Extinction

had such a fleet handy, they would have used it-all of it. They were not subtle machines.

Logically, that left me with only one conclusion: they were able to achieve FTL travel, and the entry point they had come from was right here, on the surface of Venus. The ring on the surface of the world, however it had come to be here, had to be the way they were traveling to our system from other stars.

“It’s a portal of some kind,” I said. “It has to be. The Macros must have built it or found it or something, and they have been using it to come in and out of our system from some other star.”

“From where?”

“I have no idea, but I think I know how to find out,” I said.

“If you try to fly us through that thing, you don’t know what’s going to happen, Kyle.”

“No, I don’t. That’s the point of experimentation. We need to explore the differences between our theories and reality.”

“This isn’t science. We’re more like a pair of monkeys playing with a handgun.”

I sniffed. “I prefer being compared to a gorilla.”

“We’re gonna die,” she said.

I considered her words. She had a point. But then again, I hadn’t come all this way for nothing.

“Socorro,” I said. “Take us down into the atmosphere. Take us down closer to the unknown structure.”

— 28-

Before we went down, I formed up a message to General Kerr’s team. He was a spook now, but I still thought of him as a General. I told him what was going on, and reported every detail we had on the ‘unknown structure’ we’d found on Venus. I didn’t tell him we were going down to mess with it. If we survived and returned home, I could tell him what I’d learned later. If we didn’t come back, he was smart enough to figure out it was dangerous.

This was my first time exploring an alien planet. Lucky me-Venus was one of the nastiest worlds in the solar system. The surface was extremely deadly. The atmosphere was thick, ninety-two times as thick as Earth’s. The pressure at the surface was equivalent to being a half-mile deep in the ocean. As a bonus the ‘air’ was poisonous, made up primarily of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The high-level, opaque clouds that coated the world were made up of sulfuric acid. Just to keep things interesting, the acid clouds were continuously blown around the planet by two hundred mile-an-hour winds. Conditions were even worse down on the ground. The surface temperature was a toasty nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit. That was hot enough to melt zinc on a sunny day-but there weren’t any of those on Venus, either.

I had a pricey digital recording system connected to the exterior cameras and I switched them all on to record our approach. I figured I would give the data to the science boys back home as a goodwill gesture. But I was worried the cameras wouldn’t be able to tolerate the heat and pressure of Venus. The cameras were all behind military-grade ballistic glass. They were built to operate on spy planes, but not under such extreme conditions. When we reached the upper layers of the atmosphere, I ordered the Socorro to cover all external ports with a layer of nanite-metal, including the glass floor of the observation chamber. We would be flying down blind except for the ship’s sensors and the forward wall display.

As we bumped our way into the atmosphere, I watched Sandra’s eyes grow increasingly alarmed. The winds buffeted our big, empty tin can of a ship, making it heave and roll. The engines rumbled and whirred softly, fighting to keep us from going into a spin.

“It feels like we’re in a washing machine!” she shouted over the roaring winds.

“That’s the acid-cloud layer,” I shouted back. “Things should smooth out when we get closer to the surface.”

“What acid-clouds?” she screamed.

“Want to go home?”

Sandra nodded. Her eyes were huge. She said something else, but I couldn’t make it out.

“Too late now!” I shouted, smiling at her.

Sandra gave me the bird. At least we could still communicate.

I was nervous too, but I tried to appear calm for her sake. I had plenty of reasons to worry. Venus was just one of them. The unknown ring structure on the planet’s surface was another. The Macros were the third. What if this thing had an automated defense system? It hadn’t lit us up with a beam or fired a missile, but maybe that was because we hadn’t irritated it enough yet. If it was a gateway, as I suspected it must be, did it have an off switch? Was it operating right now, or was it dormant? If we tried to use it, were there necessary precautions we didn’t comprehend, such as radiation shielding? What if it was some kind of worm-hole device, and we went into it without any inertial stabilizers? Would that be a deadly mistake?

Then there was the biggest question of all. If we did fly through this portal-if that’s what it was-who would be waiting for us on the other side? Would they be happy to see my little Nano ship nosing around? Somehow, I doubted it.

The winds died down as we broke through the clouds into the hazy brown lower layers. I could hear Sandra again.

“That was crazy,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “We made it through though, didn’t we? Down here beneath the acid-clouds the winds are relatively mild. At the surface, the gases are thick and soupy, and the winds are only a few miles an hour.”

“You have to stop saying ‘acid-clouds’ okay?”

“Okay.”

We were only a dozen miles from the ring now. I could see it on the forward wall, a looming arch that seemed huge from our perspective. I couldn’t make a precise measurement, but I figured it had to be at least three miles in diameter. Its lower half had sunk down into the surface of the world and was invisible to anything except the passive sensors of the Nano ship.

“Socorro,” I said, “halt the ship and hold our position.”

We were thrown forward as the ship braked, redirecting its engines.

“Is the structure active?” I asked the ship.

“Specify.”

I thought for a second. “Is it releasing energy from an internal source?”

“Yes,” the ship said.

“Socorro, do you know how to activate this structure?” I asked, hoping.

“No. The structure is unknown.”

“I think the ship already made that one pretty clear, but you had to try,” Sandra said sympathetically.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to think. “If we had Alamo, I bet she would know what to do. Those ships charged off into the farthest reaches of the Solar System the day they left. I’m pretty sure they went to find something like this out there in the void.”

“Why don’t we just fly through it? I mean, I know you are going to do it anyway. If we just sit here maybe a Macro will show up.”

I thought about that. I sighed, then nodded. After all, the artifact was a giant ring. What else could you do, other than fly through it?

“Socorro, what would happen if we flew through the center of the structure?” I asked, hoping again.

There was a familiar hesitation. I suspected I was giving the ship’s fledgling mind a workout. “Assumption: non-specific pronoun we refers to this ship and crew. Analysis based on assumption: The ship would exit on the other side.”

“No kidding,” said Sandra.

I frowned. “Socorro, where is the other side?”

“Unknown.”

“That’s great,” said Sandra, crossing her arms. “Well, are you going to do it?”

“Do you want to?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter what I want. You always do whatever you want to anyway.”