by Samuel Best
Saturn.
In a matter of hours, that pinpoint light would grow to a small disk the size of a dime. The planet’s rings would be clearly visible at that distance as a wire-thin equatorial halo. Explorer I would get no closer, because Titan’s orbit would soon after bring the moon to the waiting ship 1.2 million kilometers away from its ringed parent.
Saturn was a gas giant, like Jupiter, comprised mainly of helium and hydrogen that surrounded a hot, soupy liquid core of various metals and rock. Ammonia crystals in the gaseous outer layers of the atmosphere gave the planet a pale ochre hue much like that of its sixth moon. Though where Titan appeared as a hazy billiards ball without a pattern, Saturn was layered with horizontally-stacked pale stripes from pole to pole.
Yet the gas behemoth held no interest for the nascent space industry of Earth. At the dawn of their burgeoning space empires, those in the industry knew it would be far more lucrative to focus on the many moons of the planet – moons which held the possibility of countless natural resources untapped by the greedy fingers of Earth. They existed as worlds without regulation, with no protection except for the moral code of whoever got there first.
During one press conference, Noah Bell called it “a bold new frontier for industry”, and “a powerful spark for the collective imagination of humanity”.
There was no doubt in Jeff’s mind that Noah was just as much of a dreamer as he was a businessman. Attaining such goals as those grasped at by a man like Noah demanded not only a cunning worldly acumen, but also the capacity for improvisation, adaptation, and creative needlework on a vast scale.
Jeff stood in the lab section of the centrifuge, cycling through the on-screen menus of the doctor pod. He had already run his routine maintenance of the equipment earlier that morning. Now he had a few minutes of rare private time. Instead of taking it in his bunk, he decided to see if he could figure out a way to use Riley’s UV program.
Most of the pod’s protocols were focused around healing minor external traumas, such as cuts and abrasions. The robotic arms could set broken bones and expertly stitch and staple deeper flesh wounds. Jeff found a menu for automated ultrasounds, but there seemed to be a necessary piece of equipment missing within the pod for that particular function. The menu screen for that process was grayed out, inaccessible.
He swiped to the next menu and paused as he read the descriptive text.
Targeted gamma radiation treatment.
None of Jeff’s maintenance protocols had required him to check that specific setting. It was mentioned nowhere in the documentation he had been referencing since he began servicing the doctor pod, and it certainly wasn’t in the stock manual he had recently been sifting through.
He pressed the button for more information and continued reading.
According to the documentation, localized bursts of gamma radiation could inhibit the growth of Stage 1 cancer tumors. Higher doses of radiation could theoretically have a greater effect on later stages of cancer, but the doctor pod was unable to produce that much energy output.
Ideally, none of the crew would need such a feature in space. The voyage held inherent dangers in the form of constant radiation bombardment, both from the sun and from the cosmic fabric of the universe itself. The heavily shielded hull of Explorer I worked to mitigate most of that radiation, and bumped what remained down to survivable levels. Much like the missing apparatus for ultrasounds, there should have been no reason to include the gamma radiation functions of the doctor pod. If Jeff were reading the on-screen information correctly, it had required the installation of two heavy, low-frequency emitters within the pod, greatly increasing the flight weight of the equipment.
Jeff swiped through the rest of the on-screen menus, searching for a UV setting and finding none.
“So you figured it out,” said Riley from behind.
Jeff snapped around, his heart skipping a beat. Riley must have come along the central pillar and silently climbed down a low dividing wall as Jeff paged through the pod’s menus.
“You have cancer,” Jeff said. He looked around the lab. Gabriel and Ming were elsewhere.
Riley stuck his hands in his pockets and frowned. He nodded once, gravely. “Took you longer than I thought,” he said. “Pancreatic. They found it early, but that doesn’t matter. It got my old man, and his.” He stepped forward and rested a hand on the doctor pod, eyeing it appreciatively. “This chunk of metal and plastic is stalling the tumor’s growth, but the little bastard will quickly take over once we get home.”
“But…” Jeff started, trying to form his jumbled thoughts into words. “But you knew about the cancer before the mission.”
Riley nodded.
“And you volunteered anyway,” Jeff said. “They let a terminal patient command the first mission to Titan.”
“That’s right.”
“No, that’s crazy. Unless…” He paused as realization slowly crept to the front of his mind. “Unless you know something the rest of us don’t. Are we in trouble, Commander? What are we going to find out there?”
“Nothing has changed except our timeline,” said Riley. “Trust me, Dolan. Everything is going to be fine.”
Kate hadn’t been able to sleep the night before Explorer I was scheduled to enter Titan’s orbit. She tossed restlessly in bed for several hours before finally giving it up for a midnight walk on the beach. The sand was pleasantly cool between her toes, and the gentle waves, their white crests glowing in the moonlight, had given her something to focus on besides the mission.
She showered before the sun came up and sat at her dining room table at six o’clock with a cup of coffee, staring at nothing while she tried to think of a way to send a secret message to Jeff. She wanted to warn him about the potential instability of the antimatter engine – that multiple uses increased the risk of catastrophic failure.
Seven o’clock rolled by, and she still hadn’t come up with a single usable idea. Then, like every other morning for the past few months, including the weekends, she packed her day bag, grabbed her Diamond Aerospace security badge, and left for work.
Kate didn’t feel like crying. She wasn’t afraid. There was a sustained anticipation inside of her, like a taut violin string on the verge of snapping. Soon the crew of Explorer I would begin construction of the first phase of a new space station in orbit around a distant moon, and she was a part of it.
As she drove north on Atlantic Avenue, up the narrow barrier island that led to the Space Center, the image of Michael Cochran’s dead body flashed in her mind. She shut her eyes against the memory. Another driver blared their horn. A Mercedes roared past, mere inches from Kate’s side-view mirror. She had drifted over the center line.
Her eyes were open wide the rest of the way to work, even when the grisly image of murder crept back into her thoughts.
Like every other morning, she stopped at the guardhouse gate and waited to hand her security badge to the stocky security guard, Ed.
Except Ed wasn’t there. Instead, a tall, muscular man ten years younger sporting aviator sunglasses accepted Kate’s badge with a nod before disappearing into the guardhouse. He wore the same dark blue uniform as Ed – kind of a spin on a traditional police officer’s blues. Yet where Ed threatened to bust through the buttons over his stomach, the new guard strained at the seams over his chest and biceps. It gave Kate the impression he had borrowed the uniform from a smaller friend.
He emerged from the guardhouse and returned her badge without a smile.
“Where’s Ed?” Kate asked as lightly as she could manage. “He didn’t catch that bug that’s going around, did he?”
The guard stared at her a moment.
“I’m afraid I have to ask you for your cell phone, Ms. Bishop.”
“My what?” she asked. “Why? No, I’m not giving you my phone.”
“Then I can’t raise the gate, ma’am. Everyone must relinquish their cell phone before entering the building. Strict orders.”
“From who,
Noah? Frank?”
The guard’s lips tightened.
Kate snatched up her purse from the passenger’s seat and rummaged through the contents. For the first time since she had joined Diamond Aerospace, she thought she should never have taken the job.
She found her phone and tossed it at the guard. He caught it deftly, his face an unreadable stone mask. A moment later, the gate lifted.
“Have a nice day, Ms. Bishop,” said the guard.
He watched her drive past the guard house, her cell phone gripped like a child’s toy in his meaty hand. Kate glanced up at him in her rear-view mirror and noticed something she had never seen when Ed worked the front gate: a large pistol strapped to the guard’s belt.
“So what’s next?” Jeff asked. He rapped his knuckles against the doctor pod’s acrylic shield, rattling the robotic arms within, and Riley frowned. “Sorry.”
“The lieutenant and I park this ship in orbit around Titan,” Riley said, “and we see why Bell was so hell-bent on sending us out here before he should have.”
“What about fixing the secondary fuel line sensor for the TAPS?”
“I want to take everything real slow and act like the smallest mistake could kill us all.”
“…Because it could.”
“First we’ll enter orbit,” said Riley, “then we’ll shoot a message home and wait for instructions from Canaveral. You’ll probably perform the mission’s first EVA after we hear back from home base.”
“I’ll start prepping my suit,” Jeff said.
“You have time. We won’t get their response for a couple hours after we’re in orbit. Slow and steady.”
“It’ll help keep me occupied. My daily maintenance is almost finished, anyway.”
Riley left to go to the private hygiene compartment in the crew section. Jeff stood next to the doctor pod as he looked around the interior of the crew module. The crew members’ four bright orange Constellation Space Suits were laid out in shallow, molded compartments in the floor of the last centrifuge section, beyond the science lab.
He stopped by Gabriel’s lab station on his way to the suits. The small, narrow pot containing Gabriel’s sprouting lima bean was the centerpiece of the desk, surrounded by grimy petri dishes, an array of metal and plastic tools, and binders packed with laminated pages.
Jeff leaned over the desk to look inside the small pot, a curious half-smile on his lips.
The plant had wilted.
The small, hopeful bud that Jeff saw when he had awoken after his accident no longer held the promise of life. Instead, it was a brown and withered thing; a dried husk that could not be saved.
Jeff turned when he heard footsteps approaching. Gabriel walked over to the desk and looked down at the wilted plant with a sad smile.
“I don’t think it’s a bad omen,” he said.
“What do you think it is?” Jeff asked.
“Bad soil. Not enough oxygen. I should have put it in one of those new zero-g microgreen boxes, but I had already maxed out my weight limit for the mission. The rest of them are doing fine.”
He gestured to a rack of potted plants nearby, vibrant with fresh, green foliage.
“I thought I could get the lima bean to grow the normal way with a few old tricks,” he continued. “It seems you also need some new ones if you want to conform to a strict design plan in a low-gravity greenhouse.”
“At least it sprouted.”
Gabriel scratched his black and gray stubble thoughtfully. Shaving hadn’t been one of his top priorities for a while now. He glanced behind him to see if anyone else was around.
“I’ve been thinking about the fuel pump explosion.”
Jeff rubbed the center of his chest and winced at the pain. He could feel the rough stitching that sealed one of his more grievous lacerations. “Yeah, me too,” he said. “What about it?”
“First the fuel line, then the pump. I have to wonder what else will fail.”
“You’re not the only one.”
“You think it’s still a good idea to go outside the ship?”
“I need to swap out that sensor before another primary burn. We’re already pushing our luck.”
He grinned. “Yes, but that’s what space exploration is all about, isn’t it? We created a rulebook, a guideline of best practices. But nobody has ever been here before. We are the first.”
“Are you saying we throw out the rulebook?”
“I’m saying we should be writing a new one. If you go outside the ship, and another piece of equipment blows up underneath you, you won’t just be thrown back across the centrifuge. You’ll be pushed out into space.”
“I know the risks. Besides, we need the TAPS to get home, so I don’t really have a choice.”
“No,” said Gabriel, “we need it to get home quickly.”
“I’d rather take the chance of using it instead of spending years on the return trip.”
“I wouldn’t.”
Because you don’t have anyone waiting for you, Jeff almost said, but he caught the cruel jab before it slipped out, then cursed himself for thinking it. Gabriel’s parents lived in Brazil with his younger siblings. Jeff was tired and on edge, and that combination muddied his thoughts.
“I’ll get the sensor patched up and we won’t have to worry about it,” he said. “A couple months late is better than nothing. I’m sorry about your lima bean.”
Gabriel picked up the small pot and stuck his finger down on the withered bud, crushing it into the soil.
“It’s only a bean,” he said.
Static crackled over the intercom and they both looked up at a speaker embedded in the central pillar.
“All crew to the command module. We have visual on Titan.”
Kate looked into the retinal scanner and swiped her security badge at the door to Mission Control. The lock chirped and the doors slid open. Movement caught her eye and she stopped. She stood with one hand by her side, the other gripping her day bag, watching.
Frank walked among the workstations on the operations floor, talking loudly with the operations technicians, a big grin on his face and a chocolate donut in his hand. He slapped Juan on the back a little too hard. Juan chuckled until Frank walked away, then his smile turned to a scowl as he rubbed his hurt shoulder. He spun in his chair to face the display wall, shaking his head.
The operations floor was busier than it had been since launch day.
With good reason, thought Kate. There were a lot more moving pieces in play that morning, and each one of those pieces represented an entirely new and different way to fail.
She squared her shoulders and entered Mission Control.
“Ms. Bishop!” Frank called down happily from the viewing platform at the back of the room. “Good morning! Coffee and donuts in the conference room.” He waved her up to the platform and walked out of sight, presumably to get another chocolate donut.
“Why’s he in such a good mood?” Kate grumbled to herself as she plopped her bag on the seat of her chair.
“We’re ahead of schedule,” Juan said without emotion, reciting a recurring workplace mantra. “And saving time saves–”
“–lots of money,” she finished for him. “Yeah, yeah. That’s one of his favorites. If I had a dime for every time Frank quoted himself, I wouldn’t have to work here.”
“Anyway,” said Juan, shrugging. “We got donuts.”
“Better than that early pension I was hoping for,” she joked.
Rick wasn’t at his workstation. Kate checked the clock on the display wall. He should have arrived shortly after her, if he was sticking to his habit of being several minutes late for every shift.
Kate walked up the aisle between the center workstations, saying her good-mornings as she made her way to the stairs leading up to the viewing platform. The multiple monitor screens on Frank’s unnecessarily massive desk all showed different angles of the exterior of Explorer I. The camera looking over the nose had a clear view of Titan as the craft approa
ched. Saturn’s moon appeared as a hazy, yellowish marble in the distance. In another hour or so, the view would get really impressive.
She joined several others in the conference room. They were huddled around one side of the table, where several ravaged boxes of donuts awaited her. Frank had his mouth around another chocolate donut. He gestured at the boxes enthusiastically.
Kate took a relatively unsquashed jelly donut to be polite, then filled a coffee cup halfway and ducked out of the room before Frank could swallow his bite and start up a conversation.
She went to the railing of the viewing platform next to Frank’s desk and looked down on the operations floor. Still no Rick. Noah was absent, as well, though Kate had been getting used to not seeing him around. She figured he watched everything from his office and only came down when he thought it was absolutely necessary.
Kate went back to her workstation and checked her desktop phone for messages from other department heads, in case Rick had tried to contact one of them. Nothing. She asked the other techs to see if anyone on Explorer I had said anything to her in their last nightly recap. Sorry, Ms. Bishop, just a routine check-in.
She sat at her desk, gently spinning in her chair as she surveyed the room, deep in thought.
Michael Cochran was murdered. Diamond Aerospace had sent six probes to Titan before launching Explorer I. Who else in the building with her at that moment knew about the other D.A. facility? Who else knew that all of the probes but one failed on the way to their destination?
Kate was left wondering how she could send a message to Jeff without everyone else in the building knowing what she said. The system screened and logged every incoming and outgoing message. She and Jeff had never needed to invent a way to exchange coded messages.
More important than being eavesdropped upon by a bunch of gossips was the fact that her message would quite clearly indicate that she or someone she knew had broken into the sealed archives and read classified information about the company. At the very least, it would result in her getting fired, possibly along with Rick. At worst, the two of them might end up like Michael Cochran.
