The descent into Neptune to our floating base went smoothly. Even though we were in a god-awful hurry, we inspected the floating base fully and carefully when we arrived. To this day there are only a handful of human-built structures that endure pressures like those of the Ooze Zone, so we had to check if the base really was enduring. One thing we quickly found was that a lot of helium had migrated through the hull into the base -- so much that we were talking like Donald Duck for about six hours before the life support system could purge it back to normal levels. We also shivered a lot. Helium can suck heat out of person much faster than any other gas. But, we lived with it, and once the inspection was complete we hustled to get the Purple Passion ready again.
Cracker updated us on the weather. "We're much closer to one of the spots, now -- one of the great storms we can see even from Titan. This means the turbulence is going to be higher. This is good and bad. It's good because we should be able to get down and up faster. It's bad because it's new. This planet has mysteries, and some should be here. Stay on your toes, Frank."
I nodded. Yeah, my job was going to be a lot more interesting this time. But, we knew a lot more now. "Is our old way of getting through the boulder-zone going to work?" I asked.
"It should. If anything, we may want to take even more advantage of it. If the turbulence is right, we should be able to ride it even lower, and break out in a big convection cell. Then we can slide down the edge of that to the Ruby Layer."
"Get your motion medicine ready, folks. If we do that, this will put a jet-ski trip to shame."
It was only hours before we were ready. We were all primed, all "up", but we were all dog tired -- those hours since arriving, and the descent hours before them, had been busy ones. "OK, folks." I said, sounding like a mother, "I know you don't want to hear this, but it's dinner and beddy-bye time. I want us all fresh on the run tomorrow."
"Aww, Ma. Do we have to?" It was Cracker doing some mock kid whining.
"You have to!" I wiggled my finger at him, "And... you have to eat all your vegetables at dinner!" Everyone laughed. We hadn't seen vegetables since we left Titan. "We leave in ten hours."
The night was restless for me. It was not pleasant being back on this base without fresh supplies. The unknown was in front of us once again. We had to be sharp, sharp as any man ever gets. I finally got a little shuteye.
None of us were as "up" that morning, but we were all a lot more rested. We would have a lot more endurance for this upcoming challenge. We launched and started our "flying teacup" ride down to the Ruby layer of the Ooze zone. Things didn't feel much different until after we spread our probes and became a rock. As we hit the bottom of the boulder zone, we felt the turbulence go up. We heard deep booms penetrate through the hull as other boulders crunched into our boulder.
"Keep it together, Frank. Keep it around us until we drift off to the side of the cell. There will be a reverse current there, headed down. Break out when we get into that." Jack was sounding excited.
"Is our boulder doing to hold together?" asked Hansley.
"I hope so." said Jack and I together. I continued, "I'm watching. If it breaks, I will start sailing us."
There was a lot of banging, and a lot of sideways motion. Then we started down... fast.
"We're at the side." said Jack.
"I'm going to leave us inside." I said. "This is fast, and I'm still hearing a lot of banging."
"Remember, this block is getting bigger and tougher fast." warned Jack.
Minutes later the block broke. There was an abrupt halt to our descent, then a huge grown and a sharp crack. Our block had gotten wedged between a couple of bigger blocks, and then crushed by them. I was at the controls squirming our way through quickly dissolving block wreckage and heading for the down current that was working around those blocks that had crushed us.
Yeah, this was fast, all right. Within hours we were down at the Ruby zone. And it wasn't long before Hansley had spotted a vein. Hot Dog!
But then a problem. As we headed for the vein we hit a huge cross current. It was a horizontal current, and about five times as fast as the verticals we had been experiencing. "We can't cross that! It will carry our ship way downstream. We don't have the power to match that velocity."
"How unusual." said Hansley in his usual calm voice. "Let me check this for a bit. Everyone take a break."
I was frustrated, but we did what he said, we took a break and had a meal. It's not that we didn't need it, we'd been hard at it for six hours. As we were finishing up, Hansley came in looking relaxed. "There is a solution." he said, as he sat down for his meal. Then he said no more while he ate.
Grr... it's times like this that I want to strangle the man for being so cool-headed. But we all knew that wheedling him or yelling at him would only make him eat slower, so we waited... and watch the clock tick... second... by... second.
Finally he finished... leaned back... and said, "What we are experiencing here is like a canyon wind back on Titan, or Earth. It's fast and furious, but very local. We can let it carry us downstream because it will end in a kilometer, or so, where this crack widens out. We can then head for the Ruby vein."
"You're sure of this? It's not like a Mississippi River of ooze that's going to carry us down to the great Pacific Ooze Ocean thousands of miles away?" I say.
"The Mississippi issues into the Gulf of Mexico. And, see for yourself." He put his readouts up on the room overhead. And, yeah, if you looked at the readouts the right way, you could see the huge funnel effect he was talking about. The fast current would peter out quickly. I slapped him on the back, pretty hard -- I was kinda hoping he still had something in his mouth he could choke on a bit, for making us wait so patiently. But it was a hot solution to our problem!
We manned our stations, crossed our fingers, and crossed the river!! It put our previous rides to shame in turbulence, but the huge turbulence had broken all the usual junk down to peanut size, so there was no trash at all to dodge.
On the far side... there is was!!! Ruby!!! We sent out collectors, and within three hours we had another three pounds. Gosh, this was getting easy!! The price of Ruby was going to come crashing down, down, down!
We headed back to base uneventfully.
From base back into space was also uneventful. We had to put the base to bed with a whole lot less reserve than previously, and we had to be quick. But our luck held, and we did so without mishap.
Now we had our negotiating ace-in-the-hole, and we could worry about Titan issues.