The Titan Probe

by Morris, Brandon Q.

  Martin had also assembled her gear. For instance, she carried a hammer and a large awl in her backpack. ‘Instead of crampons,’ Martin had said. The dunes, and most likely also the mountains behind them, were as hard as granite on Earth. The mission planners had not taken climbing equipment into account. When she hammered the awl into the ice, she would be able to pull herself up on it. In addition, she also carried a tent. It was not airtight, so she would not be able to take off her spacesuit inside of the tent. She asked Martin what use it was, but he only smiled and said she would appreciate it in time. The tent fabric, which was coated with metal foil on the outside, was so light she did not even bother to argue with him.

  The tent was on the primitive sled that also held three spare oxygen tanks, currently her dearest possessions. She did not believe she could cover the 60 kilometers in one stage. The three tanks gave her more than enough time, a total of 32 hours. Somewhere near her goal she would take off her improvised backpack, put the tent fabric under her head as a pillow, and sleep for a few hours. In more unusual situations she must have already done something like this... no, she had not. This was the strangest excursion of her life, by God, not counting the race against time to save her life on Enceladus.

  The ground below her feet was getting considerably more rigid. The sled, which only consisted of a tarp, offered little resistance. She had suggested attaching runners to it, but Martin talked had her out of it. Runners, he said, would not be useful at such low temperatures. They worked on Earth because the ice briefly melted below them. This could not be expected to happen here. Francesca thought he was probably right, as much as she wouldn't admit it to him.

  A few more meters and she reached the slope of the dune. Here, the ground was not shifty, such as it would be in a sandy desert on Earth, but hard as stone. Francesca took a little break. She shook her legs to get the cramps out of her muscles. The dune ahead of her looked like a sleeping giant. From this side, the path was comfortable and rose only gradually. But, when she crossed the first dune, she noticed she would not be able to move as quickly in the opposite direction. On the downwind side, a 100-meter-high wall loomed at a steep angle.

  Now, from a distance of two or three kilometers, it looked less impressive. Everything farther away could only be perceived vaguely, because the haze in the atmosphere was so thick. The sun could not be seen at all. The light around Francesca was a dull orangish brown. Titan was a world of eternal twilight. Even in the middle of the day it was a thousand times darker than on Earth.

  When the sun set behind the thick layer of haze it never got completely dark, because Saturn’s giant disk reflected light toward its companion. Francesca was glad she would soon be able to leave this moon—on the other hand she was proud to be the first human to step on Titan. With each step she entered something absolutely new. Cristoforo Colombo, who was born in the same city as she, had done less—after all, the America he came to was already populated by humans.

  After her breathing steadied, she aimed her hand-held searchlight at the slope ahead of her, just for the sake of safety. No obstacles were visible. She turned off the searchlight and took the backpack from her shoulders. When she bent down, something snapped in her back. Ah, the old pain. A tendon in her shoulder joint sometimes popped out. She slowly stood up and stretched. Nothing happened, only the short pain. She bent forward again, more carefully this time, and switched on the searchlight once again. Where its light fell—the same area as before—about 15 meters away, a small hill had formed in the treacherous sand. She turned off the light, waited for ten seconds, and then switched it on again. The hill had disappeared, as if it never existed. Francesca shook her head. How strange. But she needed to go on.

  December 31, 2046, Titan

  “Fucking shit!” Martin Neumaier cursed like never before. Some kind of ‘brief excursion’ this turned out to be. He knew beforehand Titan would not welcome them with open arms. He looked at Hayato, who seemed to be standing at attention, waiting for him to calm down again. Martin could not see his face through the glass of the helmet visor, but he was sure the Japanese engineer wore a slightly disapproving expression one could almost mistake for calm friendliness. Only almost. And only if you don’t know Hayato well. Martin had to admit, though, his fellow astronaut was right. It really didn’t help at all to get upset. It wouldn’t help them finish their work any sooner. Martin was surprised at himself, since he always considered himself to be very level-headed. What was making him so upset?

  Actually, he knew quite well what it was. On ILSE, a particular name had been mentioned, the name of a particular man. It had taken him a long time before he had eventually managed to forget this man, and now, 1.2 billion kilometers away from Earth, he was once again interfering in Martin’s life. Maybe intentionally? No, it was probably unfair to think this. The man, whom Martin considered to be his father only in the biological sense, had probably meant well when he reported the surprising radio contact with the Huygens lander. Yet this was typical for Millikan. As long as Martin had known him—which was his entire childhood—the man had a talent for habitually ‘meaning well,’ but he had habitually caused him and his mother a lot of pain over the years. Martin therefore had been glad when they finally lost contact with him. That had occurred when Martin was 14 years old.

  He wiped his hand over his helmet visor. All of this was nonsense. He mustn’t allow himself to lose his concentration. Titan was unforgiving if you made mistakes. He looked at Hayato and signaled him to continue. They were trying to free the lander and make it ready for launch again. There were two problems they had to deal with. First. the landing struts were broken and frozen in the ice on the surface of Titan at a depth of about half a meter. And second, the lander was also slanted; one side touched the ice and the other rested, at an angle of 20 degrees, on the remainder of the struts.

  After they had said goodbye to Francesca, they ineffectually tried to hack their way into the ground. Soon they realized the attempt was futile. Martin himself should have known better because, after all, he had given Francesca the special tools to take on her trip. The ice was as hard as granite.

  Despite this, they had a weapon they could not have used with granite—heat. While they would have to heat stone to 1,500 degrees, ice began melting at zero. Starting with the minus 180 temperature on Titan, it should not be much more difficult than liquefying soldering tin back on Earth. Martin remembered using a soldering iron when he was a kid. You applied a bit of electricity and heat was created—it sounded very simple. First they connected a two-core cable with the batteries of the lander, but how could they run the cable outside without causing a leak? The poisonous and slightly caustic atmosphere of Titan must not be allowed to enter the cabin. Therefore, the next step was to remove part of the batteries. They had to be careful the craft would still have enough power for launch, since the engine could not be started without electricity.

  Unfortunately, and this was what Martin had confirmed with a curse, the batteries were useless in the cold. They would work in a vacuum, but the atmosphere allowed them to cool too fast, causing them to lose power.

  “We should actually be glad about this,” he said to Hayato via his helmet radio. “Imagine that it worked and had melted the ice.”

  “And we would have been in the middle of it,” the Japanese astronaut said, completing his thought.

  “Crackle, crackle,” Martin said.

  Hayato understood the onomatopoeia for electrical sparks and laughed. “And now?”

  A somber silence followed.

  “A blowtorch would be good.” Martin tried to recall his tinkering as a teenager in order to find something suitable.

  “We have to think bigger. A flamethrower!”

  “Wait, Hayato, I’ll just look around...” Martin did not move. “No, we don’t have one.” He conspicuously shrugged his shoulders so that Hayato noticed the gesture, even though he wore a spacesuit.

  “Yes, we do have a flamethrower.”
r />   “What do you mean?”

  “Our oxygen tanks.”

  “How are you going to burn oxygen?” asked Martin, shaking his head. Hayato must know combustion is nothing else but a reaction with oxygen. Then an idea dawned on him.

  “The methane, that’s what you want to...”

  “Yes, it should work,” Hayato said. “We’ve got almost five percent down here, and the atmosphere is about 50 percent denser than on Earth.”

  “Won’t there be a danger we could set ourselves on fire?”

  “I do not think so. The methane can only burn where there is oxygen—and that will only be where we spray it from the tanks. There probably is no safer flamethrower than ours.”

  “And what if the methane suddenly gets into the tank?”

  “The tank is under pressure. As long as it remains over 1.5 bar, there is no danger. We just have to stop in time.”

  December 31, 2046, Titan

  Two hours later Francesca left the last dune behind her. The strap pulling her sled chafed her shoulders, but the most exhausting part of her trip was still ahead of her. Through the curtain of haze she detected a mountain range that appeared to be several hundred meters high. The remainders of the Huygens probe must be located in a valley behind it.

  “Hi guys, are you doing okay?”

  The signal of her helmet radio managed to reach the stranded lander module without any problems. She doubted whether this would still be the case once she was beyond the mountain range.

  “Everything fine so far.” She heard Martin’s answer loud and clear. “Hayato is just getting one of the oxygen tanks from the lander.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “We’ll explain later. He is just coming back. Everything okay with you?”

  “Perfect. I have reached the mountains.”

  “Then have a safe trip. Talk to you later. Neumaier, over.”

  “Good luck to you guys,” she said, but Martin seemed to have already cut the connection. The radio was her only link to humanity. She knew ILSE hovered above her, but it was not possible to establish direct contact through the thick haze. Even though Francesca was sweating, a shiver ran down her spine.

  She started the ascent. Based on radar scans of the area, the AI had marked the easiest path through the mountains for her. Francesca soon realized this assistance was of little use to her. Deep fissures in the ice, created by the gravitational pull of Saturn, were missing from her map, due to being located in the radar shadow. Instead, Francesca had to find her own way, which was often much steeper than she had planned. She could walk best in the trenches that the methane rains had carved into the ice.

  The sled with the oxygen tanks became more and more of a problem as she progressed. Because of it, she could not follow certain routes. Even though the gravity shrank the 200 kilograms to not quite 30 kilos, the weight gradually became a burden. Francesca thought once she reached the ridge of the mountain range, the last four or five kilometers would be downhill all the way. It would take an hour to get there, and two more hours for the return trip, since it would be uphill again. That would allow her up to five hours to take care of Huygens once she was at her destination. She was going to leave the sled with her oxygen supply right where she was, take a longer break, and then march toward Huygens with a fresh tank.

  After making the decision, she looked around for a camping site. Toward the east, about ten meters below her position, there was an open, level piece of ground where no ‘sand’ had collected. It had most probably been swept clean by the wind, so the spot appeared to be suitable for her needs. By the time she reached it, it had grown noticeably darker. Francesca looked up at the sky and saw clouds had gathered. This was a fairly rare occurrence near the equator, and only in the spring or fall. By chance, they had arrived somewhat south of the equator at the beginning of the southern fall season.

  Neumaier is an asshole, she thought. He could have informed me about this more directly. Clouds in the sky, this might mean rain. On Titan, the seasons lasted seven and a half Earth years. When it got warmer in the north, where now spring was beginning instead of autumn, the methane lakes there evaporated. The methane formed clouds. The temperature differences with the cooling south were equalized through air currents—wind, or even storms—which moved the clouds until they precipitated in the south, or on the way, if they hit a mountain range and therefore needed to climb higher. This worked the same way on Titan as it does on Earth.

  Damn, Francesca thought. If it were to rain anywhere, it would be here. Even though things generally moved sluggishly on Titan, the clouds had multiplied in a short time. It was obvious they were accumulating at the ridge. She wondered what this might mean for her. The rain that would probably hit her soon would not consist of water, but of methane at minus 162 degrees. The liquid would run over her spacesuit, moisten it, and most importantly, draw heat from it. She had yet to experience rainfall on Titan, but if it was like the autumn rains in her home country, the heating of the spacesuit would not be able to compensate for the lost heat. She would freeze, even though the suit's batteries were full.

  Francesca pulled the tent from her gear. She could not wait until the rain started to fall. The tent had a practical mechanism that immediately transformed it into an igloo shape. It took less than sixty seconds and then it was ready for her to crawl inside. But before doing so, she first took the hammer and drove the awl into the icy ground with all her strength, making holes for the tent pegs to ensure the tent was anchored properly. She entered it after about five minutes, hearing the first drops splashing against the fabric.

  It was tight inside. Francesca rolled herself into a ball so that she would not touch the tent walls. This wasn’t an easy accomplishment inside her spacesuit, and due to technical constraints, she could only lie on her side. She regretted not having brought a pillow along because the backpack was too flat to substitute for it. Due to the HUT, the rigid upper part of the suit, her head was placed at an uncomfortable angle. She could already tell she would get one hell of an aching neck from being in this position. Since she was going to have to turn over every ten minutes, due to the cold ground, she could hardly expect much sleep.

  “Lander, please acknowledge.” She wanted to say goodnight to the two of them, but received no reply. The rain probably blocked the signal. Francesca listened. If she tried hard enough she could imagine being on Earth in the room directly under the roof of her grandmother’s house, while fat drops pattered against the slanted window. The rain sounded only slightly different here. The drops did not make a drumming sound, they splashed loudly against the fabric. They must be much larger than at home. Francesca regretted not being able to see them from outside. Now the drops fell faster and faster. The fabric of the tent stretched in the gusts of wind. Then suddenly she was startled by a loud crash. That must have been thunder. Another crash, and then another. The drops fell in such rapid succession that she could hardly tell them apart. As alien as it was, the sound of the rain seemed strangely comforting. Francesca fell asleep.

  December 31, 2046, Titan

  “Good luck to you guys,” was the last transmission Martin heard from Francesca over his helmet radio. Hayato was just closing the outer hatch of the airlock behind him. Martin picked up the oxygen tank again and walked around the lander module toward him. “And now?” asked Martin as he pressed his transmit button.

  “It is not as easy as I imagined,” Hayato answered. “Methane requires a high activation energy.”

  “What does that mean? You know I am not a chemist.”

  “Where to begin? The combustion of methane and oxygen creates water and carbon dioxide, and it generates a lot of energy. You know the digestive tracts of cows produce a lot of methane. In spite of it, they do not explode. The reason for this is that energy has to be added before a reaction can start.”

  “I understand. We need an igniter.”

  “Correct. The activation energy depends upon the temperature. At minus 160 deg
rees, it is definitely higher than at 20. I have not had enough time to find any statistics.”

  “This is what took you so long?”

  Hayato nodded. Martin noticed he tried to put his index finger on his chin in a teacher’s gesture, but was unable to do so because of the spacesuit.

  “Let’s first try it with Francesca’s fire steel. She left it behind in the cabin. I am rather skeptical about it, though.”

  Hayato opened his hand. In his palm was the fire steel one could use to strike sparks, along with a small pocket knife.

  “You turn on the oxygen, and I will strike a spark near the valve opening.”

  Martin nodded. He placed the tank in such a way that the valve was aiming away from them. Then he turned the valve wheel. This required a lot of force, since the icy cold made it more difficult to move. The oxygen came out with a slight hiss, but of course they couldn’t see it. Hayato held the fire steel at the edge of the air current and hacked at it with the knife. Sparks flew, but the flame did not ignite.

  “Just what I thought,” Hayato said. Martin closed the tank again.