Finally, a mail screen appeared and Salio sent the package off to its destination with a flourish. Then he stood and extended a hand. “Sorry about that. One of those things that couldn’t wait. Let’s see . . . we need to make some room for you.” He lifted a pile of books and papers from a chair by the wall and cleared some space for them on top of a file cabinet. Keene sat down, and Salio moved around to pull up his own chair on the far side of the desk. He looked across and pushed his hair up from his eyes. “Well, I admit I was flattered when you got back to me so quickly. I never expected to see you here in person. We don’t exactly get a lot of celebrities stopping by in this office.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t attach too much significance to that,” Keene said. “You know how it is. They’ll all have found someone else by the end of the week.”
“What’s your title with Amspace, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I’m not exactly with Amspace. I run a technical consultancy on nuclear dynamics that’s been working with them for a number of years: Protonix—also based in Corpus Christi.”
“Ah . . .”
“That’s what I really do. The stunt and commercial last Friday were coincidental.”
“It’s stirring up a lot of hostility out there,” Salio said. “But you knew that had to happen.”
“If you hope to do anything, you have to be visible,” Keene answered. “As I said when we talked, Amspace, myself, and various other interests that we’re associated with are trying to help promote the Kronian case because we believe it’s too important an issue to let politics and scientific dogmatism get in the way of the truth—which is what’s happening. You said you’d like to help. We’re interested enough that I’m here.”
“This is all very gratifying, Dr. Keene. It’s something I’ve been battling over for years.”
” `Landen’ is fine. So can we talk about the kind of work that you and the other scientists that you said you’re in touch with have been doing? Particularly about Venus being a young planet. You said a lot of evidence points to it.”
“I can’t say whether or not it had anything to do with Moses,” Salio cautioned. “Things like that aren’t written in thermal signatures or atmospheric compositions. But what I can show you is that practically everything we know about Venus is consistent with the notion of a young, recently very hot body.” Salio tilted his chair back and clasped his hands behind his head. “The first thing every schoolkid knows is that what the first American and Russian probes found back in the nineteen sixties came as a big surprise—at least it did to the orthodox theory. The expectation had been that since Venus was about Earth’s size and had clouds, it would be pretty similar—maybe a little warmer through being nearer to the Sun. What they found was virtually a volcanic cauldron: surface temperature seven-hundred-fifty degrees K and more—enough to melt lead—and an atmosphere of acids and hydrocarbon gases at ninety times the pressure of Earth’s. Not the kind of place to put on your list of vacation spots.”
“Supposedly a runaway greenhouse effect,” Keene supplied. It was what all the texts said, and not something he had ever had much reason to doubt or look into.
Salio pulled a face. “Yes, `supposedly’—a good choice of word, Mr. . . . Landen. That theory was contrived as an attempt to square the facts with the established assumption of an ancient planet. But it really doesn’t stand up. The main weakness is quite simple: a real greenhouse has a roof that stops the hot air inside from convecting upward and being replaced by cooler air circulating down from above. A planet doesn’t have such a lid, and so there’s nothing to stop the hot surface gases from mixing with the freezing upper layers. A greenhouse process might raise the temperature some, but maintaining a difference of over seven hundred degrees just isn’t credible. You’d reach thermal equilibrium through convection and radiation back into space long before it got anywhere near that. The only way such a difference could be maintained is if the heat source is the planet itself, not the Sun.”