Half Life Read Free Page A

No one argued, most were relieved at the decision, and Gene was the pilot anyway.
    “Not quite,” he finally answered absently.
    In visible light frequencies his target looked exactly like an earthly thunderhead. There was even lightning, in spite of the non-polar composition of the droplets, and Belvew faced the piloting task of making collection runs through it at a speed high enough to prevent another ram stall but low enough to avoid turbulence damage to his airframe.
    “Not quite,” he repeated at last. “But I still have enough cans to finish Four and most of Five. I hope all the ones I’ve dropped so far work. It’d be a pity to have to go back just to make replacements. There’s too much else to do.” He fell silent again as the waldo began pressing his body at various points, indicating that Oceanus was entering turbulence. His fingers, shoulders, knees, elbows, tongue, and toes exerted delicate pressure, now this way, now that, on parts of the suit’s lining, answering the thumps he could feel and forestalling the ones the vision screen let him anticipate. For nearly two minutes the aircraft jounced its way through the vertical currents, and as the turbulence eased off and the air around his viewers cleared, the pilot gave a happy grunt. He would have nodded his head in satisfaction, but that would have operated too many inappropriate controls.
    “A respectable bite. Nine or ten more runs at this height should give us takeoff or orbit mass.”
    “Or a hundred or so stall recoveries,” his official buddy couldn’t help adding.
    Belvew let the remark lie, and two or three minutes passed before anyone else spoke. All not otherwise too absorbed were reading for themselves the rise of tank levels as Oceanus’s collectors gulped Titanian air, spun the hydrocarbon fog drops out of it, stored the liquid, and vented the remaining nearly pure nitrogen to the atmosphere. Even Status watched, but used only current-log memory, which would be routinely edited and wiped of nonessentials each Titan orbit.
    “There’s another odd surface patch a little east of Carver,” Maria Collos’s voice came at length, as the main tanks neared the seven-tenths mark. “It wouldn’t take us very far off plan to look at it before we start Leg Five.” She, too, would have been glad of seismic data her growing maps showed a lot of topography in need of explanation—but was willing to pause for other information if the time cost was small enough.
    “Like the earlier ones, or something really new?” asked Belvew.
    “Can’t tell for sure in long waves. It could be just another bit of melted tar, if that’s what they’re made of. It’s the biggest so far, but even if that’s all, we’re getting enough of the things to need explanation.”
    “One would need explanation!” snapped Arthur Goodall, the highest-ranking and—excusably because of the ceaseless pain of synapse amplification syndrome—usually least patient of the group. “I can see and so can you how polymer tars formed up in sunlight would settle out of the air as dust at this temperature. I can see dust getting piled into dunes even in the three-kilo breezes that pass for gales here. I can see it looking like obsidian if it gets melted and frozen again. What I don’t see is what on this ninety-K iceball could ever melt it.”
    “I’ve suggested methane rain, dissolving rather than melting the surface of a dune as it soaks in and forming a crust as it evaporates,” came the much milder, thinner, and rather snappish voice of leukemia VII case Ginger Xalco.
    “And I’ve suggested landing and finding out firsthand whether those nice, smooth, glassy patches and hillocks are thin shells of evaporite over dunes and dirt, as you’re implying, or the tops of magma lenses,” snapped Goodall. “When do we do that? You’ve plenty of juice now, Gene. Why not take a good look at this one—whether it turns out to be just another item for Maria’s maps or