The Titan Probe

by Morris, Brandon Q.

  December 27, 2046, Enceladus

  Marchenko was sweating. Something was holding his left arm down. He needed to lift it to find out his fate, but he was afraid and angry at himself. It used to be easy for him to face his destiny. Otherwise, he would have not flown the rescue mission from the spaceship.

  What is wrong with me? Was he so grateful for this new spark of life that he did not want it to be extinguished? He listened to himself. There was a warm spot in his body that was filled with hope, somewhere between his stomach and his heart, a spot in danger of being extinguished by the icy cold of Enceladus. It was also very important to him, as it contained the hope of seeing Francesca once more.

  A warm tear rolled down his cheek, and now he managed to do it—he lifted his left arm, looked at the display, and then suddenly felt relieved. Six hours. He had oxygen for six hours. The tank must be almost full. That should not have been surprising, since it had taken him just under an hour to reach the surface of Enceladus after leaving the spaceship.

  It should be surprising. After all, this had occurred the day before yesterday.

  How had he survived the past 48 hours? He could not be alive anymore—it was utterly impossible. Marchenko was not a religious person, but he briefly considered being in some kind of life after death. He shook his head. No, that was complete nonsense. He was a doctor, and there was no afterlife. He did not know what was actually keeping him alive, and he would not be able to answer that question any time soon. Would he ever find an answer? Perhaps it was one of those impossible coincidences quantum physicists liked to play around with, but he could not imagine it. The answer was not important now. He had six hours left, and he had better not rely on that period being extended once more.

  What were his options? The helmet radio was not working, so he could not call for help. Spaceship ILSE was probably already on its way back to Earth, and his fellow astronauts must have believed him to be dead. At the former location of the lander module, he would only find the laser concentrator and the launching scaffold for Valkyrie. He could not do anything with the metal scaffolding. The concentrator could probably be reconfigured to send signals into space, but he was not Hayato or Martin. The Japanese or the German would more than likely be able to convert the system without any instructions. He was a medical doctor and furthermore, the landing site was too far away to reach it with a single oxygen tank. This fact was the reason he was at this very spot, rather than in the stuffy but warm atmosphere of the spaceship.

  There was still Valkyrie. This drill and dive vehicle that Martin and Francesca had used to explore the subsurface ocean must be locked in the ice somewhere south of here. There he should be able to find oxygen and food, and most importantly, an opportunity to send a distress signal. Marchenko tried to remember when his two fellow astronauts departed from that location. If he was right, it must have taken Francesca and Martin about four hours to reach his location in the crevasse. He did not know exactly where Valkyrie had broken through the ice, but he assumed they took a straight path toward the lander. His suit computer knew the coordinates of the landing site, so he only needed to extend the line from the lander to the crevasse southward. After about four hours he should arrive in the vicinity of Valkyrie.

  Marchenko used the computer display to show the direction. Enceladus did not possess a magnetic field, so a magnetic compass would not work. However, the system was clever enough to calculate the southerly direction from the positions of Saturn and the sun. Enceladus moved around Saturn in such a way that it always presented the same side toward it, and this made the planet’s disk a great orientation point. Marchenko could also see by the landscape where south was located, due to the noticeably increased number of fissures and hills.

  He started walking. Again and again he put too much force into his step and floated a bit. It would take him some time to get used to walking in this low gravity. Long floating phases cost time. He learned to use his left leg to push at the correct angle so that his right foot would land appropriately. Then he distributed the impact across the hard sole of the boot. Then the next step, one after the other.

  Since he could easily jump across them, fissures in the ice barely slowed him down. He was very careful, though, about the fractured edges of the ice looming ahead. At these temperatures, the ice was as hard as iron. If he scraped along these edges with any speed, he ran the risk of cutting open his spacesuit. The upper part, the HUT, or Hard Upper Torso, might be rather impervious to it, but the bottom part, the LAT, or Lower Torso Assembly, was made of a fabric-type of material, like his gloves, which he had to keep away from sharp edges.

  He seemed to be making rapid progress. Every five minutes he made sure he was still on the right course. While Saturn showed him the way, after a few kilometers, even a paltry two degrees deviation would make it impossible for him to find Valkyrie. After an hour he checked his oxygen consumption. Everything was fine, and he seemed to be in good shape. In spite of the steady marching speed, he had hardly increased his oxygen consumption. The only thing that annoyed him was the bad visibility. He definitely would have to find a solution for it inside Valkyrie.

  Marchenko looked up at the sky. In spite of the bad visibility through the visor, he tried to find Earth. Amy, the commander, had shown him in the spaceship where to look for it, but he had not listened carefully at the time. From here, his home planet looked so small he could not find it without help. Push off... land... push off... land. He also imparted a tiny impulse to Enceladus in the opposite direction with each step that gave him a little push. This meant while he was on the way to the salvation offered by Valkyrie, he speeded up the rotation of the moon. It would hardly be noticeable, but maybe this weak push was all that was missing to get the moon out of its orbit. That was unlikely, but possible. He felt like an ant in an ocean of emptiness and darkness, vainly trying to roll a huge chunk of ice to its colony.

  Crack. The fractured edge of an ice floe caught his left glove. Enceladus punished him for daydreaming. A small spray gushed from the rip into the near vacuum of this moon. The water vapor in his breath immediately turned to ice, and the intense cold entered his suit through the ripped hole. The sudden drop in temperature made the inside of his helmet visor fog up. Now he had an even harder time seeing the outside world. Marchenko reached for the repair kit, which must be in his tool pocket. He needed to stay calm, but it was not easy. His suit used visual and acoustic signals to warn him of the loss of pressure. The repair kit was not there. Shit.

  “Calm down, Mitya!”

  It was his mother’s voice. She was strict, and when she called him, he had to obey.

  “Look in the left pocket, stupid boy.”

  She was right, of course. The repair kit was not in the tool pocket but in the first aid bag. ‘Medicine for the suit, your best friend.’ This is what he always used to say to the cosmonaut recruits at the training center in Star City. He took the kit out; it had a pressure cap. The damage was on the left side, so he could not fix it with his left hand. He needed the right one.

  “Do not let me down,” he said out loud. The hand obeyed, and for at least a moment, the adrenaline covered up the pain. Marchenko took the special spray can from the kit. The adhesive would harden quickly once it was sprayed onto the torn spot. He pressed the pump button, but nothing happened. The cold was biting deeply into the skin of his hand, where he probably already suffered from frostbite. He had to try to move his left hand away from the ripped spot. Once he hit the spot with the spray adhesive, it would be too late—he would be unable to extricate his hand from the cloth. He held the defective glove with his right hand and turned the arm. The injured skin rubbed against the fabric, and he wanted to scream in agony. He needed to spray quickly, right at this moment. He strained the muscles of his hand. A deep, throbbing pain shot through the right half of his upper body, but he succeeded. The spray can squirted adhesive on the damaged spot. It pulled the fabric together and rapidly hardened. At this particular spot, at leas
t, the ice would not cut the glove again.

  Marchenko was feeling dizzy, which must have been caused by the overwhelming sense of relief. But he did not sit down, because he was afraid it would be even more difficult to get up again. He had made it! Now take a deep breath. The suit had automatically increased the oxygen flow. The fan blew against the helmet visor. Two minutes later he could see better again, but he still noticed some distortions. He looked at the display. During this short period he had lost 30 minutes’ worth of oxygen. It could have been worse. Marchenko noticed his belly starting to rumble. Now. Of all things. He looked at his watch—maybe three more hours before he reached Valkyrie. It was useless to fight the urge, he would have to relieve himself. For this very purpose he wore a diaper underneath his thermal onesie, the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, or LCVG. He knew it would feel uncomfortable for the next few kilometers, but once he was inside Valkyrie he could clean himself.

  The drill vehicle waited for him to the south. He needed to keep going. From now on he would be more careful. The gravitational pull of the giant ringed planet constantly massaged the moon with its diameter of 500 kilometers. This caused the surface to break into ice floes, especially here near the South Pole. The sharp edges of the floes were just waiting to shred Marchenko’s ExtraVehicular Assembly suit, or EVA.

  He really needed to stay on guard. Space was without mercy. The fact that human technology managed to stuff everything he needed to survive into a mobile covering was truly a miracle, and it could not last. The suit pressure of almost one atmosphere was trying to equalize itself with the vacuum on the surface of Enceladus. This was the true nature of life, not the harmonic connection between plants, animals, and humans on Earth. If all people could experience this reality, maybe they would treat their own planet differently.

  He jumped up to better see what was nearby, but even from a height of ten meters he still could not detect Valkyrie. The display told him he remained on the right course. He was almost there—he just had to be patient, which had never been his strong suit. Exactly four hours after he started his walk he ventured another exploratory jump. Valkyrie must be here somewhere, inside a Tiger Stripe, one of the deep fissures reaching down 5000 meters to where the Enceladus Ocean began. He spotted a dark object in a crevasse about 300 meters away. It looked like a beached whale. This was definitely an artificial structure and could only be the drill vehicle. In order not to lose sight of it, Marchenko hurried and moved toward his goal in great leaps. Valkyrie was surrounded by ice. Marchenko stepped on what appeared to be a virginal ice layer. There was no trace of ice dust on top of it. He seemed to hear a crackling sound, and while the vacuum around him did not transmit any sound, he might be hearing the noise via the suit.

  Looking dead, Valkyrie was stuck in the ice. Technically speaking, it was dead, of course. Marchenko hoped to be able to inject some life into it again. All it needed was energy. The entrance, actually the emergency exit, was located on top. It looked like Francesca and Martin had not used it to exit the vehicle, but rather employed the pressure suits of the SuitPort at the rear, which were now missing. This meant Valkyrie should still be pressurized, but this realization did not help him. Unfortunately, his spacesuit was not compatible with the SuitPort. He had to get inside the vehicle through the emergency exit with his suit on, which would cause Valkyrie to lose the atmosphere inside. In addition, he would run out of air if he did not replace it by getting the driller operational again.

  The oval hatch that conformed to the tubular shape of the vehicle was locked with a rotating wheel that required great force to open. For this task he would need both of his arms again. Marchenko tried to suppress the pain from his right arm but failed to do so. He turned and pulled, the pain almost killing him, and he cried aloud for his mother as he had never allowed himself to do before. It did not matter. He was alone, and nobody could see or hear him.

  He gathered all of his strength—and courage against the pain—and tried one more time. The wheel turned, and now he needed to be careful, for once he moved the last lever, the interior air pressure might blow the heavy hatch into his face. Marchenko turned the lever and opened the way inside. White steam arose. The steel hatch did not move by itself—he had to lift it. Within a short time, but in total, eerie silence, all the air escaped the interior. If it had not been mixed with water vapor, he would not have even noticed it.

  Marchenko lifted the hatch high enough to be able to enter. Below it, he saw nothing but darkness. Should he shine a light into it? It did not matter. He had no other option, since only Valkyrie could offer him shelter, so he jumped inside. He landed on a hard surface, but he could not see what he was standing on. He could still easily reach the hatch with his left hand. He pulled it down and closed it from the inside with a second wheel.

  It was pitch black inside.

  December 27, 2046, Earth

  “Do you want to move this giant antenna dish yourselves?” Robert knew he could lure most students with this question. The class waited obediently inside the bus. The driver drove them to a flat-roofed building almost two kilometers away.

  “This is the Jansky Laboratory, named after the well-known astrophysicist, Karl Jansky.” The two-story building must have been white once. In the humid climate of Virginia, moss now grew on its walls. It had looked the same way when Robert had started his first job here.

  “Everyone out,” he instructed the group. The chaperone gave him a friendly nod when he passed her. “You are doing this so well,” she said in a way that may have been a bit condescending. She probably thought he was some retired guy trying to add a few dollars to his meager retirement income.

  “It used to be pretty crowded in here, but these days, you’ll meet only a few people. And you wouldn’t have been allowed into the control room back then.”

  He led the group to the entrance. The control room was on the ground floor. Old-fashioned neon lights flickered in the hallways. After five minutes they reached a massive steel door.

  “Is this where they keep the national gold reserves?” A stocky, almost fat boy pushed himself to the front. “May I?” He tried in vain to press down the robust metal bar attached to the door instead of a handle.

  “One moment,” Robert said, “I first have to open two locks… Okay, now.”

  Now the bar moved down. At the back of the door, a substantial bolt with a diameter of three centimeters slid from its bracket.

  “Yes, it looks like a safe,” Robert explained, “and what is inside must not get out. This does not apply to gold, but to electromagnetic radiation,” he said, while the class gazed at the room. In the center there were several tables forming a square where computers were placed. Further tables with computers lined the walls, supplemented by a total of five computer cabinets.

  “You see the shiny red metal up there, where the ceiling tiles are hanging down? That is copper. It shields the room. We call it a Faraday cage. Otherwise, the radiation from all these computers would affect the signals.”

  Most of the computers had been turned off years ago. The technology was practically ancient and had not been upgraded in 30 years, but for the most part it still functioned. Robert would sometimes play around with the computers after work. Besides his love of reading, this was his second hobby. The world is crazy, he thought. Years ago, any astronomer would have sold his own mother for observation time here, but now the entire technology was freely available to a bored semi-retiree.

  He stepped toward the window that faced south.

  “Look, back there is the 100-meter-telescope.”

  Some of the students came toward him.

  “Please do not touch anything here. This is the control unit.”

  A boy who was about to touch a keyboard carefully pulled his hand back.

  Robert smiled. “Basically, nothing would happen. It has all been set for safe parameters.” He wiped his hand across the window pane. “See, there are even strips of copper embedded in the glass.”

>   “Can we look through the telescope?” the lanky girl asked, casting him a curious glance. The nerdy boy smiled, as if he knew better.

  “A radio telescope works a bit differently than a regular telescope. An optical telescope focuses parallel beams of light from an object with the aid of its lenses so the light is amplified at the target—the eye of the observer, or a sensor. The radio telescope uses its dish to focus the incoming radio waves on a receiver. Just like a telescope deals with light in various colors, a radio telescope can receive different wavelengths and thus create an image.” He showed a black-and-white printout of various spectra to the students.

  “Often a single wavelength is enough to answer a scientific question, such as hydrogen absorption lines or wavelengths from satellites that we sent into the solar system.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Robert felt the disappointment of the students who probably expected some spectacular views.

  “It means radio telescopes are much more flexible. In 1968, for instance, the Green Bank Observatory discovered the first pulsar as a remnant of a supernova, in 1971 the first long-chained molecule in space, and in 2008 the first biological molecule. We can, or rather, we could use it to listen to extremely small and extremely large things at the same time. What’s more exciting, we can illuminate an object artificially by bombarding it with radio impulses and then measuring the returns. Just try doing this with light, if you want to observe another planet!”

  “Can you also communicate with it?”

  Thanks, nerd-boy, Robert thought. “Sure. We have used radio telescopes several times to send signals into space. So far, no one has answered. ”

  “You said we could turn the antenna,” said the slightly overweight boy who had earlier wanted to open the door.

  “There is no wheel, or anything like a wheel, to turn the antenna. The computer adjusts it via this program.” Robert called up a simplified program he developed especially for these guided tours.