The Io Encounter: Hard Science Fiction (Ice Moon Book 3)

by Brandon Q Morris

  “You could at least make some sandwiches for us,” Hayato said, “if we’re going to pull your chestnuts out of the fire.”

  “And how are you going to eat them? The sandwiches, that is. You won’t be getting out of your spacesuit the whole way there and back, Hayato. So you’d better have a bite before you go.”

  April 17, 2047, ILSE

  It’s amazing how small his fingers are!

  Amy sat quietly and watched her son’s tiny fingers grabbing onto her ring finger, as if Dimitri Sol was a curious little monkey. She was experiencing a precious moment and she appreciated this time with her child very much. The tender connection between their hands seemed to pump pure joy into her body, yet at the same time it was the source of her greatest misery—Dimitri Sol was facing an almost inevitable death in a few weeks. He would still not be able to speak or walk, but he would already have to take the long path into the afterlife. Who was ultimately to blame for his life being cut so short? It was she—his mother—because she had condemned him to be born on this ship. Amy tried hard to prevent it, but a single tear started running down her cheek. No. The moment of loss had not yet arrived. She would save further tears.

  She had always considered herself to be a very optimistic person, one who, even in the darkest of times, still believed in a happy outcome. At this moment, though, she was no longer capable of seeing the bright side of their situation, since she and Dimitri Sol were locked inside the habitat ring. While Amy had everything needed for temporary survival, she was nevertheless alone. The child lying in her lap was not only an enormous joy, but also an infinite burden. Without Dimitri Sol, she might have already ended her own life. What was being asked of her now did not fit her character in the slightest. She was condemned to sit idly by while waiting for the end.

  During the first 24 hours after the takeover she had tried to fight it, arguing with Watson for hours on end. The AI refused to divulge its plans, and Amy knew it had a specific mission to fulfill, while everything else was subordinate to the mission’s success. She herself was considered an unwelcome guest who would be the least dangerous if she knew as little of the agenda as possible.

  Her discussions with Watson revealed that the AI was no bloodthirsty machine, but if her existence or her actions endangered the success of the mission, the AI would surely eliminate her. Unfortunately, this would be all too easy to accomplish, since it controlled the oxygen supply to all the rooms. Watson might even let her go to sleep peacefully—and ensure that she would never awaken again. Amy considered whether she should ask the AI to let her and her son pass away gently, right before the inevitable end.

  She suddenly heard the sharp metallic sound of a bulkhead closing. It must be coming from the habitat ring, she concluded.

  “Watson, what just happened?”

  The AI hesitated for a moment before answering. “Li Jiaying asked to be able to use one of the showers. I temporarily sealed off the part of the habitat ring with WHC 2 from your sector.”

  “But I would like to speak to Jiaying. I am not going to do anything against the mission, I promise. Please?”

  As expected, Watson was completely unmoved by this. “Unfortunately, that is not possible. Regulations do not allow you to have direct communication with Li Jiaying.”

  ‘Regulations do not allow’ it! What was Watson alluding to? Amy pondered this concept. Until now he had simply rejected her wishes with the run-of-the-mill ‘it can’t be done’ answer. There seemed to be things Watson decided based on his internal logic, and other things by rationale forced on him from outside sources. Would Watson allow the communication without these regulations? She decided it was best to postpone asking that question.

  Amy now heard water running through the pipes behind the wall. Jiaying had apparently just turned on the shower, and the commander thought about the woman in the WHC. What might she be thinking and feeling at this moment? Would she be glad to assist Watson in fulfilling their mission? Did Jiaying consider herself a traitor—or a victim of circumstances? Remembering what her own parents had taught her, Amy always tried to refrain from judging someone without knowing all the factors involved. There was only one way to arrive at a usable assessment—she had to establish contact with Jiaying. The hair on Amy’s neck prickled. She knew this feeling. Just knowing she had a crucial task imbued her with new energy.

  What had she learned about AIs during training? Watson had the ability to draw logical deductions based on everything he knew. For this purpose, the programmers provided him not only with facts but also with a knowledge of the world, things a human being learned intuitively while growing up. But the programmers had to be selective, out of sheer necessity. It was not possible to convey all the impressions that a human experienced in twenty years’ time to a machine within two or three years. Therefore, the software program focused on the tasks Watson would have to perform. Watson did not have to know, for example, how it felt to lie on the warm sand of a tropical beach while drinking a refreshing strawberry daiquiri. If the question ever arose, the AI had access to a database of cocktail recipes, knew the composition of sand, and could call up weather reports for Tahiti covering the last 200 years. But it wasn’t the same concept as ‘experience.’

  Amy realized this was the only way she could outsmart Watson. She could not beat him with facts, and certainly not with logic, but Watson lacked the knowledge of the world that she and Jiaying possessed without being aware of it, just because they had the advantage of being part of human society. Watson did not belong to ‘society,’ and if he had a consciousness, she would pity him.

  The ‘commander with no command’ carefully withdrew her finger from Sol’s grip. The baby smiled in his sleep, and Amy could not help but reply with a broad smile. She stood up quietly and looked around the cabin. She was looking for some common-sense thing Watson had no idea of, even though it was in plain sight of his camera eyes.

  In the corner she saw the footlocker containing the personal items she had been allowed to bring on board. Amy had not rummaged around in it for a long time. She knelt in front of the footlocker and lifted the lid. The hinges squeaked loudly, causing Amy to flinch, but luckily Sol did not wake up. She could not see much of the locker’s contents in the soft light—she had dimmed the lights earlier for the sake of her son—so she reached in with her hands. There was her mother’s soft scarf. A plastic bag, which must contain the dried leaves she had gathered before the launch. A velvety box—this had to be the jewelry she had never worn on board. And there it was: her diary. At the age of nine, Amy had started recording everyday events because she felt so lonely at that point in her childhood, although she had mostly stopped writing in it by the time she reached age eleven. The diary still contained many empty pages, since she had not been a very consistent writer through the years.

  Somewhere there must be a pencil—she would have packed one, just in case. She turned the diary in her hands, and then her finger brushed against something rubbery. She had stuck an old-fashioned pencil, a wooden one with an eraser at its end, into the binding. Very good! She took the diary from the footlocker and left the lid open so that she would not awaken Sol with the squeaking noise of closing it. Then she went back to her seat next to her son’s cradle.

  Sol was still smiling in his sleep in the cradle his father Hayato had constructed for him. It looked handmade, but it was the most beautiful cradle she could ever imagine. She swallowed hard when she thought of Hayato. Every second increased the distance between her and Io, where the father of her child was probably fighting for his life at that very moment.

  Amy opened the diary. She flipped through it until she reached the first blank page on the right side. Then she pulled the still-sharpened pencil from the binding. She started to formulate a message for Jiaying. In the dim light she could barely see what she was writing.

  Dear Jiaying,

  I may have found a means to communicate with you. I really hope so, because I feel you are a good person. There must
be a reason for your actions, something that lies beyond your control. I truly regret we did not communicate with you enough to give you the feeling that you could share everything with us. But it is not too late, yet. Perhaps both of us can work together to reverse these events. Unfortunately, I have not even been told what fate awaits us. Even if you do not have any useful answers to any of this, I would be glad to hear from you and find out how you are doing.

  Best wishes,

  Amy

  The commander read through the message once more and replaced ‘feel’ with ‘know,’ and then she ripped the page from the diary. The abrupt sound of tearing paper reached Sol in his sleep. The baby squirmed a little, but then resumed his sound sleep. Amy slipped the page of text into her blouse. It would ‘accidentally’ slip out in WHC 2, as soon as Watson opened the sector for her again, and she would not pay any attention to it. And when Jiaying took another shower, she might find the page, assuming Watson did not know about writing messages on paper as a form of communication. Amy was rather optimistic, since she knew many people who were no longer aware of the practice.

  April 17, 2047, Io

  Less than a centimeter of fabric separated them from the vacuum. Mindful of this fact, Francesca could not help but shiver when she inserted her legs into the spacesuit attached to the SuitPort, even though she had just vigorously exercised to become better accustomed to the pressure difference. She was equipped as if going on a spacewalk—with a diaper, thermal underwear, and so on—even though she would be on the surface and moving under the gravity of this moon.

  Unlike Titan, Io had no atmosphere to speak of, and Francesca was unsure if she liked or disliked that feature. The low atmospheric pressure, one-millionth of what it would be on Earth, made excursions more complicated than previously. On the other hand, it would probably be uncomfortably hot if Io’s atmosphere was as dense as Titan’s.

  From inside the lander Martin gave the signal to uncouple the suit, but first she checked the displays. The pressure was okay, so she initiated separation from the SuitPort connection. She slowly fell a few centimeters down to the surface of the moon. Francesca landed gently, flexing her knees in order to be prepared for anything. She was the first human being on Io.

  She alone would know, in these first moments, what it felt like walking around here. She made a careful first step with her right foot and then pushed down more firmly. This caused a little bit of dust to swirl around, probably a remnant of the many volcanic eruptions. At night, the sulfur dioxide freezing out of the almost non-existent atmosphere covered the dust. The dust layer itself was thin, which she found reassuring, since she hated any reminder of the quicksand on Titan. Due to the lack of weather-related erosion, they would find no sand on Io, and recalling this fact put her anxieties to rest.

  The Italian pilot was standing securely and firmly on a rock surface, maybe granite or basalt—or some other material. They would have time to analyze it later. The sky above was black, with the exception of a giant Jupiter—appearing to be almost forty times the size of the moon in the sky of Earth—hanging halfway over the horizon. Francesca could not stare at the gas giant for very long because the huge disk confused her senses, and made the perception of up and down switch directions. This was probably caused by the cloud bands of Jupiter constantly swirling in front of her eyes. The planet itself took about 10 hours to rotate fully around its axis, while Io required 42 hours for a complete orbit around Jupiter. Therefore, the relative movement was so slow it caused an effect similar to looking out from a stationary train’s window at a train leaving on the next track at the station, and feeling like your train is the one in motion. This would make Jupiter a good signpost during her expedition, since it would hardly change its position, and Io always turned the same side toward the planet. The landing crew was located slightly below the moon’s equator, and she could only see part of the disk. The Great Red Spot was not visible.

  Something suddenly pulled against her body, and Francesca found herself reeling. She had to look at the horizon to avoid getting dizzy.

  “Hayato, watch out that you don’t look at the sky for too long,” she told him via radio.

  The Japanese astronaut was already standing next to her, and of course he too was watching the spectacular sky. Unlike her, he did not seem bothered by it. Hey, I am the trained fighter pilot here! She placed a hand on the shoulder of his HUT, but Hayato did not seem to notice. She knocked against the fabric until he turned around.

  “Should we go now? We will have time for breaks later,” she stated.

  Francesca wanted them to cover a sizeable part of the distance as quickly as possible. Kami-Nari Patera was about 50 kilometers away. A round trip of 100 kilometers was quite a distance to cover, even considering the lower gravity. They carried oxygen, water, and liquid nutrients for 48 hours, but Francesca was not keen on spending a night in her spacesuit. This would mean her having to sleep with her own bodily wastes. She hoped Martin would fulfill his promise of having a shower set up by the time they returned.

  Their destination was roughly eastward, and Francesca looked at the horizon. Until now, only Jupiter had lit up the scenery, probably 100 times brighter than a nighttime full moon on Earth. But now the sun rose in the east. Even though it seemed almost infinitely far away, it was surprisingly bright and definitely outshone the planet. Io seemed to be changing by the minute. Francesca turned around and looked at her shadow. What had previously been fuzzy, wide, and gray was now sharp-edged, narrower, and black. The sunlight increased the contrast to the extreme. The sky was still black as night, but now a gleaming searchlight rose above the horizon and bathed everything in a bright light, also simultaneously creating large areas of darkness that might hide whatever Francesca’s imagination allowed for.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Hayato via the helmet radio. Her Japanese colleague had an extra oxygen tank on his back, just as she had on hers. In addition, he carried a bag of tools and measuring devices, with sample containers that they planned to fill along the way. They decided not to split up their ‘luggage’ but to take turns carrying it instead. Due to the low gravity, the approximately 30 terrestrial kilos of the bag should not be a problem, even considering each of them had to manage the extra oxygen.

  Francesca started out carefully. It took her a few meters to gain confidence in handling the surface. Then she quickly became more courageous, attempting longer jump-strides. They would be moving at a good pace, it seemed, at least for the first five kilometers. On the horizon, Francesca detected a chain of hills that probably represented the edge of a crater’s ejecta. According to the radar, the hills were about 800 meters high, and the crater behind them was certainly too large for Martin’s purposes. On the other hand, simply looking for suitable objects along the way did not seem to be the right strategy, either. Perhaps they could search the area around the landing site after this excursion.

  Through the helmet radio she heard Hayato breathing loudly. Was she going too fast for him? As long as he did not say anything she saw no reason to decrease her speed. She enjoyed moving—she had been sitting around too long. Tomorrow her muscles would complain, but today she would push them to their limits. They had 21 hours before the sun was going to set, which they estimated—based on the optimistic notion of no major surprises—would be one hour more than they would need.

  Gradually, the landscape became more uneven. There were more boulders, and some small craters created by their impacts. It was obvious they were approaching an active volcano. Where was the mountain range they had seen earlier on the map? Francesca looked at her arm display and zoomed in on the area. They were just now walking by the range! Francesca ventured a particularly high jump and it became clear why they had not initially noticed the expected mountain—they were moving parallel to a rift valley. The plate they were walking on was angled by a few degrees toward another one. There must be an escarpment a few kilometers further north that would be seen on radar as a mountain range. The probes
sent from Earth had tended to concentrate on the ice moons, so the maps of Io were still relatively imprecise.

  Francesca gave Hayato a signal. Now they definitely moved more northward, and it did not take long before Francesca stood at the edge of an abyss. She first tested the rock, but as nothing seemed wobbly, she dared to go to the very edge.

  Hayato stayed two meters behind her.

  “Come on, you’ve got to experience this view!” said Francesca, waving him in her direction.

  “You go ahead,” he said, “you deserve it.”

  “Vertigo?”

  Hayato shook his head. “No, survival instinct. We do not know how stable this slope is. At least one of us should stay on safe ground—just to be sensible.”

  “There is no atmosphere, no weather, and no erosion. This rock is absolutely solid,” she insisted, but Hayato did not react. She shrugged at his reluctance. Ahead of her was a broad plain bathed in many poisonous-looking colors. To Francesca it looked like a huge building site where someone had experimented with using colors that were as ugly as possible. The painter left and took his paint buckets with him, but round structures remained, looking like paint that had dripped from the sides of the buckets and dried in place. She knew they consisted of various forms of sulfur and sulfur compounds. The role played by water on Earth, ice on Enceladus, and methane on Titan, was played by sulfur here—they had landed on a sulfur moon.

  Here and there steam rose from the surface. Francesca asked Hayato for the night vision device and, using the infrared view, she saw hotspots scattered everywhere. She had to turn down the brightness of the night vision device in order to avoid being blinded. In some spots, temperatures reached almost 2,000 degrees, and a wide, warm band came from the north and turned toward the southeast. Francesca followed it with her binoculars. The structure, probably a lava stream, flowed into the crater that was also their destination. The crater seemed to be surrounded by mountains along only two-thirds of its circumference, and those stood right in their path.