bookssland.com Ā» Fiction Ā» Brightside Crossing by Alan Edward Nourse (detective books to read TXT) šŸ“—

Book online Ā«Brightside Crossing by Alan Edward Nourse (detective books to read TXT) šŸ“—Ā». Author Alan Edward Nourse



1 2 3 4
Go to page:
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRIGHTSIDE CROSSING *** Produced by Greg Weeks, readbueno and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Brightside
Crossing
by Alan E. Nourse

JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman had flagged him as he came in from the street: ā€œA thousand pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentlemanā€”he would leave no name. He said youā€™d want to see him. He will be back by eight.ā€

Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the Red Lion, gently but persuasively; the patrons were few in number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew vaguelyā€”Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time without justifying it.

Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat down at Baronā€™s table. He was short and wiry. His face held no key to his ageā€”he might have been thirty or a thousandā€”but he looked weary and immensely ugly. His cheeks and forehead were twisted and brown, with scars that were still healing.

The stranger said, ā€œIā€™m glad you waited. Iā€™ve heard youā€™re planning to attempt the Brightside.ā€

Baron stared at the man for a moment. ā€œI see you can read telecasts,ā€ he said coldly. ā€œThe news was correct. We are going to make a Brightside Crossing.ā€

ā€œAt perihelion?ā€

ā€œOf course. When else?ā€

The grizzled man searched Baronā€™s face for a moment without expression. Then he said slowly, ā€œNo, Iā€™m afraid youā€™re not going to make the Crossing.ā€

ā€œSay, who are you, if you donā€™t mind?ā€ Baron demanded.

ā€œThe name is Claney,ā€ said the stranger.

There was a silence. Then: ā€œClaney? Peter Claney?ā€

ā€œThatā€™s right.ā€

Baronā€™s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger gone. ā€œGreat balls of fire, manā€”where have you been hiding? Weā€™ve been trying to contact you for months!ā€

ā€œI know. I was hoping youā€™d quit looking and chuck the whole idea.ā€

ā€œQuit looking!ā€ Baron bent forward over the table. ā€œMy friend, weā€™d given up hope, but weā€™ve never quit looking. Here, have a drink. Thereā€™s so much you can tell us.ā€ His fingers were trembling.

Peter Claney shook his head. ā€œI canā€™t tell you anything you want to hear.ā€

ā€œBut youā€™ve got to. Youā€™re the only man on Earth whoā€™s attempted a Brightside Crossing and lived through it! And the story you cleared for the newsā€”it was nothing. We need details. Where did your equipment fall down? Where did you miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?ā€ Baron jabbed a finger at Claneyā€™s face. ā€œThat, for instanceā€”epithelioma? Why? What was wrong with your glass? Your filters? Weā€™ve got to know those things. If you can tell us, we can make it across where your attempt failedā€”ā€

ā€œYou want to know why we failed?ā€ asked Claney.

ā€œOf course we want to know. We have to know.ā€

ā€œItā€™s simple. We failed because it canā€™t be done. We couldnā€™t do it and neither can you. No human beings will ever cross the Brightside alive, not if they try for centuries.ā€

ā€œNonsense,ā€ Baron declared. ā€œWe will.ā€

Claney shrugged. ā€œI was there. I know what Iā€™m saying. You can blame the equipment or the menā€”there were flaws in both quartersā€”but we just didnā€™t know what we were fighting. It was the planet that whipped us, that and the Sun. Theyā€™ll whip you, too, if you try it.ā€

ā€œNever,ā€ said Baron.

ā€œLet me tell you,ā€ Peter Claney said.

Iā€™d been interested in the Brightside for almost as long as I can remember (Claney said). I guess I was about ten when Wyatt and Carpenter made the last attemptā€”that was in 2082, I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then I was heartbroken when they just disappeared.

I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface conditions, without any chartsā€”they couldnā€™t have made a hundred milesā€”but I didnā€™t know that then and it was a terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sandersonā€™s work in the Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my blood, sure as death.

But it was Mikutaā€™s idea to attempt a Crossing. Did you ever know Tom Mikuta? I donā€™t suppose you did. No, not Japaneseā€”Polish-American. He was a major in the Interplanetary Service for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up his commission.

He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days, did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for the Colony there. I first met him on Venus; we spent five years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later.

Iā€™d always liked the Majorā€”he was big and quiet and cool, the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck, with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind of personality that could take a crew of wild men and make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him.

He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about old times; he told me about the Vulcan business, and how heā€™d been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury, and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the yearā€”and then he wanted to know what Iā€™d been doing since Venus and what my plans were.

ā€œNo particular plans,ā€ I told him. ā€œWhy?ā€

He looked me over. ā€œHow much do you weigh, Peter?ā€

I told him one-thirty-five.

ā€œThat much!ā€ he said. ā€œWell, there canā€™t be much fat on you, at any rate. How do you take heat?ā€

ā€œYou should know,ā€ I said. ā€œVenus was no icebox.ā€

ā€œNo, I mean real heat.ā€

Then I began to get it. ā€œYouā€™re planning a trip.ā€

ā€œThatā€™s right. A hot trip.ā€ He grinned at me. ā€œMight be dangerous, too.ā€

ā€œWhat trip?ā€

ā€œBrightside of Mercury,ā€ the Major said.

I whistled cautiously. ā€œAt aphelion?ā€

He threw his head back. ā€œWhy try a Crossing at aphelion? What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense about it.ā€ He leaned across me eagerly. ā€œI want to make a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If a man can do that, heā€™s got Mercury. Until then, nobodyā€™s got Mercury. I want Mercuryā€”but Iā€™ll need help getting it.ā€

Iā€™d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in. That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the surface of the Sun itself.

It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned just how hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It was a real hellā€™s Crossing, but someday, I thought, somebody would cross it.

I wanted to be along.

The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasnā€™t very extensiveā€”a rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sandersonā€™s crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed the Solar ā€™scope that Sanderson had built up there ten years before.

Twilight Lab wasnā€™t particularly interested in the Brightside, of courseā€”the Sun was Sandersonā€™s baby and heā€™d picked Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could hold his observatory. Heā€™d chosen a good location, too. On Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770Ā° F. at perihelion and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410Ā° F. No permanent installation with a human crew could survive at either extreme. But with Mercuryā€™s wobble, the twilight zone between Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival temperatures.

Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to 60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ā€™scope could take that much change and theyā€™d get good clear observation of the Sun for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet to wheel around.

The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab to make final preparations.

Sanderson did. He thought weā€™d lost our minds and he said so, but he gave us all the help he could. He spent a week briefing Jack Stone, the third member of our party, who had arrived with the supplies and equipment a few days earlier. Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside was like.

Stone was a youngsterā€”hardly twenty-five, Iā€™d sayā€”but heā€™d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didnā€™t care for exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed him around like a puppy.

It didnā€™t matter to me as long as he knew what he was getting in for. You donā€™t go asking people in this game why they do itā€”theyā€™re liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check and test.

We dug right in. With plenty of fundsā€”tri-V money and some government cash the Major had talked his way aroundā€”our equipment was new and good. Mikuta had done the designing and testing himself, with a big assist from Sanderson. We had four Bugs, three of them the light pillow-tire models, with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in, and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges.

The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he said, ā€œHave you heard anything from McIvers?ā€

ā€œWhoā€™s he?ā€ Stone wanted to know.

ā€œHeā€™ll be joining us. Heā€™s a good manā€”got quite a name for climbing, back home.ā€ The Major turned to me. ā€œYouā€™ve probably heard of him.ā€

Iā€™d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasnā€™t too happy to hear that he was joining us. ā€œKind of a daredevil, isnā€™t he?ā€

ā€œMaybe. Heā€™s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the line? Weā€™ll need plenty of both.ā€

ā€œHave you ever worked with him?ā€ I asked.

ā€œNo. Are you worried?ā€

ā€œNot exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.ā€

The Major laughed. ā€œI donā€™t think we need to worry about McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the trip to him and weā€™re going to need each other too much to do any fooling around.ā€ He turned back to the supply list. ā€œMeanwhile, letā€™s get this stuff listed and packed. Weā€™ll need to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says we should leave in three days.ā€

Two days later, McIvers hadnā€™t arrived. The Major didnā€™t say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We spent the second day studying charts of the Brightside, such as they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and that was all. Still, we could use them to plan a broad outline of our course.

ā€œThis range here,ā€ the Major said as we crowded around the board, ā€œis largely inactive, according to Sanderson. But these to the south and west could be active. Seismograph tracings suggest a lot of activity

1 2 3 4
Go to page:

Free e-book Ā«Brightside Crossing by Alan Edward Nourse (detective books to read TXT) šŸ“—Ā» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment