On the Shores of Titan's Farthest Sea

by Michael Carroll

  The Admiral was back on the air with a surprising announcement. “Your friends are safe.”

  “What?” Piers roared. “Just like that?”

  “He’s toying with us,” Jeremy said.

  “Not us. With Abby, if one were to ask me.”

  Jeremy keyed the mic. “That’s good news, Admiral. May we speak to them immediately? We have need of their…expertise on something.”

  “They are unavailable at this time,” came the retort.

  The comms officer grumbled, “This thing smacks of a hostage situation.”

  “Admiral Montenegro,” Jeremy said into his headpiece, “I think we’ve met before. Perhaps on Earth? Perhaps at Morrow Rehab Campus?”

  There was no reply.

  “Admiral?” Jeremy repeated.

  “I think you got his attention,” Piers said. “What’s that all about?”

  Jeremy held up his hand for silence. There was plenty of it. He waited another full minute. Could it be true? He was good with voices, and he would never forget this one. He keyed his microphone again. “Demian Sable, shall we stop playing games? What is it you want?”

  This time the pause was a short one. The return voice was clear and concise. “Simple, Mr. Belton. We are going to take Mayda Station.”

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_45

  45. The Evening News

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  “Look,” Jeremy said, squaring his shoulders and gazing across the table at Piers and Brian. “We have three Marines and a hundred plus nearly frozen scientists here armed with a handful of spectrometers and microscopes. It’s likely that they have an army over there with something more formidable. None of us is trained to go sneaking in on a rescue mission, not even these Marines, able as they are. So let’s just wait for help. The team should have been here by now, so I’m sure they’ll show up any moment. I have calls in to both Mars and Ganymede to see what’s up. Our friends on the north shore are undoubtedly monitoring communications, so my messaging is encrypted.”

  Piers’ lips tightened. “Right,” he said, his body stiff.

  Jeremy put a hand on Piers’ shoulder. “And relax. There’s not much we can do at this moment. What we do need is to fix that reactor. Brian, now that we can communicate through our ship, can’t we call Antillia or Kosovo for, you know, something that would help? A replacement part?”

  Brian’s voice took on a professorial tone. “You won’t get a replacement part for quite some time. Our Ingermanson reactor is unique. The problem is in the transfer of power from the reactor itself to the grid, the rest of the station.”

  “There’s no jury-rig? Nothing you can kluge together in the interim?”

  “Not with the parts we have here. The Ingermanson is a delicately balanced system. You can’t just plop something on the end of it to make it work. I did figure out a way to get some power out of it for a little while at low levels, enough to save the place, with some technology that they probably have at the larger settlements on Titan. What I’m hoping is that our rover team will be able to get a ship here from Kosovo/Taishan with the proper equipment. But even that won’t last long. We need the real thing if we are to save this outpost.”

  “When is the rover due to arrive there?”

  Brian looked toward the window, shivering. “They should have arrived two days ago. I told them to transmit in the blind when they got there, in case we got the radio up. I have great faith in Piers.”

  “Too much, I fear,” Piers said.

  “But the ship will pick up anything that comes our way,” Jeremy said. “It would have been good to know your plan,” he scolded. “I’ll have them contact K/T right away. See if there’s been anything.”

  (*)Jeremy figured the Mayda residents had had enough bad news lately, so he climbed aboard the ship to talk to the comms officer directly.

  “Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do,” the officer said. “Why the heck didn’t they tell us they had a rover on its way out there?”

  “Nobody’s on their game. They’re all cold and starving. Let’s just focus on contacting Kosovo/Taishan.”

  “Yes sir. Part of our problem has been that Titan’s still got that one comsat down. They need to replace it, and who knows when that will be? But I think the constellation has another one in range at this point. I’ll give it a try, see if we have a relay available.”

  In moments, the comms officer had the communications center at Kosovo/Taishan on the line, and a few minutes later, Jeremy was speaking directly to Laurita Hernandez.

  “It was bad. After the explosion, after we could tell that the rover was toast, we tried transmitting in the blind once or twice, but we just didn’t have the range. K/T has tried three times. Don’t know why we didn’t get through, but I’m glad you did.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I wish the news was better. It’s like Brian suspected. These energy people here are pretty sharp. They had a whole contraption bolted together to try to adapt onto our Ingermanson system. They weren’t sure it would work, but it was worth a try. Looked like something out of a cartoon show.”

  “And it all went down with the ship?” Jeremy asked.

  “All of it. Some of it was specialized. No backups here. They said they might be able to get something similar from Ariel, of all places, but they say it’s on the wrong side of the system right now. We’re talking months.”

  “And you’re sure it was a missile?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen surface-to-airs before. This one had the ship in its sites. No accident. Who would shoot down a rescue ship?”

  “Very nasty people,” Jeremy said. “But you two are okay, right?”

  “Right.”

  After some of what Jeremy hoped was encouraging small talk, he signed off and looked at the comms officer.

  “These guys are out of control. They seriously need to be shut down. Where’s our help?”

  Jeremy was in what was left of the galley when the answer came. He sat at a small table in the corner with the Master Sergeant, nursing a cold coffee, when his earbud pinged. It was the comms officer in the lander.

  “Prime One to Belton, do you read?”

  Jeremy spoke. “Roger, go ahead.”

  “Feeding a message through from Director Sanjay Rao.”

  Finally, some news, Jeremy thought. His helmet accepted the prerecorded message.

  “Jeremy, Sanjay here. I have some really bad news that’s going to change things up considerably. We’ve gotten a snippet of a distress call from the SWAT team. They disappeared somewhere in the rings of Saturn. It appears that several lifeboats managed to deploy, but your ground support is simply not coming. And it takes a lot to take out a SWAT team, so I want you all to stand down until we can get some backup there. I’m looking into that now, but sit tight until you hear from me. No heroics, Jeremy. Rao out.”

  Jeremy looked at the big Marine next to him. “Did you hear that?”

  “No sir. Dat vas on your personal channel.”

  Jeremy Belton was not one for short words, but on this occasion, he said several. Even Master Sergeant Dønnes was surprised.

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_46

  46. Visitations

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  In addition to one of the rover bays, the eastern section of Mayda housed the boats and general storage units, meeting rooms, and the smallest of the three galleys, now abandoned but for one lone inhabitant. And although everyone seemed to be clustering together for warmth or encouragement as the science outpost slowly surrendered to Titan’s relentless elements, Tanya Yampolskaya wanted to be alone.

  She sat at a corner table, imagining the feel of hot c
hocolate and steaming borscht, a favorite childhood combination. The nearest windows faced away from the sea, which was just as well. She didn’t want to know what was going on out there. She was tired of thinking about it.

  Her eyes felt heavy. If only she could sleep. It was so cold.

  “Tanya.”

  Had she really heard a voice, or was it the sound of her coat against the table?

  “Hello, Tanya. Would you like me to play for you?”

  She turned in her chair. He looked so good. How she missed him! “Hello Kevin, my love. No, not just now. Where have you been?”

  “Around. I’ve been watching.”

  “The place is falling apart.” Her eyes teared and her nose began to run more furiously than it had from the cold air.

  “There, there, my sweet. You are a strong girl. You will get through this. You all will.”

  “I’m so tired of dark and cold and dry food. And of just being tired. So tired.”

  “Why do you think you are so tired?”

  “I have not sleep—slept—well,” she said in a weak voice.

  “Does it smell funny in here to you?”

  Tanya rested her forehead against the table and sniffed the air. She looked up. “Yes, it does smell.”

  “What does it smell like?”

  “Glue. Paint.”

  “Maybe you should leave this area.”

  “Oh, Kev, I’m just going to rest a little bits.”

  “It smells very funny in here. You know what that means.”

  “Yes,” she slurred.

  “Maybe you should get up right now, Tanya. Maybe you should leave.”

  She sat up straight and blinked. “Yes, maybe so.”

  “And close the door behind you.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said quietly, stumbling as she stood. “What if someone is in here?” But Kevin seemed to have left.

  Tanya stepped to the galley doorway and called down the hall. “Hello? Is anyone there?” She coughed and turned in the opposite direction. “Is anyone there?”

  She stumbled to the hatch leading back to the main outpost and called over her shoulder, “Is anyone there?” She stepped through and slammed the hatch shut. The floor dipped to the right as she stepped down the corridor. It swung back to the left, but as she got some distance between herself and the east section, she felt clearer, more stable. Somewhere behind her, from the direction she had just come, a flash brightened the gloomy hall. Then she heard the fire alarms.

  (*)

  Piers wished he had Abby to talk to. He hadn’t realized how he relied upon her to help him think through life’s difficult decisions. She had often been there for him, and always when it counted. But not this time. This time he had to figure things out, like a big boy.

  Those thugs on the north shore weren’t here for the mining or the study of nature’s wonders. They were here to rape and pillage, in the old vernacular. They were criminals, pure and simple. They had shot down a rescue and supply ship with innocent passengers aboard. They had cut down a SWAT team, which took cunning and skills and superior equipment. Even if Jeremy Belton could get another ship full of top-rate GI Joes, what was to stop these pirates—and that’s what they were—from doing the same to them? They seemed to be plenty good at it. No matter how he looked at it, Piers could only come to the conclusion that they were on their own. He had to take matters into his own hands. Belton had his own plan. Fine. Piers would take a different tack. He smiled at his mental simile as he headed for the boat room. He wore a fully outfitted environment suit prepared for a long stay in the Titan wilderness. He hadn’t sealed the visor yet. It was hard to see in the dim light.

  His first order of business in the boat room would be to find a toolbox and make whatever repairs were necessary to whichever Zodiac was in the best shape. But the first inflatable he came to seemed to be perfectly intact. The engine gleamed on a stand next to it, tagged with a handwritten note—in Troy’s handwriting—as “serviced and ready to go.” Odd, he thought. So much for Troy’s damaged-beyond-repair boats.

  He slid the engine into place, wheeled the inflatable to the door, set the inner and outer seals, and closed the visor on his helmet. Just before the door unsealed to the murky outside world, Piers could have sworn he caught a whiff of benzene, and something a little more acrid.

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_47

  47. Delayed Gratification

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  It was time to call in a favor. Clarisse Sanbourne had been stationed on Iapetus for over a year. She loved it. She’d gotten the military transfer, in part, due to a glowing reference from Jeremy Belton, formerly of the Tri-Planet Bureau of Investigation. Not bad.

  “I need you with me when I make the call,” Jeremy had told Brian, “in case something technical comes up.” So Jeremy and Brian crowded their way into the confined cockpit with the long-suffering comms officer.

  The time it took Jeremy’s voice to reach Clarisse was roughly nine seconds at this point in the orbit, enough to be annoying. Jeremy reflected that is wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The orbit of Iapetus took it on a leisurely loop around Saturn once every seventy-nine days in a great ellipse 7 million km across. Its path was inclined to the equator, giving it the best view of Saturn’s rings of any major moon. Titan, not as far out, coasted by Iapetus as closely as 2,300,000 km away, but at its farthest, the dance of the two moons brought it nearly as far from Iapetus as 5 million km, with a light time transit of sixteen seconds. Texting might have been easier.

  “Clarisse, I figure if they’re shooting down ships and taking over facilities, they may have what amounts to a military base here. The Marine analysts share that view. It seems like you guys should send everything you can. Over.”

  Her reply began half a minute later. “That won’t be much. Not for a while. But—and this could be good—there’s a detachment of Marines en route to Iapetus for some sort of training exercises. I’ll see if we can get them out there post haste. It could be less than forty-eight hours, if all goes well. That should do something, one would think. Over.”

  “One would hope,” Brian said under his breath.

  “Roger that, Clarisse. Now would be good. We can’t wait any more. People are going to start dying.” He prayed they had not already, but he wouldn’t put anything past Demian Sable. “Thanks for whatever you can do. Keep it on this channel, scrambled, and hopefully those visitors on the north shore won’t be able to decipher our communiqués. Out.”

  Jeremy turned to Brian. “I guess the bottom line is, once we secure our hostages, we need to get that equipment back. It’s the only thing that can save Mayda now, right?”

  “Those guys out there are besting SWAT teams and knocking supply ships out of the sky. And you have—what—three well-armed Marines? Let me compute those odds. Wait, where’s my calculator…”

  “Granted, they’re armed to the teeth. We’ll just have to do it clandestinely.”

  “Out,” came Clarisse’s delayed reply on the speaker.

  “Clandestinely?”

  “Using that cool little sub of Troy’s you’ve all been slobbering about. Where is it?”

  “It should be in the warehouse dome hab.”

  “It should, but it’s not. I checked.”

  “Okay, Piers knows where it is.”

  “Where is Piers?”

  But Brian’s eyes were tracking something out the window: two people in pressure suits were dashing toward the ship. The comms officer popped the airlock just as the Master Sergeant came on the radio.

  “We’ve got a fire in the east habitats. I say again: fire in the east habs.”

  The suited duo burst through the airlock and unsealed their helmets. They were breathing hard. The closest one said, “Fire! We’ve got a breach of some kind and fire all over the place in th
e east end. It’s burning hot, like there’s methane streaming in. There’s no power in the fire suppression system, obviously. We’ve got the whole section sealed off.”

  “That’s bad,” Brian said. “Hope none of those beasts get in.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” the other one said.

  Jeremy gave Brian a withering scowl. “Let’s grab some fire extinguishers and worry about your creatures of the deep later.”

  (*)

  She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to stay sharp, in case an opportunity presented itself for escape. But Troy had filled that hypo with strong stuff, stuff that was lingering, and the closet was getting warm. And so dark.

  Her sister’s laughter filled the air. Even Janice’s laughter could be musical. The sky was that crystalline gray-blue that only Martian skies could be.

  “Abbeeeeee, come on!” Janice’s voice called. Across the little vale, beyond some rocks beside a little stream, lay the hulk of a great spaceship. Her father had told her that some of the old Soviet-era spacecraft were still unaccounted for. She had always wanted to find one. This one was much larger than she imagined an ancient robot would be. But she had never seen a Soviet spaceship anyway, so who could tell?

  The long, green-gray disk lay on its side at an angle. Its edge rose high into the sky. From a little port or opening on the rim, Janice looked down and waved. Abigail knew they were in trouble. She knew they would be found out.

  “What are you girls doing?” came the booming voice of Father. But there was no anger in it. There was amusement.

  Mom was there, too. “You girls come down, now. There is icky radioactive stuff in there, and germs.” She was laying a picnic on the sand by the stream.

  Abby realized that this quality, this air of entertained observer that her parents often adopted, was what she really missed. They were smart about grown-up things like Russian Mars landers and early settlements on the Red Planet, and they were always patient to take time out to explain new wonders. They always corrected gently, always shared a bit of wisdom, always turned fear away with kindness. That’s what she missed. Even now. Even in a darkened closet. Her eyes were open now. Her cheeks were wet.