Titan

28 May 2096: Turmoil

Timoshenko drifted slowly out of the airlock, floating like a leaf on a pond. Turning, he saw the immense curving bulk of the habitat, a huge metal structure created by human minds, human hands.

A place of exile, he said to himself. All that thought, all that care, all that genius went into building a fancy prison for people like me.

Rising above the habitat’s tubular shape as it turned slowly on its long axis, Saturn’s glowing radiance filled his eyes with light. The planet’s hovering rings gleamed with dazzling light like a field of glittering jewels, circles within circles of sparkling ice.

More than a billion kilometers from home, Timoshenko thought. They sent us here to make certain we could never get back home again. They exiled us among the stars, tied us to an alien world, a constant reminder of how far away from Earth we’ll always be.

Earth. Katrina. What good is living if I can’t be home, with her?

With gloved hands he felt along his waist for the remote control unit he’d brought. With one press of his thumb, he could shut down the superconducting wires that produced the habitat’s magnetic shield against Saturn’s deadly radiation. One press of my thumb, he thought, as he clutched the remote in his hand, and within an hour the people inside will begin to die.

They could restart the superconductors, he told himself. But that will take hours. By the time they realize what is happening to them it’ll be too late. They’ll all die. Including that lying bastard Eberly. Him most of all. He’s the one I want dead.

And me? I’ll go drifting out to the stars. I might be the first human being to reach Alpha Centauri. He laughed bitterly at the thought.

Timoshenko held the remote in his right hand and lifted it to the level of his helmet visor so he could see it. One touch of my thumb and they all die.

Then his tether reached its limit and tugged at him unexpectedly.

HUMANS ARE CARRIERS OF CONTAMINATION.

Gaeta saw the laser turn toward him. His brain raced: the laser puts out a ten-megajoule pulse; how much energy is that? Can it puncture my suit?

Clumsily he began to crawl toward the laser. If I get close enough to it I can get under it, where it can’t hit me. Or I’ll rip the sonofabitch out of its mounting and throw it overboard.

“The laser!” Habib shouted in his earphones.

“How much energy can it put out?” Gaeta asked, scrabbling across Alpha’s roof.

No answer. And he was suddenly brought up short. The wire connecting him to the central computer’s access port had stretched to its limit. Gaeta fumbled with the communications unit at the waist of his suit to free himself from the wire.

Something slammed into his shoulder. It was like being hit by a bullet. Still on his hands and knees, Gaeta was rocked back onto his haunches, then instinctively rolled and dropped flat onto his stomach. Wildly he checked the life-support displays. Nothing. All the lights were in the green.

“I’m pulling up the specs on the laser,” Habib’s voice came through. “Ten megajoule pulses, ten per second. That works out to a bit more than two kilograms of TNT in explosive power.”

“Christ! Like a hand grenade!”

Again that damned communications lag. Gaeta thought furiously: The suit’s armored, it’s been hit by ice chunks in the rings and taken tumbles snowboarding down Mt. Olympus. But a fucking hand grenade?

He felt a thump on his back and suddenly half his life-support telltales flashed into the red. Gesoo! The damned fucker hit my backpack! Gaeta disconnected the wire connecting him with the computer access port and began to crawl as fast as he could toward the laser’s slim mounting.

“I’ll rip that son of a bitch out by its roots!” Gaeta’s shout came through the speaker of Habib’s console.

“No!” Habib snapped reflexively. “Don’t damage the laser if you can avoid it.”

One of von Helmholtz’s technicians pushed through the crowd gathered around Habib’s console, his face drawn, sweaty. Grabbing Fritz’s slim shoulder, he said, “Life support’s gone critical.”

Jumping to his feet, von Helmholtz said, “We’ve got to get him out of there!”

Habib turned back to his console. “How do we shut down that laser?” he shouted.

“We can’t!” one of the engineers wailed. “The beast isn’t receiving any commands from us. It shut off its downlink antennas, remember?”

“My god,” Habib groaned. “He’s a dead man.”

Gaeta huddled around the strut supporting the laser, his heart hammering so hard he could hear his pulse in his ears.

Okay, he told himself. Simmer down. You’re safe here. The chingado laser can’t shoot you, you’re underneath it. Take a deep breath. Another. Slow down your heart rate. Fritz’ll never let you live it down; he’s getting all this on the life-support telemetry; he’ll say you crapped in your pants.

He squinted at the life-support readouts displayed on the inside of his helmet. Son of a bitch hit my air tank. It’s leaking. Gotta get out of here.

But if I move out from under this fregado laser it’ll start taking potshots at me again. Catch-22: if I stay here I’ll asphyxiate; if I make a run for the return pod I’ll get shot.

“Fritz,” he called as calmly as he could. “You got any ideas about this?”

Silence.

And Gaeta saw that the black snowstorm was closer than ever, almost upon him.

Cardenas and Negroponte walked determinedly from the biology lab to the mission control center. They had sent a hurried message to Wunderly, on Earth, and now were heading for Urbain to tell him that the creatures in Saturn’s rings were nanomachines.

Nanomachines. Cardenas still found it hard to believe. Why? she asked herself. You think you’re the only one in the universe who can handle nanotechnology? You’re not even the only one in the solar system.

But the instant they pushed through the unguarded double doors of the mission control center, her thoughts about nanomachines and alien intelligence evaporated. Cardenas could tell from the tension crackling in the air, from the huddles of engineers and technicians hunched in tight knots around consoles, that something had gone wrong.

“Urbain isn’t here,” Negroponte said. “He must be in his office.”

Cardenas barely heard her. She rushed to von Helmholtz and his crew, clustered around one of the consoles, while Negroponte headed for Urbain’s office alone.