The Ice Moon Explorer (2 page)

"He bailed."

"I'm sure he had a good reason. It's not like
when you got in; astronaut training is hard."

"Yeah."

The only sound was the treadmill.

"So, we had quite a night last night."

"What do you mean? I looked out the window.
"Where's the scoop?"

"I closed it."

"Was it damaged?"

"No, we're full."

"We're
full?
" I almost fell off the
treadmill.

"We hit a dense pocket - a
very
dense
pocket."

"Wow. How did that even happen?" At our
orbit, we were clearing just a few grams per square meter, per
hour. How had we taken a month's crop in a night?

"I guess we can head back to base then," I
started running on the treadmill again. "How's the bioreactor
doing?"

"I'll show you."

Images and graph plots appeared on a large
screen.

Enceladus's ocean was closer to antifreeze
than sea water. It had regular sea salt, Sodium Chloride, but in
much higher concentration. Water ice is pure. As the ocean freezes,
it kicks the salt back into the ocean. This raises the salt content
- further slowing freezing. It's just like salting a road.

It's also loaded with Ammonia, another
antifreeze agent. Together with Sodium Carbonate (washing soda), it
makes the ocean highly basic. The pH is 12 on a good day. Reactions
in the rock below, add more bases.
Much
more importantly,
they release Hydrogen.

Some say Hydrogen is to life here, what
Oxygen is to us. That's incorrect. It's closer to what sunlight is
to us. The ocean floor is covered in bacterial vent scums. The
scums use the Hydrogen to produce Methane, which is their biofuel.
Jellies and worms eat the scums. Bigger worms (like the wrigglers)
eat those. Leeches steal from anything bigger than your thumb. It
was likely the most common biology in the solar system. Perhaps,
the Universe.

"We got wrigglers."

"Lots of them. I reined them in with some
magnetite."

Magnetite on the ocean floor was a byproduct
of the Hydrogen reaction. Kapoor suspects they're building reefs
with it down there. The larger, deeper water predators weren't keen
on it. Good thing too, or they'd descend and eat the whole food
chain.

"That's odd. What happened to the
magnetite?"

"I used it."

"
All
of it?"

"There wasn't much."

"I refilled it before leaving!"

"Are you sure you didn't forget?"

"Of course I didn't. And even if I did, there
was already enough in the tank to last several weeks."

"Well, maybe the gauge was faulty."

I got off the treadmill and floated to the
window.

Saturn's rings were half my view. It was like
we were skimming the edge of God's dinner plate. I looked into
space at the local dots. I counted three. I should have been able
to see Rhea, too.

Where was Rhea?

"Pilot, where's Titan?"

The brightest dot was red-boxed. It was
whereabouts it should have been.

There were two bright dots left. "Where are
Tethys, Dione, and Rhea?"

Three red boxes appeared. In one, Rhea was
quite faint.

And of course, quite
new
.

"Is everything alright?" asked Pilot.

"Of course. Make a landing on the edge of the
Damascus tiger stripe."

"Land? That's not on our schedule."

"Like you said, you do the orbital mechanics.
I'll handle the icy moon geology."

Eight Hour later, Enceladus, South Pole

I stepped out of the hatch, on to a
life-bearing world.

Below, in the Damascus valley, a line of
geysers was firing. They shot water up at twice the speed of sound.
Flash freezing, it built diamond columns a hundred kilometers into
space. Lots of it would snow, someday, on other moons.

It was bright. Saturn was out, and the lander
floodlit the snow. Enceladus's fine grain snows made it the most
reflective body in the solar system. Down in the "Tiger Stripe"
valley though, the ice was a bit darker, and chunkier. Impurities
form the ocean below.

Impurities like Life.

"I have no idea why we're down here," my suit
radio spoke. "We should be heading - "

I cut the feed. I also turned off the
cameras. All Pilot knew now were my vitals and how much safety
cable I was using.

I stepped off the ladder. It was a slow
process - bouncing around a microgravity moon is annoying when you
have work to do. We videoed Maggie Liu doing a standing jump once,
for social media. It took over a minute for her to land. And then
she
bounced
. It got a ton of views.

As if crossing a minefield, I moved towards
Damascus.

Before my parents were born, the Cassini
mission discovered the "Tiger Stripes." They were valleys, clawing
across a fifth of this world. One of the more active ones, they
named Damascus. It was a busy place. I counted thirty simultaneous
eruptions once.

This time, I counted eight.

I looked beyond to the other valleys. That
raised the count to just twenty. How does an ice moon go from
eighty three geysers to twenty, in one day? It doesn't. That should
have taken two or three months.

Months.

"You son of a
bitch
."

I hauled myself back into the lander.

"Why did you turn off your radio?"

I heard the bridge speakers through my suit.
They must have been turned up loud. Frost fogged the outside of my
helmet. I removed it and saw innocent screens and cheery green
status lights.

"Kara? What's wrong with you today?"

I moved towards the bridge. Quick as I dared;
I knew where all the handholds were. I had been on the ICE for
months (and months).

"Kara, why aren't you saying anything?"

I opened a tool box, and got to work on a
panel. It slid open, cool, dry air hit me. I looked through the
installed cards, and tried to remember.

"Girl, stop what you're doing."

It was a
series
of cards. Which
first?

"Kara? Kara, you're making a big mistake. I
have never - "

I pulled out his brain. All the lights and
screens died, even the air vents. It was completely dark. All I
could hear was my own breathing. In retrospect, I should have
isolated him, first.

I thought he would have put up more of a
fight.

The vents restarted, the cabin turned red
with emergency lights. I removed the rest of Pilot and packed him
away into specimen bags. Mission control could figure out what went
wrong with him. Mission Control. How long had this been going on
for? Why hadn't they asked Kapoor or Maggie to check on me? Maybe
they had. All I knew was what Pilot had told me.

There was the Village though; I had visited
after I noticed Titan's position was wrong. How long had I slept,
then? No one said anything.
Kapoor
didn't say anything.

My son didn't say anything.

I sat in my seat and started the booting
sequence. Puzzles would have to wait. Now I needed to fly a
multi-billion dollar spacecraft, in Safe Mode.

ICE didn't let me down. She had always been
designed to be human-operator friendly. It was hands on of course,
but I didn't need to install (or write!) new software.

Ascent was straightforward. Enceladus's
gravity was barely one percent of Earth's. The rocket engines
coughed, and we were airborne. Our landing site boiled and froze
into a new crater. I did another burst, to get us up to two hundred
kilometers. Once there, I turned the ship and did a three second
burn. It circularized our orbit (more or less. It was a passing
grade).

Once you're in orbit, you can relax. The ship
isn't going to come crashing down anymore. I made myself a
vat-bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, and thought about my next
move.

ICE couldn't radio Mission Control. It had
the power, but the antenna wasn't designed for it. Porco Station
was our relay, everything went through there. I didn't want to use
Porco though - Pilot was there, too. His ICE copy couldn't be
errant without his main copy knowing. They monitored each other for
defects, daily.

So were Kapoor and Liu being made to sleep,
as well? We wouldn't notice then, when we met in the Village. It
would be seamless.

Except, for the Village itself. Everyone
there would notice. They would say something. Even the asshole
Europa miners (
such
assholes), would say something. The only
way Pilot could solve that, would be to run a fake Village
simulation. It would take a lot of processing power. None of us had
been to Porco in a while, though. If the AIs wanted to physically
build more capacity, they could.

No wonder I didn't meet Josh. How could they
emulate him? I would have known he wasn't my son, immediately.

So that was it then. The humans in the
expedition were being deceived.

I didn't have the fuel to reach Maggie Liu. I
could transfer to intercept, but I wouldn't be able to match speed
and orbit. I'd run out of fuel, just trying. She could come get me
(she's got the tanker), but it was too risky. If she hadn't
realized by then, her Pilot would still be in control. He could
just block my messages. I'd fly right past, a helpless new
moon.

I could reach Vajra Kapoor though. He was
building an aquarium at Telesto, a nearby, piece-of-shit, asteroid
moon. I did the math and worked out a transfer burn, three days
away. I could have flown sooner, but I wanted to save fuel. Who
knows when I'd get more? And what would I find at Telesto? Kapoor
was the smart one. It should have been him, coming to
me
.

Maybe he went to get Liu, she's got all the
fuel after all. If so, I'd just stay put at his lab till he got
back. And eat all his food, and spray his worms with nasty oxygen.
That'll teach him to ditch me for another woman.

Four days later, Orbiting Telesto

The Enceledan International Microhabitat
Ancient Reef Project (EIMARP) was Kapoor's pride and joy. Arguably,
the entire program's. It's so big, it's fitted with radar
reflectors - to help visitors
avoid
it. Like any pilot
flying hands on, I kept peering out the window. Finally, I saw
Telesto. It seemed oddly bright.

That's no moon.

EIMARP was a bubble wrapped in Mylar,
reflective side out. You'd think we'd want to heat a hydrothemal
vent environment. Instead, we wanted to remove outside variables.
Under EIMARP's inflated skin was an ice crust. It was just three
meters thick, but you didn't want that unevenly heating. We'd be
making our own geysers.

I spent a day adjusting our orbit, prodding
ICE into a rendezvous. Kapoor was aboard -
atop
- EIMARP. I
wouldn't announce myself till the last moment, AI shenanigans, and
all that.

Shit. Was Kapoor even
awake?

Even at a kilometer's distance, EIMARP looked huge. It was a
reinforced inflatable, closer to a super pressure balloon, than a
space station. Two
hundred
meters in diameter, it was the
largest space construction, in history.

At its heart was a small asteroid, seabed
ejecta from the Golden Age impact. What did we know about feeding
Enceladans? Best give them some home-cooking. Inside it, Kapoor
shoved an Americium 241 RTG [3]. Am-241 is more fiddly than
Plutonium, but it's good for centuries. This was ESA's
contribution, the (thanks Congress!) RTG technology leader, these
days. It powered heat radiators to keep EIMARP from freezing. It
also ran hydrogen bubblers. Just like the air bubblers you'd find
in an aquarium. Only, explosive.

Filling up EIMARP was four million tons of
water, robot-mined from Telesto's ice. Pumping in Ammonia, Kapoor
needed six months to turn it into bathroom cleaner. Then, he added
life.

Not just any Enceladans,
Golden Age
ones. EIMARP attempted to revive their world; a practical exercise
in natural history. Many said we knew too little to be attempting
this. What materials should we add, what species to introduce? We
still couldn't replicate stable Terran biospheres. Others said we
wouldn't learn these anyway, without running EIMARP.

As I got closer, I could make out the
research lab. We built it from seven Standard Utility Modules. Six
tin cans like spokes on a bike's wheel, around a standing seventh.
Cables anchored it to the surface like tent guy ropes. It was
docked underneath to EIMARP, and 381 million years ago.

Docking isn't easy. Pilot's copy at the
research station wouldn't have to do much to prevent it. I wasn't
even sure I could manage it, myself. Typically, both vessels line
up for docking. Stuck in place, the lab couldn't do that. Its
docking ports were gimbal-mounted though, they could turn and face
a vessel.

Or, be turned away. I realized I was only
going aboard, if the Pilot let me.

"EIMARP Lab, this is ICE. I'm approaching the
aft docking port."

"Copy that ICE," the reply was immediate.
"Standby for automatic docking."

Should I let it?

The docking instructions appeared on the main
display. They looked legit (and better than I could do).

Did it even know I had unplugged its ICE
copy? It
had
to know. They were all avatars of the same
AI.

"Kara, please give me control of your docking
computer."

Pilot could pretend there was a problem, and
just prevent a docking. After a few tries I'd run out of
maneuvering fuel. There was no point in contacting Kapoor directly;
Pilot would block it. Worse, he could impersonate a reply.

"Kara?"

I could try landing on EIMARP instead. I
could EVA, and enter through the airlock.

The airlock Pilot controlled.

"Kara, ICE is drifting out of position."

I turned over control of the docking control.
I felt ICE shift as its maneuvering jets hissed. We were moved, as
if by a giant hand that had closed over us.