“Ah, I see. You were built under great pressure, and designed to fold out when you reached space. Like some kind of giant solar sail.”
“Reference unclear.”
“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. What I want to know is if you can reshape yourself with a small, but effective command module. I need an egg-shaped region of airspace around me-let’s make it about three feet from my person in every direction. That should be enough room for my seat and the translation device.”
At length, I got the ship reconfigured into a tight, coffin shape that had a hull several inches thick. I was certain it could withstand tremendous pressure-but could I? The jury was still out on that point.
I ordered the ship to descend gradually, not wanting to crash into anything. Every five hundred miles, I stopped and made a communications attempt. There was plenty of howling wind out there, but I never heard an intelligible response.
The more I thought about the structure of this world, the more sense the deep-planet theory made. This ship was made of metal, and if it came from this world, there had to be a source of metal somewhere to build it. I decided to ask Alamo.
“Does this world have a rocky core?”
There was a slight hesitation. “No.”
I was surprised to get a direct answer. These Nano ships had always been reluctant to reveal any information concerning their origins. I thought perhaps by being here, and asking about the world I was on, rather than the world of its creators, I’d bypassed some of these defenses.
“But there is some metallic content somewhere, right? Something a vessel like yours could be fashioned from?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have a molten core?” I asked, frowning.
“Yes.”
I didn’t like that. A hot, metallic, molten core? Was walking on the so-called surface of this planet really going to be more like walking on a lava flow? I recalled the unexpected thermal flux. External readings indicated the atmosphere was indeed getting warmer as I descended.
I continued falling deeper. Hours passed. I was surprised when I reached six Gs, because I could still breathe and even move about. I could feel the weight, but it didn’t crush me. I’d allowed the pressure inside the ship and my suit to build up as I went down, naturally. I didn’t want to cause it to implode due to low pressure on the interior and higher pressure outside.
Another five thousand miles down, I began to feel my breath coming in ragged heaves. I didn’t ask about Gs or pressure ratings anymore. I didn’t want to know-I might panic, if I knew the truth. I did know no normal human could have survived it. My eyes swam with golden flecks. Frequently, my vision was blocked and it often dimmed in waves. When I became worried I might pass out, I stopped descending.
“Let’s cruise at this depth,” I said thickly.
The only good thing was the change in turbulence. The gusting winds of the upper atmosphere had died down. It was relatively smooth sailing deep within the planet, inside a poisonous soup of gases that were almost liquids, they were so thick. I had set up a repeating message by this time, and I let the brainbox operating the bassoon-like translation system sing its strange song as we traveled.
More hours passed. Had the Macros attacked by now? Had Sarin declared me lost, and ordered Star Force to pull out? I didn’t think my officers would let her get away with that so soon. Maybe a week from now, but not just a day or two after I’d taken the plunge.
As the first day in the gas giant’s atmosphere slipped into a second, the novelty had begun to wear off. I no longer felt like an intrepid explorer. Instead, I felt like a fool who had to go to the bathroom all the time. The pressure in my bladder was particularly annoying. Every time I drank a cup of liquid, I felt like I was going to explode. I suspected it had to do with the alterations to my density Marvin had made with the nanites. My nerves still felt the pressure in some key areas.
I began to think it might take weeks to find the Blues, and the thought almost made me despair. I had no idea how far down they were. They might be above me, living in a narrow band that was comfortable for their race. Or they might be much deeper, in a place I would never be able to reach because it would kill me to do so.
I tried to reason it through. If they had built ships and sent them up to space, they must have worked with the molten core at the bottom of this endless fog. I thought about the creature I’d met named Introspection. The Blue had been huge, and thinly spread out. But perhaps on this world, floating in the hot thick atmosphere, the creature would have been compressed in comparison. I could only make guesses.
At last, after having circumnavigated the world from pole to pole, I ordered Alamo to take me down deeper. Another thousand miles-then two. Then three.
I felt sick. I could no longer see, except in flashes. When I finally heard something different, a voice talking to me, it was like hearing angels singing in the distance.
“Why do air-thoughts disturb our peace?”
“What?”
“The noise must stop.”
I blinked, but my eyes didn’t work anymore. I struggled to think. I’d been dozing-dreaming and awake at the same time. I’d fit the messages into my dreams, which had been about talking clouds with frowning faces of gauze.
“Halt descent,” I ordered. “Stop contact message loop. Halt all transmissions into the atmosphere.”
The groaning, warbling cries finally ceased. That was a relief to me. Nothing else happened for a while, and I began to wonder if I’d dreamt the entire affair. Then the translator spoke again.
“The thought has ceased. Peace is restored.”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Curiosity,” the voice said.
I smiled slowly. I wasn’t totally sure, but I figured I’d found myself a Blue. Apparently, I’d done it by annoying him until he made contact. Who said spamming never worked?
— 34
Curiosity quickly lived up to his name. I’d expected to be learning from him, but he was the one asking most of the questions. I wasn’t sure he was a he, of course. There didn’t seem to be any comprehension among these creatures concerning gender. As best I could figure out, they didn’t exactly mate. Being a mass of aerogel, they spawned new young by flying high and being ripped apart by the high winds. Viable bits with complete enough structures floated back down and regrew until they reached adulthood again. It was very strange, but not really a lonely existence. They ran into one another often and shared mass whenever they did so. It was rather like mating. For them, exchanging body mass and communicating were the same activity.
After an hour or two of back-and-forth discussions, Curiosity asked to taste me. I said I could do that, but only if we flew up to a higher level. He was reluctant, but I assured him we wouldn’t go all the way up to the upper turbulence, which I surmised would be deadly to him-or might cause an unscheduled “spawning”.
At about nine thousand miles from the top of the atmosphere, I was able to move about in relative comfort. As a nanotized man, I would have been flat on my back and nearly unconscious. As a regular unaltered human, I would have quickly died. But after the Microbes had done their strange, bizarre work on my internal organs and external epidermis, I was not only functional, but willing to try exiting my craft.
I came out in my battle suit, after forcing Alamo to build me an airlock. The ship didn’t like it, and gave me plenty of objections. I was command personnel, I was not authorized, etc. I didn’t feel like explaining Microbes and Marvin and the rest. I didn’t entirely know what it was I’d become, anyway.
At last I wriggled out of an airlock that was about as big as a household oven and swam in the blinding murk of Eden-12. Alamo didn’t let me go entirely free, however. It maintained a firm grip about my midsection with a set of three black cable-thick fingers. The ship held me in a death grip. I felt like a new Christmas toy in a toddler’s
