Titan

28 May 2096: Departure

Kris Cardenas woke from a troubled sleep to find Gaeta already up and dressing. She watched him for a sleep-fogged moment, then realized that this was the morning he would leave her for Titan.

She sat up, letting the bedsheet fall to her waist. Gaeta looked at her and grinned.

“Don’t try to get me back into bed, Kris,” he bantered. “I can’t take advantage of your luscious body ’til I get back.”

“You’re really going,” she murmured, knowing it sounded stupid as the words left her lips.

His grin faded. “I’m really going.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Hey, I got Fritz to round up a top crew and fly all the way out here. We got a contract with PanGlobal. I gotta go through with it.”

“Even if I ask you not to?”

He sat on the bed beside her and began to tug on his soft-boots. “Don’t make this into a competition, Kris.”

“Do it tomorrow,” she blurted. “Put it off for twenty-four hours.”

He shook his head slowly. “It’ll be the same deal tomorrow, kid. And you’ll be just as clanked up about it.”

She looked into his deep brown eyes and knew that if she put it on an either/or basis he would choose to do the mission and leave her waiting for him to return. And she knew she would wait. She would wait and worry and fear that he’d get killed but she would never leave him, even though he’d chosen danger and risk over her.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said lightly. “In time for dinner, probably. Pick which restaurant you want to celebrate in.”

“I don’t want to lose you!”

He leaned over, grasping her by her bare shoulders, kissed her soundly. “You won’t lose me, kid. You can’t ever lose me. I’ll come back to you.”

She flung her arms around his neck and tried to hold back the tears that threatened to engulf her.

Gently, Gaeta disengaged from her and got to his feet. “I’ll be back, querida. Wait for me in bed.”

He turned and headed for the door. He slid it open, blew her a kiss, and then left her sitting in bed. Cardenas wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. He was gone. He had left her. The fear that she would never see him again was too terrifying for mere tears.

Gaeta’s cheerful grin disappeared once he left the apartment. He knew better than Cardenas the risks he was facing. He had tried to appear optimistic for her, but now, as he straddled one of the electrobikes racked in front of the white-walled apartment building and began pedaling through the bright morning sunshine, he started reviewing the details of the mission he faced.

Paragliding through the smoggy air of Titan onto the back of Urbain’s sleeping machine. Gaeta shook his head as he engaged the bike’s little electrical motor. Well, he thought, it’ll make a good experience for the VR audience. Not an easy assignment, though. Not easy at all.

By the time he reached the steel-walled chamber that fronted the airlock down at the habitat’s endcap, Pancho, Wanamaker, Fritz and his crew were already there. So was the news guy, Berkowitz.

“Our star performer is only fifteen minutes late,” said Fritz stiffly.

Gaeta sauntered past him and up to the excursion suit, towering like a monument to past glories over the team of technicians.

“C’mon, Fritz,” Gaeta said, “I know you. You built at least a half hour of slop into the schedule.”

Berkowitz had two minicams trundling along beside him on wheeled monopods, balancing like unicycles. He held a third camera in his hands.

“Any words for posterity before you climb into your suit?” he asked Gaeta.

Pancho called from across the chamber, “What’s posterity ever done for us?”

“I’ll have to edit that out,” Berkowitz said, his usual smile dimming a bit.

Gaeta said to the newsman, “This mission is a lot more than a stunt. My job is to try to revive Dr. Urbain’s probe down on the surface of Titan. I’m working for the scientists now.”

Berkowitz nodded and said, “Good enough. We can embellish it later.”

Fritz tapped Gaeta on the shoulder. “If you’re finished with your publicity, would it be too much to ask that you get into the suit?”

Gaeta made a mock bow. “I’d be happy to, old pal.”

Pancho and Wanamaker were already at the airlock hatch. “We’re going aboard the transfer craft,” Pancho said, as much to Berkowitz as to Fritz. “Gotta check out the bird and make sure it’s ready to go.”

Fritz nodded curtly.

Urbain had gone to his office before dawn. Too nervous to sit at his desk, though, he paced along the corridor that led to the mission control center. The technicians were filing in, one by one, and taking their places at their consoles.

“This will be the most important day of our lives,” Urbain told them.

They nodded half-heartedly and muttered agreement as they started to power up their consoles.

Urbain watched them, thinking, Wunderly has reached Earth and made her presentation to the ICU governing board. In another few days she will meet with the Nobel committee. I must have some solid results to show from Alpha by then. I can’t have her stealing the spotlight after all the work I’ve put into Alpha. My creature must begin to send us data from Titan. It must!

Cardenas was still in bed, unable to make a decision about how to spend her day. The phone jingled.

Startled, she said to herself, It can’t be Manny! “Answer,” she called out.

Yolanda Negroponte’s face appeared on the tiny screen of the bedside phone console. Cardenas clutched the sheet to her.

“Oh,” said Negroponte. “I’m sorry to wake you, Dr. Cardenas.”

“I’m … I was … ,” Cardenas stuttered. Then, “It’s all right. I was already awake.”

“I wonder if I can pick your brain,” Negroponte said. “I have a problem and I need your help.”

Go away and don’t bother me, Cardenas wanted to snap. Instead she said to the image in the phone screen, “I can meet you at the cafeteria in half an hour. Will that be all right?”

Negroponte appeared to think it over for a few moments. “Could you come to the biology lab, instead? I’ll pick up breakfast and we can eat in the lab. Will that be all right?”

Suddenly Cardenas was grateful for something to do, some excuse for getting out of bed, some reason to at least try to stop worrying about Manny.

“That will be fine,” she said. “The bio lab in half an hour.”

Pancho stood before the control board of the transfer craft, scanning all the panels with a practiced eye.

Standing beside her, Wanamaker said, “Everything’s in the green except the airlock.”

“I left it open,” Pancho replied, “so’s Manny can tromp in without having to cycle it.”

Wanamaker nodded. He watched as Pancho’s hands played over the control panels as deftly as a concert pianist’s. She’s in her element, he thought. She’s good at this and happy to be in a ship.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asked.

Pancho looked at him. “Yep, guess so.”

“You’re a flygirl by nature.”

“Beats sittin’ on my butt wondering how to spend my money.”

Wanamaker laughed. “I suppose it does.”

“The decon nanos are aboard?”

“In their container in the airlock. I’ll help Manny apply them once he’s outside.”

Pancho nodded. “Just be careful—”

Fritz’s crisp, slightly annoyed voice came through the speaker, “Our intrepid hero is ready to board your ship.”

Pancho tapped the communications keyboard. “Copy Gaeta boarding.”

Wanamaker said, “I’d better get down to the cargo bay and see that he gets in okay.”

Pancho replied, “Stay out of his way, though. He’s like a three-hundred-kilo gorilla in that suit.”

Beneath his icy exterior, Fritz von Helmholtz was quivering with apprehension. We should have taken more time to prepare for this mission. Ten days isn’t enough. We should have taken a month for simulations and tests. Six weeks, even. I’ve allowed Urbain to rush us too quickly.

And Manuel is carrying nanomachines with him. Nanomachines! What if something goes wrong with them? What if they attack his suit? This mission is far more dangerous than Manuel is willing to admit.

Von Helmholtz squared his narrow shoulders and studied the displays his technicians were working with. It’s up to me to keep Manny safe, he told himself. At the slightest sign of danger, the slightest deviation from our mission plan, I’ll pull him out of there. Whether he likes it or not.

Inside the cumbersome suit Manny Gaeta felt like a giant, a titan of old, far more powerful than any mere mortal. With a clench of his fingers he could crush metal. With the servomotors that reacted to his arms’ movements he could lift tons of dead weight.

Yeah, and with an eyeblink’s worth of carelessness you can get yourself killed, suit or no suit, he warned himself. Remember that.

“Closin’ airlock hatch,” Pancho’s voice sounded in his helmet earphones.

Gaeta could see Wanamaker standing by the cargo bay hatch in his flight coveralls. The ex-admiral looked wary, on guard, as his eyes flicked from Gaeta to the airlock hatch behind the massive suit.

“Airlock hatch closed,” he said in a flat, noncommittal voice.

“Ready to separate,” Pancho said.

A heartbeat of hesitation, than Fritz’s voice replied, “You are go for separation.”

“Separating,” said Pancho.

Gaeta felt the slightest of tremors. The transfer ship was no longer connected to the mammoth habitat. The sense of weight dwindled to nothing.

“We’re off for Titan,” Pancho sang out.

“And we are off to the mission control center,” came Fritz’s frosty voice, “where Dr. Urbain has graciously permitted us to use one of the consoles.” His accent on one dripped with acid.