Ice Moon 4 Return to Enceladus

by Brandon Q Morris

  Doug stopped for a moment before climbing into the dark hole. Kiska cast a long shadow that fell directly on their greenhouses. The green lights at their entrances signaled that the technology was working correctly. If it were not so, Maria would already be inside the repair exoskeleton, fixing the problem.

  Doug placed one foot inside the hatch, as he had done thousands of times before. Nonetheless, the automated voice still startled him.

  “Welcome to the Kiska airlock. Please close the hatch so the pressure can be equalized.”

  After the landing, Maria had copied Kiska’s automatic software. They could not afford a real AI. Except for the fact that the program could not learn where it was located, so far it had fulfilled its tasks well. This also included activating the red lighting strips at the edges of the roughly-square chamber. These did not generate enough light to see all the latches and buttons of the spacesuit, but that was likely intentional, as the room had not yet been filled with air. Doug pushed off and floated toward the ceiling to close the hatch.

  “Hatch closed,” the automated voice confirmed. “Establishing air pressure.”

  Doug was humming a melody that had suddenly popped into his head. He recalled neither the name of the song nor its lyrics. The tune felt like it might have been a country song. He smiled, since he had never liked country music. The radiation exposure during his long career as an astronaut must have gradually affected his little gray cells.

  “Air pressure established,” he heard. At the same moment the lighting switched to white. Doug began taking off his spacesuit. He started with the helmet, followed by the upper part, called Hard Upper Torso or HUT, and finally the lower part, which was made of a flexible material. He kept on the LCVG, or Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, a kind of temperature-regulating underwear. Maria liked cool temperatures inside the station—perhaps she was used to them from the long period she had spent living in Siberia. Sebastiano spent most of his time in the overheated kitchen in any case, so Doug was the only one who had to dress warmly. And what would be more suitable for that than the LCVG, which could even handle the coldness of space? He was used to Maria sometimes teasing him about it.

  “Did you remember the boots?” Her voice sounded duller than earlier, coming from the headphones in the helmet he had placed on the floor.

  Doug shook his head—no, he hadn’t—and said, “Sure, of course.”

  A bucket and rag stood in a corner of the room, and Doug bent over it. “Shit,” he said quietly. Here was the answer to why he should have closed the hatch. The bucket had been half-full of water, but the continual vacuum had caused it to evaporate. However, the rag inside it still seemed to be wet. Doug put on his right glove again, took the rag, and wiped off both boots. Maria claimed he would otherwise track a lot of dirt into the living quarters after his excursions. He could not imagine a few specks of dust posing a real problem, but if it made her happy he would clean his boots. ‘Live and let live.’ That was the only way for three people to survive more than five years crammed together into sixty square meters.

  Well, they needed a few other things, too—for instance good food, which Sebastiano seemed to live for. Doug had noted that fact when he had looked through the Italian’s application file. Shostakovich had given him access while Doug was initially trying to assemble the crew. He still referred to Sebastiano as ‘the boy,’ although at 49 years old, the Italian was only seven years younger than himself. At age 20 Sebastiano was a fighter pilot, at 26 he flew his first space mission for ESA, and then he suddenly became a pizza baker in his family’s restaurant. Doug had asked no further questions. How often do you find a cook with space experience who knew more than opening tubes and placing plastic pouches in hot water?

  “Guys, will you kindly go to the living room? I am hungry!” Now Maria sounded genuinely annoyed, and he had to hurry. A green light was already blinking on the airlock door. Doug turned the wheel several revolutions to the left and then pushed the heavy metal door outward. It opened with a squeak. On this level, the topmost one, there were only storage rooms, due to safety concerns. The way down led through a round hole in the floor, with a pole attached to its edge. It was supposed to help them move up or down more quickly, but for Doug it was mostly a source of numerous bruises. The others made fun of him because he was so clumsy in zero gravity, even with his long spaceflight experience.

  In order to avoid the next bruise, Doug slowly pulled himself downward. There were four doors at the four quadrants of the second level. The door to the bathroom was open, and a little bit of steam was billowing out of it. Maria had obviously just recently finished her hot shower. To the right of the bathroom was Maria’s room, his own room to the left, and the one behind him belonged to Sebastiano. However, Sebastiano sometimes preferred to sleep in the kitchen. Despite all the annoying effects of zero gravity, it at least had the advantage that you did not absolutely require a bed to sleep in.

  The entirety of the third level consisted of the ‘living room.’ Maria had come up with the name. It was actually an all-purpose room for functions that did not generate moisture or dirt. It was here that the exercise equipment stood, on which they had to suffer for almost a third of each day. Also in this room Maria had her TV corner, where she spent hours watching television shows transmitted from Earth, and where Sebastiano liked to play chess against himself, when he was not busy cooking.

  The Italian and Maria were already sitting around the large table on the right side of the room. Doug hurried, but then slowed his momentum at the backrest of his chair and pulled himself onto his seat. Maria smiled at him. He knew she had not really been annoyed. She began to pour the coffee, and to do so, Maria stood up slightly. A tearing sound could be heard, caused by a Velcro strip separating. This also had been her idea, in order to simulate a relatively normal everyday life. Instead of gravity, tiny elastic hooks held them to their chairs. Doug got used to it surprisingly fast, and by now Maria had attached Velcro strips to almost all of their clothing.

  “Could you hand me your cup, please?”

  Doug held up his cup. Maria tilted the closed coffee pot until the spout was aimed directly at the opening in his cup. Then she gave it a slight push.

  “Perfect, as always,” Doug said, and Maria smiled. Exactly the right quantity of coffee moved in a straight line through the air from the pot to the cup. Doug tilted his cup a little, and the hot coffee hit the opening and followed the curvature of the vessel. If Doug had been holding a normal cup the coffee would leave it again, but the rim of this particular cup was rolled inward. Like the surf on a beach back on Earth, the stream of coffee slowed down as if it were a returning wave that in turn decelerated the newly-arriving waves rolling toward the shore. So far, only three times had a drink been spilled, and each had been his fault.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Maria also poured for the Italian, and then she sat down again. Sebastiano never ate breakfast. “And how was the sunrise?” he asked.

  “Great dawn,” Doug said with a grin. He wondered how often he had given this same answer. A hundred times? A hundred and fifty? In spite of it, his smile was genuine and he was glad about Sebastiano’s question. He really and truly had been damned lucky to be at the right place at the right time, meeting the perfect crew. He of all people! He certainly did not deserve this much luck because he had mistreated so many—some by accident or because he could not help it, like his first wife, whom he had cheated on with her best friend. He had mistreated others intentionally, some because he was either envious or jealous, and in other cases because Shostakovich had paid him well to do so.

  Can this last? he asked himself. Things had been going along well for more than two years, and that scared him. At some point the payback moment would come. He simply could not shake the feeling.

  Maria placed her hand on his. He looked at her.

  “Your kasha is getting cold,” she said, pushing his hand toward the spoon. In front of him stood a bowl of buckwheat
porridge. It was the only thing Maria knew how to cook. He could not stand the taste of kasha. Sebastiano probably chose not to have any food at breakfast because he felt the same way. But, like a good boy, Doug ate all of the kasha in his bowl—for Maria.

  She had fallen in love with him, she once admitted, because he had eaten a whole dish of buckwheat porridge just because of her. This was shortly after he had hired her as his ‘girl Friday,’ as he called her, for the five and a half years on 2003 EH1, from her ‘home’ back in deepest Siberia, in the brothel in Tsiolkovsky, where Shostakovich operated his spaceport. Maria had agreed, even though she barely knew him and was quite aware of what her job was supposed to involve. She also explained this to him later in more practical terms: At the age of 42, her years in ‘the profession’ were limited, and a pension fund of three-quarters of a million dollars—based on the ore prices of that time—was just what she needed. Neither of them had expected she would fall in love with him.

  Sometimes Doug considered the alternative. A cook for good food, a woman just for sex? Would this have worked in the long run? These days he could not even imagine it. He must have been really stupid back then.

  He wiped his mouth with his left hand. Eating buckwheat porridge in zero gravity wasn’t exactly easy. In the beginning he often distributed the content of the spoon across his face. By now, he had mastered the method. He always had to hold the spoon vertically towards the direction of the acceleration vector. Doug wasn’t exactly a math wizard, but he knew the acceleration vector, the arrow pointing in the direction of the change in velocity, because he was a pilot. Once he realized this, eating in microgravity was no longer a problem. Neither was sex. Doug smiled to himself pensively.

  “Shit!” he yelled. A stream of warm liquid hit his cheek. For one second he had not paid attention. Maria and Sebastiano were laughing.

  “What are you thinking of today?” she asked, handing him a cloth napkin.

  “I don’t know… Thanks.”

  “It must be because of the date!” said Sebastiano, rising from his chair. “In case you forgot, a new year starts today! I’ve got a surprise for both of you.” He reached under the table and pulled up a bottle that must have been floating there for a while.

  “You’ve got what?” Maria gazed at the bottle with her mouth open. Sebastiano gave it a slight push, and the bottle floated toward Maria.

  “Genuine ‘Crimean Champagne.’ Read the label yourself. This wasn’t easy to get.”

  “Yeah, there just aren’t enough supermarkets out here,” Doug replied.

  “I acquired it back on Earth. They were christening a ship on the launch pad next to Kiska. So I went over there in my wheelchair, and no one can deny anything to a cripple,” he said, pointing at his legs.

  “You are the greatest,” Doug said.

  “You could have enjoyed the bottle all on your own,” Maria said. “And you still can do so, if you want to.”

  “Out of the question,” Sebastiano replied. “I wouldn’t keep a bottle for over two years and then drink it myself. You do that with friends, and as we have almost reached the halfway mark, today is the perfect opportunity.”

  “Fine,” Maria said. Doug saw such sincere joy on her face, it almost made him cry. Maria could be happy in a way that he envied.

  “But how do you open a bottle of bubbly in zero gravity?” Sebastiano asked.

  “You are the cook, my friend,” Doug replied.

  “A cook isn’t a waiter.”

  “What are you worried about?” Maria asked. “We’ve got perfectly normal air pressure in here. If we remove the cork slowly, so the pressure in the bottle gradually decreases, everything should be fine.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “In The Man on the Moon they once had a bottle of wheat beer.”

  “Wasn’t that the series taking place at a moon base?” Doug asked.

  “Yeah, with the tall blond guy in the main role, the one who always made such funny faces.”

  “And the short black guy who joked about it?”

  “You are making fun of me. That’s not nice,” Maria said, pouting.

  “You are right. To make up for it, I will offer myself as a test subject for Operation Crimean Champagne. If something goes wrong, you can laugh about me.”

  “Me, too?”

  “Yes, you too, Sebastiano.”

  The Italian nodded. “Well, then get started. Or should I explain first how to work the cork?”

  “No, thanks.” Doug grabbed the bottle and pulled it toward him. Then he sat down in his chair. If the cork shot out under high pressure, he wanted to spare himself the embarrassment of being launched in the opposite direction. But Maria was probably right. Lately, producers of TV series have been researching their facts well, Doug thought. He looked for the wire he had to untwist from around the neck of the bottle. He found the loop, lifted it upward, and started moving it counterclockwise.

  Suddenly a shrill sound interrupted him, one he had only heard once during the last two years—and then it had been a false alarm.

  “Proximity alert,” the computer voice reported. “Unidentified object within radar range.”

  Doug carefully let go of the champagne bottle. It floated gently inside the room.

  “Computer, is there a danger for the station?”

  “This cannot be assumed.”

  “Why was there a general alert then?”

  “My programming requires triggering an alert under certain circumstances.”

  “And what kind of circumstances are those, if you please?”

  “The object does not seem to be of natural origin.”

  January 1, 2072, Pico del Teide, Tenerife

  Maribel stopped her SEAT in front of the barrier and honked the horn. The guard stationed in the small shed seemed to be soundly asleep. In a way she felt sympathy for him. On the other hand, it was his job, and he had to do it. She too had partied late into the previous evening—no, actually, until this morning. And then her boyfriend broke up with her, of all things, because she worked too much! He in fact spent more time in the office than she did, but his place of work wasn’t even five minutes away from the apartment they shared. Hers, though, was at an altitude of 2,400 meters on Pico del Teide, the largest volcano on the island of Tenerife. What an idiot—he didn’t really deserve her. Okay, then, it was over! She would look for another apartment, as soon as she finished today’s shift.

  She angrily honked again, but the barrier remained closed. Damn! She stopped the engine, activated the emergency brake, grabbed her scarf from the passenger seat, and got out. The ice-cold wind hit her right in the face. Suddenly she felt sober like never before, as if last night’s New Year’s Eve party had never happened.

  She walked around the car, toward the window of the guard’s shed, and knocked hard against it. Nothing. Then she walked around the wooden structure to the door that was at the back. She pushed the door handle and the door opened. Where is this guy? To the right of her was another door, partially ajar. She cautiously opened it, and there indeed was the guard, lying on a cot, snoring loudly. Maribel wondered if she should simply push the button to open the barrier and then disappear? But if her boss found the guard in this state, the man would surely lose his job. She knew he had three children. Her boss was unfair, an asshole who never forgave anyone a single mistake.

  She could not leave the man lying here like this. Maribel briskly left the wooden shed through the back door. She noticed a few piles of snow by the side of the road. There wasn’t much snow this year, but it should be sufficient for her purpose. She picked up as much snow as she could carry in her two hands. Then she walked through the open back door into the room with the cot and dumped the snow on the sleeping guard’s face. She left the room quickly, pushed the button for the barrier and ran outside. He deserves a bit of punishment!

  The car was still warm, but Maribel still kept her scarf on. She started the engine, pressed the clutch down while slight
ly pressing down the accelerator at the same time, and then deactivated the emergency brake. Ten meters behind her there was a thousand-meter drop. She had been working here for three months, but starting the car on an incline still made her feel uneasy. Why had her father given her such an old car? While the SEAT looked cute, and she liked to drive it, an automatic transmission would have been nice, particularly as she was not allowed to use the highway at rush hour, when it was reserved for self-driving cars. The law did not make an exception for 50-year-old rattletraps.

  The narrow road twisted and turned through the landscape. Maribel passed the TCS, the first reflector telescope of the observatory, which celebrated its centennial this year. To the right she recognized the French solar telescope Themis, which was also quite old. Her destination was the visitor center, located behind the brand-new OGS 2, which the European Space Agency had opened two years ago. The road in front of it had been partially dug up to make room for a few more cables that had to be laid. The cables had already been installed for a while now, but the hole in the road seemed to be an eternal fixture. Maribel would not mind this so much if she didn’t have to listen to her boss griping about it all the time.

  Directly adjacent to the visitors center there was a parking lot with charging stations. Even though she was prepared for the cold, she shivered when she left the car. Just an hour ago she had left La Laguna where it had been 18 degrees Celsius! She wasn’t that sensitive to cold—otherwise she would never have studied astrophysics—but she had a hard time with the wide temperature differences here.

  She had to connect the old SEAT by hand to a charger, because her old car could not even do that automatically. She walked around the vehicle. Of all things! The charging station was locked. Who would lock the charging stations in an area that was enclosed and guarded? Did someone really expect people to drive up to an altitude of 2,400 meters in order to steal electricity? Maribel made a gruff face. She saw herself in the pane of the passenger window and had to laugh. It wasn’t all that bad. The battery still held enough charge for the return trip.