Titan Cruel Moon

by Kate Rauner

  They hung above Titan's night-side, but it glowed in light reflected from Saturn. The color lightened through dull orange to murky yellow where the cameras focused through the top of its dense atmosphere. At the edge of space, a thin layer of blue faded into blackness.

  Maliah brought a shaky hand to her lips as she gazed at a greater challenge than anything mongrels faced in lunar bases or Martian colonies. Below those clouds lay a frozen world, waiting for the Kin to mold it into a home, just as Doctor Tanaka promised. Her pulse quickened despite lingering stasis dullness and she reached toward the screen, soaring despite the harness.

  Chapter 3

  S till groggy from stasis, Drew barely noticed the flight to the surface. Everything had changed so quickly. One minute he'd been looking forward to a tour of a research ship, the next he was stuffed into a steel pod, and now he was halfway across the solar system on Saturn's largest moon. There was nowhere to hide. His stomach knotted hard as a rock and he felt clammy all over.

  A thump penetrated his confusion. They'd arrived and he groped at his harness. From above, Fynn tumbled past him to the deck and gripped a berth to steady himself.

  Warm air burst in when the hatch opened.

  "Smell that plastic." Drew covered his nose with both hands. "I'm gonna gag. It's thick enough to chew."

  He inhaled through his mouth. "Does Titan smell like plastic?"

  Maliah leaned over the berth above him. "No, at least, I don't think so. A little oily, maybe. The dome's made of layers of plastic. Once we set up utilities, wet filters will scrub that smell away in a few weeks."

  Drew sighed slowly. "Someone should have set them up already."

  "We are the someone." Maliah swung her legs over her berth's edge and dropped gracefully to the deck. "We're the Advance Team, chosen from four hundred-eight colonists for this assignment. It's an honor."

  "Wait a minute." Fynn jerked his head toward her. "Four hundred-eight? There are more Kin than that."

  Maliah bit her lip. "Only people young enough came with us."

  "What do you mean, young enough?"

  "Risks from stasis are associated with age. It's too dangerous for elders. And for little kids."

  Drew's chest went cold. "The medics said stasis was safe."

  Fynn talked over him. "Where're our grandparents?"

  Maliah's shoulders drooped. "On Earth."

  "Do they know where we are? What'll happen to them?"

  Maliah's chin jutted out. "Doctor Tanaka provided for the Kin we left behind."

  Drew was thankful to escape their argument. Tingling in his hands wasn't from stasis, and he had to get a grip on himself before chills spread through his body. Jokes and cynicism shielded him from the fear inside, the fear that he'd lose control. If he had a meltdown here, everyone would see. He was more scared of that than of being kidnapped to Titan.

  He crawled from his berth and took a few steps. Talking would calm him. "This is so weird. Words like walk and jump won't mean the same thing ever again." He hopped on his right foot - the left one was still numb - and held his breath as, body stiff, he resettled on the deck. A lopsided grin spread over his face. He was okay. He was going to be okay.

  ***

  Silence waited ahead as they filed out the back of the shuttle and, when Fynn stepped over the hatch frame, he knew why.

  The team entered a dimly lit dome. Fynn couldn't judge the height for certain, but lights like lines of stars traced the ribs of an immense umbrella from zenith to horizon. He walked forward a dozen paces, or what would have been a dozen paces on Earth.

  Fynn was buoyant, as if he was walking in a dream. This could be fun. He jumped, windmilled his arms as he hung in the air, and collided with a man gazing into the gloom.

  From behind, Maliah squeezed his shoulder and Fynn leaned close to her. "I watched all the media stories about the Herschel's science mission to Titan," he said. "Did reports tell the truth about the power source? Is there a nuclear reactor outside somewhere?"

  "Yes," she said. "The pioneer robotic mission to prove out technologies - that was real. It's been on Titan for three years, powered by a reactor exactly like the one on the Herschel."

  Drew rolled his eyes. "Isn't that great? We travel to the only moon in the solar system where a person is protected from cosmic radiation, and you plop a nuclear reactor down outside our habitat."

  "There's shielding." Maliah jutted her chin forward for emphasis.

  "Why's it so dark in here?" Fynn asked.

  "These lights came embedded in the dome, just to get us started. Our job includes installing lots more."

  Bins surrounded them, shiny plastic boxes glinting under the tiny overhead bulbs. Some were waist-high and some taller than Fynn. Interspersed among the shadows were loaded pallets mummified in plastic. It was as if a scaled-down train had derailed in the dome and scattered its cars.

  Fynn drew in a long breath. The air was warm, damp, stagnant, and heavy with a sickly smell.

  The team wandered through the cargo and gathered in an open area where ropes of lights strung between pallets drove back the darkness.

  A loud sneeze made Fynn flinch. Drew was at his elbow.

  Fynn's forehead furrowed with concern. "You okay? You look terrible."

  "It's just these Ever-Clean coveralls." Drew fingered the cold, slippery fabric. "Blue's not my color." He tapped his sleeve display, sending a signal through hair-thin wires coated with pigmented polymers, and the coveralls shifted to pastel green. "That's better."

  Fynn's father stepped into the pool of light. Behind him was a row of base cabinets, and he hopped easily onto the countertop. A smile showed on his dark face. "May I have your attention? Welcome to the village dome. Welcome to Titan."

  His words broke the ominous mood. Cheers erupted and echoed through the dome. The men and women of the Advance Team raised their arms, pumping fists overhead.

  Maliah started the chant. "Kin, Kin, Kin."

  The team joined in. Fynn had shared that cheer at every sports game and every rally, all through school. At the peak of one mass jump, he glimpsed his father again, a loose sleeve fallen back from his brown arm as he pumped his fist.

  Fynn was breathless when the last wave passed through the group. They shook loose from each other and quieted.

  His father's voice sounded hollow in the cavernous space. "I know you're eager to start work, but the medics insist you take a day to recover from stasis. We can't afford fuzzyheaded mistakes while we're assembling life support systems. So for the rest of today, get used to Titan's gravity, and familiarize yourself with the labels on these cargo containers. Anyone feeling up to it, find the bins stenciled Mess Hall and set up tables and chairs. Stow food in these cabinets and leave cooking equipment on the countertops. We'll sleep in the shuttle tonight."

  Fynn's mother led Maliah to his side. "Let's go see your father."

  "Greta! Kids." His father spread his arms and hopped down in slow motion.

  "Yash, we made it." Greta hugged him in a long, tight embrace.

  When she let go, he held Greta's face in both hands for a moment before planting a quick kiss on her lips. "Are you furious with me?"

  "You're lucky stasis dulls emotions," she said. "And I've had the entire shuttle flight to calm down."

  "Leave the mess hall cargo to the others. You and the kids will each lead a crew, so you should review your assignments for tomorrow."

  Fynn's stomach sunk. "Lead a crew?"

  His father smiled. "I spent too much time away from my family these past years, so I'm making sure we're together now. As Chief Engineer, team assignments are my prerogative."

  Greta tapped Maliah's arm. "Let's leave the boys to talk."

  Yash crossed his arms and stared downward for a long moment. Fynn was fidgeting when his father looked up, his dark eyes serious. "You've every right to be angry."

  A little boy's pain nibbled at Fynn's resentment. "You trusted Maliah, but not me."

  "I trust y
ou completely. I knew four years in a mongrel university wouldn't weaken your loyalty. Installing utilities is good training for a much bigger task. I'll rely on you in the coming months." Yash placed both hands on Fynn's shoulders, and his broad face softened into a smile. "Son, I couldn't bear it if you weren't here with me."

  Fynn's mouth opened but he had no words. He wrapped his arms around his father, as much to hide the tears prickling his eyes as to draw him close.

  ***

  Fynn waited while Drew passed a stack of chairs along a bucket brigade of men and women and then pulled him aside. "You're on my crew. Did you know that?"

  Drew extended his left arm, jabbed his thumb against the sleeve, and made a fuss of swiping the display. "So I am. Lucky you."

  "I need your help to figure out what I'm supposed to do."

  "Why don't you ask the team? They were all part of the big colony secret."

  "All of them?"

  "I think so. I've been listening to them talk. They're all thrilled to be here."

  Fynn's stomach churned, but he'd show his father he could do this. "I'm supposed to be the crew leader, and I'm not gonna make a fool of myself tomorrow."

  Fynn led Drew through the cargo bin shadows to the dome's outer edge, trying to hurry without launching himself off the dark gray floor. Bouncing from foot to foot was becoming easier to control, but Drew shuffled.

  If Drew was trying to be funny, Fynn didn't appreciate his humor. "What's the matter with you?"

  "My foot's still numb." Drew's tone turned serious. "I'll fall over."

  "Oh, sorry. You should talk to my mother about that. Do you want to hold my arm?"

  "Hell's bells, no. Just slow down."

  The dome's plastic wall rose a few paces beyond bundles of pipe and a row of tanks lying on their sides, strapped to pallets. They stopped in an open space where lights ran down to the floor. The LEDs were deeply embedded, so they left the wall black and threw a wedge of light across grates in the floor. Fynn knelt and extended a hand over one. "I don't feel any airflow."

  "Of course not," Drew said. "We're the someone installing utilities, remember?"

  Fynn examined the nearest pallet. "This tank is part of the wastewater recycling system. I've got to figure out how all this equipment goes together."

  "Shouldn't be too hard." Drew ran one hand along a smooth white tank. "This looks familiar. One of my high school jobs was in the water treatment facility. Look. The letter C's stenciled on this one."

  Fynn walked past the tank. "Hey. There's a white circle on the floor with a letter inside."

  Drew smiled as he walked toward the dome wall. "Put tab C into slot C. Simple."

  Fynn held his pad up, peered into the shadows, and heaved out a sigh of relief. "The diagram's drawn on the floor."

  Muscles in his shoulders unknotted. No wonder Dad said he could handle the utilities. This was easy. If he followed his father's instructions, everything would be okay.

  He pulled the pad against his chest and frowned at Drew. "What're you grinning at?"

  "I recognize this equipment. I know how to run the water system. Don't you see? I was trained to be part of this colony all through school and didn't even know it."

  "I bet Tanaka's been planning this all our lives," Fynn said.

  "There's more to it than that." Drew's words tumbled out. "I've been talking with the others. Everyone else on the Advance Team was part of the hijacking. Except me, you, and maybe your mom. Your father brought you. I thought..." He caught his breath and continued more quietly. "I thought I was only here to keep you company. But I have a skill too." The grin returned. "The Kin sent me for a degree in genetics, so wastewater microbes are right up my alley. I bet there's a starter packet in here."

  He spun loose three shipping bolts that secured the tank lid, a flat flange that fit easily between his extended arms. From inside the tank Drew held up a sandwich bag filled with loose mossy fibers. "Here it is. This is a selection of desiccated microbes, ready to wake when I drop them into water. Exactly what we need to digest waste from the toilets." He pulled out a larger bag. "This is dog food, to get the bugs started. Have you checked the toilet technology yet? Do we have space toilets? I don't know if flushing will work in fourteen percent of Earth's gravity."

  Drew tossed the bags back into the tank. "I'll be on the maintenance crew after utilities are installed. Look ahead on the schedule. What'll you be doing?"

  Fynn tapped the schedule and swiped left, following activity bars. His tasks were color-coded. After Dome Utilities, a bunch of bars clustered under Methane Combustion Power Plant.

  He'd learned about Titan since kindergarten and those lessons weren't faked. It was huge for a moon, its surface blanketed by a dense atmosphere of nitrogen and hydrocarbons. And cold enough to rain methane. "I'm going to run a power plant." He opened an information window. "We're powered by a nuclear reactor now. It arrived with a robotic mission ahead of us. But it's small." Fynn's eyes widened as he considered the implications. "A single uranium alloy sphere like a golf ball, with a limited useful lifetime. After a few years, power production drops off, and I bet it's already dropping."

  "We've got the Herschel's reactor," Drew said.

  "Which remains in space with the ship. A combustion power plant will make the difference between life and death down here." Fynn sucked in a deep, shaky breath. Hydrocarbons weren't used much on Earth anymore, not to generate power. But there was an unlimited supply on Titan, and any hint of global warming would be welcome.

  The classes his father had chosen for him and his summer job at a living-history museum gave Fynn both the theory and experience he needed. He could run combustion chambers and Stirling generators to produce electricity. Fortunately, classical thermodynamics was his favorite subject.

  Chapter 4

  N ear the village dome's center, someone had set up lights on telescoping poles. Fynn paused at the row of base cabinets where the team had chanted and cheered, and scanned dozens of long, narrow tables. It looked a lot like the mess hall Fynn grew up with. He counted chairs and, sure enough, each table would seat the bunkmates from a single barracks unit. Beyond the tables, lights illuminated a large arched panel in the dome with Greenhouse stenciled in the center.

  The Advance Team could fit at three tables, but people scattered themselves around in small groups. His parents occupied a table close to the dome wall. With their heads bent together in conversation, they were apparently enjoying their privacy.

  Maliah bounded over. "Figured it out yet? I've been waiting to eat supper with you guys. The drinking water's in dispensers by the microwaves, and meals are under here." She opened a cabinet door to reveal shelves stacked with brown boxes that each fit neatly in her hand. "Packaging goes in that bin over there. We'll store the plastic, from meals and from the cargo too. It'll all become feed for 3-D printers on the Herschel."

  Fynn chose a box, examined the label, and read out loud. "Chili with beans, corn bread, crackers, cheese-filled snack food."

  Drew reached to a lower shelf. "If it has beans, it's not chili. This one is spaghetti, pears, crackers, and fruit-filled snack food."

  They shuffled through barbeque beef, chicken with noodles, stew, tortellini, meatballs, and vegetarian fettuccine.

  Drew dumped his meal box out on a nearby table. Two flat packages labeled Spaghetti with Meat Sauce and Pears skittered across the table, followed by smaller vacuum-sealed squares. He tapped the one labeled Crackers against his palm.

  Maliah grabbed a package. "Feel it. It's squishy inside and ready to eat. Just needs to be heated, though you could eat it cold."

  She handed out condiment packets from one four-liter tub on the countertop and beverage powders from another, and they piled their entrees into the microwaves.

  Fynn scooped out a spoonful of chili. "Not bad. Beans give it some body. The crackers are like cardboard, though."

  Maliah squeezed her cheese-filled snack food and licked the thick orange paste. "So wh
at do you guys think? Isn't this the greatest challenge in human history? Kin will build a new world."

  "But we left people behind," Fynn said.

  "The best are here, from all three branches of the Kin family. Samurai like Doctor Tanaka himself, Archetypes like Dad and Fynn, and Vikings like your buddy Drew."

  Drew snorted. "My university has a fine archeology library, and I've been reading about our supposed three branches."

  Fynn concentrated on smearing some thin peanut butter on a cracker. Maliah was dedicated to Tanaka's theories and arguing seemed pointless.

  "Don't be so literal minded," Maliah said. "Those terms are meant to be poetically accurate."

  Drew wrinkled his nose like something smelled bad. "There's no link between your poetically accurate groups, no more than between any other cultures. Not with each other and not with the ancient Indus Valley."

  "You've only heard the summary presented in the barracks school. You should listen to Doctor Tanaka explain his genetics studies. He's brilliant."

  "Then why hasn't he ever published his findings?"

  "Why should he? To impress the mongrels? Just because you took a few classes in genetics..."

  Drew sat up straight as if offended. "My degree is in genetics. That's impressive enough for someone..." He pulled out his flat pad and dropped it on the table. "To assign me to the Herschel's biology labs, once the ship's reconfigured."

  Fynn interrupted them. "Don't you think we should concentrate on the job in front of us?"

  "Which job?" Drew asked. "Making a meal from mushy spaghetti?" Sarcasm, as usual, but Fynn noticed Drew bit his lip as he stirred his food pouch. Maybe he was scared. Maybe Fynn was, too.

  Thankfully, Maliah wasn't inclined to argue. "Enjoy your mushy spaghetti while it lasts. We packed individual meals as a reward for the Advance Team, but after these are gone, the rest of our food is freeze-dried and stowed in buckets. That's why we can't wake the next group until the greenhouse is producing."