Titan

9 January 2096: Morning

Manuel Gaeta usually wore a sassy, almost insolent smile on his rugged face. After all, he had braved some of the most dangerous environments in the solar system and lived through them. He had made a living out of performing such feats.

But now, surrounded by Holly, Wunderly, Pancho and Tavalera, he looked wary, on guard. Kris Cardenas, sitting beside him, also seemed highly dubious.

They were out in the lakeside park on the outskirts of Athens, in the warm, never-failing sunshine of midmorning, sitting bunched together on a pair of benches that they’d dragged to face each other. Holly had chosen this spot in imitation of Eberly: no one could eavesdrop on them out here, she thought, and they could see anyone else approaching from hundreds of meters away.

“Let me get this straight,” Gaeta said slowly, trying to sort out what they were telling him. “You want me to let Nadia use the suit for a zip through the rings.”

“Not a ‘zip,’” Wunderly replied instantly. “I’m going to the rings to collect samples.”

Gaeta nodded cautiously. “Uh-huh. And you want me to train you.”

“And run the mission,” Holly said, “the way Fritz what’s-his-name did for you.”

“Von Helmholtz,” Gaeta murmured absently.

Cardenas interjected, “You want to fly the mission yourself, Nadia? Not ask Manny to do it?”

“No, I’ll go myself,” said Wunderly, with the complete seriousness of a woman who had made up her mind. “It’s my problem and I’ll do the job myself. But I need your help.”

“You’ll need more than me,” Gaeta pointed out. “More than one man controlling the mission. Fritz had six guys with him, remember.”

Wunderly turned to Holly. “Can you get me six engineers?”

Before Holly could reply, Gaeta said, “They’ve got to have experience controlling excursion missions.”

“And I’ll need someone to fly the transfer craft to the rings and then pick me up afterward.”

Holly said, “I can rummage through the personnel files and dig up a half-dozen engineers, I guess. But it’d mean taking them off their existing jobs.”

“You’re chief of human resources,” said Pancho. “You can finagle the files, can’t you?”

“It’s more’n that,” Holly replied. “I’ve got to do this without bringing it up to Eberly. If he gets a whiff of what we’re doing, he’ll shut us down like that.” She snapped her fingers.

Pancho smiled knowingly. “Midnight requisitioning. I’ve done that once or twice, over the years. You can do it; I’ll show you how.”

“Thanks,” said Holly, dubiously.

Gaeta looked Wunderly squarely in her eyes. “You know there’s a good chance that you’ll be killing yourself, don’t you?”

She nodded wordlessly.

Holly pointed a finger at Gaeta. “Manny, we’ve got to see to it that Nadia gets to the rings and back in one piece. It’s important. Vital. We’ve all got to get this job done, and done right.”

Gaeta shrugged his shoulders. “I still don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

“Listen up,” Holly snapped. “The whole future of this habitat depends on what’s in those rings. If there aren’t any living critters in there, we can mine the ice and make a fortune out of it. With that money we can build new habitats and allow our population to expand.”

“But if I find living organisms?” Wunderly challenged.

Holly spread her hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “Then we won’t generate the money to build new habitats. We’ll have to continue to restrict our population growth—which I don’t think will be possible for much longer.”

“Something’s gotta give,” Pancho muttered.

They all turned toward Wunderly. “So you all would like to see me fail, then?” she asked, her voice plaintive.

“No,” Cardenas said firmly. “I want you to find out what’s really in the rings, one way or another, and come back safely.”

The others all nodded, but Wunderly thought that there wasn’t much enthusiasm in them.

Urbain made his fourth call of the morning to Eberly’s office; like the first three it was answered by a recording of the chief administrator’s smiling face saying that he was busy and would return the call as soon as humanly possible. Checking his phone log, Urbain counted twenty-six calls that Eberly had not deigned to answer. He thought about going to Eberly’s office and knocking his door down, but he knew it would do no good. The man had made it clear: He would approve the satellite launches only if Urbain agreed to support mining the rings for their ice.

That I cannot do, Urbain said to himself disconsolately. Even if I wanted to, the ICU would get the IAA to issue an order forbidding it. I would be disgraced even more than I am already. Intolerable.

He closed his eyes and tried to picture his Titan Alpha alone and abandoned on the surface of Titan. Not abandoned, he said to himself. Never! I will find you, my creation, find you and bring you back to life. I swear it!

His reverie was interrupted by a knock on his office door. Almost glad of the interruption, Urbain called out, “Enter.”

He recognized the young woman who slid the door back and stepped into his office as a technician in the communications group: the wiry, nervous type; her lips were pressed into a thin line but her eyes focused on him as if her life depended on it.

“What is so important that you must come to my office instead of phoning?” he asked severely.

She looked startled, almost ready to bolt for the door. But she stood her ground and said, “I thought you would want to know this, sir.”

“Know what?”

“The storage capacity of Alpha’s memory core.”

Urbain gave no gesture for her to sit down, still she hesitantly went to one of the chairs in front of his desk. Instead of sitting, though, she grasped the chair’s back with both hands.

“Assuming that Alpha’s sensors have been operating at full capacity—”

“An assumption that may be quite incorrect,” Urbain interrupted.

The young woman gulped visibly, but then continued, “Yes, sir, I know it’s an assumption, but if it’s correct it leads to an important conclusion. Or maybe I should say a problem.”

“Conclusion? Problem? What are you talking about?”

“Sir, if Alpha’s sensors are working as designed, and if the central computer is storing the data they’re recording, then the core’s storage capacity will reach its limit in thirty-five more days. Forty days, tops.”

Urbain stared at her. “When the core memory capacity is reached, Alpha is programmed to transmit all data in storage.”

“Yes, sir. But since there’s been no data transmission at all from the vehicle, there’s no reason to assume that it will uplink all the accumulated data.”

He sank back in his yielding chair. “Then she will go into hibernation mode.”

“Exactly, sir. If Alpha can’t, or won’t, dump its accumulated data and clear its memory storage, then the vehicle will shut down all systems. It’ll be dead.”

“Not dead!” Urbain snapped. “In hibernation mode.”

“But sir, if it won’t respond to our commands and it enters hibernation mode, it might as well be dead. We can’t find it and we can’t communicate with it.”

Urbain felt his insides twitching, churning. His gut began to throb painfully. As calmly as he could manage, he dismissed his communications tech. Once his office door was safely shut once again, he leaned his head on his desk and closed his eyes.

There is nothing else I can do, he said to himself. I must find her before she goes into hibernation mode. Once she is asleep we may never be able to revive her. I must find her, save her!

He knew what that meant. With a sinking heart, he realized that he would have to give in to Eberly, support his contemptible scheme to mine Saturn’s rings.

Either that or lose his precious Titan Alpha forever.