Ishtar Rising Book 1 - Michael A. Martin [1]
“After spending six years overseeing Project Ishtar,” said Adrienne Paulos as she inspected the instrument panel beside Saadya’s, “it’s hard to believe you’ve never been all the way down to the surface before.”
Still looking out through the viewport, Saadya imagined he could feel the atmosphere of Aphrodite Terra pressing down on the ground station’s structure, like the hand of some merciless god inexorably closing into a fist.
He forced the image from his mind.
“The big-picture theoretical work requires a global perspective, Adrienne,” Saadya said, “and that’s rather difficult to achieve down here beneath the clouds. Like trying to forecast Earth’s weather from the bottom of the ocean. How are the force-field generators holding up?”
“Everything in the ground network is still looking nominal,” Paulos said, then turned toward the pair of Bynars who ran the computer console to her immediate left. “How do the atmospheric numbers and the probe network data look?”
1011 and 1110—known to the predominantly human crew members of Project Ishtar as Ten-Eleven and Eleven-Ten—spoke in their customary smooth, collaborative manner, each finishing the other’s utterances.
“According to the probe data—”
“—and our last round of chaotic atmospheric motion simulations—”
“—the force-field generator network should succeed in lifting the bulk of the atmosphere from this valley—”
“—all the way to the superrotational region of the cloudtops—”
“—and safely disperse it there.”
The first step to setting this place to rights is to blow all the excess atmosphere off this Gehenna of a world. Saadya felt awed by the powers now at his command. Using only directed force fields, they were preparing to displace a mass comparable to that of the Indian Ocean, moving it about as though it were furniture.
Saadya smiled. “Let’s do it, then.”
Paulos, the Bynars, and the rest of the crew—both in the ground station and up in the orbital facility—continued their work with resolve and professionalism. Within eight minutes, the force fields had pushed an immense swath of superheated, compressed carbon dioxide gas to an altitude of about sixty-nine-point-two kilometers above the canyon floor, where it came into contact with the fast-moving layers of the atmosphere, a torrent of noxious Venusian air that circled the entire slow-turning globe in a mere four Earth days.
The theory had been worked out superlatively. The numbers were right, as confirmed by the network of orbital satellites and the millions of tiny, interconnected probes that floated through the atmosphere. The force-field generators, the bulk of whose hardware was distributed among several hundred staffed and automated ground stations, were working to perfection.
Perfection. He smiled.
Then Saadya was momentarily struck speechless when the force-field generator network’s computers became confused by the chaotic motions of the upper atmosphere and began feeding an ocean of ionized carbon dioxide—air displaced by the mass that Hesperus Station’s energy fields had moved—straight back at the station dome with nearly the force of an asteroid impact.
“Abort!” shouted Paulos. The Bynar duo struggled to bring the forces the team had unleashed back under control, with no immediately apparent success.
From somewhere behind Saadya’s instrument panel, one of the dome’s support trusses groaned ominously.
Paulos evidently heard it, too. She cursed, then began speaking rapidly into a comm panel. “Ishtar Station, initiate backup force fields across the entire ground network.”
Damn! Saadya thought. This cock-up will take us weeks to set right.
A moment later, the local force field collapsed and inrushing atmosphere rang Hesperus as though it were a colossal church bell. The impact rocked the station, throwing Saadya to his knees. The Bynars fell like dominoes, though Paulos somehow managed to remain at her console.
The atmosphere must have breached the outer hull, Saadya thought, swallowing panic.
Braces and beams shrieked in protest, responding to the irresistible heat and pressure bearing