The Io Encounter: Hard Science Fiction (Ice Moon Book 3)

by Brandon Q Morris

  He carefully pulled the thin blanket aside and got up. He searched for his things as quietly as possible in order not to wake Sol. Before he slipped out of the cabin he once more gazed at his son. Dimitri Sol lay with eyes closed in the crib Hayato himself had built. The baby had kicked off his blanket and was lying on his side with his mouth open. Hayato was tempted to caress his soft skin. But he did not want to wake Sol and then have to take him to Amy. He simply couldn’t control himself—he had to feel the child’s warmth and his fine fuzzy hair. Very carefully he brushed his fingertips across his son’s cheek. The feeling was stunning and indescribable, yet sometimes he asked himself whether he would be up to the task of raising him. He had been so unprepared, and space, which started less than half a meter away from his son and stretched to infinity, was so hostile.

  Sol continued breathing steadily. Smacking his tiny lips, he seemed to be dreaming. Hayato smiled in the darkness. I’ve got to go now, my shift is about to start. The AI would inform him if Sol awoke, now that he had put it in charge by tapping the command into his bracelet. He turned around, opened the cabin door, and slipped out. Carrying his work overall under his arm, he entered the waste holding compartment to wash, and got dressed. He left his pajamas there because he shared the WHC with Amy, whose cabin was next to his, and he didn’t want to risk waking the baby.

  The habitat module was not rotating as usual because the spaceship was still in its acceleration phase. The pseudo-gravity was currently working toward the rear of the ship instead of the entire outside perimeter. This meant they could not use the showers. Most other components in the WHC, however, were built in such a way that they either worked independently of the direction and force of gravity or could be reconfigured as needed.

  Under these conditions, getting to the machine room was more arduous than usual, as Hayato had to climb in the direction of the command module. What he thought of as ‘the machine room’ was actually a universal module. In actuality, the current conditions also made it more difficult to work in the combination workshop and lab, situated between the habitat ring and the command capsule at the tip of ILSE.

  Martin Neumaier, not being an astronaut by profession, was probably the one who had started with the imprecise names. For example, none of them called the CELSS by its real name anymore, because ‘garden’ sounded so much nicer. As an engineer, Hayato liked to use precise terms. Miscommunication could be dangerous, but in this case he realized he could not and should not object.

  Numerous lights were blinking in the machine room. With one hand, Hayato gripped the ladder leading up toward the command module. He looked around. At first sight everything appeared to be fine. Watson would have warned him long ago of any irregularities. Now the supervision and control of the ship were once again handled by the AI. All communications with the outside, however, were controlled by Marchenko. The consciousness of the ship’s Russian doctor had been transferred to Valkyrie by the multicellular intelligent entity on Enceladus, and now it also ran on the quantum computer hardware. Marchenko had to make absolutely certain no one on Earth found out about him, since his very existence ran afoul of all laws concerning AI. Otherwise, he was free—or, as Marchenko himself put it, he was searching for meaning. The crew agreed he should decide for himself how the human personnel should interact with the first truly conscious AI.

  Hayato systematically checked the instruments. The astronomers on Earth were happy with any measurements they could feed into their models. The vacuum around the ship was not empty. The instruments recorded both magnetic flux and units of cosmic radiation. Anything ILSE saw, collided with, or heard on various wavelengths, might be important for a more precise understanding of space. So far only a few probes had traversed this region of the outer solar system. Therefore this offered a rare chance for research, even if individual measurements might not be particularly exciting.

  Unless, Hayato thought, they come from a certain direction, like right now. The radio receiver used a yellow light to indicate that a signal outside the expected range had arrived. Hayato climbed up another step to better see the miniature screen. He immediately recognized the signal as being in a wavelength range on which no man-made technology was transmitting. He studied the changes over time, and it looked as if the sender had first sought a suitable frequency. The displayed curve was initially wide and then became narrower. Only then did it change its amplitude. Hayato immediately thought of Morse code, but those particular combinations were unknown to him.

  This is no use, he decided, the monitor screen here is much too small. He transferred the signal sequence to a workstation in the command module where he would be able to sit and think in comfort. Then he told Watson to ask Martin Neumaier to join him there. The nerd always had good ideas when it came to interpreting signals. Martin should have time off right now, but after that whole thing with Jiaying he would probably be glad for some distraction.

  Hayato climbed all the way to the top. The command capsule was empty. Shouldn’t Jiaying be here? He shook his head.

  “Watson, where is Jiaying?”

  “Jiaying is working in the CELSS.”

  Hayato shook his head again. That was not according to schedule. Work in the garden was a welcome change—despite the stench—since you were surrounded by greenery. Maybe this will help her find her way back to us, he thought.

  “What’s up?” asked Martin when he came in.

  “Martin, I might have something for you.” Hayato knew he could come straight to the point with the German astronaut. “Take a look at this signal,” he said, pointing to the monitor. Martin Neumaier leaned toward the display and manipulated the diagram with his fingers.

  “Hmm... This is... interesting,” he said.

  “I thought so, too,” Hayato replied.

  “Take a look at the temporal axis. It seems whoever sent this had to practice first. After a while the signal became stable.”

  “And what about the code? At first I suspected it to be Morse code.”

  “Amplitude modulation. You are right. We should show this to Watson. Maybe Marchenko would also be interested in it. Are there any indications concerning the source?” asked Martin.

  “It is definitely behind us. Just a moment.” Hayato had the computer calculate the temporal sequence of the average signal strength. After a moment the result appeared on the screen.

  “Hmm, only the distance-related component is significant,” Martin said, sounding a bit disappointed.

  “Does this mean,” Hayato asked, “that the source is slowly flying behind us?”

  “I rather think we haven’t been receiving the signal long enough to see its parallax, the sideways displacement of the source. A few days from now we should definitely be able to triangulate the point of origin.”

  “You sound like you already suspect something.”

  “Correct, Hayato. Remember our first take-off from Enceladus, when I ran over to the laser concentrator once more?”

  “Yes. Jiaying was almost frightened to death.” The instant Hayato said it, he was worried about reminding Martin of Jiaying.

  “I reconfigured the dish of the concentrator so it could be used as an antenna. I hoped the entity in the ocean would be able to communicate with us this way, even across long distances. Perhaps it really worked. It would be great.”

  Hayato had not seen Martin this animated for days. Who says useful work does not help people get over problems?

  “I hope Watson can tell us if it actually is a message,” Hayato said.

  “Watson, we need an analysis of the information contained in this signal,” Martin ordered the AI. “We also require an interpolation of the source based on our continuing reception.”

  “Confirmed,” the AI said. “According to an initial analysis, the signal structure is very complex. Time required for decryption: 48 hours. Or 24 hours, if using supercomputer capacities on Earth.”

  “Forty-eight hours is fine,” Hayato said. “I would rather avoid getting
Earth involved in the process.”

  February 21, 2047, ILSE

  Hayato gathered his thoughts before knocking on the cabin door of the Chinese astronaut’s quarters. Amy had approved this attempt at conversation. She herself felt helpless concerning the sudden change that Jiaying exhibited. Would he do any better than his commander? He knocked softly, but no one answered. He used the buzzer next. Jiaying would definitely hear that, considering the ship’s control system made sure of it so no one could miss hearing an alarm in an emergency.

  It wasn’t long before he heard Jiaying’s voice. “Come in.”

  Hayato opened the door. There was a fresh smell, and the cabin was clean and tidy, like its occupant had just moved in. Jiaying sat upright on her bed, her hands pressed between her thighs.

  “Hello, Hayato.” She greeted him without modulating her voice. She almost sounded like a robot from years ago, back before programmers learned how to make them use natural intonation patterns.

  “Good morning, Jiaying.” Hayato tried to catch her eyes, but she quickly avoided looking at him.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked, but her facial expression showed her question to be insincere. She really wanted him to leave her cabin as soon as possible. Her forearm trembled, as if she was about to have a fit—or a breakdown. What is going on? wondered Hayato. A psychosis caused by the stress of being in a hostile environment? But why now, when we are on the way home? Hayato was no doctor and could not assess her symptoms. And when they had asked Marchenko, who was a doctor, he could not find clear indications of a specific illness.

  “I do not need you to do anything for me, but I am wondering whether I could help you somehow?”

  Jiaying laughed briefly, but the laughter did not sound cheerful. “You want to help me? Nobody can... no. I am fine, there is no reason to help me.”

  “We—Amy, Francesca, and I—and also Marchenko—have a different impression.” He deliberately did not mention Martin’s name. “You are behaving in a different way from the way you did two weeks ago.”

  “‘In a different way?’ Are you trying to say I am neglecting my duties?”

  “No, certainly not, even though you do not always keep to what was agreed on, but that is not the issue. You are so different now, and you are placing artificial barriers between yourself and us.”

  “Am I not allowed to keep a bit of distance? We have been breathing down each other’s necks, round the clock, for more than a year. I also have my period to deal with, so I cannot be in a good mood all the time.”

  “This is not about being in a good mood. I feel like you built a wall around yourself so no one can reach you anymore. That is not the Jiaying we used to know.”

  “People change, you know. Maybe the silly little girl who was so full of hope no longer exists. Perhaps I simply grew up. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “I do not think it is that simple, Jiaying. People do not change so quickly. I remember the early days on ILSE. It took us months to become friends. Something like this does not happen overnight.”

  “Sometimes it does, Hayato, sometimes it does.” He thought he could feel a deep sadness in her voice. If he could only make her understand she could get help! If anyone could help her, it would be them, her colleagues and friends. ‘If, Hayato, if,’ he figured Jiaying would reply, and he was afraid of being wrong. Had they been able to help Marchenko?

  Hayato was startled when at that very moment the Russian’s deep voice sounded from the loudspeaker in Jiaying’s cabin.

  “There is some interesting news. Could you please come to the command module?”

  Hayato felt the Russian could not have chosen a worse moment. He gazed at Jiaying, who seemed to look slightly more cheerful. A bit of distraction was good for Martin, he thought. Maybe it will help her, too. Hayato shook his head. He doubted her problem would be so easy to discover. Martin was experiencing something that had happened to billions of people—he had lost his true love. Whatever lay behind Jiaying’s abrupt change must have very different causes. He decided he would talk to Marchenko about it.

  Right now, he was more interested in the news the Russian had promised.

  “Are you coming along? The day before yesterday we recorded a possible signal which Watson promised to decrypt within two days. This seems to be the moment.”

  At first Jiaying moved to get up. Then she shook her head. “Martin will also be there, right?”

  Hayato briefly considered whether to lie to her, but then he nodded.

  “I’m sure you will keep me informed anyway,” Jiaying said. Her body slumped, as if the conversation had been an enormous effort, and then she fell back on her bed.

  “Okay, I am going now. I will see you tomorrow during the early shift.”

  Jiaying did not answer. Hayato turned around once more at the door and saw that her eyes were closed. A tear shimmered between her amazingly long, black eyelashes.

  Amy and Martin were waiting for Hayato in the command module.

  “Francesca is asleep right now, so we did not want to wake her. What about Jiaying?” asked Amy.

  Hayato shook his head.

  “Well then, do not keep us in suspense any longer, Marchenko.”

  The fog display activated itself automatically. Hayato was shocked, since he was not used to Marchenko making spontaneous decisions. Sometimes, the Russian seemed to be a ghost haunting the entire spaceship.

  “First, let us see the interpolation of the signal source,” Marchenko began.

  The display showed two dots—a red one moving toward the sun, and a silver one orbiting a ringed planet.

  “This small moon here,” Marchenko said, obviously referring to the silver dot, “moves with a component of its velocity in the same direction as ILSE, and with another one at right angles to it. The component of the movement toward us causes the frequency of the measured radio signal to shift slightly, similar to how a race car sounds different when it approaches than when it drives away from you. The lateral movement, on the other hand, reduces the relative signal strength, as the emitter is getting farther away from us. The redshift and the change in signal strength allowed us to determine the position of the emitter. Once we collected enough data, it took Watson only a few seconds to determine this. Well done by Watson, I would say.”

  Hayato had noticed during the past few days that Marchenko referred to the ship’s AI as if it was a well-trained pet. He hoped this would not lead to additional problems, because they definitely did not need any more.

  “The source, as you have already probably figured out, is Enceladus. That should make it clear to you who the sender is. Since it is not me—just joking—it could only be the entity on Enceladus. By the way, I just noticed we have not given it a name yet.”

  Marchenko seemed rather cheerful today. Was he really doing as well as he tried to imply?

  “The name can wait,” Amy said. “Let’s get to the contents of the message.”

  “Please do not interrupt my prelude, because I was really looking forward to it. How do we even know it is not just random garbage our antenna received, or the result of some natural process?”

  Hayato uttered a loud yawn. “We must calculate the entropy, obviously,” he said. A high entropy or disorder would indicate a series of values to be the result of chance, while a low entropy suggests meaningful information.

  “Oh well, let us get right to the result, then.” Marchenko seemed to be a bit annoyed with Hayato for making further explanations unnecessary. “You guys do not even know what a groundbreaking lecture you just missed. The message itself is not very long. It repeats constantly. This made decryption harder, since repetitions are redundant and do not offer new information.”

  “Otherwise they would not be repetitions,” Hayato said.

  “Please don’t start nitpicking, you two,” the commander admonished them.

  “Understood. I have to warn you, though. It is impossible to reconstruct an entire language from a message tha
t would fill maybe a page when printed out. This is what we were able to determine—there is no grammar as we know it. The message could most closely be described as a direct expression of higher brain functions. Therefore we are receiving images that have not first been encoded in symbols, as would be the case with human language. This being never had a companion to talk to, apart from itself, so it did not have to develop a system to make its own thoughts comprehensible to someone else. It is difficult to interpret these images, as we have no clue what this entity sees in them.”

  “So you failed?”

  “Wait, Hayato, you need to show a bit of patience. Yes, we were able to identify a few of the images by comparing them with Watson’s knowledge base. The more specific an image is, the simpler the process. We will never be able to understand abstract thoughts this way, but it was sufficient for a message that Watson and I translated into a film. The images have been adapted to our senses. Afterward, we can talk about possible interpretations.”

  Naturally, Hayato was curious how Marchenko had translated the signal. The diagram of the signal source disappeared from the fog display. It became completely opaque, and then a glowing dot emerged. The dot grew and gained in volume. Around it, stars shone. It was a celestial body, but it was not Enceladus. This object looked completely different. It radiated a heat that Hayato seemed to feel on his face. It also was not white and cool like Enceladus, but burnt and poisonous-looking.

  “Io… it must be Io,” Martin whispered.

  Hayato nodded. Io, the volcanic moon orbiting Jupiter.

  The moon disappeared. Everyone immediately recognized the next image. They saw the commander lying on a kind of cot. She was bending her legs, screaming. Marchenko was standing next to her. This was the very moment of Dimitri Sol’s birth. Hayato shivered, and at the same moment he felt glad Francesca was not here, considering she still grieved the loss of Marchenko.