Titan

by Bova, Ben

  “It’s better than sitting around and doing nothing,” Eberly coaxed.

  “That’s true enough,” Timoshenko muttered.

  “It’s a very important position. Lots of responsibility. Do you think you’re up to it?”

  Timoshenko felt a jolt of anger Hare inside him. But he suppressed it and said merely, “I can handle it.”

  “You’ll do it, then?”

  Feeling that he was being maneuvered, but not knowing why or how to get out of it, Timoshenko shrugged heavily and said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  “Good!” Eberly shot to his feet and extended his hand across the desk. Timoshenko took it in his thick-fingered hand, careful not to grasp too tightly.

  “I’ll tell Aaronson about it,” Eberly said, smiling broadly. “He’ll be relieved.”

  Another drone, Timoshenko thought, as he left Eberly’s office.

  As his office door closed behind the engineer, Eberly thought happily, That ought to keep him out of my hair. He’ll be too busy with exterior maintenance to bother me, and the job’s not so big or glamorous that it will draw attention to him. Aaronson can concentrate on these niggling little complaints so things will be running smoother as we come up to the election. Good!

  As he left the administration building and stepped into the morning sunlight, Timoshenko thought, Maybe he wants to get rid of me. Maybe he thinks I’ll get myself killed outside. It could happen.

  Holly heard light footsteps padding down the corridor around the corner. Must be Manny, she thought. But then they stopped.

  Stepping into the main corridor, she saw Gaeta peering at a wall screen map, tracing a finger across its screen.

  “Manny, here we are,” she called.

  Gaeta trotted to the two women. “I got lost,” he admitted sheepishly.

  “I would have, too,” said Wunderly, “if it weren’t for Holly’s photographic memory.”

  “At least I remember the combination,” Gaeta said, tapping on the keyboard lock.

  The door popped slightly ajar and Gaeta swung it all the way back. The overhead lights came on automatically in the bare little room. Before them stood the excursion suit that Gaeta had used for many of his daredevil stunts. It loomed over the three humans like Frankenstein’s monster, like an inert robot, massive and intimidating.

  “Hey amigo,” Gaeta said softly as he stepped up to it and slid a hand along one of its dimpled cermet forearms. “We’ve been through a lot, this suit and me,” he murmured. “A helluva lot.”

  “Climbed Olympus Mons on Mars,” Wunderly said.

  “And skiboarded down the reverse slope,” added Holly. “And surfed Jupiter’s cloud deck. And skydived through Venus’s clouds.”

  “What was the toughest stunt you did?” Wunderly asked, her eyes glowing.

  Gaeta didn’t hesitate an instant. “The solo trek across Mare Imbrium. For a while there I didn’t think I was going to make it.”

  “And then you sailed through Saturn’s B ring,” said Wunderly.

  “And then I retired,” Gaeta said firmly.

  “As a stuntman.”

  “But you kept the suit,” Holly pointed out. “Why? I mean if you’ve really retired, why not sell the suit to the highest bidder? Or give it to the Royal Museum or the Smithsonian or someplace?”

  Gaeta pursed his lips before replying. “I don’t know. Sentimentalismo, I guess. Like I said, this suit and I have been through a lot.”

  “Would you consider going through the rings again?” Wunderly asked, all in a rush, as if afraid that if she hesitated the words wouldn’t come out.

  Gaeta stared at her. “Is that what this is all about? You want me to dive through those fregado rings again?”

  “Would you?”

  He shook his head. “That stunt’s been done. The second time isn’t news anymore.”

  “Not as a stunt,” Wunderly said. “As part of a scientific investigation this time.”

  Gaeta took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had slept with both these women and they both knew it.

  At last he answered, “Couldn’t do it even if I wanted to, Nadia. You’d need more than me and the suit. Fritz and the rest of my tech team are back on Earth looking for a new guy to be their stunt gorilla.”

  “We have technicians here,” Holly said. “Engineers, too. We could put together a team for you.”

  Gaeta shook his head. “You can’t cobble together a group of people just like that. It took years for Fritz and me to work out everything. You’ve got be able to trust your techies when you put your life on the line.”

  “But it’s for science,” Wunderly pleaded. “We can train a team for you. You can pick whoever you want.”

  “Nope. I’m retired. I’ve found the life I want, with the woman I want. I’m not gonna risk that.”

  Nadia’s face flushed and Gaeta realized he’d made a mistake, mentioning Kris. I’m gonna hear more about this, he knew. A lot more.

  28 DECEMBER 2095: URBAIN’S OFFICE

  It was a small office, barely large enough for the stylish teak desk with its built-in computer and phone console. Urbain had locked himself in and cranked the reclinable chair back almost as far as it could go. He needed a few hours of quiet, with no disturbances. He needed time to clear his mind and think.

  The situation was maddening. All the telemetry data shows that Titan Alpha is performing normally, except for the sensor data uplink. Is something wrong with the uplink antenna? No, that couldn’t be; the telemetry data show the antenna is undamaged. Habib and his computer people believe there might be a bug in the software. Or could it be something else, something we haven’t thought of yet?

  He leaned back in the softly yielding chair and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling stared back, smooth and blank. No help there, Urbain thought. His entire staff of engineers was running through every possible permutation in Alpha’s programming, with the scientists leaning over their shoulders and making fifty suggestions per minute. At this rate, he thought, one of the engineers is going to attack one of the scientists and I’ll have a brawl on my hands. How Eberly will enjoy that! I’ll be humiliated all over again.

  Urbain snapped forward in his chair and told the computer to display the satellite’s view of Alpha’s landing site. The opposite wall of the office seemed to disappear, replaced by a real-time view of Titan’s murky, orange-tinted clouds.

  “Infrared view,” he commanded.

  The clouds vanished and he could see the rugged, broken surface of Titan and the lopsided shape of the Lazy H Sea.

  “Locate Alpha.”

  A pinpoint of red light began to blink on the shore of the frozen sea.

  “Maximum magnification.”

  The view zoomed in, but stopped well short of allowing him to see the lander. The cameras’ resolution is fifty meters at the altitude of the synchronous satellite, Urbain recited to himself. We need satellites in lower orbits. He knew it would take a fleet of at least six satellites to keep the landing site under constant observation. This one bird in synchronous orbit was too far away to be of real value. Besides, it was eating up fuel to remain on station; the perturbations jostling it out of position were severe.

  Everything works except the sensor uplink, he repeated to himself. Why? Why?

  Then he thought, If everything else works, why not try to use that? Perhaps we can correct the defect by putting Alpha to work. Wake her from her slumber.

  A sudden burst of hope shot through Urbain. He practically jumped to his feet and strode out of his office, heading for the control center, straightening his ascot and buttoning his jacket as he walked.

  The center had the dreary feel of a mortuary. All the consoles were manned, as they should have been, although he did not recognize many of the faces. Volunteers, donating their free time to keep the consoles manned twenty-four hours a day. Volunteer or regular staff, they were all sitting morosely at their places, staring idly at their display screens or clicking listlessly through routines
they had already performed a hundred times before. The ceiling lights were on; the room looked bright enough. Yet there was no spark of vitality in the chamber, no animation among the men and women, no chatter back and forth. The only sounds he heard were the background hum of electrical equipment and the soft hiss of air from the grills set high in the walls. No one spoke. No one even looked up as he entered the control center. They were depressed, frustrated, merely going through the motions of working.

  Then Urbain’s nostrils twitched. He smelled coffee and saw that someone had brought in an urn and a hot plate. The next thing they’ll do is to bring in a microwave to heat their snacks.

  “Attention!” he called. “Hear me.”

  All heads turned toward him. Many of them were bleary-eyed from having worked night and day, fruitlessly.

  “Check Alpha’s propulsion system,” Urbain commanded.

  “It was checked just a few—”

  “Check it again,” he commanded. “I want to make certain that we can start the drive engines without a problem.”

  “You’re going to move it?”

  Stepping briskly down the central aisle between the rows of consoles, Urbain rubbed his hands together with real enthusiasm.

  “The creature will not speak to us where she now sits, so we will move her. Perhaps a little action will stir her to better behavior.”

  Most of the engineers looked at him with obvious disbelief. One of the women said in a stage whisper, “If it won’t work, kick it.”

  “The French touch,” someone else muttered.

  “I am Quebecois,” Urbain snapped, “and my sense of hearing is quite acute.”

  Several of the engineers chuckled guardedly. Urbain thought that doing something, anything, was better than sitting around like a collection of mourners at a funeral.

  The icy crust that capped the frigid sea was breaking against the base of the bluffs; the dark methane slush that covered the ice chunks was slowly washed off them and sank below the surface of the inky sea, revealing choppy waves driven by the turgid dark wind. Titan Alpha sat on the flat, slightly undulating tableland at the top of the bluffs, unmoving. Then it received a fresh command.

  Review propulsion system checklist.

  Automatically the command was routed through the central computer’s master program. The command impinged on the primary restriction, but only marginally so. Reviewing its decision tree, the master program found that the command was allowable, so the computer ran through the propulsion system checklist. The task took four nanoseconds.

  Repeat: Review propulsion system checklist

  The computer repeated the checklist review, as commanded.

  Thirty billion nanoseconds elapsed.

  Report results of propulsion system checklist review.

  This command was also routed through the central computer’s logic circuitry. The primary restriction blared clearly, so the command was shunted to a subroutine for deletion.

  Repeat: Report results of propulsion system checklist review.

  The command was again routed as before, the primary restriction was again detected, and the command again shunted.

  Six hundred and forty-nine billion nanoseconds elapsed. During that time Titan Alpha’s central computer anticipated a command to activate the propulsion system, so instead of merely reviewing the checklist it tested the diagnostic program and found that the propulsion system was fully capable of activation and operation within allowable parameters.

  No command came. The earlier inhibited commands were erased from the shunt circuit, as per the master program’s normal routine.

  “It must be the main antenna downlink,” Urbain muttered, bending over the shoulder of the propulsion engineer, who was seated at her console. He noticed a bead of perspiration trickling down the side of her face. She was wearing a flowery perfume of some sort, but the pungent scent of fear, of utter frustration, was overpowering it.

  He straightened up and realized that his back ached from bending over for so long. Walking stiffly, he made his way along the row of consoles and stopped at the main communications post. He realized that every eye was on him. The control center was absolutely still; no one moved, even the displays on the screens seemed frozen.

  “You are receiving telemetry from the comm system?” he asked the communications engineer in a quiet voice brittle with tension.

  “Yes, sir,” the engineer said, looking up over his shoulder at Urbain. “The tracking beacon is coming through, too, loud and clear.”

  “Very good. Run the diagnostics program, if you please.”

  “For the whole comm system?”

  Urbain thought a moment. “No. Merely the receiving antennas. Primary and both backups.”

  The man pecked at his keyboard. Urbain noticed that his fingers were thick, blunt, the nails ragged and chewed down to the quick. The display screen flickered through long lists of alphanumerics faster than his eye could follow.

  At last the engineer cleared his throat and said, “Diagnostics completed. All receiving antennas fully operational.”

  “Good,” said Urbain. “Now I wish to send a very specific command to—”

  “Hey!” a voice yelled. “It’s moving!”

  Without being told to, the communications man punched up the satellite view of Titan with the blinking red dot showing where Alpha’s beacon was located. The red pinpoint was inching across the screen.

  “It’s moving,” Urbain breathed.

  “Looks that way,” said the engineer.

  Raising his voice to an angry shout, Urbain demanded, “Who gave the command to move Alpha?”

  No one answered.

  “Well? Which of you did it?”

  Dead silence.

  The comm engineer cleared his throat again, louder than before, and jabbed a forefinger at one of his secondary screens. “Sir, here’s the communications log. No one’s sent any command of any kind to the lander since you ordered it to report its review of the propulsion system checklist.” He tapped his screen for emphasis, then added in a smaller voice, “Nobody’s said a word to the beast.”

  My god, Urbain thought, staring at the screen. It’s moving on its own volition.

  Titan Alpha’s central computer was programmed to anticipate certain problems and, within carefully preset limits, to act on its own. Even though commands from the control center usually spanned the distance between habitat Goddard and the surface of Titan in less than six billion nanoseconds there was always the possibility of some immediate emergency—a sudden fault line opening in the icy ground, an avalanche, an electrical storm shorting out communications—that would require action before the human controllers in Goddard could react. Then, too, there were periods when the habitat was on the opposite side of Saturn and commands had to be relayed to the lander through the communications satellites placed in equilateral positions around the ringed planet. There could be a lag of almost a hundred billion nanoseconds under those conditions.

  Based on the latest commands reported by the main receiving antenna, Alpha’s central computer anticipated that the propulsion system was to be activated. But such a command ran directly counter to the master program’s primary restriction. The computer pondered this conundrum for more than a thousand nanoseconds, then used its decision-tree logic program to resolve the problem.

  Activate propulsion engines.

  Engage tractor treads.

  Automatically, the navigation and reconnaissance programs also activated. The central computer immediately became aware that the edge of the bluff loomed three thousand, seven hundred and twelve centimeters ahead.

  Engage reverse gear.

  Maintain speed at five centimeters per second.

  Strain gauges and vibration sensors immediately began reporting data. Comparing their inputs to the structural diagnostics program, the central computer decided to proceed.

  Titan Alpha lurched into painfully slow motion, backing away from the rim of the ice bluff, grinding ov
er small round pebbles of ice, heading away from the dark encrusted sea.

  In the control center aboard Goddard, Urbain stared at the satellite view in unrelieved horror.

  “It’s moving,” he whispered, barely able to get enough air through his throat to speak.

  “Dead slow,” said the engineer.

  “But we didn’t command it to move. No one told it to move.”

  The engineer nodded. “It’s taking off on its own.”

  “But how? Why?”

  “Damned if I know,” said the engineer. “The big question is, where’s it going?”

  Da’ud Habib leaned in beside Urbain, his dark eyes intent on the display screen. Urbain saw that the computer engineer looked slightly disheveled: His hair was glistening wet, his shirt hanging outside his trousers.

  As if he could read Urbain’s face, Habib apologized, “Please excuse my appearance. I was in the shower when I was told that Alpha is moving.”

  “What do you make of it?” Urbain whispered tightly.

  Habib shook his head slowly. “It must be something in the programming. It has to be.”

  “But what?”

  “The learning subroutines. We built learning capability into the master program so that it could react to unexpected conditions down on the surface.”

  Urbain hissed, “I am aware of that.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s making its own decisions and ignoring our commands.”

  “Nonsense! Impossible!”

  Habib fell silent before Urbain’s glaring eyes.

  “Can you disable the learning subroutines?” Urbain asked. “To test your theory?”

  “I can try. But if it’s not responding to our commands—”

  “Bah! There must be a flaw in the programming.”

  “I haven’t been able to find it,” Habib admitted. “Not yet.”

  Urbain glared at him. “Well, you had better find it, whatever it is, before my Alpha blunders into a disaster.”