The Titan Probe

by Morris, Brandon Q.

  Maybe Robert would be lucky. Chris, who had been a doctoral candidate when they’d met, was a typical relaxed Australian who should be interested in such a little challenge. He wrote him an email, since his former colleague would certainly not have a cell phone turned on inside the control room. Over there in Australia it must be around noon now.

  He leaned back nervously, and now he had to wait. He looked at his hands, which were shaking. Only three minutes later he heard a ‘ping’ in his inbox. The text of the email only read ‘Just a moment,’ followed by a winking smiley. Did this mean Chris was really trying to do it? Robert took a pencil from the desk and started to scribble on his palm. The pencil was pointy and hurt his hand, but he did not care. He could not avoid thinking about space. No matter how dangerous the journey was, he envied his son. Martin had achieved what he had always desired. He had accomplished something nobody had done before and stood out among the other nine billion human beings.

  Robert heard another ping. He looked at his watch. Only 15 minutes had passed since he received the first message. This new one read as follows:

  Hi Bob. The dish was free, because somebody from ESA was running late. Not that this would matter to you. I found the spectrum you need and attached it as a FITS file. Have fun and tell me sometime what came of this. You owe me a beer in our local pub.

  Robert clicked on the attached file and opened it in Spectral Analyzer, a program which allowed him to evaluate the frequency distribution. The old computer here was much too slow for this modern software, so he had to patiently wait again while an hourglass icon spun on the display. Finally, the image appeared line by line, starting at the higher frequencies. 10,000, 5,000, 4,000… everything normal. 3,000, 2,000… there it is, obviously. The new antenna of the Parkes Observatory, which had been built in 2036, had a diameter of 140 meters and was even more sensitive. It also saw a status signal at exactly 2040 MHz reaching Earth from the direction of Titan. The small redshift fit the movement of the moon around its planet perfectly. The object sending these signals most likely was located on its surface near the equator—exactly where Huygens had landed back then.

  What is going on? Robert was thinking hard, but he could not come up with a scientifically plausible explanation. The batteries of Huygens were empty and had been empty for over 40 years. The chances of them recharging spontaneously were zero, particularly under the conditions on Titan, with a temperature of minus 150 degrees and a poisonous atmosphere. It was a miracle, but he did not believe in miracles. He definitely needed to report this discovery to someone, but to whom? Most of the people who had been involved in the Cassini and Huygens projects at NASA or ESA years ago would be retired by now. He frantically began searching the internet for possible contacts. There was one group that should be very interested in what was going on up there—the ground team responsible for the ILSE expedition. Now Robert regretted not having kept up his networking during the past few years. It would take too long and would be too risky to work his way up the professional hierarchy, asking questions. Some assistant who’d had a bad night’s sleep and did not recognize how important this was would probably brush him off or ignore his message completely.

  Who did he remember? Of course he knew the names of the entire crew, since he had read often enough about the six astronauts. He had cried when he learned Marchenko died. But there was the incident before launch, with the ice drill vehicle. A man from India had been injured in it, and now the man was CapCom, or Capsule Commander, and served as the voice of Mission Control. A search engine gave him the man’s name: Devendra Singh Arora. He hoped NASA did not have too many employees named Devendra. He wrote an email and addressed it to various combinations of his name in conjunction with nasa.gov. It’s a shot in the dark, so to speak. How high were his chances of reaching the correct recipient? Nonetheless, even if he reached the wrong person, that person would certainly know the address of his famous namesake. In his email, Robert described who he was in order to appear credible, what he had measured, and who had confirmed it. He left the conclusions to NASA in order not to sound like an arrogant crackpot. Then he clicked the ‘Send’ button.

  He started to lean back, but immediately shifted forward again. In spite of the cold temperature in the control room, his back was soaking wet. His heart beat faster than usual, and he felt more alive than he had felt in a long time. He looked at his watch: twenty past eight. Florida, where he assumed Mission Control was located, was in the same time zone. The ILSE spaceship would be watched round the clock, even though the CapCom needed to take a break and rest sometimes. Robert decided he had exhausted his options. If NASA took his message seriously, somebody would contact him. Now it was time to go home.

  December 28, 2046, ILSE

  Francesca awoke with a start. It was completely dark in her cabin. Earlier, she had asked Siri to turn off every single source of light. Since her return to the spaceship, not only did interior lights bother her, but now even the slightest sound gave her a bad headache. As ILSE generated a lot of noise, this meant she only made it through the day by taking painkillers. She could not shield herself from the noise, or even turn it off temporarily, because it was mostly generated by the life-support systems. Even now, wearing the best earplugs available on board, she could still hear the dull thumping sound. At least the earplugs cut out the hissing, the high-frequency screeching, and the continual creaking. Sometimes she wished she was out in space. In the vacuum, even ten centimeters would be enough distance to be protected from all the noise and stir of the ship.

  The noise did not bother her before her excursion into the depths of the Enceladus Ocean. It had always been there, but her brain used to filter it without any problems. The doctors on Earth did not know what had physically changed for her to cause the symptoms. If she kept taking pills at this rate, she would use up the entire supply on board ILSE before they arrived back on Earth in about twelve months. Then she would have to kill herself. Francesca could not imagine being exposed to this much pain without any pharmaceutical help. Maybe she could be put into an artificial coma. She laughed in the darkness at the thought, and it sounded like a desperate croaking.

  Francesca clung to the idea that only one person could help her—the ship’s doctor, Dimitri Marchenko, who had sacrificed himself for her on Enceladus, and whom she had left in the lurch back on the moon. Dimitri—Mitya—whose death she felt responsible for. The others offered clever arguments against this notion. She had not even been conscious when Marchenko fell into the crevasse. And he would have initiated a rescue mission for any other crew member because it was the right thing to do in this situation. In the end, he had been able to save two lives while only risking one.

  It didn’t matter. The others on board did not have a clue, and certainly not the doctors from Earth who claimed she was temporarily suffering from shock, and that everything would be fine again. They reminded her that only three days had passed since these traumatic events. She knew she was right—not the others—and that she would pay for her perceived sin with headaches until the end of her life. It served her right, for she carried a heavy guilt for which she could not atone. Marchenko was dead. How could she live with this fact and ever again lead a normal life? Yesterday, she had locked herself in Mitya’s cabin after a short memorial service for him. There she alternately cried and cursed herself, until she finally fell asleep.

  There was a knock on the door. This was probably what had awakened her in the first place. She wiped off the fresh tears with her pillow.

  “Siri, turn on the light,” Francesca said.

  In the narrow room, the mess became even more noticeable now. Francesca looked around and saw there were dark smudges on her pillow. She must have forgotten to remove her makeup last night. Marchenko always teased her about wearing it. Who needed makeup in space? A French cosmetics company actually developed a specific line of makeup that could be applied and worn in a space environment. She was the only female astronaut on the mission who had agr
eed to take along a few items of their brand in her personal luggage. Yesterday she had put some on, especially for Marchenko, but now she also asked herself, who really needs it? Marchenko was dead. She felt like crying again, but her cheeks remained dry.

  There was another knock. So it was not just her imagination. She quickly straightened her blanket and put on her overalls. She lifted her arms and sniffed her armpits. She was in dire need of a shower, which made it embarrassing for her having to open the door in this state. At the same time, Francesca felt like she was watching herself from some far away distance and scolded herself for this abnormal sense of detachment. It didn’t matter because now, nothing mattered anymore.

  “Siri, open the door.”

  Amy had just raised her hand to knock again, and she now stood rather awkwardly with one hand up in front of the entrance.

  “Good morning, Francesca.”

  Francesca got up. She was almost a head taller than the commander, and five years older, but it was completely clear who called the shots on the spaceship. In spite of her slender build and her almost youthful age of 43, Amy exuded a natural authority that Francesca could not deny.

  “Good morning, commander,” she said. “Did I miss the start of the workday?”

  “No, your time off won’t be over for another two hours. I had hoped to meet you in the fitness room, but you weren’t there today.”

  Francesca nodded. Daily exercise was mandatory, to keep the decrease in muscle and bone mass to a minimum.

  “I...”

  “You don’t have to apologize. In your case, I wouldn’t even manage to crawl out from under my bedcovers.”

  It was nice of Amy to say this. Yet, Francesca did not believe her. The commander would pull herself together and carry on as usual. She could not imagine anything else.

  “Hmm,” Francesca said. She hoped Amy would leave the room before she burst into tears again. Most of all, she did not want Amy to ask how she was doing. She crossed her arms in front of her belly.

  “I wanted to ask you to come to the command module in one hour. We have to discuss a few things relating to our return journey,” Amy said with a smile.

  “I will be there,” Francesca replied. The commander made a gesture, but then changed her mind.

  “You know we are always here for you. And Mission Control can offer good psychologists.” She did not wait for an answer, but instead turned around and left. The door closed automatically behind her.

  Francesca wondered if she should throw herself on her bed, but then opted for the shower after all. A good decision, she thought when she stood under a warm jet of water in the WHC, or Waste Hygiene Compartment. Due to the artificial gravity created by the rotating habitat ring, the shower almost worked as it did back home. If she held her head directly under the spray, the splatter of the drops covered up the noise of the spaceship. She imagined walking through a tropical downpour accompanying by Marchenko. Of course he was with her. She never asked him if he liked rain as much as she did. There had not been enough time. The water running across her face seemed to be saltier than usual.

  She turned off the shower and dried herself off. Naked, she walked across the narrow hallway to Marchenko’s cabin that had now become her home. She would not meet anyone else here because the second cabin in this section of the habitat ring was empty. Francesca looked at herself in the mirror. The body measurement devices said she had lost one-eighth of her muscle mass, but she could not detect this in her mirror image. She pulled on a fresh overall. Should I put on makeup? Francesca shook her head.

  It was time to go to the command module. It was only a distance of twenty meters, but it took some skill to navigate the path through the spokes of the ring due to their decreasing gravity. In the hub of the ring, and in the center of the spaceship where the crew worked and researched, there was zero gravity. The transition there made Francesca breathe faster. She felt like she was plunging downward on a roller coaster. Like a free fall to the end of time and space. She knew this brief, somewhat unnerving rush very well, but could not avoid or prevent it. Since the time they had left Earth, she had waited for months to get used to it, but the rush always returned. For a few seconds she did not think about Marchenko at all. Then she got ahold of herself, opened the entrance to the next module, and grabbed one of the handles.

  The command module was ahead of her. Once past the hub of the habitat ring, the garden, a small workshop, the radiation bunker, and the airlock followed. Francesca remembered how several weeks ago she and Marchenko had run through the spaceship after a pressure loss. Now it felt like that had happened in another life.

  Francesca turned around. The others were probably waiting for her. She did not have the right to impose her own pain on them. As she had thought, her fellow astronauts had already arrived there before her, and they were floating directly above. Francesca turned around and placed herself on the same level. Around the table she saw Hayato, the Japanese engineer, Jiaying, the Chinese geologist, and Martin, the German computer programming expert who had explored the Enceladus Ocean with her. One seat remained conspicuously empty. Amy was at the head of the table, holding the baby in her arms. The baby had been an accident that had almost seemed to be a catastrophe for the mission, but then had turned out to enrich their lives. Six of them had started, and six human beings would return to Earth—but someone was missing.

  Amy tickled the baby’s belly, and he laughed. Dimitri Sol was his name. Francesca felt tender-hearted at the thought Dmitri would be on board for the second part of their journey as well.

  “Hayato, could you please take him?” The commander gave her son a little push in the direction of his father. Hayato stood up so the child would not miss him. Dimitri Sol floated through the command module, completely calm. One could tell he was used to the weightless environment. How would he fare on Earth, when the feeling of falling suddenly wasn’t normal anymore, but a sign of danger? Maybe he was the first human in a completely new generation, for whom dealing with zero gravity in the hostile environment of space would become normal.

  “I just wanted to inform you about the plans for the return trip,” the commander began. “First the good news. You will be able to hug your friends and family members on Earth in eleven months. Our supplies allow us to lengthen the acceleration phase. This also means the time of our flight in free fall is shortened, and the doctors on Earth are very happy about that. Watson?”

  Amy must have earlier prepared the AI for this presentation. Watson played an animation of a fog display showing the return path ILSE would take.

  “Any questions, anyone?”

  “When are we going to start?” Martin almost interrupted her. Francesca had never seen him this impatient before.

  “After leaving the orbit around Enceladus, we have entered a large Saturn orbit outside of the rings. We are only waiting to reach a suitable position in relation to Earth so we can initiate our drives for the first acceleration phase.”

  Martin knocked on the table. “It’s an old custom—knocking on wood,” he said when the others gave him strange looks.

  “But the tabletop is not made of wood.” Jiaying jabbed him in the ribs, so he had to hold on to the table in order not to float away.

  “I don’t expect any problems,” the commander said, “because we’ve learned from our mistakes.”

  Francesca noticed Amy cast a nervous glance at her. What would come next?

  “As you know, we no longer have a medical doctor on board.” Amy briefly looked in her direction, but then again at the others. “Starting now, Jiaying will take over this position. We no longer need her knowledge of geology. She has also studied biology, though, and Mission Control is preparing her for this new task.”

  It was a sensible decision. Francesca was not angry about it, yet she still felt a twinge. Marchenko was being replaced very quickly.

  “Jiaying has to learn a lot, and therefore won’t be able to work for a while. For this reason I had to reshuff
le the shifts for the next few weeks. Watson will upload the data to your personal schedules. We still use two-person teams, but from now on you will have twelve hours of work and the same amount of rest. We will rotate all the teams, so no one goes stir-crazy here. This will lead to a small number of double shifts, but you can manage it.”

  The crew did not protest. Francesca hadn’t expected them to do so, anyway. It was a logical choice, and if she was the commander she would have come to the same decision. There was another reason she was afraid of the coming months: her skills as a pilot would no longer be needed. Gardening and cleaning would not be enough of a challenge for her to make her forget her loss—and more than that, her overwhelming feeling of guilt.

  December 28, 2046, Enceladus

  “Ba-bumm. Ba-bumm. Ba-bumm.” For Marchenko, his heartbeat appeared to echo loudly in its lonely chamber. He could not sleep—or had he already slept? The arm display showed 01:47, which meant he must have nodded off for a while. He felt cold. The blanket covering him was too thin, but it smelled of Francesca, and this was the reason he did not look for a thicker one. How nice it would be if the pilot could lie next to him, keep him warm, and sing him an Italian lullaby. Marchenko sighed. It was no use. He could not fall asleep again, so he might as well get up. He turned the lighting to the minimum level, walked around in the cabin, and rubbed his temples. How in the world would he get enough energy for Valkyrie to make it fully functional again?

  Marchenko walked back and forth: control console, the improvised bed, end of the cabin, the control console. Now and then he passed by the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU, his spacesuit. He had simply left it on the floor. His mother would have scolded him for his sloppiness. Francesca, on the other hand, did not mind when he left his socks lying around. The HUT took up most of the space. The helmet sat on the top part of the suit. Shouldn’t he try to clean the visor that had shown him a blurred image of the outside world? There was something strange about the helmet. Marchenko stopped and looked at it, moving his head back and forth. The cabin light should have been reflecting off the visor, but instead there was only blackness. He reached toward it and realized the helmet did not have a visor anymore. At its edge he felt sharp shards of a hard material, but the center was simply empty. A bit of water came off the lower edge of the helmet in one big drop, and then the remainders of the visor fell clinking to the floor.