the side, and stopped breathing. Somewhere deep inside me, contrary to all logic, there still lived a faint ghost of hope. It died as I looked. Two figures lay side by side on the floor of the pod, neither of them moving.
I groaned, saw Mac coming to stand beside me, and switched on my helmet light for a better view or the interior. Then I straightened up so fast that my head banged hard on the pod’s tough metal.
They were both wearing suits, their helmets were touching — and as the light from outside penetrated the interior of the pod, they swung around in unison to face me. They were both rubbing at their suit faceplates with gloved hands, clearing a space in a thick layer of white dust there.
“Jan!” My shout must have blasted Mac rigid. “Sven! Mac, they’re alive!”
“Christ, Jeanie, I see that. Steady on, you’ll burst my eardrums.” He sounded as though he himself was going to burst, from sheer pleasure and relief.
We scrambled around to the main hatch of the pod and I tried to yank it open. It wouldn’t move. Mac lent a hand, and still nothing would budge — everything was too bent and battered. Back we went to the hole in the ship’s side, and found them trying to enlarge it enough to get out.
“Stand back,” I said. “Mac and I can cut that in a minute.”
Then I realized they couldn’t hear me or see me. Their faceplates were covered again with dust, and they kept leaning together to touch helmets.
“Mac! There’s something wrong with their suits.”
“Of course there is.” He sounded disgusted with my stupidity. “Radio’s not working — we already knew that. They’re communicating with each other by direct speech through the helmet contact. Vision units are done for, too — see, all they have are the faceplates, and the dust sticks and covers them unless they keep on clearing it. The whole atmosphere of this damned planet is nothing more than charged dust particles. Our suits are repelling them, or we’d see nothing at visible wavelengths. Here, let me in there.”