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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 42: Cooper 86
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 269
“What do I do?” Cooper asked. Ren turned to him, and helped him unstrap.
“Follow me.” Ladders had been dropped on the inside of the starship leading from hatch to hatch, Cooper saw. He went downhill, using boxes still tied up as steps to reach the rear bulkhead, now the floor, of the cargo bay he was in. Down there Ren waited for him, and once he got there the two stood in line with a double handful of others in front of them.
Once it came to Cooper’s turn, he climbed up the rope ladder with aliens up ahead and soon down below him. At the next hatch, and through it, he got a short break, and then had to climb some more. By the time he got to the top, he was feeling warmer, and after that it was another, and then the final. By that time he could feel the humidity in the air, and the great heat gusting into the starship. Just how hot was Venus anyways? He remembered that it was supposed to have acid rain, and enough heat to melt metals on an exploratory probe sent from Earth, but surely the other aliens would not be marching so willingly to their doom in an eight hundred degree furnace? He wondered if he was about to become part of a cautionary tale about lemmings marching blindly to the cliff to follow other lemmings.
Getting closer to the hatch, he felt a shot of cooler air hit him. Going up, he went out the hatch and into a clear, if smoke stained, boxy tunnel that ran horizontally above the smoking rock a couple hundred feet or so beneath him. The tunnel was only a few feet tall so he did like the others and climbed on hands and knees across the warm flooring of the tunnel for another hundred feet until he came to a slide which he took down to the ground. Being pulled out by Ren and shoved out by Afo, he stood and took his first breath of Venusian air.
It was not nearly as hot as he feared, nor even as hot as the air had become in the starship. It was warm and muggy, and rain spattered on his face. He licked it, and it tasted of water and green growing things. Looking up, he saw the skies were completely overcast, but the clouds shone.
Taking a step he almost tripped, so deep was his fascination that the slightly lower gravity caught him off-guard. A pale turquoise hand caught him, and guided him upright.
“First time on Venus, friend?” the melodious voice asked. Turning he studied the manling next to him who was almost as tall as he was, wearing a green tunic, if it was that color to alien eyes, and brown khaki pants and sandals of some sort of rough leather, but on the back a large barrel long gun of some sort gave a different appearance than the smooth featured manling.
“Yes, I--” He wanted to ask why it had been so hot, but looking back, he saw the glowing cone of the fission drive, and quickly grasped that the rocket had after all been descending on its tail. A fission rocket would be extraordinarily hot, so he looked around and saw a black granite flat top, fairly flat, that rose out much higher than the surrounding jungle. He was on a granite plateau, which served as a good natural spaceport, and probably had advantages to not having to fly all the way down to sea level. That is, if Venus had seas. He had no way to check for that here so he asked the manling.
“What’s your name, and are there seas on Venus?”
Ren was busy setting up something, and he laughed.
“Litel, and there is one. Unlike Earth, we have but one shallow sea.”
“How large? Is it salty like ours?”
“It covers the majority of the surface, and I understand it's not as salty as yours. We had no comet strike to nearly wipe out our species, although we are a younger world, but the Lady told us of your earlier history.”
“Sin and the Fall. We brought Death to the universe.”
“Oh, no. I believe the Saturnians did that first. Each world has its chance. We all failed.”
“Cooper.” Regretfully, Cooper turned from his new friend, and went to help Ren set up a transport line. It would run the length of the tunnel. At the far end he helped set up a rope crane to lift the boxes the length of the ship. They would be hooked to the rope crane’s hook, unhooked from their positions near the walls, lifted, the hook detached, and then put on the moveable hand cranked assembly line. Upon reaching the end they slid down the slide. Eager hands at the end picked them up and put them on carts pulled by what looked to Cooper as four pairs of giant sheep.
Once everything was set up it took about two hours to unload the ship. During that time, the rock under the ship stopped smoking, but even still he could tell what direction the ship was with his eyes closed. When he was not lifting and moving boxes and crates, he asked Litel tons of questions. The Venusian answered back with unfailing good humor, and never seemed bothered by one more question, or one circling back to catch up on a previous detail. Cooper found himself wondering why others could not be so reasonable.
One thing he learned was why Venus was so bright despite the clouds. It was nearer to the Sun. He felt like smacking himself at missing that, but he reminded himself that he was still not yet a month into this world with all its oddities, and he thought he was doing fairly well at coping. He had met Martians of several colors, Jupiterians, Saturnians, Neptunians, Plutonians, Dark Side Mercurians, just plain Mercurians, Titanians, and now Venusians. He had flown from the Asteroid Belt after helping fight off space pirates, and landed on Venus. He had seen an angel as described by Ezekiel. He had rescued a kidnap victim. Plus he had become an official Sailor Level One. It had been an eventful few weeks.
But it was done, and the many carts with their drivers were going off in that direction and this, and the other, to various tunnels down from the plateau and thence to the underwater canals across Venus. But for him and the crew there was a dingy shacktown at the far end of the plateau called Venusport. So when Litel offered to take him home to meet his wife and his seven children, Cooper was overjoyed. The choice between a bunch of rowdy sailors, who even if they were good guys were more interested in getting drunk, playing games of chance, hiring guides to go hunting the megafauna of Venusian jungles, and getting in fist fights with other crews, versus having a quiet dinner with polite, educated companions was no choice at all. However, he had to explain to Litel that he was stuck on the ship tonight, but he would be glad enough to eat lunch with the man’s family the next day. This was good enough, and plans were set, and then Cooper went back to the now almost empty starship.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
