Geralt gave him the carabiner, which he took in both hands and hooked to the tank. The cable that the carabiner was attached to was surprisingly thin.
He pointed to the thin cable. “Are you sure that’s strong enough? The tank’s very heavy. Maybe we should start with the rover?”
“No, Boris, this way will be better. Jenna swears that the cable will bear the weight.”
“You’re a little skeptical, too?”
“Not anymore. If Jenna says it’s okay, then it’s okay.”
“Okay then.” If Geralt believed her, then he should believe her even more. “Anna, Jenna, can you hear us?”
“Loud and clear.”
“The tank’s attached to the cable.”
“Good. We’ll pull it up.”
Boris looked up at the spaceship. The terrace had to be about 20 meters above them, where he knew the two women must be, ready to hoist the tank. It would be better not to give them any advice. The two women would manage. The tank slid forward a bit toward the ship. Then one end raised into the air. The back slid farther forward. The tank stopped, and then it was hanging in the air.
Anna and Jenna were raising it as smoothly as possible to keep the cable from starting to swing. That was the only danger—if the tank began swaying back and forth, it might smash into the ship. There was nothing else that could get in the way.
“Come on. We can start getting the rover ready,” Geralt said.
Boris walked around the vehicle and inspected all the flaps and compartments. Why did they need the rover onboard? Were they expecting to drive around on the asteroid with it? If he remembered correctly, the rock was only 30 kilometers across. If that were the case, it wouldn’t even have enough gravity to allow a rolling rover to operate correctly. They would need a vehicle with thrusters and jet nozzles instead. They’d have to come up with some other plan.
“Everything shut tight?” Geralt asked.
“Yes, all flaps are fastened securely.”
“Thanks.” Geralt drove the rover a little closer to the ship, but he left the area directly below the suspended tank free for now. He was even marking a circle around the area as Boris walked up to him.
“So, it doesn’t look like you trust that cable completely, or why mark off that space?” asked Boris.
“I... uh... A small stone could come loose from the undercarriage and smash into my helmet from twenty meters up. That’d be the end of me.”
Ha! A clever response. No wonder Geralt was a scientist. And as an archeologist, he knew his stones.
Boris looked up. It looked as if the tank was lifting itself on the cable. The women were managing their job quite well.
He reached the storage room where the vehicles were just as Anna and Jenna were closing the large hatch. The hoist had already been secured in its spot close to the entrance. First they secured the tank with the cable, then the rover. The ship’s designers had thought of everything. There were recessed mounting points in the floor they could use to tie down the cable. Geralt helped him pull the cables taut.
Then they all gathered in the command center. Jenna had taken off her spacesuit and was sitting in the commander’s center seat. She had already pulled the associated console close to her. “Now I need all of you to help me,” she said.
“Assuming everything works right away, and the ship is able to launch. Are we all prepared to do that right now?” Geralt asked.
“The tank’s online. We have food, water, and oxygen. We know the coordinates of our destination. What more do we need?” Anna asked.
“I can’t think of anything. The hatch and the entrance are closed,” Boris said.
“The only unknown is that of fuel, but I’m guessing only the control console will be able to answer that for us,” Jenna said.
“Then there’s no reason to wait,” Geralt said.
“What should I do?”
“Press a button,” Boris and Geralt answered in unison.
With great solemnity, Jenna pressed one of the buttons at the edge of the console. As expected, the screen lit up. Like the communications console, it displayed six fields that each had symbols and text. The three fields in the top row were easy enough to decipher. From left to right they saw a schematic of the solar system, a ship with a jet of exhaust coming out the back, and a ship entering orbit around a planet. The symbols in the bottom row didn’t make as much sense. They probably represented three of the spaceship’s subsystems. But they didn’t know how the ship was constructed, so it was difficult to conclude what they might be.
“I think we can ignore the buttons on the bottom for now,” Geralt said. “I’d say they’re probably used for diagnostics on subsystems.”
“Let’s hope we won’t need them,” Boris said.
“On the top, it looks to me that we have destination entry, launch and landing, and deceleration for entering orbit. What do you guys think?”
“That’s what I’d say, too,” Anna said.
“Now, of course, there’s the question of whether there’s a prescribed sequence. Launch first, then enter the destination? Or vice versa?”
“We can’t ask the founders anymore, Geralt, so it looks like you’ll have to tell us,” Boris replied.
“The safer way would probably be to enter the destination first. And most humans read from left to right. So, I’d say to tap the symbol on the left, Jenna.”
She followed Geralt’s suggestion, but all that happened was an annoying buzz, and the symbol shook back and forth on the screen.
“I guess it must be the other way, then,” Geralt said. “So, press the middle symbol.”
They sat cluelessly in front of their ancestors’ technology as if they were a group of cavemen in front of a modern rover. Wasn’t that sad? Why hadn’t the founders passed on this part of their knowledge? A professional launch sequence probably looked much different—first they would inspect every system, locate and correct all errors, and only then issue the launch command. But they had no choice but to make it up as they went along, using an extremely abbreviated order. Hopefully that wouldn’t lead to their doom.
Jenna appeared to be thinking something similar, because she moved her finger toward the middle symbol very slowly. Finally, her bare, delicate finger touched the screen. She immediately pulled it back and slid her hands under her thighs. It must’ve been freezing for her fingers in here.
The display on the screen changed. Now they could see a picture of the spaceship, greatly simplified and strangely compressed. The different areas were highlighted in different colors. Most of them were green, including the propulsion units in the rear, and also the tanks. However, in the bottom part of the ship were a few yellow- and orange-colored areas.
“It’s nice that the founders used the color spectrum green to red,” Geralt explained, “to represent danger. Orange would then mean something like ‘borderline OK.’”
“What if orange-colored areas indicate systems that are just about to fail?” Anna asked.
“Boris and I were down there.”
Jenna pointed to the orange-colored area. “That represents the garden. Do you see? It corresponds to the bottom level. It’s wildly overgrown and probably questionable from a technical point of view. But that shouldn’t affect our ability to launch.”
“Yellow might be the locked storage room. Maybe the system simply doesn’t have information about it,” Boris observed.
“But here at the top, we also have a yellow area,” Anna said.
“That must be the command center,” Geralt offered. “It’s yellow because I haven’t turned on the life-support system completely. I didn’t want it to get too warm for you two. I’m sure the system’s normal settings wouldn’t have been calibrated with Snarushi in mind.”
“Those are all good explanations,” Jenna said. “Under these circumstances, I think we should attempt the launch. Who wants to bet that this green plus-symbol here starts the engines?”
“Wait. We should first find ou
r seats,” Anna said.
“Oh, of course. I’d like Boris to sit on my left...”
Ha! She wants me to sit next to her!
“...and Geralt on my right—only in the event that I need help with the technology. I hope that doesn’t upset you, Anna.”
“Of course not. In your place, I would have put my little brother next to me, too. I’ll find somewhere where I can get sufficiently secured in place.”
“Everyone ready?” Jenna asked.
“Reasonably comfortable and secure,” Anna called out from behind.
“Buckled in,” Geralt said.
“Ready,” Boris answered.
His eyes followed Jenna’s finger as it got closer to the green plus. When her finger touched it, the symbol disappeared. Numbers appeared next to the schematic of the ship. At the same time, a deep vibration started going through his outer skin. He could feel the vibrations clear into his core. The engines appeared to be pulling plenty of air. They breathed in and they breathed out. On its hot exhalation, the ship rose into the air. The combustion gases melted the ice and left behind a bubbling, churning lake.
The ship extended its tip out of the cryovolcano’s patera, where it had been waiting for more than 5,000 orbital periods to be rediscovered.
4790.13
Boris glided weightlessly through the command center. His first attempts at moving around the room after their entry into orbit had been clumsy and awkward at best—to his surprise and everyone else’s amusement. His experience with gliding through Titan’s atmosphere was no help for moving in zero gravity. The most crucial difference was that he could no longer feel which way was up or down. His eyes had to take over the function of balancing from his organs of equilibrium, and that had taken some time to get used to.
But now he was getting along quite well in the new conditions. While the others were still trying to understand how to control and steer the ship, he explored the command center. Unfortunately, there weren’t any portholes anywhere. He wanted so much to look at Saturn and Titan! The command center had a significantly smaller footprint than the ship itself. It ended approximately where the shaft holding the cables that ran from the engines up to the ship’s nose cone broke through in the storage room.
Boris held tightly onto the handle that was mounted nearby and looked around. His three friends were gathered closely near the three seats. Geralt was floating in his spacesuit. Jenna was still braving the cold, but had put on a breathing mask and thick spacesuit gloves. Anna was sitting in the commander’s seat with her legs crossed tailor-style, leaning over the main screen.
What had it looked like here when the founders were still onboard? Was the command center overcrowded? But then where were all the seats that the people would have used? It seemed to him that the founders must’ve thought that their ship would be used again, and would have therefore prepared it for a small crew before hiding it away.
He looked at the ceiling. It shimmered when the light of his headlamp reflected off of it, no doubt ice crystals. Just in above him, he could see a thin circle that reminded him of a hatch. It didn’t seem to be a decoration. He moved himself directly below the circle with a short push-off, turned over to face it, and tapped against the surface. The recoil started him moving down toward the floor.
He pushed off again, and this time he hooked his right foot into a handle on the wall. Again he pressed on the circular surface. Nothing happened. Then he tried to push it to one side. Suddenly, a thin, dark crescent-moon shape appeared. It had worked! He’d discovered a doorway. He pushed the surface to the side until he heard it click into place.
A tubular chute led upward above him. He extended his arm into the opening, and the space was flooded with bright light. Boris looked at the others. They were still talking to each other. There seemed to be a kind of ladder on one side of the chute. The section close to him was wider than the rest. It could probably be extended down to the command center floor to allow people to climb up and down. But he wouldn’t need it in zero gravity. He pulled himself up to the edge of the cylindrical passage.
The tube was several meters long, at least, and appeared to taper as it went up away from him. Even after he had climbed ten meters, he still could not see the end. He gave himself another push and sailed farther up. He was approaching another white surface. Another hatch? He stopped in front of it and looked down. He had to be at least 30 meters from the command center. Had he reached the tip of the rocket?
Carefully he pushed the hatch to the side. Had he expected to find something behind it? He saw nothing, only darkness. This new passageway remained dark, even when he extended his arm into it. On top of that, the light in his current passageway also switched off in reaction to the gesture. That had to be some kind of sign, even if he wasn’t sure what! He pulled himself through—and froze. The universe was all around him—thousands of stars shining. He involuntarily held his breath, even though his exterior skin would protect him from any vacuum.
Be still, Boris.
Dark lines ran through the sea of stars at regular intervals. He was floating in some kind of see-through construction... astrodome—which had to have been built from metal and some transparent material. Slowly he let himself rise until his hands touched the exterior wall. Glass? Whatever it was, the surface was smooth, hard, and cold, but not space cold. It was at least 250 degrees.
He turned to the right and flinched so sharply that he bumped his head against the dome. Saturn was staring back at him—dazzling! The planet he had never before seen with his own eyes dominated this half of the view, in all its beauty. Boris pressed his face against the dome. Clouds were moving so quickly across Saturn’s surface that he could watch their movement. The planet seemed to be alive, a giant organism, a creature made from gas, liquid, and rock, where still-unknown laws of nature applied.
Where were the rings? He looked for the equator that had to be at the middle of the cloud bands. A very thin strip glistened and shimmered there. They were still much too close to Titan, so he was only looking at the inner ring system edge-on. What about Titan? Where was the world they were leaving—his homeland—in order to go searching for an asteroid? He twisted about his axis.
Titan was below him, so he could only see half of the moon from here. Brown clouds with no distinguishable structure shrouded it. The founders must have had incredible imagination because they had been able to recognize its potential, even though it looked unapproachable and harmful to life from here. Maybe they had been hiding, or had someone perhaps been hunting them? That wasn’t part of the official story, in any case.
With his fingers on the dome window, Boris traced the contours of the moon that he called home. In comparison to Saturn, Titan was insignificant. But the founders’ descendants had built their own world there. Boris couldn’t think of any reason to leave Titan forever, but he still felt an urge to explore and travel far away.
Saturn was only the first step for them. The asteroid they were supposed to intercept was traveling through space on the other side of Jupiter’s orbit. That was very far away.
How fast could the founders’ ship go? He guessed they would find out. The founders had already proved many thousands of orbital periods ago that it could cover the distance between Earth and Titan.
“Ah, here you are!”
Was he dreaming? Boris jumped, pushed off in the wrong direction, and barreled straight toward a black, shapeless mass. No, it hadn’t been a dream—he’d heard her voice. It was Jenna, and she spread her arms out wide. In the starlight, they resembled the dark wings of a bat. Then she caught him.
“I, uh, sorry, I...” Why did he always start stammering when she was closer to him than a meter?
“Wow. It’s great up here,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Her voice had such a warmth to it, or was he imagining that? It seemed to him that a constant flow of heat was coming off her, forcing him to keep his distance. That would be her genetically unmodified physiolo
gy, he thought, explaining the phenomenon to himself. She’s got to dissipate quite a bit of heat when her body is 310 degrees, and she’s not wearing a spacesuit.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m cold, but it’s bearable.”
He looked at her face in the glow of the starlight. Jenna gave off a calming and relaxing impression. And she was no longer wearing her breathing mask. “You could put on your spacesuit.”
“You could also warm me up,” she said.
“I...”
‘I can’t warm you up,’ he was going to say, ‘because my exterior skin is an almost perfect insulator, and you wouldn’t be able to feel my body heat.’ He’d feel like a cold, wet fish to her. But that was all nonsense, so he refrained from saying it. Even if he couldn’t radiate his own heat, he could still protect her from the rest of the space, like a blanket, and warm her that way.
Jenna’s silhouette was getting smaller. He’d been thinking too long, and she had interpreted his lack of response as a ‘no.’ Why did he always do that? Boris closed his eyes, but then opened them again. No, he wasn’t going to let her go this time. He pushed off and started moving toward her again, this time with his arms wide open.
Jenna let him embrace her, and he held her tightly.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “Yes, I can keep you warm.”
“Finally,” Geralt said with an eye roll. “Geraldine’s been trying to reach us for twenty minutes.”
“Why didn’t you talk to her?” Jenna asked.
“She wanted all of us to be on the line at the same time.”
“Then why didn’t you come and get us?”
“Anna said...” Geralt shrugged. Had Anna, who was standing right behind him, just pinched him? “Doesn’t matter,” he continued.
Anna winked at Boris like she was including him in their little secret. What was she trying to say?
“Well, now we’re here, so we can...” Jenna started, but then a light on the left console started blinking. “That’d be Geraldine again.”
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