Titan

27 May 2096: Mission planning session

Urbain was surprised at how crowded the conference room was. His own team of a dozen mission control engineers sat along one side of the long table, talking among themselves, while this von Helmholtz person and his half-dozen technicians lined up along the other side. Then there was Gaeta himself, of course, and Dr. Cardenas. Gaeta looked quite relaxed; she was obviously tense, her normally sunshiny cheerful face drawn and tight-lipped. Below them Pancho Lane and Jake Wanamaker sat together, and down at the foot of the table sat Berkowitz, chatting amiably with Wanamaker. Why the news director had to be in on this meeting, Urbain could not fathom.

I suppose I should be grateful that Eberly didn’t insist on joining in as well, he said to himself.

From his chair at the head of the table Urbain called the meeting to order. The separate little conversations stopped. All heads turned to him.

“We are here this morning to make a final review of the mission plan,” Urbain said.

Halfway down the table, Pancho muttered, “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Suppressing a frown, Urbain said, “Herr von Helmholtz, if you please.”

Fritz touched a pad on the keyboard in front of him, and the wall on the opposite side of the room lit up. It showed an image of Titan’s surface with the location of Alpha indicated by a red dot.

“The plan calls for flying a transfer vehicle from the habitat to orbit around Titan. From there, our man will leave the transfer craft in an aeroshell protective heat shield and enter Titan’s atmosphere. At an altitude of three thousand meters above the ground, he will collapse the aeroshell and parasail the remainder of the way down, to land within one hundred meters of the Alpha machine.”

A dotted red circle sprang up around the red spot on the display.

Urbain interrupted, “The plan calls for him to land atop Alpha. He is not to set foot on the surface. He is not to contaminate the organisms living there.”

Von Helmholtz dipped his chin once, barely. “He will attempt to land atop the vehicle, but there is no guarantee that the parasail descent will be that accurate.”

“I’ll land on its roof,” Gaeta said. “Don’t worry.”

“Even if he lands on the ground,” said one of Urbain’s engineers, “Alpha itself has driven over the area. Its tracks have crunched through the ice.”

“But Alpha was thoroughly decontaminated before landing,” Urbain protested. “Sterilized by gamma radiation.”

Cardenas hunched forward in her chair. “Manny’s suit will be decontaminated by nanomachines. His boots as well. He’ll be just as clean as your lander. Cleaner.”

“Still—”

“I’ll land on your machine’s roof,” Gaeta repeated. “I’ve done a lot of parasailing. In that thick atmosphere with its low wind velocities, I’ll hit its roof. Don’t worry about it.”

Urbain wanted to reply but thought better of it. This is a compromise I must accept, he told himself. If this braggart of a stuntman can touch down on Alpha’s roof, fine. If not, I must depend on Cardenas’s nanomachines to prevent contamination of the surface. In the back of his mind, though, he worried about the nanomachines themselves. What if they were not deactivated after sterilizing Gaeta’s suit? What if they began to multiply there on the ground? Devouring everything in sight?

Von Helmholtz cleared his throat, forcing Urbain’s attention to return to him. He continued, “Once atop the landing vehicle, our man’s first tasks will be to examine the lander’s uplink antenna and then establish a communications link with your machine’s central computer.”

“And use the nanos he’ll be carrying to build a new uplink antenna,” said the communications engineer.

“If necessary,” said Habib. “He might discover a programming glitch that can be corrected on-site.”

Before the comm engineer could reply, Urbain said, “Yes, we all understand. Achieve a linkage with the master program, then use the nanomachines Dr. Cardenas has designed to build a new uplink antenna, if necessary.”

“Once an uplink connection has been made,” Fritz resumed, looking directly at Urbain, “our man will activate his escape thrusters and leave the surface. He will be picked up by the transfer vehicle waiting in orbit and returned here to the habitat.”

The wall screen now showed a yellow-gray ball representing Titan. A curving green line rose from its surface to intersect with a bright blue circle that represented the transfer craft’s orbit.

“Very well,” Urbain said, his eyes on the display. “Are there any questions?”

No one spoke.

“You all understand your duties and are prepared to carry them out?”

Heads bobbed up and down the table.

Then Fritz cleared his throat again, noisily.

“Herr von Helmholtz?” Urbain said. “You have a question?”

“A comment,” said Fritz. “A suggestion, actually. I believe this mission would benefit from another few weeks of training and simulation runs.”

“Another few weeks?”

“We have had less than ten days to prepare for this mission. It is a complicated mission, involving a high degree of risk for our man.”

“That’s what I get paid for, Fritz,” Gaeta said.

Ignoring him, Fritz went on, “In addition, our man will be on the surface for only one hour. The mission objectives must be completed in one hour. That is … quite difficult.”

“I can do it,” Gaeta replied. “An hour’s plenty of time.”

Von Helmholtz arched a brow at Gaeta, then continued, “Failure of this mission would mean that your lander remains dead on Titan’s surface.”

“Asleep,” Urbain growled. “Not dead.”

Spreading his hands in a what’s the difference gesture, Fritz pointed out, “If this mission fails, your lander will remain silent and useless, with no possibility of reactivating it. It will be totally written off, will it not?”

Urbain’s mind was racing as he stared at von Helmholtz’s icy, hard-eyed face. We cannot postpone the mission, he said to himself. Wunderly has already reached Earth, she is already being honored for finding the creatures in the rings. We must rescue Alpha now, before Wunderly steals all the glory, before she meets with the Nobel committee.

He saw that all eyes were turned to him. Slowly, as if it took an effort to make the decision, Urbain replied, “It is vital that we reestablish communication with Alpha before the master program begins to dump the data that her sensors have accumulated. That is our most important task. Alpha carries a treasure of data about the conditions on Titan’s surface and the organisms that live there. We cannot risk losing that data by postponing this mission.”

“Even at the risk of a man’s life?” von Helmholtz insisted.

“That’s not a fair question, Fritz,” Gaeta said. “I’m the guy who’s taking the risk. We’ve worked out the mission plan. I’ll be okay.”

“You are willing to go without more training?” Urbain felt a flood of relief gushing through him.

“Yeah. Why the hell not?”

Gaeta grinned, coolly confident. Fritz scowled at him. Cardenas looked as if she wanted to clout somebody.