Titan

25 December 2095: Christmas dinner

You mean nothing came through?” Kris Cardenas asked.

“Not a damn thing,” said Pancho. “The probe went silent soon’s they ordered the data uplink.”

This Christmas dinner in the habitat’s quiet little Bistro restaurant had been intended as a reunion. Pancho hadn’t seen Cardenas in nearly five years.

Holly had brought her friend, a silent, morose-looking young man named Raoul Tavalera. With his long, horsy face and mistrustful brown eyes he reminded Pancho of Eeyore, from the old Winnie-the-Pooh vids. Tavalera said very little; he just sat beside Holly looking sad, sullen, worried. It’s Christmas, Pancho scolded him silently. Lighten up, for cripes’ sake. But Holly seemed quite happy with the lug. No accounting for taste, Pancho thought. Maybe he’s good in bed.

Wanamaker sat beside Pancho, while Cardenas had brought a hunky guy wearing faded jeans and a mesh shirt that showed off his pecs nicely. She introduced him as Manuel Gaeta.

“The stunt guy?” Pancho had asked, recognizing his rugged, slightly beat up face.

“Retired stunt guy,” Gaeta had replied with an easy smile.

“You flew through the rings of Saturn,” said Wanamaker in his deep gravelly voice, “without a spacecraft.”

“I was wearing a suit. A pretty special suit.”

“The ice creatures that live in the rings almost killed Manny,” Cardenas said. “At one point he was totally encased in ice.”

“So you’re the one who really discovered the ice bugs,” Pancho said, reaching for her wine. “How come they gave the credit to that woman?”

“She’s a scientist,” Gaeta replied easily. “I’m just a stunt stud.”

The three couples were sitting at one of the Bistro’s outdoor tables, on the grass. The restaurant’s special holiday menu featured faux turkey, faux goose, and faux ham—all derived from the genetically modified protein that the biolab produced. The vegetables, sauces, and desserts were fresh from the habitat’s farms, however.

As they relaxed over a bottle of local Chablis, Pancho leaned back in her yielding plastic chair and admired the view. Everything’s so damned clean and tidy: the grass is manicured and the trees prob‘ly drop their leaves in neat little piles so you can vacuum ’em-up one-two-three. And instead of sky overhead there’s more land! Clean little whitewashed villages and roads in-between ’em. She could see the lights marking the paths like stars as the big solar windows shut down for the night. You can have an outdoor restaurant here without ever worryin’ about rain, she said to herself. They don’t even use sprinklers for the grass; underground drip hoses instead.

Wanamaker, looking overdressed compared to Gaeta and Tavalera in a neatly pressed short-sleeved shirt and dark blue slacks, mused aloud, “I wonder if the Titan probe touched down in one of the methane seas and just sank to the bottom.”

“That’s a navy man talkin’,” Holly joked.

Pancho said, “They know where it landed. It’s on solid ground. The dingus sent telemetry confirming its landing and checked out all its internal systems. Then it shut itself down; won’t talk to Urbain’s people. Not a peep all day.”

“Poor Urbain,” Cardenas said. “He must be going crazy.”

Jeanmarie Urbain stared at her husband. She had never seen him like this. Ever since returning from the control center he had paced about their apartment, his face dark as a thundercloud, his eyes sullen, accusing. He cancelled the Christmas dinner that had been scheduled with Wexler and the other visiting notables. When she asked him what had gone wrong, all he did was snap at her.

This was not the Eduoard she knew, not the patient, gentle man who had spent his life watching others climb past him, not the man who was content to allow younger scientists to advance while he stayed in place, who timidly acceded to the directives and procedures of the university hierarchies. I have misjudged him all these years, Jeanmarie realized. He was not being timid; he just didn’t care. As long as he was allowed to pursue his own research interests, none of the politics mattered to him one iota. Even when I nagged him to seek advancement, he shrugged it off as if it meant nothing to him.

Jeanmarie had refused to go with him on this five-year mission to Saturn. It was the final blow. He had no self-respect, she felt, and no appreciation for her feelings. He was being sent into oblivion, a second-rate scientist assigned to obscurity in the farthest reaches of the solar system. She was still young, desirable. Some called her vivacious. Even among the sharp-clawed faculty wives she was considered attractive. Too bad Jeanmarie’s burdened with that husband of hers, she had overheard more than once. She could do much better.

But he had unexpectedly returned from Saturn full of fire and confidence. One of his scientists had made an important discovery, which made him an important person. He dined with the head of the International Consortium of Universities; he was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne. He stayed on Earth only long enough to accept acclaim for the discovery of the ice creatures in Saturn’s rings and to reveal his plans for exploring Titan with the robotic vehicle he had built. And to sweep Jeanmarie back into his life. She realized that she loved him, that she had put up with his failings and lack of drive all those years because she truly loved him. When he returned to the habitat orbiting Saturn she was at his side.

This mission to Saturn has changed him, she realized. Now he cares. He’s tasted glory; now he understands that one must have power in order to succeed. Now he wants to be admired, respected.

And now this failure. His robot sat dead, inert, useless on the surface of Titan. It was enough to make a man weep.

But Eduoard did not weep. He seethed. He fumed like a volcano about to erupt. He paced their sitting room radiating anger and frustration. All the passion he had kept bottled up inside him when he was among his scientists came boiling out now that he was alone with her.

“Dolts,” he muttered. “Idiots. All of them. From Wexler on down.”

“Eduoard,” Jeanmarie said as soothingly as she could, “perhaps it is only temporary. Perhaps tomorrow the probe will respond.”

He glowered at her. “You should have heard them. The high and mighty geniuses. Throwing off theories like little children tossing handfuls of leaves into the air.”

She saw the fury in his face.

“It must be a programming error,” he whined in falsetto, mimicking Wexler’s penetrating nasality. Then, in a deeper voice, “No, it has to be an antenna malfunction. No, there must be damage from the entry into the atmosphere. No, it must be … must be …”

His face was so red she feared a blood vessel would burst. Balling his hands into fists he shook them above his head. “Fools! Stupid, smug, self-important idiots! And all of them staring at me. I could see it in their eyes. Failure! That’s what they think of me. I’m a failure.”

Only then did Eduoard Urbain actually break into tears, deep racking sobs that tore at Jeanmarie’s heart. She folded her arms about him and gently led him toward their bedroom, wondering to herself, What can I do to ease his pain? How can I help him? How?

At the Bistro restaurant, Pancho had tipped her chair back to a precarious angle and lifted her softbooted feet off the grass, balancing herself teeteringly on the chair’s back legs.

“You could get hurt if the chair goes over,” Gaeta warned.

She grinned at him, slightly drunk from the wine and cognac they had absorbed. “Wanna bet I can keep it on two legs longer’n you can?”

Gaeta shook his head. “No thanks.”

“You’re a stuntman, ain’tcha?” Pancho teased. “You laugh at danger, right?”

“I do stunts for money, Pancho. I don’t risk my spinal cord on an after-dinner dare.”

“Betcha a hundred. How’s that?”

Kris Cardenas grasped Gaeta’s hand before he could reply. “Manny has better things to do than play games with you, Pancho.”

Pancho let the chair drop forward. “Like play games with you, Kris?”

Cardenas smiled sphinxlike.

Turning to Holly and her guy, Pancho asked, “How ’bout you, Raoul? I’ll give you odds: five to one.”

Holly got up from her chair. “We’ve got to be going, Panch. Thanks for the dinner.”

“Welcome,” Pancho slurred.

Her sister smiled. “This was the best Christmas I’ve had in a long time, Panch. The best I can remember, f’real.”

Slouching back in her chair, Pancho drank in the warmth of Holly’s smile. “Me too, kid. Me too.”

Wanamaker said, “It’s time we got to bed, too, Pancho.”

“Oh? Whatcha got in mind?”

He laughed, but Pancho caught a hint of embarrassment in it.

As they got up from the table, Holly asked, “Are you going to watch them try to make contact with Titan Alpha tomorrow?”

With a shake of her head, Pancho replied, “I been disinvited. Nobody allowed into the control center tomorrow except the workin’ crew.”

“I’ll bet Wexler will be there,” said Cardenas. “Urbain can’t lock her out.”

Turning curious, Pancho asked, “I heard you were gonna lace the probe with nanomachines.”

“We had talked about it, Urbain and I,” Cardenas said, as they started up the path that led back to the village’s apartment buildings. “But he sent the beast down to Titan before I could work up the nanos for him. Impatient.”

“Bet he wishes he had ’em on board now.”

“Maybe,” Cardenas said guardedly. “Frankly, Pancho, I’m just as glad they’re not. He’d be blaming me for whatever glitch has shut down his beast.”