Titan

28 May 2096: Contact

Sitting spraddle-legged on Alpha’s roof, Gaeta counted the seconds until Habib’s reply. In the distance he saw the black snowstorm approaching, a wall of inky darkness. He pulled both his arms inside the suit’s chest cavity again and flicked through his life-support diagnostics. Everything okay, he saw. No malfs. Got more’n six hours of air and water, with recycling.

The yellow light of his comm system’s alternate frequency began blinking for attention. Gaeta said, “Freak two,” and Berkowitz’s voice came through his earphones. “Can you give us some first-hand impressions of Titan?” Gaeta could almost hear the man’s perpetual smile in the tone of his voice.

What the hell, he thought. I got nothing better to do until the geniuses in the control center start sending me the questions they want to ask.

“Okay,” he said, looking out toward the horizon again. “The first impression you get down here on the surface of Titan is gloom and darkness. This place looks like a midwinter day in northern Manitoba. Only colder, a lot colder. Clouds cover the sky. No sign of the Sun or even Saturn. Which is a shame, ’cause the planet and those rings would be a spectacular sight from here.”

“Any signs of life?” Berkowitz asked, and Gaeta realized the man must have asked his question even before he himself had started talking.

“The life-forms here are microscopic, like bacteria or amoebas. They live in the ground at temperatures close to two hundred below zero. Just ahead of the rover’s front end, the ground seems to be covered by some black goo. Looks like tar or maybe oil that’s thickened by the cold. Seems to extend all the way out past the horizon.”

Habib’s voice broke in on the first channel. “We have a list of questions for you. With the communications lag, we decided to send a set of questions instead of sending one at a time. I’m sending the list to you via your data link. The questions are arranged in a logical sequence. They’re rather rough, but we’re working on refining them.”

“Okay,” Gaeta said, glancing at the communications panel built into the suit’s chest wall. The yellow INCOMING light was flickering furiously. He manually clicked off Berkowitz’s frequency. No time for PR fluff now, he said to himself. There’s work to be done.

Urbain sat slumped at his desk, his arm throbbing, his face sheened with perspiration. I should go back to the control center, he told himself. I am their leader, I should be I charge.

But he didn’t have the strength to get out of his swivel chair. Habib is conducting the mission; this is his domain, Urbain thought. Let him handle it. I can monitor the control center from here. No need to show myself. No need to let them all see how much this means to me, how much pain I am suffering.

This is my entire life, he reflected. If they cannot bring Alpha back online my career, my entire life, is finished.

He licked his parched lips and wished it didn’t hurt so much.

Standing in the cramped bridge of the transfer craft, Pancho listened to the chatter between Gaeta and Habib.

“They’re gonna try to talk to the rover’s main computer,” she said to Wanamaker, who stood beside her slightly hunched over, his arms floating weightlessly in the semifetal crouch typical of zero g. Pancho realized she too was making a pretty good imitation of an ape-woman.

“Call coming in,” Wanamaker said, pointing to the comm panel.

Pancho clicked the incoming frequency. Holly’s face filled the panel’s small screen. She looked eager, excited.

“Panch,” Holly said without preamble, “how’d you like to go comet hunting?”

Before Pancho could reply, Holly went on, “We don’t need to mine the rings! We can get water from comets and sell it! I’ve been talking it over with Doug Stavenger at Selene and he thinks it’s a good idea. You could start an operation that’ll sell water all across the system, from Mercury to Saturn and back again!”

“Wait, hold on,” Pancho said. “Slow down and tell me what this’s all about.”

But Holly rattled right on, “Panch, you’ve been wondering what you want to do. This is it! Go out and find comets, maybe even out past Neptune. Alter their orbits so they fall into the Belt or the Earth/Moon region, wherever they’re needed. Mine ’em for their water. It’ll work! You can get rich and I can beat Eberly with this!”

Pancho looked over at Wanamaker, who shrugged elaborately. “I got my hands full with this mission, Holly,” she said to the image on her screen. “Can’t this wait ’til we get back?”

Holly kept on babbling.

Wanamaker chuckled. “She won’t hear you for another six seconds or so, and even then I doubt that she’ll pay any attention.”

“Damn,” Pancho muttered. “She’s spoutin’ like a runaway rocket.”

“She’s got the bit between her teeth, that’s for certain,” Wanamaker said.

“Since when are you talkin’ like a cowboy, Jake?”

Eying the comm screen, Wanamaker said, “She reminds me of somebody.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“You,” he said.

It took a bit of manipulation, but at last Gaeta saw Habib’s list of questions glowing on the left side of his visor. Feeling a trifle foolish about talking to a computer, he took a breath, then checked to make certain that his communications line was plugged into the computer’s comm receptacle. The controllers back in the habitat can hear me talk to the computer, he reasoned. They can eavesdrop. But he turned off the incoming audio on the channel that connected him to the control center. Let ’em listen, Gaeta said to himself, but I don’t want them yammering in my ear while I’m talking to the machine.

Once he was properly connected to the central computer, Gaeta asked, “Is the uplink antenna functioning properly?”

The computer’s synthesized voice answered flatly:

Uplink antenna deactivated.

“Deactivated?” Gaeta blurted. “Why?”

No response from the computer.

Gaeta grumbled under his breath and peered at Habib’s list of questions. They were arranged like a logic tree: if the computers says this your next question should be that. But there wasn’t any question about the uplink antenna being deactivated.

“Was there a command to deactivate the uplink antenna?” he asked.

No.

He started to ask why again, but figured the computer wouldn’t answer that one. Instead, Gaeta thought for a few moments, trying to frame a question the coño computer would reply to.

“For what reason was the uplink antenna deactivated?”

Conflict of commands.

Ah, Gaeta thought, now we’re getting somewhere. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the yellow comm light start blinking again. The guys at the comm center want to get into the chatter. He ignored it.

“Display conflicting commands,” he said to the computer.

He waited, but the computer stayed silent.

Most of the controllers had left their consoles and were gathered around Habib. As he listened to Gaeta’s attempt to talk to the central computer, he could feel the heat of their bodies clustering around him.

“He’s cut off his link with us,” said one of the controllers.

“I can see that,” Habib muttered.

“But he won’t hear any instruction we send to him.”

With gritted teeth, Habib replied, “We’ll just have to wait until he sees fit to listen to us again.”

“Display conflicting commands,” Gaeta’s voice came through his console speaker.

Habib shook his head. “That’s too general,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “The program can’t handle that kind of input.”

Sure enough, nothing but star-born static hissed through the speaker grill.

Habib leaned on the communications switch. “Talk to me, Gaeta,” he urged. “Open your comm link and talk to me, dammit!”

No one spoke, no one even breathed, it seemed to Habib. The speaker remained silent except for the faint background crackling of interference coming from the cold and distant stars.

Timoshenko tapped out the access code on the security panel set into the bulkhead beside the airlock hatch. He knew that this would send a warning signal to the safety supervisor; no one was supposed to go outside by themselves. All outside excursions had to be cleared by the safety department beforehand.

He grunted to himself as the airlock’s inner hatch swung open. Safety regulations are only as good as the people using them, he thought. I know all the rules and all the codes. And I know how to get around them.

He fingered the remote controller he’d attached to the belt of his hard suit. I know all the commands for the radiation shielding system, too. I can shut the system down with the touch of a button.

The inner hatch closed and sealed itself. Timoshenko stood inside the airlock and waited for it to pump down so that he could open the outer hatch and step into nothingness.