Transmission by Andrew Webster

Author:Andrew Webster [Webster, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N01
Published: 2021-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

Our paradoxical friend

Despite the protestations of mutual trust on all sides, the first manned visit to the object consisted of representatives of each ship and both the ‘non-recruited’, making the party rather larger than optimal. They had all agreed that it was important to have both the recruited and the unaffected in contact with the object so Caz, Bjorn, Nikola and Aleksi set out in the Resolution's slightly larger transfer module across the short expanse of void.

Under the module's lights the altered area of the planetesimal looked a little like a rocky plain primitively surfaced with tar or possibly just melted and roughly flattened by a giant roller. It was hard to estimate size but it didn't appear to be more than tens of metres wide or long. It wasn't completely flat but it was more or less featureless, with none of the cracks and crags of the natural rock around it.

They divided into pairs of opposites. The first to visit were Nikola and Caz. They approached the surface very cautiously, tethered to the module. They had both been trained, Caz rather briefly, in manoeuvring by thruster packs in weightless conditions but Caz immediately found herself severely disoriented and dizzy; there was glare from the surface reflecting the module lights, no sense of up or down or scale and blackness beyond the illuminated area. She hit the surface slightly hard with her knees and elbows but was surprised when the solid looking surface seemed to give slightly, cushioning the impact and lessening her bounce. A minimum thrust from the pack brought her slowly 'down' and she managed to time her deceleration to keep herself in contact with the surface, still more or less on hands and knees. However when she tried to anchor herself by sinking a powered screw-headed piton into the surface, the substance gave slightly again and the piton flew off dangerously past her head.

"Jesus!" exclaimed a voice right in her ear and she recognised Bjorn's voice from the module.

"Who were you aiming at, Caz? If it was yourself you only just misseed." That was Aleksi.

"Surface didn't appreciate the piton's attempt to embed itself." said Caz

A movement over to her left turned out to be Nikola making a more graceful landing, feet first. The thick, boot-like feet of her suit seemed to penetrate a millimetre or two into the surface and stay there, as if in dust or mud. Caz looked down at her suited hands and knees and saw they also seemed to have penetrated a short way in. With elaborate caution she moved her left hand away from the stuff and then back down again. Through the suit visor the surface looked perfectly solid and it felt hard and resistant as her hand came down on the surface but, despite that, the black material seemed to cover the bottom edges of her glove to a depth of nearly a centimetre. Looking at her other hand and her feet, she thought there might have been an infinitesimal

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.