The Triton Disaster: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Nobody could have guessed that you would become the best-traveled cleaning robot.”

  “I’ve always suspected something to that effect.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I see that you’re back. Should I stick some duct tape over the button? Then it won’t happen again.”

  “No way. Duct tape on my beautiful, sleek body? That’s out of the question.”

  “It’s not so beautiful anymore. The shell is cracked on the top.”

  “My radar didn’t notice. Couldn’t you have kept it a secret from me?”

  “I didn’t realize you were so vain.”

  “Now you know.”

  “Where are we?” Oscar asked.

  Nick called up the map display in the helmet. The program was unable to determine their position. “The suit has no idea,” he said.

  “The computer has shut down. Apparently it has also affected the batteries. I’m glad I’m not in the computer anymore!”

  “What would have happened to you?”

  “A reset to the time you transferred me from the robot to the ship.”

  “So you would have been reborn younger?”

  “I would have lost all the data I’ve collected since then. Horrifying! Speaking of data, we need to know where we are so that we can make a plan.”

  “We can figure that out. The suit can calculate our position based on the sun and Neptune, I believe.”

  “There’s no GPS system here yet.”

  “Exactly.”

  Nick edged toward the hatch and the capsule wobbled. Walking was difficult enough for him anyway, due to Triton’s low gravity. Only 6 of his 80 kilograms remained. Outside, however, this would be an advantage. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d have to tackle more than one of these impressive ice walls. Nick bent down and reached for the hatch handle. The capsule didn’t have an airlock. All the air would escape when the door opened, but there were enough reserves to replenish it several times over.

  He turned the handle, but nothing happened. “Jammed,” he said.

  Oscar rolled across to the recliner seat, pulled out the metal bar that had pierced the screen, and carried it to Nick. “You’re losing lubricating fluid,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’re bleeding. It’s dripping down your forehead. I can tell because radar reflects blood differently than skin.”

  “You’re using radar to look through my helmet?”

  “A little. It depends on the wavelength. Here’s a lever for the hatch.”

  Nick wanted to touch his forehead, but the helmet was in the way. There was probably nothing he could do anyway, and it couldn’t be too much or he’d have felt it. He could only hope the bleeding would stop on its own. After all, they’d survived the crash. It looked like they were stranded on Triton. But he was alive, and he was going to find a way to get back home.

  He reached for the lever and positioned it on the hatch handle. Then he looked for secure footing. He pushed and the hatch was blown outward. Okay, there had still been a fair amount of air pressure inside.

  Nick bent down. The hatch was round and measured about a meter. Beyond it, there was darkness. He reached for the improvised lever again and used it to feel outside. About a meter below the hatch he felt solid ground. “Should we get out?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing to keep us here,” replied Oscar.

  Nick ventured with his left leg first, feeling for something on which to stand. Then he threaded his right leg through the hatch. Hips and abdomen followed, then his torso.

  “You’re doing it like a contortionist,” Oscar said. “Wait, I’m coming, too.”

  Nick straightened up and his surroundings lit up with the light from his helmet. He winced when he saw that the ice wall he’d admired was behind him. The capsule had rolled to a stop just before reaching it. They’d been lucky—they must have hit an incline right before the terrain sloped down to where it looked as if there were two huge slabs of ice that had collided. One was tilted and the other rose up almost perfectly straight.

  “Will you help me?”

  Nick shone his light on the hatch. Oscar had dug his way out of the exit with his hand, but he hadn’t been able to get his relatively heavy back portion out yet. There wasn’t enough room for the robot to swing out acrobatically, as he had done before. Nick knelt down in front of the hatch and pressed down on its lower wall. Then he went to reach for Oscar but missed. Shit! The capsule rolled back very, very slowly. The oblique plane that initially saved them was now going to destroy them.

  Nick bravely thrust his arm into the hatch. He had to save Oscar! He caught him by the long, thin arm and quickly pulled upward. Oscar’s disk came up through the hatch, and Nick grabbed it. He had generated so much momentum that he almost fell, but the ice wall at his back supported him. The capsule, however, kept on rolling, over and away. In complete silence, it started turning over faster and faster to eventually disappear, passing beyond the range of Nick’s headlight.

  They were alone.

  “We did a great job,” said Nick. He shivered and cast his gaze about 100 meters down the slope. The ice wall seemed to go on forever on both sides. Okay, is it day or night? He looked to the sky. He couldn’t see the sun. Not even Neptune, which was good news—it meant at least they had landed on the right side of the moon.

  “Well, what does your suit say?”

  Right. He’d gotten out of the capsule in the first place to determine their position. After that, he’d have climbed back into the capsule, packed supplies, topped off his oxygen tank, strapped on the tools and the tent, and made a plan. There was nothing like having a working strategy. But could he have guessed how unstable the capsule was? It made no sense to blame himself now. He had to find the Triton station.

  He called up the map display. The suit had stored the topography of Triton so they wouldn’t get lost. Now he directed a camera towards the sky, analyzed the position of the stars, and calculated their current position. An orange dot appeared on the map with an orange arrow dancing over it, indicating them and their running direction.

  “Show Triton Base,” he commanded.

  A green dot lit up. It was much closer to the pole. Nick turned until the arrow pointed to the base. He ended up staring right at the ice wall.

  “Find route.”

  The software drew a yellow line over the map. First it ran far west, then made an about-face to the east and finally led to the base. At a walking pace, they would need about a week. Nick looked at the oxygen gauge—he had just under twelve hours with average consumption. This wouldn’t work.

  “The suit suggests a route that will take a week.”

  “You have no supplies. You’ll be dead in twenty-four hours at the most. In the best-case scenario.”

  “You’re a real pal. Always optimistic.”

  “Thanks. Realistically, your likely survival time is sixteen hours. We have to account for an exhausting route and a higher consumption of oxygen than usual.”

  “Well, that would be that, then. Unfortunately, I can’t accept this projection.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. He couldn’t afford to panic, since it would only increase his oxygen consumption.

  “You don’t have to, Nick. I suppose it was made on the assumption that we wouldn’t be able to surmount this 785-meter-high ice wall here.”

  “Yeah, the route goes right up to a fissure that the software thinks can be climbed.”

  “So we can greatly improve the projection if we refute the underlying assumption.”

  “Should we go up this wall here?”

  “No. I wouldn’t be able to climb up here either. I’m not suitably designed for it. That’s why I’m going to go the long way. My batteries will last for about two weeks. But you have to go up here. Otherwise you’ll die.”

  “Thanks for your encouragement and your assistance.”

  “I can wait down here until you make it, if that’s of any help to you.”

  “And give me wise
counsel from below? I’ll pass.”

  “Why don’t you want some sage counsel? That’s not wise on your part.”

  Oscar was right about that, but the idea of him commenting every step of the way sounded really annoying. Nick weighed the metal bar that he was still holding. It was all that he had left of the capsule. Could he use it for climbing somehow? 785 meters—it could be done! And if Oscar could give him advice, then he should damn well accept it. He shouldn’t get himself killed. If he died out of vanity or stupidity out here, Maria would have to grow up without a father. Was that what he wanted?

  “Forgive me, Oscar. Of course your advice is important. Do you have a suggestion about getting up?”

  Oscar paced back and forth along the base of the wall, scratching the ice with his fingers.

  “Low gravity is an advantage,” he said. “You just have to find enough of a hold for six kilograms of mass. At forty degrees Kelvin the ice is very hard, but it has lots of cracks and fissures. Another advantage is the static friction, which isn’t any less than it is on Earth. And you’ll tire out more slowly than you would climbing the same wall on Earth. Besides, you have power boosters in your joints.”

  “Thanks. Sounds good. Before my air runs out while I’m standing here, I’ll just start.”

  Nick waved, turning to the wall and scanning the ice. He found numerous cracks and indentations, just as Oscar had described. On Earth they would have been too shallow to hang onto, but it would work here. He tensed his hands and pulled himself up. Though he felt out of his element, his gear helped him ascend. The pole was somewhat impractical and got in the way as he climbed. He reached for it intending to just cast it off, but then he thought the better of it and tucked it into the back of his tool belt.

  He took a break halfway up. Here, the wall receded a bit and formed a little ledge. He sat down and lets his legs dangle. His headlight wasn’t strong enough to illuminate all the way to the ground. According to his helmet display, he’d already gone 410 meters, and it had been less than three hours.

  Nick was proud of himself. The oxygen supply had shrunk faster than usual, as Oscar had predicted. He still had air for eight hours. When he reached the level of the summit, he’d still have five. The climbing was absolutely exhausting, but he couldn’t think about that now. He had to reach the station, whatever the cost.

  He imagined that Maria was waiting for him there. It was a beautiful vision. She was wearing her own little spacesuit and waving to him as he rushed with all of his strength into the airlock. “Here we go!” he said to himself.

  “Good,” replied Oscar. “I’ll head out then, and we’ll meet at the station. I think that we’ll have reached the maximum range for the helmet radio soon.”

  He’d completely forgotten about Oscar, who had apparently been monitoring him silently. So there’d be no opportunities to get his sage counsel. “Do you have the map?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How do you determine your position?”

  “Image recognition. I match the radar data from my surroundings with the topographic maps. It works well.”

  “Smart.”

  “I’m an AI.”

  He reached the top of the ice slab after precisely 2 hours and 39 minutes. In the last few meters he’d gone faster and faster. He still had enough breathing air to last for five and a half hours. If he stretched it out by expending less energy, it could even be seven hours. As he checked the batteries, he made an exciting discovery. He could program the suit’s booster so that the suit traveled autonomously to the destination. This meant he could sleep while the suit moved his limbs, or that even if he were to go unconscious and die, he could reach the Triton station as a walking corpse.

  But that was all nonsense. He’d make it to the station alive. There wasn’t one week ahead, as the projection initially had it, but only 24 hours. He’d have to get by for at least 17 of them without oxygen. That shouldn’t be his worry now. He must solve problems as they arose.

  Because the summit of the ice slab extended almost endlessly in three directions, he felt like he was on the roof of the planet. The conditions for walking looked good. Due to the low gravity, he could take huge steps that would help him advance quickly. The helmet showed him that he had reached 20 km/h. Nevertheless, the time left until he would get to the station decreased slowly. The software calculating it obviously knew more than he did. After all, it knew the entire elevation profile up to his destination.

  After another half an hour, he reached a strange trench. It was scarcely a meter deep, semi-circular in shape, and was running somewhat parallel to the ice wall he’d climbed. He shined his headlight on it. The ice in it reflected somewhat dimly, as if it were beneath a fine layer of dust. From orbit, the trench would have looked like a line. This was the line they’d seen their approach! It ended somewhere east of the station.

  Nick hesitated. It was probably artificial. To make the trench, someone would have had to have worked with some kind of machine. If there were people at work here, the mechanism might hold other supplies. Nobody ever wanted to run on empty. The tool was probably located wherever the line ended. But that wasn’t in the same direction as the station.

  What else could have created the ditch? It couldn’t be a natural phenomenon. And he certainly didn’t believe in aliens. The distances in space were far too boundless for any beings to cross paths. Now, what about the missing RB spaceship with its three-person crew? Perhaps the cosmonauts had wanted to communicate using the trench somehow. This seemed like the most likely explanation.

  Nick wavered. He had two options. He could follow the route to the station and hope for a miracle. But where would the miracle come from? Or he could stray from the path and trust the explanation that he’d come up with, and that seemed to make sense. He didn’t have Oscar to calculate his chances and risks, but he had a gut feeling that made him go with the second option. Nick compared the map and the picture from space again. It was perhaps 25 kilometers to the end of the line, so it wouldn’t be more than two and a half hours to go there and back moving at the speed he’d gotten here. Nick turned to the left, got a running start, and then sprang onwards like a grasshopper.

  And boing, boing, boing, Nick went into a real trance. And then the line suddenly came to an end. Just like that, in the middle of nowhere. He had taken his chances that there would be something like a machine here, but no dice. How could this be? Did he really have such a poor understanding of people? He was moving in an ever-increasing spiral out from the endpoint of the line when he suddenly saw a small hill. It was as white as the flat terrain surrounding it, but rose two meters higher.

  There! There had to be a machine hidden underneath. He knocked on the hill, which appeared to be made of ice. Vapor from the geysers had probably been driven over the surface and settled on anything that projected outwards. The ice was hard. Now perhaps the metal bar would be of help. He took it out of his belt and hit it hard against the surface, which caused cracks to form. Then the ice crumbled. There was something! He peeled the encasing ice away from the machine like removing the egg white from around the yolk of a boiled egg.

  It was a rover, and it was a type he was familiar with. RB had improved the ExoMars rover, which had been developed in partnership with the ESA, and then produced it under license. The model was rock solid and worked anywhere there was solid ground for its six wheels. Nick freed the rover from the ice. How long had it been there? It was hard to say, because without an atmosphere, nothing rusted. It could be thirty years or three. But three years was more likely.

  The radionuclide battery showed a surprisingly high charge level. This is what could save him! He searched frantically for the control panel so he could start the vehicle. He found a lot of buttons but they didn’t work. There had to be a main switch somewhere. Nick slid under the rover and finally located it, a rotary switch with three positions: 0, I, and II. The previous owners had apparently taken care to turn off the main switch when they
’d parked their vehicle there. He switched it from 0 to I and the rover jolted. Nick pulled his leg up quickly so he wouldn’t get run over, but the rover stayed in the same place. He clambered back out from underneath.

  A few status lights on the steering system turned green. The buttons were labeled in Cyrillic letters. Nick walked around the vehicle and at the back end there was a kind of plow assembly. It was as broad as the trench. It had probably heated and then evaporated the ice. The rover had to have a powerful radionuclide battery. It wouldn’t have been possible to dig such a ditch using the research models of the past. This was good for him. With sufficient electrical energy, the rover could produce oxygen from the water ice on the surface and even fuel for the spaceship that they no longer had. At least I won’t die from suffocation. And if... He pushed the thought aside. That would be too lucky.

  He decided to give it a shot anyway and examined the rover’s side panels. He pressed the locks and pulled on the handles, but nothing happened. He increased the setting on the power booster in the crook of his arm. Now he was able to open the doors, and he found several packages of frozen food and two small first aid kits. His stomach growled, but he couldn’t do anything with the food as long as his helmet stayed on. But he didn’t find the tent he’d been hoping for, and there wasn’t one hiding under the plow at the back of the rover either.

  Nick climbed into the driver’s seat. This wasn’t so easy, because the rover’s small crane and dish antenna were in the way. Clearly, the model had been initially designed as an autonomous unit. There was only one seat for the driver, meaning that the rest of the crew would have had to walk. But such a rover also went hardly any faster than 5 km/h. The makeshift seat had been attached to the frame with a few clamps. Was it possible that the three Russians had found the rover and rebuilt it for their own purposes?

  Nick turned around and his gaze fell on the antenna. Could he use it to contact Earth? He looked for an interface. Somehow he’d have to be able to pair his spacesuit with the system. He ended up finding a few loose protruding cable ends at the base of the antenna. So his predecessors must have gotten into the rover’s brain. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do much on his own. If only Oscar were here!