Titan

CHAPTER THREE

From a ballistic standpoint, Themis was a nightmare.

No one had ever tried to orbit a toroidal body. Themis was 1300 kilometers across and only 250 kilometers wide. The torus was flat along the outside, and 175 kilometers from top to bottom. The density of the torus varied radically, supporting the view that it was composed of a thick floor along the outside, an atmosphere about that, and a thin canopy arching overhead holding the air inside.

Then there were the six spokes, 420 kiloineters tall. They were elliptical in cross-section, with major and minor axes of .100 kilometers and 50 kilemeters, respectively, except near the base where they flared out to join the torus. in the center was the hub, more massive than the spokes, 160 kilometers in diameter, with a 100-kilometer hole in the center.

Trying to cope with a body like that was tantamount to a nervous breakdown for the ship's computer, and for Bill, who had to make a model the computer would believe in.

The easiest orbit would have been in the equatorial plane of Saturn, enabling them to use the velocity they already had. But that was not possible. Themis was oriented with its axis of rotation parallel to the equatorial plane. Since the axis passed

through the hole at the center of Themis, any Saturn-equatorial orbit Cirocco might assume would have Ringmaster passing through areas of wildly fluctuating gravitational attraction.

The only viable possibility was an orbit in the equatorial plane of Themis. Such an orbit would be expensive in terms of angular momentum. it had the single advantage of being stable, once achieved.

The maneuvering began before they reached Saturn. During the last day of approach their course was re-calculated. Cirocco and Bill relied on Earth-based computers and navigational aids as far away as Mars and Jupiter. They lived in CONMOD and watched Saturn grow larger in the aft television screens.

Then the long burn was initiated.

During a lull in her work, Cirocco turned on the camera in SCIMOD. Gaby looked up with a harried expression.

"Rocky, can't you do something about that vibration?" "Gaby, the engine function is, as they say, nominal. They're just going to shake, that's all."

"Best observing time of the whole fucking trip," Gaby muttered. In the seat next to Cirocco, Bill laughed.

"Five minutes, Gaby," he said. "And I really think we ought to let them burn as long as we planned. It would work out so much nicer that way."

The engines shut down on the tick and they watched for final confirmation that they were where they wanted to be.

"This is Ringmaster; C. bones commanding. We have arrived in Saturn orbit at 1341.453 hours, Universal Time. I'll send up the prelims for a correcting burn when we come out from behind. Meanwhile, I'm going off this channel."

She slapped the appropriate switch.

"Anybody who wants to take a look outside, this is going to be your only chance."

It was tight, but August and April and Gene and Calvin man- aged to squeeze into the cramped room. After checking with Gaby, Cirocco turned the ship ninety degrees.

Saturn was a dark gray hole, seventeen degrees wide, covering 1000 times the area of the moon as seen from Earth. The rings were an incredible forty degrees from side to side.

They looked like solid, brilliant metal. Ringmaster had come in north of the equator, so the upper face was presented to them. Each particle was being lit from the opposite side, presenting a thin crescent, like Saturn. The sun was a brilliant point of light in the ten o'clock position, approaching Saturn.

No one spoke as the sun drew nearer to eclipse. They saw Saturn's shadow fall across the part of the ring nearest them, cutting it like a razor.

Sunset lasted fifteen seconds. The colors were deep and changed rapidly, pure reds and yellows and blue-blacks like those seen from an airliner in the stratosphere.

There was a soft chorus of sighs in the cabin. The glass depolarized and everyone gasped again as the rings grew brighter, bracketing the deep blue glow that outlined the northern hemi- sphere. Gray striations became visible on the planetary surface, illuminated by ringlight. Down there were storms as big as the Earth.

When she looked away at last, Cirocco saw the screen to her left. Gaby was still in SCIMOD. There was an image of Saturn on the screen above her head, but she didn't look up at it.

"Gaby, don't you want to come up and see this?" Cirocco saw her shake her head. She scanned the numbers marching across a tiny screen.

"And lose the best observing time of the whole trip? You've got to he out of your mind."

They first assumed a long, elliptical orbit with a low point 200 kilometers above the theoretical radius of Themis. It was a mathematical abstraction because the orbit was tilted thirty degrees from Themis, equator, which put them above the dark side. They passed the spinning toroid to emerge on the sun side. Themis lay spread out before them as a naked-eye object.

Not that there was a lot to see. Themis was nearly as black as space, even with the sun shining on it. She studied the huge mass of the wheel with the triangular solar absorption sails rimming it like sharp gear teeth, presumably soaking up sunlight and turning it into heat.

The ship moved over the interior of the great wheel. The spokes became visible, and the solar reflectors. They seemed nearly as dark as the rest of Themis, except where they mirrored some of the brighter stars.

The problem that still worried Cirocco was the lack of an entrance. There was a lot of pressure from Earth to get into the thing, and Cirocco, despite her cautious instincts, wanted to as badly as anyone else.

There had to be a way. No one doubted Themis was an artifact. The debate concerned whether it was an interstellar space vehicle or an artificial world, like O'Nell One. The differences were movement and origin. A spaceship would have an engine, and it would be at the hub. A colony would have been built by somebody close at hand. Cirocco had heard theories that included inhabitants of Saturn or Titan, Martians--though no one had found so much as a flint arrowhead on Mars-and ancient space- faring races from the Earth. She didn't believe any of them, but it hardly mattered. Ship or colony, Themis had been built by someone, and there would be a door.

The place to look was the hub, but the constraints of ballistics forced her to orbit as far from the hub as she could get.

Ringmaster settled into a circular orbit 400 kilometers above the equator. They traveled in the direction of spin, but Themis turned faster than their orbital speed. It was a black plane outside Cirocco's window. At regular intervals one of the solar panels would sweep by like the wing of a monstrous bat.

Some details could now be seen on the outer surface. There were long, puckered ridges that converged on the solar panels, presumably covering huge pipes to carry a fluid or gas to be warmed by the sun. Scattered widely in the darkness were a few craters, some of them 400 meters deep. There was no rubble scattered around them. Nothing could stay on the outer surface of Themis that wasn't fastened down.

Cirocco locked her control board. At her elbow, Bill nodded in his couch, asleep. The two of them had not left CONMOD in two days.

She moved through SCIMOD like a sleepwalker. Somewhere down there was a bed with soft sheets and a pillow, and a comfortable quarter gee now that the carousel was turning again.

"Rocky, we've got something strange here."

She stopped with one foot on the ladder of D Spoke, stood very still for a moment.

"What did you say?" The edge in her voice made Gaby look up.

"I'm tired, too," she said, irritably. She palmed a switch, and an image appeared on the overhead screen.

it was a view of the approaching edge of Themis. There was a swelling on it that seemed to grow larger as it caught up with them.

"That wasn't there before." Cirocco's brow furrowed as she tried to shake off the exhaustion.

A buzzer sounded faintly and for a moment she could not place it. Then things became sharp and clear as adrenalin ate the cobwebs. It was the radar alarm in CONMOD.

"Captain," Bil,1 said over the speaker, "I've got a strange reading here. We're not getting closer to Themis, but something's getting closer to us."

"I'll be there." Her hands felt like ice as she grabbed a stanch- ion to swing herself up. She glanced at the screen. The object exploded. It looked like a starburst, and it was growing.

"I can see it now," Gaby said. "It's still attached to Themis. It's like a long arm or a boom, and it's opening out. I think-"

"The docking facilities!" Cirocco yelled. "They're gonna grab us! Bill, start the engine sequence, stop the carousel, get ready to move."

"But it'll take us thirty minutes-"

"I know. Move!"

She caromed off the viewport and into her seat, reached for her microphone.

"All hands. Emergency status. Depressurization alert. Evacuate the carousel. Acceleration stations. Strap in." She slammed the alarm button with her left hand and heard the eerie hooting begin in the room behind her. She glanced to her left.

"You too, Bill. Get suited."

"But-"

"Now!"

He was out of his seat and diving through the access hatch. She turned and called over her shoulder.

"Bring my suit back with you!"

The object was visible out the window now, approaching fast. She had never felt so helpless. By overriding the attitude control system's programing she was able to fire all the thrusters on the side of the ship facing Themis, but it was not nearly enough. The great mass of Ringmaster barely moved. Other than that, she could only sit and monitor the automatic engine sequencing and count the seconds as they dragged by. In a short time she knew they could not escape. That thing was big, and moving faster.

Bill appeared, suited, and she scrambled into SCIMOD to don her own suit. Five anonymous figures sat belted to acceleration couches, not moving, staring at the screen. She clamped her helmet, and heard chaos.

"Quiet down." The chatter died away. "I want silence on the suit channel unless 1 ask you to speak."

"But what's happening, Commander?" It was Calvin's voice.

"I said no talking. It looks like an automatic device is going to pick us up. This must he the docking facilities we were looking for."

"It looks more like an attack to me," August muttered. "They must have done this before. They must know how to do it safely." She wished she could convince herself of that. it didn't help her credibility when the whole ship shuddered.

"Contact," Bill said. "It's got us."

Cirocco hurried back to her station, just in time to miss seeing the grapple sweep over them. The ship jumped again, and awful noises came from the rear.

"What did it look like?"

"Great big octopus tentacles without the suckers." He sounded shaken. "Tthere were hundreds of them, waving around all over."

The ship gave an even greater lurch, and more alarms began to sound. A firestorm of red lights spread across her controls.

"We've got a hull rupture," Cirocco said, with a calmness she did not feel. "Losing air from the central stem. Sealing off pres- sure doors 14 and IS." He hands moved over the controls with- out conscious guidance. The lights and buttons were far away, seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The accelerometer dial began to spin as she was thrown violently forward, then to the side. She came to rest on top of Bill, then struggled back to her scat and strapped in.

When the buckle clicked around her waist the ship jerked backwards again, worse than before. Something came through the hatch behind her and hit the viewport, which developed a network of cracks.

She hung from her seat, her body straining forward against the belt. An oxygen cylinder flew through the hatch. The glass shattered and the sound of the impact was sucked away with the burst of cold, hard glass knives that turned and dwindled before her eyes. Everything in the cabin that wasn't tied down leaped up and hurtled through the mouth of jagged teeth that had once been a viewport.

Blood pulsed in her face as she hung above a bottomless black hole. Large objects turned lazily in the sunlight. One of them was the engine module of Ringmaster, out there in front of her where it had no right to be. She could see the broken stump of the connecting stem. Her ship was coming apart.

"Oh, shit," she said, then had a vivid recollection of a tape she had once beard from the flight recorder of an airliner. That had been the last word the pilot had uttered, seconds before impact, when he knew he was going to die. She knew it, too, and the thought filled her with a vast disgust.

She watched in dull horror as the thing that had the engines wrapped more tentacles around it. it reminded her of a Portuguese man o' way with a fish snared in its poisonous grip. A fuel tank ruptured---soundlessly, with a strange beauty. Her world was coming apart with no noise to mark its passing. A cloud of compressed gas quickly dispersed. The thing did not seem to mind.

Other tentacles had other parts of the ship. The high-gain antenna almost seemed to be swimming away, but it moved too slowly as it tumbled down the well below her.

"Alive," she whispered. "It's alive."

"What did you say?" Bill was trying to hold himself secure with both hands m the instrument panel. He was strapped solidly to his chair, but the bolts which held it to the floor had broken.

The ship shuddered again, and Cirocco's chair came free. The

edge of the panel caught her across the thighs and she cried out as she struggled to free herself.

"Rocky, things are falling apart in here." She wasn't sure whose voice it was, but the fear reached her. She pushed, and managed to open her seat belt with one hand while holding her- self away from the panel with the other. She slipped out to the side and saw her chair bounce across the shattered array of dials, stick briefly in the frame of the broken port, and launch into space.

She thought her legs were broken, but found she could move them. The pain lessened as she drew on reserves of strength to help Bill out of his chair. Too late, she saw that his eyes were closed, his forehead and the inside of his helmet smeared with blood. As his body slithered loosely over the control panel she saw the dent his helmet had made in it. She fought for a grip on his thigh, then his calf, his booted foot, and he was falling, falling in the middle of a glittering shower of glass.

She came to her senses crouched in the leg well under the control panel. She shook her head, unable to recall what had put her there. But the force of deceleration was not so great now. Themis had succeeded in bringing Ringmaster---or what was left of it-up to its own rotational speed.

No one was talking. A hurricane of breathing came through the speaker in her helmet, but no words. There was nothing to say; the screams and curses had exhausted themselves. She got to her feet, grabbed the edge of the hatchway above her, and pulled herself through into chaos.

No lights worked, but sunlight spilled harshly across broken equipment from a large rip in the wall. Cirocco moved through the debris and a suited figure got out of her way. Her head throbbed. One of her eyes was swollen shut.

There was a lot of damage. It would take a while to get it cleaned up so they could get under weigh.

"I'll want a complete damage report from all departments," she said, to no one in particular. "This ship was never meant for that kind of treatment."

Only three people were standing. one figure knelt in the corner, holding the hand of another who was buried in wreckage.

"I can't move my legs. 1 can't move them."

"Who said that?" Cirocco shouted, trying to make the dizziness go away by shaking her head, succeeding only in making it worse.

"Calvin, attend to the injuries while 1 see what can be done for the ship."

"Yes, Captain."

No one moved, and Cirocco wondered why. They were all watching her. Why were they doing that?

"I'll be in my cabin if you need me. I'm not ... feeling so good".

One of the suits took a step toward her. She moved, trying to avoid the figure, and her foot went through the deck. Pain shot through her leg.

"It's coming in, over there. See? It's after us now."

"Where?".

"I don't see anything. Oh, God. I see it."

'Who said that? I want silence on this channel!"

"Look out! It's behind you!"

"Who said that?" She broke out in a sweat. Something was creeping up behind her, she could feel it, and it was one of those things that only come out into your bedroom after you switch off the light. Not a rat, but something worse that had no face but only a patch of slime and cold, dead, clammy hands. She groped in the red darkness and saw a writhing snake dart through a patch of sunlight in front of her.

It was so quiet. Why didn't they make any noise?

Her hand closed around something hard. She lifted it and began to chop, up and down, over and over as the thing flashed into view.

It wouldn't die. Something wrapped around her waist and started to pull. The suited figures jumped and ran around in the small space, but the tentacles shot out strings which stuck like hot tar. The room was laced with them and something had Cirocco by the legs and was tying to pull her apart like a wishbone. There was a pain like she had never felt before, but she continued to chop at the tentacle until awareness slipped from her.