Ishtar Rising Book 1 - Michael A. Martin [25]
Gold sat in the captain’s chair, watching the forbidding hellworld that filled the viewer, along with everyone else present. The tension in the air was palpable, and he realized too late that his biosynthetic fingers had dug themselves completely through the upholstery at the base of the chair’s left armrest. Instinct can get too big a push from technology sometimes.
He hoped Pas stopped to consider such things occasionally.
“The procedure seems to be working well,” Tev said, grunting in apparent disbelief as he leaned over the engineering console.
“Has anybody noticed the predicted expansion effect yet?” said Gomez, who had situated herself at one of the science stations, across the bridge from Tev. “It’s already measurable and it’s steadily increasing. Looks like those newest atmospheric models were pretty accurate.”
Gold turned and glanced around the rear of the bridge. Abramowitz, who stood between Corsi and Stevens, watched the forward viewer closely, squinting as if to tease out every possible detail.
“Looks the same as ever to me,” Abramowitz said. “Of course, I suppose I must be the proverbial untrained eye.”
“Then consider this your training,” Stevens said. “Keep watching the cloud bands near the equator. We’re in for quite a show.”
Corsi remained silent, her body taut as a bowstring. Her gaze was riveted to the screen as though she were seeking a target onto which to lock every weapon in the ship’s arsenal.
Gold turned back toward the screen and continued watching in silence. At first he thought it was his imagination, but as the minutes piled up, he knew there could be no denying it.
Venus was growing, especially in the middle.
“Look at that,” Corsi said.
Abramowitz whistled. “I’ll be damned.”
Gold pushed a button on the arm of his chair. “Gold to Saadya.”
“Saadya here. Ishtar is finally rising, David. I’m glad you’ve come to assist in her ascent.”
“Me, too, Pas.” Gold watched as the planet’s atmosphere continued pushing outward and upward, like a river flooding and overflowing its banks. The normally slow-moving cloudtops had begun whipping themselves into a frenzy, and golden streamers of gases were reaching spaceward, delicately tapered fingers probing the shallow shoreline of the cosmos. As they rose, the plumes of vapor lengthened, attenuated, and vanished in brilliant, thousand-kilometer-long streaks of auroral blue, violet, and magenta, scattered and ionized by the fierce onslaught of the solar wind. The rising gaseous traceries began appearing—and vanishing—faster and faster as the force-field network gradually ramped up its power output, pushing oceans of atmosphere to higher and higher altitudes.
Through the gathering brilliance of the ionized atmospheric “blow-off,” Gold could see that the planet’s sweltering carbon dioxide blanket had to be dissipating at a phenomenal rate, like a balloon whose air was being abruptly released. He could only watch in wonderment.
Gold was startled, just for an instant, by an alarm Klaxon from the science station from which Gomez was monitoring the proceedings. Noting that his channel to Saadya was still open, he momentarily interrupted the audio feed.
“Report,” Gold said, turning his chair toward his first officer.
“This can’t be good,” Gomez said. “Maybe Dr. Saadya should have spent more time running geological simulations.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m reading a massive geological upheaval occurring beneath the tessera of Alpha Regio. About twenty degrees south latitude.”
“What could be causing it?” Gold wanted to know.
“We know that the Venusian surface lacks plate tectonics,” she said, lifting her gaze from her readouts. “And that causes the planet to experience torrential eruptions of liquid magma every half-billion years or so because of the seismic stresses that accumulate without there being any plate motion to relieve them.”
Gold blinked at her. “And this has exactly what to do with the price of halvah?”
“My point is that