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air vibrated with the humming and throbbing of unseen machines.
Beyond the anteroom, a short corridor brought them at last to the low-level
control room. It was a maze of consoles and equipment cubicles, attended by
perhaps a dozen operators, all intent on their tasks. One of the longer walls,
constructed completely from glass, gave a panoramic view down over the
workings in progress outside the control room. Lieutenant Cameron joined them
as they lined up by the glass to take in the spectacle beyond.
They were looking out over the floor of an enormous cathedral, over nine
hundred feet long and a hundred feet high, hewn and melted out of the solid
ice. Its rough-formed walls glistened white and gray in the glare of countless
arc lights. The floor was a litter of steel-mesh roadways, cranes, gantries,
girders, pipes, tubes, and machinery of every description. The left-side wall,
stretching away to the far end of the tunnel, carried a lattice of ladders,
scaffolding, walkways, and cabins that extended up to the roof. All over the
scene, scores of figures in ungainly heavy-duty spacesuits bustled about in a
frenzy of activity, working in an atmosphere of pressurized argon to eliminate
any risk of explosion from methane and the other gases released from the
melted ice. But all eyes were fixed on the right-hand wall of the tunnel.
For almost the entire length, a huge, sweeping wall of smooth, black metal
reared up from the floor and curved up and over, out of sight above their
heads to be lost below the roof of the cavern. It was immense -- just a part
of something vast and cylindrical, lying on its side, the whole of which must
have stretched far down into the ice below floor level. At the near end,
outside the control room, a massive, curving wing flared out of the cylinder
and spanned the cavern above their heads like a bridge, before disappearing
into the ice high on the far left. At intervals along the base of the wall,
where metal and ice met, a series of holes six feet or so across marked the
ends of the network of pilot tunnels that had been driven all around and over
and under the object.
It was far larger than a Vega. How long it had lain there, entombed beneath
the timeless ice sheets of Ganymede, nobody knew. But the computations of
field-vector resultants collected from the satellites had been right; there
certainly had been something big down here -- and it hadn't been just ore
deposits.
"Ma-an," breathed Stanislow, after staring for a long time. "So that's
it, huh?"
"That is big!" Peters added with a whistle. The aides echoed the sentiments
dutifully.
Stanislow turned to Mills. "Ready for the big moment, then, Captain?"
"Yes, sir," Mills confirmed. He indicated a point about two hundred feet away
where a group of figures was gathered close to the wall of the hull,
surrounded by an assortment of equipment. Beside them a rectangular section of
the skin about eight feet square had been cut away. "First entry point will be
there -- approximately amidships. The outer hull is double layered; both
layers have been penetrated. Inside is an inner hull..." For the benefit of
the visitors, he gestured toward a display positioned near the observation
window showing the aperture in close-up.
'Preliminary drilling shows that it's a single layer. The valves that you can
see projecting from the inner hull were inserted to allow samples of the
internal atmosphere to be taken before opening it up. Also, the cavity behind
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the access point has been argon-flooded."
Mills turned to Cameron before going on to describe further details of the
operation. "Lieutenant, carry out a final check of communications links,
please."
"Aye, aye, sir." Cameron walked back to the supervisory console at the end of
the room and scanned the array of screens.
"Ice Hole to Subway. Come in, please."
The face of Commander Stracey, directing activities out near the hull, moved
into view, encased in its helmet. "All checks completed and go," he reported.
"Standing by, ready to proceed."
"Ice Hole to Pithead. Report transmission quality."
"All clear, vision and audio," responded the duty controller from the dome far
above them.
"Ice Hole to Ganymede Main." Cameron addressed screen three, which showed
Foster at Main Base, situated seven hundred miles away to the south.
"Clear."
"Ice Hole to Jupiter Four. Report, please."
"All channels clear and checking positive." The last acknowledgment came from
the deputy mission director on screen four, speaking from his nerve center in
the heart of the mile-long Jupiter Mission Four command ship, at that moment
orbiting over two thousand miles up over Ganymede.
"All channels positive and ready to proceed, sir," Cameron called to
Mills.
"Carry on, then, Lieutenant."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Cameron passed the order to Stracey, and out by the hull the ponderous figures
lumbered into action, swinging forward a rockdrill supported from an overhead
gantry. The group by the window watched in silence as the bit chewed
relentlessly into the inner wall. Eventually the drill was swung back.
"Initial penetration complete," Stracey's voice informed them. "Nothing
visible inside."
An hour later, a pattern of holes adorned the exposed expanse of metal.
When lights were shone through and a TV probe inserted, the screen showed
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