by Kate Rauner
Liam was talking. "... the sooner we get the station spinning. Got to be done."
Maliah tipped the flat pad so Liam was sure to see her. "You didn't deliver buckets of freeze-dried food with the last awakened group. That's required."
Liam scowled. "You didn't send fresh food up to us, so I'm only looking out for my crew."
"I've got ten times as many Kin in the domes as you have crewmates on the Herschel."
"Then dip into the tower storage room. Food's squirreled away there. Clear enough from my observations."
Her arms went rigid, but Maliah kept her expression neutral. Criticism of Tanaka's action was intolerable, but until she could get her hands on Liam and his traitorous crew, she'd betray no hint of anger. She'd avoid alerting anyone to her eventual retribution.
The plastic table rattled under Greta's rapping knuckles. "We're arguing without sufficient facts. Max, send me your harvest projections. I'll inventory stocks on the Herschel when I go up and see where we stand."
Her mother didn't mention the tower storage room where Tanaka stowed supplies. That was proper. Maliah tipped her head, accepting Greta's plan. Her mother was a loyal Kin.
Fynn broke the tension further. "I'll start on the fuel depot today."
***
Fynn's flat pad pinged in a pocket of his khaki coveralls. He had a private text link to the Herschel's crew via firmware his father had secretly arranged. The ship was always in comm range, balanced between Saturn and Titan at an orbital Lagrange point. That was why the colony sat where it did, positioned with Saturn and the Herschel directly and permanently overhead.
Fynn moved the pad back and forth before his deteriorating eyes. There were moments of terror on Titan, but irritants like low gravity deforming his eyeballs were constant. Like being pecked to death by ducks, as his friend Drew said.
Fynn ran a hand thorough his dark, tousled hair, tapped an icon to increase the text size, and found a message from Liam.
When will fuel be ready? the commander asked.
I'm about to run new cables. I'll keep you posted.
At the furnace platform, Fynn talked to the crewmate on-duty and scanned the consoles, one for each of four identical steel cylinders arrayed in a square behind them and raised off the plastic floor by an insulated platform. Each was taller than Fynn and too wide to get his arms around. Not that he'd try. Two of them were too hot to hug, and the others were off-line.
From the cybernet's videos, Fynn knew that blue flames spouted from burners inside the cylinders, and pistons cycled in the Stirling converters. Compressors blasted air into bundles of heat exchanger tubes, and ducts buried in the floors carried hot air away to warm the domes.
The crew constantly fiddled with manual valves to balance methane flowing through expansion chambers with intake air, but the system seemed stable at the moment. Fynn could proceed with his project on the surface.
With a few taps on his sleeve pad, Fynn called a stevedore. The bot rolled to a parts bin, unfolded multi-jointed arms from its shiny central column, and lifted out a heavy spool of cable.
Most of the crew was more interested in assembling their new housing units than in the barren surface of Titan, but Rica and Lukas tossed fliers into the airlock and hopped in with Fynn. It took all three of them to wriggle the stiff cable through a spare fitting in the airlock's inside wall and coil it on the floor. Pushing it through the outer wall would be equally tiresome.
They pulled on surface suits and helmets, and Fynn cycled the pressure. Compressors pumped up the pressure inside the airlock to match Titan's atmosphere. He spun the outer door's handle and pushed it open letting warm air escape as cold atmosphere flooded in. Their suits' heaters clicked on, and Fynn checked their comm channel.
They stepped onto a dock platform at the top of a ramp leading down to the surface where pebbled ice disappeared into blackness.
Fynn flipped on his helmet lights. "It's darker than usual."
Lukas flexed his knees and leaned backward to aim his helmet's faceplate high into the sky. "I can barely make out Saturn's glow. There must be clouds overhead. More than the usual haze. I've read everything I could on Titan's climate, and Saturn's dragging us through the northern hemisphere's summer. It's probably been raining on and off at the pole for years, so I expect clouds are moving closer to the equator."
"It'll rain here too?"
"I don't know. I wish we could send a shuttle through some polar orbits to collect data."
Learning about Titan. That was one of the things Fynn's father had said was important. "I'll talk to Liam. He's focused on reconfiguring the Herschel and bringing down the rest of the Kin, but maybe a pilot could loop around the poles once or twice on each trip."
"There's a theory that all the methane lakes are connected underground." Lukas started down the ramp, arms and legs moving in slow motion like walking under water. "If it rains enough at the poles, our lake's level might rise."
On the shore below the ramp, a pair of long rods were pinned to the ground and connected to a yellow float sitting placidly on the lake's surface. Below the float hung a pump driving liquid methane through a hose to the dome.
"The pump buoy can be our marker. Does it seem farther from shore than it used to be?" Luke asked.
Fynn swam down the ramp through the thick atmosphere. Laying one hand on the hose, a vibration through his thick glove told him the system was operating normally. He splashed a toe in the clear methane to be sure he'd found the edge. "I don't know. I never really noticed the distance."
Rica arrived with her cupped gloves full of ice pebbles. "Let's build a cairn. If it goes under-methane, we'll know the lake level rose."
They collected more pebbles and Lukas crouched to record a picture with his helmet camera. "Methane is like water at home," he said. "It reflects the sky when I look across the lake, but it's clear when I look straight down in the shallows."
"Adjust your helmet's spectrum display until the edge of the lake shows," Fynn said. "We should get to work now."
Walking up the sloped shore and ramp was easier if he leaned forward. Fynn pulled his flier upright on its blower base and strapped a toolbox to the footrest. "I want to scope out the fuel depot before we start dragging cables around."
He pulled the handle up from the thick, battery-filled column to a comfortable height, hopped on top of his tools, and in an instant was airborne.
Rica pulled away from the others to practice rolls. Lukas cut his blower, floated downward, and restarted before hitting the ground. They were on a serious mission but flying was too much fun to ignore. Fynn corkscrewed upward for a fine view of the colony's four domes. They glowed in his helmet's infrared display.
They flew over the old reactor pad where thick strips of torn, tangled dome material were frozen into the ice. With the reactor now deep inside Titan, there was no radiation hazard. Sometime they should recover whatever metal and plastic was accessible, but today Fynn led them past the shredded dome to the ice quarry.
The dull orange sky-glow barely cast shadows, and even the vast disk of Saturn was only a yellowish blur overhead, but Fynn spotted the straight trenches of the quarry. A robotic mission had arrived on Titan a few years ahead of the Kin to manufacture fuel from the moon's surface materials. Burning methane from the lake with oxygen recovered from water ice provided a decent specific impulse, and there was an unlimited supply, assuming Fynn's furnaces could power the systems.
Six production units sat parallel to the trenches like a train of boxcars. Fynn had studied the applicable videos. The first car crushed and melted ice, then liquid water was pumped to electrolysis units where hydrogen was vented and oxygen compressed into long tanks hung below the cars. It was a process simple enough to be included in every kid's chemistry set, but it required a lot of electricity. His flier wobbled as he rocked heel to toe, wondering if he could deliver the necessary power. He rubbed his helmet, wishing he could ruffle his hair. The system seemed bigger than he'd envision
ed.
Fynn cut power to his flier and drifted down. The two decapod bots sat next to the boxcars, as inert as a nearby ice block waiting to slide into the crusher. Twice the size of stevedores in the domes, a decapod's central column sat on a deep platform fitted with tool bins and six legs jointed like a crab. Four retracted arms lay flush in grooves in each bot's central column. Their shiny surfaces were as orange as the ice block under Titan's sky. They looked harmless.
The crew approached on foot. The bots were stupid, programmed for a few activities and only in response to very few stimuli. They didn't recognize humans and could easily run someone over. The robotics cohort was supposed to bring their full set of programs, but he'd died in stasis, and no one could find his files on the cybernet.
Rica poked at the nearest bot. "This one was smart enough to plug into the charging station. It connects to the main power panels over there, and those thick cables run the manufacturing units. Unfortunately, the main panel is currently connected to nothing but a crater in the ice."
"There are supposed to be batteries." Fynn had reviewed several relevant videos.
"I don't see any meters, but with the power cable cut, it's safe to say all the batteries are dead."
Lukas leaned against a waist-high tank, reached up, and rubbed his glove along a seam in its boxcar. "How do the bots access the fuel system? Everything's sealed up tight."
Fynn opened his toolbox. "The last car should contain spare parts. That one will open. And there are a few places we can check for system status." He handed Rica a multi-meter and carried a pressure gauge to a transfer hose. "Yup, this oxygen tank's empty alright. Lukas, see if the methane pump's still floating in the lake while I check the other tanks."
As the video promised, the cargo car had side panels that hinged open along the top. With his helmet cam, Fynn recorded pictures of neatly stacked parts and bins of tumbled, broken components. Later, based on the cybernet's manifests, he'd analyze the spare parts usage rate.
One rack remained entirely full. "Hey Lukas," Fynn said. "Come look at this."
"Your pump is fine as far as I can tell." Lukas joined Fynn. "Why isn't anything here labeled?"
"Because the bots have a storage map in memory. So does the video. This rack holds replacement catalyst slabs and none are missing."
"So?"
"Pure water doesn't electrolyze efficiently, so these slabs are polymers spiked with sulfur and fluoride. But the bots haven't changed any in the units, so there must be some trace ions in the melt water."
"Which is good news?"
"Yeah. Man does not live by water and methane alone. Neither do plants. They need trace elements to make vitamins and minerals. Once the Herschel's labs are unpacked, we can do a proper analysis."
Rica's comm signal broke in. "No sign of any electrical damage to these bots. I'm ready to plug them in."
"Okay. Let's follow the charging cable back to the domes." Fynn tugged at the cargo panel, but all that did was pull him up off his feet. He braced against the boxcar and, with Lukas' help, heaved it closed. The panel's surface glistened.
"Hey, look." Lukas held his palm flat. "Dew." He bounced from foot to foot and tumbled into Fynn. "Sorry - whoa! Am I lucky. I'm the first human to spot dew on Titan." He adjusted his helmet display. "Sort of a wet fog. But this could be the start of the equator's rainy season."
"You're the weather geek. Is this condensed methane?"
"Mostly, but some heavier hydrocarbons too. You can analyze catalyst slabs if you want. I'll ask the labs to run surface samples." He swung his arms wide. "But no sign of rain drops yet."
That was fine with Fynn. He didn't remember what the videos said about sealing suits liquid tight, and he didn't like the idea of two hundred degree-below-zero methane trickling into his boots.
They flew low along the cable to be sure they'd identify the correct end buried in the ice at the old reactor pad.
Rica pointed to Fynn's toolbox. "Leave that with me. I'll cut these wires loose and crimp on new connector lugs. You guys haul the cable from the airlock to me. We'll have those bots charged up and back in business in no time."
It didn't seem likely she'd see his face in the dim light, but Fynn nodded. "I'll let my mom and Liam know. They can awaken another level of stasis pods in a couple days."
Chap ter 3
G reta announced the shuttle's landing over the colony's open text channel. With crewmates in tow, Fynn moved cautiously into the greenhouse. After supper, no one should be working among the plants rising to the ceiling on plastic racks. New growth was barely visible where he entered but farther on rows were buried in leaves, and vines swayed in the ventilation currents, teasing the corners of his eyes with movement. Shiny, waist-high bins beneath the hydroponic tubes churned with bright green algae as air and CO2 bubbled through, while pumps throbbed along the dome walls.
Lotus were Rica's favorite and she paused at a row of shallow ponds. Fynn stopped with her as the others passed them. The lotus were rooted in a tangle of harvested bean stems that had been sunk to the bottom. Raw compost was the only soil available, and only the low gravity allowed slender stems to hold their plate-shaped leaves up high. She gently touched a leaf. "These are hardly ideal growing conditions, but I hope Max can harvest a few rhizomes soon."
"Lately, he's delivered something fresh every day."
Rica sighed. "Anything's better than mushy bucket meals, sure. Boiled beans, nuked potatoes. Good salads. But nothing's like the crunch of lotus roots."
Fynn glanced up. Leaves obscured the dome cameras, but they might glimpse an image of Rica at the lotus pond. "Well, don't look like you're taking anything." Tanaka had imprisoned people in trash bins for nibbling on spinach as they worked, so he was sure Rica knew what he meant.
"Your sister wouldn't do anything like that, would she?"
The sister he'd known on Earth would think it was fun to steal from the gardens, just because it was forbidden. But now, Fynn didn't know. "We should catch up with the others."
Through the next tunnel, they entered the Village. The men's barracks to the left were quiet, but Kin occupied several tables near the kitchen. Someone had carved domino sets from strips of plastic and, judging by the laughter, several games hadn't been abandoned yet.
They veered toward the main dock where their crewmates surrounded the airlock. Outside, the shuttle must be creeping along ground smoothed by the decapods. It would back up a ramp and into the conical docking port. Any minute now. There. The hatch in front of him shifted slightly as clamps engaged.
Dozens of Kin with expectant faces crossed the playing field toward them, some bouncing high with each step. No one seemed to notice Fynn's crew, who'd adjusted their coveralls to standard Tanaka Blue. Kin's True Blue.
Adjuncts cleared a path through the crowd and Maliah arrived. She glared at Fynn, but before she could speak, the hatch pushed open and one of the medics stepped over the lip. She helped the first Kin through and the crowd applauded. A woman in stiff, new Ever Clean coveralls gripped the hatch frame and squinted. Fynn remembered stasis aftereffects well enough to know she felt like she had a bad case of the flu.
Her foot hit the floor and the woman rebounded, arms flailing outward as she hung for a moment in the air. Earth-normal muscles, preserved in stasis, propelled her through a long arc. Someone caught her before she over-balanced forward. Not that falling on her face would hurt as much in Titan's gravity, but in such a slow fall, there was time to dread the impact.
Someone shouted. "Who is it?" Fynn streamed an image from his pad so everyone could see.
Maliah's voice rang clearly over the hum of conversation. "There's tea in the mess hall. Tea with sugar for everyone." Here and there, individuals bounced enthusiastically above the sea of heads. For the next half hour, Kin greeted newcomers and led them toward the mess hall.
The last to exit were Greta and the shuttle pilot, Evan, each carrying a square, knee-high bucket containing the promised dehydrated meal
s. Fynn hopped forward to help unload the rest.
"There's enough in each bucket for everyone in the domes to have a meal," Evan said. "Well, not quite everyone, now that I've brought down seventeen more. From a dozen buckets, that's a meal a day per person for a week or two."
Fynn frowned. Maliah wouldn't like that. "Seventeen Kin brought down but only twelve buckets?"
"I notice there's no return shipment of fresh greenhouse produce for the Herschel," Evan said.
Greta lay a hand on each of their shoulders. "I didn't give much warning of the shuttle landing, so Max didn't have time to prepare. In the future, our schedule will be clear in advance. I'll arrange for the medics to awaken twelve Kin one morning and shuttle them down that same afternoon. The next day will be reserved for gravity treatments in the domes while the shipboard medics rest. Followed by another awakening day. Evan, won't you join us in the mess hall?"
A smile warmed the pilot's chubby face. "Maybe next time. I'd rather test the refueling depot, now that Fynn has it back in operation."
Greta helped Fynn secure the airlock behind Evan. "I need to run to the clinic to make sure everything is arranged for examinations of our newcomers."
Fynn ambled back to the tables. Sobs broke out as newcomers learned of Tanaka's death and other deaths in the colony. Even with emotions blunted by their recent stasis, they buried their heads in their hands. Friends, reliving their own sorrow, joined them in tears.
Fynn tapped Rica's arm. "I'm taking my tea back to our dome. You coming?"
"Not yet." Rica nodded toward a newcomer. "I know that girl pretty well. We were on the track team together. I want to say hello."
The line to heat water was long, so Fynn hung back and allowed the newcomers to be served first. Maliah stood at the row of microwaves, greeting each person.
A stocky, balding man with a stasis-preserved tan reached her. He seemed unusually steady for someone only a few hours awake and retrieved a cup without help. He pulled a handful of sugar packets from a tub on the counter.