Ice Moon 4 Return to Enceladus

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Let’s go, then,” he said. The display on his lower arm showed them the way, and Valkyrie was south of them. The way was not all that complicated. While the navigation system showed some deep fissures and cracks, they could easily get across them using the jumping technique that was possible here.

  It was around noon—Earth time—and Martin suddenly longed for a steak. A steak, right here on the ice. How messed up is the wiring of my brain to come up with such ideas in this environment? Perhaps it wants to distract me from the all-encompassing feeling of loneliness that increases with every meter I walk away from the lander. He could not remember having felt this way after the first landing. Plus, he even had his darling Jiaying here, and was about the only crew member who had not had to say goodbye to a loved one back on Earth. Well that wasn’t true, because Francesca hadn’t, nor Jiaying, and perhaps Valentina hadn’t, since she never mentioned living with a partner. He really did not know very much about her.

  Jiaying carried the cable reel. It unspooled meter by meter. The fiber-optic cable was covered with a layer of carbon nanotubes that gave it great strength without reducing flexibility. Sometimes Jiaying turned around and waved at him. Martin smiled, and she smiled back. Despite this there was a loneliness that seemed to cover the whole moon and which oozed like an invisible poison gas from the fissures of the Tiger Stripes. Yes, that’s the direction, he thought. The loneliness came from the depth. He was glad he would not have to dive down to the bottom of the ocean in a submarine this time. Were the others experiencing similar feelings here?

  “I can see it!” Jiaying had just jumped across a particularly wide fissure and called while still in flight. Martin’s heart seemed to stop briefly—he hoped she would not forget where she was. Fortunately, her jump was enough to carry her across to the other side. Due to the lack of air resistance, his girlfriend could not stop herself from getting to the other side even if she tried to.

  “What does it look like?” he asked via radio.

  “A dark, round spot on a white background,” Jiaying replied.

  “Circular?”

  “Of course not—elliptical.”

  Definitely it, Martin thought. He smiled. It had to be Valkyrie. Its cigar-shaped body must have rested in the water at an angle and then froze solid. The view of the section from afar would then look like an ellipse.

  They both reached it after five minutes. Three years ago this had been an open water hole, but now the area was frozen solid. Jiaying raced ahead eagerly. Martin wanted to warn her against weak ice, but before he made a fool of himself again he remembered they only weighed two kilograms here. Distributed against the area of her boot print it would not generate more pressure than a light backpack on Earth, and three years was far more than enough time for the water to have frozen solid at 150 degrees below zero.

  “Francesca, Valkyrie is waiting for you,” Martin radioed, and also added the exact position.

  “It froze into the ice at an angle, bow downward.” Martin took another look to verify that, since an error would be embarrassing. Yes, the bow was below the ice. If it had been the other way, there would be a significant problem, because the hatch Francesca and Valentina were going to use to get on board was near the stern. The SuitPorts were also located there, but they could not use them until they got Valkyrie up and running again.

  First of all, Valkyrie needed energy. Martin approached the stern. It was here where the cable feed-through was located, and the mechanism the vessel used to unspool its umbilical cord. During their first journey the fiber-optic cable had been severed by a movement in the ice, and they had reeled in the rest of it despite its uselessness. Now they had to connect the cable they brought with the existing cable reel, on the inside. This meant someone had to board Valkyrie, and since Martin knew the vessel well, he would be the obvious one to do it.

  Martin took a look at the hatch. It seemed everything was set up especially for them. The hatch was slightly above the ice surface. He could easily reach the large spoked wheel, but it would not turn.

  “Could you help me here?” he asked.

  Jiaying put down the cable reel and came to him.

  “Should I give the wheel a try?” She gave him a cheeky smile, turned around, and used all her strength. Martin caught himself, hoping out of sheer masculine vanity that she would not succeed. This is stupid, he thought, because then the hatch would be open for me. It didn’t move, so they tried it together, but the wheel was still stuck.

  “It’s just because of the gravity,” Martin said with a laugh. “How are we supposed to use our immense strength if we cannot properly hold onto anything?”

  Jiaying nodded. “We must wait for the others.”

  They did not have to wait long. Francesca was the first one to rush in.

  “Why are you sitting around here?” the Italian pilot asked. “Why isn’t the vessel ready to dive?”

  Martin pointed at the spoked wheel with a tired gesture. Francesca tried it alone, and then all three of them attempted it together, but it was still in vain. Finally, when Valentina arrived, it was as if Valkyrie had waited for some four-person magic ritual to occur, and the wheel moved smoothly.

  “I do not know why you make such a big fuss,” the Russian woman said.

  “Don’t you realize? It only yielded to the combined power of four heroes from different nations,” Martin joked.

  He grabbed the cable reel. “I am going inside now. You need to push one end of the cable through here,” he instructed Jiaying. Then he vaulted through the open hatch into the darkness. He activated the lamp on his helmet.

  Things looked better than he was expecting. There was no visible damage because there was nothing that could have caused it, just a bit of ice covering the walls. This must be the residual atmosphere inside Valkyrie, which had condensed and then frozen. Near the bow more ice seemed to have collected. Perhaps some water could have gotten in there after the last time someone exited—or maybe it was from a geyser eruption? There had to be a reason Valkyrie was at a slant.

  Martin aimed his lamp toward the stern. The cable reel would be on one side, below a cover. The fiber-optic cable ran toward it guided by two rollers. He took the monkey wrench from a pocket in his suit and opened the cover. There was the reel. He moved it, and the bearings worked fine, as if they had just been greased. Now he had to squeeze himself halfway behind the panels. He aimed his flashlight forward. Somewhere there the cable Jiaying was pushing through would have to appear.

  “Could you wiggle the cable?” he asked via radio.

  “Okay,” Jiaying said.

  Martin saw something move. “I see it. Another twenty centimeters, please.”

  The cable moved forward until finally he could reach it.

  “Okay, I’m going to pull it. Don’t be scared,” he radioed, pulling. Jiaying played out some length on her side. He pulled the cable toward the reel and used his left hand to search for the coupling in his suit pocket. Where had he put it?

  “Ah, there it is,” he whispered.

  “Did you say something?”

  “No, never mind.”

  He inserted both cable ends into the coupling until they clicked into place. Then he activated the fastener. From now on this would be the weak spot of the entire system. It would have to withstand the entire weight of the cable, and it was an advantage that they were not on Earth. The purely mechanical fastener must not crimp the fiber-optic cable inside, and it had to withstand getting hot, as transitional surfaces always exhibited losses. If Valkyrie should ever lose contact, it would be here—but Martin did not think it would come to that. He closed the cover again and climbed out.

  “Neumaier to commander, please test the link to Valkyrie via remote control.”

  No one saw the test LED at the end of the cable light up briefly, as its glow was transmitted at light speed through the fiber-optic cable and into the drill vessel.

  “It works,” Amy said via radio. So the sensor at the end must have r
eturned the signal.

  “Thanks,” Martin answered.

  “But I notice something strange,” Amy said. “The jets tell me they cannot start the heater.”

  Martin sighed. He would have to go into Valkyrie once more, find the problem, and repair it. Three easy steps, he hoped.

  It took three difficult hours, working in claustrophobic conditions. Who the f... had removed that pipe? He managed to cobble together a solution, and hoped it would be adequate. Valkyrie was all they had.

  They stood around for a minute, just looking at each other—four human beings on the icy surface of an alien moon, indistinguishable in their suits. Yet, they each brought their own special goals, wishes, and ideas, which could have hardly been any more different. Humans are rather strange, Martin thought, and to me it doesn’t look like some creator made them according to a plan.

  Francesca was the first one to move. She announced, “Time to start up the ship.” She started to turn around and go on board, but then she returned to hug Jiaying and Martin.

  “Once we have an atmosphere on board, I cannot say goodbye directly anymore.”

  “Have a good trip,” Jiaying said.

  “And remember to bring back Marchenko safe and sound,” Martin added.

  Valentina also hugged both of them. Then she followed Francesca. Martin and Jiaying saw how Francesca first attached the spacesuit meant for Marchenko to an exterior SuitPort. Then the two women entered and closed the hatch from inside.

  “We should get out of their way,” Martin said. They waited at a safe distance for Valkyrie to embark on its journey. For a quarter of an hour nothing happened. Then they saw the ice getting darker from below. Valkyrie must have activated its control jets, heating the water and melting the ice. A crack formed below the stern, and soon afterward the protruding part slowly broke through the ice, which now was turning into a bubbling expanse of water. Valkyrie floated in it like a whale that had lost its way, although soon the whale remembered where it wanted to go, and it dove into the depths of the ocean.

  Age of Ascent, 31

  There was:

  Shocks.

  Waves and vibrations.

  Movement.

  Light.

  There is:

  Hope.

  Hope and fear.

  Fear.

  The present.

  There will be:

  The emptiness.

  The depth.

  The way out.

  The I.

  December 20, 2049, Enceladus

  Francesca naturally chose the pilot’s seat, and so far everything was working well. Valentina seemed to have realized she was no more than a kind of stowaway who should keep out of the way as much as possible and definitely not argue with Francesca. In reality, Valkyrie could easily be handled by a single person, since all controls were within the pilot’s reach. Even the system startup worked smoothly, as if she and Martin had just recently left the vessel.

  No, she was not the last person who had sat in this seat and operated Valkyrie. How could she have forgotten that? Marchenko had been seated right here on his solo trip to the Forest of Columns, from which he had never really returned.

  “What was it like down here?” she asked him via radio. They had never really talked about it at length.

  “What can I say? It was both exciting and at the same time depressing.” Thanks to the fiber-optic cable connection, Marchenko was always with her. They could also access Watson this way. Although, if necessary, both could download themselves into the on-board computer.

  “You know,” Marchenko sighed, “I do not think I want to talk about it.”

  “You think?” said Francesca.

  “It...” he hesitated, “it still hurts. You know how it all ended. The whole time I still try to consider myself a complete human being, to justify myself. This was the trigger. Maybe it will change once we find what we are looking for.”

  “I hope so. It will only work if the creature cooperates.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think we are going to be successful?”

  “To be honest, I do not really believe it, Francesca. But we will attempt it nevertheless, even if I consider it a utopian goal.”

  “But you agreed to the attempt. Amy would not see her son for two years. I...”

  “I did not agree for myself, but for all of you. It was not my idea. I hoped it would rid Amy and you of any feelings of guilt—and do not deny feeling guilty. I could not take this opportunity away from you. Once we return you will have done everything in your power. The same applies to Amy. This will help you in the long run. It will free you from feelings of guilt. That is why I agreed to all this.”

  “You are such a good person,” Francesca said in a voice dripping with irony. “This is pure emotional manipulation, but it is okay. I will prove to you that you are wrong, and then you will notice you are also mistaken concerning your own motives. You are just as selfish as all of us.”

  For two minutes Marchenko gave no reply. Then he said, “Perhaps you are right. We must not argue. It is partially selfish, yes. I want you to stay because of me, not due to feelings of guilt. And I do notice you are unhappy with the situation. I cannot be there for you physically. Once you no longer feel guilty, you can make a better decision about whether you really want to live with me. Maybe we will go our separate ways after all. That would be terrible for me, but better than the idea that you were doing something which you really did not want to do—out of pity.”

  “You do not know me very well, Mitya. Nothing and nobody can force me to do something I do not want to do.”

  Valkyrie had been moving toward the bottom of the ocean for an hour. They had not had any problems getting through the ice layer at the surface. While the crevice through which the vessel surfaced back then had partially closed in the meantime, Valkyrie had enough energy now to get rid of the thickest ice obstacles. Francesca remembered the crazy trip when they had reached the surface with their last bit of energy—now they were traveling much more comfortably.

  The searchlights shone ahead and cut cone-shaped pieces out of the darkness, without being able to actually penetrate it. The water looked like it had before. If things did not weigh so little here, it would be impossible to distinguish the deep ocean of Earth from that of Enceladus. Darkness looked the same everywhere, and the temperature of 4 degrees was exactly the same as on their home planet. Strange as it might sound, Enceladus was more livable down here than on the surface. There was oxygen dissolved in the water, and it was so warm they would survive for a few minutes without a suit, until they ran out of air. The pressure was lower than in the depths of the oceans on Earth, because the water layers above them weighed only one eightieth.

  Once they hit the bottom of the sea, they would notice again they were no longer on Earth. There should be only a thin layer where life existed here, as opposed to the diversity they knew from Earth, because on Enceladus much less energy was available. Francesca checked the radar measurement. Only 150 meters more to the bottom.

  Five minutes later they reached the sea floor. Francesca gazed at the area lit by the searchlights, but what she expected to find was not there. Three years ago, a thin layer of cells had covered the ocean floor, but now they were missing. This is impossible, she thought.

  “Marchenko, do you see what I see?” she asked.

  “Confirmed,” he replied. “Try a zigzag course. Perhaps it is a local phenomenon.”

  Francesca typed in the appropriate commands, but the image shown by the searchlights did not change. There definitely was no life here anymore, just bare rock.

  “Engines stop,” she said.

  Valentina came forward. “What is going on?” the Russian woman asked.

  “It is nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Francesca wanted to say that there should be a layer of cells at the bottom of the sea, but there is nothing there,” Marchenko interjected.

  “That’
s what I said. ‘It is nothing.’ I want to take a sample of it.”

  Francesca called up the control menu for the manipulator arm on her screen. She lowered Valkyrie all the way to the bottom and had the arm scrape across the rock with a sample container for two or three minutes. Then she brought the container on board and placed it in the analyzer. The unit needed a few minutes to determine the exact composition.

  ‘Analysis Complete’ appeared on the screen. Francesca pressed a button to display the data: water, various salts in high concentration, and silica. Nothing else.

  “No organic material,” she said. “Rossi to commander, are you listening in?”

  Amy reacted the same way Marchenko had earlier. “That’s impossible. Maybe you just happened to be at a bad spot.”

  “I think that’s unlikely,” Martin said over the communication channel. “If it was just a bad spot—as you call it—there should have at least been traces of organic material. This looks clinically clean.”

  “As if someone employed the weapon I was supposed to place on Enceladus back then, when I left you all on Io,” Jiaying said quietly. One could hear by her voice that those events still bothered her.

  “It could not be,” Marchenko explained. “ILSE turned around halfway here. In the meantime no one had an opportunity to use the retrovirus against the being on Enceladus.”

  “Perhaps there was a secret project that managed to reach Enceladus, just as we did?” said Martin.