Excerpt from REDSHIFT, BY R.M. OLSEN

Aran clung to the thin cable with both hands, swearing loudly and creatively.
Beneath him, molten rock from the northern Rim Mountains’ most notorious volcano bubbled and gurgled like porridge mash left too long on the stovetop. As he watched, a particularly large bubble rose sluggishly, then burst, sending a spray of lava into the air with a thick glopping sound.
How the hell did he keep getting himself into these situations?
“Aran? Aran, are you alright down there?” Istvay’s voice crackled through the wavelink. They sounded worried.
Then again, Istvay was usually worried.
And, Aran had to admit, in this case, his friend was probably right.
He tried to force his eyes away from the orange, dully glowing deathtrap fifty metres or so below him. It was harder than it should have been. Something about the simmering, hypnotic lethality of it drew his gaze inexorably.
There was a soft, delicate touch on his shoulder over the fabric of his high-temp protective suit, a curious, searching sort of gesture, and he managed a small smile.
“I’m alright,” he called up through his link, dragging his eyes away from the certain death that waited below him. “I’m fine.”
Istvay would be able to tell it was a lie. Still, Aran had told worse ones.
The tentative touch came again, inquisitive and questioning. He reached back, stroking the gently exploring tentacle with his heavy glove. “It’s alright, Ani,” he said in a whisper. “We’ve been through worse than this, you and me.”
It was probably true, even.
His makeshift backpack shifted slightly as Ani flattened her bulbous body against the inside of it, as close to him as she could get. She stubbornly refused to stay behind, and the familiar weight of her was somehow comforting.
She, at least, didn’t need protective gear. Her species was notoriously resilient.
Tendrils of heat twined insistently around him, searching for a gap in his gear, and the roiling, caustic steam fogged against the plex facepiece of his suit’s hood.
He closed his eyes, bracing himself, then forced the fingers of one hand to let go of the cable hooked to his harness, currently the only thing standing between him and thorough, inevitable, uncompromising destruction. He fumbled in his pouch and retrieved his sensor, tapping it against his thigh. It grumbled unwillingly, seeming as unhappy with the conditions as he was, and then, grudgingly, hummed to life.
The dial spun lazily for a moment, and then snapped to attention, the low hum resolving into a quick, beep, beep, beep.
He stared at it. Then he stared at the volcano wall he’d braced his legs against, and then once more back at the sensor.
It couldn’t be.
He’d hoped, of course, but he’d never actually dreamed—he shook the sensor to reset it.
Again, the dial spun, and he watched it intently, hardly able to breathe.
It beeped again, sharp and insistent, and a sudden giddiness bubbled in his stomach, excitement surging through his veins strong enough to banish any remnants of terror.
He squeezed his hand to activate his wavelink, and shouted, “Istvay! We were right! There’s a life form down here!”
He could picture the look on their face, resignation mixed with cautious excitement, but he couldn’t focus on it at the moment, because his whole attention was glued to the sensor.
“Aran, listen. You need to start back up.” Istvay sounded distinctly uneasy. “I’m getting some readings—”
“Yeah, I’ll be up in a sec,” Aran murmured. He recalibrated the sensor to a more responsive setting, his hands trembling with excitement, every trace of his earlier terror now forgotten.
The dial’s rotation was absurdly slow, but he hardly cared, lightheaded with exhilaration.
And then it beeped again, and he brought it close to his face, peering at the screen through the foggy miasma of the volcanic gases. He squinted, heart pounding quick and uneven.
Was he reading it wrong? Was it—could it possibly be—
“Aran!”
“Just a second.” He rubbed the sensor’s screen against his leg and looked closer.
No. He hadn’t misread it.
He could hardly breathe.
“It’s not something living in the volcano,” he called, voice hoarse with excitement.
“For hell’s sake, you can tell me about it when you’re back on solid ground! There’s something going on with the atmospheric pressure, and it’s sending the readings I’m getting from the volcano off the charts—” Istvay’s voice was sharp with worry.
Aran felt a momentary pang of guilt, but it was quickly subsumed by elation.
“That’s the thing—it is the volcano. You know all those stories about this place? They make sense now! Whatever this thing is, it’s alive!”
He was grinning so wide it hurt.
Beneath him, the molten rock—or whatever it was—gurgled restlessly, another sluggish bubble rising on the surface and popping with a loud, prolonged belch, caustic steam spraying from it like a cloud of smoke.
Well, if smoke would take the meat from your bones in three point two seconds.
He reached back and grabbed one of Ani’s tentacles in delirious excitement. “We did it, girl! We did it! We were right!”

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