On the Shores of Titan's Farthest Sea

by Michael Carroll

  She felt the sting of tears in the corners of her eyes, and the heat moving up the sides of her neck. Where did this attack come from? Troy seemed to be teetering on the brink of some precipice.

  He motioned toward the open door. “You’re hopeless. Just go.”

  She did, happily. But as soon as she was out in the hallway, she felt exposed in the shadowy corridor, vulnerable. She thundered back to her room in record time and slammed the door. The habitats and laboratories and research pods should have been silent this time of night, but unhealthy Halloween laughter filled them. Voices yelled and cackled and screeched. What was happening out there? It was going to be a very long night.

  Was there any truth in what Troy had said? What did he mean by Abby being on the ‘wrong track’? Clearly, he was not himself. Still, people under stress often said true things that they might not otherwise. Had she learned nothing since the death of her parents? Since her travels to Earth and Titan? Was she really hopeless?

  Abby could just make out rivulets of methane slithering down the window in oily streams. The darkness clawed away at her spirit. It numbed her mind. It drained her strength until there was nothing left but a restless, chilled sleep.

  (*)

  By now, the cruise ship was too distant for direct communication. Sanjay Rao’s message to Jeremy Belton arrived in no-nonsense text form, scrambled for security: ship approaching saturn with swat team.

  will make landfall on titan in two days’ time

  and deploy immediately to Mayda with supplies and arms.

  Good, Jeremy thought. If somebody had, in fact, taken Mayda Research Station by force, the crack team would have it surrounded at the very least by the time he arrived. In the best-case scenario, they would have everything back up and running, and Demian Sable, if he was behind things, would be in custody once again. Belton could finally relax, just a little.

  (*)

  Abby had finished the last of her nutro-bars hours before the first hints of twilight bled across the horizon. The faint indigo always came first, a purple haze that began as an ill-defined, amorphous horizontal line. Eventually, as the light turned to a dull burgundy, the lower portion firmed up into darker shapes: hills, bumps, the rise of Mayda Insula itself. In a few hours, the sky would take on its moldering orange glow as Titan morning arrived. But even now, there was enough light to see the wave machine still in pieces on the shore, as if it had been abandoned in a panic.

  It was very, very quiet. Abby crept down the hall to Piers’ quarters. He wasn’t there. She turned and headed back toward the Communications Center. Several of the doors to the personal apartments stood ajar, gaping darkness threatening to spill into the dim hallway.

  Out of habit, she had been looking for the rows of tiny indicator lights on the entry hatch when she nearly ran into the wall beside it. The Comm door was secured. She tapped on it and whispered, “Piers?”

  She said it louder. “Piers?”

  She thought she heard something behind her in the darkness. “Piers!”

  The door cracked open. “Hey, Abby. Are you, ah, okay?” He spoke the words tentatively.

  “I’m fine, Piers,” she said with just a hint of impatience.

  Piers lowered his voice. “Seen any weird things in the halls lately?”

  She glanced back into the hallway. It was empty. Her nerves must be frazzled. “Only my colleagues.”

  He opened the door and let her in quickly.

  Piers sealed the hatch. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Sounds like I should be asking you.”

  “I, ah, yeah. Sort of. I am, but I’m pretty sure Tanya’s batty as a vampire’s balcony. She was going on about wall paintings and flute music and dancing co-koalas—”

  Abby broke in. “Wait. Kokopelli? Is that what she said?”

  Piers thought for a moment. “Sounds about right.”

  “It’s a Native American mythological flute player. Troy and I saw paintings of Kokopelli in Kevin Nordsmitt’s room.”

  “Yeah, flute player. That’s what Tanya told me. But get this—when I asked her how she knew about it, she said Kevin told her. In the hall. Just a while ago.”

  Abby opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  Piers said, “That was my reaction.”

  Abby felt a wave of apprehension building slowly within herself. Had Troy placed the idea of Kokopelli in Tanya’s mind? Did she know anything about those Native American sketches in Kevin’s room, know about Kokopelli before she had her hallucination with Kevin? That was the most likely scenario, but it didn’t quite fit. Troy himself hadn’t known about the little flute player until Abby told him, so he hadn’t planted the idea, had he? And Tanya’s perception clearly was that Kevin told her, in the hallway, long after he was dead and gone. Then there was Doc Mason, complaining about flute music that Abby couldn’t hear. Auditory hallucinations, to add to everything else? It seemed to be the same sort of shared hallucination that people held as they watched whatever they were watching out the windows. What was going on?

  “Where is she?” Abby asked urgently.

  “Not a clue. But Abigail, it does beg the question.” He looked down at his hands and fidgeted in silence.

  “What question?” she prodded.

  He turned to her and put his hands firmly on her shoulders for a moment. The pressure of his palms on her skin, his warm fingertips on her back, his thumbs gently resting on her collarbones gave her a sense of security, encouragement. “Abby, everybody seems to be crazy. Why aren’t we?” He sat down on the little chair behind his desk, as if the question had exhausted him. “Is there something different about us? Where’s all this coming from?”

  Abby tried to walk back and forth, but there was no room. She leaned against the wall and kept bouncing her back against it. “Seems like it all began when we saw that launch, right?”

  Piers looked up at the ceiling. “No, later. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, trying to remember, and I don’t think anybody did anything really out of the ordinary—at least by the standards of this weird place—until sometime after the drill broke through.”

  “To the water ocean.”

  “Yes.”

  “A hundred klicks below.” Doubt could be heard in her voice.

  “Right. Like they say, it’s something in the water.”

  Abby shook her head. “No good. First of all, that drill is sealed. Nothing can come up unless it comes through the closed system, and it’s closed in several layers of security, so the thing’s not going to leak. Not ice, not water under pressure, nothing. Tanya said they were very careful about back contamination. And we aren’t drinking it, we’re analyzing it.”

  “Maybe something is in the ice matrix, locally. If the ice down there is spongy enough, there might be chambers linked to the passage cleared by the drill. Perhaps we’ve got contamination indirectly.”

  “I think that’s a stretch—something in the solid ice that we melt for our water?”

  “Happens in Earth’s aquifers, doesn’t it? Water filtering through seemingly solid rock over time?”

  “Maybe so. But everybody’s been drinking Titan water for decades. We walk on it, for the love of Mike.”

  Piers wilted in resignation. “I suppose so.”

  Abby straightened. “But wait a minute. You don’t drink it.” She surveyed the piles of water bottles around the room.

  Piers jabbed a finger at her. “But you do. It’s in your tea and coffee and hot cocoa.”

  She frowned at the floor. “It’s got to be something.”

  Piers patted one of the dead consoles. “Whatever it is, it’s getting worse and we’re flying blind here. There’s not enough power for comms, let alone life support. I don’t know if anybody is on the way, if anybody heard my last transmission.”

  “Somebody must know by now, because you haven’t been chatting anybody up. I hear you in here blabbering away all the time. The cosmos is probably rejoicing at the silence.”

&nb
sp; Piers grinned. “Hey, communication is my life. Sit. Have a bottle of non-Titan water, guaranteed to be uncontaminated.”

  Abby took the bottle from Piers and shoved a pile of detritus off the chair.

  “I keep thinking there’s a way to get a message out. I asked Troy about the sub, but it’s strictly short range communication, except for nav.”

  “Speaking of crazy, Troy’s another one.”

  “He’s got whatever it is? Unfortunate. I was hoping we could count on him to help out.”

  Someone tapped gently at the door. “Piers?” came the tentative voice of Tanya.

  Piers grinned at Abby and whispered, “This could be entertaining.”

  Before Abby could object, he had opened the hatch. “Come in, my dear. Welcome to the completely offline Comm Center.”

  “Spaciba, sir. Hello, my little Anya.”

  Tanya gave Abby a hug.

  Piers said, “May I offer you some freshly chilled water?”

  “Still liquid?”

  “Just.”

  “Love some.” She took a bottle and tried to open it. “My fingers are too cold.” She shoved the bottle to Piers. He cracked it open and handed it back. Tanya drew a long draft before sitting on a box, apparently planning to stay for a while.

  “How are you…feeling?” Abby asked.

  Tanya held her bottle aloft in a sort of toast. “Fine. A little headache, but otherwise. Please, continue what you were doing. I will just enjoy company.”

  Piers took her at her word and turned to Abby. “Why do you suggest he is crazy?”

  “Who is crazy now?” Tanya broke in.

  “Troy,” Piers blurted. Abby winced, not wanting to get Tanya involved in this. Who knew what her mental condition was at this point?

  “He sure is!” Tanya barked. “That poor guy. Fruitpie. Crazy man.”

  “Can you elaborate?” Piers asked Abby.

  “First, he lied about going out in the sub. Said they needed him at the drill.”

  “Nope,” Tanya offered. “Nobody has been out there since the monsters came.”

  They both stared at her. In a very controlled voice, Piers said, “Tell us a little about the monsters.”

  “You know, they are almost cute. If they weren’t so big, I mean. That chemist lady, Dr. Delpine or Daphnine or whatever it is, she calls them Loch Ness Monsters of Titan. I think that is perfect, don’t you? So when that one chased Stanley up main tower of drill, everybody abandon it.”

  “I don’t blame them,” Abby said, indulging her.

  Piers shook his head, as if trying to get rid of an annoying distraction, and turned back to Abby. “You think Troy lied about the sub. And what else?”

  “He went off on some tirade about something.” Her voice trailed off. She dropped her gaze to the floor. “I guess maybe I’m overreacting.”

  “Tell me. I’m interested.”

  “Me, too!” Tanya said with too much enthusiasm.

  “I don’t know; he just seemed to have lost all his self-control. He said it was the last days of Mayda Station, and he was really exhibiting paranoid behavior. Peering around corners and flinching at sounds. He brought up things from our past, things about our relationship.”

  “Oh,” Piers said flatly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, accusation tinging her voice.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it, Abigail. You know me. I’m not on anyone’s side. But you must admit that you two have some baggage, and sometimes baggage gets in the way of rationality. Just a bit. Agreed?”

  Abby looked away. She remembered Troy’s comment. You’re hopeless. “Right.” After a moment, she looked back at him. “You’re right, of course. Lots of history.”

  “I think you are one of the most brave and brilliant people I know,” he said. “I admire the veracity of your work and your relationships. That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

  It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her like that. She felt like kissing him. She might have, if her teeth hadn’t been clattering so much and Tanya hadn’t been there. But she could tell by his tone that he was winding up to one of those ‘but’ clauses.

  Abby pushed. “Go ahead and say it. ‘But’ what?”

  “It’s just that even though he’s not very smooth about it, there might be truth in some of the things Troy says. Just take his ideas into account. It might be helpful, sometimes. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Abby couldn’t hold back a Cheshire cat grin. “I guess you’ve got just about enough caveats in there to cover yourself!”

  “Why they have bags?” Tanya interjected.

  Abby said, “We go back farther than you probably think.”

  Tanya looked at Piers. “Why Troy knows her best?”

  “Well, it was—let’s see—how long were you dating?”

  Tanya jerked as if she had been hit by a cattle prod. “You and Troy? Boyfriends and girlfriends?”

  “Everybody makes mistakes,” Abby said sheepishly. Both she and Tanya were blushing.

  “It was before either of them came to Titan,” Piers tried to explain. “Not common knowledge.”

  Abby added, “And it was only a couple of dates. That’s all it took for either of us to see the oil-and-water effect the two of us were playing out.”

  “Not a good mix?” Tanya offered.

  “That’s putting it mildly. Believe me, we were more surprised than you are. Neither of us planned on ending up on the same ice ball at the same remote science station. Not the ideal situation. But here we are.”

  “Yes,” Piers said. “Here we all are, in those last days of Mayda Station.”

  “Maybe Brian and the gang can fix our reactor,” Abby said quietly.

  Tanya stood, a look of realization playing over her face. “No need to fix it. Just missing a part. Somebody stole it.”

  “Stolen part?” Piers said. “Did Brian say that? Hey!” But Tanya was already out the door and gone. He looked at Abby. Her mouth was hanging open. He said, “Why would somebody steal critical hardware from our nuclear plant and put themselves—and us—through all this?”

  “It would make more sense if they weren’t from here at all.”

  In unison, they said, “The north shore.”

  “Well, that makes it simple,” Abby said. “We’ve got to get it back.”

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_37

  37. Serpents in the Morning

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  Tanya made it back to her room in time to see the Sun rising above the hills. It looked like a tangerine ember in the clearing fog, spilling itself across the molten bronze of Kraken Mare. The morning should have been a welcome sight, but as soon as Tanya’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw them. They were what she had feared, and there were hordes of them. The monsters were out at Mayda. Long necks rose and fell in the undulating waves, but the beasts no longer stayed out to sea. Now, a few of the most determined had lumbered their way onto the shore, and they were coming this way.

  Monsters in the methane. Amazing.

  Troy and Abigail. Astonishing.

  A dead man playing flute music to her in the hallway. Astounding.

  There was something she needed to talk to Brian about, something important. What was it? Her temples throbbed. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. She needed a good night’s sleep. She just couldn’t remember what it was she needed to tell him.

  (*)

  Abby’s trusty flashlight—the one that had seen her through grad school, fieldwork at the volcanoes of Elysium and in the canyons of Ganymede, and tours inside Hawaii’s hot and humid lava tubes—was on its last legs. Its dim light played unevenly against the hatch to Troy’s sub room. She cranked hard on the handle. The door opened easily. She didn’t think the air could be any colder than it was in the hallway, but a flash o
f arctic wind hit her face from inside the darkened vault. The sub loomed like a dark blue whale, hanging from the ceiling, lifeless. Troy was not here.

  What was Troy up to? He was slinking around like a juvenile delinquent worried about getting caught for some minor infraction. He was acting sophomoric, immature, and decidedly paranoid. She felt sorry for him. Somehow, even after all this time, he triggered in her that same feeling she had for abandoned puppies at the pound. On one level, he made her angry with his suspicions and his tirades, but on another, she wanted to help him, to “make it all better.”

  Maybe that was the flaw in their relationship from the beginning. She found human interactions far more baffling than planetary weather systems, but both could be tempestuous. She smiled at the word. Tempestuous. From tempest. She thought of the greatest tempest of them all, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, with its hurricane-force winds and its vast size, two full Earths across. Then there were the blue storms on Neptune, like cobalt jewels floating in an azure fog. There was nothing like those on her home world. The worst storms Mars ever got were the great walls of dust that rolled off the deserts, draping powder across entire cities and battering roofs and walls with stinging winds. Her mind wandered sunward, to those terrestrial hurricanes that had come with more frequency and severity with Earth’s changing climate. Storms. Tempests. That’s what Troy was: a tempest.

  She headed back to her quarters, past bands of people huddled together for warmth or grouped around windows gazing at scenes she could not begin to imagine. The morning sunlight, such as it was, had begun to bring a kind of psychological warmth to the day. It cast a yellowish pall inside her room. As she entered, she saw Troy at her kitchen table, hunched over something.

  “Hey Apps,” he said without looking up. “Sorry if I was a jerk back there.”

  The tempest had calmed. But Abby was distracted by something that should not have been there. Was it finally happening to her? Did she have the sickness—the infection or hallucinogen or whatever had descended upon the entire facility? Perhaps it had just been a matter of time. But there, sitting on the table in a small glass next to Troy, a perfect red rose stood in a few inches of water. A live rose. How ridiculous. Perhaps there wasn’t much time before they would all be gyrating blobs of insane gelatin.