Amateur in Chancery

A desperate call erupts in a government lab: a trainee astronaut has crashed through an airlock on Venus, and the planet’s toxic cyanogen clouds have already begun to paralyze her. With only a handful of minutes before permanent brain damage sets in, the only hope lies in an experimental quantum link that could pull her back through the same tunnel that delivered her there. The narrator, a modest computer programmer, is thrust into the center of the crisis, tasked with translating a bizarre alien logic—explaining something as simple as left and right to a creature that doesn’t share human perception.

Project Tunnel, a half‑joking venture turned serious, hinges on a tunnel‑diode effect that can blur the line between Earth and Venus. Scientists scramble to power the device, while a teenage “psi‑girl” with uncanny mental abilities watches the chaos with unnerving calm. The story balances tense, high‑tech problem‑solving with a wry look at bureaucracy, ambition, and the odd camaraderie that forms when an impossible rescue hangs in the balance.