The Great Hydration

“The negotiating is to take place in the natives’ main dome,” O’Rourke went on. “The partners want Shelley present, and also Castaneda. The lobsters are asking for technical details. Got that?”

“Got it.”

“I’m sending a lighter down. Meantime you can put the drilling rigs in place. No point wasting time.”

“Right.” Northrop hesitated. “One other thing. Did the partners beam up language translation?”

“What if they did?”

“Pass it on to us, will you?”

“What for?” Northrop asked suspiciously.

“We’ve spotted bands of dehydrate natives roaming around. We might need to talk to them.”

There was an ominous pause before O’Rourke replied. “There’s a security issue here. On no account must the dehydrate species gain any hint of what is being planned. Request denied.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot? Tenacity dehydrates have a traditional warrior culture. They’ll attack us if we can’t talk to them.”

“You are a bond jumper,” O’Rourke said, with no attempt to hide his hostility. “Any request like that must come from Castaneda.”

He cut the connection. Northrop turned as Castaneda entered the tent. The team leader’s skin was a bright green in hue. He was wearing several layers of radpaint.

“The show’s on,” Northrop informed him, and relayed what O’Rourke had said about the negotiation and drilling. “By the way,” he added, “could you ask him for the partners’ translation package? He got sticky when I asked him for it. Seemed to think I’d blab to the dehydrates.”

With a tired air Castaneda keyed the communicator and got O’Rourke back.

“Are the shock tubes assembled yet?” he asked him.

“They’ll be ready when you need them,” O’Rourke told him.

“Drawing up a legally binding agreement with the lobsters is going to take some time yet. The lighter is leaving now. You’ll need a geological map of the faultline and also a map of the projected new ocean. The natives should be warned if they’ll need to evacuate any of their refuges.”

“I doubt if that will be necessary. The new ocean will lie on the bed of the old one.”

Northrop nudged him. Castaneda grunted in bewilderment, then said, “Oh yes. We want the language package. Might need to talk to the locals if we’re to continue operation down here.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Castaneda said testily, “why do you think I’m asking?”

“All right. Get ready to cop.”

After a warning bleep, the language translation package was dumped into the communicator’s memory.

Castaneda rummaged about the tent. He found a scroll-screen with his charts stored on it. “Wonder if the lobsters have decent eyesight?” he wondered. “Bet I’m down to drawing maps in the sand.”

“It’ll be all right. Shelley has the harder job.”

Castaneda snorted. “Have you never seen the partners in a negotiation? Shelley has practically nothing to do. Krabbe and Bouche will do nearly all the talking. Shelley’s job is to make what comes out legally watertight. It’s vital the lobsters can’t claim they weren’t party to the agreement if it comes to a fight in the courts.”

Naturally Northrop was familiar with this aspect of a gogetter’s fortunes. The laws dealing with contracts drawn up with aliens were extensive. Understandably, they leaned heavily in favour of the human party.

He followed Castaneda out of the tent. Tenacity’s endlessly rolling dunes stretched in all directions. The sand was the colour of sulfur and would probably induce sand blindness if one were left in it for too long. Some of the team had taken to wearing dark goggles, both for that reason and so the fine sand itself would not irritate their eyes.

The three others on the team were tinkering with the squat bulk of the drilling rig, which had the seismic detector beside it. The rig’s energy beam would slice its way through ten kilometers of shale and basalt in only a few days, leaving a shaft wide enough to lower a shock tube down. The only problem would be if the shaft filled with water. Then the tube might have to be forced to its proper depth.

“I never heard of this ocean-draining phenomenon before,” Northrop said. “Is it common?”

The geologist shook his head. “As far as I know it’s unique. In my view it’s a cusp event related to the exact magnitude of Tenacity’s mass. Rock porosity is perfectly common, of course. It’s caused by vulcanism. Volcanoes result from the melting of a planet’s basaltic mantle. The melt is never uniform: it occurs at dihedral angles between rock crystals. The melt regions then join up to create a network, and in effect the rock becomes a sponge filled with molten material, which pressure forces to the surface and you have an eruption. Normally the sponge is then filled up with more mantle rock, acting elastically over long periods of time.