Free The Best of Penny Dread Tales by Kevin J. Anderson, Quincy J. Allen, Cayleigh Hickey, Aaron Michael Ritchey Ritchey, J. M. Franklin, Gerry Huntman, Laura Givens, Keith Good, David Boop, Peter J. Wacks Page A

hull, which imbeds in the side of the tower. A cable attached to the harpoon now stretches from the hull to the tower.
    “Attach your safety lines to the cable. The wind is so strong out there it could blow you away. Don’t release your safety line until you are both inside the tower. I have installed temperature gauges on the wristbands of your suits, so you will know if it is safe to remove them.” Professor Higgs gives us the thumbs-up sign before pushing us into the hatch and sealing the inner door behind us.
    With a deep breath, I release the outer hatch, hook my safety line to the cable and take my first steps onto the planet’s surface. The white ground gives a few centimeters under my weight, but it holds me. It is only a few steps to the tower door, which, as we suspected, is frozen shut. I am prepared; I take my mini torch from my bag of tools. It takes a few minutes, but I get the door open relatively easily. Once we are both inside, we remove our safety lines and close the door. There is another inner door, and once through that, we discover that it is indeed warm enough to remove our protective suits. Now, it isn’t warm by any means: 5° C by our gauges. We each wear thick woolen clothing and heavy gloves. Hopefully, it will get warmer the closer we get to the pipes.
    I pull up the schematic of the steam tubes the Professor has downloaded onto my tablet, and we are able to locate the access tunnels without incident. The tubes are different than the pipes that run under the city. These are flexible, but the basic principles of how to fix them still apply. Davie and I are in our element as we silently set about checking for leaks and ruptures, making repairs when we come across them. It takes nearly two hours to check all the tubes, but satisfied, we head back to the Pandora .
    The next two towers go just as smoothly as the first. The last, however, takes longer. Many areas of the fourth tower have already begun to freeze due to the loss of heat. Davie and I have to use the torch to break through the inner tower door as well as the access tunnel door. An entire section of tubing has split down its length. We have excess tubing aboard the Pandora , and I have to wait for Davie to return with it. As I wait, I explore a bit. I find a hatch in the ceiling of one of the tubing chambers. It’s frozen, so I put my suit back on—I have no idea how cold it is on the other side of that door—and use my mini-torch to open the hatch. Crawling through I realize that it is much colder on this side. My suit’s gauge says it’s -15°C. I think this is an observation area. Two of the walls are made of thick glass. I can see the Pandora waiting below. If the fog wasn’t so thick, I think I could have seen forever.
    I close the hatch behind me as I return to the tubes. Davie has returned with the extra tubing, and in no time we will be back on our way to the city. The repair is easy, but since it is such a long length of tubing, it takes both of us to fix it. Thank goodness Davie is with me, otherwise I would have needed the Professor to help me. We test the last seal for leaks before re-pressurizing the system.
    No sooner is the system back up and running than a vibration shakes the tower. The entire structure seems to move. I grab the tablet just as the Professor pops onto the screen. “What’s happening?” I ask.
    “I just got word from the Mayor. The city engineers want to test the towers before we return to the city. We can’t leave if they aren’t fixed.”
    “They’re fixed I tell you!” Davie comes to stand next to me, nodding his head in agreement.
    “They won’t listen to you! Hell, they won’t even listen to me! They are extending the towers. You just have to hold on. Clip your safety lines to something and hold on!”
    I motion for Davie to follow me. If I am going to be two kilometers in the air, I want to see what it looks like up there. I push open the hatch I found to the observation room and