Titan (38 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Titan
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And they sell water to the other settlements on the Moon, Holly thought.
“However, if habitat
Goddard
could supply us water at a price lower than our existing costs, we’d be foolish not to consider the offer very seriously.”
That meant they would take it, depending on the price, Holly figured.
“On the other hand,” Stavenger said, “there’s a good deal of excitement in the scientific community Earthside about one of your people finding living creatures in the rings. The university consortium is already holding discussion with the IAA about banning all commercial activities in Saturn’s rings. If that happens, it would make mining the rings politically and legally impossible.”
Unless Malcolm’s willing to risk going to war with the IAA, Holly replied silently.
“The thing is,” Stavenger went on, “water is the key to expansion
here on the Moon. And elsewhere in the solar system as well, I should think.”
Holly almost asked him what he meant, but she knew he wouldn’t hear her question for more than an hour. Instead, she continued to listen as Stavenger spelled out, “You see, we can get along all right on the water available to us now. We recycle pretty thoroughly. There are some losses, of course: no system is one hundred percent perfect. But if we had a reliable, continuous supply of additional water we could expand and build new settlements here on the Moon. Lord knows there are plenty of people anxious to get away from Earth and live here. But we’ve always had to limit our growth to our water supply. Increase the water supply and Selene can grow; we could even spin off daughter cities. We could raise the Moon’s population from a few thousand to millions.”
Holly sank back on her pillows. This is cosmic, she said to herself. We hold the key to the growth of human settlements all across the system!
“But the IAA is most likely going to ban commercial activities in the rings, at least until the scientists can thoroughly study the ring creatures, and that might take years.” Almost as an afterthought Stavenger added, “Maybe you should think of other sources of water. After all, you’re a lot closer to the TNOs than anyone else in the solar system.”
“TNOs?” Holly blurted aloud.
“I hope that answers your questions, Ms. Lane. Please feel free to call me personally if you’d like to discuss this further.”
The phone screen went blank, leaving Holly thinking: Trans-Neptunian Objects, that’s what he means. The Kuiper Belt. There’s zillions of icebergs out there; that’s where comets come from.
She shook her head, though. Too far away. We might be closer to ’em than anybody else, but they’re still more’n twenty Astronomical Units away from us. Just too far to be practical.
I think.
U
rbain was surprised at how crowded the conference room was. His own team of a dozen mission control engineers sat along one side of the long table, talking among themselves, while this von Helmholtz person and his half-dozen technicians lined up along the other side. Then there was Gaeta himself, of course, and Dr. Cardenas. Gaeta looked quite relaxed; she was obviously tense, her normally sunshiny cheerful face drawn and tight-lipped. Below them Pancho Lane and Jake Wanamaker sat together, and down at the foot of the table sat Berkowitz, chatting amiably with Wanamaker. Why the news director had to be in on this meeting, Urbain could not fathom.
I suppose I should be grateful that Eberly didn’t insist on joining in as well, he said to himself.
From his chair at the head of the table Urbain called the meeting to order. The separate little conversations stopped. All heads turned to him.
“We are here this morning to make a final review of the mission plan,” Urbain said.
Halfway down the table, Pancho muttered, “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Suppressing a frown, Urbain said, “Herr von Helmholtz, if you please.”
Fritz touched a pad on the keyboard in front of him, and the wall on the opposite side of the room lit up. It showed an image of Titan’s surface with the location of
Alpha
indicated by a red dot.
“The plan calls for flying a transfer vehicle from the habitat to orbit around Titan. From there, our man will leave the transfer craft in an aeroshell protective heat shield and enter Titan’s atmosphere. At an altitude of three thousand meters above the ground, he will collapse the aeroshell and parasail the remainder
of the way down, to land within one hundred meters of the Alpha machine.”
A dotted red circle sprang up around the red spot on the display.
Urbain interrupted, “The plan calls for him to land atop
Alpha.
He is not to set foot on the surface. He is not to contaminate the organisms living there.”
Von Helmholtz dipped his chin once, barely. “He will attempt to land atop the vehicle, but there is no guarantee that the parasail descent will be that accurate.”
“I’ll land on its roof,” Gaeta said. “Don’t worry.”
“Even if he lands on the ground,” said one of Urbain’s engineers,
“Alpha
itself has driven over the area. Its tracks have crunched through the ice.”
“But
Alpha
was thoroughly decontaminated before landing,” Urbain protested. “Sterilized by gamma radiation.”
Cardenas hunched forward in her chair. “Manny’s suit will be decontaminated by nanomachines. His boots as well. He’ll be just as clean as your lander. Cleaner.”
“Still—”
“I’ll land on your machine’s roof,” Gaeta repeated. “I’ve done a lot of parasailing. In that thick atmosphere with its low wind velocities, I’ll hit its roof. Don’t worry about it.”
Urbain wanted to reply but thought better of it. This is a compromise I must accept, he told himself. If this braggart of a stuntman can touch down on
Alpha
’s roof, fine. If not, I must depend on Cardenas’s nanomachines to prevent contamination of the surface. In the back of his mind, though, he worried about the nanomachines themselves. What if they were not deactivated after sterilizing Gaeta’s suit? What if they began to multiply there on the ground? Devouring everything in sight?
Von Helmholtz cleared his throat, forcing Urbain’s attention to return to him. He continued, “Once atop the landing vehicle, our man’s first tasks will be to examine the lander’s uplink antenna and then establish a communications link with your machine’s central computer.”
“And use the nanos he’ll be carrying to build a new uplink antenna,” said the communications engineer.
“If necessary,” said Habib. “He might discover a programming glitch that can be corrected on-site.”
Before the comm engineer could reply, Urbain said, “Yes, we all understand. Achieve a linkage with the master program, then use the nanomachines Dr. Cardenas has designed to build a new uplink antenna, if necessary.”
“Once an uplink connection has been made,” Fritz resumed, looking directly at Urbain, “our man will activate his escape thrusters and leave the surface. He will be picked up by the transfer vehicle waiting in orbit and returned here to the habitat.”
The wall screen now showed a yellow-gray ball representing Titan. A curving green line rose from its surface to intersect with a bright blue circle that represented the transfer craft’s orbit.
“Very well,” Urbain said, his eyes on the display. “Are there any questions?”
No one spoke.
“You all understand your duties and are prepared to carry them out?”
Heads bobbed up and down the table.
Then Fritz cleared his throat again, noisily.
“Herr von Helmholtz?” Urbain said. “You have a question?”
“A comment,” said Fritz. “A suggestion, actually. I believe this mission would benefit from another few weeks of training and simulation runs.”
“Another few weeks?”
“We have had less than ten days to prepare for this mission. It is a complicated mission, involving a high degree of risk for our man.”
“That’s what I get paid for, Fritz,” Gaeta said.
Ignoring him, Fritz went on, “In addition, our man will be on the surface for only one hour. The mission objectives must be completed in one hour. That is … quite difficult.”
“I can do it,” Gaeta replied. “An hour’s plenty of time.”
Von Helmholtz arched a brow at Gaeta, then continued, “Failure of this mission would mean that your lander remains dead on Titan’s surface.”
“Asleep,” Urbain growled. “Not dead.”
Spreading his hands in a
what’s the difference
gesture, Fritz pointed out, “If this mission fails, your lander will remain silent and useless, with no possibility of reactivating it. It will be totally written off, will it not?”
Urbain’s mind was racing as he stared at von Helmholtz’s icy, hard-eyed face. We cannot postpone the mission, he said to himself. Wunderly has already reached Earth, she is already being honored for finding the creatures in the rings. We must rescue
Alpha
now, before Wunderly steals all the glory, before she meets with the Nobel committee.
He saw that all eyes were turned to him. Slowly, as if it took an effort to make the decision, Urbain replied, “It is vital that we reestablish communication with
Alpha
before the master program begins to dump the data that her sensors have accumulated. That is our most important task.
Alpha
carries a treasure of data about the conditions on Titan’s surface and the organisms that live there. We cannot risk losing that data by postponing this mission.”
“Even at the risk of a man’s life?” von Helmholtz insisted.
“That’s not a fair question, Fritz,” Gaeta said. “I’m the guy who’s taking the risk. We’ve worked out the mission plan. I’ll be okay.”
“You are willing to go without more training?” Urbain felt a flood of relief gushing through him.
“Yeah. Why the hell not?”
Gaeta grinned, coolly confident. Fritz scowled at him. Cardenas looked as if she wanted to clout somebody.
K
ris 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.

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