A/N: HMMM…I wonder what those strange creatures they saw could have been?  Will they find them?  Will it be a hostile or a friendly greeting?  How will the Amazing Venber Melting Properties be discovered?  Read on to find out…MUAHAHA, you HAVE to read it now!  Oh…one other question…is there any tension on this mission? Muahaha….

Chapter Four

The Captain didn't call for us until after breakfast, but when he did, it was announced over the ship intercom system: "All Amagan cadets report to Recreation Chamber number one."  Which made me feel important, at any rate.  Once we'd all assembled in RC1, the Captain (looking as intimidating as ever, and still without a personal name) asked us what we had seen, what time we'd seen it, where the creatures had been, what direction they had been moving, and other questions I could go on about.  The Captain, unlike others I could mention, did not remind us that this moon received little to no radiant energy and had an average temperature of a hundred and forty-four K.  This may have had something to do with Bosh attesting to the existence of the creatures along with the crew of cadets.

The tension I'd noticed in the crew yesterday was still there today.  And by "still there," I mean more mild verbal abuse.  Fortunately, I was to be saved another day of cleaning up after everyone.  About midway through Amagan "morning," Kasseena showed up in the RC where I was doing a repair job.  Kasseena never gets sent to the RCs, something about cadets being distracted and adult messengers being better for the job.  Also, Kasseena would never be allowed to hang around as long as she did today.  It was a solid ten minutes before I'd fixed the food synthesizer and turned it back over to its (Great) users, and Kasseena was still there, so I moseyed on up to her.  Very nonchalantly.

"Kass—what are you doing here?  Does this have something to do with—"

"Shut up," she hissed quickly, and cast a furtive glance around. 

"OK.  But—"

"Just follow me," she said, and turned to exit the RC, wings buzzing.  Buzzing very quickly.  My heart sped up, though I didn't know what this could mean.  But after an interview with the Captain…over something this important…anything that had Kasseena overlooking usual ship procedure and acting like this was bound to be momentous.

We reached an elevator.  Kasseena pulled me inside and hit a button for the bottom deck.

"Kasseena, what is this about?"

"Aniera, you know, I'm not really supposed to tell.  Really, people will talk, you're not supposed to know until we get to the airlock—"

"Airlock?"

"You see, it was just my father—"

"Kass!" I fairly shouted.  "Kass—what is happening?"

"We're going outside."

That was impossible, since cadets are never allowed on outside missions.

"That's—"

"My father's heading the mission: he's S.O., after all." 

"But—"

"After he heard about the creatures, Father was absolutely adamant: the Captain had to let him outside to explore.  We were the fleet; the fleet searches the galaxy for new life forms!  These creatures might be a hazard to the ship!  I think the Captain just gave him the job to shut him up."

"But how do we come in?"

"Oh—my father's bringing out equipment—sensors and things.  He needs someone to run them."

"But why not a few crewmen?  Some Greats—"

"Well, there are advantages to having the Keyala's science officer for a father," Kasseena said mischievously.  "I think he wanted to give me and my friends the opportunity."  So Hanesh and Yanesh were included, too.  "But, Aniera, who cares why we're going?  We're going!"

We reached the door to Airlock Four, a large room that could double for a cargo bay.  I'd been down here only once before, fixing something in RC7 down the hall.  Once we stepped inside the airlock, I saw Kasseena's father, a party of two security men (Great and Little), and Hanesh.  I looked for Yanesh, but didn't see her.  Hanesh was looking wary, edging away from the security personnel even as he tried to appear calm and collected.  I gave him a strange look as we passed him, which I'm not quite sure he caught. 

"Right then," the science officer began, and we all looked toward him.  He moved forward, torso flashing iridescent green, to the center of our small group, which had congregated in a rough circle around an all-terrain vehicle of the type that was standard throughout the fleet.  The big thing when you're a maintenance cadet is to graduate to working on the "planetsiders," as they're called.  Daran had already done it once. 

"Right then.  I'm sure the cadets here already know all about the mission parameters, but let's go over it again just to make sure there isn't any confusion."  Kasseena had the sense to look embarrassed, and the security men had the decency to only give us fleeting glances.  "We're going out on the surface of the moon, in the approximate direction in which the Amagan cadets saw some large moving creatures last night."  More glances exchanged between the security men.  "We're looking for any sign of these creatures.  And, of course, we'll be taking plenty of rock and ice samples along the way."  I could have sworn I saw the Great man roll his eyes, but when I turned my head to look at him, he was standing at perfect attention again. 

In the meantime, the S.O. had continued his speech unbothered.  "What I want the cadets to do is man the sensors, which are already installed in the planetsider.  Aiming aside, the sensors are easy to learn.  Radar's the red button.  Life-form sensors are the blue button.  A distress signal to the Keyala is the yellow button.  Any questions?"

Kasseena buzzed her wings.  "Is Yanesh coming?"

"Unfortunately, no.  Her section couldn't spare a worker today."

Kasseena looked disappointed, and I thought it was too bad she couldn't join in the adventure.

Actually, it's probably the best thing that could have happened—though I didn't realize it for days afterward.

"Right, then," said the S.O. "Suits on!  And we'll be on our way."

We found the protective space suits along one wall and returned to the planetsider.  It was an open-topped car with only a windshield in the way of walls, so we all entered it quickly and took our seats.

Which turned out to be a bit more difficult than it sounds here.

"As you can see," Kasseena's father said through the suits' open radio channel, "the space suits restrict your movement greatly.  You'll have to become accustomed to this, and work around it.  Kasseena, you'll have to remember that you can't fly."

At that moment, the air began to be vacuumed out of the airlock chamber.  It was a strange feeling: lots of wind against my space suit, like I should have felt cold, but nothing touched my skin.  I put a hand to my arm, caught Hanesh giving me a pointed look that I couldn't discern the nature of behind his visor, and quickly put my hand down and turned forward again.

"Driver—driver!" said Kasseena's father quickly from the front passenger seat.  "Just do be careful—my own design—don't push the orange button, please."

The airlock doors opened.  Our driver, the security Little, drove the planetsider carefully down the extended ramp to the moon's surface. 

"Slowly now," cautioned the S.O.  Then to us, "Switch on the radar.  There's a gorge ahead that we need to go around."  Hanesh, who had taken a seat behind the main sensor array, complied and busied himself reading the resulting radar display on the sensor screen. 

"A gorge?" he exclaimed.  "It's a canyon!"

I flinched and sent him a "look."  The same look, in fact, that Kasseena was busy giving him at that same moment. 

"Er…we need to go left ninety degrees," Hanesh mumbled, and for a second I actually felt sorry for the guy.  Then I remembered who it was.

"While we're at it, switch on the life-form sensors," said Kasseena's father as we made the sharp left turn.  The back wheels of the planetsider slipped and slid. 

"Ice," I commented brilliantly.

"Yes," said the science officer.  "I'd like a sample of that ice for chemical analysis."  I nodded.  Then I noticed that everyone had turned their heads toward me, so that I had five UV-screened helmet visors looking at me.  Then I realized that I was the only person in the outside seat—or, I was the only cadet with an outside seat, and security officers don't do grunt work when cadets are around.  I dropped, rather awkwardly, down the side of the vehicle as the driver stopped it, landed, and fell on my rear end.  Hard.

"Careful.  It's slick," said Kasseena's father, as Kasseena held a pick and sample bag out over the side for me.  Ha ha.  I nodded to the S.O., stood up, and received the tools from Kasseena.  I dug into the hard surface ice for a few samples, dropped them in the bags, and handed them back up to Kasseena.  Soon we were moving again.

It became readily apparent, once you left the ship, that the moon's landscape was much more interesting than the view from the Keyala suggested.  Far from being the smooth, icy ground with a few rocks that I had envisioned, the lunar surface was covered in jagged outcrops of what appeared to be ice.  The ground rose and fell in wavelike hills and ended abruptly in cliffs, like those of the gorge walls to our right.  I could just see the gorge in the lunar-midday sunlight, about a kilometer distant, a dark void where the land ended on one side, skipped a few hundred meters, and reappeared. 

"Strange," commented one of the security men, Little by his voice.  "It's almost as if this moon were seismically active.  But if it's cold enough that its crust is made of ice—"

"The ice may only be an outer layer of the crust," said Kasseena's father, switching to science-officer-mode.  "But it does appear to have been seismically deformed within the past few million years.  Perhaps…"  He fell silent.

"It looks like this canyon goes on for miles," said Kasseena, peering at the radar screen in front of Hanesh.

"Yes," Hanesh added.  "We're coming up on the narrowest point we've seen: only about twenty meters across."

The science officer turned his head to look over the chasm.  "Twenty meters…sounds alright.  Cadets?  Would one of you aim the radar toward the far bank?"

Hanesh, who had taken it upon himself to run the sensors, complied.  "It's fairly smooth, sir…rock outcrop to the left twenty meters…"

At that point I happened to raise my eyes from the radar screen to Kasseena, who was looking from Hanesh, to the radar screen, to her father, in that order and repeatedly. 

"Kass?"

She gave a little head shake that was just barely perceptible.  Then she cocked her head, in a thoughtful manner, toward her father.

"Father," she began.

"Everybody in a seat," he said unnecessarily.  "And strap in.  And if I could have access to the controls…thank you, sir…"  A confused-sounding Little switched seats with the S.O. 

"Father?" she tried again, sounding worried this time.

"Hold on, everyone," said the S.O., and suddenly seat belts shot out of the left side of everybody's seat, buckling on the right.  OK, so now Kasseena's worry was spreading to me.  The S.O. pushed a series of buttons on the control panel.  I felt a vibration in my seat, as though something on the car were moving, shifting—

WHOOOSH!

The planetsider took off on rocket engines I hadn't known it had.  From the yells of shock from cadet and security officer alike, no one else had, either.  We didn't go up so much as forward, shooting over the gorge and reaching the other side safely on our own momentum.  When we reached the far side, we only had about two meters to drop.

Ka-CHUNK.  But we didn't bounce, and it only took about five seconds for the S.O. to get the vehicle back under control.

The seatbelts unbuckled and automatically slid back in their sheaths.

Kasseena's father chuckled.  "I designed this car myself," he explained.  "It's perfectly safe, of course…providing that everyone is buckled up."

I wasn't amused, and I couldn't imagine that many of the others were, either.  But he was the ship science officer, so no one offered complaint.

As the original driver took the driver's seat (rather shakily), I turned a blank visor toward Kasseena and Hanesh.  Two blank visors faced me.  The smallest one shook her head and turned back to the front.  The other one looked away toward the security Great and turned back to the front. 

"All right back there, cadets?"  Asked the S.O., turning around in his seat. 

"All fine, sir," I said after a moment's pause brought no confirmation from the other two.

"Good.  Well, sir, full speed ahead, if you would be so kind."  We began our trek again, full speed ahead and in the opposite direction of the Keyala.  Only then, and for a fleeting moment, did it occur to me to be afraid.  But then I shook myself out of it:  this was an away mission.  There was no place for fear or hesitation, especially when routine missions like this happened all the time. 

No one spoke again for about a half-hour, except for the occasional order to re-check the life form sensors or the radar.  I guess I had never really thought how hard it would be to find a few living creatures in a miles-wide desert of rock and ice, but now I saw that it could be compared to trying to find a micro-wrench in a scrap pile.  In fact, I realized, our chances of actually finding the creatures today were slim to none.  We had one carload of explorers, a radar set, and a world.  After stopping a few times for even more ice samples (I swear I began to believe the officers were just calling the breaks for the comedy of me falling on my butt), we continued on in a long, unbroken stretch.  Ice hills, outcrops, glistening spires and dull, low mounds surrounded us.  The hours stretched longer, with the hum of the oxygen filters in our suits and the jarring vibrations of the planetsider simultaneously lulling us to sleep and shocking us awake.

The S.O., on the other hand, was enjoying himself immensely.

"Hmm…very interesting," he said, looking at the analysis his portable scientific gadgets had spat back at him.  "Fascinating!  Little to no iron—which points to the idea that this moon was originally molten."  He sounded as if he were speaking to somebody else, but from what Kasseena had told me, this was how he talked to himself.

"Er—excuse my asking, sir," I said shyly, "but how does that point to—"

"Well, you see," he interrupted, less rudely than enthusiastically, "if the moon was molten, then the heavier elements—oh, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc—not the heaviest, of course, but substantially lighter than hydrogen, oxygen, silicon—well, you get the picture.  Anyway, if the moon was originally molten, all these heavy elements in the soup would have sunk to the bottom.  Because of gravity, you see.  And iron is fairly plentiful in the universe, or at least the part of it we've studied.  It makes sense that most bodies would contain iron."

"That makes sense," I said, really for lack of anything else to say.  It did make sense, and I'd always had a sneaking affection for science.  I mean, it'd be a nice career path, wouldn't it?  But I actually didn't know that much, and I didn't feel like showcasing my ignorance.  Especially not for—the science officer of the Keyala

"Now, this ice," he said, continuing on more for his benefit than mine.  "It is mostly water.  Many minerals dissolved in it, however—that's what leads me to believe the ice was originally molten as well—thrust up by volcanic activity.  Some carbon dioxide in there, too.  A standard volcanic gas.  Yes, water, from within the planet; molten within, perhaps even rock material…"

"Does that mean—WHOA!" I cried out as the car suddenly fishtailed, slid, and began to turn up on two wheels.

"Whoa!" Kasseena's father shouted.  "Don't hit the brakes!  Don't hit the brakes!  Let it ride, sir!"

We gradually fell back on our four wheels again, and the driver stopped the vehicle.  No one had fallen out, which was a miracle, but the scientific equipment had been jarred and we spent a few minutes bringing it back online again. 

"What was that?" said Hanesh, crouching to look at the underside of the sensor array. 

"Ice," said the driver, but I could have told him that.  "And slicker than the rest we've run across.  Care to aim the sensors at the ground ahead, young man?"  He glanced at the science officer.  "With your permission, sir?"

"By all means," Kasseena's father said.  "Let's see."

Hanesh sat up hurriedly and pushed the red button. 

"Very smooth," said Kasseena, reading off the display screen.  "No outcrops…hills…anything…for miles.  Sir," she added.

"Yes, sir: it's like a sea of ice.  In front of us," Hanesh added.  He re-aimed the sensors.  "Behind us—terrain is…like what we've been seeing.  And to the sides.  The ice begins in a nearly straight line, following contours of elevation."  I found myself very impressed with Hanesh's geography skills.  Then I remembered that it was Hanesh delivering that report, so it was all just showing off. 

"It's almost like a lake," Kasseena said.  "A lake of ice."

"Could it have welled up from the interior?" I asked, going for my own bit of showing off.

"I think so," said the S.O., nodding.  "Volcanic activity, like on our world—only with molten ice, not molten rock."  I shook my head to clear it.  "Recent activity, too, I'd wager…"

Hanesh got there before me.  "Do you mean there could be water volcanoes here?"  he asked, somewhat incredulous.

"Possibly," the science officer said.  "It would hardly be unique.  But most likely they would function like geysers—the atmosphere here is so thin that liquid water on the surface would boil away quickly due to low air pressure.  This lake must have been erupted in a large enough amount that the water froze before all of it could be evaporated.  In any event, I'd like a sample of this.  Aniera?"

I suppressed a groan, didn't look at the two security men's' helmets (or Hanesh, either, for that matter), and jumped down to the ground.  I fell on my butt again.

Kasseena handed me the pick, and I hacked up a few pieces of volcano-lake ice.  As I did, I happened to notice something interesting: the ice from the interior of the lake had a far shinier luster than the material from the surface.  I bent down to examine a piece I had excavated.  Unfortunately, this involved my shifting my weight, which involved me finding myself, once again, on the ground looking up at the S.O.'s not-quite-worried face, trying not to blush too maroon.  This time, however, it did not come to naught.  I began to push myself up—

Brainwave.

"Hey!"

"Hey, what?" asked Hanesh.

"Hey, there's frost," I clarified.  "Science officer, sir, there's some kind of frost on the ground down here." I pointed to some I had rubbed off the ice.  "It's very hard, sir, but it's not the original ice."

Kasseena's father peered hard, then jumped down himself, which put us, after a second or so's flailing, roughly face-to-face.  I heard a delicate snort over my open-channel radio, then the buzzing of a pair of wings. 

"Well, Aniera, it seems you've found something," the S.O. said, not giving any notice to his humiliation.  He gathered up some of the frost, and put it into a small tool he was carrying.  After a second or so, it beeped, and he checked a small screen on it.

"Well," he said after a moment or so, "very interesting."

"What is it?" I asked.

"The main component in this frost is water.  If it had been carbon dioxide, nitrogen, then perhaps this frost could be explained as atmospheric freezing."

"The atmosphere freezing?"

"Certainly not," he said.  "No water vapor in this atmosphere in any amount like this."  I blinked, not sure he'd answered my question.  "I believe," he continued dramatically, "that we may have found one of Hanesh's geysers."

"Here?" asked Kasseena.

"Well, somewhere," said the S.O.  "And nearby.  Close enough that ejecta has reached this area."

Then the science officer of the Keyala, sprawled on the ground like me, reached forward a gloved hand and gave mine a shake.

"Good work, Aniera.  We may not be closer to finding these creatures, but we've certainly got something interesting to study in the meantime.  And who knows?  Perhaps these creatures, whatever they are, thrive on the minerals ejected by this vent."

I grinned.

A/N: …and they all grinned with her.  Hopefully.  Hopefully Governor's School hasn't fried my writing ability.  I don't think it has…