Venus Read Online Free PDF Page B

now I was thoroughly confused. “But if it’s not going to go through this cataclysm, then what are you so excited about?”
    “Seismic measurements,” Greenbaum said, staring at me again. “That’s what we need.”
    Mickey explained, “The whole issue depends on whether Venus has a thick crust or a thin one.”
    It was starting to sound like a pizza contest to me, but I kept my mouth shut and kept on listening.
    “If the crust is thin, then the upheaval is more likely. If it’s thick, then we’re wrong and the others are right.”
    “But can’t you measure the crust with robot sensors?” I asked.
    Mickey replied, “We’ve had some measurements over the years, but they’re inconclusive.”
    “Then send more probes,” I said. It seemed so obvious!
    They both turned to Abdullah. He shook his head. “The agency is not allowed to spend a penny on studies of Venus, or anything else that isn’t directly related to Earth’s environmental problems.”
    “But private donors,” I said. “Surely it wouldn’t cost that much to send out a few probes.”
    “We’ve been trying to get funding,” Mickey said. “But it’s not easy, especially when most of the specialists in the subject think we’re wrong.”
    “That’s why your mission is a godsend,” Greenbaum said, with the fervor of a missionary. “You can carry dozens of seismic sensors to Venus—hundreds! And a scientist to handle them. Plus a lot of other equipment.”
    “But my spacecraft won’t have that capacity,” I insisted. Perhaps pleaded is a more accurate term.
    “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” Greenbaum said again. “I wish I were thirty years younger.”

    “I can’t do it,” I said.
    “Please, Van,” said Mickey. “It’s really important.”
    I looked from her earnest face to Greenbaum’s to Abdullah’s and back again.
    “I’d be the scientist,” Mickey added. “I’d be the one going to Venus with you.”
    She looked so intent, so beseeching, as if her entire life depended on going to Venus with me.
    What could I tell her?
    I took a breath and said, “I’ll talk to my people. Maybe there’s a way for us to carry you along.”
    Mickey jumped up and down in her chair like a kid who’d just opened the biggest Christmas present in the history of the world. Greenbaum half-collapsed back in his seat, as if the effort of this meeting had drained all the strength out of him. But he was grinning from ear to ear, a lopsided, gap-toothed jack-o’-lantern grin.
    Even Abdullah smiled.

GREATER LOS ANGELES
    T omas Rodriguez had been an astronaut; he’d gone to Mars four times before retiring upward to become a consultant to aerospace companies and universities doing planetary explorations.
    Yet what he really wanted was to fly again.
    He was a solidly built man with an olive complexion and thickly curled hair that he kept clipped very short in almost a military crew cut. He looked morose most of the time, pensive, almost unapproachable. But that was just a mask. He smiled easily, and when he did it lit up his whole face to show the truly gentle man beneath the surface.
    Unfortunately, he was not smiling now.
    Rodriguez and I were sitting in a small conference room, just the two of us. Between us floated a holographic image of the spacecraft that was being constructed for my flight to Venus. Hanging there in midair above the oval conference table, the ship looked more like an ironclad dirigible than anything else—which it was, almost. Of course we were
using the latest ceramic-metal alloys for her exterior, rather than iron.
    With a slight frown creasing his brow, Rodriguez was telling me, “Mr. Humphries, we can’t hang another gondola under the gas envelope without enlarging the envelope by a third or more. Those are the numbers from the computer and there’s no way around them.”
    “But we need the extra gondola to accommodate the crew,” I said.
    “The friends you want to bring along are not crew, Mr.