Were there any other possibilities? Well, there was always the improbable case where the inside and outside pressures were exactly equal, but chances were strongly against that. And there was the case where Bony had forgotten to take account of some crucial variable, and as the hatch was cracked open something totally unforeseen happened.
He was willing to take that risk. But he didn’t see why Liddy should be exposed to it, too. He stood up, suddenly aware that he had asked her a question whose answer he was very much interested in hearing; but he had no idea of how she had replied.
“I’m sorry. You were saying?”
“I wasn’t. I can tell when somebody isn’t listening.” Liddy sounded more amused than annoyed. “I thought I was here to help? All I’ve done so far is stand around.”
“You can help right now. You go back in the ship and stand next to the inner hatch. I’m going to stay here, close the inner hatch, and then open the outer one.”
“Shouldn’t you put a suit on? Suppose the fizziness in the water is something poisonous?”
“The tests say that’s it’s just oxygen, and lots of it. But I’m going to wear a suit anyway. And so are you.”
“Why do I need a suit, if I’m going to stay in the ship?”
“In case you have to do a rescue operation. We will be in radio communication, and I will make sure I keep talking. If I stop, or if I start to sound or act peculiar, don’t wait. Close the outer hatch most of the way — I’ll show you how to do it from inside the ship — then pump air from the ship into the lock until the water is driven out. You may find there’s still a little bit that won’t leave, because the hatch isn’t exactly horizontal. Don’t worry about that. Close the outer hatch completely when it’s as water-free as it will go. Then open the inner hatch, go into the lock in your suit, and drag me into the ship. Seal the inner hatch again. Until all that is done, don’t waste a moment finding out what happened to me. Did you follow all that, and remember it?”
“Yes.” Calm, quiet, and trusting. That made Bony feel good.
“Let’s do it, then. Quickly, Liddy, so I don’t have time to think of anything that might go wrong.”
“Nothing will. I told you, you’re going to save us all.” Liddy didn’t seem capable of a graceless movement. She stripped off her outer clothes and slipped into the suit as though it was something she did every day. Bony, aware that his extra pounds showed a lot more when he was undressed, did the same thing slowly and awkwardly.
Then he was standing in the lock, and Liddy was in the ship. The inner hatch, like the outer one, had a small, round port in it about six inches across. Bony closed the hatch and peered through. He could see Liddy, less than two feet away but with three layers of toughened transparent plastic between them. She raised her eyebrows at him in dumb show, then said over the radio, “All right?”
Bony nodded. “Everything is fine.” He had promised to talk to her nonstop, but that might be more demanding than it sounded. What was there to say? He glanced down at the outer hatch, right beneath his feet. He had to be careful to avoid standing on it as the plate slid to one side to admit whatever it was that lay outside the Mood Indigo , but that was the only thing he had to do; the only thing he could do. When the hatch opened, the rest of it would be out of his hands.
Bony glanced again at the inner hatch. Liddy was still there. She pursed her lips in a kiss and said, “Good luck!”
Bony gave the signal and the outer hatch began to slide open. He watched closely, then said, “External liquid pressure seems to be more than pressure in the ship, but not much more. I think it won’t rise much farther than my knees. So far, things are just the way I expected. When the hatch is fully open, if everything still seems all right I may try a short trip outside.”
“That wasn’t on your original plan.” Liddy sounded alarmed.
“I know, but we can’t stay inside the ship forever. We’ll have to go outside sometime.”
“Don’t take chances, Bony.”
“I won’t.” No one had ever worried on Bony’s behalf before. He decided that he liked it — even if Liddy’s concern was partly for herself. I expect you to save me, too . That was nice. Let’s hope he could justify her confidence. “The outer hatch is fully open now. The liquid level has stopped rising.”
All he had to do was take a step forward, and he would sink down. In another five seconds he could be standing on the seabed of — what?
This was a world with no name. Bony was nowhere, about to take a step into nothingness. Think of a name. Swirlworld . Not precise enough. Heavy-water-world . That was ugly. The world of the deuteron? That would be Deuteronomy — but at the moment he was more interested in Exodus .
“Are you all right?” said Liddy’s anxious voice. “You’ve stopped talking.”
“Sorry. Just playing around with stupid names for this place. Everything still looks good, so I’m going to take a look outside. Here goes.”
Bony took a deep breath, added, “I hereby name this planet — Limbo,” and stepped into the pale green unknown beyond the open hatch.
6: RECRUITING ON MARS
Ten days. Ten days, to find and recruit five people.
That was only one every two days. It didn’t sound bad — until you realized that when last heard from the men and women you needed had been scattered all over the solar system, everywhere from the sun-skimming Hades of the Vulcan Nexus all the way to the Oort Harvester, rolling along in its multimillennial orbit half a lightyear from Sol.
So you might as well tackle an “easy” one first. Chan cleared the final Link exit point, sited conveniently on an island close to the geometrical center of Marslake, and stood for a couple of minutes adjusting to the changed air and gravity. He reflected that before the Link system, even this undemanding destination would have been a challenge. During the first centuries of space exploration, travel times and access to moons or planets were decided less by distance than by relative orbital velocities and the strength of gravity wells. Earth was a major challenge. The old space traveller’s complaint, “If you wanted to explore the Universe, you wouldn’t start from here,” had been coined for Earth. Venus, almost as massive, was little better. While as for Jupiter, you might fly down into the roiling clouds and eternal hurricane winds, but it would be a one-way trip. The planet’s vast gravitational pull would prevent you ever getting out.
Even now, fast journeys around the solar system or beyond it were not cheap. The Link would never be cheap. The power for a single trip between points of widely different gravity potential could eat up the savings of a lifetime. Linkage of materials from the Oort Cloud to the Inner System consumed the full energy of three kernels aboard the Oort Harvester. It was a measure of the importance of Chan’s mission to the Geyser Swirl that no one had mentioned a budget when he said he needed to travel by Link in order to recruit.
Actually, he needed a good deal more than a budget . He needed an argument powerful enough to convince some of humanity’s most talented but skeptical individuals that they would like to be on board the Hero’s Return when it linked out to the Swirl.
What was the local time of day? Chan looked toward the Sun. Much of what you saw at Marslake was misleading. That blue sky above his head was an illusion, an artefact of the same anosmotic thermal field that held a hundred-meter layer of breathable air like a comfort blanket over the whole of Marslake and for forty kilometers beyond. That air was at a comfortable twenty degrees Celsius, while two hundred meters above Chan’s head the near-vacuum hovered at a hundred below zero. The island on which he stood was real Mars soil, but it had been mined from ancient sedimentary layers far beneath the surface, where hid the once-and-future Martian life-forms. The serene blue lake itself was fifty kilometers across and listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Solar System (low on the list, to be sure), but it was nowhere more than ten meters deep, and it held only a thousandth of the water of even the smallest of Earth’s Great Lakes.