Ice Moon 1 The Enceladus Mission

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Watson, display analysis of sample,” she commanded.

  The main display revealed a landscape populated by two different kinds of single-cell organisms. This was at the bottom of the sample container under high magnification. The creatures moved through the water by rhythmically changing the shape of their cellular walls. When Martin took the sample, he must have also picked up some inorganic material. The single-celled organisms moved to the tiny clump and remained there. Then they approached the center, where they paused again. They emitted a minuscule quantity of some material, the composition of which Watson had not yet analyzed.

  Martin noticed his hair stood on end. We are watching the metabolism of an alien form of life. Yet it was much more than that—the single-cell organisms, even though they were of different types, were working together, like ants. They all cooperated to build a miniature version of a column in the center of the sample container.

  Age of Questions, Pentahedron

  There is:

  The I.

  The not-I.

  The not-I.

  (Pause)

  The not-I’s.

  The all.

  The not-all.

  A reader.

  A reader of the I.

  A story.

  A story of the not-I.

  The Mar-Tin.

  The questions.

  The intentions.

  The feelings.

  The discrepancy.

  The curiosity.

  The curiosity.

  The curiosity.

  There is not:

  The I’s.

  There will be:

  Dreams.

  Change.

  Adaptation.

  Expansion.

  December 22, 2046, Valkyrie

  They had enough oxygen to last for another six or seven days. Martin tried not to imagine what problems still lay ahead of them. On paper, the plan looked like this: three or four days’ journey to the Tiger Stripes, one day for surfacing, half a day’s march to the lander, and one day in reserve. They would never again see the Forest of Columns. Martin hoped they had initiated something that would help them—even if it is just an entry in the archive of a strange being. They had watched these exo-creatures in the container until they died from lack of energy supply. This is a perfect example of symbiosis, maybe of a symbiosis with a hidden goal. Ants also seamlessly work together in a colony, but they just fulfill a purpose, the survival of the colony—they don’t have an intention. The task fulfilled by the single-celled organisms is not purposeful because it does not help them survive. Therefore, Martin thought, it must be intentional. Francesca agreed on that point. It had an intention that somebody or something had formulated, had come up with.

  How many such single-cell organisms might there be in the Enceladus Ocean? wondered Martin. The layer on the seabed was only a few millimeters thick, but it must contain at least 100 million single-celled creatures per square centimeter, according to their analysis. If one assumed an area of 100 by 100 kilometers, this would mean 10 to the power of 22, or 10,000 billion billion cells. What did my old biology professor say? A human being consists of 100 trillion cells. The Enceladus Ocean therefore contained as many cells as 100 million humans.

  What if all these single-cell creatures cooperate in a giant organism? What if my idea of the aliens that created the Forest of Columns is totally wrong? What if—like in humans—only one in a thousand of these primitive cells are involved in thinking functions? This being would have the mental capacity of 100 million humans.

  It would be a super-being of enormous intelligence. What would it be like? Martin tried to imagine it but failed. Could the being he imagined not also be particularly cruel? An immensely smart creature limited to the area of the Enceladus Ocean and having no counterpart... What kind of morals would it develop? Would it even need morals, if it was all alone in its world, the undisputed ruler? Did it have values, was it curious, and how would it react if, in all its omnipotence, it suddenly met others?

  These ideas discouraged him. Compared to this being, if it exists, we are nothing more than a fleeting disturbance. Maybe it does not even notice us. If it has existed for millions or billions of years, it will not think in terms of days. On the other hand, what is the new column but a form of reaction?

  He sighed. His musings contained too much speculation and imagination. He did not know anything about the physiology of such a super-being. The signal exchange between cells will use chemical-electrical means, as in the animals on Earth, though few there are more than two meters long. This being, though, must synchronize cells that are up to a hundred kilometers apart. Even if it is as clever as ten million humans, it must be thinking correspondingly slower.

  And how can it act? Is it capable of influencing its environment? Is it to blame for the broken optical cable, which had lasted so long?

  Martin shook his head again and again. If we had an unlimited amount of time, we might be able to establish contact by means of the columns. If they can decipher the symbols, we will have a common language.

  Lots of ‘ifs.’ And Martin and Francesca did not have enough time. They would most probably suffocate in a few days. Searching for a way out through the Stripes is probably a crazy idea. There, the water was ejected with enormous velocity. Down here, though, hardly any current could be measured. This meant there must be a kind of nozzle in one location, or several that accelerated the water coming out. He should have Watson calculate just how wide the gap probably was. Is it ten centimeters? Or even twenty? It definitely will not be enough for Valkyrie to fit through. He had unnecessarily put a bug in Francesca’s ear, even though he should have known better. It would be better if we concentrated on how to make our farewells as dignified as possible.

  It was early afternoon. The jets were creating a deep hum. Francesca had aimed the bow of Valkyrie 20 degrees upward. The vehicle was on course for the Tiger Stripes. He yawned.

  “Take a nap. I am still fit,” Francesca said. She is right. I can ask Watson later to develop a model of the geyser.

  Once again, Martin woke up shortly after lying down, even though he knew he was dreaming. He sat on his bed. The vehicle was empty, except for himself, his bed, and the control console, where Francesca sat looking forward. The walls were no longer covered in panels. All equipment was gone, including any technical apparatus. He was barefoot. He carefully climbed off his bed. His naked feet moved across bare steel panels.

  “Francesca,” he called, but the pilot did not react. He touched her shoulder and turned her seat around. Martin abruptly jerked back and gasped. He only saw Francesca’s clothing. Her body is... gone, no, it has been replaced by many small single-cell organisms, protozoa. He recognized this living mass on her cheeks, her forehead, and her chin. She opened her eyes, but her eyeballs were also made up of a mass of tiny cells that were constantly changing. She held out her hand, but he did not shake it because he knew it consisted of protozoa.

  “Phew,” he said. There was no answer, not even an echo. He knew all of this was just a product of his imagination, yet he could not get out of it.

  “I,” said Francesca, who no longer was Francesca, pointing at herself.

  “Not-I.” She pointed at him.

  “You,” he corrected her.

  “You,” was the answer.

  Francesca’s eyes were big, much bigger than usual, as if she had to record everything she saw.

  “Not-all.” She started to walk around in the vehicle and randomly pointed at things. “Not-all.”

  “I,” she said again. “All.”

  “How can I help you?” Martin asked. Francesca looked at him without comprehension.

  “How can I help you?” she repeated.

  “Yes, help. I help you, you help me.” He had once heard that language was not easier to comprehend if you simplified it. He tried it nevertheless. “I help you. You help I.”

  He had not had such a lucid dream in a long time. Can one go insane in a
dream? Francesca turned around again and bent over her console. She randomly touched letters, but without a plan.

  “It doesn’t work like this,” he said, and first typed in Francesca’s password, which was “Marchenko.” Well, if the administrator only knew. This is extremely careless, Martin thought. Francesca gazed curiously at the screen. Martin displayed landscapes there, photos of Earth, of Mars, of Saturn. It was bizarre. He was in a dream, but fully conscious, and he was showing pictures, like family snapshots, to a dream figure. He also pulled up the latest research, presented drawings of the two types of cells and their still mysterious organelles, diagrams of the ice moons, the geysers, and the ocean. Finally, he opened one of Francesca’s hidden folders and found a poem from a collection by Rilke.

  His gaze from passing metal bars

  has grown so weary that it cannot hold.

  To him there seem to be a thousand bars

  and yet behind those bars no world.

  This soft and supple step and sturdy pace,

  that in a tiny circle turns,

  is like a dance of strength around a place,

  in which a mighty will is stunned.

  Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides

  and opens quietly— An image enters it,

  through the tense stillness of the limbs it glides—

  and in the heart ceases to be.

  The false Francesca moved her lips, as if she was reading each word aloud. She opened the next file, another poem. Her fingers moved downward on the cursor keys. One poem after the other briefly appeared on the monitor, and then was already overwritten by the next. Francesca smiled, and even in this smile he could see the protozoa that formed her lips.

  Martin woke up startled and drenched in sweat. That dream was so crazy, but also so realistic I have to tell Francesca about it right away.

  “Those terms...” she said afterward, “did you hear those for the first time?”

  “Yes. No. Yesterday, in a different dream,” he said.

  “So? I often invent something in a dream.”

  “These are so... different. They do not belong to our world, and we do not belong in this one.”

  Francesca nodded. “And if they... want to communicate?”

  “Not they. It.” He explained to Francesca what he had concluded. “But telepathy, no, that doesn’t exist. That’s what you are alluding to, isn’t it? That is New Age nonsense.”

  “No, not telepathy, this helmet here,” she said, pointing at the neuro helmet, “this is no pseudo-scientific claptrap.”

  Martin nodded.

  “And if this existed at some larger scale? What would be necessary for it?” she asked.

  Martin was thinking, and then he approached the AI.

  “Watson, I need a profile from the South Pole and 50 kilometers northward, up to a depth of 20 kilometers. Temperature, pressure, all measured or probable phases. Where data is missing, try to measure again as well as you can.”

  It took the AI 42 minutes. A diagram of their surroundings with many colorfully shaded areas slowly appeared. After a quarter of an hour, Martin noticed something.

  “Take a look at this.” He pointed at the upper part of the ice layer. “Here we have normal ice. Ice Ih, with a Roman numeral one, and the ‘h’ stands for hexagonal. Each water molecule connects to four others. The result is a tetrahedron, like a shape made up of triangles. Most of the ice on Earth is frozen in this phase.”

  The middle part of the ice layer, which was relatively narrow, had different shading. “This is exciting,” Martin said. “I didn’t pay attention to that during our descent. Here we have a layer of Ice XI. It develops at low temperatures and high pressure. It’s not that rare, and has been found while drilling in the Antarctic. Ice XI has one special feature—it is ferroelectrical.”

  Martin zoomed in on this area a bit.

  “You can do a lot with ferroelectrical materials. You can think of them as permanent magnets, though they produce an electrical rather than a magnetic field. Or they amplify it.”

  He pointed at the neuro helmet.

  “This material even possesses a memory. It is pyro- and piezo-electric. This means you can create an electrical field through heat or pressure, or use an electrical field to create heat or pressure, which means generating mechanical work. Imagine that you are superhumanly clever and you have had this tool right in front of you for millions of years. Would you have learned to use it?”

  Francesca scratched her ear. “You can bet on it.”

  “Our fiber-optic cable ran directly through that area.”

  Martin zoomed closer, so that the position of the cable became visible.

  “You see, even if the ice layer is moved only slightly sideways, our cable will break.”

  “A lot of evidence, I would say,” Francesca commented.

  “But no final proof, that’s true. It doesn’t matter, though. I think another question is much more important. What does it want from us? Maybe, more poems by Rilke?”

  Francesca looked at him with flashing eyes. “Wrong,” she said. “The crucial question is still, ‘How do we get back home?’”

  Age of Questions, Hexahedron

  There is:

  The knowing and the not-knowing, in continuous increments.

  The not-I, a geometric representation of the I. A translation and distortion in several dimensions, yet still related.

  The joy of exchange, of knowledge, new knowledge that no age has brought forth until now.

  The hope of finding the meaning of the all.

  The understanding. They call themselves human, and they recognized the I.

  The I that watched the not-all.

  The knowledge of solitude, which until now had been impossible.

  Thousands of new words and concepts that fill memory assumed to be empty, as it is highly compressed.

  The desire to take and to give.

  There no longer is:

  Standstill.

  Solitude.

  Boredom.

  There no longer will be:

  The wrong concepts.

  December 23, 2046, Valkyrie

  This was the first night he did not shut an eye. Normally, Martin always managed to sleep, even if he knew he might die the next day. Yet when they needed him to go to sleep, it did not work. He had tried last night, again and again. He had attempted to fall asleep by not trying to, but his mind could not be tricked that easily. I have to talk to Francesca—maybe she has an idea. Will you still dream if you are knocked unconscious? Martin did not really want to sleep. I hope I can continue the conversation with the I. Of course, this could all be a trick played by my overwrought imagination, after all the stress. Watson had calculated a 20 percent probability for this explanation. Yet, I will at least have the feeling I can do something.

  Tomorrow they would reach the first Tiger Stripe. With some luck they would be in the spaceship by Christmas Eve, or close to it. True, their chances were extremely low. Martin had not even started to work out a solution for a forced march across the ice without enough oxygen. Maybe I should start focusing on that, instead of waiting for a dream?

  He turned over on his left side, and then on his right, trying to find the most comfortable position, but his mind was already wandering. Why do we have to fail here, after all the stress and boredom of the last twelve months? We could have just surrendered to the coldness of space, back then when the DFDs wouldn’t start up. On the other hand, Jiaying would not have survived then. This way, at least she will make it home.

  The others would wait for a while, even search for them, though he could not imagine how. Yet when it became obvious Valkyrie had run out of oxygen, they would have to accept the sad truth. Mission Control would order them to start the return journey. Jiaying will protest—at least I hope so—but will have to give in. And she will get over it. She is young, and she will be much admired on Earth, even if the mission is not a total success. Maybe NASA would build a monument for
Martin, or somebody would set up a scientific award named after him. He was worried about his mother. She has always insisted she would die before me. Once his father, an American radio astronomer, had left her, she began thinking about death. Will she forgive me for leaving before her? Or will she prefer to believe I am alive, as long as my corpse has not yet been found?

  That would never happen, though. The most important questions posed by the scientists back on Earth had been answered. There was primitive life on Enceladus, as everyone had assumed. It made no sense to spend a lot of money again in order to send a second mission, which would be just as risky. Maybe in 200 years, Martin thought, when technology is much more advanced. After all, there are much more exciting destinations. Enceladus is too inhospitable for humans. Titan, on the other hand, with its dense atmosphere and the extensive oceans of liquid methane, might at some time become a commercially viable target. Corporations could exploit its resources, while athletic tourists would be able to fly like birds through its dense atmosphere, using their own wings.

  Valkyrie, with the corpses of Francesca Rossi and Martin Neumaier, would rest at the bottom the dark ocean forever. Over time, the alkaline liquid would attack the steel hull, slowly, but surely—not in ten years, but in a thousand or ten thousand. In a million years researchers will be surprised at the high content of vanadium and chromium in the water. Will the ocean floor still be alive then? His thoughts faded.

  “I. All. Eternally there,” a voice said in his head. He had finally succeeded in falling asleep. Martin looked around. Everything looked like it had before. On Francesca’s control panel, a blue light was blinking in a soothing rhythm.