The Far Shore

by Glenn Damato

  If I don’t talk to Eric now, I won’t get any real sleep.

  He’s awake, but with the same squinty-eyed weariness exhibited during the thruster failure and the oxygen generator breakdowns. I show him the charge trend over the past twelve hours and ask about the accuracy.

  “Depends what you mean by accurate. Those values are derived from coulomb counting and voltage comparison. They’re calculated, not measured. With the reactor up, the inverter is powering your main DC bus loads, not the batteries.”

  “Eric, I’m no electrical engineer.”

  “That’s right, you’re not.”

  “But I understand basic physics. I know energy input and output have to balance. You’re telling me the reactor is draining the battery?”

  He sighs. “I said nothing of the kind. Pay attention. There’s no accurate way to directly measure the charge of lithium-ion polymer cells. This is a technology I’m familiar with, and I can tell you it behaves predictably if somewhat strangely. You can’t gauge state of charge as you would pressure or temperature.”

  “So we’re measuring it indirectly. It might be wrong. How do we measure it right?”

  “It’s complicated. Been working on this all day. Look, don’t lose any sleep. There’s an error in the derived state of charge, and I’ll create a workaround. Put it out of your head.”

  “You’re confident the batteries are fully charged?”

  “Didn’t say that. Get some rest, Cristina.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  People get up to laugh and chat while it’s still utterly black outside. I stay bundled in a cocoon of blankets, a pillow wrapped around my ears to shut out the gibberish. Sleep comes, but dreams of rocks and ice chunks spoil the early morning hours.

  Golden sunbeams flood the control center. Paige sits alone, eating a bowl of fake oatmeal and watching a vid loop of Jürgen’s pre-expedition speech. My sleepy brain absorbs two facts: the first Discovery Team has left, and battery state of charge is 685 kw-hours, seventy-four percent.

  Paige says, “You missed the departure.”

  “Oh, no. I am so devastated.”

  There’s gotta be a way to determine if the batteries are actually being charged—and whether the reactor is truly generating power. It must be possible to do this independently, without interference or contradictory information. I gulp a breakfast of eggs and sausage while reviewing the electrical system manual. Shuko and Andre are outside digging up ice. Mikki emerges from her sleeper and joins Paige in organizing the day’s activities. If a test is possible, now is the time.

  We have five Sony battery packs, each a meter square and thirty centimeters thick. A System Management Bus keeps one pack online, one pack charging, one in standby, and two in maintenance mode. In flight, the AC loads were powered by an inverter connected to the battery. The TMI reactor charged the battery. But the inverter shouldn’t be powering anything now, because the buried reactor is supplying AC.

  I wrap my fingers around the four thick cables from the reactor. They carry every load on Liberty, currently forty-six amps according to the power panel. Equipment to melt ice, electrolyze water, compress hydrogen, oxygen, and methane, condense methanol, plus purify our air.

  Yet, the cables don’t feel warm. Aren’t they supposed to be?

  Suppose I disconnect the inverter from the battery? Nothing should lose power—if the reactor is actually supplying the AC busses. There are two breakers, both in a common control box under the power panel. I slide the safety latch and press both breakers downward.

  Liberty goes dead. No lights, no ventilator fans, no panel displays. An alarm buzzes—must be powered directly off the batteries.

  Mikki’s face hangs from the access hatch. “What are you doing?”

  I close the breakers and our equipment comes back to life. “Mikki, the reactor isn’t powering the AC loads.”

  “You did that on purpose?” Paige shouts, nostrils flaring. “Don’t you realize the Sab is outputting methane into a compressor?”

  “The Sab is exothermic. It doesn’t draw power.”

  Paige jumps down into the equipment bay and scans the Sab readouts. “The reaction is self-sustaining. But the compressor pulls methane out. You could’ve over-pressurized the main chamber, popped the reliefs, screwed up the whole thing!”

  “I had to—”

  She shoves me aside. “Don’t touch what you don’t understand!”

  Eric connects on the com. “Liberty, your AC busses were down for nine seconds. Anyone playing with the system?”

  “One guess!” Mikki snarls.

  “Cris-teeen-naaaah,” Eric calls softly, as if to a child. “What did you do?”

  “I determined the reactor isn’t powering anything. The question is—”

  “I don’t have time to teach you basic electrical engineering today. All you need to know are these three words. Leave it alone.”

  He’s going to answer me whether he likes it or not. “If the reactor is supplying AC power, how could we lose the busses just by disconnecting the inverter? We shouldn’t need the inverter!”

  “You’re confused. Let us worry about what we need.”

  “You want something to do?” asks Paige. “I know the perfect exercise. Break some ice! I want to make a hundred liters of methanol by the time Jürgen’s back.”

  ◆◆◆

  The state of charge drops to 659 kw-hours, seventy-one percent. When I return to the equipment bay sometime after noon it’s ninety-eight percent. Like magic!

  Just as strange, there’s no triumphant announcement from Eric. He fixed it. Why not explain how, as he always does?

  “For my own understanding,” I ask him, “Where did I go wrong this morning?”

  Eric blinks at me. No trace of pride, just exhaustion. “Don’t be hard on yourself. I might have done the same, before I became an engineer. The SMB didn’t know there are five standalone battery packs on one bus. They were tested one at a time, which is standard procedure. I had to rewrite the SMB kernel to correct it.”

  “But only one pack is on line at any given time.”

  He stares at me. “How did you get that idea?”

  “The manual.”

  “Well, yes, there’s one battery pack discharging at a given moment. But if the SMB looks only at that one pack, the state of charge is invalid.”

  “I’m still confused. I thought it’s designed for one pack.”

  “It is, Cristina. But we have five packs.”

  “So your fix makes it look at all the packs?”

  “I think you’ve finally got it.”

  There are missing pieces. But more questions will trigger Eric’s defensiveness.

  An hour before sunset the Discovery Team trucks round the top of a distant hill and come within VHF line-of-sight range. Ryder contacts us first. His voice shakes with excitement. “Snow volcanoes, three of ’em! Would you believe it? Fucking snow volcanoes. I’m serious!”

  That’s all anyone wants to see—vids of the snow volcanoes. Slush, mud and steam geysers, actually. They erupt in irregular puffs from the bottom of a ravine. The steam condenses into ice crystals, real snow, that swirl like a bona-fide mini-blizzard. Pretty bizarre.

  “We didn’t expect snow volcanoes,” says Jürgen “I believe this is a phenomenon of the spring thaw. Icy mud flows down until it reaches a geothermal heat source, then it erupts to the surface. We traveled thirty-eight kilometers total, nine stops, sixty kilos of mineral samples. An incredible day of historic firsts!”

  “Fuel usage six percent under projection!” Ryder gushes from over Jürgen’s shoulder.

  “Tomorrow we’re loading three times more fuel so we can cover a one hundred kilometer route.” says Jürgen. “Our objective is a range of cliffs to the north. Orbital pics show evidence of sporadic flowing water.”

  Paige yells, “A hundred and twelve liters of methanol in Liberty’s bladder!”

  An endless stream of pics follows. Jürgen describes taking atmospheric
samples for traces of natural methane. The max reading was two parts per billion, but there shouldn’t be any methane at all. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun breaks it down within a few decades. From where is it being replenished? Biological activity near the surface?

  “We’re going to find out,” Jürgen promises, the glint back in his eye. “We’re breaking new scientific territory, a privilege that cannot be squandered.”

  I order a light dinner of soup and dumplings. With the first spoonful comes the purr of the airlock compressor. Ryder and Senuri. Isn’t the discovery gang planning to hang out at Independence and bask in the remembrance of their deeds? Why walk over here just as night is falling?

  Ryder climbs up to the control center with his helmet on. He pulls it off to reveal his sweaty red face, nose dribbling like a three-year-old. He grins at me. “Don’t forget to say thank you.”

  “For what?”

  Senuri pushes Liberty’s vid out to Independence. She winks in my direction. “Get ready for a surprise.”

  I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means.

  “Discovery Team Two!” cries Jürgen. He pauses so everyone can stop whatever they were doing and wait for him. Paige sits, fingers over her mouth.

  “Our second Discovery Team will depart at dawn to explore the northern reaches of our yet unnamed valley. Joining me will be Tess, Cristina, and Darien.”

  Alison screams in my ear and hugs me from behind. Paige bangs her fist down on the tabletop with enough force to fling drops of chicken soup onto my face.

  “Ryder did this, you know,” Senuri tells me, eyes beaming.

  I say it softly so only Ryder can hear. “I’d rather not.” He responds, but the noise surrounding us muffles it. I tell him a bit louder, “I need to show you something.”

  Later, alone in the equipment bay, I hold his fingers against the reactor power cables. “We’ve been drawing forty to fifty amps all day. Shouldn’t these cables be warm?”

  “We charged the battery banks over the past two days,” Ryder says. He points to the state of charge indication. Ninety-nine percent. “We’re topped off, so the generator isn’t putting out full current.”

  “Eric says the AC loads come straight from the reactor, not the inverter.”

  He squints. “What’s your point?”

  “We have a power deficit, and the battery charge isn’t accurate.”

  “All right. I don’t agree with your reasoning, but I can talk to Eric about this tomorrow while you’re in the field.”

  “I’m going to see Jürgen,” I tell him. “Right now. I want you to come with me, but I’m going even if you don’t.”

  ◆◆◆

  The western horizon glows vivid blue over jagged black peaks. It should be beautiful, a promise of adventure on a pristine world. Tonight, it’s a stark reminder of our isolation. There are no rescuers here, no teachers willing to forgive our mistakes.

  Ryder and I walk to Independence hand-in-hand. The visor’s night mode shows every rock in sharp grayscale, so the Mars quick-shuffle style of walking is safe in the dark. He hasn’t given me an argument yet, but he doesn’t know what I’m going to say. And to be honest, neither do I.

  We remove our helmets while still in the airlock. “He’s extending an olive branch. Don’t underestimate him. Sure, he has a high opinion of himself, but maybe that’s justified.”

  I rub my face. He’s lecturing, and nothing I can do will stop him.

  “Jürgen’s a brilliant planner, and he’s got a nose for the right direction. You might participate in one of the greatest discoveries in history. With Jürgen, it could happen.”

  Ryder grips the inner hatch handle but instead of twisting it open he holds it shut. We have a few more seconds of privacy before entering Independence.

  “Tess told me a couple of things about Jürgen and I want you to be aware. He’s a determined and ambitious man. He didn’t want the curriculum the university told him to study. When he stopped attending classes he was arrested and put in a cement hole for two years.”

  Did he just say a cement hole?

  “That’s right, two years solitary confinement. His grandfather intervened, probably saved his life. Jürgen’s destiny is to explore—”

  “Fine! And there will be a time for that. But this fixation can’t be allowed to interfere—”

  “Not a fixation. And it’s not interfering with anything, except maybe in your head.”

  “That’s what we’re here for. Let’s talk it out.”

  Two years. How big a hole? Why didn’t they just kill him? And what did he think about during all that time?

  Jürgen’s in the control center, alone, examining a scientific chart or something. Did he order everyone else into their sleepers?

  “Cristina, good to see you. You look well rested.”

  There’s something about him so likable, and the effect is more powerful in his presence. Is this whole talk a mistake? Let Ryder and Eric handle the engineering?

  I bow my head slightly, a stupid habit drilled in from a young age. “Thanks for picking me.”

  “You were the logical choice. Everyone respects your problem-solving abilities.”

  “There’s a problem I’m working on now.”

  His mouth twists. “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t think the reactors are charging our batteries. I think we’re running out of power. We shouldn’t produce any more truck fuel until we find out for certain if the electrical system is working correctly.”

  He stares for a second, then turns to the main panel. “Our banks are at ninety-seven percent.”

  “This morning they were seventy. Eric altered the software, and suddenly all our batteries are maxed. I have reason to believe they’re not actually being charged.”

  Jürgen looks to Ryder. “What’s your opinion?”

  “I can work with Eric and conduct some tests. What Cristina’s saying is physically possible, I guess. Remember all the other problems we’ve had. Not much of a stretch to suspect there’s something wrong with the charging.”

  That’s as good as I’m going to get. “I want to participate in your expedition, especially if we’re surveying for minerals. But we need to figure out this power thing first.”

  Jürgen pushes a vid to Eric on Constitution. “I agree. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Eric’s eyes go wide when he sees I’m with Jürgen. “Yes, I had to alter the code. It was necessary to correct defects in the battery charging management software.”

  “You hacked it,” I point out.

  “Cristina, what haven’t we had to hack to stay alive?”

  “You insisted you could work around the oxygen generator failures. You promised and guaranteed right up to the point they all shut down.”

  Eric shows a mean little smirk. “Is this some kind of revenge for losing the election? Making the rest of us look bad?”

  “Shut it, Eric,” Ryder says. “That’s not what I want and you know it.”

  Jürgen opens his mouth to speak but I cut him off. “I isolated the battery this morning and we lost all AC. How could that happen if the reactor is generating power?”

  Eric snarls, “Because you disconnected the whole AC bus!”

  Jürgen says, “Eric has the experience here.”

  “Nobody has enough experience. You know that.”

  Unnecessarily antagonistic!

  Another mouth twist. This time it lasts longer. “Cristina, there’s a reason I’m organizing these Discovery Team expeditions as early as we can make fuel. The reason is momentum.”

  “Momentum?”

  “Momentum is necessary for morale and attitude, the mental elements that will make us or break us. We didn’t come here just to survive. We came here to do remarkable things. Historic things.”

  “You want to be the first person to discover life on another planet.”

  Huge mouth twist.

  Estúpida chica!

  He juts his
chin upward. A rare event, Jürgen’s at a loss for words.

  “I’m going to figure this out myself,” I tell him. “Replace me on tomorrow’s expedition.”

  ◆◆◆

  Paige cries when I tell her the news. “Tomorrow? As in tomorrow? Me, tomorrow?”

  “As in seven hours from now. You better get some sleep.”

  “Should have let me go to bed and woke me at five and told me then!”

  I pull two electrical system manuals to the main panel. Would opening those breakers truly isolate the entire AC bus, or just the inverter?

  Ryder says, “I think we should talk.” He slides my sleeper door open.

  “I have work to do. And didn’t we just now talk, me and you and everyone else? We said our piece. We all know where we stand.”

  He pushes my manuals off the screen. “I haven’t said my piece, Cristina. I saved it for just me and you. Do me this courtesy, please.”

  The door is closed for two seconds and he blurts, “Two oh eight. That’s the lowest Score I ever heard.”

  He’s got to be kidding. “What the fuck does that matter now?”

  “I think it matters very much, Cristina. You were . . . at whatever academy, you were . . . toxic. Friendless. You threw yourself into your studies hoping it would somehow make you special, make you liked.”

  “I had a close friend, one good friend. That’s all I needed.” Harmony wants us to have many scattered friends. He’s holding it against me I didn’t do what Harmony wants?

  “I’m going to take a wild guess and speculate it was your one good friend’s mission to help you raise your Score, which would make their own Score zoom up into the stratosphere.”

  Son of a bitch. “You know everything, don’t you?”

  “We don’t have Trust Scores any more. What we do have is plain, ordinary trust.”

  Paco taught me more about honesty and trust than Ryder or any of them could ever know. “What about honesty? I’m being honest here. I’m not going to lie to you or myself and agree that thing is putting out power.”

  “I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself, Cristina. And that’s the most important kind of honesty.”