“Something of that scale could only be financed by the international community, Martin. No military worldwide has such a budget,” Marchenko replied.
“A rich industrialist, maybe? Shostakovich succeeded in doing it,” Martin said.
“Yes, with us, and only because ILSE already existed and no one wanted her anymore,” Marchenko said.
Francesca shook her head. “No reason to argue, boys. The fact is that there is no life here anymore. And it looks like there never was any here. If I was an independent researcher given these results, I would say, ‘It was all your imagination, you’re crazy. Either the pressure down there or the long trip clouded your mind.’”
“I sensed something like this,” Martin said. “This time, it was so lonely I could barely stand it.”
“And why did you not mention it earlier?”
“Francesca, you wouldn’t have taken me seriously, would you?”
“You are probably right. I have to see something to believe it,” she said. “There is definitely nothing here.”
“But the two of us were down there, Francesca—and Marchenko as well,” Martin said. “This life exists, just not at the spot where you currently are. It can’t have completely disappeared. Do you remember the Forest of Columns?”
Of course she remembered it. Martin had walked a few meters in. It looked fascinating: tall, slender, white columns in the middle of the ocean.
“Yes. If life still exists somewhere, it would be there,” she said. “It was the center, the head of the creature. There—that is where we have to search for Marchenko. What we saw was no hallucination.”
“Perhaps,” Martin said, “our thoughts are going in the wrong direction if we fear a catastrophe might have happened to the creature. What if we ourselves represent this danger and the creature consciously withdrew? We definitely gave it some reasons to do so. We, even if it was different people, tried to kill it, and we just placed a laser weapon on its surface. Who knows what else it expects from us? It certainly has good reasons.”
December 21, 2049, Enceladus
The Forest of Columns was located about 105 kilometers to the northeast. Valkyrie moved along staying close to the sea floor. The fellow astronauts on the surface and in the spaceship were currently asleep, so it was nice and quiet. Francesca loved these shifts when she was all alone with herself, the machinery, and the environment. There was a meditative ambiance inside Valkyrie. The water gurgled in the heating circuit of the jets, electric motors hummed, and the life support system hissed. All the devices had different rhythms, and together they played a tune that Francesca found very calming. Earlier, Valentina asked if she should take over for a while, but Francesca rejected her offer, because she still was not tired.
The front searchlights showed the rocky ground. Now and then its color changed from dark gray to grayish brown and brownish black, and sometimes black that had a tinge of blue. Occasionally, when the searchlights hit an ice deposit, the sea floor became blindingly bright and seemed to be lit from below. Nevertheless, everything was still barren.
The thin cell layer, with its electrical structures visible in infrared light, which Marchenko had discovered back then, was nowhere to be found. Francesca always imagined the ice ocean and the Enceladus creature being one, absolutely inseparable. If that was true, the creature no longer existed and she would have no way to retrieve Marchenko’s body, so she hoped she was mistaken. Could they really have come all this way only to have to return empty-handed?
The console hummed softly. Francesca had set the volume for all messages to ‘low’ in order to avoid waking Valentina. It was shortly after 3 a.m. standard time, and the radar system detected contours in the distance. The distance was right, so this had to be the Forest of Columns. At least one thing remained unchanged. Her heart was beating faster. From this moment on, time seemed to stretch.
Francesca increased the engine power an additional twenty percent—Valkyrie should be able to handle it for a while. She turned around and saw Valentina was still asleep. Nothing depended on this Russian woman for the journey, because she had already fulfilled her mission. Francesca was still puzzled why Shostakovich insisted on his daughter participating in this undersea mission. Valentina seemed to be unsure of the reason as well, and right now she obviously was having a nice dream. She stretched sensually. She was still so young! Francesca tried to remember back when she herself was in her early twenties. She had always tried to be better than the others, including the boys who were going through pilot training with her, and she had succeeded, finishing at the top of her class!
Did Valentina ever have to prove herself like this, as the daughter of a billionaire father? Francesca told herself not to be unfair. She knew much too little about the young woman to judge her. It was strange that they’d had to land on Enceladus before she no longer considered Valentina a traitor.
The console hummed again. Francesca gazed at the monitor. They had reached the Forest of Columns. She steered Valkyrie very close to it and then turned off the engines. The gurgling and humming disappeared. Only the hissing remained, like in a symphony slowly fading out of a piece until a single instrument played the last notes. The searchlights projected bright cones into the water, causing the white columns to cast shadows. Francesca was just as impressed with the sight of it now as she had been the first time. ‘The forest stands rigid and silent.’ Hadn’t Martin quoted this wonderful line from a poem back then? Or maybe I am mistaken, since the German astronaut isn’t very interested in poetry, she thought. But there it was, the forest of thousands of columns, and it was silent in several ways.
For once, it did not issue any physical signal. The columns only reflected. They did not glow in any frequency range. Furthermore, the forest was silent since it did not answer any of her questions. Back then, Martin had mentioned his theory that the forest might be some kind of archive. Francesca called up the photos taken during the last voyage and compared them with the current ones. Could it be that two new rows of columns had come into being? She compared the exact coordinates and found that new columns had indeed been added. This did not answer her most significant question, though: Where was this being, or even more importantly, where was Marchenko’s body?
Francesca decided to take a little stroll, so she moved very quietly. She wanted Valentina to keep on sleeping, because she wanted this time in the forest for herself. Once she was outside, she would contact the crew on the surface via radio. She changed her outfit quietly, donning first the diaper and then the LCVG against the cold. Then she walked past the sleeping Russian woman to the stern of Valkyrie, where the spacesuit meant for Marchenko was attached to the SuitPort from the outside. Good that I thought so far ahead, Francesca thought. If she used that suit, she could not be easily followed. While there were two additional spacesuits on board, Valentina would have to flood the vessel before she could exit. Francesca definitely would have a sizeable head start.
She realized now she had unconsciously pursued a plan from the very beginning. When Francesca placed Marchenko’s suit on the outside of the SuitPort, she created the opportunity to leave the vessel alone and in secret, without Valentina being able to follow her. She wanted to find Marchenko’s body, and she would search until she found it. She would never return without it, no matter what the others said. It was obvious she owed it to him, and could not fail in this mission.
Francesca slowly descended to the bottom. The heating unit blew warm air against the visor of her helmet. Down here, the world was strangely digital. Whatever her light illuminated immediately existed, and whatever was outside the light did not exist—only dark and light, 0 and 1. There was nothing in between, no dusk, no dawn, no gray. Francesca imagined having to live in such a world. It was one thing having been born here, like the creature who had existed for millions of years, but a visitor would never feel at home here. She had undertaken a long journey to bring Marchenko home.
Once again she turned toward Valkyrie. She could only
see the bow, where the searchlights were. The stern disappeared into the darkness. Valentina must still be sleeping.
“Rossi to Commander. I am entering the forest,” she said.
“Just a moment,” Marchenko replied. “I am sending you the coordinates of the center. That is where you need to go.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck,” Marchenko’s voice said now. “And please do not take any unnecessary risks. It is not worth it.”
If it were only that simple, Francesca thought. She turned toward the forest. The light on her helmet let her see the nearest row. The closer she approached, the smaller the field of view became. She stood directly in front of the first column and looked upward. A tingle coursed through her body when she realized she was facing an artificial object not created by humans, the result of an alien technology. It was like no method known to man. The columns grew from single calciferous cells, essentially like coral reefs, but this idea might be based on a basic human error. We are arrogant, she thought. A coral reef or an ant colony... they grow in a similar way to this column, follow a plan, and are the result of non-human technology. Yet, I would not stand next to them in admiration.
Francesca touched the surface of the column with her glove, but did not feel anything. She wanted to feel the structure under her fingertips, the hardness, its fine lines. Without hesitation, she opened the latch and pulled off the glove. The suit was self-sealing, so not even a milliliter of water would enter into the sleeve that now pressed snugly against her lower arm. Her hand was free, and she lifted it in front of her helmet to take a look. What a strange sight—a naked hand more than a billion kilometers away from Earth.
The water was so cold she had to move her fingers to limit the pain. She did not have much time. Gingerly, she touched the fine lines of the column. The surface was rough. The lines of the engraved signs were only a millimeter thick, but she believed she could feel them clearly. Francesca closed her eyes. Could she trace the signs without looking? She concentrated and put all her feeling into the fingertips, which were quickly becoming numb due to the cold water. Was there a slight electrical impulse when she followed a line, or did she just imagine it? Could it be that the lines were warmer than the background?
She opened her eyes again but saw no difference. The tool bag of her suit must contain a night-vision device. She took it out, hoping the battery was still working. She placed the device in front of her visor and switched it on. Her view changed. The dark was still impenetrable, but now it did not seem blue but green. Once again she placed her finger on the signs, but this time with her eyes open. She felt the tingling once more. She increased the zoom factor to the maximum and looked directly at the spot where her finger touched the column. There was indeed a temperature difference—the material was not dead. When she moved her finger, the spot followed.
“Rossi to Commander,” Francesca radioed, “I found something.” Then she described her discovery.
Martin chimed in. “I don’t want to be a killjoy, but your finger is warmer than the column, so thermal energy flows from you to the column. The spot you see in infrared, that’s from yourself.”
“Impossible,” Francesca said. “I feel this tingling sensation.”
“Must be the cold,” Martin replied.
“You have absolutely no idea.”
“Francesca, darling,” she heard Marchenko’s voice say, “do you have the night vision device activated? Then take a look around. Do you see the network of nerve fibers meeting in the center? It should be an awesome sight. I remember it very clearly.”
“No, Mitya.” She knew what he wanted to say—that the forest was dead. That there was no life left here. That whatever she perceived was caused by her imagination and the desire to see something. But she also had to admit to herself there was nothing here, and she had been following a mirage.
Should she turn around? It would be the sensible choice. Valkyrie was only a few meters away. She had made the attempt. Didn’t this erase her guilt? And her relationship with Marchenko was not so bad. They could have conversations for many years—for decades—until she eventually died. Marchenko on the other hand was immortal, and was condemned to exist eternally.
Francesca hit the column with her fist, but felt no vibration. No, it was too early to give up. She slipped the glove back over her freezing hand. Would there ever really be a moment when it felt right to give up the search? The suit squeezed out the water and closed itself again. Humanity had come far. Had it come so far by giving up so readily?
Francesca glanced at Valkyrie once more. Was there movement in the shadows? Impossible, she told herself. She turned around and walked into the forest. The columns were noticeably taller than herself. On Earth, this forest would appear open and bright, since its trees had no crowns, but here 50 kilometers of ocean took the place of this particular feature. The Forest of Columns was gloomy, and even though she now knew there were no traces of life remaining, she felt she was being pursued.
She checked her course on the arm display. She would have to hurry if she wanted to arrive at her destination with sufficient oxygen left. Should she call Valkyrie and let herself be transported into the center of the forest? This seemed wrong to her. Back then, Marchenko also walked this path. Maybe she would find him by following exactly in his footsteps.
The farther Francesca proceeded, the denser the forest became. However, the columns were shorter here than at the entrance. She stopped and examined the signs. Could it be that they were less complex here? It would only be logical if the script that was utilized also reflected the development of the creature. Who knew how many millions of years she had already traveled into its past? At some point she would have to return, gain the friendship of this being, and allow it teach her the script, so that she could read all these stories.
Francesca looked at her watch. She had been walking for almost an hour. The location where Marchenko had met the being and lost his body was not far away, only 500 meters according to the display. Here the columns appeared rather worn. Did the creature have to learn how to produce them, so that the oldest columns were of inferior quality? Or did this simply reflect the billions of years that had passed?
She could look over the tops of the last rows of columns. At a distance of 50 meters, the helmet light shone on some kind of platform inside a clearing. The platform was about four meters square and one meter high, and this was the center of the forest. Here Marchenko must have met the creature.
Francesca heard a loud thumping, looked around in shock, and then realized it was her own heartbeat. She deactivated the interior microphones. This left her in complete silence. Now the clearing lay in front of her like the eye of a storm. There was not the slightest trace of currents, of warmth, of energy, of life.
“Everything is dead here,” she reported via radio.
“Yes, I can see it too, darling. Come back. You have done everything you can. I am so grateful to you.”
No, it was not time yet. It was there, in the middle, on the platform where the meeting between this strange being and her boyfriend Dimitri had occurred, an encounter that took away his body, but gave his consciousness eternal life. She approached the area with short steps. The platform’s square seemed to consist of the same material from which the columns were made. Was this the germ cell? Billions of years ago, did cells start cooperating here, creating something much greater from many weak individual components? The very thought was awe inspiring.
This being might have a history that had begun when Earth was still in its primeval phase. Even though it spent all of its life in this ocean, it must be far more advanced, so far that humans could never understand it. Nor could this entity comprehend the primitive motives of humanity. Considering this, the fact that it saved Dimitri Marchenko two years ago was an almost impossible stroke of luck for which she should be grateful. From the perspective of this creature, the current existence of Marchenko was on a much higher level than the short-lived physical e
xistence she was subject to.
Yet Francesca could not be grateful. She felt the loss, which was as physical as if somebody had torn off one of her arms or legs. She walked forward and pulled herself onto the platform. She shone her helmet light over it. In the center of the square she saw a ring. It had a diameter of about one meter. Inside was a hollow about half a meter deep. The edge of the ring was raised and displayed various signs of the newest kind, like she had seen on the outer columns, precisely engraved and worked out in many details. The inscription must be relatively new—maybe the entire ring? Did it serve a function?
“Marchenko, do you recognize this? Was it here earlier?” she radioed.
She sent him the pictures taken by the helmet camera.
“No, there was only this cloud,” he replied. “I could not see more, because it covered the area, and then there was this mulch-like substance everywhere.”
Francesca examined the surface. This time, the platform was spotlessly clean. The hollow with the ring around it seemed new, but it might have been here ten years ago. Francesca stepped closer. What was written on the ring? If she could only decipher the signs! In a fairy tale, this would be a magic spell which summoned a genie.
She sat down in the hollow and turned around once. It was probably only for decoration, and if humans built this, it would say something like, ‘We thank our sponsors Fiat, Ferrero, and the Vatican.’ She got onto her knees, leaned forward, and looked at the signs more closely. They appeared artistic and complex in a script that would not be well-suited for handwriting.
Once again she took off her right glove and carefully moved her fingers across the signs—and was startled! Wherever she touched the ring, it started to glow. Was this real? She put on the infrared visor, but the IR image showed only darkness—it was cold light. No one would believe her! Francesca watched her fingers while swiping them slowly across the material. Gradually, the cold entered the sleeve through her skin. The light seemed to come from the bottom of the engraved signs.
Ice Moon 4 Return to Enceladus Page 24