[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Stepping up the rungs of the metal ladder set into the airlock's wall, Dan pushed the outside hatch all the
way open and stuck his head up above the opening.
The camp looked as if it had been bombed. The tent was completely gone, not a shred of it left. The
desks and consoles and other gear from inside the tent were nowhere in sight, either. Nothing there but
the plastisteel foundation, and even that was buried under several centimeters of powdery sand and ash.
The sky overhead was gray now, sullen-looking. The clouds were high, but moving with great speed.
Dan turned stiffly with the suit and tried to look in all directions. No break in the clouds anywhere: gray
from horizon to horizon.
The refinery was a complete shambles. The big cylinders and spheres were cracked open, blackened
and burned.Not much to salvage from it, Dan realized. He knew he should have been glad
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
just to be alive, but somehow he felt terribly dejected, defeated, let down.
The communications mast was gone, of course. So were most of the trees. The grass was still there,
though, poking through the sand and ash, its cheerful yellow strangely incongruous in the somber scene of
destruction.
Dan stepped down the ladder again, lowering the hatch after him. He sealed it, set the airlock to
recycling again; the native sulfurous air was pumped outside, the breathable air that had been stored
away hissed out of the tanks and filled the tiny airlock once again. When the light flashed green, Dan
opened the inner hatch and stepped back into the main area of the shelter.
He took off his helmet. It felt as if it weighed a ton.
Cranston was still seated in front of the radio. "No response. We can't reach them."
"They can't see us, either," Dan said grimly. "Cloud deck's still covering us."
"Isn't there any way we can tell them we're here? Can't they spot us with radar or infrared or
something?"
Dan plopped on the lower bunk and reached for the zips on his suit legs. "Radar won't tell them if we're
alive or not. But if we could make a big enough hot spot, IR might pick it up "
"A hot spot. With what?"
Dan shrugged. "I don't think we've got anything bigger than the suit lasers. That won't do."
"Uhmm..." Cranston started to look concerned. "How much air and water do we have?"
"We pull our oxygen out of the planet's air," Dan answered. "Clean out the sulfur and other gunk so we
ca.n breathe it. That's not problem. Water, though ... our water purification gear was all topside. It's
gone There's probably not more than a couple days' worth in here."
"And how long will the clouds cover us?"
Dan shrugged. "Maybe we ought to try to figure out how to make a big hot spot."
Larry was pacing back and forth along the bridge, followed by Joe Haller and Guido Estelella. The
technicians working the various consoles kept their faces turned very carefully to their work.
"But you can't let them sit down there without even trying to pick them up!" Haller was shouting.
Larry whirled and pointed to one of the viewscreens. It showed nothing but gray cloud scudding across
the planet's face.
"There's absolutely no evidence that they're still alive," he snapped back, lower-keyed but still with an
edge of anger to his voice. "You want me to risk our only qualified pilot and our only landing shuttle on
the chance that they might have survived the storm?"
"Hell yes!"
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"I'm willing to try it," Estelella said.
Larry shook his head. "We have no idea of what conditions are like under those clouds. The whole
surface could be buried under tons of volcanic ash."
"We have other landing shuttles," Haller insisted. "You can order them taken out of the storage depot
and reassembled."
"Can I replace our one qualified astronaut?" Larry demanded.
"But he's volunteered to go!"
"No." Larry pushed past Haller and started pacing the bridge again.
Haller followed doggedly. "You're killing two men!"
"They're already dead," Larry said. "We'd have heard from them by now if they were still alive. The
storm's been over nearly two days."
"Their communications gear might've been damaged. They could be hurt, trapped in wreckage..
.anything."
Larry countered, "Nothing survived that storm. You saw the electrical signals we were getting from the
lightning. Like a continuous sheet of flame. The wind speeds were right off the scale of our meteorological
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]