Titan

Titan Alpha

Slowly, with an unwavering patience that only a machine could exert, Titan Alpha extracted itself from the quickly refreezing lake. Its biology program reviewed the available sensor data and concluded that the protocellular organisms in the water were being immobilized as the water crystallized into ice. It routed this information to the central processor’s master program. For nine billion nanoseconds the master program halted Alpha’s drive engines as it compared this information against its major objectives and restrictions, and then reviewed its conclusion three times, as required by its programming.

The organisms were not being killed, it concluded: merely frozen into immobility, their life functions suspended, not extinguished. Even if they were being killed, there was nothing that Titan Alpha could do about it. The action that precipitated this environmental crisis was entirely involuntary. The best plan of action, consistent with all the master program’s objectives and restrictions, was to exit the area with as little additional environmental damage as possible. Organisms at deeper levels of the lake would be protected from environmental harm once the surface of the lake refroze completely.

Its drive gears in dead-low reverse, Alpha inched out of the lake, recording sensor data nanosecond by nanosecond. The biology program checked and rechecked the status of the samples obtained from the lake. Satisfied that the samples were safely stored, the biology program reverted to its normal passive review of incoming sensor data.

Free of the lake at last, Titan Alpha pivoted forty-seven degrees right, engaged its forward gearing, and began a slow, purposeful circumnavigation of the ice lake. The jagged breach it had smashed into the icy surface was quickly refreezing. Off beyond the low rounded hills of ice on the other side of the lake, sluggish dirty orange clouds were precipitating fat drops of liquid ethane onto the rough dark landscape.

Titan Alpha surged ahead, gathering data, trundling purposively across the rolling, spongy ground as the ethane rainstorm slowly enveloped it.