“Beats me. Looks like a ghost town. I’m still not getting even a ping on my transponders. And all the lights are off. Everything’s off. Dark.”
“But is somebody home? I wonder.”
“There’s supposed to be a hundred somebodies,” the pilot said. “Set down anyway?”
Jeremy looked at the blank monitor and listened to the empty static. He threw a suspicious glance out the window. “You bet.”
He cinched his helmet, unholstered his pulse gun, and stepped to the door, along with the three European marines that Port Antillia had sent along. The shuttle hovered just over the methane surf, casting up a spray that scattered a rainbow across the orange sky before them. Then the craft slid past the shoreline and bumped to the ground. The door popped open and the ramp clanged to the sand.
“Shall we?” Jeremy said, stomping down the metal ramp. He led his small team to the airlock where a ship full of SWAT members was conspicuously absent.
He studied a panel on the door and shook his head. “No juice. Not even enough to tell us what’s going on inside.”
A bearlike Marine in front, wearing Master Sergeant stripes, spoke with a Norwegian accent. “What dew ve dew, knock?”
Jeremy held up his hand. “We may have a hostage situation, or a critical failure of life support—”
“Or a bunch of human ice cubes,” said a corporal. “I say we get in and see what’s up.”
The Norwegian officer spoke up. “Marine, until dere are other Marines to answer tew, Mr. Belton is technically head of dis operation. It is up tew him.” He turned to Jeremy. “Sir?”
Jeremy shrugged under his environment suit. He had no idea what to do. That ship full of military experts, SWAT from Ganymede, was supposed to be crawling all over the place by now. Someone had apparently forgotten to invite them. He was no hero. What should he do?
Jeremy turned toward the head Marine, but the wall-like man towered above him. Jeremy’s eyes settled on the nametag on the officer’s chest: Dønnes. Looking up through his visor, he said, “The most prudent thing is to wait for the SWAT team, don’t you think?”
“Unless time is of the essence for survivors inside. It does look like the station is in bad shape. No power. No lights. It might be an ambush, or it might be a systems failure. Yer call.”
Jeremy turned away from the door. He paced toward the ship, then turned back and walked past the airlock, turning again to end up at the side of the Marines. “Let’s give it an hour. No, half an hour. Where the hell are they?”
Jeremy was quiet for a moment. If it was an ambush, they were hiding quite well. There were no tire tracks or footprints surrounding the habs, no signs of forced entry. If anyone was in there, it wasn’t a bunch of militia. It was somebody who was in trouble. And Abigail might be among them. She was his goddaughter. Blood trumps orders, he thought. Finally, he said, “I suppose we just go in.”
“Carefully,” the Nordic Marine added, bringing his weapon online. Jeremy was relieved to hear the hum of the man’s weapon. He didn’t like wielding his. He had only used it once in his entire career, in self-defense, and in that event only into the air above the head of a threatening young woman who didn’t really need to be shot anyway. He wasn’t about to go into a situation with guns blazing now.
Jeremy leaned into the airlock doorway and studied the controls. “Here goes nothin’.”
He tapped several keys. “It’s cycling.”
“Dat’s a gewd sign,” said the big Marine.
Airlocks on Titan were different from those Jeremy was familiar with. Rather than equalizing pressure for ingress and egress, the relatively Earth-like surface pressure of Titan allowed for simple entry without pumping pressures up or down. Rather, airlocks here simply exchanged the exterior methane-rich gases for the oxygen-rich interior ones.
The chambers also supplied a biological barrier, infusing the air with an antibacterial that killed any human-generated microbes on the suits. But airlocks served one other important function: they vacuumed off the volatiles from boots, space suits and any equipment that a researcher might track in. Even some of the sand was saturated with materials that, when exposed to the oxygen atmosphere inside the station, could become flammable. If there was no power in the airlock, Jeremy worried that they might trail in disaster with them. He could only hope that the majority of outside material would fall through the airlock floor’s grating.
In a few moments, the door popped. The all-clear lights that normally indicated that the airlock was safe to enter remained dark, but Jeremy opened the door anyway. A soft swoosh of air issued from the chamber. The four stepped in, secured the hatch, and cycled the air again. Despite the lack of power to the lights, it seemed to be working.
Once the atmosphere was equalized, with only their suit lights to illuminate the lock, the three Marines held their weapons at the ready. Jeremy cracked his visor and sniffed. The place smelled like a cross between a cold-storage meat freezer and a boy’s locker room. What he did not smell, thankfully, was the aroma of deadly liquids from the outside. He stepped back from the inside door slightly. “Please, after you.”
Master Sergeant Dønnes stepped smartly through the open hatch, covering the corridor to the left. A second Marine pivoted to the right, while the third cat-walked straight ahead, with Jeremy following. The group made their way down the hallway in this fashion, into the darkness, until Jeremy had them pause. He checked his wrist monitor. “The temp’s like a Siberian winter in here, but the air is marginally breathable.” He unsealed his helmet and opened his visor. The others followed suit. As they did, they could hear a quiet voice coming from down the hall.
The lead Marine gestured them forward. The voice became clearer. It was a woman’s, and she was clearly not trying to be clandestine.
“So then he says, ‘Hey, you’re the guys with all the Vodka.’” A chorus of laughter echoed down the corridor. “True story. I swear!”
The four rescuers cautiously entered the hab. A dim lamp sat on a table in the center of the room. A dozen people huddled around it, covered in blankets, coats and even a rug. They peered, unblinking, at the intruders.
“Well,” said one of them. “If it isn’t the Marines!”
“Help at last!” said another. Applause broke out. Jeremy held up his hand for silence.
“What’s the status here? Is everybody okay?”
A man stood. “I’m Brian Finnegan, Chief Engineer here. We’re in reasonably poor shape. No heat, no active pressure or oxygen. Reactor’s non-functional. Air’s getting stale, to say the least. Did you bring heaters?”
“Or coffee?” someone else chimed in to the sound of groans all around. The woman shoved her hand at Jeremy. “I’m Susan Mason, physician for this lovely tropical paradise. We seem to be having a spate of symptoms that are tempered by hot coffee or tea.”
“I’ll check on our hot drink situation, but I doubt we can handle a hundred people. We’re a small shuttle. More help is on the way soon.” He said the last with blind hope in Sanjay Rao.
“Did the monsters give you any trouble?” one of them asked. Jeremy looked at him curiously.
“You must have seen them on your way in,” the doctor said. “We’ve got a real infestation. It’s scientifically incredible, but in our state, it’s just adding to our woes.”
The Norwegian Marine was slowly shaking his head.
“You can’t have missed them,” Brian said, crossing to the porthole. “There, look. Down at the beach. There are two of them, almost completely out of the lake.” He jabbed his finger against the plexiglass.
Jeremy leaned over. Several people had huddled around the window a few feet to the right. “Oh, yeah, that’s a huge one. He’s new, isn’t he?” crowed someone.
Another jockeyed for position. “He is big. Longest neck I’ve seen on one of these buggers. Man, they’re weird. Who would have imagined?”
“Right here on Titan.”
“Amazing!”
“Wait
‘till the people back home hear about this, right?” Doc Mason said to Jeremy.
Jeremy looked at the Marines. They wore expressions of complete bafflement. He turned back to the doc. “Interesting. When did they first start showing up?”
“About the time the drill broke through.”
“Drill?” Master Sergeant Dønnes asked.
Jeremy said, “Big core drilling project here, according to the files. They’re trying to sample the ocean down there beneath the ice crust, but it’s a long way. They broke through shortly before we lost contact.”
“They did it,” Mason said. “Broke through to the water. Started bringing up samples. And that’s when the trouble began. Weird stuff. These creatures all over the place, but they’re too big to have come up any borehole. Nobody can quite figure out what’s going on.”
“I see,” he drew the words out. “And everyone has seen these creatures?”
The doctor looked at him as though he had lost his mind. “Whatever do you mean?” She glanced toward the window and back at him, as if he was a fool.
Jeremy rubbed his hands together as if enjoying a warm campfire. “Let’s leave the creatures to the biologists. We need to get everybody as close together as we can, and we’ll get our portable heaters in here. I was wondering if anybody knows the whereabouts of Abigail Marco?”
Brian chimed in, “If anybody would know, it’s Piers Wellington. You’ll find him in Comms, down that corridor on the left. But what about that coffee?”
“Dat sounds like a job for da Marines.” The Master Sergeant sent one of his troops back to the ship while he and the other Marine continued to evaluate other sections of the outpost. Jeremy headed for Comms.
Titan’s orange pall tinted the corridors with the faintest of blood-red glows. Jeremy’s suit light reinforced the miserable chill: ice crystals sparkled back at him from the walls and surfaces of equipment. The floor felt oily. When he finally reached Comms, he found the door ajar.
“Anybody home?” he called.
Piers twisted around in his seat, grasping a metal rod. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Jeremy Belton. I’m—”
“Belton! Boy, am I glad to see you!” He erupted from his seat toward Jeremy. “Abby’s told me all sorts of things about, well, anyway, I’m glad you made it. Did you bring supplies?”
Piers held his hand out. Jeremy shook it. “Our ship is a small scout shuttle. I’m hoping help is on the way soon.”
Piers looked around. “Yeah, well, soon would be my vote. We’re in a degrading downhill slide here. We’ve got no operational power and mass hallucinations.”
Mass hallucinations sounded dangerous, if true. Then again, they sounded like the ravings of a paranoiac. Was Welllington sane? “One thing at a time,” Jeremy said. “I’m looking for Abby.”
“She’s gone. So is Troy. I think they may have been kidnapped by some people who are holed up on the north shore. Know anything about that lot?”
“Not substantially, but we have some intelligence on them. They seem well equipped in terms of weapons and transportation.”
“We got nothing here. Any chance we can help our two wayward buddies?”
“Maybe. We need to talk to our Marines.”
“You brought the Marines? Why didn’t you say so?”
“I brought three Marines.”
“Oh.”
Jeremy wanted to mount a rescue for Abby, but he obviously could not assemble a full assault—or even a clandestine operation—with himself and three Marines against what amounted to an ice fortress. He had to focus on the problems at hand first. “What about the power here?”
“You’ll have to ask Brian about that. He’s our resident expert.”
“I met him.”
“Good. He says our reactor is fine, but there’s some other problem and it’s not fixable by us.” Piers met Jeremy’s eyes. “How did Brian seem? Is he okay?”
The corners of Jeremy’s mouth twitched. “Just what’s going on here?”
“I’m not sure,” Piers said cautiously. “Let me ask you something. Did you see anything in the lake as you came in?”
“There’s the rub, isn’t it? Yes, I did see things.”
Piers looked deflated.
Jeremy added, “A wrecked pile of equipment on the shore and a huge drill that was not doing much drilling.”
“Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
Piers snapped his fingers. “Excellent! There seems to be some kind of mass hysteria going on here, some universal mirage or something. Everyone seems to be seeing brontosauruses out there and really weird things in here.”
Apparently, Piers had a good handle on the situation. He seemed to be thinking more lucidly than anybody in the other room, and there was something else: his eyes were clear.
“Weird like what?” Jeremy prodded.
“Everybody’s complaining about the music.”
“What music?”
“Exactly. Doesn’t matter. There’s no time. Look, whatever it is, everybody seems to have it except me. And Abigail.”
Jeremy’s eyebrows crawled toward each other. “Really? Everybody?”
Piers nodded. “Yep. Something in the air? The water? I don’t know. Doc Mason’s too out of it to ask.”
“And you and Abby escaped somehow. Hmm. What are the two of you doing differently?”
“We’ve tried going over it. I’m too cold to think and I’m too worried about Abby.”
“Yes, I can understand that,” Jeremy said, putting his hand on Piers’ shoulder. “Me, too. Let’s see what we can do about our Abby.”
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
Michael CarrollOn the Shores of Titan's Farthest SeaScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-17759-5_44
44. A Bridge Too Far
Michael Carroll1
(1)Littleton, CO, USA
Kinto dragged Abby roughly through the door and into the corridor, away from Montenegro’s ‘headquarters’ and down the hall from the guards who had held her. Once alone, he paused. “Stand up straight,” he commanded.
“That’s a little hard with you throwing me around like a rag doll.”
He put his hand against her back in an almost reassuring manner. “It’s the effects of the tranq. You’ll be on your feet in no time.” He leaned over and spoke rapidly. “Look, Montenegro, or Sable, or whoever he is, has lost it. Certifiable. Marbles fully absent. Come this way. I’m depositing you in a storage closet for now, until we can figure this whole mess out. You can thank me later.”
“For stuffing me in a storage locker?”
“For not killing you.” He flashed a grin at her.
At the end of the hall, in a room full of lockers and stowage areas, Kinto nudged Abby into a large, metal cabinet and slammed the door. As she sat in the darkness, Abby mumbled, “Gee, thanks.”
(*)Piers waved toward his darkened monitor. “Just before our power grid went down, I figured out what frequency these numbskulls were using.”
Jeremy shifted in his chair, trying to get comfortable around the small boxes, empty water bottles and papers nested around his butt. “So using our ship’s equipment, I could probably contact them, right?”
Piers cast a disdainful glance at Jeremy’s seating arrangement. “Sorry about the mess. Abby calls it ‘Wellington modern.’ So, yes, maybe you could contact them. If they’d pick up. To what end?”
“To negotiate release of hostages.”
“Or hostage.”
“You really think Troy was in on it somehow?”
“I don’t know; there was just something not right about everything the guy was doing lately.”
Jeremy sat silently for a moment, ruminating. “Well, I say we try it. Want to come?”
“Absolutely.”
Even by Mayda’s standards, the ship’s interior was cramped. Jeremy stationed himself on one side of the cockpit, while Piers stood behind the other seat, occupied by the
Marine communications officer. The officer handed a headset to Jeremy, and keyed his touchscreen so that the transmissions could be heard on the cockpit speaker.
Jeremy looked at the comms officer, and then at Piers. His eyebrows twitched upwards. His eyes narrowed. “Here goes nothing.”
He keyed the microphone. “This is Jeremy Belton, calling on behalf of Mayda Research Station. Do you read?”
Static. White noise.
Jeremy keyed his microphone again. “This is Jeremy Belton, calling on behalf of Mayda Research Station. Is anyone reading us?”
The speaker registered a click, and then a voice.
“This is Commodore Clark of the Northern Quadrant. We have been trying to contact you. Can we be of service?”
Piers looked surprised. Jeremy fought down the skepticism in his own voice. “Good to hear from you, Commodore. Mayda is, indeed, in need of some assistance, but we want to first inquire about the status of two of our scientists, Abigail Marco and Troy Fels.”
A long silence met Jeremy’s statement.
“What could be going on?” Piers said.
“Equipment’s fine,” the comms officer said. “We are receiving. They are just not saying anything.”
“They seem to be sorting something out,” Jeremy guessed.
A new voice came across the speaker. “This is Admiral Montenegro. We are happy to be of any help we can be. What is your status?”
“Evasive, at best,” Jeremy observed before keying the mic. “We are currently missing two scientists who were headed your way. Do you have any information about either Abigail Marco or Troy Fels?” He said the last more emphatically.
After a pause, the Admiral’s tone came back more boldly. “We’d be happy to help you in your search, but it sounds like we should be trying to help you with your crippled station first.”
Piers whispered, “We never said anything about a crippled station.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” He stared at the floor, then looked out the window toward the north. Somewhere beyond the rusted mist, somewhere on the far side of the methane swells and shimmering surreal light of an alien sea, Abby was stuck with this group, and the Admiral was playing games. There was something else that bothered Jeremy: the Admiral’s voice sounded awfully familiar.
On the Shores of Titan's Farthest Sea Page 22