by Bova, Ben
“Still—”
“I’ll land on your machine’s roof,” Gaeta repeated. “I’ve done a lot of parasailing. In that thick atmosphere with its low wind velocities, I’ll hit its roof. Don’t worry about it.”
Urbain wanted to reply but thought better of it. This is a compromise I must accept, he told himself. If this braggart of a stuntman can touch down on Alpha’s roof, fine. If not, I must depend on Cardenas’s nanomachines to prevent contamination of the surface. In the back of his mind, though, he worried about the nanomachines themselves. What if they were not deactivated after sterilizing Gaeta’s suit? What if they began to multiply there on the ground? Devouring everything in sight?
Von Helmholtz cleared his throat, forcing Urbain’s attention to return to him. He continued, “Once atop the landing vehicle, our man’s first tasks will be to examine the lander’s uplink antenna and then establish a communications link with your machine’s central computer.”
“And use the nanos he’ll be carrying to build a new uplink antenna,” said the communications engineer.
“If necessary,” said Habib. “He might discover a programming glitch that can be corrected on-site.”
Before the comm engineer could reply, Urbain said, “Yes, we all understand. Achieve a linkage with the master program, then use the nanomachines Dr. Cardenas has designed to build a new uplink antenna, if necessary.”
“Once an uplink connection has been made,” Fritz resumed, looking directly at Urbain, “our man will activate his escape thrusters and leave the surface. He will be picked up by the transfer vehicle waiting in orbit and returned here to the habitat.”
The wall screen now showed a yellow-gray ball representing Titan. A curving green line rose from its surface to intersect with a bright blue circle that represented the transfer craft’s orbit.
“Very well,” Urbain said, his eyes on the display. “Are there any questions?”
No one spoke.
“You all understand your duties and are prepared to carry them out?”
Heads bobbed up and down the table.
Then Fritz cleared his throat again, noisily.
“Herr von Helmholtz?” Urbain said. “You have a question?”
“A comment,” said Fritz. “A suggestion, actually. I believe this mission would benefit from another few weeks of training and simulation runs.”
“Another few weeks?”
“We have had less than ten days to prepare for this mission. It is a complicated mission, involving a high degree of risk for our man.”
“That’s what I get paid for, Fritz,” Gaeta said.
Ignoring him, Fritz went on, “In addition, our man will be on the surface for only one hour. The mission objectives must be completed in one hour. That is … quite difficult.”
“I can do it,” Gaeta replied. “An hour’s plenty of time.”
Von Helmholtz arched a brow at Gaeta, then continued, “Failure of this mission would mean that your lander remains dead on Titan’s surface.”
“Asleep,” Urbain growled. “Not dead.”
Spreading his hands in a what’s the difference gesture, Fritz pointed out, “If this mission fails, your lander will remain silent and useless, with no possibility of reactivating it. It will be totally written off, will it not?”
Urbain’s mind was racing as he stared at von Helmholtz’s icy, hard-eyed face. We cannot postpone the mission, he said to himself. Wunderly has already reached Earth, she is already being honored for finding the creatures in the rings. We must rescue Alpha now, before Wunderly steals all the glory, before she meets with the Nobel committee.
He saw that all eyes were turned to him. Slowly, as if it took an effort to make the decision, Urbain replied, “It is vital that we reestablish communication with Alpha before the master program begins to dump the data that her sensors have accumulated. That is our most important task. Alpha carries a treasure of data about the conditions on Titan’s surface and the organisms that live there. We cannot risk losing that data by postponing this mission.”
“Even at the risk of a man’s life?” von Helmholtz insisted.
“That’s not a fair question, Fritz,” Gaeta said. “I’m the guy who’s taking the risk. We’ve worked out the mission plan. I’ll be okay.”
“You are willing to go without more training?” Urbain felt a flood of relief gushing through him.
“Yeah. Why the hell not?”
Gaeta grinned, coolly confident. Fritz scowled at him. Cardenas looked as if she wanted to clout somebody.
28 MAY 2096: DEPARTURE
Kris Cardenas woke from a troubled sleep to find Gaeta already up and dressing. She watched him for a sleep-fogged moment, then realized that this was the morning he would leave her for Titan.
She sat up, letting the bedsheet fall to her waist. Gaeta looked at her and grinned.
“Don’t try to get me back into bed, Kris,” he bantered. “I can’t take advantage of your luscious body ’til I get back.”
“You’re really going,” she murmured, knowing it sounded stupid as the words left her lips.
His grin faded. “I’m really going.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Hey, I got Fritz to round up a top crew and fly all the way out here. We got a contract with PanGlobal. I gotta go through with it.”
“Even if I ask you not to?”
He sat on the bed beside her and began to tug on his soft-boots. “Don’t make this into a competition, Kris.”
“Do it tomorrow,” she blurted. “Put it off for twenty-four hours.”
He shook his head slowly. “It’ll be the same deal tomorrow, kid. And you’ll be just as clanked up about it.”
She looked into his deep brown eyes and knew that if she put it on an either/or basis he would choose to do the mission and leave her waiting for him to return. And she knew she would wait. She would wait and worry and fear that he’d get killed but she would never leave him, even though he’d chosen danger and risk over her.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said lightly. “In time for dinner, probably. Pick which restaurant you want to celebrate in.”
“I don’t want to lose you!”
He leaned over, grasping her by her bare shoulders, kissed her soundly. “You won’t lose me, kid. You can’t ever lose me. I’ll come back to you.”
She flung her arms around his neck and tried to hold back the tears that threatened to engulf her.
Gently, Gaeta disengaged from her and got to his feet. “I’ll be back, querida. Wait for me in bed.”
He turned and headed for the door. He slid it open, blew her a kiss, and then left her sitting in bed. Cardenas wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. He was gone. He had left her. The fear that she would never see him again was too terrifying for mere tears.
Gaeta’s cheerful grin disappeared once he left the apartment. He knew better than Cardenas the risks he was facing. He had tried to appear optimistic for her, but now, as he straddled one of the electrobikes racked in front of the white-walled apartment building and began pedaling through the bright morning sunshine, he started reviewing the details of the mission he faced.
Paragliding through the smoggy air of Titan onto the back of Urbain’s sleeping machine. Gaeta shook his head as he engaged the bike’s little electrical motor. Well, he thought, it’ll make a good experience for the VR audience. Not an easy assignment, though. Not easy at all.
By the time he reached the steel-walled chamber that fronted the airlock down at the habitat’s endcap, Pancho, Wanamaker, Fritz and his crew were already there. So was the news guy, Berkowitz.
“Our star performer is only fifteen minutes late,” said Fritz stiffly.
Gaeta sauntered past him and up to the excursion suit, towering like a monument to past glories over the team of technicians.
“C’mon, Fritz,” Gaeta said, “I know you. You built at least a half hour of slop into the schedule.”
Berkowitz had two minicams trundling
along beside him on wheeled monopods, balancing like unicycles. He held a third camera in his hands.
“Any words for posterity before you climb into your suit?” he asked Gaeta.
Pancho called from across the chamber, “What’s posterity ever done for us?”
“I’ll have to edit that out,” Berkowitz said, his usual smile dimming a bit.
Gaeta said to the newsman, “This mission is a lot more than a stunt. My job is to try to revive Dr. Urbain’s probe down on the surface of Titan. I’m working for the scientists now.”
Berkowitz nodded and said, “Good enough. We can embellish it later.”
Fritz tapped Gaeta on the shoulder. “If you’re finished with your publicity, would it be too much to ask that you get into the suit?”
Gaeta made a mock bow. “I’d be happy to, old pal.”
Pancho and Wanamaker were already at the airlock hatch. “We’re going aboard the transfer craft,” Pancho said, as much to Berkowitz as to Fritz. “Gotta check out the bird and make sure it’s ready to go.”
Fritz nodded curtly.
Urbain had gone to his office before dawn. Too nervous to sit at his desk, though, he paced along the corridor that led to the mission control center. The technicians were filing in, one by one, and taking their places at their consoles.
“This will be the most important day of our lives,” Urbain told them.
They nodded half-heartedly and muttered agreement as they started to power up their consoles.
Urbain watched them, thinking, Wunderly has reached Earth and made her presentation to the ICU governing board. In another few days she will meet with the Nobel committee. I must have some solid results to show from Alpha by then. I can’t have her stealing the spotlight after all the work I’ve put into Alpha. My creature must begin to send us data from Titan. It must!
Cardenas was still in bed, unable to make a decision about how to spend her day. The phone jingled.
Startled, she said to herself, It can’t be Manny! “Answer,” she called out.
Yolanda Negroponte’s face appeared on the tiny screen of the bedside phone console. Cardenas clutched the sheet to her.
“Oh,” said Negroponte. “I’m sorry to wake you, Dr. Cardenas.”
“I’m … I was … ,” Cardenas stuttered. Then, “It’s all right. I was already awake.”
“I wonder if I can pick your brain,” Negroponte said. “I have a problem and I need your help.”
Go away and don’t bother me, Cardenas wanted to snap. Instead she said to the image in the phone screen, “I can meet you at the cafeteria in half an hour. Will that be all right?”
Negroponte appeared to think it over for a few moments. “Could you come to the biology lab, instead? I’ll pick up breakfast and we can eat in the lab. Will that be all right?”
Suddenly Cardenas was grateful for something to do, some excuse for getting out of bed, some reason to at least try to stop worrying about Manny.
“That will be fine,” she said. “The bio lab in half an hour.”
Pancho stood before the control board of the transfer craft, scanning all the panels with a practiced eye.
Standing beside her, Wanamaker said, “Everything’s in the green except the airlock.”
“I left it open,” Pancho replied, “so’s Manny can tromp in without having to cycle it.”
Wanamaker nodded. He watched as Pancho’s hands played over the control panels as deftly as a concert pianist’s. She’s in her element, he thought. She’s good at this and happy to be in a ship.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asked.
Pancho looked at him. “Yep, guess so.”
“You’re a flygirl by nature.”
“Beats sittin’ on my butt wondering how to spend my money.”
Wanamaker laughed. “I suppose it does.”
“The decon nanos are aboard?”
“In their container in the airlock. I’ll help Manny apply them once he’s outside.”
Pancho nodded. “Just be careful—”
Fritz’s crisp, slightly annoyed voice came through the speaker, “Our intrepid hero is ready to board your ship.”
Pancho tapped the communications keyboard. “Copy Gaeta boarding.”
Wanamaker said, “I’d better get down to the cargo bay and see that he gets in okay.”
Pancho replied, “Stay out of his way, though. He’s like a three-hundred-kilo gorilla in that suit.”
Beneath his icy exterior, Fritz von Helmholtz was quivering with apprehension. We should have taken more time to prepare for this mission. Ten days isn’t enough. We should have taken a month for simulations and tests. Six weeks, even. I’ve allowed Urbain to rush us too quickly.
And Manuel is carrying nanomachines with him. Nanomachines! What if something goes wrong with them? What if they attack his suit? This mission is far more dangerous than Manuel is willing to admit.
Von Helmholtz squared his narrow shoulders and studied the displays his technicians were working with. It’s up to me to keep Manny safe, he told himself. At the slightest sign of danger, the slightest deviation from our mission plan, I’ll pull him out of there. Whether he likes it or not.
Inside the cumbersome suit Manny Gaeta felt like a giant, a titan of old, far more powerful than any mere mortal. With a clench of his fingers he could crush metal. With the servomotors that reacted to his arms’ movements he could lift tons of dead weight.
Yeah, and with an eyeblink’s worth of carelessness you can get yourself killed, suit or no suit, he warned himself. Remember that.
“Closin’ airlock hatch,” Pancho’s voice sounded in his helmet earphones.
Gaeta could see Wanamaker standing by the cargo bay hatch in his flight coveralls. The ex-admiral looked wary, on guard, as his eyes flicked from Gaeta to the airlock hatch behind the massive suit.
“Airlock hatch closed,” he said in a flat, noncommittal voice.
“Ready to separate,” Pancho said.
A heartbeat of hesitation, than Fritz’s voice replied, “You are go for separation.”
“Separating,” said Pancho.
Gaeta felt the slightest of tremors. The transfer ship was no longer connected to the mammoth habitat. The sense of weight dwindled to nothing.
“We’re off for Titan,” Pancho sang out.
“And we are off to the mission control center,” came Fritz’s frosty voice, “where Dr. Urbain has graciously permitted us to use one of the consoles.” His accent on one dripped with acid.
28 MAY 2096: TITAN ORBIT
Circularization complete.” Pancho’s voice jarred in Gaeta’s helmet earphones. She hollered as if she were shouting to someone on the other side of a canyon.
It had taken them six hours to fly from habitat Goddard to Titan on a high-thrust burn and establish the transfer craft in a circular orbit above the dirty orange smog-ridden moon.
Gaeta had stood inside the big armored excursion suit all that time; there was no room in the cargo bay to get out and walk around. Being in zero g helped: his heart could pump weightless blood much more efficiently. He flexed his legs as much as he could, pulled his arms out of the sleeves and munched on a meager breakfast of muffins and lukewarm coffee. Fritz’ll bitch about the crumbs, he thought, almost giggling. Give him something to complain about when I get back.
Now the work begins.
In the mission control center, von Helmholtz scowled at the single console he had at his disposal. All the other consoles were manned by Urbain’s people; the chief scientist himself had left the center and gone back to his own office.
Von Helmholtz’s half-dozen technicians crowded behind Fritz as he sat down and powered up the console. This will be the primary link with Manuel, Fritz told himself. The rest of them are connected to satellite sensors and to Alpha itself. I am connected to Manuel. His safety depends on me.
Wanamaker pushed through the hatch that connected to the transfer vessel’s bridge.
“Are
you okay? Need anything?”
“I’m fine, Jake,” Gaeta said, careful to keep the volume of his suit’s speakers down to a moderate level. “Ready to go out and get started.”
“Okay. I’ll join you as soon as the lock cycles and I can pull on my suit.”
Gaeta nodded inside his helmet. Wanamaker went back to the bridge.
“You’re clear for EVA,” Pancho sang out.
Dialing the volume control even lower, Gaeta slid his arms back into the suit’s sleeves and replied, “Entering airlock.”
He stepped ponderously into the tight metal womb of the airlock and sealed its inner hatch. Once he was outside the ship, he knew, Wanamaker would come into the cargo bay, worm himself into a nanosuit, then come outside to help him decontaminate the suit with Kris’s nanoscrubbers. Then he had to climb into the aeroshell and thruster package.
The telltales on the airlock bulkhead cycled from green, through amber and finally to red. Gaeta barely felt the pumps’ vibration through the thick soles of his boots.
“’Lock’s in the red,” Pancho called.
“Copy red,” said Gaeta. “Opening outer hatch.”
He leaned a gloved hand on the control stud and the outer airlock hatch swung slowly open. At first all Gaeta could see was the infinite black of space. Then the filtering of his visor adjusted and pinpoints of stars stared back at him. Off to his right he could see the curve of Titan’s orange clouds, looking somehow sickly, almost a sallow yellow. Like a bad day in L.A., he said to himself.
Then Saturn swung into view, huge, brilliant, those impossible rings hanging like swirls of diamonds above its middle. Gaeta could see bands of clouds eddying across the planet’s immense bulk, storm systems bigger than Earth surging through the delicate saffron cloud tops.
“You goin’ out?” Pancho asked.
Gaeta forced his attention to the metal frame of the airlock hatch. Gripping it with both hands, he said curtly, “Stepping out.”
