Illustration by Ron Miller

1

Sweat soaked my hair and ran down into my eyes. I tried to shake it away, afraid to remove my hands from the control panel, angry with my body for responding to pressure which was purely psychological. The interior thermometer had settled on twenty degrees Centigrade less than five minutes after I sealed the hatch of the Pellucidar Express. It had clung tenaciously to that reading ever since.

Still, I would rather admit that I was suffering from nerves than have to deal with the implications of a non-functioning thermometer.

The exterior reading had been almost as constant for almost as long, but the figure it displayed was 1,160 degrees Centigrade. Glancing around at the mostly plastic control panel, the cheap carpeting glued to the floor, at my own shiny hands, I tried not to think of how many of life’s mainstays char and melt at that temperature.

Two of the displays showed a slow, steady movement. According to one, I was four hundred meters below the bubbling surface of a lava lake which had only recently appeared on the side of Mauna Loa. The other told me that the hull was being subjected to nearly one hundred atmospheres of pressure.

To get the right sort of advertising these days, the small businessman has to go through hell. Sometimes, it seems, literally.

With an effort, I wrenched my attention back to the mission. Along with my primary purpose–generating profitable publicity for Maxwell Associates–I had an ostensible purpose which required my efforts. I was supposed to be conducting research, exploring the last frontier on, or more accurately in, the Earth. Selling Vreality rights to National Geographic had helped pay for the construction of the Pellucidar Express. The company would receive twice that amount on successful completion of the mission. Successful completion was defined in terms of my survival, and the return of the data recordings to the surface.

One part of my mind was already composing the narration: "The Earth continually gives birth to itself in volcanoes like those of the Hawaiian island chain. The mission this day of David Maxwell and the Pellucidar Express is to perform an ultrasound examination. But this examination must be performed from inside the patient!"

And from that opener, straight into the first set of commercials. I would have to be careful of extended metaphor, however. Things could get sticky if I pushed it too far.

The truth of the matter was that what I was experiencing was too awesome ever to be captured by Vreality or any other medium. The only way even I could understand the experience was through the software Sandy had written for the Doppler sonar. Setting the knobs so that the high definition flatscreen displayed a horizontal view, I saw a brown wall at the limits of resolution. This was the wall of the magma chamber. In front of it, red and blue vapors swirled about like the doomed lovers in the second circle of Dante’s Hell. Confused about what was right and wrong, tossed to and fro by their uncontrollable passions. If I were to survive, I would have to know the right thing to do and be able to hold to it.

Most of the blue was concentrated in the central plume rising from the depths. With the volcano in a steady state, as it presently was, this upwelling was almost exactly balanced by the cooling magma, coded red on my screen, which was sinking around the perimeter of the funnel.

Two caveats, as my lawyer Izzy, would say. The first was that Mauna Loa is not always in a steady state. The relatively gentle convection currents on which I was navigating could be overcome by sudden surges of magma. These might endanger the recovery crew on the surface, on whom I was almost totally dependent. They might also dash my craft against the sides of the funnel. The Daimonium sheath was not constructed to withstand that sort of impact. One crack might not allow in enough heat to melt the hull. It wouldn’t need to. The heat conducted into my cabin would, in short order, turn me into something that would look like it had been left in the deep fat fryer too long.

The second caveat was that these surges were unpredictable. After all, had it been otherwise, there would have been no excuse for my presence or my research.

A groan vibrated through the hull, the sound a strong man, severely wounded, might make through clenched teeth. I looked at the pressure gauge. It had just passed one hundred atmospheres. I decided I had proved enough. If this couldn’t garner sufficient publicity for Maxwell Associates, then the hell with it.

I pressed the send button. "This is the Pellucidar Express. I’m going to dump ballast and begin my ascent."

"Damn about time." The earphones reproduced Sandy’s relief perfectly. She had been extremely troubled when I had decided on this "suicidal stunt." Only imminent bankruptcy had forced her reluctant consent.

"Hustle on up, hon. I’ve got a backer wants to meet you."

That was good news! The publicity was paying off already. I hit the ballast release. There was a jar as the arms holding the tree-trunk-thick iron bars swung wide and their burden dropped away. I felt myself relax. Theoretically, the cable was strong enough to lift me to the surface even with the ballast still attached. I was relieved I would not be testing that prediction.

I adjusted the diving planes to guide us into the central plume. Ever so slowly, the Pellucidar Express began to rise.

With a lurch and a roll, the craft broke the surface. The cabin righted itself abruptly as the cable pulled taut. The cabin floor seemed to spring upward as the lava released its hold. I fought vertigo as I felt myself falling sideways. Swinging in ever-decreasing arcs, the craft was lowered gently to the lava field I had left six hours previously.

I made a last check of all exterior readings, popped out the data disk and flicked off all the power except the lights and the phone headset. For the moment, there was nothing for me to do but wait for Moe and the recovery crew to break the Daimonium sheath sealing me into the Pellucidar Express.

A series of sharp raps on the hull, followed by a tearing sound. "Okay, Dave, you should be able to exit." I was spinning the wheel on the hatch even before Sandy finished speaking. Little gusts of cold and hot air chased themselves through the cabin as the hatch slid aside. Hot air from the lava pool only a few meters away; cold air from being nearly four thousand meters above sea level. Moe’s smiling face looked in and nodded approvingly.

"So, you are not crispy critters after all," he said, in a mellifluous accent. "The boys will be sorry to have lost money on you."

I laughed as he helped me out of the hatch and down the portable stairway to the lava field. Behind the lines there were a gratifying number of media reporters, gyrocams perched on their shoulders. Three figures were walking toward me. Two I recognized. Sandy, of course. Next to her, Regina Hallaj, CEO of House of Hawks. Maxwell Associates used her services as often as we could afford. Which wasn’t all that often.

In front of both of them strode a man who was probably my height, though he somehow conveyed the impression of being taller. Khaki-colored longcoat and trousers had been cut so as to suggest a uniform. His skin was the color of mahogany. Hawk eyes devoured the Pellucidar Express.

"Chandra Shivaji, may I present to you Mr. David Maxwell of Maxwell Associates. He has just demonstrated, I believe, that he has the abilities your require. David, this is Greater India’s Minister of Advanced Technology." With a proprietorial smile, Regina held out her hand in my direction.

Shivaji seemed not to notice her. "This vessel, it has survived ninety atmospheres pressure."

It took me a moment to realize that he expected me to answer. "It has survived one hundred atmospheres pressure."

"And a temperature of five hundred degrees Centigrade?"

"More than twice that."

"And you can prove this."

"It’s all here," I said, holding up the data disk. "Subject to verification by both National Geographic and Smithsonian research teams."

For the first time, Shivaji allowed himself a thin smile. "Good. If you can provide materials to my specifications, you will be well compensated. Let us proceed to you trailer where we may discuss terms."

"Your Excellency, I think–" Regina began.

"Your task is finished, Ms. Hallaj. Ratnatunga will see to your payment."

Hot and cold winds buffeted me with renewed force during the walk back to the operations trailer. Sandy and I exchanged glances, as disturbed by Shivaji’s tone as by what he said. It could be that he was unaware of Regina’s doctorate; she wore her learning lightly. Yet the edge in his voice made me think that he was consciously denying her title.

I stopped at the door to our trailer to wave at the media while Shivaji waited impatiently. Then we stepped inside.

Regina was still with us. Shivaji’s eyes flared as soon as he realized it. Regina turned from him and addressed Sandy and myself.

"Would you care for my services in the negotiations?" she asked.

"You can’t work for them," Shivaji objected.

"I could not work for them while under your employ," she replied. "That is no longer the case."

"I am not sure we can afford to retain the services of the House of Hawks CEO," Sandy said. "At the moment, we are a bit, ah, overextended."

"This is a conflict of interest," Shivaji said. "You have no right to disclose our confidential information."

"I will work on contingency," Regina said. "You will pay me whatever you find my services to have been worth." To Shivaji: "No confidential information was provided to me, so there is nothing for me to disclose."

"This is unacceptable." Shivaji turned to me. "Unless you dismiss this woman, you will have nothing to pay her or yourself."

Sandy winced. She tried to take care of the financial side of the business so I could concentrate on the engineering, but I knew without being told that we could not afford to turn down government investors.

Apparently Regina knew that as well. She grimaced and shook her head. "That will be unnecessary. I withdraw–"

"No."

"What?" Shivaji looked at me with a combination of astonishment and fury. Looked at me, even though Regina had been about to concede, even though Sandy seemed ready, however reluctantly, to support him.

Because they were women, and therefore distractions unworthy of notice. In my grandmother’s time, it had been assumed that this combination of male chauvinism and misogyny was a cultural overlay on a underlying animal innocence. In fact, it grows as naturally as cancer in some men, who sometimes manage to impress it on the society surrounding them. I have seen it in Ivy League graduates and in Mexican day laborers. Shivaji probably disliked Regina simply because she was both intelligent and necessary to him.

"I mean that Maxwell Associates have accepted Dr. Hallaj’s offer–" I watched Shivaji’s eyes widen at my insistence on her title, "–to aid in our negotiations. The House of Hawks is, if not the largest, certainly the most respected Librarian/Generalist organization in existence. Its aid has been invaluable to us in the past. You must have formed the same high opinion to have retained them yourself."

Shivaji sat back in his chair and regarded me wordlessly for perhaps thirty seconds. "You realize," he said at length, "that I do not have to deal with you. It is a matter of convenience. If necessary, my technicians can reverse engineer your Daimonium process. Stubbornness can cost you a great deal."

"If you so much as touch the Pellucidar Express, I will have the data cops on you so fast your head will spin," Sandy said.

I waved her to silence. "Excellency," I began, "as the Minister for–was it Advanced Technology?–you are no doubt aware that the most advanced materials processes involve a certain amount of ‘magic.’ That is, you might contract with me to deliver the Daimonium process to you. And I might attempt in all good faith to do so. I could give you the recipe for the material, the construction diagrams of the nanites, and the algorithms for the controlling software. And what you have might be totally worthless because I would not be able to tell you some crucial fact or process that I don’t know, and don’t even know I don’t know. Something unique about the isotope ratios of our raw materials. Perhaps the factory foreman in charge extruding the composite had adjusted the heat treatment or the extrusion speed in a manner so slight that he hardly notices himself what he has done. Or it might be the controlling AI. Such programs are always modifying themselves, adjusting to their surrounding and adjusting their surroundings to them. Sometimes they cease working for no immediately discernible reason.

"Or everything might work together at first try. It is possible."

We were both silent for two breaths. "It is stupid to argue over this!" Shivaji said. "Hallaj can stay if you wish. You are only cutting into your own profit. Her presence will not obtain for you a single rupee more."

I nodded agreement.

His thumbprint activated his notebook. "Here are the configurations which require your treatment. Interior temperatures are to be maintained at twenty degrees Centigrade, plus or minus fifteen degrees. Exterior temperatures may exceed five hundred degrees. Exterior pressures will reach ninety atmospheres."

I studied the diagrams with growing curiosity. The largest "configuration" appeared to be a tower almost ten floors high. The second I recognized as an Arachnid All Terrain Personnel Carrier. The third appeared to be a pressure suit.

"This will cause us the greatest difficulty," I said, pointing to the pressure suit. "Daimonium is not flexible. The joints are going to be a real problem."

From his previous behavior, I expected an explosion from Shivaji. Instead, he nodded seriously.

"Are there other environmental factors which may affect the performance of the Daimonium?" Regina asked.

Shivaji frowned. "Such as what?"

"Radiation. Ultraviolet exposure perhaps?"

Shivaji’s finger indicated the tower. "This . . . structure will be exposed to both ultraviolet and hard radiation for periods on the order of a week."

Sandy’s face mirrored my alarm. "What intensity?" I asked.

"I do not have the exact figures. Perhaps a thousand rads during mission life. This can be provided to you." Shivaji shook his head, as if trying to dodge a troublesome insect. "None of this matters. Technology has been sufficient to handle these exposures for more than a century."

"It matters a great deal," I said. "The Daimonium sheath may degrade if not protected from the radiation. On the other hand, the radiation shielding may decay if not protected from the heat."

"I think you need to tell us everything about how and where these structures will be used," Sandy said.

"These are state security matters," Shivaji objected. "You have a job. It does not clear you to know all our secrets."

"I don’t want to know all of them. Only those relevant to the task. The matter of radiation itself might have been enough by itself to ensure failure, if we had not learned about it. What else is there?"

He stared at me silently.

I sighed, aching at the thought of all the hard currency, which might save my company from bankruptcy, about to fly away. "Unless I know everything about the environment in which these structures will be used, I must decline the commission. The dangers in case of failure are just too great."

"For example," Regina said, "you might like to talk about any pH extremes to which the sheathing will be subjected."

Shivaji’s glare was deadly. "You know." It was an accusation.

I had come to the same conclusion. Regina was not interested in any fee we might pay her. She had been stonewalled by Shivaji and had not liked it.

"I have made intelligent guesses," she said. "After all, I started as a Librarian. Knowledge is our business."

"What is the answer to the question?" Sandy asked.

Shivaji stared at her for an instant, then seemed to collapse into himself. "It will be exposed to sulphuric acid in aerosol form twice, probably for no more than ten minutes each time."

I blinked, trying to imagine what sort of hellish environment Shivaji proposed to explore.

"I will tell you everything," he continued in a low voice. "In return, you must promise the strictest confidentiality." He thumbed on and held up a standard Geneva Vocorder. Sandy immediately did the same for our records. Then all three of us promised to maintain in confidence all information which would be disclosed to us, subject to the usual exceptions for planned or disclosed illegalities.

"And I assure you," he said, with something of his original fire, "if you break that pledge, actions at law will be the least of your worries."

There being nothing intelligent to say to that, we said nothing.

"Six weeks ago, the Air Force of Greater India, under the direction of my ministry, tested a drone spacecraft equipped with what we have called a Maya Drive. We started the test from thirty degrees behind Earth orbit, to be free, we hoped, from unwanted observers. Our target was Venus. Cramers established the correct vector and accelerated it until it attained the orbital speed of Venus. Then the Maya Drive was activated. It vanished. At that same moment, our observers in orbit about Venus picked up its appearance."

"A faster-than-light drive?" I asked. "How fast . . . ?"

"That is a meaningless question. There is no speed, because there is no distance. Extension is a delusion. Space is a delusion. The Maya Drive annihilates this delusion for a quantum instant, and allows a vessel to appear at any arbitrary distance from its original location."

His voice dripped disdain, yet there was another emotion I was not able to name.

"But you lost it," Regina said, almost inaudibly.

"It appeared exactly where we had programmed it to appear." If Shivaji had heard Regina, he gave no sign. "It emerged five hundred kilometers above the cloud deck. It was supposed to make the corrections to take up orbit at that altitude. Something went wrong. The drone continued without deceleration straight into the atmosphere. There was no way any of the waiting craft could intercept it, much less alter its course. We watched, horrified, as it turned into a meteor.

"Fortunately, buried in all its programming, was an automatic landing sequence. This activated itself and slowed the craft to what appears to have been a safe landing. The drone is there now, in heat which melts lead, beneath clouds which rain acid. It may have been altered by stresses from the Maya Drive. Perhaps that was the cause of the failure to achieve orbit. Perhaps those same stresses are fatal to humans. The only way to find out is to retrieve the data disks on the drone.

"That is your task, Mr. Maxwell. To descend into hell and return, if you are able, with the key to the stars."

I expected Shivaji to hand me detailed specs and demand thirty-six-hour work days until the project was finished. I did not expect that nothing would happen until after a formal presentation to the Council of Ministers.

"Stop complaining," Sandy said, as she adjusted my ascot. Since I had neither a Registered Name nor a Company Crest, the pattern was simply one of the basic ungendered designs appropriate for United States citizens. "I know you hate parties, but for what we are being paid, you can put up with more than a few hours of boredom. And you may even enjoy yourself, if you unbend a bit."

"Unlikely," I replied. "Most of these things are attended by self-important zombies as beautiful as peacocks and with brains to match–"

"That’s unfair!"

"–but the really frustrating thing is when you meet someone interesting, you can never talk because the music is so loud that the floor is shaking."

She stepped back and regarded me. "Not too bad, really. Just try not to look so martyred."

Our cab took us from the hotel through the electronic checkpoints into the New City Government Center. We sped through brightly lit, oddly empty streets. New City had not been designed for pedestrians. There were stories of a man who had wandered away from a broken-down car and nearly starved to death in the deserted streets, unable to find an entry into any of the silent, brilliantly lit office buildings.

At Gandhi Hall, the doors slid open and we were taken up to the main ballroom, where Shivaji presented us to those members of the Indian government most important to his project. A blur of members of the Council of States. A sharp-eyed prime minister. Colonel Rucha Sattayarak of the India Space Force, who hoped to be the first man to exceed lightspeed.

Earlier that afternoon, I had made the basic Maxwell presentation to many of these same dignitaries by remote. An animated demon–Maxwell–stood guard at what looked like an open doorway. Energetic molecules, drawn to resemble corporate go-getters, were batted back from the door by the demon. Their "cooler" cousins, drawn with dark glasses and berets, were allowed to amble through. Gradually, one side became searingly hot while the other chilled down to Arctic inactivity.

"This violates the laws of thermodynamics," the prime minister observed.

"No more so than life itself violates those laws," I replied, wondering who had fed him that statement. "Or any refrigerator, for that matter. The point is, you have to consider the system as a whole, not just parts of it. The demon doesn’t work for free."

The prime minister’s smile was disturbingly shark-like. "I think we understand each other, Mr. Maxwell."

This evening, however, was supposed to be a purely social occasion. Yet in all the smiles and murmured compliments I sensed an odd tension, as if we were chess pieces being displayed so that our strength could be properly appreciated. An odd fancy, since I had no idea what the actual game might be, or the identity of the opponents.

A small orchestra occupied the far end of the room. Sitars and vinas were plucked, bansris and shahnais skirled, while mridangams and tabla were battered to a rhythm I could not quite catch. "Isn’t it wonderful?" a matron taller than myself asked. "These instruments were never designed to be played together. This is truly Pan-Indian music." I agreed that the result was quite astonishing.

Sandy got involved in a discussion on the merits of the sari as female dress and didn’t she think the constantly moving patterns which had become fashionable in Europe were inexpressibly vulgar? I retreated to the bar for a rum and Coke and nearly choked on the result. The mixture was nearly pure rum; the Coke apparently serving only as food coloring.

The long walls were lined with ornamental trees surrounded by polished wooden benches. I took a seat on one of these where I would be almost out of sight beneath the overhanging branches, able to nurse my drink quietly. Only then did I notice that the adjoining bench had an occupant, a young man who had been gazing intently at the lighted screen of his notebook. I extended my hand to introduce myself. My companion regarded me with a fixed smile and somewhat alarmed eyes. I wondered if my words were as meaningless to him as they would have been to me in Tamil or Punjabi.

He put that fear to rest at once. "Ah, so you are a practical man," he said, a trifle wistfully. "You invent new processes, you form your own company to market them, and fight off the corporate carnivores who would seek to devour you. It is easy to see why you have been made part of this effort. Many times have I wished for these qualities in myself."

I wondered how Sandy would have responded to the characterization of me as a practical man. If I had been able to resist any "corporate carnivores" it was probably because they had not yet deigned to take notice of my company.

"Surely you are being too modest," I said, reminded of one or two youngsters I had hired over the years who had needed no more than freedom and confidence to make their talents bloom. "From what I have seen, Shivaji hires only those who can pull their own weight. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. . . .?"

His blush was distinctly visible even beneath his dark skin. "Oh, you must forgive my terrible manners, Mr. Maxwell. I am Ramesh Sadanada. I play with numbers." He indicated his notebook screen, which was filled with a notation I had never seen before. "That is the small talent which his excellency Minister Shivaji wishes me to exercise on behalf of our country."

Numbers could be everything from accounting to interplanetary navigation. "How did that come about?"

A self-deprecatory shrug. "Largely because I was such a bad student in everything else. Most literature I found impenetrable. History was a chaotic swirl of arbitrary events. Only in numbers was there order, immediately comprehensible on its surface, yet with greater depths and more basic relationships always beckoning me on. I think it was in desperation that my teacher gave me copies of some old notebooks to work through."

Ramesh fell silent. "And?" I prompted.

He shook his head slowly, as if I were bringing him back from a great distance, but only partway. "It was as if I had been living in a foreign country for years, and then suddenly heard someone speaking my native language, a language I had nearly forgotten. It started with simple things, like a different way to compute pi. From there it went on to a series of number proofs. There were steps skipped, but of course they were skipped: they were too obvious to be worth the time to state explicitly.

"Although . . . once or twice, he made a mistake." Ramesh looked at me as if he were confessing the flaw of a particularly favored cousin. "I had to go over and over those proofs, because they were the type of mistakes I would make."

"Did you find enough of interest to stay in school?" I asked.

"I found . . . I found the foundations of the world. Those notebooks were not merely a collection of theorems and proofs. They were the outline of a way of understanding reality. There were incomplete proofs, sections which were no more than hints and speculations. All previous mathematicians had avoided these sections because they were so fragmentary and contradictory. I saw them as markers for my own explorations.

"There is so little I have been able to do so far. But that little has been enough to show me that this, all of this, is illusion. Maya. Professor Yamaoka sees it in terms of physics. He says that I have proven what should have been intuitively obvious. That the Universe we see all around us and the state which immediately preceded the Big Bang are equivalent. They have to be. It is the only result which makes sense."

Only then did my brain belatedly turn on. "You invented the Maya Drive."

Again, the shy, embarrassed smile. "I showed that it could be done. Others, good with their hands, people like you, designed the drive machinery. Especially Professor Yamaoka. I wish we were still allowed to talk."

"Why aren’t–?"

"He is not Indian." Ramesh’s eyes were downcast, his voice flat and without affect. "It was considered an unacceptable security risk for him to be associated with the project."

For the first time, I understood the emotion underlying everything he had said. The loneliness of an exile in an alien land. The loneliness of a genius who saw wonders, but had no one who could understand his discoveries.

"What about the author of the notebooks?" I asked. "You haven’t told me about him."

"Srinivasa Ramanujan has been dead for more that a century and a half."

Two months later, a raging argument on the progress with the Daimonium sheathing came to a halt with the news that Ramesh Sadanada was dead. He had been visiting relatives near the border of Nepal, in a land vehicle so old it required the direction of a human driver. Snow dusted the roads. The tires of previous vehicles had melted the snow, which in places immediately refroze as glare ice. The police report also indicated brake failure, probably caused by a combination of age of the vehicle and the fact that Ramesh only rarely thought to maintain it.

When I looked up, I saw that Shivaji’s face was contorted with emotion. "I suppose," I said carefully, "that this would never have happened if you had been there."

He looked at me curiously, almost offended. "Of course not. I could never stand by and watch anyone die, much less the greatest genius India has produced in generations."

I nodded, and went back to my work.

As expected, the pressure suits caused the most difficulty. Like abyssal diving suits, they were constructed of rigid components, since it was necessary to for the occupant to be protected within a shell which could be maintained at standard pressure. Several areas called for unique solutions.

Even aerogels would have been insufficient insulation for the faceplate. We dealt with that problem by eliminating the faceplate altogether. Sensors built into the Daimonium sheath relayed the exterior scene to goggles worn by the occupant. Microchips tracked head and eye movement so that, visually at least, the explorer would have a completely unobstructed view in all directions. He would seem not to be wearing a helmet at all.

I found it impossible to protect all the hand joints from the heat and still leave the hands flexible enough to remove the data disks within the drone. We stepped around that problem by replacing the gloves with waldoes to be manipulated from within the protected sleeve.

That still left elbows, shoulders, knees, and hips unable to be protected by Daimonium. There was no elegant solution. Standard aerogel insulation reinforced by an intensified layer of microrefrigerant lines would have to do.

We were halfway through the pressure and temperature trials when a horrible thought occurred to me. I called Jagjit Ponnuru, the overall project manager for the retrieval effort.

"What are the entryway dimensions?" I asked.

On the screen of my tracy, Jagjit frowned at me as if I were asking a nonsensical question. "Large enough to allow egress of the Arachnid. I can get you the exact dimensions. How large do you want it?"

I shook my head. "Not the entryway of the landing vehicle. The entrance to the drone. My suits are going to be useless if they are too bulky to get to the data disks."

He blinked. "That is classified. I will have to get back to you."

That night, in bed, Sandy said, "Regina would never have allowed that sort of oversight in one of her projects."

I grunted agreement. But Regina was persona non grata on the project. Her only input was through occasional long-distance consulting. If Shivaji was aware that we were in sporadic communication, he chose not to make an issue of it.

It took Jagjit more that a week to get through the security bureaucracy. When he did, he obtained not only the dimensions of the entryway but also of the passage to the recording equipment.

It was too small. The suits we had built might fit through the hatch, but the wearer would be jammed into immobility at the first turn. We had to do a complete redesign.

Shivaji paid a surprise inspection two weeks later, when the rework was nearly complete. I expected a blustering harangue filled with threats concerning what would happen if we slipped schedule any further. Instead, he inspected the suits with something like awe.

"You would think these were robots," he said, his fingers tracing the opaque helmets, moving down to the hand waldoes. "You would never know that a human was inside. But . . . what is this?"

He had moved around to the back of the suit and was staring at the tightly curled bundles on the back. I felt my stomach tighten.

"My apologies," I said. "I thought my reports made it clear. The gaps in the Daimonium sheath throw a strain on the internal cooling system. The heat has to be dumped somewhere. That is what these vanes are for. They are radiating surfaces. The more heat they have to dump, the further they expand. Most of the time, of course, we want them to be rolled up and out of the way."

"Ingenious," he murmured. "Quite ingenious."

This era of good feeling lasted two days. Then he was in my office demanding that I fire Moe.

"Why?" I asked. "He is one of my best employees. He was the head of the surface team in Hawaii. I trusted him with my life."

"He is a follower of Islam." Shivaji’s tone indicated that no more need be said.

"With a name like Mohammed el-Ghasib, he can hardly be accused of keeping it a secret."

"There is no peace between our people. We used to have a capital named New Delhi. Now we have a radioactive crater."

"They used to have a country called Pakistan. Now you have an additional province. It seems to me that you got the best of that deal." Then, realizing that I might have gone too far: "Look, Moe’s people come from Saudi Arabia, and he was born in Berkeley, California. I am sure he can pass any security check–"

"He has already failed the only security check necessary. Fire him."

I could feel my temper evaporating. "This is simply wrong. You have hired the only team in existence able to keep your expedition from roasting before it touches the surface of Venus. Moe is part of that team."

"Unless he is gone by this evening, your contract will be terminated and you will all be removed."

"That would be self-destructive. Our work is by no means complete."

"If you have accomplished so little, you will be paid nothing."

The word that we were closing down got around quickly. When I got back to my trailer office after notifying the last of the work crews, Moe was waiting for me.

"Boss, I want you to know that I appreciate the stand you have taken."

I shook my head, feeling embarrassed. "Don’t mention it. I’m not about to let some bigoted moron push my people around. That’s not the way the Brothers taught me."

"But if there is one thing Janey and I have appreciated more, it has been being paid regularly. Until recently, that has been a sometimes proposition."

"I know," I said. "I appreciate the loyalty of everyone who has stood by me."

"So let’s not throw it away just because some bureaucrat is a xenophobe. Here’s a suggestion. Fire me to make Shivaji happy. Then appoint me your agent to handle all the deals we had lined up before Shivaji monopolized all our energies. I go back to the States and restart everything from the Moho probes to providing technical advice on the remake of At the Earth’s Core. We all make more money than we would have otherwise, without the legal fight which might break us even if we eventually won."

I grimaced. "Shivaji shouldn’t be able to push us around." I wanted that to sound noble. Somehow, even to my own ears, it sounded petulant.

Moe leaned across the desk and squeezed my shoulder as if I were a younger brother. "Absolutely right, in a perfect world. But this will be better for everyone. Do it as a favor for me."

Shivaji seemed almost disappointed when I told him the news. It was the last major disruption in our work. Less than a month later, we were undergoing our last premission briefing. I had thought myself prepared for all the major obstacles and dangers: the crushing pressure, the noxious atmosphere, the intense heat. Now I learned one last detail, caused by a conspiracy between our schedule and celestial mechanics.

We would be searching for the drone in the dark, in a night longer and more intense than any ever known on Earth.

On a notebook screen on the slopes of Mauna Loa, the Indira Gandhi had appeared to be a ten-story tower. In the intervening months, it had been given detail and substance, and become the spacecraft which would land us on Venus. Strapped into my cabin bunk, I had my first real opportunity to look past the engineering problems and personality clashes that had occupied my mind for most of ten weeks and consider the importance of our mission. It was almost too big to grasp. I could hardly comprehend the Cramers which were propelling us in-system at one g. We were emitting neutrinos at infinite velocity, tachyons if you will, which were pushing us forward as they fled away into the past. A little more than five years before, the first lab demonstration of a Cramer drive had rocked the world. Antigravity at no power cost! Cheap travel within the solar system, measured in terms of days and weeks rather than years. According to Regina, there were even plans to build floating cities, which would drift all over the Earth on its constantly changing winds.

Now we were going after a technology compared to which Cramer drives were as primitive as sailing vessels. No wonder Shivaji had been pushing us so hard.

Colonel Sattayarak was our pilot. Near the end of our deceleration, he invited us into the lounge. The outer wall was a high definition screen. Right now it was displaying a white crescent which stretched from floor to ceiling.

"Is this working correctly?" Jagjit asked. "Shouldn’t I be seeing cloud patterns?"

"You are too used to seeing those pictures taken in ultraviolet light," Shivaji said, not unkindly. "They print those in all the books, because the visible wavelength reality is too dull."

But it wasn’t dull at all. The cloud cover glowed with the brilliant white of sulphuric acid droplets. Colonel Sattayarak told us to resume our stations for the descent. As I looked back on leaving the room, I though I could see pinpricks of light in the darkness far below. I wondered idly what they might be.

One of the nicer things about the Cramer drive was that there was no need for the ten g fireball reentry decelerations characteristic of chemical rockets. Sattayarak could drop us down gently as a feather if he wished. He would not so wish. At about seventy kilometers, we would encounter the top layer of sulphuric acid clouds. Even though the Russian Venera landers seemed to have succumbed to heat and pressure rather than the effects of acid, I did not want not want Daimonium exposed to the acid for a prolonged period. The good news was that the acid clouds ceased a little below fifty miles from the surface. The bad news was that they ceased because they evaporated before they hit the ground.

I lay strapped in my bunk, listening to the whisper of atmosphere grow to a dull roar, wishing Sandy and I were close enough to hold hands.

Weight had been increasing steadily. Suddenly, the straps bit into me as that weight was released. We had entered the upper cloud bank and Sattayarak was letting us drop. I wished our room had its own viewscreen, then chided myself for my forgetfulness. Outside, there would be only layer upon layer of darkness.

"David," Sandy said, "haven’t we been falling for an awfully long–"

A thrumming vibration made itself felt through wall and cushions. I felt myself pressed down into the bunk.

"Those were the Cramers powering up," I said, trying not to sound as relieved as I felt. "I guess we won’t crash after all."

The thrumming died away, but the sensation of weight remained. Abruptly, there was an almost imperceptible bump.

"Touchdown." Sattayarak’s voice over the intercom sounded no more than slightly amused. "Welcome to Venus."

I unsnapped the safety harness and scrambled up to the control room, nearly banging my head on the companionway. Surface gravity might be almost nine-tenths of Earth’s, but that missing one-tenth was, in close quarters, enough to make a painful difference. I held my hand up to every vent I passed to see if anything had gone immediately wrong. Reassuringly cool air washed across my palm each time.

As I crowded into the control room, Sattayarak was reading a series of numbers to Jagjit, who was methodically noting them down. Temperatures all along the inner hull. I found my station and checked the readings for the sensors monitoring the performance of the Daimonium itself. If integrity had somehow been compromised during the landing, I would probably note it here before the interior temperatures started to rise. With luck, I would see it soon enough for us to abort the mission and rise above the atmosphere before we all roasted.

"What was that?"

I looked up at Jagjit, who was staring at the wall. "What was what?"

"That." The console trembled. There was a distant rumble, almost too low to hear. "That sound . . . like the footsteps of dinosaurs."

Sattayarak looked up patiently. "I, too, saw that movie when I was very young. I assure you, however, that there are no tyrannosaurs on Venus." Jagjit glared at him, angry but still frightened. Sattayarak sighed. "I have been hearing the same sound at irregular intervals since we landed. Whatever it is, it comes no nearer and gets no louder. It in no way threatens the stability of our vessel. For the moment, therefore, I believe we may ignore it."

"How close are you to finished up there?" Shivaji’s voice over the intercom betrayed a carefully restrained impatience.

I looked over at the chronometer. It had taken more than half an hour to complete the landing checks. "Everything is fine here."

Jagjit looked over at Sattayarak and checked his screen one more time. "We are finished. Everything is optimal, so far."

"Then please release Mr. Maxwell to me. I do not want to be down here a minute longer than necessary."

At Jagjit’s nod I left my station and took the moving ladder tubeway, which extended the full length of the ship, down to the hold. There lay the Arachnid, its legs folded about it to save room, its burnished skin gleaming in the dim hold lighting. I scrambled in, sealing the hatch behind me.

The plan from this point was simple. The drone lay on a ledge halfway up the side of a landform unique to Venus called a pancake dome. We had landed at its base. Although the sides were generally quite steep, intensive radar reconnaissance had discovered a twisting pathway up to the ledge with a slope no greater than thirty degrees. The Arachnid should be able to handle it easily.

Shivaji would enter the drone and remove the data disk. Sandy and I were along to make sure that all the cooling systems in both the Arachnid and the suits worked. In addition, Sandy would act as chauffeur, having qualified to drive the Arachnid in the preceding three months.

They had completed all their system checks while I had been up in the control room. As I was strapping myself in, Shivaji asked Sattayarak to pressurize the hold and open the main door. Hot carbon dioxide flooded the space around us, quickly increasing the pressure to ninety-two Earth atmospheres.

"Interior pressure is steady. No leaks," Sandy said. The temperature in the hold had climbed to five hundred degrees Centigrade. Inside the Arachnid, only cool air. The Daimonium, in fact all the systems, were functioning perfectly.

"Let’s get going, then," Shivaji commanded. Joysticks flanked either side of Sandy’s chair. She squeezed one of them. The Arachnid stretched its legs and walked down the ramp to the basalt of Venus.

Sudden brilliance cracked the sky into jagged plates. A few seconds later, the shockwave washed over us. The Arachnid quivered, but did not lose its balance.

"That is what Jagjit was hearing," I realized. "There has been a thunderstorm going on ever since we landed."

"It is no more than a distraction," Shivaji decided. "We are more than thirty kilometers below any rainfall. The wind speed is–?"

"Between one and two kilometers per hour," Sandy said.

"Not a factor, then. Proceed. Only you may wish to adjust the light intensification on our screens. The ground appears to be glowing on the current setting."

"You are getting an unenhanced outside image," I said, licking suddenly dry lips. "Parts of the ground are indeed glowing. It is only slightly below melting temperature."

The Arachnid advanced with a prancing motion, intelligent shock absorbers keeping the cabin level and damping out all but forward motion. I programed the screen so that it would retain the images provided by the lightning and adjust them accordingly as we moved forward. Succeeding flashes extended the range of the image and corrected the program’s bad guesses.

Static erupted from the speaker. ". . . ving troub . . . ceiving your telemetry . . ."

Shivaji activated his mike. "I’m having difficulty receiving your transmission. Say again."

This time the garble was even worse.

"It’s the lightning storm," I said. "The static is drowning us out." I tried the other frequencies. Improvement was minimal. We could make ourselves understood, barely, at the base of the ramp. Half a kilometer away, nothing intelligible got through.

"Well, can we proceed?" Shivaji asked impatiently.

Sandy and I exchanged a glance, astonished that Shivaji was asking the question rather than just commanding us to go forward. On reflection, though, it made sense: Hounding project subordinates to make a schedule was one thing; strolling off onto into a ferociously hostile environment with malfunctioning equipment, however, might understandably induce a more conservative attitude.

"Things may look worse than they actually are," Sandy suggested. "Although we would like to have a working radio, it isn’t necessary to the mission. After all, if the Arachnid breaks down, what can they do for us back at the ship? There is no backup Arachnid to come rescue us. The distance will be too far to walk in these suits. And if the Indira Gandhi could set down on the ledge where the drone is, we would have done so."

Shivaji grimaced. Lack of redundancy was an issue we had brought up before. In the end, Shivaji had ruled that he could not afford the extra time that it would have taken to send two ships, or to increase the size of the Indira Gandhi to make room for two Arachnids. He looked at me.

"We’re here," I agreed. "Let’s at least make the attempt. If any of the readings even get close to the danger zone, we head back."

Shivaji managed to make himself understood to Jagjit, and we set off again. All three of us were aware that, despite what I had said, if things actually started to go wrong, they might well do so with such speed that a leisurely retreat would be impossible.

The base of the dome was littered with rubble, platelike stone fragments which had apparently cracked off the upper reaches. The Arachnid lurched a few times as the debris shifted beneath its weight. Then we were on the slope beyond the loose rock and began our ascent.

It became quickly apparent that our radar maps, detailed as they were, were nonetheless misleading. There were gashes in the slope. Some of these crevasses were small enough that Sandy could make the Arachnid step across them. Others were too wide for that. After carefully walking the Arachnid along the edge to measure their depth and grade, Sandy took the Arachnid down one side and traversed the bottom until it came to the incline she had spotted earlier which it could negotiate to climb back to the surface.

Near the end of the ascent, the grade increase to nearly forty-five degrees. The Arachnid started up, then began to slide.

"Don’t let it turn over!" Shivaji hissed.

Sandy fought the controls. As sophisticated as the Arachnid was, its design necessarily resulted in a high center of gravity. Movement brought out an inherent instability. Now, as it began to slide and twist, I found myself remembering how, as a child, I had come across an upside-down horseshoe crab, its small feet waving in the sun as it dried.

The upslope legs buckled at their top joints, so that the Arachnid fell toward the incline. There was a tremendous screeching as the craft slid the rest of the way down to the base of the slope. I waited for alarms. The displays showed that we were maintaining a steady interior temperature and cabin pressure. The only indication that we were in trouble was the slant of the deck.

Sandy was studying her instrument bank intently. "Hold on." She gripped both joysticks tightly, yanking back on one as she pushed the other forward. With a shudder and a lurch, the Arachnid stood up. The deck resumed the horizontal.

"We do not want to do that again," Shivaji said, his eyes very wide.

"I have no intention of doing so," Sandy replied. From where I sat, I could see that she had called up detailed images of the slope. False colors highlighted the relief . Various grooves and bumps were magnified, examined, and then replaced in the larger map, with lines showing the distances between them.

"What do you think?" Sandy asked.

"It looks doable," I said reluctantly.

"What–" Shivaji began.

"We were very proud of the Pellucidar Express when we first designed it," Sandy said, "but for all the sophistication of its sonars and its Daimonium sheathing, it was basically just a high-temperature bathyscaphe. This Arachnid is a much more sophisticated vehicle. I have failed to make use of its abilities until now."

She finished entering the final instructions. It responded on the console screen: PROGRAM COMPLETE. EXECUTE? Y/N. Shivaji was looking increasingly concerned. "You should not–"

Y ENTER.

I was thrown back in my seat as we surged forward. The cabin tilted for an instant as we hit the slope, then righted itself as the Arachnid put most of its weight onto its front legs. They searched for and found the footholds Sandy had identified. A few were rotten. The cabin shuddered as a rock gave way under the sudden weight of the vehicle. The motors powering the other legs whined as they took up the strain, thrusting the Arachnid up to the next set of holds.

And then we were on level ground again. The Arachnid was motionless, having come to the end of its programmed run. Ahead of us, at the end of this level space, lay a cylinder with rounded, tapered ends. It was perhaps three meters in diameter through its center and about twelve meters long.

"Well," said Shivaji, letting out his breath in a long sigh, "this is extraordinary. I really did not think you would make it." It was as close as he ever came to a compliment. "Let’s get what we came for."

Although for safety reasons, each of us had individually fitted suits, the plan was for Sandy to stay at the controls of the Arachnid while Shivaji and I went outside to retrieve the data disk from the drone. Actually, Shivaji would retrieve the disk. I was going along to make sure our suits functioned properly and for extra muscle in case it was needed to open heat-swollen doors.

The suits were kept in a room beneath the main cabin. I sealed myself into my suit and initiated the automatic checking sequence. Small lights flashed contentedly in the lower left corner of my vision, keeping time with the shifting initials of each feature of the suit. Then there was only a single winking green light. I looked over at Shivaji. He had been right. With opaque helmets and mechanical hands, we were the classical images of robots.

"Transmission test. This is Maxwell. Everything is green."

"All green with Shivaji. Pressurize and open."

Sandy’s confirmation was so clear in my helmet that she might have been standing right next to me. I felt heat around shoulders and elbows, knees and ankles. The cooling unit clicked on and the warmth faded away.

"Opening the exterior lock," Sandy warned.

A slice of the floor ahead of us dropped slowly away and became a ramp. I followed Shivaji down to the surface of Venus.

Immediately beneath the Arachnid, illuminated by the lights beneath its belly, there was ground indistinguishable to my nongeologist’s eye from that which might have been seen in any stony desert on Earth. Two meters beyond the Arachnid’s legs, the ground fell away vertically. Lightning spider-webbed the sky, and was reflected in the burnished hull. I looked out over a dark plain, dotted with dull red smudges. Despite the darkness, I was able to spot the Indira Gandhi almost immediately, a silvery column thrust up against the utter monotony of the burning bottomlands.

I felt rather than heard the impact. It hit me from behind, not a sharp blow but irresistible nonetheless, and I stumbled, leaned far out over the abyss, and began to fall–

Only to be grabbed and pulled back onto the ledge. "Don’t go near the edge." Even this close to Shivaji, static crackled so loudly as to make him nearly unintelligible. "In this thick atmosphere, the nearer lightning flashes cause thunder to have as much force as a depth charge going off underwater."

He sounded as shaken as I felt. The radiating vanes on his back had partially unfolded, giving him the aspect of an as yet unclassified insect. As he spoke, another thunderclap rolled over us, a pressure almost like a sudden gust of wind. This time I was able to brace against it and remain upright.

I followed him carefully over to the drone, alert for any sign of a breach in the Daimonium sheathing of our suits. I could feel the surge of coolant around knees and elbows, even hear it as a distant whisper.

The drone, when we reached it, looked disappointingly ordinary for a prototype starship. Whatever had gone wrong had left most of the backup systems operational. It seemed to have set down and shut itself off without impacting on the surface. It was even oriented with the hatch facing us.

That was our last bit of luck. As expected, the hatch mechanism was not operational. Shivaji took a long, wedge-shaped tool from his belt, snapped it on to a waldo hand, and pried the hatch open. It stuck at about three centimeters, either because some interior mechanism had melted and was blocking it or because hatch and hull had swollen enough with the heat to throw the hatch off the interior track. I added my strength to Shivaji’s. Together we pushed, pulled, and jiggled, and finally managed to slide the hatch all the way back. I stood aside then for Shivaji to enter.

Because the drone had been designed to operate in outer space without a crew, it had no airlock. A tunnel, less than a meter wide, ran from the hatch to the heart of the vessel: the autopilot which controlled the Cramers and the Maya drive. There was lodged the data disk which might hold the secret of interstellar flight. Or might contain the evidence which would prove it impossible.

Shivaji entered halfway, and stopped. "I can’t get around the bend." He had to say it three times before I could understand him through the crackling static.

"Pull in your radiator vanes. They may be snagging."

He did so, and now was able to get completely inside. But not down the tunnel. I tried to imagine what the problem could be. We had rehearsed this procedure several times with a mock-up. It should prove a tight fit, but by no means impossible.

"I’m getting hot." Shivaji backed out carefully and stood beside me. The vanes unfolded as if in relief. I examined him closely, wondering if despite our precautions something–the vanes or the tool belt–had come loose.

"This is the wrong suit," I said. "This is one of the set we designed before I got the entryway dimensions from Jagjit."

Shivaji was silent for so long that I thought he might not have heard me through the static. "This cannot be a mistake. It must be intentional. Sabotage."

Another pause. "Are you wearing the proper suit, Mr. Maxwell? If so, you should be able to retrieve the disk."

Had my own suit been switched, I would have noticed it. "Alright," I agreed. "It’s the least I can do for the man who just saved my life."

I retracted the vanes on my suit and climbed in through the hatch. It was a tight fit, but I was able to crawl forward slowly on hands and knees, my way illuminated by the light on my helmet. Everything was the way it had been described at the end of the tunnel. Aside from a few readouts, now blank, there were two disk trays. The one on the left contained the flight program. The one on the right had all the data from five minutes before the flight started to system shutdown.

The trays had been designed to slide in and out at the touch of a button. That was not going to work without power, and restoring power under these conditions would have been difficult to impossible. Instead, I had been provided with a thin piece of metal with a small flange on the forward end. I was to attach this to a waldo, slide it under the tray, hook it, and pull it out manually.

To my astonishment, it worked the first time. The tray came out. With utmost delicacy, my waldo hand lifted the disk and deposited it in the pouch which had been specially designed for its safekeeping.

There was no room to turn around. I backed out slowly until my feet banged against the end of the tunnel. Then I extended my left foot, feeling for the hatch opening. It bumped against solid metal. I drew the leg up and tried again. Same result. I squeezed myself into a tight crouch, hoping that the illumination from my helmet might disclose the problem.

The hatch was closed. There was no inside latch or any other sort of opening mechanism. From this angle, in the uncertain light, I could barely see the hatch’s outline.

Sweat stung my eyes. In this cramped space, there was no room for my radiating vanes to unfurl. Heat was building within my suit. If I did not get out quickly, I would cook.

"Shivaji! Open the hatch. Let me out!" There was no response.

Read the exciting conclusion in the December 1999 issue of Analog!

"Heat" copyright 1999, Rober R. Chase