Titan

8 January 2096: Noon

Nadia Wunderly sealed the outer hatch of the nanolab’s airlock entrance and fidgeted impatiently for the few seconds that it took for the inner door to pop open. When it did, Raoul Tavalera swung the heavy hatch open for her.

“Why, thank you, Raoul,” she said, a smile dimpling her face. “Have you been standing there long, waiting for me?”

Puzzled by her attempt at humor, Tavalera replied, “I’m heading out for lunch.” Then he added, “With Holly,” and his face brightened a little.

He went into the airlock as Wunderly stepped into the lab. “Kris is talking with that Russian from maintenance, Timoshenko,” Tavalera said, as he pulled the airlock hatch shut.

Wunderly passed benches loaded with silent equipment as she walked deeper into the laboratory. She heard Cardenas’s voice and the gruff lower tones of the Russian engineer. She was still losing weight, and now that New Year’s had come and gone, she was wondering when she should have Cardenas flush the nanomachines out of her body.

Cardenas was perched on her tall stool, as usual, with a starched white smock over her dress. Timoshenko stood next to her, a stubby thickset figure in gray coveralls, several centimeters shorter than the seated Cardenas.

“We could do more than armor the superconducting wires,” she was saying. “We could develop nanomachines to automatically repair any damage done to them.”

“That’s not as easy as you might suppose,” Timoshenko said. “Very powerful electrical currents flow through those wires.”

Cardenas nodded. “Well, if you can give me the specifics, I can try to work out a program for self-repair. Then we can test it here in the lab on short samples of superconductor before we install any nanos on the shielding wires themselves.”

Timoshenko started to reply, then noticed Wunderly standing off at some distance. “Ah,” he said to Cardenas, “you have company.”

“Come on over, Nadia,” Cardenas called to Wunderly. Turning back to Timoshenko she explained, “Nadia and I have a lunch date. Care to join us? We can continue our discussion in the cafeteria.”

Timoshenko dipped his chin in agreement while Wunderly thought to herself, He’s the guy who piloted the transfer craft that carried Gaeta to the rings and then picked him up afterward. If he did that for Manny he can do it for me. Maybe.

All through lunch in the busy, clattering cafeteria Timoshenko and Cardenas talked about using nanomachines to protect and even repair the superconducting wires that provided the magnetic field which protected the habitat from radiation. Wunderly had no chance to ask Cardenas about flushing the nanos inside her. She listened to their conversation with only a fraction of her attention. Her mind focused on flying out to the rings again, this time to pick up samples and prove to those doubting Earthworm flatlanders back home that the ring harbored living psychrophiles, organisms that lived within the ice particles of Saturn’s rings.

How can they not believe it? Wunderly asked herself, as she munched on a fruit salad, straight from the habitat’s orchards. They know that amino acids and other complex polypeptides form naturally in amorphous ice particles. They’ve seen it in comets for damned near a century. Why shouldn’t the next step be believable? Amino acids self-assemble into proteins, and proteins evolve into living organisms. It’s happened in liquid water on half a dozen worlds that we know of. And in liquid sulfur on Venus, for chrissakes.

It just goes slower at freezing temperatures. Amorphous ice allows chemicals to flow as if they were in a liquid, but it all happens at a slower pace. Unless you’ve got some catalyst present, like an antifreeze. I wonder if that’s what happens in the ring particles. Plenty of energy available from Saturn’s magnetic field and the electrical flux of the rings themselves.

“Nadia, did you hear me?”

She abruptly realized that Cardenas was talking to her, the expression on her face somewhere between worried and annoyed.

“I’m sorry, Kris. My mind wandered.”

“Back to the rings, I suppose,” Cardenas said, an understanding smile curving her lips.

“Where else?” Wunderly replied.

Timoshenko asked, “Do you really believe that those particles are truly alive?”

“Yes! Of course. How else do you explain the fact that Saturn’s rings are so big and bright? Those creatures maintain the rings for their own survival, just as living organisms maintain Earth’s environment for their own survival.”

“Gaia,” murmured Cardenas.

Timoshenko picked up his glass of tea. “If the Earth’s biosphere actively works to maintain the planet’s environment, how do you account for the greenhouse cliff? Or the ice ages of the past?”

“Minor fluctuations,” Wunderly answered, with a wave of her hand.

“Not minor to the people who lost their homes to the floods,” muttered Timoshenko.

“Gaia works on a planetary scale,” Cardenas said. “The Earth’s biosphere maintains the planetary environment for the survival of life itself, not for the benefit of any particular species.”

“Like the dinosaurs,” Wunderly said. “Major impact event wiped them out, along with half the other species on Earth, yet within a few million years Gaia was restocking the planet with new species.”

“Including us,” said Timoshenko.

“Until we messed up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases,” Cardenas said. “Gaia slapped us pretty hard then.”

“It was avoidable,” Wunderly agreed. “Or correctable.”

Timoshenko shrugged heavily. “Just because humans are intelligent doesn’t mean they’re smart.”

“I don’t know about that,” Cardenas mused. “The greenhouse disaster forced us into space in a major way. We wouldn’t be here if the climate hadn’t collapsed on us.”

Timoshenko started to reply but apparently thought better of it. He simply shook his head.

“I’ve got to prove that there are living organisms in the rings,” Wunderly said. “It’s important.”

“Important to you,” said Timoshenko.

“Important for scientific knowledge,” Wunderly countered. “Important for our understanding of the universe.”

“And it should be important for the creatures themselves, if they exist,” Cardenas pointed out. “Eberly wanted to mine ice from the rings, remember?”

“That idea got shot down,” said Wunderly.

“Did it? Or has he just shelved it temporarily?”

“You think … ?”

Cardenas pointed out, “A lot of people voted for Eberly because he said he’d make us all rich by selling water mined from the rings.”

“But the IAA would never allow that,” Timoshenko said.

“I wonder,” Cardenas said. “Elections are coming up again in a few months. How much do you want to bet that Eberly brings up the ice-mining idea again?”

“But he can’t!” Wunderly blurted. “He mustn’t!”

“You think so, Nadia. And I think so. But most of the voters might like the idea of making money off ice mining.”

“Money talks,” Timoshenko agreed sourly.

Wunderly looked at each of them in turn, her mind churning. Then she said, “So it’s more important than ever that I prove there are living creatures in the rings. The IAA would flatly deny permission for mining the rings if there’s proof that there’s an extant biosphere in them.”

Cardenas nodded agreement. Timoshenko looked wary, as if he knew what was coming next.

Wunderly turned her chair to face him. “I’m planning to go to the rings and collect samples. I’ve asked Manny Gaeta to be my mission controller and teach me how to use his excursion suit. I need someone to pilot the transfer craft that’ll take me to the rings and back out again.”

“Not me,” Timoshenko said flatly.

“You did it for Manny.”

“Once was enough. More than enough. I’m no hero.”

“But I need your help.”

“Ask Tavalera,” Timoshenko said. “He piloted transfer craft while he was at the Jupiter station, didn’t he?”

“Raoul?” Cardenas asked, surprised.

“Him. Or anybody else,” said Timoshenko. “But not me.”