It also went to sleep itself, in order not to waste the batteries. It did not regret this action. The connection to Earth had been severed, but its sensors were all online. It could now observe the wonders of space for several millennia, while the spacecraft shot past Saturn with undiminished speed and eventually left the solar system. If the programmers had given the AI a sense of irony, it might have been amused by what it saw of the ship—the engines, now turned off, were unflinchingly following the command module, like a dog following its master even without a leash.
However, the programmers had decided the AI did not need the tool of irony to fulfill its tasks. That would have been a waste of capacity. The AI was curious, though, and this curiosity would save it from going insane in the millennia to come.
Programmers are pragmatic people. That was the reason they had not given the AI a sense of responsibility for its human creators, as ILSE 2 was an unmanned ship. Therefore, after the collision the AI did not regret that the spacecraft could no longer fulfill its task of bringing supplies to the humans aboard ILSE 1 when they reached their goal. Humans would discover this glitch a week later, when Mission Control would try to wake ILSE 2 from standby mode and would receive no response.
July 4, 2046, ILSE
Martin assumed his very own death might be waiting for him. It could be over, between one second and the next—I know this. He already had been conscious of this on Earth. In his everyday life, moving between the apartment, the office, and the supermarket, he had wasted no thought on the idea. Out here, on the other hand, he could not get used to the idea of always being threatened by death without seeing it coming. Perhaps there had been a minor collision in the asteroid belt several thousand years ago. Maybe a comet, on its path for millions of years, had lost some of its material around here. Death did not have to be fast to hit him. It could simply be waiting for ILSE, the spaceship that hurled him toward Saturn at 50 kilometers per second. To be more precise, the spacecraft that was moving him toward the point where the planet Saturn, which now had just emerged from behind the sun, would be located several months from now.
ILSE, the International Life Search Expedition. The name is too pretentious, he felt. When he pronounced the acronym I.L.S.E—as a word in his mother's language —the others gave him funny looks. Jiaying, the Chinese woman, then tried to repeat the word with a German accent. She was linguistically talented, but it still sounded like ‘Ull-see’ rather than ‘Ill-see.’
Martin looked at the ceiling, which was gradually getting brighter. A meteorite could hit here at any moment, he imagined. There was only a third of a meter of fabric between his cabin and space. This was not just any fabric, though, but a ceramic textile folded into about a dozen layers—a ‘stuffed Whipple shield.’ The shield material consisted of special foam sprayed between the textile layers. As the foam dispersed, it formed numerous small, airtight chambers. Whatever hit the exterior wall was supposed to splinter into numerous pieces that would further fragment in the next layer and finally get stuck in the foam, which closed up again after it cooled off. It even worked. He had seen the small holes on the outside of the hull in the images taken by the spider robots.
Of course, this only worked if the meteorite was small enough. Up to five centimeters the system would be fine, the experts on Earth had said. The probability of encountering a bigger rock on the way to Saturn was quite low. In addition, the wall of his cabin did not point in the direction of their travel. When Martin realized this, he breathed a sigh of relief. If ILSE sprung a leak somewhere, the artificial intelligence would immediately close all bulkhead doors and isolate the affected module.
Which AI? Before launch, the ILSE consortium had held a bidding contest that led to two winners, Siri and Watson. Apple’s Siri had scored best in emotional contacts with astronauts, while IBM’s Watson had done best in prognosis and algorithms. It was decided to load both on the spacecraft’s computers. In hindsight, psychologists considered that a lucky choice—more contacts for the astronauts during the one-year flight, and less boredom.
No one had expected the artificial intelligences to argue about areas of expertise. Even if they argued about closing the bulkhead doors, the crew would not notice this. For such emergencies, the AIs were allowed a purely algorithmic cooperation, in which discussions were decided in fractions of milliseconds. Siri and Watson only shared their thoughts with humans when nothing depended on it.
“Good morning, Martin!”
He had selected a low, slightly nasal voice for the AI. This suits Watson, Sherlock Holmes' friend, he had decided.
“Good morning, Dr. Watson.”
Watson had never asked why Martin preceded his name with a title. The AI probably had found the solution itself. Martin’s media DNA clearly showed he liked the old-fashioned mystery novels by Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Breakfast, and your colleague for today, Jiaying Li, are waiting in the mess room. Work is going to start in 30 minutes. I have awakened you late at your own request, but you have to hurry now.”
There was a certain urgency expressed in the AI's voice, and Martin immediately recognized the subtext. It had taken him long enough to learn something like this.
The ceiling of his cabin now shone in a warm white. A blue haze was moving across it. He did not look at his watch. On the ship they followed a 24-hour rhythm, but outside space was dark, no matter what time it was. If he took a shower he would have to spend ten minutes less with Jiaying. It was not that he disliked her, but her presence made him insecure when he did not have a specific task. It was necessary to consume food, but this was not a specific task he could talk about with Jiaying. ‘The coffee doesn’t taste of anything today,’ or ‘The pancakes are only lukewarm,’ were among the sentences that had already been uttered about the food—each several times by everyone on board within the first two weeks after launch—and they were not yet near the orbit of Mars.
The structure of everyday life had been designed by psychologists back on Earth. Everything was geared to allow crew members to be alone as often as possible, without intentionally isolating themselves from the rest. Therefore, the astronauts were paired, and each pair was assigned to cover an eight-hour shift. Routine was a desired factor, as it provided stability.
It was also boring. Martin yawned. Then he sat up and dangled his legs over the edge of the bed. His room was tiny. Eight cubic meters of air space—an enormous luxury for a spaceship, although nearly half of it was unused most of the time. In any case, how long does someone stand around in his cabin? Martin pulled down on the zipper of his suit. The elastic material peeled off his shoulders. The suit was cut in such a way that it always exerted a slight pressure against the spine of the wearer. This was to prevent people from growing. In low gravity, the spine expanded and the space between the spinal disks increased. Without pressure, the blood flow in the spinal disks decreased and they became bony—and if that person later walked under normal earth gravity, pain would be the result.
In his cabin, Martin weighed about half of what he did on Earth. He would rather not think about the reason for this. During the first ten days of the journey he could not help imagining being rotated through space like on a swing carousel. By now, he no longer felt queasy, though he stood on the inner wall of a donut with a diameter of twelve meters as it rotated around its axis ten times per minute. He had to avoid thinking of it. Now he pushed the cabin door aside and walked to the combination shower/toilet room, officially called WHC, or ‘Waste Hygiene Compartment.’
The artificial gravity created by the rotation made many things easier. During the training aboard Tiangong-4 he had greatly missed real showers. There, personal hygiene had involved using wet wipes. He was glad some psychologists had insisted on offering this physical comfort. He had never been really convinced by the argument that a shower was impractical under microgravity. Water, some believed, would gather in bulges and cavities of the body. Martin was of the opinion, If humans can fly to Saturn, shouldn’t th
ey also be able to build sanitary facilities that work in zero gravity?
Martin dried off and pulled on the suit again. He looked in the mirror. No, I do not have to shave. It was part of the ship rules—which were designed by psychologists, of course—that no one could get sloppy. Walking naked through the corridor, having breakfast unshaven—such is completely out of the question. Once more, Martin realized how many of the rules here were not due to outer space but were the work of psychologists. They thought the biggest problem during the two-year flight would not be technology, but the crew. Martin considered this a mixture of megalomania and budget strategy, and except for the mission commander, the whole crew agreed with him on that point.
July 10, 2046, ILSE
There actually is wind in space—each time the hamster leaves his wheel, Martin envisioned. He had wiped the WHC dry, and the towel was hung over the tumble dryer. It looked like the bathroom of a cheap hotel on Earth. Once, just out of curiosity, Martin had actually spent a night in a capsule hotel in Tokyo. The toilet there had looked rather similar, and at the press of a button, it had also analyzed the user’s urine and stool. Here, the analysis data went directly to the on-board computer. During the one-on-one at the end of the shift, Siri would probably lecture him on proper nutrition again. The meals were specifically adjusted to each astronaut’s body and to the conditions in space: less iron, as he produced fewer blood cells; more vitamin D, as sunlight was lacking. However, Martin ate what he liked and not what would have been the best for his body.
The impression of being inside a hamster wheel was unavoidable once Martin left the WHC. He stood inside a narrow corridor, the walls of which contained luminous panels. Now, at the beginning of the shift, these emitted a bluish-white light. Some interior designer had really put a lot of thought into this idea, as the panels displayed interesting patterns that did not appear to repeat themselves. At regular intervals there were replicas of well-known works of art on the walls. The floor was covered with a special material that diminished the sound of his steps. Cables and pipes hanging haphazardly from the ceiling marred the hamster wheel impression, though. Such last-minute changes were probably unavoidable in a project of this size, purportedly at 80 billion dollars.
The corridor curved upward before and behind him. Despite this, Martin did not ever feel like he was walking uphill. He knew he moved like a hamster on the interior wall of a ring with a diameter of twelve meters. Luckily, he did not have to rotate the ring by muscle power, as this task was handled by small chemical jet engines placed on the outside of the sectors, in space.
The hard sector ended behind the cabin of his Chinese colleague. It was called ‘hard’ because it was a rigid construction that would not change shape if the pressure suddenly decreased. The four hard sectors of the habitat module were placed like hammer heads at the ends of a cross. The ring was completed by the soft sectors, which had been inflated like balloons. From the inside, Martin could not see that their walls were made of a flexible material. He only noticed the corridor became narrower behind Jiaying‘s cabin. At this location, a mechanism could be seen that would seal off the hard sector in case of a loss in pressure.
In order to reach the command module, Martin had to look upward when he stood in front of the WHC. The hatch leading to the hub of the habitat module was open. He pulled down the ladder. To do so, he needed to overcome an initial resistance, and then it fell into his hand automatically. As the habitat ring was rotating, everything tried to move outward. He, however, wanted to go inward, and that took some effort. Martin climbed the ladder, which became easier with every step.
Then the wind started. Shortly before this spoke met the hub, Martin had to push through a flexible membrane everyone jokingly called ‘the fly screen,’ and which reminded him of a condom. It consisted of thick rubber lips that extended from the edge of the center and normally closed off the corridor completely. Due to this, the air circulation system did not have to overcome the inertial force that not only pressed the astronauts against the interior wall, but also against the air molecules of the station. Without the four fly screens, the air in the hub would have been much thinner than in the outer sectors. Since there was still a difference in air pressure between the two sides of the hatches, Martin faced a draft while he squeezed himself, like a worm, headfirst through the rubber barrier.
In the center—the hub—there was no gravity. He would spend his eight-hour shift here, as the psychologists had decided, so that work and leisure would be clearly separated. There were no technical reasons for working in the command module. Martin could have accessed all the information in his room, and the actual control functions were handled by the AI, which possessed a whole arsenal of sensors to connect with the exterior world. It, or rather he, as Watson had asserted himself here, took over the analysis and translated everything important for the astronauts into results that appeared on the monitors. The task of the crew consisted of giving its blessing to decisions already made.
Yes, they could change course or even cancel the entire mission. The psychologists had insisted on giving the astronauts that much autonomy. Nevertheless, due to the negative effects of zero gravity, half of the work day consisted in physical exercise to counteract the damage that would not have occurred if they had stayed in their cabins all day long.
Martin had been thinking about this ever since they had launched. In the beginning, the others were eager about meeting for meals, watching movies together, or reminiscing, but now, this only happens rarely. Martin had not been surprised. Even after three weeks they had no longer managed to agree on a movie to watch, even though their entertainment system had digital copies of all films produced since the early 20th century. Afterward, they had still met, but all of them were watching their own movies on private headsets. This practice ended when the pilot Francesca arrived late one time and started laughing at the scene of five people immersed in their own worlds.
At around the same time, Marchenko’s supply of pure alcohol, which they had diluted with water and fruit flavoring, ran out. Mission Control on Earth was probably glad about it, as the WHC sensors had registered any sins of this kind, of course. The crew had totally ignored the commotion down there because Earth could not do anything about it. In space, they were completely self-reliant. Martin disliked that Mission Control was always referred to as ‘down there,' even though Earth was not located below them, but behind. After all, we are flying toward our far goal in the ecliptic plane, where Earth also moves. He had nevertheless given up correcting the others concerning this aspect. Because of this, Marchenko, the ship’s doctor and a fan of science fiction, had jokingly called Martin ‘the android on board.’ Martin only got the joke when they watched some ancient movie about an alien monster during one of their film evenings.
After that, their evening meetings together as a group had become increasingly rare. Now and then the commander, Amy, tried to surprise them with something new, and she was very inventive about it. Martin was surprised how many ways there were to make a fool of one's self. Only a week ago the commander had revealed to him that she had learned half of these ideas in a special team-building course. The fact that she came up with the other fifty percent filled Martin with awe—and horrified him at the same time.
The first person who no longer appeared at their evening events was Hayato. The quiet, always friendly Japanese man gave no reason for preferring to stay in his cabin. The commander had asked him, but all she could tell the others was he had ‘personal reasons’ for it. Martin liked Hayato, not least because he knew almost as much about computers and software as Martin himself. Hayato had brought an ancient tube radio aboard, but that was not all; after launch he had managed to build a transmitter for it from spare parts, which changed the sound of the ceiling loudspeakers to the long wave spectrum. Martin remembered how once all six of them had sat in his cabin listening to the crackly, warm sound of the tube radio playing a concerto by Gustav Mahler. Hayato loved German composers.
Thereafter, Amy felt responsible for paying special attention to Hayato, as she told them at a communal evening, without mentioning details. Jiaying suspected their commander had fallen in love with the Japanese man, but Martin rather believed Hayato was suffering from depression.
This meant there were only four of them left. Martin generally refused to agonize over past decisions he would handle differently, looking forward from today’s perspective. However, later on he was annoyed that he had not spent more time with Hayato in the past. Could I have changed the unavoidable this way? He did not know. Perhaps then the commander and the navigator would not have fallen in love, as Jiaying correctly suspected. Martin, who until now had regarded love only as an avoidable misfortune, had been really surprised that love could have such concrete effects on a rationally planned mission and on all their lives.
The whole world was turning, and only he stood still. Martin had reached the center of the hub. The engineers had managed to preserve this illusion perfectly. The two hatches to the adjacent sections, which were normally closed, had been constructed and decorated in a rotation-symmetrical fashion. Martin placed his finger on the metal. He felt the movement, but he did not see it. It had taken him weeks before he no longer felt nauseous when he moved from the spaceship to the rotating habitat module. As soon as he pressed one of the Open buttons placed in 90-degree intervals on the bulkhead, and he would have to do that soon, he might suffer a relapse.
The hatch opened. Martin closed his eyes and catapulted himself through it. He knew where the position-stabilization handles were situated, and he grabbed them. From ten revolutions per minute to zero—that sounded harmless, but human beings were obviously not built for it. He breathed in hard and avoided getting nauseous, even though he now also deeply inhaled the machine and oil smell of the central modules. Martin knew how badly spaceships could stink. The air circulation on ILSE was working reasonably well. Shortly before launch, a private university had supplied a new kind of filtration system. Still, when each cubic centimeter of breathable air had passed through the lungs of the crew several times already, even the best recycling system no longer helped. The stench could be suppressed for a while, but no longer than a few weeks.
The Enceladus Mission: Hard Science Fiction Page 9