Acid Sky Read online




  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright page

  In memory

  Preface to the e-book edition

  Acid Sky

  Prologue

  PART I - Dusk over Venus

  Picture: Olympus 240V spaceplane

  Chapter One

  Picture: USSV Langley plan view

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Picture: USSV Langley side views

  Chapter Four

  Picture: USSV Langley deck plans

  Chapter Five

  PART II - Endless Sky

  Picture: Venus

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Picture: Frigate V-200

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  PART III - Storm Front

  Picture: USSV Denver

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  PART IV - Retribution

  Picture: Venus atmosphere

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Background Notes

  USAC inventory

  Glossary

  Select bibliography and further reading

  Comparative astronomical data

  Ten years later ...

  Below Mercury

  ACID SKY

  MARK ANSON

  GF

  Glenn Field Publishing

  First published 2013 by Glenn Field Publishing

  Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk

  Copyright © Mark Anson 2013

  All illustrations by the author.

  Cover image: ‘Eruption on Venus’ copyright © John E. Kaufmann.

  The right of Mark Anson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-9568898-3-6 (Paperback original)

  ISBN 978-0-9568898-4-3 (e-book edition)

  First Edition

  www.glennfield.co.uk

  In memory of

  Gerry Anderson

  1929–2012

  whose imagination inspired a generation

  FAB, Gerry

  PREFACE TO THE E-BOOK EDITION

  This book includes several illustrations by the author. In the print book, these are located in the text in the appropriate place. In the e-book edition, to avoid inconvenient breaks in the text when the font is changed, the illustrations are placed at the start of the relevant chapter rather than in the body of the chapter text.

  Kindle Fire users may wish to lock the display rotation so that the drawings in landscape format can be viewed more easily.

  Readers may be interested to know that a sequel to this story is also available on Kindle, titled Below Mercury, in which we find out more about Clare Foster’s later career. A further story in the series, set beyond Mars, will be published in late 2015.

  Mark Anson, November 2013.

  Acid Sky

  PROLOGUE

  June 14, 2141, was a routine day on board the USSV Langley, on station in the upper atmosphere of Venus, high above the cloud deck. The Langley’s complement of over 120 crew and passengers in transit were working, eating and sleeping on board the giant carrier as it circled slowly round the planet.

  First Lieutenant Elizabeth Keller was a pilot in the Langley’s small wing of Frigate aircraft, providing ferry and logistics services between the Langley and the two other carriers on the planet. Life as a carrier pilot kept her busy; if she wasn’t flying crew and materials between the Langley and the two other carriers, she was honing her skills on carrier takeoffs and landings. Landing an aircraft on a moving flight deck where the target touchdown spot was barely six metres long was a skill that needed constant practice.

  In the landing pattern around the Langley, other Frigate aircraft were circling or coming in to land, and the crew in the air control tower, high above the Langley’s flight deck, were kept busy marshalling the incoming aircraft and issuing instructions for landing. Others tracked the aircraft through camera and binoculars, watching for any problems.

  Keller had taken one of the trainee pilots out for a navigation exercise earlier that morning, and having dropped him off back on the carrier, was doing a few landings to meet her quota for that month. She had made over four hundred landings before, but like all carrier pilots, she always strove to improve and never took any chances. On Venus, there were no ejector seats, no parachutes and no second chances; if you screwed up, you doomed yourself and anyone with you.

  She had practised several landings with the arresting hook raised to check her missed trap procedure, and was making her last landing of the morning, which was a routine test of a full automatic landing, letting the aircraft’s autopilot take her all the way down to touchdown. She was the last aircraft to recover and the most experienced pilot in the air that day; nobody anticipated any problems as she completed the landing checklist and reported ready for landing.

  In the air control tower, the flight operations officer watched as Keller’s Frigate made the final turn, crossing the carrier’s wake and coming down the glideslope towards the flight deck.

  ‘Zero Eight, ball, fuel state zero decimal nine, established.’ Keller’s voice came over the control tower speakers, showing that she could see the flight deck and the visual landing aids, even though the aircraft was coming in automatically.

  ‘Zero Eight, land.’ The tower controller glanced up at the situation board, checking that the flight deck was clear and the arresting wires ready to catch the incoming aircraft.

  The flight operations officer watched as the aircraft came in, sliding down the invisible radio beam of the glideslope, unerringly towards the arresting wires stretched across the deck. It would be like it had been countless times before, the harsh slam into the deck, the sound of the engines spooling up, and then the deceleration as the hook caught the wire and the aircraft was hauled to a stop. The autopilot was bringing the ship in precisely down the groove.

  The Frigate was seconds away from the flight deck threshold. In his binoculars, it dropped down suddenly, and he anticipated the rise as the autopilot added more power to counteract the turbulence. But the aircraft didn’t come straight back up again; it stayed down, and carried on sinking. Something was wrong with the autopilot; it was dropping her below the glideslope. He glanced across at the glideslope camera; she was already well below the amber, going down into the deadly red, where her flight path would intersect the back of the ship.

  ‘Emergency power!’ he yelled, but it was too late – she was too close and too low to recover. There was time for one panicked shout on the radio, and then First Lieutenant Keller’s Frigate slammed into the reinforced ramp at the rear of the flight deck. The impact stove in the nose and cockpit in a crumple of metal. One wing broke off and veered crazily over the deck, its engine still thrusting, while the twisted remainder of the aircraft slid from the Langley and spun down and away in a shower of wreckage, a corkscrew of black smoke m
arking its long fall to Venus’s surface.

  The tower controller hit the alarm immediately, and a few moments later the Langley banked over hard in an emergency turn, circling back to the Frigate’s last known position, but everyone knew it was futile; they had all seen her go down. If she hadn’t been killed outright by the impact, the fearsome pressure deep in the atmosphere would have crushed the aircraft flat, long before it reached the surface. The control tower crew sat in stunned silence as they made the run past the location; Keller had been popular, and had been coming towards the end of her tour on Venus.

  The flight operations officer made the call to the captain, letting him know the worst; there was no sign of Keller and her aircraft.

  The next morning, two men sat on opposite sides of a polished desk, steaming mugs of coffee in front of them. One, a tall man with greying hair, stared fixedly at the liquid in his mug. The other man, younger, picked his up and took a slow sip. His gaze was fixed on the older man, and his eyes never moved.

  ‘This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be,’ the grey-haired man said without looking up. ‘I didn’t want—’

  ‘You said permanent,’ the younger man interrupted. ‘Forever. For good.’

  The grey-haired man closed his eyes. ‘Not like this.’

  ‘Well, how exactly would you have liked it? You left it up to me, remember.’

  The older man looked up again. ‘They’re sending an investigation team. They’ll be here in August.’

  For a moment, the younger man’s confidence wavered. ‘They’re coming here? Why aren’t they letting us do the investigation?’

  ‘Why the hell do you think?’ the other man snapped. ‘This is the third fatal landing accident on Venus, and it’s scaring the trainees back on Earth. Nobody wants to sign up for tours here any more; they all want to go to Mars.’ He eyed the younger man suspiciously. ‘Anyway, you said there was no evidence. Are you sure about that? Because if you’re not—’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I took care of everything. There weren’t any mistakes. Remember, my ass is on the line here as much as yours. They won’t find a thing, no matter how hard they look.’ Under their feet, the ship moved slightly as it came round onto a new heading; the patch of sunlight on the desk crept across its surface, then settled out again.

  The older man shook his head and rubbed his thumb over the rim of his mug. ‘I hope so,’ he said distantly. ‘There’s nothing to be done about it now, in any case.’

  ‘No. We go on as normal. As far as anyone’s concerned here, it appears to be pilot error. We have to keep on flying, keep on training.’

  ‘Yes … I suppose so.’

  ‘I’ve been looking through the list of potential replacements.’ The younger man placed a file on the desk, flipped it open. ‘We need to put a request in.’

  ‘I can’t deal with this right now.’ The grey-haired man looked down again.

  ‘You have to.’ The eyes staring back at him were cold. ‘You can’t let your own feelings show through, or they really will suspect something. You have to put in a request immediately – you know how long it takes to get a replacement.’ He stood up and went over to the launch window plot on one wall. Twin whorls of contour lines, looking like a weather pattern, showed the optimum transit times and dates for transfers between Earth and Venus for the next year. He traced a line out on the chart with his finger. ‘The September window will get someone here in early December. We’ll still be short of pilots until then.’

  The older man flipped open the file, and glanced without interest at the candidate profiles. ‘I presume you have a recommendation?’

  ‘Yes. Clare Foster – second one in the list.’

  There was silence as he read her profile, and let the pages fall. ‘Young, bright, talented, and not even close to bad-looking. So why her, and why not the first candidate, Jefferson? His subject scores are better, and he’s further into his training.’

  ‘Foster’s not as good academically, but she’s a better pilot. She flies instinctively and well, and her instructor rates her very highly – look at his assessment.’ He paused for a moment, considering his next words. ‘Besides, I thought you liked your pilots young and attractive.’

  There was dead silence in the room.

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Can I take it that you’ve endorsed my recommendation?’

  The older man picked up the file and threw it across the desk. ‘I don’t care who you choose. Just get them here.’

  The younger man allowed himself a trace of a smile. ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied. He picked up the file and left the room. The older man watched him go, then looked back down into the depth of his mug. He blinked several times and wiped a trace of moisture from his right eye.

  On the desk console, an alert was blinking for his attention. He was needed in the control room. He rose as well and left the room, leaving the coffee, untouched, sitting on his desk.

  PART I

  Dusk over Venus

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Skydive One Four Seven, on internal power, ready for pushback.’

  Second Lieutenant Clare Foster’s voice was calm in the dim lighting of the spaceplane cockpit. The heat and glare of the Sun had faded some minutes ago, leaving them in the cool darkness of a star-filled sky, five hundred kilometres above the night side of Venus. Ahead of her, the enormous mass of the deep space tug Denver loomed dark against the stars, its huge fuel tanks just dimly guessed shapes stretching away into the distance.

  No matter how many times you saw them, Clare thought, you could never fail to be awed by the size of these leviathans, or the incredible distances that they covered. The Denver had arrived here yesterday all the way from Earth after a twelve-week voyage. In four days’ time, it would move on again, this time on a five-month journey taking passengers and supplies bound for the dusty plains of Mars. There it would refuel in orbit before returning to Earth, and another mission cycle. Like sailing ships dependent on trade winds, the space tugs of the United States Astronautics Corps followed the shifting alignments of the inner planets, and the careful planners back on Earth had calculated their movements for years ahead, to make the most of transfer opportunities and maximise the cargo that could be carried.

  It was the second week in December, 2141, and a busy period in the skies over Venus. Mars was in an unfavourable position for direct flights from Earth, and several vessels were making the journey via Venus, taking the opportunity to exchange passengers and cargo during the brief stopover. It was also a time when incoming flights could leave for Earth almost immediately, instead of having to wait many months for a suitable launch window. As a result, there were several tugs already in orbit awaiting transfers, with more due to arrive in the next few days.

  Clare had only arrived here herself two days ago on board the tug Indianapolis, as a newly qualified lieutenant on her first flight from Earth. The spaceplane she was piloting today was one of a fleet of four Olympus 240s that moved crew and supplies around in orbit, and worked the shuttle run between the orbiting tugs and Venus.

  She risked a brief glance at the night side of the planet, just visible outside her window. The intense white glare of the clouds had faded to blackness as they rounded the night side, but she could still make out the planet alongside them, a huge black curve blotting out the stars. If this had been Earth, there would have been the lights of cities peeping out through breaks in the clouds, but here the clouds covered the entire planet in a featureless cloak that revealed nothing of the planet below.

  ‘Skydive One Four Seven, all umbilicals disconnected, clear for pushback.’ The voice of the tug’s pilot in her headset broke into her thoughts.

  ‘Clear pushback, One Four Seven.’ Clare acknowledged the clearance and looked across to the commander in the left-hand seat.

  ‘Proceed.’ Captain Alan Hartigan nodded to Clare, and she reached up to the overhead panel and flicked a switch underneath a safety cover. The spaceplane shuddered as the dockin
g clamps unlocked, and the craft moved smoothly back from the tug, propelled by four hydraulic rams.

  The huge mass of the space tug slipped away from them, its navigation lights winking in the darkness. One of its thrusters flared briefly, correcting its attitude. On Clare’s navigation display, the distance between them widened – twenty metres, thirty, forty.

  Clare moved a small handle on the centre console and the nose section of the spaceplane moved upwards and closed over the docking adapter. She watched as a cluster of red LEDs flashed, and then glowed green as the nose section latched shut. A further movement of the handle, and the heat-resistant visor moved slowly up to cover the main cockpit windows, leaving only a narrow slit to see forwards.

  ‘Skydive One Four Seven, you are clear of the docking area and looking good. Clear to start thrusters and move away. Contact Carrier Two Eight Langley Approach on X band. Have a good day.’

  ‘Clear for thrusters, contact Langley Approach, Skydive One Four Seven, thanks guys.’ Clare read back the clearance and wrapped her right hand round the sidestick controller. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves.

  This is it. Don’t screw it up.

  The trouble was, there were so many ways she could screw it up, and all the time Hartigan would be watching her, assessing her, noting down her performance for later. This was the first time for her as first officer flying a fully loaded spaceplane down from orbit, and if she made any serious error, it would be back to training in the simulator for another six months.

  Behind her and Hartigan were their eight passengers, several tonnes of freight, and a hundred and twenty tonnes of super-cold liquid propellants, and it was her job to pilot what was effectively a huge flying bomb, down through one of the most unforgiving orbital descents in the Solar System.