Trang (4 page)

The person was obviously
computer-generated: She looked vaguely Asian and vaguely female, but not so
much so as to alienate any secret racists or misogynists.

Philippe watched the entire video,
examining the jumpsuit’s hood as the video explained how to pull it over the
head and create an airtight seal, and looking at the nozzle where he would be
able to plug himself into an oxygen supply “in the unlikely event” that a
meteor smashed into the ship or its engines exploded. There was a brief
animation of the passenger and pilot pods ejecting from the ship and falling
safely through Earth’s atmosphere to land with a gentle splash in the ocean. No
animation explained what would happen if the pods fell right back onto Beijing.

There was also no word on whether
you could wear your clothes under the suit. Philippe asked the allegedly
interactive wall, but it would only replay bits of the video that he had just
seen, so he finally walked out of his booth to see if he could find a real
person. Luckily there were some guys—construction workers for the Titan
station—in the main changing room, who told him that he could just throw the
suit on over whatever he was wearing, shoes included. He thanked them and
returned to his booth to suit up.

He came out and followed the
construction workers to the ship. He lagged behind them because he was a little
embarrassed—he’d gotten his own changing booth, and they had not. Worse, the
arrows that lit up for them said “Ship this way,” while the ones that lit up
for him said, “Welcome, Philippe Trang! This way to your ship.”

The arrows were easy enough to
follow, though, and Philippe walked down a long corridor that ended at the
doorway to the ship. He walked onboard and felt a disappointing sense of
familiarity—the passenger cabin was small, holding only about 20 people, but if
it weren’t for the suits people were wearing and the handholds sticking out of
the walls and ceiling, he never would have known that he wasn’t on an airplane.

At least the seats looked big and
comfortable. A light appeared above one of them as he passed by, and the words
“Philippe Trang” popped up next to the light, so he stowed his bag in the
overhead bin and sat down. Most of the passengers were burly young men,
construction workers or maybe military. But in the chair next to him was a
slim, middle-aged woman with straight black hair streaked with gray. She was
reading, but she looked up from her scroll as he sat and gave him a warm smile.

She started. “Oh, hello, I saw you
on the news,” she said. “You’re the diplomat.”

“Philippe Trang,” he said, putting
out his hand. Hopefully anyone cleared to go to Titan wasn’t a stalker.

“Yoli Quintana,” she said, shaking
it. She had a Spanish accent—she must be just old enough that it hadn’t been
expurgated in her childhood—but she seemed very comfortable with English, so
Philippe didn’t switch.

He buckled himself in—the
restraints were definitely more substantial than you’d see on an airplane, with
straps both over the shoulder and under the arms that attached across the chest
and into the seat between his legs.

“Are you with the SA?” he asked
Yoli, more as a conversation-starter than anything else. She certainly didn’t
look like she was military or in construction.

“In a way,” she replied. “I am
borrowed from Pontificia Universidad Católica in Santiago. I’m an
astrophysicist.”

“Oh really?” asked Philippe. He
tried to turn his body toward her to talk, but his restraints wouldn’t let him.
He turned his head instead. “So they’re finally letting you guys go up?”

“Yes, finally. The SA has its own
scientists on Titan, and I’m sure the military has people, too, but not a
proper research team that can publish findings and the like. We received
permission to send up people and equipment just six months ago—and I don’t mean
just UC, I mean the whole consortium of astrophysics programs.” Yoli gave
Philippe a sly look. “Of course, none of us get to go where you’re going to
go.”

He shrugged as much as his
restraints would allow. “I think I’m the first person to go through the portal
who’s not carrying a weapon. But my hope is that once we establish good, open
relations with the aliens, and everyone feels safe, then scientists like
yourself can come through and look around. Who knows what you might discover?”

Yoli grinned, clearly delighted at
the thought. “That would be amazing,” she said. “The Titan portal, you could
work your whole life on that alone.”

“Not to mention all the other
portals on the other side,” said Philippe. She nodded.

A couple of burly young men went
past them and sat in the back of ship. It seemed like people were just being
allowed to trickle on, which meant that it might be a while before the ship
actually took off.

Philippe decided to take advantage
of the time, not to mention the presence of an astrophysicist. “I have a
question for you, since you actually know something about science, which I
don’t. What are those things? Those portals? I keep asking, and people keep
trying to explain it, but it just never makes any sense to me.”

Yoli’s smile became rueful. “It
doesn’t make any sense to
anybody
,” she said. “We can’t even figure out
how that camera works.”

Philippe chuckled. “I guess it’s
not just us. If you ask the aliens what the portals are, they tell you that
they’re a great mystery of the universe, or an invitation to fulfill destiny.”

“According to the Builders, several
hundred years ago there was this prophecy that a portal would open up that
would take them someplace far, far away.”

Yoli nodded. “You are going really
far, you know—outside the Milky Way.”

“Yeah, I was told that it’s not
really in any galaxy.” Philippe paused. He hadn’t asked when he was briefed
because he didn’t want to sound like an idiot, but chances were that Yoli
worked with students, so she was probably used to stupid questions. And she
seemed quite friendly.

He decided to ask. “Is that even
possible? To not be in a galaxy?”

“Oh, yes, it is,” said Yoli.
“There’s a lot of space between the galaxies. A galaxy is simply a gathering of
stars and planets. You’re going into the space between the Milky Way and the
Small Magellanic Cloud. It is like traveling to some isolated hotel between two
cities—it’s not impossible, it’s just that there’s not much there other than
the hotel. And it’s a
really
long way away.”

“OK,” said Philippe, feeling
relieved on two levels—if she thought he was stupid for asking, she hid it
well. “Anyway, the prophecy goes on that once they get to that place, they
should build this station, and then other aliens would come and they would all
be friends.”

Yoli looked surprised. “Really? It
said all that? That was a good prophecy.”

“Well, that’s the official story,”
said Philippe. “I suspect that there’s some historical revisionism going on:
You know, like maybe what actually happened was this thing opened up, and no
one was sure what to do about it, and then some Builder who had strong opinions
about the matter came along saying, ‘I very conveniently found this prophecy!’
And that gave them some direction, and things just grew from there.”

The ship gave a lurch, and the same
bland face and loud voice that startled Philippe in his changing booth popped
up on the back of the chairs in front of them.

“Welcome to the Titan shuttle,” the
face said. “Please fasten your restraints in preparation for takeoff. Please
keep your restraints fastened until the alpha drive is engaged.”

“I know I sound like a little girl,
but I can’t believe I’m finally going to Titan. It’s something I’ve always
wanted to do—always, always. And I’m really excited about getting to meet
someone like Wouter Hoopen. What vision he must have to do what he did five
years ago! I really admire him.”

They sat on their backs for several
minutes, and then the deep rumbling and vibration started. Hearing it in
Beijing was nothing compared to being on top of it. Philippe felt like his
teeth were going to shatter to bits in his mouth.

In a moment, they had taken off—the
shaking hadn’t eased any, and given the pressure Philippe was feeling, his
crushed teeth were going to wind up right down his throat. He peeked over
Yoli’s head out the window, and saw that they were passing through a cloud.
After a few minutes that seemed like an eternity, the rumbling ceased, and the
sky outside the window gradually got dark.

The ship seemed to stall, and all
the pressure on Philippe’s body suddenly lifted. He felt his breakfast coming
back up, but managed to remember the sick patch on his suit and slapped it in
time. He tried not to think about meteors.

“In a minute, we will have alpha
drive!” said Yoli. Philippe looked over at her: She was beaming, clearly
thrilled by the entire experience.

There was another shudder, and then
a high-pitched whine. “Alpha drive engaged,” said the bland video person.
“Please feel free to move around the cabin and help yourself to the available
refreshments or entertainment.”

Some of the passengers immediately
unbuckled themselves and pulled themselves over to the refreshment center, but
Philippe was in no mood to eat and decided to stay put. Yoli was looking out
the window.

“So this alpha drive,” he said,
reaching back in his mind to a long-forgotten science class. “Does it use alpha
waves?”

“You mean alpha particles?” she
asked, turning away from the window. “I don’t think so. The name’s just sort of
a marketing thing—like the alpha dog, the alpha drive. It’s very macho.”

“It is an impressive engine,
though. Didn’t it used to take months to get to Saturn?”

“
Years.
It took the earliest
satellites
years
to get there.”

“And now it takes a day,” Philippe
said.

“We go fairly close to light
speed,” said Yoli.

Philippe became puzzled, dimly
remembering something he had perhaps seen once in a virtual entertainment or
heard about in a class. “If we’re going at light speed, won’t everybody be
really old when we finish our journey?”

Yoli smiled—at least she found his
ignorance entertaining. “It’s not
so
fast. We will gain only a few
minutes on people who haven’t made the trip. And if someone on Earth was
observing us, we would look a little shorter right now than we did when we
left, but we’ll get that back once we slow down.”

They chatted a bit more, and
eventually both went back to their reading. Yoli fell asleep—she was still on
Santiago time, apparently—but Philippe got hungry and unfastened his
restraints. Moving about in zero gravity was tricky, but he was able to haul
himself to the refreshment area without kicking anybody in the face. He ate,
discussed soccer with some of the construction guys, puzzled out the toilet,
went back to his seat, watched a movie, ate again, and was thoroughly bored by
the time the video half-woman reappeared and woke Yoli up by telling everyone
to strap back in.

Another sickening lurch and the
high whine that Philippe had stopped hearing hours ago ceased, reclaiming his
attention by its absence. The ship hit Titan’s thick atmosphere and shuddered
its way through the orange haze. The pressure wasn’t nearly as bad this time, and
of course there was nothing to see out the windows except for orange fog, so
Philippe didn’t realize how close they were to landing until he felt a big
thump and the video person told them they could remove their restraints.

I didn’t even have time to get
frightened,
he thought.

The other passengers started taking
off their restraints and getting their things, so Philippe got up and got their
bags out of the bin, handing Yoli’s to her. Then with a sudden
pop!
the
door to the ship opened. Philippe went out, followed by Yoli, and walked down a
long corridor that had attached itself to the side of their ship.

It was newer and cleaner, but it
looked just like the corridor in Beijing that Philippe had walked down to get
on the ship. The air smelled slightly musty, but other than that and the
noticeable difference in gravity there was no indication that they were on
another planet, a moon of Saturn, hundreds of millions of kilometers from
Earth, in an atmosphere of pure poison.

They reached the end of the corridor.
Yoli saw some people she knew and went to greet them. Philippe was wondering
where he should go when a young man approached him and said, “Philippe Trang?
GM Hoopen is waiting. Follow me, sir.”

“Sure,” Philippe replied. “Is it OK
for me to remove the space suit first?”

Philippe had not expected the
question to be a stumper, but the man furrowed his brow and pondered it for a
minute. “Yeah, OK,” he finally said. “I don’t think we’re going to be passing
near any of the areas that are under construction.”

There wasn’t a changing area, so
Philippe stood off to the side and pulled off his protective suit, rolling it
up and stuffing it into his bag. He did his best to smooth and straighten his
clothing without a mirror, running his hands over his hair. Then he grabbed his
bag and followed the man.