On the Shores of Titan's Farthest Sea

by Michael Carroll

  Her text came in the early morning hours local time; the message was awaiting him at the breakfast table. When he pulled it up and saw that there were no visuals, he knew it was probably something serious. No goofy greeting or comical snapshots, just a short blast of letters that had sailed across 900 million miles of emptiness. Abigail was obviously saving her bandwidth for the Thanksgiving window.Jeremy: Long times! Hope u r well. A frnd of mine has died here on Titan under very suspcs crcmstncs; need someone who can b discrt. I tld boss here u r good; they want u if u can cm. CAN U? Fvr 2 me? Abs

  “Favor to me,” he mumbled. “Unless she meant fever.”

  He walked over and had his refrigerator pour him some orange juice. Rubbing the back of his neck, he stepped onto the rear deck. A condor rode the currents along the far canyon wall. The sunlight was just painting the stone with the gold of morning, bleeding down the cliff faces in molten ribbons. He pulled in a long breath of the fresh air, the smell of wilderness edged with dry desert sand and pine. The northern slopes of Kasei had been some of the first places on Mars to establish a viable pine forest during terraforming. The forests stood firm and ancient now, lining the canyon rim like gray-green sentinels against the sky.

  In a way, he was glad her message was text rather than visual. The distance to Titan precluded much in the way of full visual bandwidth, and he couldn’t face those fierce eyes. She held so much in, wouldn’t let things go. Over the years, a small weight could become a millstone. How heavy did those things, the things they shared in common, weigh on her these days? She could seem so innocent, so unspoiled and childlike. But she was tempestuous. He had seen her turn on someone as quickly as the storms she studied. He reminded himself to be patient with her, to remember her hurt, her psychological injuries. The death of her parents at the hands of Demian Sable still stung. It even stung him after all this time. Abby’s sister had buried her sorrows in her art. Janice painted from an early age. She showed a dancer’s athleticism at a far younger age than most. And she wrote poetry.

  For Janice, in a paradoxical way, a sort of inner joy had arisen from the appalling catastrophes of her childhood. Her anguish became the springboard, the inspiration for her art, as her art became its balm. She had told Jeremy that this world had granted her grace to survive the ordeal, and that grace was simply a reflection of the grace the Creator had given her.

  Jeremy could feel Janice’s sorrow, the loss, the agony build in those literary lines, or the painted ones, and he could sense its ebb as it bled out onto page or canvas or stage. But for Abigail, there had been no outlet, no release. She was the one he worried about.

  He turned back to face the table monitor. He sat, slowly letting his breath out.Dear Abby: Long times indeed. I wish I could help you, but you know I absolutely hate to travel, and I especially dislike the dark and cold beyond the Main Belt. I know there are good resources at Ganymede and even at Port Antillia in Adiri just a few hundred miles from you guys. Happy to make recommendations, but it would take a lot to get me on another interplanetary transport ever. Maybe I’m getting old. Sorry, girl. Hope you have satisfaction in finding out what happened to your friend. Sorry for your loss. Plans to come to Mars? Please come by. Guest room always open. Jeremy

  He felt guilty as soon as he hit SEND. His message would not arrive for over an hour. By then, maybe he would feel better.

  (*)

  Abby sat on the edge of her bed. It was time to sleep. It should have been easy, with that sulking winter sky always just outside. But Tanya’s words pricked at her.

  “…sounds more than love. You are driven, girl. How come?”

  Tanya was right, of course, and Abby had to admit it.

  “Hours you keep?”

  There was more to Mayda Station, more to Titan, than work. Who was she trying to kid? Her father had taught her that, taught her that people came before work, even though he was incredibly dedicated. And yet, in a way, it was her father’s untimely death that urged her on.

  “How much time you spend on reports and not on people? There is something else. Something you make up for, or something you want. No?”

  But no. If she spent time on people, or on joy rides around the Titan wonderland, her work would slip, and Titan had so much to teach. The work was paramount.

  At least it had been, until Kevin’s murder came along. Kevin’s death was a game-changer. She had her plans all in place and humming along nicely, and then this came along to rearrange her priorities. She couldn’t let that happen. She had her parents to think about.

  Her mother and father had been brilliant by any yardstick. Pioneers, trailblazers, innovators, catalysts; all were Marques bestowed upon them at one time or another by historians and fellow scholars. Her father had been called the architect of modern archaeology. But he had just begun when he was cut down. He and Mother had been working in Hesperia, at the abandoned early Chinese settlement. The place was Mars’ own Roanoke. And he had theories—they both did—possible solutions to the ancient mystery of the vanished settlers. Yes, the worlds had been robbed by their deaths.

  Three thieves. Why do things always come in threes? There was the thief of Time, and that one she could do nothing about. Then there was the thief of Knowledge, of the things they might have found, the things they were working on to share with the world. The last one, of course, was the thief who took their lives. That thief had never had to pay. So she waited, and hoped something would change for him.

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_10

  10. Skyward

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  Abby seldom ventured to the west. She had deployed several meteorological stations on the craggy tops of outcrops to the east and on the shore of Kraken Mare just north of the science outpost. But to the west lay a scattering of dunes, and blowing organic powder wreaked havoc with electronics. She had avoided the area. Now that she was out of the rover, she could take it all in.

  She followed Troy as he trudged through the low-lying umber drifts, newer than the big dunes and fine as confectioner’s sugar. “Ever been to Belet?” his voice crackled in her earpiece.

  “Troy, really, it hasn’t been that long. Don’t be so dramatic.” She panted, and realized she should have been saving her breath for the tiring trek through the mushy sand. She always liked to walk, and the smaller rovers like theirs didn’t do well on methane-saturated ground. But this stuff was tough. “Wouldn’t mind a caramel macchiato thingy from one of those robotic baristas of theirs right about now.”

  “Personally, I’m glad we’re not there. Those equatorial dunes are huge. Go for miles and miles and miles.”

  He had to be contrary. Was it revenge? Sour grapes? Everybody thought of him as so happy-go-lucky, but she knew another side. Intimately. And what was with the macho uber-hike? What happened to stopping to smell the benzine roses? She would try something neutral.

  “These little sand piles are hard-going enough.” But even as she said it, the sand was becoming more coarse, the dunes more shallow. Soon, the ground took on the undulating form of packed gravel. The walking grew easier. In the distance, through the sienna haze, hills rose into the afternoon twilight.

  Troy paused and turned to face Abby. “This is more like it,” he wheezed. “I gotta get out more. I’m out of shape.”

  The dunes seemed to be sinking away into the organic sand, slithering downward until the ground was all that was left. Abby looked northeast. The dark, slow-motion ripples of Kraken Mare sliced a tarry line along the base of the low hills on a distant shore. Sludge rimed the shoreline, reflecting spectral colors in the dim light. Further to the north, across Skelton Sinus beyond the great island of Mayda Insula, the shore rose in ragged cliffs, icy promontories stained by sooty methane rains. Beyond them lay the no-man’s-land of the north pole, a great emptiness uninhabited and scarcely explo
red save by robotic drones and orbital observatories.

  She realized that she’d stopped walking. Troy was pulling ahead. Again.

  “Hey Troy!” she hollered instinctively. Her radio voice was probably painful in his ears.

  “Yeah?” He stopped and turned toward her.

  Abby pointed toward the sea, working her way toward him. “See the west end of the island out there?”

  “Of Mayda? Our namesake?”

  “Yep. The peninsula just there? I went out on it once.”

  “Out there? Voluntarily? What was the occasion? Did you commit some heinous crime?”

  Abby gazed at the rugged landform rising from the subdued methane swells. It was the color of custard, matching most of the shoreline in the region. Rain and wind had scoured the top clean so that a blue-gray rampart of pure water-ice crowned the island. It looked like it needed a Cape Cod lighthouse on top.

  “My crime was wanting another data point in my weather patterns. I went out on an inflatable with an assistant. It was like sailing through thin molasses, sort of a golden brown below us. You could see way down, maybe fifty feet down.”

  “How’d you get to the top?”

  “Climbed. It’s not as steep on the other side. So now one of my little weather stations is perched atop Mayda Insula.”

  She could just see him nod behind his visor. “Actually, I’d love to go out some time. Maybe next time you do maintenance?”

  “Sure thing,” Abby promised. At least he was making an effort. “But in the meantime, I’m not seeing a whole lot of river action out here.”

  “Map says there’s a drainage system between those two hills up ahead. If Kevin was really researching hydrology, my money’s on that place.”

  “I guess it’s time we stop pretending,” Abby grumbled. “I kept hoping there was no ‘dark side’ he was hiding.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a dark side. Maybe he was just quietly trying to make a few extra bucks on the side doing something like…like…”

  “See, that’s the thing. Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” Resignation tinged his voice. “But we know he was in this region on that third logged traverse, so it’s worth a gander.”

  The hike became a stroll as the landscape sloped gently down in the direction of the shoreline. Low hills rose up to block their view of Kraken. The yellowish mounds rising from the dark organic soil reminded Abby of bumblebees.

  Troy’s voice brought her back to the hike. “I can’t believe your guy said no.”

  “He hates interplanetary travel,” she said somewhat defensively.

  “It’s practically painless these days. Besides, if you wanted me to do something, I’d travel a ways. A little ways. But just a little, so don’t get any big ideas.”

  If he meant to compliment her, it just came out as attacking her best friend. Bad timing all around.

  Troy pulled up a map on his heads-up display, then pointed to the left. “This way, I think.”

  As they crested a mound, a strangely earthlike panorama opened ahead of them. A vast floodplain defined the serpentine wanderings of a river delta. Teardrop-shaped islands pointed upstream toward what must have been a dramatic methane flow in some past downpour. The rich chestnut sand looked like poorly ground turmeric. What a strange place this is, where the sand of the earth has fallen from the skies.

  Troy whistled. “Hate to be here at the height of monsoon season.”

  “I’d kind of like it,” Abby countered.

  “You meteorology geeks.” Troy pointed downstream. “Watch those low flat spots. Looks like it could be quicksand.”

  Abby shivered. In the extreme north and south of Titan, that alien combination of powdery hydrocarbon soot and methane mist led to hidden traps, soupy sludge that could trap a rover or an unwary hiker. Two researchers had been lost only the year before she arrived. That was when somebody put up all the MIND THE GOOP signs.

  They followed the streambeds uphill until the delta narrowed into a sharply cut canyon. Abby stopped and put her hands on her hips, surveying the gorge. “No sign of anyone here.”

  “Maybe down by the lake,” Troy suggested. In another half hour they had descended back into the floodplain. The saturated ground sucked at their boots. Along the shore, Kraken Mare’s pseudo waters seeped up into rivulets like dark snakes slithering across the oily sand.

  Abby let out a long sigh. “You’d think he would have left something around. A tide marker; a flow meter. Some sign.”

  Troy froze in his tracks before Abby heard the sound. It began as a low rumble, ramping up to a sharp crackling. In Titan’s thick air, sound carried farther than it did on Mars or Earth. The two wanderers looked north, in the direction of the sound. They felt it in their feet now, and in their chests. Behind the distant shore rose a ship on a glowing trail of smoke. It was a large rocket, the kind that could make it directly into orbit and be on its way. It arced northeast, away from the direction of the scattered habitations of Titan, disappearing quickly into the gloom overhead.

  (*)

  Abby burst into the Comm Center and nearly tripped over the officer on duty, who happened to be Piers Wellington. The room was cramped, even by Titan standards, and there was no place else for the poor guy to sit. At the end of his little desk rose a small shelving unit with stacks of old-style books. To make matters worse, she and Troy still wore their bulky environment suits. In front of his main desk unit, a small plaque read: “I’m just the messenger.”

  “Hey Piers,” Abby barked as Troy bumped into her from behind.

  “Ooh, you have books,” Troy said.

  “Take care, ladies and gents!” the Comms officer said in a soft British accent. “There’s just enough room for me and the coffee maker, and bugger-all else.” He frowned, gauging Abby’s urgent expression. He looked at Troy, who seemed equally perplexed. “You two look like Frick and Frack. What’s all this, then?”

  “Could you pull up a global Titan map for us?” Troy asked.

  Piers clucked his tongue and gave them a pitying look. “Did somebody confiscate your personal terminals?”

  “Just—you know—” Abby motioned toward the wall screen.

  “For you, Abigail, anything. In all its glory,” Piers said as the map came up. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

  Abby leaned past Piers and tapped the screen in the general area of the launch. She traced her finger over the pole and to the opposite hemisphere. “Looks pretty busy back here. The Russo-African base at Antillia, the complex at Tortola Facula…”

  “The Bacab colony,” Troy added. “All this stuff in eastern Adiri and Ching-Tu.”

  “Unlikely they’d go that way,” Abby murmured.

  Troy nodded and turned to Piers. “Did you guys see anything on radar in the past hour? Anything flying?”

  “Wasn’t any.”

  “There wasn’t any what?” Abby prodded.

  “Radar,” Piers said. “We seldom run it between scheduled flights. It takes a lot of juice. Our next supply autodrop doesn’t arrive for another week, so we’re only monitoring radio frequency. In case somebody has a big emergency, like needing to look at a map.”

  Troy ignored the comment. “What about somebody to the southeast? Could they have seen something?”

  Piers shook his head even before Troy finished. “No good. Xanadu Mountain Research Station is essentially automated, visited once every three months for maintenance or by someone with a research grant. I suppose the closest thing besides that is the Australian station over in western Senkyo.”

  Abby looked at a vast expanse between what passed for civilization centers on Titan. From the sand seas of Belet to the rugged uplands of Adiri, the remote terrain had effectively kept settlements at bay. “So anyone leaving across this path would be unobserved.”

  “Leaving?” Piers said, chewing on a memory chip. “As in departing Titan itself?”

  “As in launching. Surface to orbit.”

  “Con
ceivably, unless they said something over radio, or kept a low orbit long enough to be picked up by New Ontario. It takes quite a bit of energy to clear Titan’s gravity well directly, though. Most ships go into orbit before they leave for good, to optimize their departure.”

  “But it could be done, right?” Abby encouraged.

  “It could be done. But who would want to keep something like that a secret?”

  Abby tapped her chin in thought. “Right. And why?”

  Abby and Troy dropped their suits off at the north airlock. Above the door, a hand-scrawled sign spoke the familiar words: MIND THE GOOP. As she swung her airpack onto a stand, Abby said, “I’m calling Mars at this evening’s relay.”

  “Gonna talk to your TBI buddy?”

  “Jeremy. Roger that.”

  “Twist his arm. They say things are weird at the north pole of any planet. Titan’s got it in spades. First Kevin freezes to death in bed, and then a ghost ship leaves from the other side of Kraken Mare. Next we’ll be seeing Santa’s sleigh up here.”

  “After our mystery launch, I think he’ll come.”

  “Santa, or Jeremy?” Troy mumbled, “Hope you’re right”. But he sounded unconvinced.

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_11

  11. The Villa

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  Horf had never been to Demian Sable’s villa on the outskirts of New Tucson. Only special people got invited, and Horf was used to not being special in that upper crust way. The cultured life was never for him. But if Circe wanted to meet there, meet there they would, even at this ungodly hour of the night.

  A uniformed guard admitted Horf through an imposing wrought-iron gate. Two alabaster lions cast baleful eyes in his direction, observing from atop 3-meter pedestals on either side. The guard gestured toward a pathway. Apparently, Horf was expected.