On the Shores of Titan's Farthest Sea

by Michael Carroll

  50. Lost Ticket Home

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  Piers and Abby had made it 20 meters down the hallway before Piers shot a hole in the roof. “Good grief!” he cried. “How do we turn this thing off?”

  Abby reached carefully for the gun. “Why don’t I just take care of this,” she said, jamming it into the back of her waistband.

  “Good idea.” Piers let out a relaxed sigh.

  “What’s the geology hammer for?”

  He wagged it at her. “I know how to use one of these.”

  “Ah, I see,” she grinned.

  “You’ll need an environment suit. The boat’s this way.”

  Piers led her down a corridor to a cramped, dimly lit room next to an airlock. The walls were made of some kind of cast metal, yellow paint peeling from their sides. Large bolts protruded from the seals, more H. G. Wells than modern interplanetary. Abby tapped the side. It gave a hollow ping. “Old school.”

  “Yeah, they must have brought it in from something else, an old cargo transport or derelict orbital; just plopped it here for their exit. This place has been thrown together in a real hodgepodge, but it works. Why don’t you grab one of those?” Piers gestured to a row of ghostly figures standing at attention along the wall. The environment suits were all of one piece, with the helmets attached at the shoulders as if they were a row of bodies staring straight ahead. Abby slid into one as Piers picked up a helmet from the floor. “Just where I left it,” he marveled. “Channel five, right?”

  Abby switched her suit’s communication channel to Piers’ and sealed the suit. In moments, Piers had secured the door and pumped the airlock up. They stepped out into Titan’s midday twilight.

  Abby could almost feel the fresh breeze on her face (although it would not have felt nearly as refreshing as she imagined). She could hear the gurgling slosh of the methane swells as they washed against the rugged shoreline ahead. Sometimes she almost expected the cry of seagulls overhead. It was good to be outside again.

  “This way,” Piers said. He led them along a ledge just 2 meters above the lapping waves. The cliff face was steep here, with no sign of a beach or ridge at surf’s edge.

  “So Abigail, may I ask you a question?”

  “’Course,” she huffed, stepping carefully along the frozen shelf.

  “Those guys were calling the head honcho ‘Montenegro,’ who we have all obviously heard of before, and then there was that discussion about ‘Sable.’ You weren’t talking about Demian Sable, were you? Ishtar terrorist Sable? That Sable?”

  “They appear to be one and the same.”

  Piers stopped and did an about-face. “Well that brings up a host of questions. How did he get out here? How did he escape? What’s he got to do with Kevin and who was—”

  Abby held up her hand. “I don’t know even a small percentage of the answers. I have a few questions of my own, as you can imagine. But this is probably not the time for distractions. I’m sure somebody knows we’re gone by now.”

  “Yes, quite. Sorry. This way.”

  As they rounded a corner, Piers stopped in his tracks.

  “What?” Abby asked.

  “It’s gone. The Zodiac. This is where I left it. I know it is. There’s a mark on the cliff face here. But it’s gone.”

  “Crrrap.”

  “Just what I was thinking.”

  Abby shoved her hands on her hips. “We’ve got to go back.”

  “Back where? You can’t want to go back into Ali Baba’s den of thieves, surely?”

  Abby turned around to take the lead. “We can’t swim. Besides, I know a shortcut to the dock. They’ve got an entire airlock bay, a real nice set-up. There must be something we can use in there.”

  “Yeah, sure. Sounds just like the strategic sort of place where I’d post a few guards.”

  “Good thing there’s two of us.”

  Abby passed the airlock Piers had led them through earlier and took them on a circuitous route farther along the shore. The cliff face became a gentle slope and finally crumbled into a stony beach. The walk took them nearly ten minutes of precious time, but it was worth it. The airlock adjacent to the bay was unlocked. They passed through it into a large pool ringed with a catwalk. No guards were in sight. In the methane bath, two small inflatables bobbed on tethers near Troy’s submersible.

  “There it is,” Piers said happily, pointing to his small boat.

  “We don’t need no stinkin’ inflatable.” Abby pointed across the pool. “Let’s get in that beauty.”

  Piers knew how to sail an inflatable. He had no clue as to the workings of a complex vessel like the one Abby headed for. The thing looked like the latest interplanetary yacht.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he muttered.

  Piers climbed aboard the top of the shining blue vehicle, spun the wheel and pulled the hatch open. Abby made her way to the huge bay doors. The panel’s red letters spelled out the word SECURED. She punched a sequence to open the doors.

  SECURED AT TERMINAL

  She tried another set of commands. This time, the words flashed.

  SECURED AT TERMINAL

  “Nice,” she mumbled.

  “What?” Piers said in her headset.

  “The doors are secured remotely. Somewhere else. And we know where that somewhere is.”

  Piers popped his head out of the blue hatch. “What can I do?”

  “You wait up front in the cockpit, in the left seat. Turn on every switch you can find on the far left console—not the center left one, the far left one. Got it?”

  “Got it.” He fixed her with his eyes. “What are you going to do, Abigail?”

  “Find Sable so we can disable this security stuff and open this bay.”

  “But Abby, just what are you going to do, if you know what I mean. To Sable?”

  “You just get the sub warmed up and wait for me.”

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_51

  51. Unsettling Revelations

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  Doc Mason held out a patch to Brian. She looked from him to Jeremy. “Either of you need any pain meds?”

  Brian took one, but Jeremy shook his head. The doc frowned and stuck out her lower lip momentarily. “Hmm. I’ve been passing these things out like candy around here. It’s been a regular epidemic. Why don’t you have a headache?”

  “He’s lacking some other symptoms, too,” Brian said.

  Jeremy put in, “Like none of us have seen any of those sea monsters. Not the Marines, and not me. More importantly, both Abigail and Piers seem free of these symptoms that seem to be the latest rage around here.”

  Mason looked alarmed. She turned to Jeremy, wide-eyed. “What are you talking about?”

  Jeremy stepped to Mason’s side and took her hand. “Doc, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Their eyes met as Jeremy sat her down in a chair next to him.

  “Look, Doc. I think we’ve got some serious hallucinations going on here. Group hallucinations. Is that possible?”

  Doc leaned over and held her chin in her hands. “Folie a plusieurs, yes.”

  “I love it when you speak German,” Jeremy quipped.

  “French. Folie a plusieurs, the madness of many.” She was thinking now, the panic melting into an intellectual distraction as she stared out the window. “I suppose it is possible. It’s happened before, historically.”

  Brian leaned in. “What was that thing you said? The French thing?”

  Mason seemed to awaken from a coma. “Yes, yes. Folie a plusieurs refers to mass hallucination. It really has more to do with a shared psychosis. A delusion is transferred from some individual who is typically charismatic, a leader type, to someone who is in a subservient role, someone with a weaker personality, a follower. It’s
most common in situations where the subjects are physically isolated, or socially isolated, with limited outside contact.”

  Jeremy warmed to the idea. “Like an outpost on Titan cut off from outside communication? Like that?”

  “Exactly. There was this case—a more limited one that they call folie à deux—”

  “Madness of two,” Jeremy offered.

  “See? You do speak some French. This event involved a woman and her husband. The couple’s folie à deux presented as shared delusions of harassment. As I remember it, the couple believed that people were sneaking into their house, spreading dust around and doing something to their shoes, of all things.”

  “Great excuse for not doing the house cleaning, I guess,” Brian said.

  Doc Mason sighed like a martyr. “The point is, the idea was shared between them.”

  “So, to be clear,” Jeremy said, “you think something like that might be going on here? Someone has a vision or hallucination or something, and it gets caught by others?”

  “What we’ve got here is on a scale that nobody’s seen before, to my knowledge. I’m no psychiatrist, but I could do some digging…”

  Jeremy pushed the point. “And when you think about it, rationally, isn’t it more likely that those sea monsters everyone is seeing are merely visions, shared mirages of some kind, rather than extant life coming up from the ocean a hundred klicks below our feet?”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  She was staring at the floor now, but Jeremy called her back into focus. “But I haven’t seen them, nor has Abby, nor has Piers. Why do you suppose that is, Doc Mason? Can you be thinking about that little problem for us?”

  “Yes, I suppose I could.”

  “Good, because I think it might be very, very important.”

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_52

  52. Retribution

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  Abby peered down the long, rough-hewn corridor, feeling like Dorothy in the wizard’s palace. It was a very long way to Demian Sable’s lair, but she had a plan, and all it required was a simple architectural feature: an extra door. Reaching behind her, she reassured herself that the pulse weapon was still in her waistband. A man and woman rounded the corner. She kept walking, and so did they. Act natural. Just act natural.

  She passed the rooms filled with countless arms shipments. These people weren’t interested in the next hijacking; they were preparing for an invasion on a global scale.

  She approached the galley, but passed it in hopes of finding another way into that little room next to Sable’s. She passed two hatches, both locked and both apparently giving access to storage or equipment. Further down, another door looked far more promising. She placed her hand on the door, gently grasping the handle, but paused.

  What was best, the element of surprise? Stealth? Overpowering shock and awe? After a moment’s deliberation, she knocked lightly. There was only silence. She tried the handle. The door opened easily. She peeked in through the narrow crack. Only one person stood in the room, and he was looking through the side doorway into Sable’s compartment. She could hear Sable ranting about something.

  “Get in here. Now. And close that door.”

  The man disappeared, closing the door behind him. Abby had the room to herself. She stepped in, closing the hall door softly behind her. Gun drawn, she dashed to the central monitor. It had touch keys, but another set on the arm of the chair looked more likely. She studied the pad, found what she wanted, and keyed in a command to unlock the bay. Sable was changing direction in the next room. She lurched around the chair and hid in a small space between the console and the wall. It was a lousy place to hide. She could hear Sable hollering.

  “I’m surrounded by incompetents! Clark, I thought you were supposed to be organizing our invasion of Mayda. Stiles, go help him. You, Darrow is it? What kind of security guru are you? Get out. And find that girl!”

  After a few moments of shuffling feet and murmuring voices, the room fell silent. Sable muttered something about doing everything himself. He slammed the hatch that led to the galley, but she could hear him in there still, busily moving around. Abby got up and stepped over to the hall door. She opened it, checked to make sure it was clear outside, and waited in the corridor, listening. Inside, the inner door opened and she heard the chair in front of the console squeak. Now Sable was in the room with all the screens, undoubtedly searching the system for her.

  She opened the door slowly, gently let it latch shut, and stood behind Sable at a discreet distance, her gun steady and aimed at his back. The back of Demian Sable. She thought about that. There he sat, the source of pain, loss and hardship for a host of people across the entire planetary system. The inspiration behind Ishtar, a group that had destroyed so much beauty and life and culture on a number of worlds. How many families had he obliterated? Hers was a microcosm of so many. And what justice had he seen? There he sat, punching keys, calling orders, executing his plans. Someone should put an end to it. Someone could. One person could. Once and for all. The justice system had had its chance, and it had failed. She took in a deep breath to steady herself.

  Sable’s left hand rested on the tabletop, balled into a red fist. His right hand tapped a key. On the screens before him, a series of scenes marched through like a deck of playing cards. Armory One, Armory Two, Galley, Docking Bay, Airlock One, Two, Three, Electrical Room…

  On the left monitor, the bay appeared again, and this time, Piers stood atop the sub, clearly looking around. “Ahh, got you,” Sable said.

  Abby said, “I don’t think he’s who you’re really looking for, though, is he?”

  Sable the terrorist, Montenegro the ersatz pirate, spun in his chair to face her. She aimed her weapon at the left screen. “You might want to lean to your right just a bit.” She fired. The monitor splintered against the wall.

  “Put that thing down!”

  “Still giving orders, are we?” she said in a coy voice. “Was it you that gave the order to kill Kevin Nordsmitt?”

  “Who?”

  “Pitiful. You don’t even know his name. Turn around. Face the screens. Sit up straight.”

  He did. She fired at the right screen. It disintegrated into powder.

  “Just how do you propose to leave this place without someone stopping you?” Sable said, keeping his eyes on the center screen, the only one left.

  “Well, have a look at that monitor in front of you, Demian. See all those people swarming? They aren’t swarming this way. They’re doing just what you asked: preparing for an invasion. That’s what it is, isn’t it? I’d say they’re a bit distracted, wouldn’t you? They look as organized as bees after someone’s hit their hive with a baseball bat.”

  “You don’t have a chance of escape, and I am your only chance of survival here. I think you should just—”

  “Demian Sable, you gave up the right to ask anything of me twelve years ago. You took my parents and stole the lives of a hundred families.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. It was simply a strategic operation as means to an end.” He wasn’t even denying his involvement. This scum needed to be eradicated. But something within her, something deep inside, objected. Still…

  “And now you sit here, with all those people out there waiting to do your bidding. I guess Morrow did a lot to ‘reform’ you, didn’t it?”

  “It did help me accomplish a few things.”

  “You don’t get to accomplish anything else. Scoot over.” She fired at the central screen. It vanished in a cloud of powder and shards.

  “I had other goals in mind.” Sable spoke faster now. “I was certainly not responsible for—”

  “Look, you cannot possibly pull the ‘just following orders’ card at this late date. You were the one giving the orders.”

  There were no monitors
left to shoot. She fired one last time.

  © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

  Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_53

  53. Bon Voyage

  Michael Carroll1

  (1)Littleton, CO, USA

  Troy’s fancy little sub seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. Where could she be? Piers wiped his palms on his knees, swiveling his chair from side to side as he waited. He stood and paced as far as the cramped quarters would allow. Outside, he heard the door to the bay open. That was good. Then he heard voices. That was bad.

  Piers stood in the upper platform and cracked the hatch. He peered out. Two people had come into the bay. One he had never seen, a large, burly man who looked like a bouncer from a pub he knew in Cornwall. The other was all too familiar to him: Troy Fels. It was Troy who seemed to be doing the talking.

  “So I say to this pencil-pusher, ‘Got any electrons in there?’ and he looks at me like I’ve got monkeys crawling out of my nose, so I left and that was that. Amazing, or what?”

  “Yah, amazing,” the other said with little enthusiasm.

  There were only two of them. When Abby got back, the odds would be even, and they would have the element of surprise on their side. How could he be ready? Where had he left that geology hammer? Sweat dribbled into his eye. He blinked it away.

  He stepped down onto the main deck again and looked around. It was all so clean, so pristine. So…useless. He scurried back to the storage closet and found a heavy wrench-like thing. Carrying it back up, he peered out again. He could see the bouncer, but where was Troy? Sounds echoed from somewhere across the room. The two had split up. That would make things more difficult. He had to be ready to spring into action. He stepped backward to get a better view. His foot met empty air. The rest of his body quickly followed suit.