The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Author:Charles Stross [Stross, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2006-08-31T06:00:00+00:00

BLURRED SHADOWS DANCE ACROSS THE VIDEO screen, grey and black textures like ripped velvet laid over volcanic ash. On the floor in front of my feet the coil of cable unspools, snaking into darkness. Hutter, the equipment tech with the control panel, is hunched over it like a video game addict, twitching her joystick with gloved hands. I lean over behind Alan, who has the ringside view; I have to lean because the backpack is a solid mass, thirty kilograms pushing me forward if I even think about relaxing.

“One metre forward; now pan left.”

The screen jerks. There’s a thin wail as air vents through the doorframe and the cable reels out, then the scenery on screen begins to rotate. We see more blurred grey rubble, then a view that swoops away, down to a distant sea. As the camera pans round further the back of the robot comes into view, trailing a white umbilical back into the incongruous side of a wall. There isn’t enough light to examine the wall, or enough scan lines: it’s a night-vision camera, but we’re operating in starlight. The camera continues to rotate until it’s pointing back to its original bearing. There is no sign of life.

“Looks clear,” someone whispers in my ear, voice tinny and half-masked by static.

“If you want to go first, feel free to volunteer,” Alan says dryly. “Mary. See any hot spots?”

“Nothing,” the tech reports.

“Okay. Bearing zero six zero, forward ten or until you see anything, then halt and report.”

She follows through and the little robot lurches forward into the grey and black landscape on the other side of the gate. “Ambient air pressure, ten pascals. Ambient temperature—thermocouple gives an error, FLIR is flat lined, but that backup sensor is claiming somewhere between forty-five and sixty Kelvin. Gravimetric—it’s Earth-like. Uh, I’m worried about the power, boss. Battery load is normal, but we’re losing power like crazy—I think it’s in danger of freezing solid. We never designed a robot to do this kind of environment—it’s colder than summer on Pluto.”

Someone whistles tunelessly until Pike tells them to shut up.

“How does this affect our environment model?” Alan asks aloud. “The suits are only certified down to a hundred and twenty Kelvin.”

Someone else clears their throat. “Donaldson here. I think we should be okay, sir. We’re only going to be in contact with the ground via the feet, and we’ve got plenty of insulation—and heating—there. No air means no convective loss, and we’re not going to radiate any faster just because ambient is cooler. Our regulators use a countercurrent loop to warm incoming air from whatever we breathe out, so they’re not in danger of icing up. The real risk is that we’re going to be more visible on infrared, and if we get into a firefight and have to take cover we are going to get frostbitten so fast it isn’t funny. That lake is probably liquid nitrogen—don’t walk on any shiny blue ice, it’ll be frozen oxygen and the heat from your feet will flash-boil it.

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