The Enceladus Mission: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Congratulations,” Miller said after they had pulled the parachute and its payload into the middle of the clearing. It was a tarp folded into a sack containing various cans.

  “This is your food for the next two days.” Miller pointed upward. “Water comes from there, too, although there is also a creek here.”

  Hayato started to open one of the cans with his knife.

  “Did I say anything about breakfast? First we will build a shelter and start a fire,” Miller sternly instructed.

  The tough material of the parachute served as the basis for a primitive tent, which was reinforced with branches and secured with parachute cord.

  “Definitely keep the rest of the cord,” Miller advised. He was the only one giving instructions now.

  The fire proved to be more of a problem. Miller let them experiment for a little while. Amy had seen in a movie how someone made fire by quickly twirling a stick of wood against a second piece of wood with tinder piled around the contact point. However, they didn’t find any wood dry enough for this purpose. Martin was about to talk to the instructor when Francesca came to the rescue. She opened her jacket and took off her necklace. It had a pendant in the shape of a thick metal rod.

  “Spoilsport,” Miller said, when he saw what she was up to.

  “This is a firesteel. A pilot can’t be without a firesteel.” Francesca told them exactly what to do. Hayato was supposed to find birch trees and cut off several pieces of bark with his knife. Martin was told to gather old, dead branches, even if they were wet. With these branches, Amy and Francesca created a fire pit, protected by the tarp. Then Francesca used her knife to cut fine shavings from the inside of the birch bark.

  “This is our tinder,” the pilot said.

  She created a fist-sized pile of shavings and placed it on a dry surface. Then she held the firesteel at a 45-degree angle over the tinder and started scraping the knife across it. Sparks flew into the tinder, and soon a small flame spread and finally set the dead branches alight. Once the fire was big enough, Francesca removed the tarp from over it.

  “If we regularly add new wood, the rain cannot extinguish the fire,” she explained. “In the end, the outside of the wood is quickly dried by the heat. It just cannot be young and fresh, because green wood is moist on the inside.”

  Miller clapped his hands.

  “Who wants some coffee? It’s breakfast time.”

  Martin looked up at the lingering gray sky. A bright spot was slowly climbing upward. It must be almost noon. Each of them picked out a can and placed it near the fire. The food, eaten directly from the can using a knife and fingers, tasted delicious.

  Miller advised the group, “In the wilderness, you are going to need at least two meals a day.”

  After the meal, Martin would have liked to have rested for half an hour, but Miller wouldn’t let them.

  “Let’s see how you can come up with a second meal. In temperate zones, you are going to find a lot of edible plants in the forest, but there is nothing like a piece of meat. Don’t try to tackle a wild boar in areas where they exist. Bears are too strong. Foxes and deer are too fast. It is even hard to catch rabbits with what you have on hand. But you can catch squirrels. What do you think of a tasty squirrel?”

  Miller addressed the two women directly. Francesca kept a straight face, but Amy grimaced.

  “Okay, we are going to need a straight branch, at least a meter and a half long and five centimeters thick. Martin and Hayato, you start looking for one. Amy and Francesca, we happened to find an old umbrella. I would like you to remove the metal ribs from it.”

  Martin nodded at Hayato. They went into the forest in different directions. It took Martin a quarter of an hour to find two suitable branches and to clean them with his knife. When he returned, Hayato was already sitting by the fire. The women had turned the metal spokes of the umbrella into rings, which they now attached to the branches at about half height.

  Miller began his lecture, “This is our squirrel trap. These animals are lazy, just like we are. We will lean the branches at a 45-degree angle against a tree where we suspect squirrels to be located. When they climb the tree, they choose the most comfortable path, until they realize they have stuck their heads in a wire loop. Then they jump. That’s not good for the squirrels.”

  Amy was staring at the branch she held in her hand.

  “Do we actually have to do this? We understand the principle behind it now,” Martin said.

  “Martin, I am sorry, but you have to. How else am I supposed to show you how to skin a squirrel?”

  “Thanks, Martin, but I can handle it,” Amy said.

  “Well, let’s place our traps. Then we have to wait a while. In the meantime, we’ll collect water, in case there is no creek.”

  Miller selected two trees he considered particularly promising for squirrels. Martin looked around. I don't have any idea why he would choose this area, he concluded.

  “You see the shit on the ground?” Miller pointed. “Squirrels must be here regularly.”

  Then he led them back to the makeshift tent in the middle of the clearing.

  “We still have a lot of parachute fabric left over. How can we use that to get water? Francesca, don’t say anything,” Miller directed.

  “Put it in the rain and then squeeze it out,” Hayato said, laughing.

  Amy raised her hand like in school. “Construct a funnel?”

  “Then let’s get started.” Miller did not indicate whether this was the correct solution. It seemed logical to Martin, so he did not contradict him.

  “If the funnel is supposed to have a radius and a depth of one meter, we have to cut out a sector with a central angle of 360 degrees times the radius, divided by the root of the depth squared plus the radius squared,” Martin explained.

  “What?” All three queried him, almost simultaneously.

  “Imagine a cake baked in a round cake pan has a radius of one meter. Somebody already ate a piece of one minus one divided by the square root of two.”

  They still looked at him aghast.

  About to lose patience, Martin tried again. “Almost a third of the cake is missing, okay?”

  They cut the remaining fabric with their knives so it had the form of a circle with a sector of about a third missing. They joined the edges of the missing one-third, using parachute cord. Then they supported this construction with branches and placed a container below the hole in the middle.

  “This is an area of about three square meters,” Martin explained. “In October, there should be an average of two liters per day per square meter, so within 24 hours we should be able to catch six liters of water. That should be enough for two to three people—only if it rains, of course, and rains the average amount.”

  Miller looked at him without saying a word and then sat down. They watched the container slowly fill up. They did not even notice they had already been soaked to the bone.

  “Amy, one person has to stay here and tend the fire,” Miller finally said.

  Martin smiled. Miller probably did not want Amy to be present when they inspected the squirrel traps.

  “You others come with me to check whether we caught anything.”

  Miller went ahead. The ASCANs were moving a bit more slowly than before. Apparently no one wanted to be the first to reach the traps.

  “You see? We got one!” Miller whispered excitedly, even though there was no reason for quiet. He picked up the first three empty traps and pressed the loops flat. Then he showed them the dead squirrel in the fourth trap.

  “Don’t worry, it died very quickly.”

  No one said anything.

  “Now we are going to need a tree stump that's as smooth as possible. By chance, there is one right around the corner. We cannot cook the squirrel in its fur. We have to skin it first.”

  He bent down. The tree stump was about 25 centimeters high. The instructor placed the dead animal on the smooth wood, inserted the knife slightly above the anus, and
cut a few millimeters along the fur. Then he pulled firmly on the skin above it until a piece of it separated. Miller looked around. He found a clean spot on the ground, put the animal there, and stepped with one foot on its tail. Then he pulled strongly on the fur, which rolled up centimeter by centimeter until he had reached the front legs. Here he cut off both the fur and the head.

  “Finished.” Miller wiped the sweat off his forehead. His hands were not bloody, as Martin would have expected. Without its fur the squirrel looked even smaller. It seems to be lonely and in need of help, almost like a newborn, Martin realized, and he was starting to feel nauseous. He took a few quick steps to get behind a bush, where he threw up. What kind of life did this animal have? he wondered. Did it feel something like happiness, or at least satisfaction? Did it have any idea how it would have to die someday?

  Martin returned to the group. He saw the others had also reacted with shock and disgust.

  “It’s not worthwhile gutting the animal because it’s so small. Grill it whole, but only eat the meat off the legs, breast, and back.”

  Miller noticed his audience was not at all enthusiastic about their prospective meal.

  “It's your life or the animal's, that’s what it’s all about.” He sounded serious. “You probably won’t crash-land in a forest, and as far as I have heard, there are no squirrels on Enceladus. There could be a situation, though, when you have to decide between your life and the lives of others. You should be prepared for that, at least a little. Such decisions can be very painful, and the consequences of your decision will follow you for the rest of your life.”

  They returned to the camp in silence. Amy had already prepared some fresh coffee. They had hot-in-the-can food for dinner. They sat around the fire to get warm. Inner and outer warmth began to drive the moisture out of their clothes. Today, no one was in the mood for telling stories of other times. The flames sputtered as long as someone kept the fire alive. The wood was crackling while it dried in the heat. There was a smell of soot, moss, and wet dog fur, even though there was no dog nearby. No one even noticed when the sun set behind all the clouds.

  At some point, Martin wrapped himself inside a piece of tarp, his backpack serving as a pillow. In reflection, he replayed the events of the day just before he fell asleep. This day has made me think twice about wanting to quit. I now realize it would be a mistake for me to call off this journey. My curiosity has been piqued, and I think it would be worth my while to get to know the people I will be traveling with. I no longer have the feeling I will endanger them.

  December 20, 2045, Tiangong-4

  Saying farewell had been easy for the mission crew. They were all glad to finally leave the confines of Tiangong-4. The Chinese space station, currently occupied by 17 people, had become an international meeting point, so they felt like they didn’t belong, and were only in the others’ way. No one aboard had said anything negative to the crew because they were all too polite.

  Yet Martin sensed a mixture of envy and admiration: envy, because aboard this space station were taikonauts, cosmonauts, and astronauts with considerably more experience who might feel more qualified for this mission; and admiration, as it was clear to everyone how small their chances for a safe return really were. There simply had never been a space expedition lasting two years, so far away from any help. Without ongoing delivery of food, water, and spare parts, Tiangong-4 itself would cease to function in less than four weeks. ILSE, the craft that was supposed to fly to Saturn, would spend 30 times that long with only the supplies the planners managed to stow on board two spacecraft. ILSE’s full name was in fact ILSE 1, to differentiate it from the supply ship, ILSE 2.

  After leaving the Dragon capsule that had brought them into space, they met Dimitri Marchenko and Jiaying Li for the first time. The Russian, athletic and not quite young anymore, seemed to have the respect of the entire crew. The Chinese woman is very reserved, Martin thought, and I have no idea what to make of her. He tried to find out whether there were any rumors about her here at the space station, but apparently there were none. On the other hand, everyone aboard had already heard about Marchenko’s legendary vodka parties.

  The days stretched on. Martin felt exhausted and no longer even noticed his own body odor. He could hardly sleep due to all the noise on board. They did not expect to be able to leave this year. Yet five days before Christmas Eve, NASA finally released their decision—the mission would start the next day, December 20.

  The hatch of the airlock separating ILSE from Tiangong-4 had just opened. A technician waved at them and said something in Chinese. Jiaying answered him and walked ahead. Once he had followed her inside, Martin breathed in its air. Finally, our own spaceship, he thought. It smells fresh—no comparison to the stench of Tiangong-4. Of course it smells of oil and ozone, but it reminds me of the fresh air after a thunderstorm.

  Amy took charge. “CapCom says we should just stay here.”

  “They are suddenly in quite a hurry,” Hayato remarked.

  “The sooner we leave, the sooner we will be back,” Amy said. “So, everyone, please buckle in.”

  Martin followed her instructions. His place was in a corner of the command module. Amy and Francesca, the pilots, were busy steering. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and sighed. Soon afterward, a force pressed him into his seat. It was the inertia of his own body that resisted the change in velocity caused by the engines at the stern of the ship. He had no idea what was happening up front. No big speeches, no slogans, no good wishes, he thought. He had never been sent on a journey with so little ceremony. One might even suspect the organizers of this trip were embarrassed for some reason, but I do not regret it. In the end, who needs all that hoopla, anyway? He went to sleep.

  June 25, 2046, Space

  The stone had been on its way since ancient times. It possessed no memory, but if it had one, it would remember a giant, flat cloud of gas and dust coalescing through its own gravity, rotating faster and faster, until it became hotter and hotter inside, and at some point igniting a sun. One of these dust particles still rested inside it, the seed from which the stone was born. The heat had made other particles stick to it. The particle grew into a stone by colliding with others, but it circled the young sun at the wrong place. While its siblings grew from centimeters to meters and kilometers, forming asteroids, planetoids, and even planets, the stone remained a stone. It would be called a ‘meteorite’ by humans, of which it knew nothing. They would not even give it a name, as with its diameter of 20 centimeters it was far too small and too unimportant. There are millions this size, yet space is so huge that the chance of it ever meeting one of its siblings, or anything else for that matter, is close to zero.

  But it is not zero. By chance, the trajectories of this nameless stone and a spacecraft launched by humans would intersect somewhere between Earth and Mars. It was an almost incredible coincidence, something that had rarely happened in the short history of human spaceflight. It was a chance occurrence that belonged to two categories at once—probably won’t happen and must not happen. The spacecraft that the stone approached at a speed of over 130 kilometers per second—seen from the perspective of the stone—was not prepared for this. Nothing could prepare a spacecraft for such a collision. The impact would release the energy of a nuclear explosion, even though the stone's diameter was less than a man's wrist-to-elbow length.

  The spaceship ILSE 2 was asleep to conserve energy. It was en route to the moon of a distant planet that had been closely studied by humans only twice, where it was supposed to meet its sister ship, ILSE 1. But the artificial intelligence on board already knew this encounter would never happen. It had noticed the stone two seconds ago and had used trillions of computing cycles and thousands of simulations to calculate its path. It compared this with the abilities of the ship’s drives and realized that no course correction could prevent the collision. The AI had known about this blind spot since before the launch of the spacecraft, as soon as it had been fed the data. It kne
w the available technology would discover obstacles of a certain size too late to change the course of the ship in time. It was not scared by this, as it knew it would survive a collision. A meteorite of that size could destroy one of the modules, but not the entire ship. The AI would then quickly retreat to a computer located in a different module.

  Therefore, it was not upset when the stone came closer. The AI left the ship in standby mode. At this point, it certainly would be too late to hand the ship over to human control. Three seconds before impact, it started a starboard engine. Not much seemed to happen, but by this small change in position, the AI caused the stone to impact at the spot where it would do the least damage—right before the engines, where titanium alloy girders separated them from the habitable modules.

  There were two seconds left. The AI used this long interval to train the pattern recognition of its neural network. Then it registered that the strong arms connecting the ship to its engines were torn off. A loud blow lasting only a few milliseconds was transmitted through the body of the spaceship. Otherwise, all was silent. The frame absorbed the kinetic energy of the stone, comparable to a small atomic bomb, but without the shockwave, because even destruction worked soundlessly in the vacuum of space. The engines, no longer connected to the spaceship, shut off automatically. The life support systems could work only a few hours on battery power. The AI deactivated them permanently.