by Aaron Bunce
Shit, he thought, physically jumped, and then tried to hide it.
“Hey, guys.”
“I’ve got your back. You know Soraya and Anna do, too. Play it cool, be the nice guy you are, and he’ll come around. We’re a team!” Lex leaned in casually and whispered into his ear.
“We just finished up the last of that cable bundle,” Anna said, moving around the group, “which was the last of the wiring changes that Erik had to make, so I told him that we’d been talking about our upcoming decision.”
“Also, that we are on a time crunch but need to work together. That we all essentially want the same thing,” Soraya said, stepping up next to Erik.
Jacoby recognized what they were doing–propping him up into a position to pull the group back together again. So, no pressure.
“Awesome. Hey, Erik, I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done. You’ve sacrificed more than anyone to give us a chance. I just want you to know that every person on the Betty appreciates you for it.”
“Yeah? That’s nice.” Erik nodded, stopping only to pull his insulated cap back down over his ears. The tip of his nose was red, his blue-gray lips and foggy breath further evidence of how cold their living conditions had become. A quick glance around their group confirmed that only Shane was the only other person showing outward signs of the cold. Anna and the others weren’t bundled up, nor did they look uncomfortable. No wonder Erik fell apart. Not only had he done the lion’s share of the labor, but he did it at an obvious biological disadvantage.
Poole moved inside his head then, the slimy, slithering motion blurring his vision for a moment. Jacoby reached up and cradled his head, Lex’s hands catching him as his legs went weak. The group crowded in, their voices and faces showcasing ample concern. But it was their ghostly outlines that caught his attention. They gained substance for a moment, backlighting their physical double’s outline, as if they were smashing together into one. All except Erik. The young man seemed to be fading, blurring into the shadows around him.
“I’m okay. S-S-Sorry. I think it will be a while before my head is back to normal. Whatever normal is.
“Anna told me about the receiver and how we might be able to pick up the Russian station’s beacon. That’s good right? I mean, that’s got to be a pretty good indicator that there’s people down there waiting for us with hot food, soft bunks, and long-range coms,” Jacoby said, forcing his most natural smile into place. He started with the things he’d been missing but realized that the young man was likely craving some different creature comforts…beyond the obvious safety and security they had been lacking.
“A nice hot shower and soft blanket has got to feel awesome right about now. I don’t know much about Russian food, but it’s got to be better than freeze-dried Salisbury steak and that stuff labeled ‘Stir-Fried Style Meat Substitute and Vegetables’. I know things have been tense between all of us so far, and I’ve been down and out for most of it, but I’m here to help any way I can the rest of the way. Whatever it takes to get us safely to Titan.”
Erik didn’t perk at the mention of a shower, but he did visible cringe at the mention of the stir fry meals, which constituted the bulk of their remaining food.
“It makes the most sense, man. I get it,” Erik said, suddenly, and then chuckled.
“You do?” Jacoby asked, unable to hide his surprise.
“Yeah. I do. It’s in the computer. That station has what we need…an FTL coms array to contact the others. It’s all down there. I see it now. I didn’t before. So, yeah man, I hear it.”
“You were dead set against going down there before, why the sudden…?” Lana started to ask, but Anna nudged her hard with an elbow.
“That’s perfect. Just let me know what we can do to help get everything ready. I mean calculations or…”
“Actually, that reminds me. Hold onto something for a minute,” Erik said and moved between Anna and Shane. He wove around the control consoles, dropped into the fore pilot’s seat. “Okay. We’re coming up and over.”
Jacoby grabbed onto the wall just as the thrusters fired. Lex hooked his arm and pulled close as the Betty shifted, her abused superstructure groaning around them. The gravity plating held his feet while the ship’s sudden rotation played hell with his equilibrium. His stomach lurched–the sensation of motion without view of the horizon. He’d learned long ago that it was the worst kind of motion sickness.
More thrusters fired, the sound of the violently expelled propellant deadened by the thick hull. Then their rotation slowed, and with one final thruster fire, Jacoby’s stomach found its equipoise again.
“What are you doing? We still had two deceleration pulses left to drop to minimum safe entry speed. Or are you trying to skip us off and around? Is this your slingshot…?” Lana argued.
“Lana!” Anna snapped.
Jacoby stepped forward between the two, trying to cut them off before their newfound cooperation fell apart again.
“That’s just it,” Erik said, turning in the seat. He did not look mad, however, just wore that relatively content half-smile. Hell, Jacoby thought he almost looked stoned. “You kept yelling at me about the damage to the manifolds, so I got to thinking. I already had the pulse engine wired in on that manual trigger, so I went in and dialed our fuel in-feed rate way back from the reaction chamber, then fiddled with the ejection valves. It turns out, you can set a low burn, and as long as the exhaust rate doesn’t exceed the fuel intake, the pulse engine will function more like a chemical booster. I’ve been slow burning us for hours now, doing in that time what two, maybe even three regular pulses would have accomplished. We’re actually below optimal entry velocity now.”
“Wait, but that would mean…the fuel table would have to…” Lana stammered. Erik held her large data point tablet up over his head, which she promptly grabbed and started scrolling.
“This is amazing. How…when did…? This idea just came to you and you did it all by yourself?” Lana asked, the screen’s glowing text reflecting in her eyes.
“When he woke up and you finally stopped yelling at me. The idea just came to me. The rest was just setting the manual valves, and since we’d already bypassed all the control computers, it took a manual ignition trip to start the burn and close the valve off the chamber to stop it. Oh, heh, check this out,” Erik said, and flipped a switch on the seat’s console.
Heavy metal locks thudded around them, the whine of hydraulic motors following, and for the first time since Jacoby had boarded the tug, the shutters started to open. Space appeared beyond the curved windows, the black pockmarked by a sea of distant, glowing stars and a colossal, ringed gas giant directly before them.
“Saturn. It is so close!”
Jacoby moved forward, Lex on one side and Anna coming up on the other. They converged behind Erik and stared out into the back. The massive planet was larger and closer than he’d ever seen before–even the holo-trainings. The giant rotated, its swirling gaseous cloud cover striped with beautiful, but subdued stripes of blue, reds, and tan.
“Thirty-six hours of math with only a tablet to check my calculations, but it is all correct. I know it, I feel it. We don’t have a computer to auto-plot a course line and enhance the view, but if you look right here,” the technician said, pushing out of his seat and using his hand to point out a patch of dark space to Saturn’s right.
“That is…” Jacoby started to say.
“It’ll be coming out of Saturn’s shadow any minute, so wait for it.”
They stood still, clustered together, watching the darkness. All except Lana. She moved up to Erik’s left and opened a panel. She flipped a few switches and turned a dial, a small speaker crackling in response. A blue screen glowed to life, next to a wired mic handset. A meter started to scroll from left to right, moving quickly through a sizable list of numbers.
“Scanning all frequencies,” Lana said, and perched cat-like onto the hand rest. Jacoby eyed the seat warily, silently wondering if he’d ev
en left a mark when it nearly caved his head in.
“There…there she is!” Erik shouted, and jumped out of his seat.
The leading edge of a massive, dark sphere materialized out of the void to their right, light just kissing its outline and slowly wrapping its bulk.
“Holy shit,” Soraya breathed. “We’ve spent all this time in the dark. It felt like we weren’t going anywhere. Like we weren’t moving. And I’ll be the first to admit, I didn’t think we’d ever get here. But there it is.”
Erik nodded, pulling his hat down again. “Eight hours and four minutes. That’s it. Then we’re kissing Titan’s upper atmosphere.”
Start the Countdown
-8:02 Until Entry
Their stunned silence quickly wore off. Lex was the first to holler, then Soraya. In short order, everyone was jumping around the Betty’s small bridge, giving high fives and hugging.
Jacoby squeezed Soraya, the noise and contact still a little much for his throbbing head. She pulled away, and before he knew what happened, Lana jumped in and threw her arms around him.
A trickle of biofeedback hit him, the spark from their skin to skin contact much more subdued than he’d felt before. She felt nothing like Anna, Lex, or Soraya, but more combustive, spontaneous, and in a way, out of control. He picked up on a dozen or more urges or compulsions, each one pulling in the opposite direction of the others. He wondered how it didn’t all pull her apart inside.
“This is good! This is good!” she gasped, squeezed him until his ribs ached, and finally let go. “We got here. Yes! First step down. Now we find that beacon. This is good! So good!”
She pulled away, her eyes shining, then came forward, grabbed his cheeks, and smashed her lips into his. Lana pulled away after a moment, whooped loudly, and screamed, “This is good!”
“Be right back,” Lex yelled and ducked out into the galley.
“It’s green! Well, I guess, kind of bluish green. It doesn’t really look like a moon at all, does it,” Soraya said, drawing his attention forward again.
Jacoby marveled at the moon as the last of its bulk slid out of the darkness. It wasn’t anything like he’d envisioned. Nothing like Earth’s moon, that is, which looked rocky and gray. Titan looked accommodating in comparison, with a hazy atmosphere, churning clouds, and even what looked like standing water.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Erik asked, gazing out the window. “Fourteen percent of Earth’s gravity. Don’t jump or you might not come down for a while. Atmosphere is thick, too…one hundred and fifty percent ambient pressure at ground level. So, we won’t need pressure suits.”
“We won’t need suits? That’s incredible. Why haven’t they colonized it if the conditions are so hospitable,” Soraya asked.
Erik laughed, his shoulders not moving with the sound. “Hardly hospitable. Compared to the moon, yes. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen with trace levels of methane and other non-breathable gases. It’s cold, too. Almost negative three hundred degrees on the sunny side.”
Jacoby moved forward for a better look but froze as he approached Erik. The technician was leaning forward now, practically laying on the console and talking quietly to himself.
“…I hear you. I feel you. You are so close now. I’m almost there.”
Awkwardly, Jacoby hung mid-step and moved to turn and walk away, but the young man startled and flipped around in the seat.
“Jacoby.” Erik said his name, but not as a question or to transition into a conversation. It looked and felt like he was simply identifying him.
“Hey, I just wanted to grab a closer look. It’s really something, heh?”
Erik stared at him for a long moment–face impassive and eyes glassy. Then his odd smile returned, and he nodded. “Yeah. She really is, isn’t she?”
“Okay. Everyone, huddle up!” Lex called, reemerging from the galley.
Jacoby turned and moved away, grateful for the distraction.
“Which got there?” Lana asked, bouncing forward with almost teen-like energy.
“We had this little tradition in my unit. When we were going on deployment, right before we disembarked, we’d raid the galley. But it wasn’t to steal the stuff we really wanted. Nope!” she said, and dropped a steaming tray into Lana’s hands first. “You see, we would be without the stuff we really liked for a while, so we grabbed the food we hated the most. It became a rite of passage for the boots–kind of a baptism of fire, I guess. The saltier members of the group, the ones that introduced it to me, said it helped them to not dwell on all the things they’d be living without. I can see that, but for it was more about the camaraderie. The embracing the ‘suck’ together.”
She finished distributing the trays of food, extending Jacoby’s last with a smirk and a wink.
“Ahh. I got the faux turkey and vegetables. The texture in this one makes me gag,” Lana argued.
“Here, I got chicken stir fry. Trade me,” Soraya said, jumping up and holding her tray out.
Jacoby slid into an empty seat and started eating his meal. He’d gotten lucky, or maybe Lex showed him a little favor. His tray was sesame beef, and in the hierarchy of crappy meals, it actually ranked as one of the better options.
They sat together and ate, the conversations revolving around how bad their food was, but usually led to fun challenges. His favorite was Lex challenging Lana to eat at least four bites without talking, gagging, or fidgeting. She’d struggled through three bites and was almost home free before she failed.
They continued for some time, easily transitioning from how bad their food was, to what they ‘missed most’, what they would ‘sell everything for a bite of’, and his favorite, a game of ‘would you rather’ based off a chunk of rather unsavory looking something left in the bottom of Soraya’s tray.
He watched Lex dangle the bite above her mouth on four different occasions, the others chanting her name and yelling encouragements. And yet, despite her claim to be able to eat anything, she folded.
“Buh-Buh-Buh, chicken!” Soraya yelled, snorting and flapping her arms.
An alarm sounded and the entire group practically fell out of their seats in their haste to turn. But the receiver was still scrolling endlessly through frequencies.
“I’m sorry, that’s me,” Erik called, and held up the data point. “I have to take these to the…” The technician’s voice faded as he rolled out of his seat and started to fumble with a box of electronics. “Hey, Shane. This is kind of heavy. Can you help me carry it to the back?”
“I can help with that…” Jacoby offered, but the big man waved him off.
“It’s okay. I got this, Jacoby. You take it easy. I’ll help him with this stuff. You guys stay up here and keep eyes and ears on that receiver.”
“Yeah. We’ll do that,” Lex said, then held her tray out as he moved to walk by. “Here, eat this…lump. You’ll need the energy.”
Shane pushed the tray away, declining graciously, but then met Jacoby’s gaze and nodded. He didn’t need Poole’s insight or biofeedback from alien microbes to understand. Shane saw this as his opportunity to repair his relationship with the young man, perhaps make amends to his earlier heavy-handed approach.
Lex threw the inedible morsel at their backs as the two men disappeared into the dim galley and then the aft maintenance passage.
“Okay. Who’s up for round two?” she asked, after turning. “God, I could seriously go for a cup of hot coffee right now. Even cold coffee.”
“Here, instead of throwing food and making this place an even bigger mess, why don’t you help me get rid of these trays,” Soraya said, stretching to kick Lex’s feet off the back of the seat in front of her.
“Dick move, ‘corn cakes’,” Lex growled.
“Come on, Red, you can multitask and bellyache about all the things you want but can’t have while doing something productive.”
-6:52 Until Entry
They cleaned up the Betty’s bridge and settled in, alternately watching the recei
ver as it scanned the frequencies, and the dark windows. Time trickled on, Titan dominating more of their view forward.
The high from seeing their destination wore off, the other, pressing concerns, having been temporarily swept under the rug, crawled back out in force.
“Okay, so who else is thinking about atmospheric entry now? Looking at the big ball of atmosphere speeding our way, I’m starting to like, I don’t know, doubt everything,” Lana said. Hearing her openly doubt their plan did little to sooth Jacoby’s nerves.
“Should we be worried?” Soraya asked. Poole appeared suddenly, his feet hitting the deck between them with an audible clatter.
“…it’s necessary. So, yeah. The answer is yes? See, I’m paying attention. You know, being respectful.”
“What is he talking about?” Lana asked.
“Lana-Banana, don’t start with me right now. I’m seriously not in the mood. Let daddy talk without interrupting.”
“She’s not wrong, Poole. What were you trying to say? It’s like you started talking before you appeared. You cut yourself off,” Jacoby said.
“No. Seriously?”
“Yup,” they all responded in unison.
“Okay, that is super creepy. Like quad-jinxsies,” Soraya laughed.
“Whatever. Listen, this is actually really important. Do I have your permission…” Poole started to say, almost gagging on the words, “to filter more microbes into your body? I have a running hypothesis that I really freaking hate. Like loathe, but I’m struggling to put it all together. The inside of your head is like a butcher shop’s gut bin after it’s sat out in the sun all day.”
“I thought you already were. Is that why everything still hurts? Why you keep popping in and out randomly?”
“Well, no. I mean it’s strawberry pants on a Gecko’s train ride, my rambunctious philistine. And after you all corn breaded me in the vroom room and read me the riot act about personal space, I haven’t changed a thing. Wait.”
