The contrast between the freezing tracheal channel and the Chitin Smelters was an assault on the senses.
The heat slammed from minus two hundred degrees to over eight hundred degrees in the span of thirty paces. Arthur Vance quickly engaged the active cooling coils of his outside suit. He listened to the high-pitched whine of the freon compressors as they fought to keep his internal suit heat at a survivable twenty-one degrees. The outer visor of his helmet automatically aligned, darkening to shield his eyes from the blinding glare of rivers of liquid dark rock and boiling iron. Beneath his boots, the rock radiated fierce earth-heat energy. That made the rubberized tread sizzle with faint wisps of white vapor.
Beside him, however, his companions didn’t suffer.
Grimm’s dense jet-black coat absorbed the surrounding blasting heat like a sponge, his gravity marrow naturally compressing the heat energy into dense moving mass without breaking a sweat. The hound walked with his head held high, his black paws leaving steaming footprints on the hot dark rock as he scanned the boiling lakes below. Vesper strolled along the scorching ledge, her starlit fur naturally deflecting the heat with a shimmering barrier of Gengjin spatial refraction that bent the heat rays around her body like water around the bow of a ship.
