The Spheres of Heaven

3: ABOARD THE MOOD INDIGO

The Terran exploration ship Mood Indigo was not the dead, derelict hulk described by Dougal MacDougal. It carried a crew of three: owner and captain Friday Indigo, chief engineer and astrogator Bony Rombelle, and general factotum Liddy Morse.

They were certainly alive; but what they were, more than anything, was confused. They had entered a Link near the Vulcan Nexus, so close to Sol that the sun’s flaming surface filled more than thirty degrees of the sky. Their destination was set as the Geyser Swirl. They expected to emerge in open space, at a location about as close to a star, planet or dust cloud as their departure Link was close to Sol. What should not happen — what the Link system should not permit to happen — was an arrival at a place where something was already there. The Link navigator would detect the presence of matter, and abort the transfer.

So much for theory.

Bony Rombelle stared out of the port at an expanse of cloudy green that faded off into the distance without discernible features. According to his instruments, the ship was in a weak gravity field and gently descending.

“Rombelle!” That was Friday Indigo’s harsh voice, crackling through from the cabin. “I show us clear of the Link exit. Report our location and status.”

Obviously, the captain was focused on the controls and not looking outside.

“All internal ship readings are normal, sir.” Bony peered again through the port, looking downward. “However, sir, we appear to be under water.”

“What! Liddy, keep an eye on things in here.” Friday Indigo popped out of the interior cabin. He was mousy-looking and short, something he tried to hide with exotic, expensive clothes and elevator heels. He stared at the port with bulging eyes, beneath eyebrows that ran straight across with no break. “My God. How did we get here?”

“I have no idea. But we’re descending, and I can’t see the bottom.” Bony glanced at his dials. “No problem so far, the hull can stand four or five atmospheres. We’re not a submarine, though. If we sink too deep …”

“We’ll be flattened. How about the drive?”

It sounded logical, but it made Bony shudder. His supposed training in science and engineering was mostly his own invention, but he knew he was smart and he did have a feel for what you could and could not do. Flying a spaceship underwater was definitely in the latter category.

“Not the fusion drive, sir, that’s right out. I could probably fix the auxiliary ion thrusters to work in water — if it is water — but not without going outside to make a few changes.”

“Then go outside. I assume you can?”

“Go outside, yes. And the suits will work there, no problem. It’s coming back in that’s the hard part. The airlock would be full of water, and we’d need to raise the air pressure high enough to force the water out.” Bony thought about it. “I believe we can do that, given time. But we don’t have time. If we keep going down at the rate we are, we have only a few more minutes before the hull collapses.”

Friday glared accusingly at Bony, as though the whole problem was the fault of his engineer. “Then hold tight. I’m going to start the drive, and the hell with it.”

He headed for the control cabin, leaving Bony with a familiar sensation. Out of the frying pan, into the — what? Bony had signed on with Friday and the Mood Indigo near the solar hotspot known as the Vulcan Nexus. He had done that to escape a difficult situation back in the solar system. Now he was facing a worse one.

He stared warily at the cloudy green beyond the port. What happened if you tried to light a fusion torch under water? Bony’s knowledge of nuclear physics was sketchy, but surely there was a good chance that you would initiate a fusion reaction within the water itself, annihilating everything in one giant explosion. Was it water out there? That seemed logical, but the Geyser Swirl was a very strange place and they didn’t have proof. Given a few minutes, Bony could take a sample from outside, make a few tests, and prove that it was water. But he did not have a few minutes.

Loud cursing came from the inner cabin. “Rombelle! Get your fat ass in here right now. The fusion drive doesn’t work!”

Thank God. Drowning, maybe, but no instant incineration. Bony stood up to walk the few steps through to the control cabin. Then he paused. Looking down, he could see that outside the port there was no longer a featureless cloud. Below the ship was a forest of spears, their points stretching upward. The Mood Indigo was dropping straight down onto them.

“Hold tight! We’re going to hit bottom.” Bony followed his own advice and grabbed for the back of a seat, but the warning was a little too late. Amidst a crystalline tinkling sound like fairy bells — it came from right outside and underneath the ship — they smacked into the seabed.

Bony held his breath and waited. This might be it , the end of everything. A space pinnace like the Mood Indigo was designed to withstand certain stresses encountered during travel in space. It was not intended to bear the forces that came from contact with an array of sharp, up-pointed spears, at some unknown depth in some unknown ocean.

The hull flexed and groaned like an old man in pain. The cabin floor trembled and tilted. The port next to Bony, normally flat, bowed in a little under the pressure. And, from the control cabin, the voice of Friday Indigo came again. “Rombelle! You fat-ass idiot, what are you playing at out there? I’ve lost sensor readouts. Get in here!”

Business as usual. If Friday was yelling, they must still be alive.

Bony took the few steps through to the inner cabin. He couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned. Never get involved in a venture with a man who inherited his money and didn’t earn any himself. He’ll assume he’s smarter than you are, just because he’s rich and you’re not, and he’ll expect you to bow down to his greatness because for all his life people have. Bony had known Indigo for less than a week, but the man fitted the rich-man model to perfection. Friday Indigo; descendant of one of the original heirs to the Yang diamond; only son of a Kuiper Belt developer who was killed by a Persephone tunnel cave-in; self-proclaimed entrepreneur, space expert, and daring explorer.

And a bombastic, domineering little turd who never did a day’s work in his life and blames other people for everything that ever goes wrong. Liddy, how can you share a bed with him?

Bony muttered that under his breath; then he popped his head into the control cabin. “Yes, Captain?”

Friday Indigo waved his hand at the display. “What have you done to those sensors?”

Bony glanced at the screen. “The ones you are pointing to are located at the rear of the ship. We came down tail-first, so I assume they were crushed when we hit the bottom of the sea.”

“Well, do whatever needs doing to get them working again. I can’t fly this ship when it’s blind.”

Or when you can see. You brought us here, wherever here is. “Yes, sir. It may take a while. First, I need to learn what the environment outside the ship is like.”

“What are you talking about, what it’s like . You can see it, can’t you?”

“I need to know how deep we are. What the external pressure is. What the seabed is made of. If it’s water out there, or something else.”

“Of course it’s water. What else could it be? Don’t waste time on pointless tests. And you, my girl.” Friday rounded on Liddy Morse. “Go with him, try to be useful for a change. Expand your repertoire, do something different from the usual.”

He patted her rump in a proprietary way. Liddy gave Friday Indigo a look which to Bony’s outraged eye combined equal parts of resignation and discomfort, but she followed Bony down a short ladder toward the rear part of the ship.

“And while you’re at it,” Friday called after them, “find out where we are.”

That’s right, Bony thought. Save the hardest question for last.

He moved downward carefully, measuring the pressure on his foot at each step. At the bottom he turned. “Try and estimate as you put your feet down, Liddy. How much would you say you weigh?”

He watched her descent and cursed his own cravings for food. Liddy was so slim and graceful, she made him feel as fat and clumsy as an elephant. She stepped easily all the way down and paused at the bottom for a moment to think.

“A lot less than on Earth. I was only on Mars once, but I think I weigh less than there, too. Maybe half of that — about the same as on the Moon or Ganymede.”

“That’s my guess, too. About one-sixth of Earth gravity.”

“Does that tell you anything?”

“Nothing useful.” He grinned at her, and was delighted when Liddy smiled back. She was a different person when she was not around Friday Indigo. He wondered, not for the first time, how a delicate and sensitive young woman like her came to be on board a dangerous expedition to nowhere.

And, thinking of nowhere … “I have no idea where we are, but the low gravity may be the reason we are alive. Water pressure at depth is a lot less here, so the ship’s hull can stand the force. Let’s see what else we can find out.”

Time to show off in front of Liddy. And it wouldn’t be easy. Everything about the Mood Indigo , inside and out, had been designed for a vacuum environment. Bony had to make things work on the ocean bed.

He went to the tailmost port on the ship and took another look outside. The array of spears had shattered under the impact and lay in pieces beyond the hull. Visual inspection suggested fragile, crystalline structures. Just as well, or the hull of the Mood Indigo might have been damaged by them.

If the liquid outside was water, they couldn’t be too deep. Bony could make out no shadows, but he had a definite impression that he was seeing by light that streamed in from above.

Was it sunlight from some local star in the Geyser Swirl, diffusing down through the liquid and slowly being scattered and absorbed as it came to greater depths? Probably. But Friday Indigo would say, rightly, that guesswork was not proof. They needed to find a way to get outside and float up to the surface. But before that, they must have samples. Suppose it was acid out there, acid that was even now eating its way through the ship’s hull?

Bringing a sample into the Mood Indigo was much easier than taking a person out of it. The liquid, whatever it was, would have filled the little cylinders of the fusion drive normally exposed to open space. He could isolate one of those and retract it without leaving the ship.

“Keep well back, Liddy. This may splash. I expect that it’s water, but I’m not sure.”

It was another test of a sort. When he opened one end of the cylinder’s chamber to allow it to come into the ship, it would be forced in by whatever pressure existed at the other end. Bony placed his left palm in the way, preparing himself for the idea that the cylinder could possibly shoot out hard enough to break the bones of his hand.

Bony opened the valve. The cylinder, its flat end about two inches across, shot backward and smacked into his open palm. It didn’t hurt. The pressure outside couldn’t be much more than a standard atmosphere. That corresponded to a thirty-foot column of water, back on Earth; which meant that the liquid outside, assuming it was water under a sixth of a gravity, couldn’t be more than a hundred and eighty feet deep. Once in suits and outside the ship, they could easily float up to the surface.

In spite of his warning, Liddy had stood too close. As the cylinder came backward, liquid splashed out of it onto her hand.

“Don’t touch it!” Bony cried, but he was too late. Liddy had already bent her head and touched her tongue to the wet spot. Now she was standing absolutely still. Bony added, “Don’t drink any,” but she smiled at him.

“It’s all right. I might as well be useful for something, even if Captain Indigo doesn’t believe I can be.” She licked her lips and frowned in concentration. “It’s water. Not pure water, though. It tastes a little bit strange and salty. And it’s fizzy on my tongue.”

If she could risk it, so could he. Bony raised the cylinder and licked a few drops from the end. As Liddy had said, it was salty, but less salty than water from Earth’s oceans. You could drink this if you had to. And it was carbonated, though the touch on his tongue was not quite the same as the carbon dioxide normally used in making fizzy water.

He poured more of the liquid from the cylinder into a triangular beaker and held it up to the light. It was quite clear; although of course, that didn’t mean for a moment that the sample was free of microorganisms. Possibly he and Liddy had already allowed lethal alien bacteria into their bodies. The chances, though, were very much against it. Experience all through the Stellar Group showed that alien organisms were just too alien to find a human body an acceptable host.

Bony went across to the miscellaneous equipment cabinet and rummaged around inside. After a couple of minutes he found what he was looking for and pulled out a graduated measuring cylinder and a spring balance.

“What are those for?” Liddy said at last.

Bony smiled. He had been waiting for her to ask. “Tasting and guessing isn’t the best way to do scientific testing. We think it’s water — in fact, I’m almost sure it’s water — but we have to do a real test. This tube holds fifty milliliters.” He held up the measuring cylinder. “So first I weigh it on the spring balance. Then if I filled it with water and weighed it again, back on Earth that would weigh fifty grams more on the spring balance.”

“But we’re not on Earth.”

“I know. So we don’t know how much fifty milliliters of water weighs here. But we don’t need to know that, to test that it’s water. First, we weigh the empty measurer.” He hung it on the spring balance and held it up to Liddy. “You note where the pointer is. Now we take some regular water, water that we brought with us.” Bony went across to a small faucet set into the side wall and filled the measuring cylinder to the fifty-milliliter mark. He hung it on the spring balance and pointed to the new level of the pointer. “See, now we know how much ordinary water weighs here.”

He looked for a place to pour the measure of water that he was holding, and after a moment tilted it up and drank it.

“All that’s left to do,” he went on, “is pour some of the water we collected from outside, and fill the measurer to the same level.” Bony did that carefully, his eye on the marks on the side of the measuring cylinder. “And now, you see, because the balance is weighed down to the same place as it was with the water we brought with us, we know that …” His voice faded away.

“But it isn’t at the same place on the balance,” Liddy said. She gazed at him with dark, wide-open eyes. “It’s pulled down quite a bit farther. That means it weighs more, doesn’t it?”

“It weighs more.” Bony was staring in disbelief at the balance. “Nearly fifteen percent more. It’s a lot denser than water. And that means …” Bony went across to an access cover for the main drive and flopped down onto it. So much for his big show-off demonstration, the one that was supposed to impress Liddy Morse.

“Means what?” asked Liddy.

“It means it’s not water. I don’t know what the hell that stuff is out there.” Bony waved his hand toward the expanse of silent green beyond the port. “But I know what it isn’t. And it isn’t water.”