Ocean Under the Ice

by Robert L. Forward

  It was time for a shift change. Soon the corridor outside the habitat tank was empty and the three flouwen were left alone for a while. With no humans around needing a translation, James bypassed the translation program, and just kept a record of the flouwen’s conversation in flouwenese.

  *I have something to show you, Subset of Clear^White^Whistle. Come over to the Talking@Plate and I will have James@Server show you the Look@View the Stiff@Mover Richard showed to me.* The red blob swam to the taste-screen on the habitat wall, and forming a red pseudopod, expertly manipulated the icons until a picture of Gargantua and its moons appeared on the screen.

  *After you have tasted the Talking@Plate, Subset of Clear^White^Whistle, look it too, to see the different colors of the different moons.* The white creature spread itself against the screen to taste, see, and look at the enlarged image there.

  ^In my many years of observing Warm and its Pets from the oceans of Water, I have never observed such detail!^

  *You will soon observe even more detail, for Big@Circle will soon arrive at Warm! Then we can all leave this small tank and explore!*

  CHAPTER 02 — SURVEYING

  Jinjur showed up early for her shift on the control deck, carrying her drink-ball. She looked around at the quiet but busy scene. George was at the command console having a muttered discussion with the lightsail pilot Tony Roma seated a few consoles away. George, reaching the end of his shift, was looking gray and tired. The crew had all used No-Die, a life-extending drug, on their outward flight from earth, which had slipped them through 40 years of calendar time while their bodies only aged 10 years. George, the oldest person on the mission, was nearly a century old by the calendar, while biologically, his age was only 66 years. Jinjur whispered something to her imp, which was formed into an illuminated comb stuck into her military-regulation afro just above her left ear, while continuing to watch the two men.

  Tony, in contrast to George, hadn’t seemed to age a bit, and looked just as Jinjur remembered him when he had been the best lightsail pilot in her Space Marines Interceptor Fleet — small, dark, and handsome, with a neat mustache and wavy dark hair that now produced a curl on his forehead. His uniform was as crisp as when he began this shift, and his cheerful enthusiasm for the mission never slackened. From long experience, Jinjur could tell the two men were talking together, since their consoles each contained the same image, and as Tony touched his screen, a green dot would show up on George’s.

  Although the two men were not more than two meters apart, they didn’t raise their voices to speak directly to each other, but used their imp link through James. It was partially to keep the noise level on the control deck down, but mostly it was force of habit.

  Linda Regan was at the space science console, zeroing in one of the many telescopes on Prometheus on a large facula which she and James were monitoring on the surface of Barnard. Jinjur could feel a “clunk” through the deck floor as a port opened under the circular science rack in the center of the deck, and a deep-ultraviolet spectrometer was thrust out into the vacuum to collect data.

  Next to Linda, at the planetary science console, the tall, gray, lanky figure of Sam Houston hunched over the screen, looking at one image after another which James wanted him to check. The robotic explorers on each of the many moons of Gargantua sent back many images a second. Most of those James took care of automatically, numbering, cataloging, and storing the image as sent, and then using a processed and rectified version of the image to update and perfect its global image map of that moon. Occasionally, however, the image would contain some object that was not easy to categorize. The image would be sent to a human, in this case Sam, with the unknown object circled. Most of these were false alarms, especially on the more barren planets. But there were enough interesting discoveries found on some of the moons, such as Earth-like Zuni which had a multitude of plants and a few small animals, and especially Ganymede-like Zulu, which had some really strange lifeforms, that the job of working the planetary science console was usually interesting. Right now, however, the results of the survey seemed to be boring. Jinjur could hear Sam muttering, “Nope. Nope. Nope.” Jinjur suspected that the images were coming from Mars-like Zapotec, which seemed to be barren, not only of life, but even fossils.

  On the other side of the deck, Caroline Tanaka was monitoring the display on the communications console. The task was almost automatic, since James had charge of keeping the laser communicators pointed back in the right direction to the solar system, and keeping the multitude of outgoing channels full of the scientific data which was pouring into the ship from the exploration robots scattered all over the Barnard system. Occasionally, however, one of the robots exploring the many moons of Gargantua required a decision — such as what to explore next — the answer to which was not immediately obvious to James. On those occasions, the whims of a human, driven by inquisitiveness and intuition rather than pure logical extrapolation, were required.

  Nine moons Gargantua kept in their steady orbits; Caroline had mapped them before leaving Earth, using an orbiting laser-controlled phase-locked interferometer array which she had designed and operated. She had also assisted in the naming of the moons, with names the Astronomical Nomenclature Board had decided should all begin with the letter Z. Before they started, they knew that they would find the large moons; Zapotec, Zouave, Zuni, and Zulu, and the five asteroid-sized rocks; Zeus, Zen, Zion, and the Zwingli-Zoroaster pair that shared the same orbit. Upon arrival at the Barnard star system, neither she nor the others were too surprised to discover many smaller moonlets in existence. These were supposed to be given Z-numbers in order of discovery, but the more creative among the crew were not content with that, and one particularly tiny close-in moonlet continued to orbit rapidly onward, uncaring that its name was now Zipcode.

  George finally noticed that Jinjur had arrived. He rose, Velcro patches on his back and bottom making a ripping sound as he pulled himself free from his seat. Kicking off from his console, he floated off across the control deck in an arc that brought him to a halt near her, arriving just after the galley imp had delivered a second drink-ball. Jinjur was looking out one of the four portholes at the stars slowly rotating by. A good portion of the upper part of the view out the porthole was blocked by the vast expanse of lightsail overhead. Just below the sail, however, was a large half-moon. Jinjur handed George the second drink-ball. As George took the squeezer, he noticed that it was cold on the outside and clanked on the inside.

  “You looked frazzled, so I had James make you a refreshing martini to help you relax at the end of your shift.” She held up her own drink-ball.

  “Coffee,” she said, unnecessarily.

  George took a welcome sip of his squeezer. “We’ve crossed the orbit of Zapotec at 1650 megameters,” he reported. “I have been assuming that we weren’t going to spend one of our last two landers there, so I didn’t have Tony plot a course to match orbits with it. I guess it’s about time we made a decision as to which moons we are going to use our last two landers on — and which one we do first.”

  “Off-hand, I’d agree with your assessment of Zapotec, but first, let’s go through the data summaries to date on all the moons, to make sure we make the right choices,” Jinjur replied. “Remember, we don’t need to land on a moon to learn about it. We can collect almost as much data from orbit using our imagers and sensors, and a few well chosen robot explorers.”

  She headed for the command console with George following behind. The other members of the upcoming shift were drifting in and discussing the shift changeovers with their counterparts. Carmen Cortez took over communications console from Caroline, Reiki LeRoux took over space science from Linda, and Elizabeth Vengeance took over the planetary science console from Sam.

  “Boring as hell, Red,” Sam muttered to Elizabeth as the tall woman came to stand beside him while he finished examining the latest set of images. Her intensely-red hair contrasted nicely with her well-fitting bright green jumpsuit. “Looking f
or signs of life on Zapotec is like trying to find placer gold in the Empty Quarter of Arabia.”

  “Or looking for nickel-iron nodules in a carbonaceous chondrite,” replied the former asteroid prospector as she took over control of the console. One of her nickel-iron finds — an asteroid containing one hundred million tons of nearly pure metal — had made her a multi-billionaire, but she had given it all up to come on this mission to the stars. All she had left of her fortune was a single gold coin, kept in her shirt pocket as a souvenir.

  Jinjur whispered to her imp. “Hook George and me up with Sam and Red, and bring up the planetary science console screen.” James alerted Sam and Red of the linkup, and soon the four were in conversation.

  “Now, Sam,” asked Jinjur. “Which exploration robots did we send to Zapotec and what have they reported so far?” Sam bent his lanky form in its trim-fitting denim over the science console, his fingers played over the touch-screen to bring up the data.

  “During our fly-through tour of the Gargantua system before we decided to visit Rocheworld, we dropped off four exploration robots at Zapotec,” reported Sam. “Seeing as how the place is a lot like Mars — even has a little atmosphere — we chose a couple different robotic vehicles. One was the orbiter Carl; it has cameras for global imagery, both high and low resolution. It’s also got a laser altimeter for topography profiles, a gravity gradiometer for subsurface mass distribution, and a whole bunch of spectrometers — visible, infrared, gamma ray, microwave, ultraviolet — specially directed at finding water and life-associated chemicals like free oxygen. Carl also fetched along a couple aeroshells which it turned loose after looking the place over. One had Wilbur in it, a robot plane modeled after the ones we used on Mars, with great big wings for the thin air. The other aeroshell had Pushmi-Pullyu aboard — that’s a pair of crawlers fastened together with a cable on reels, so they can haul each other up and down steep parts, if need be.” Sam’s voice changed slightly as he shifted from reporting to commanding.

  “James?” said Sam. “How about giving Jinjur a summary report of what the exploration robots have found so far?”

  Swiftly James produced for Jinjur the desired report. They were close enough to Zapotec that the communications time delay was negligible, so James let the vehicles themselves give the summary.

  “Orbiter Carl here,” came a sibilant tenor voice. On their console screens appeared the image of a rocky, barren planet. “After a brief initial survey of Zapotec from a near equatorial orbit, I dropped the aeroshells containing Wilbur and Pushmi-Pullyu near the large equatorial rift valley.” The picture enlarged and continued to rotate, taking them on a simulated flyover of the chasm which not only exceeded in length and depth the Grand Canyon, but the Valles Marineris. “I then switched to a polar orbit with an altitude picked so that successive ground-tracks would ultimately provide complete coverage of the planet under various lighting conditions.” The image changed to that of one of the polar regions. It showed a dirty ice cap pocked through around the edges with rounded mounds of lava with broad calderas in their centers.

  “Special attention was paid to obtaining high resolution images of the volcanic chain ringing the south pole ice cap. During my nearly two years of observation, a number of the volcanoes have showed activity.” The picture of the polar region switched from a high-resolution cleaned-up view to an obviously stop-motion view — where the beginning of an eruption on one of volcanoes would be caught in one orbital passover by Carl, and successive orbits would track the resulting dust and ash cloud as it moved down wind.

  “Richard’s been having fun analyzing those,” remarked Sam over their imp links. “The ashes and gas released have a real effect on the climate, especially when the ashes cover some of the ice.”

  “Preliminary evaluation of the imagery and sensor data produced no indications of life nor anything else of significant interest,” Carl finally concluded.

  “This is Wilbur,” came a deep, matter-of-fact voice. “As a high-altitude robotic plane with VTOL landing capacity, my task was to supply ground-truth data for the images and sensor data taken from orbit, and to collect a few samples of anything important that could not be reached by the crawlers. The atmosphere of Zapotec is thin, but I had no problem flying or hovering in it. I first surveyed the floor of the rift valley and identified important points along the rift wall for the crawlers to investigate in more detail.” The screens in front of Jinjur and Sam showed close-up images of a cliff wall, which contained layer after layer of what looked like sandstone interspersed with black ash. “After finishing the rift valley, I started on a programmed spot survey of the planet.” The image switched to a close-up of a volcanic caldera shooting up red-hot ashes, lighting flashing continuously from the glowing ash cloud to points on the rim of the crater. “I am now in my second tour, with landing spots chosen to be intermediate between those of the first survey. Preliminary evaluation of the surface samples and the airborne imagery produced no indications of life nor anything else of significant interest,” Wilbur concluded.

  “This is Pushmi reporting,” came a squeaky voice. “I and Pullyu landed on the plains outside the rift valley and we began exploring at the locations indicated to us by Wilbur. I lowered Pullyu down the walls while it took selected samples of the various exposed layers.” Close-up pictures of the layered side of a cliff showed up on their screen. “The light-colored layers are sandstone from ancient dune field build-ups, alternating with thin layers of ash, and occasional thick layers of volcanic lava. There are no indications that Zapotec had any significant surface water at any time in its history. After sampling all around the perimeter of the rift valley, we traveled south to explore and sample the polar volcano field.” There were pictures from Pushmi, of Pullyu being lowered into a caldera, taking samples off the steep slope as it descended. In the image, the humans could see a large bubble forming in the lake of lava far below. The bubble burst, sending streamers of glowing lava up along the sides of the caldera, one of which engulfed Pullyu. As the lava fell back, it left only the melted tip of the high-strength polymer cable behind.

  “Pullyu was lost in crater 79 south 120 east,” reported Pushmi. No samples were lost except those of that particular volcano, since we divided up samples after every survey mission so that each of us had a duplicate set. I have now limited my surveys to safe regions. Within one year my sample hold will be full and I will need to transfer the samples to the return stage waiting back at the aeroshell. My preliminary evaluation of the samples has produced no indications of life nor anything else of significant interest,” Pushmi concluded.

  There was a brief silence.

  “Hunh,” said Jinjur. “No indications of life nor anything else of significant interest — cubed.”

  “That about sums it up,” agreed George. “Doesn’t sound like a really exciting place to visit in person, does it?”

  “Nope,” agreed Jinjur. “James. Tell the Zapotec exploration team to keep up the good work. We’ll be back to collect their samples later. Now — how about the next moon in, Zouave?”

  Just then Arielle Trudeau came sailing down the shaft to take over the navigation console from Tony Roma. She had obviously stopped by the galley on the way for some provisions to last her between breakfast and lunch.

  Tony stood and stretched to his full five feet six. “After all the fun of Rocheworld, that report on Zapotec was something of a let-down. Well, Arielle, Jinjur says we aren’t going to Zapotec, so we’ll just maintain our present course to the inner moons. I don’t think you’ll need to do anything for a while except monitor James.”

  Arielle didn’t reply, because her mouth was full, but she slid willingly into the seat for the navigation control console. Her imp, sparkling with color, moved over her ears to form headphones, while one long tendril moved swiftly and delicately out to remove an errant crumb from her cheek and tuck it neatly between her lips. The slender hands firmly secured the food and drink she carried into convenient receptacles on
either side of the console screen, and then lay relaxed in her lap. However, the huge brown eyes were intent and watchful on the screens. Since she had little to do except monitor James — who almost never made a mistake — she switched most of her screen to the planetary science images and arranged for her imp to listen in on the discussion about Zouave.

  “Well, now. Zouave’s all covered with smog, kind’a like Titan,” explained Sam. “Plenty of air, we knew that — three atmospheres full. And radar said there was thick ice over the rocky core, but we knew it was too warm for liquid nitrogen rain like Titan’s. There might have been snowdrifts on top of the ice, or maybe lakes of methane, or ethane, or some stuff that might wreck a crawler’s sensors. So we sent down Punch and Poke, a couple penetrator probes to get right down to bedrock and find out chemical composition, temperatures, and seismic data. They also took along a couple high-pressure balloons, Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They’ve been hangin’ around, drifting between surface and clouds, blown from one place to the other by winds and collecting samples as they go.”

  “What have they found so far?” asked Jinjur.

  “Punch and Poke aren’t really intelligent enough to carry on a conversation,” interjected James. “But the balloons are. I’ll let them tell you themselves.”

  “Ice!” came a high-pitched piercing computer voice through their imps.

  “Snow!” came a slightly lower computer voice with a harsher tone.

  “More ice than snow!”

  “More snow than ice!”

  There was a spluttering from the space science console. The normally reserved Reiki was trying to keep from laughing, and was not succeeding. “I tried to program a little personality into the voice personas, to match their names. Perhaps I overdid it.” The piercing voice dropped slightly in tone as the semi-intelligent central computer of the balloon became more controlled. “This is balloon explorer Tweedledee assigned to obtain surface samples of the northern hemisphere of Zouave. The amount of ice cover I have surveyed is 51.5 percent compared to snow cover of 47.3 percent. Only 1.2 percent of the surface area is bare rock, most of it sheer cliff faces in the mountainous regions of the far north. My sample return rocket will be full in 1.3 years.”