Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (3 page)

Rivers of booze flowing across the land. Yeah baby! Who needs the Pearly gates, when you can enter the eternal flowing bliss of Titan? I would definitely need a strong dose before I start handling those icky, yucky, gooey, slimy brain parts that you call a Shaitan computer.” Jorge was getting back to his normal ‘spirits’.

“Seriously guys, it would be fun. We have been looking at the same thing for too long. We may not achieve anything serious, but we all need the break. How long have we been at the same thing without a break… huh?” Mischa said with a manufactured tone of fun and enthusiasm, which honestly she did not feel herself. She simply wanted to get these two men she cared so much about, out of their depression.

“Twenty seven days precisely. Twenty five of those in two 6 hour shifts inside suits every day.” Ramesh replied promptly, obviously he was keeping count of his days of failure, including the agony of working long hours inside suits. Thankfully since yesterday they had been working without suits. I had been a huge relief, and it was believed that the increased comfort would lead to better ideas and a breakthrough. It had not happened yet.

They had been allowed inside the Shaitan habitat without suits after Violet had certified, after over 3 weeks of rigorous testing of the atmosphere as well as detailed sampling of every conceivable surface, that there were no known pathogens harmful to earth based life. The emphasis was on the word ‘known’.

Dr. Violet Manning’s lab had been repaired and brought back to working order, but it was impossible for one single xeno-biologist working with limited equipment and cultures to even sample all the nooks and crannies, let alone test everything for harmful effects. She was fairly certain that the atmosphere would not kill humans, at least not in the short to medium term, but that was all they could be certain about.

She had found alien microbes, lots of them. It seems that microbes are an integral part of any ecosystems, as can be expected. After all life evolves first as microbes before it becomes complex creatures like us and the Shaitans.

Earth microbes carried specific molecular machinery, which attached to specific parts of our body and released specific proteins that attached in very precise and specific ways to our own body proteins to create a reaction. Some were helpful to our bodies, while others were harmful. This specialized and precise molecular machinery had developed over billions of years for all the Earth animals and plants evolving together.

The Shaitan microbes also had molecular machinery, but they were so alien compared to ours that when an Earth animal, including humans came in contact with those microbes, they ignored each other and passed off as inorganic, inanimate objects, like tiny bits of dust. The molecular machinery had no way to attach to each other.

Violet and most microbiologist on Earth were confident that due to this vast disparity in the molecular machinery, humans were not in danger of alien infection. However nothing could be said for certain. Microbiology was treading into unprecedented and unknown territory. No one could know the long term effects of exposure, it would have to be observed over years.

During normal times, biologists and immunologists would have recommended years of isolated study on Shaitan germ cultures. Slowly testing them from lower animals to higher ones, then mammals and finally on human cells before allowing even a single human to come into contact with those Shaitan microbes.

These were however not normal times. These were times of war. Not just any war, a war for the survival of human species. Humans took higher risks during times of war, and short circuited many procedures. Violet had submitted her final test reports to Earth after 22 days of non-stop work. She had finished every test that was possible with the resources she had on Titan.

While nothing harmful had been detected, and the theory said that nothing could be harmful, there were many more test possible and even necessary to confirm safety of exposure to the Shaitan bugs, but all of those would require equipment and cultures not available to Violet on Titan. So the military and the political establishment had to make a decision.

They could wait years for samples to be transported and studied properly on Earth. Scientists were however recommending that the Shaitan bugs should remain isolated on Titan, and testing equipment should be sent to Titan and all tests carried out in the sterile atmosphere of Titan. Both the options meant waiting years, perhaps as much as 5 years before proper access could be had to Shaitan technology.

Some work could be done by scientist using suits, but it would be severely limited. The scientists and technicians would eventually get exposed to Shaitan bugs working in suits anyway within a few weeks. The suits will have to enter the human camp, and the outer skin of the suit will be touched by human hands.

So a decision was made, which many would find unethical, but extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. In a way, the surviving members of the Titan expedition were to become guinea pigs. They would get exposed to the Shaitan bugs by working in the Shaitan habitat without suit.

The team would be isolated on Titan for another 10 months, after which they would be on board a space ship for another 10 months. The returning expedition and the crew would be kept in isolation for another 4 months. This would provide 2 years of observation on human subjects. This was enough as far as humans were concerned.

If the Shaitan pathogens were harmful to humans, they needed to know as fast as possible. It would open a completely new vista of warfare possible – that of biological warfare. Humans would have to prepare for it as early as they can. Conversely if the humans could study the Shaitan biome, then perhaps humans could design pathogens to wipe out the Shaitans.

While this was never officially stated, since it would freak out greens, pacifists and other so called ethically minded people, who clung to bizarre notions of human ethics applied to aliens bent on making us extinct, the military quietly authorized the study of ways to harm the Shaitan biome biologically and chemically.

Thus the guinea pigs were out of their suits for the second day, roaming around in the Shaitan habitat with plastic protection coveralls, but otherwise face open. The Shaitan air inside the habitat was cold, about 15°C. The humidity level was comfortable, but the oxygen level was low – 16%. The air pressure was also lower at about three quarter of sea level on Earth.

All this made working inside the Shaitan habitat tiring. It felt like working on the highest mountains on Earth. Low oxygen and low atmospheric pressure made you breathless and dizzy with the slightest of exertions. However it was a hundred times more comfortable than working inside those thick clumsy suits.

It was hard to believe that the humans had fought a major land battle wearing the same suits, padded with Mr. Gupta’s foam. When it comes to survival, humans ignore any inconvenience and fight for their lives. Jorge’s biggest gripe however was that coffee could only be heated to about 70°C before it started boiling in this low air pressure, an then it cooled too fast in this damned cold air.

Jorge drank his coffee fast before it turned cold. Then he gestured towards Ramesh and said. “Drink up before it turns to Irish cold coffee. Dr. Computer genius, you are having a look at the Shaitan fusion reactor, while me and the wife here are going to spend some quality time playing with the alien goo that is allegedly a computer.”

There was a mischievous twinkle in Jorge’s eyes which indicated that he was up to no good. Mischa suspected that the Shaitan computer was the last thing in Jorge’s mind. He had naughtier things in his mind, once he was alone with Mischa. She gave a fake stern look. Well… what the heck… men need their incentives from time to time.

Ramesh shrugged as he got up gulping the rest of the coffee, the damn thing had gotten cold in just over 5 minutes. What was the harm he thought? He was wasting his time in front of an alien computer, now he will waste his time in front of an alien fusion reactor. He realized he knew as little about the alien computer as he would be expected to know about the alien fusion reactor, so how did it make a difference?

The fusion reactor was placed bang in the middle of the habitat, at the mid-levels. Either the Shaitans were very casual about safety, or the reactor technology was such that there was no danger of an explosion or radiation leaks.

The reactor was running, that much they could make out, since the entire habitat was fully powered. They had taken the Geiger counters right next to it, and it had shown no appreciable levels of radiation. So it was safe for humans to approach right next to it. Ramesh stood in front of the spheroid reactor nearly 3 meters in diameter.

The upper hemisphere was covered with a hemispherical metal cover, and the lower hemisphere was embedded and resting on a huge square block. The hemispherical cover was shiny metal, but the block was covered in slimy goo like almost all equipment on this Shaitan habitat. He was sure he would never want to share a room with these disgusting creatures.

The humans had not dared to open up anything in this large room. They knew that the reactor was running, and they had no clue how to shut it down. They didn’t dare do anything silly with a nuclear fusion reactor running in the room.

It had taken them almost 2 days to simply identify this as the fusion reactor. They could only confirm it by tracing and tapping into the electrical wiring, to confirm that all power had just one source – that sphere in the center of the room. The electrical wiring around the habitat surprisingly was very conventional. Any electrician on Earth would have recognized it.

He circled the reactor, noting with disgust at the slime smeared liberally across the entire square block. There was speculation that the slime on the bock was meant for lubrication. The other theory was that it may be used for some sensory purpose, like sensing the temperature of the reactor. The soldiers thought that the aliens had simply shat on the block. It must remind them of their toilets.

Notwithstanding the soldiers’ jokes, Ramesh wondered about the other two theories. There was no moving part in the reactor. It didn’t even hum. It just lay there like a block of metal. It had taken them quite some time to figure out that the damn thing was actually running and generating electricity. So if there are no moving parts, then what is the need for lubrication?

It could have sensory purpose. Violet had confirmed that the slime was organic. But the temperature was being constantly measured by the IR scanner kept on an equipment tray in the corner. It had not varied by even 0.1°C in the last 3 weeks they have been measuring it. If you needed to monitor the temperature of something, then surely it must fluctuate at least by that amount over 3 weeks. Otherwise what is the point of monitoring it?

There was nothing other than temperature that could be monitored by the slime. The square block was either hermetically sealed or a solid block of metal. The slime was smeared on the surface. The slime had no access to anything inside. Jorge had gone over every inch of that cursed block, Ramesh knew.

Jorge had eventually ignored the slime. Whatever its purpose, the slime was common to many equipment in this habitat, let someone else figure it out. He had concentrated on the metal shell. He had measured it with the most sensitive ammeter and voltmeter. It had shown no electrical fluctuations, so no electrical or any electromagnetic signal was coming out of that metal shell.

The only thing that was coming out of the reactor was through those massively thick cables, providing perfectly stable DC current. One thing was certain, they were not using any primitive technique like heating water to drive a turbine.

That would have generated AC current. AC current can be converted into DC, but not this perfectly stable straight line. In any case, moving parts would have generated hum. They had used sensitive instruments and could confirm that nothing was moving inside.

Ramesh gave up and sat on the floor staring blankly at the reactor. He had not really expected to find anything that Jorge could not. His mind drifted towards his own struggles with the alien computer. He was growing convinced that the core of the Shaitan computer was a quantum computer.

It was definitely not a silicon based computer, a technology the humans used and understood well. There were telltale EM emissions from a silicon based computer, which Ramesh would have identified immediately. However ruling out silicon, automatically did not mean that it was a quantum computer.

There may be other ways to make computers in the universe, which the humans did not know about. However there were some points of similarity with human quantum computers. Since their original invention in the 1990s and the early 2000s, human quantum computers had to be chilled and kept in extreme cold.

The earliest human quantum computers were chilled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero – minus 273°C. In recent years, with advancement in materials, humans had been able to run quantum computers temperatures that could be cooled with liquid nitrogen. Some of the latest developments in this field, which Ramesh himself was leading promised even higher temperatures, around minus 30°C.

The contraption that they suspected as the alien computer was also cooled, but only to -2°C. Still it was cooled and maintained at that steady temperature. That meant that there was specific cooling device inside that contraption meant to keep it at a lower than ambient temperature.

Shaitan engineers would do that only if that cooling was required for the proper functioning of whatever that contraption was. They had found no other piece of equipment in the entire habitat that was cooled. What else would require to be cooled? It had no opening, so it could not be a refrigerator. It was too small for that anyway.

The other two remarkable things about that contraption were the amount of wiring that went inside it, and the copious amount of slime on the contraption, and in fact that entire room. It felt like a room from some of the old horror movies that Ramesh liked to watch. The wiring had convinced them that it was a computer.