Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [185]
“I can promise that.”
“Then let’s go.”
The Voracious Curiosity and the Blind Faith descended into the darkness of the smothered Crenna system. Davlin rode in the cockpit next to Rlinda Kett, much more animated and intense now than he had been when she’d dropped him off at Crenna not long ago. He could barely contain his relief.
A transmission came from the Blind Faith. “We’re here, but somebody switched off the sun, all right. Can’t even tell we’re in a planetary system.”
“Just watch out that you don’t run smack into the star, BeBob. Sometimes you don’t pay enough attention to your piloting.”
“I resent that, Rlinda.”
“But I don’t hear you arguing.”
She adjusted course, and Davlin leaned close to the cockpit windows. Viewing through infrared filters, they could still see fading colors as the planet’s thermal energy bled into space. With the sun’s nuclear fires extinguished, the whole Crenna system was nothing more than a cooling corpse, a dark ball in space. The planet’s atmosphere had already frozen out; ice sheets were piled on top of shattered ground upheavals. The air had condensed into carbon dioxide snow. All lakes and streams were obliterated, every living thing wiped out on the surface.
Davlin shook his head. “I hope the people are still alive down there.”
“How long did you say this ice age has lasted?” Roberts transmitted.
“Less than two weeks. There’s still heat emanating from the planet itself, and the star’s not entirely cold. Overall there’s about one percent of the former flux.”
“Good thing we brought our shovels,” Rlinda said. “Tell me where to go, Davlin.”
Before departing, he had placed a locator beacon with a long-lived battery near the hatch that covered the tunnels. He had never mentioned it to Mayor Ruis, not wanting the people huddled in their warrens to realize how bad the outer environment would get. He scanned through frequency bands and finally located the faint pinging of the locator beacon, much weaker than he’d expected. To his dismay, he realized that the beacon itself was buried under deep ice.
“I’ll project a bull’s-eye for you.”
They descended through swirling air that had frozen into a slurry of snow and carbon dioxide flakes. Davlin operated the comm systems. “Crenna colony, this is Davlin Lotze.” He waited, but heard only static. “Mayor Ruis, are you still receiving? I’ve brought help.” He tried several times, equally unsuccessful.
Rlinda looked at her equipment and shook her head. “Oh, don’t read too much into it, Davlin. The storms and the snow are building up a significant EM disturbance, and a normal signal might not be able to punch through all that ice.”
When the two ships reached position, Davlin peered down at the swirling layers of ice and frozen atmosphere. He couldn’t even see the protrusions of his hangar or any of the town’s buildings.
“Shall we sprinkle some salt?” Roberts joked.
“If it’s frozen atmosphere, there’ll be a very low volatilization point. We can melt it with the exhaust from our engines,” Rlinda said. “Don’t have to be pretty about it.” She dropped the Curiosity closer for a slow landing and let the hot vented gases blast geysers of steam from a wide area near the sealed vault door. Drifting up and down to hold her position, in half an hour she had cut a significant divot, then withdrew to let the Blind Faith take its turn in the small zone, evaporating more of the thick frozen shield.
Before long, they had excavated a large crater around the sealed metal cap.
“Now for the next problem,” Davlin said. “We were in such a hurry to get the Crenna colonists underground, to build a safe haven that would keep them warm, we just installed that single vault lid—not a sophisticated airlock.”
“Can they survive long enough to make it into our ships?” Rlinda asked.
Davlin