Goose shimmies.
In the ventral camera, the ringed scaffolding falls away like a spent rocket stage from an old NASA video. As it clears the ship, high intensity lights flare along the inner circumference.
Hitoshi smiles. “Ring deployed. Bet Goose is happy to shed all those kilos.”
“She was flying more like a stuffed turkey. Good to have her wings back,” James says. As he adjusts their altitude, the ring condenses from a blinking disc to a glaring white star, rising in their wake.
Isaac looks over from his console. “Sierra One in five minutes.”
James flicks open a video window and Beckman appears. “Coming up in five,” James says.
“Orbitals online, five by five,” Beckman replies. “Opening bay doors.” He slides something on his console. “Number one’s drive is hot and ready for launch.”
Hitoshi watches the moon spin beneath them as the cockpit windows overlay the nav brackets. The superimposed rectangles advance towards Goose and disappear one-by-one.
After a few minutes Isaac says, “Thirty seconds.”
“In position,” Beckman says.
Sierra One’s nav marker rushes towards Goose’s screen.
Hitoshi eyes his display. “Go for launch.”
The navcon chirps as a new contact flags itself just aft of Goose. Telemetry identifies it as a multi-spectrum imaging satellite.
“Bird’s away,” Beckman says. “Data’s alive. Prepping Sierra Two.”
Hitoshi looks at the aft camera. Four strobes blink from the imaging orbital as it falls away from Goose. On the forward screen, a new set of waypoints overlay the stars. “Okay,” Hitoshi says to those stars. “We’re keeping an eye on you. No funny business.”
For the next three-quarters of an orbit, Goose deploys orbitals, encircling Janus like a string-of-pearls. As the ship readies for its second lap, James taps an overhead switch and the cabin lights cycle red.
Hitoshi takes a deep breath. “Here we go.”
“Crew, prep for de-orbit,” James says over ship’s intercom.
At first, it’s a flutter in Hitoshi’s stomach, the feeling of clearing the top of a roller coaster and picking up speed in the descent. As Goose decelerates, the harness straps dig into his chest, leaning him forward.
Janus looms up from the bottom of the cockpit windows. Once it overtakes two-thirds of the cockpit view, a vibration rumbles through Hitoshi’s boots. Goose shimmies, the upper atmosphere buffeting its hull, and the wind sound grows louder.
The sky ahead is a deep blue, nearly black, splattered with stars and hints of adumbral land masses. Plasma flames flicker ahead, as if the air itself were catching fire, intensifying to a dazzling green. Goose rocks and bounces. Hitoshi tightens his grip on both arm rests.
For the next five minutes they are a supersonic meteor crackling through the blue glow of Janus’s nitrogen thermosphere. As the flames subside, rocky mountains resolve themselves into individual snow-capped peaks with sinuous blue ice ridges. Hitoshi’s stomach burns. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath. He gasps in fresh air.
James taps a button on his console and Goose’s landing lights flare. Flecks of snow streak by like shooting stars. “Six hundred kph, altitude eight kilometers.”
Hitoshi can feel it. They are no longer a spaceship traveling in the frictionless linearity of vacuum. They’re an aircraft slipping through the layers and eddies of atmosphere.
Isaac seems unfazed, calmly tapping at his console. “Thirty kilometers to crash site.”
Goose descends and slows. At times the landscape, with its rocky snow-covered mountains, could be in the Alps on Earth. At other times the stacked ice shelves, sublimated crystal spikes, and rusty basins seem like something completely alien.
Isaac glances over at Hitoshi as the ship streaks over a red patch of landscape. “Still no explanation for tholins. Too far out to interact with solar wind. Hope I get a chance to study. Seems likely Janus was within the solar system long ago, and was ejected.”
“Like, for misbehaving?”
“Or maybe captured. You know, seventy-thousand years ago Scholtz’s Star passed within one light-year of the Sun.”
“Oh, yeah, totally knew that.” He pauses. “Wait, you think we swiped one of its planets?”
“Not Scholtz’s. Not enough time for a planet to move from where it was to here. Take one, two million years.”
“That’s a relief,” Hitoshi says.
“But every nine million years that happens, so lots of chances. Do the math, probably happened over five hundred times since Earth formed.”
Hitoshi frowns. “Are you saying Erebus and Janus are alien worlds we stole from another star?”
Isaac shrugs. “I dunno. That’s why I hope I get time to study.”
“This is not making me feel any better.”
James taps the intercom. “Crew, prep for landing.”
Hitoshi closes his eyes and focuses on breathing.
Goose glides into a gentle arc, shifting its weight as it banks. The deceleration is stronger now, pushing against Hitoshi’s chest. Chemical thrusters fire with hisses and bursts.
“Touchdown in three, two, one…” James says. The ships jolts and Hitoshi opens his eyes. Snow sizzles and evaporates as Goose settles onto its struts.
“Well,” James says, powering down the RF drive, “that went much better than last time.”
Bernard’s Beauty is visible through the cockpit windows, fifty-meters distant, partially buried in snow. One nacelle juts up marred by scratches and dings.
James unclips his harness and pokes his head back in the passenger cabin. “Alright, let’s get through the people and ship post-flight, then Beckman has the ball.”
Beckman flicks the surface drone telemetry to the passenger-area media screen. Four video feeds form a square, each peering out of Goose’s cargo bay. When Beckman taps an icon, the drones hover out of the bay and zip across the snowy landscape towards Bernard’s Beauty. Spotlights flick on from their noses and swing shifting light in the mist. The upper left drone increases its altitude as it nears Bernard’s nose, leveling itself off with the cockpit windows.
Inside the cockpit, three blue seats glisten with ice crystals. Except for an empty sleeping bag beside the seats, there’s no sign of activity. The lower right drone coasts to Bernard’s airlock, swinging its beam to the dead auxiliary power unit connected to the airlock’s external power interface.
Beckman examines the telemetry. When he’s satisfied, he says, “Send in Betty.”
Hitoshi enters a command from his workstation, glancing up at the cargo bay monitor. A heavy vehicle lumbers out with spider-like manipulators, ambling across the snow towards Bernard’s airlock. Two of its arms extend and attach a cable to the external power connection while another deposits a new APU on the ground. Lights pulse along the generator and the interior of Bernard’s flickers awake.
Betty backs away and deposits hexagonal blocks every ten meters around the ship’s perimeter. Each blossoms into a self-illuminated tethered balloon.
Hitoshi eyes his screen. “Okay, Bernard’s is booting up. Bunch of errors. We’re going to have to go in there to clear them.”
Overhead, the drones fan out in different directions.
“Everything’s quiet out to five clicks,” Beckman says.
James stands next to Hitoshi, watching the video feeds. He clasps him on the shoulder. “Sorry, Hitoshi, you know what I’m going to say next.”
Hitoshi glances up at him. “Meet you in transporter room three?”
James quirks his head. “The only way to get in there and fix it is to get in there and fix it. Ananke, Beckman, you’re with us. Let’s suit up.”
James’s EV suit is orange with the block-numbers 06 on its front. Ananke glows blue on his suit mount. Beckman stands to his left wearing a combat suit with gunmetal chest plates and a pulse pistol holstered on his left breast panel. He nods to James and Hitoshi as the airlock door opens
.
Janus is enshrouded in a low mist illuminated by the balloon lights. The glare washes out everything but the brightest stars. When he sets his foot onto the regolith, the mist swirls away in eddies. He grins and leads the group across the crunching snow.
As he sets his hand on Bernard’s doorframe, Beckman stops him and disappears into the cramped corridor between the reactor and the cockpit. After a few seconds of silence he says, “Clear. Proceed.”
James enters and walks his hands along the corridor’s incline. Hitoshi follows.
The cockpit is illuminated with dozens of startup errors. Hitoshi arrives and overrides each. After a minute the screen clears and displays the root directory.
When James opens a log entry, it’s him, wearing an EV suit minus the helmet. “Bernard’s batteries are almost gone,” the recording says. “Ananke will be with me, so if you find this message but not me, follow my hiking path so you can retrieve her.”
James closes the file.
Hitoshi says, “We really thought you were dead there, boss.”
James tilts his head. “Me too. Glad you proved me wrong.” He scrunches his eyebrows. “You guys make entries when you found Bernard’s?”
Hitoshi nods. “Uh, sorta, we left the APU here, so Bernard’s had power until it died. Logs recorded anything which tripped the sensors. First one should be Goose looking for you.” He opens the entry and a video appears of Goose lifting off and accelerating towards the crater. Hitoshi scrolls to the next log. “Next is us getting out of Dodge.” Goose appears as a blinking star rising in the sky.
“Two more entries after that,” James says.
“Hmm,” Hitoshi says. “Next one’s a week later.” He opens the video. Bernard’s camera shakes as slow-motion slush arcs into the sky. The slurry spills across the volcano’s southern face.
“Cryovolcano eruption,” Ananke says.
“Didn’t think it was active,” James says.
Hitoshi furrows his brow. “Might be a problem. Ejecta could reach us here. Although, if it hasn’t hit Bernard’s in all this time, we’re probably good. I’ll ask Isaac to take a look.”
Beckman glances out the cockpit windows. The cryovolcano is a distant peak against a pitch sky.
Hitoshi opens the last entry. Erebus hangs suspended in a starry sky, dark mountains framing the Janus horizon. A single star falls out of place and travels in an arc across the horizon. The time index is two weeks after Goose left. He rewinds the video and freezes it, enlarging the moving star. A silver x appears.
James looks sideways at Hitoshi.
“Ah, fudge nuggets,” Hitoshi says.
7
Stardust
The crew stands around the media screen in Goose’s passenger cabin, the image split into two windows. The left feed is a top-down view of Bernard’s Beauty from one of Beckman’s drones. Several open crates rest beside parts, and Betty performs mechanical surgery on the ship’s starboard engine. The right window has a three-dimensional model of Janus with a delineated trajectory marking the orbital path of the silver x based on Bernard’s log.
James stands with his hands on his hips. “We stick to the plan.”
Hitoshi shifts, rubbing his neck. “Boss, the plan was to fix Bernard’s before they got back. They’re already here.”
“They were here,” James says. “Far as we can tell, they’re not. We’ve got our eyes in the sky.” He relaxes his shoulders a bit, easing up on his body language. “What’s everyone want to do?”
Hitoshi nods towards the crash site video feed. “Betty’s got about ten hours to repair the starboard engine. If I can get Ananke and one other person, it should take us maybe eight hours to get the reactor on line. After that, we should get both ships back in orbit until the ring patches up Bernard’s.”
“Who do you want?” James asks.
Hitoshi glances at Isaac. “Mister Isaac, you’ve got the tech skills.”
Isaac shakes his head. “Images are processing from the Sierra orbitals. Need to monitor and task the satellites based on what they see. This is a big chance to learn about Janus. I need to be there for them.”
Ava is beside Isaac, nodding. “I agree. I’d like to get some samples from the cryovolcano’s south face. From the ship’s log, it looks like that’s where most of the slush landed. If there’s life, we may be able to detect it.”
“I’ll help Dr. Kelly,” Julian says.
James glances at Beckman. Beckman points to the drone feeds on his workstation. “We should repair Bernard’s, then leave. My place is here at ops.”
“Alright,” James says. “We’ve got eight hours. Hitoshi and Ananke, I’m with you.”
Ava’s EV suit is her own, brought from her Saturn trips. Unlike the others, it’s white with amber swathes and bears the Providence Station logo. When she kneels upon Janus’s regolith at the bottom of Goose’s cargo ramp, cold filters through her knee.
A cart sits to her right with Julian standing on the other side. She lifts a palm-sized disk from the cart and flips it over.
Julian holds a slate displaying a topographic map of the cryovolcano.
“This little guy,” Ava says, tapping the quadcopter’s belly, “is heading to the lip.” She rights it and the blades spin to speed. It hovers there as Julian enters its destination on the slate. When he’s done, it zips off. Ava grabs a second drone. “This one’s sampling the southern slag.” When she tosses it up, it flitters away. She activates the last drone on the table. “And this lucky guy gets to dive into the caldera.” She watches the blinking white lights of the three drones fan out like fireflies in the dusky shadows of Janus’s landscape.
“What will you look for?” Julian asks.
“Depends what flavor of slush we have. If it’s water-ice, we’ll look for the kind of life we’d find on Earth. Check for molecular hydrogen, some amino acids, maybe evidence of methanogenesis. But if it’s a methane slurry, that’s a whole different ball game. Life chemistry will revolve around vinyl cyanide and azotosomes.” Something catches in her memory and she glances at Julian sideways. “You worked on Titan, right?”
Julian smiles. “Ah, yes, Ligeia Mare station, in seventy-eight.”
She tilts her head. “We were there at the same time. I was on Providence, but did some research at Kraken Mare.”
“Yes, I remember you.”
She arches an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes, yes. I saw your speech from Cassini. ‘Take a baseball,’ you said, ‘and throw it to stars. If you threw it when the last of the dinosaurs died, it would already be at Proxima Centauri.’”
“Panspermia,” Ava says. “Rocks get blasted off Earth and seed other planets with life. Or vice versa. It’s the big question in astrobiology.”
“To explain the similarity of Enceladus life to Earth’s.”
“Yes, exactly!”
“I liked it, this thought that there may be bits of us out there, traveling the stars."
She leans in a bit. “How would you feel if it turned out we were the star men, seeded from another sun?”
Julian quirks his head. It reminds Ava a bit of James. “Well, we are all star dust, no?”
“Every last atom.”
“Then I suppose I would feel the same as being born of Earth.”
Ava smiles. “What brought you to Titan?”
“I served four years on the Hermes as a field physician. When it was stationed at Cassini, I would be deployed on assignments, usually on Titan, but sometimes on Cassini Station.”
“Did you like it?”
He shakes his head. “I did not. At least, not aboard the Hermes. It saw combat several times, and that is not why I went into space. But Cassini was interesting. Such a mix of people and problems, all searching for a chance to elevate their lives. I imagine it was what America was like at the start of the twentieth century, full of new faces and endless potential.”
“Were you ever at Ligeia Mare?”
“I was, but you were n
ot there. You and I, we are like two ships passing in the stars.”
Ava smiles.
Julian’s slate chirps. “First drone is on scene.”
Ava moves over next to him. “Let’s start with some basic spectroradiometry.”
When Julian taps the slate’s icon, a progress bar animates. A graph with peaks and valleys appear. The largest is labeled H2O and the secondary is NH4. Other smaller peaks include K, CO2, CH4, N and C6H6.
“Ammonium,” Julian says. “More like Titan’s water-ice than Enceladus.”
“Ah, off to a bad start. Titan’s formula had no life. But we’re not out of the game yet. Let’s try some mass spectrometry.”
Julian selects it and the drone queues up the tasks. While they’re waiting, the second drove arrives and begins sampling the slush. The mass spectrometry results spin on the screen as a pie chart.
“Molecular hydrogen,” Ava says. “Now that’s interesting. That was the first hint of hydrothermal vents on Enceladus.”
“This is a little exciting.”
“Spectrometry’s back from the slush sample. Look — amino acids, isoprenoids.” She sets her hand on Julian’s shoulder. “Oh, this is exciting. I mean, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, because Titan had all of this as well, but it’s the right puzzle pieces.”
Julian smiles, sharing her excitement. “What’s next?”
She taps on the slate. “Lucky number three. Let’s see what he finds in the caldera.”
Isaac bobs his head to the music, drumming his fingers to the beat. It’s not his music, but something Beckman’s loaded from the ops station. Still, he likes it. It reminds him of his university days working through the night in the lab. In the corner of his eye he notices Beckman watching him. Issac continues bobbing his head, giving a thumbs up.
Goose deployed six satellites during their first orbit. On the workstation in front of him is a work-in-progress, a picture assembling itself one strip at a time. Each orbital is mapping in a different spectrum — visual, radar, ultraviolet, infrared. The result is an image which looks like a photograph placed through a shredder, with a forensic artist reassembling the image one strip at a time.
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