On the Shores of Titan's Farthest Sea

by Michael Carroll

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_20

  20. Taking Her Out

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  Feeble morning light cast a rusted pall across the mountains of Titan. The methane drizzle had stopped, but Titan’s weather conjured another form of precipitation.

  “Soot fog,” Abby said as Troy helped her hitch a boat trailer to a rover.

  “You say it like it’s something refreshing, like it’s not a greasy microscopic hail of black cinders.”

  “You’re a hopeless romantic,” Abby said. “It’s weird, but it’s natural, for here. You should be used to it by now.”

  “I still think it’s disgusting. I remember a C. S. Lewis book about Hell, and he described this greasy rain falling all over everything.”

  “Lovely. Can you stop being literary long enough to help me get your charming yacht onto our trailer?”

  The two picked up the inflatable raft easily in the low gravity. Climbing into the rover, they switched off their helmet lights. Abby flipped on the rover’s headlights, and they bounced across the alien landscape toward the dunes and the lakes beyond.

  “Ten minutes in the Zodiac ought to do it for today,” Troy said. “I’ll just calibrate my spectrometers and we’re good to go.”

  “Then switch to the sub?”

  “Yep. I’d like to really put her through her paces. Maybe an hour’s worth?”

  “You drive a hard bargain.”

  Troy smirked. “Don’t worry; you’ll get your search-and-destroy expedition.”

  Abby brought the rover to a stop in the damp sand at the edge of Kraken Mare, largest sea on Titan. A specular film undulated along the strand, rainbows rippling at the liquid’s edge. A powder of black flakes rode the wavelets ashore like a charred flotilla coming home from a conflagration. Thirty yards down the shore stood the submersible, glistening blue against the ruddy fog.

  Troy hopped into the driver’s seat and eased the trailer back toward the lake. With Abby’s thumbs-up he brought the rover to a stop. She tipped the raft into the liquid and grabbed an oar from the trailer bed. She waded into knee-deep liquid methane. The cryogenic bath made her boots crackle. As she rolled into the boat, Troy said, “I hope nobody’s out there watching us.”

  “Welcoming committee?” Abby offered cheerfully.

  “I don’t think that’s a welcome we want.”

  Despite the whoosh of air in their environment suits, they could easily hear the whirr of the electric engine. Abby took the rudder and guided them out to sea. The alien “waters” faded into the murky fog long before any far shore could appear. But it was out there, and someone was undoubtedly on it, waiting. That someone was responsible, in some way, for Kevin’s death. Abby could hardly wait to get her hands on them.

  “This is far enough for the calibration,” Troy said. Abby gently slid the instrument sled into the lake. Troy revved the engine slightly. The readouts on a small monitor flashed and changed as Troy’s various experiments bobbed in the wake of the Zodiac.

  In a few minutes, the instruments and swabbies were back ashore, loading the damp equipment into the bay of the submersible.

  “Pretty slick,” Abby said as Troy shoved the sled into a cage beneath the craft.

  “Thank you. Guess that’s it. All aboard.”

  The two climbed footholds indented flush into the side of the ship. The hatch opened at the top, just behind the plex dome, into a cramped airlock. Inside, the ship smelled of new car and polish. A small observation post under the dome could serve as an above-surface station while underway. Below, on the main deck, two padded chairs reclined at the forecabin facing the wide windows of the prow. Midnight blue marine carpeting provided a safe surface for any wet feet that might hit the deck. The walls and ceiling brimmed with instruments and readouts, their small glowing lights casting multicolored shadows across polished steel beams and curved bulkheads.

  “The thing looks like modern sculpture,” Abby said.

  “It’s safer when you don’t have any sharp corners to bump into.”

  “I feel like I’m in Fantastic Voyage,” Abby grinned.

  “Ever see the original?”

  “With Devlin Clapman? 2035 or so? One of my favorite classics.”

  “Oh, no, there was one before. Seventy years or something before. Color flatscreen.”

  “Had no idea. Jules Verne?”

  “Asimov, I think. Great stuff,” he said cheerfully. “Have a seat.”

  They buckled in. After what seemed an interminable chain of checks and rechecks, and two trips aft, Troy seemed satisfied, and he prodded the little ship through the dark methane brew.

  “Sorry,” Troy said as the craft lurched to port. “Getting the hang of these controls. Guess it’s gonna take me some time.”

  “That’s why they call it a ‘shakedown’ I guess.” Abby shot one hand out to the side, bracing herself with a handle on the wall.

  “Shall we check out the drill site?”

  She nodded. “Sounds entertaining.”

  “Are we getting data?”

  Abby checked her monitors. “Three full streams.”

  Troy smiled contentedly.

  The sea bottom undulated in sandy dunes, snaking from side to side where currents had sculpted it over the years. In the hollows, darker material banked in long lines, much as it did in the dunes on the surface. The liquid was remarkably clear. The sub’s lights cut blueish beams a hundred feet in front of them. Up ahead, horizontal waves seemed to undulate beneath the surface, as if another lake lay beneath them. The lines of interference moved ahead of them, warping the grainy floor and the lake floor’s hills, breaking the view up in a wavering mirage as if hot air was settling below them.

  Troy pointed to the shifting liquid. “I wonder what that’s all about. Looks like pavement on a hot day.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s the delineation between the ethane layer, that’s beneath us, and the methane that’s less dense. As methane evaporates, the ethane stays behind, settles to the bottom, and gets deeper and deeper. Some of the short-lived lakes, the smaller ones, are essentially pure methane, but if the liquid hangs around long enough you get this dichotomy. The older lakes are enriched in ethane.”

  They traveled in silence, watching scenes that no human had witnessed firsthand. Watching an alien sea through the eyes of a robot was nothing like this. This was immediate. It was real.

  “What are those?” Abby pointed ahead to starboard. Forces had heaved the seafloor up in icy plates. Sand rested uncomfortably on top of them, dribbling off into pyramids and rounded piles.

  “The floor ice is breaking up. We must be near the drill.”

  Abby felt the speed of the sub bleed down. The ice plates became more pronounced, larger. Some reared up into the space above them tens of meters, looking like a forest of razors.

  Troy gently nudged the joystick. “I’m taking us up a little closer to the surface. Don’t want to have a Titanic rerun.”

  They could hear the core drill now, a voluminous low pulsing like a giant’s heart. A dark vertical smudge ahead slowly gelled into a set of columns rising from the seafloor.

  “Ah, it’s so big,” Abby said. “What a project.”

  “It is impressive,” Troy agreed.

  Abby marveled at the technological triumph. She thought of others: the great Pyramids of Giza, the Palace of Knossos, the Wright Flyer, the Saturn V booster, the Caliph II skyscraper. She thought that this drill, with all it took to get it to this distant place, might number among them when the history of this century was written. Building a facility like Mayda Research Station had been remarkable enough. Despite the infrastructure already in place at Titan, building something in the remote northern lake district had presented logistical nightmares. Travel from the Bacab Colony, Port Antillia, and Kosivo/Taishan was difficult through the icy plains, mountain passes and dunes of Titan’s wildernes
s. Once roads were established, it was a bit easier, as larger payloads could be transported by ground rather than by air, but it was no walk in the park. Then, years later, came that crazy idea to build a drill to dig deeper than anyone in history. The drill amounted to a skyscraper resting on the bottom of a methane sea, linked to the skein, and to a host of electronic, digital, and power sources over great distances. But its interface with that ocean floor was even more problematical. Like the habs on all Titan settlements, the base of the drill had to be cooled. Otherwise, it would melt its way through the ice surface. And like Mayda itself, the construction had been a truly international—in fact, interplanetary—effort. What a project it had been!

  A chime sounded. Abby leaned forward. “What is it?”

  “Appears that one of our engines has a little problem with heat. In all this cryogenic methane, you wouldn’t think it possible.”

  Troy let the submersible coast to a stop. He made his way aft while Abby continued to monitor the spectrometers and other science instruments. She stood to get a better look outside. It was dark, mysterious, primordial. It looked like she imagined the oceans of Earth to have been in those days when giant reptiles swam through frothy baths, swirling seaweed in their wake, scattering prehistoric turtles before them and pterosaurs above them. There was something visceral here, something primeval and elemental.

  Troy returned. “This is an issue I had earlier. I think it’ll be fine, but we’ll need to head back soon.”

  She was gazing out the window at the bizarre jagged icescape. “You know how to show a girl a good time.” Abby settled back into her seat. “I must admit, I was hoping for something a bit more like the Loch Ness Monster.”

  “It would certainly give us a funding boost,” Troy agreed, eyes glued to the monitor. Troy brought the sub up to break the surface. The methane waves gurgled along the base of the windows. “My Aunt Bets claims to have seen Nessie on a trip to Earth. Got a pretty good look. Long swan-like neck, head like a turtle, flippers like a seal. She said it kind of rolled around near their sailboat, like a whale on one of those whale-watching tours, just lazily showing off.”

  Abby shook her head. “Anybody get a picture?”

  “Does anybody ever? Keep in mind that my aunt has also seen gnomes in her backyard. And I’m not talking lawn decorations.” Troy looked over at her and grinned. “You want to drive for a while?”

  “You bet, captain!”

  Abby found the craft to be surprisingly responsive, especially for a watercraft.

  “It’s designed more like a high performance aircraft,” Troy explained. “Very advanced. Look at you; you don’t even need me here, first mate.”

  Abby leaned toward the monitor on her side. “Did you see that?”

  “What?”

  “There it is again. Light source. Just along the shore to the left of the little island.”

  Troy squinted through the front glass. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Can you drive?” Abby lunged to the center console behind her seat. “How do you work this telescope thingy?” Troy flipped a switch and a monitor came to life. Abby scanned the shore. There it was again, and this time, Troy couldn’t miss it. It was a light all right, and the light was attached to the front of a small rover.

  “There,” she said triumphantly. “I knew somebody had to be there. I knew it. Let’s go.”

  “What do you mean, go?”

  Abby’s jaw dropped. She shoved her hands on to her hips. “Look, we agreed we would look into this. There are people right in front of us, right there, where nobody should be. Aren’t you just a bit suspicious?”

  He shrugged. “Of course, yes. I just meant—”

  “Besides, you promised. Don’t be a chicken.”

  “I’m not chicken. I’m not reckless, either.”

  Abby’s lips tightened. Her eyes narrowed. He had always been that way: conservative to a fault when a little risk was called for, and wild when caution would have been prudent. He even ran his relationships that way. How she wished he would have asked her to do something risky, with him, just once. Everything had to be the same, sedate, predictable. But his disarming sense of humor diffused the situation every time. That was his strength. That was the Troy that people saw. The clown. The peacemaker. If she kept reminding herself of Troy’s shortcomings, she would be seething.

  Troy sensed danger. He held up his hands. “Okay. Tell you what. We’ll zoom in close under the surface and see what’s what, then report back to the authorities.”

  “Authorities?”

  “We’ll get help. From down in Senkyo or Kosovo/Taishan or somewhere.”

  “All right. But we gotta get close.”

  “Strap in, stormy.”

  Abby hated that nickname, and Troy knew it.

  They took their seats and Troy jammed a joystick forward. The small craft skittered and then smoothed out, pushing forward in the dark sea. In moments, Troy muttered something inaudible.

  “What?” Abby snapped.

  “Dammit. Heat alarm. Gotta check it. Sorry.” The sub slowed to a stall as Troy made his way aft again. Abby had not heard the alarm this time. She scanned the horizon through the telescope’s eyes, but she couldn’t see the rover.

  He returned with a concerned look, but Abby could see relief there, too. “It’s the same problem we’ve had all afternoon. Overheating engine on the port. Gotta take her in.”

  Abby controlled her tone. “Can’t this thing make it a few miles on one engine? We’re on the brink of figuring out what’s really going on at the north shore.”

  Troy took on an exaggerated pose and flipped his hand, palm up, for emphasis. “Well, let’s see. We’re on a boat that’s never been tried in these conditions, a good ten klicks from civilization and help, in a deadly sub-zero bath on our maiden voyage with the potential of a major propulsion failure and you want to go sightseeing? Sounds like a dream cruise to me.”

  He stormed past her toward the front of the cockpit.

  “It’s your boat,” she said.

  “Yes it is.”

  In the silence that followed, Abby stayed back at the monitor, watching the coastline for activity. The rover was gone. There was no sign of anyone. It was a very long, very quiet voyage home.

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_21

  21. Crazy

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  “Don’t you think you’re being just a little hard on the guy?” Piers took a swig of bottled water. “I wouldn’t want to go out there either. Care for some water?” He held a bottle toward her.

  “I only drink the hot stuff,” she said.

  “And I only drink the filtered stuff.”

  “They filter the stuff here.”

  “Not the same,” he said, smacking his lips enthusiastically. “When you think about it, it’s not that surprising that somebody would be up there. It’s a three-ring circus around here. You’ve got the drilling operation with multi bazillion bucks in the mix, and all these scientists competing for limited resources and funding and time, and you’ve got Troy’s new boat and international intrigue and all the rest. Somebody’s undoubtedly spying on someone.”

  Abby was just taking in a breath, preparing a defensive fusillade, when Piers’ headset pinged. “Comm,” he said. After a pause, he barked, “Roger that.” He tapped another screen, glanced at Abby, and said, “Interesting,” as a side monitor awakened.

  Doc Mason’s face blizzarded onto the screen. “Medlab.”

  “Good afternoon, Doctor.”

  “Hello, Piers. What can I do for you on this fine orange day?”

  “Well, not so fine, as it turns out. Some sort of incident at the drill. They’re bringing you a patient. Seems that a paleontologist on site had some sort of psychotic breakdown. Seeing all kinds of crazy things.”

  “T
hanks for the heads up. I’ll alert security, too.” The monitor blanked.

  Abby was grinning at him. He looked at her, blank-faced. “What is it?”

  “Piers, a man of few words. I was just wondering if you ever talk in complete sentences.”

  “Rarely.”

  Abby looked puzzled. “Did you say paleontologist?”

  “That’s what they told me.”

  “Guess Troy was right,” Abby said.

  “How’s that?”

  “North pole of Titan. Just gets weirder and weirder.”

  (*)

  Abby had a hunch. It was one of those aggravating hunches that tingled at the top of her spine every time it came up for air. It was doing that a lot lately. She finally gave in to it.

  Sitting at her personal workstation, she logged on to the skein. It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for; the CoAz Paleontology Department was proud of its donors. Though this particular one was listed as funding an “undisclosed” amount, it was clearly a big player, perched near the top of the list. Its letters were no bolder than the others. Their color did not differ from the rest of the listed items. And yet, the single word they spelled seemed to vibrate with its own energy: MECTRODEX.

  What was a pharmaceutical behemoth doing funding interplanetary paleontologists? She thought back to Kevin’s sketches, to all those vague shapes that resembled microbes. “Organelles, possible flagella? … double nuclei?” his sketchbook had asked. Were these, in fact, not microbes but fossils of microbes? That would explain the paleontology part, but not the MECTRODEX part. And where were they from? She had seen electron micrographs of the microfossils from Earth’s Columbian basin and the Martian canyonlands. These seemed to be different. She wished she knew more about old fossils, but she was just a gas girl. If these things had been floating around in clouds, she might have known more.

  That left the drug tech guy on Ganymede, and whatever role he might be playing. Troy would undoubtedly be happy to point that out. Kevin as drug kingpin. Kevin as microfossil rock hound. Neither choice made sense.