Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-08

by Penny Publications

  "I don't miss it," she continues. "Everyone here is nice to me and I don't mind the work. Of course, it's not as glamorous as you might think—we have to work hard and between stops there's a lot of downtime. Sometimes we sleep through it and you wake up with a huge hangover."

  "What makes it cool is the concerts and theater. Some of it I don't understand." Sara gestured at His Happy Bulbous Self outside the window. "He likes plant opera, which is mostly standing around and shedding body parts. But the knife-dancing is powerful, once you get used to sitting in an atmosphere bubble so you can see it live. You'd love it."

  Then she replays her smile. My earthly romantic endeavors hadn't been productive and I'm between girlfriends. A long way between. Sara Ferrous is amusing, smart, and attractive. And being on a spaceship with her and lots of spare time could be... well... interesting.

  Or at least, could have been. I think about Sara and keep the hardware store stocked with as much red inventory as I can order. But I like it here. I have new friends. Trust me, saying goodbye to Sara was the hardest thing I've ever done. But staying with Sara on that ship was a bigger jump than I was ready for.

  When Sara realized I wasn't going to f ly away with them into the sunset, she offered me a second-best option. They left some killer recording devices I can fit in my pocket. I show up for live music and theater whenever I get the chance. I still spend time playing games, but my interests are leaning to dance. All the recordings, band posters and souvenir programs get stored in the "shed" in my back yard. Next time Sara is in the neighborhood, she promises to "catch me on the flip-side" and retrieve the shed and its contents, splitting the proceeds fifty-f ifty. I keep a fresh pack of gum around at all times, just to be a good host.

  Dave is incessantly curious about my night with Sara. I haven't told him anything other than, "She was kind of spacey." Trite, but it makes me laugh.

  If culture is what Earth is good for, I ought to at least take an interest. Now that I've met Sara, I know what kind of a girlfriend I'm looking for. Someday that ideal girl will walk into the store with a handful of parts, see us standing behind the counter and ask the question I'm hoping to hear.

  "Can you help me get a plastic thingy?"

  * * *

  Beneath the Ice of Enceladus

  James C. Glass | 8505 words

  Illustrated by Vincent DiFate

  Twelve hours out from Herschel Base, Anna Hegel finally vented when Phil made another crack about wasting space for "bug" people on the mission. Her face flushed when she glared at him, and she tried hard to control the angry quaver in her voice.

  "I really hope I'm not going to have a problem with you, Phil. We're going to be spending a lot of time together in close quarters, whether you like it or not."

  Phil Yallowitz was seated in front of Anna, so she couldn't see his face.

  "That's my point," said Phil. "This isn't a bug hunt for me, it's a test of a vessel I've worked on for seven years. I need an electronic tech, not a scientist."

  Sitting next to Anna, the tech assigned to the submersible program seemed to take offense at that. "Hey, man, you've got me. I'm certified mechanical and electrical."

  "I don't need to have any light tubes changed. How are you with spectrum analyzers?"

  The tech chuckled and turned to Anna. "Don't feel bad, Doctor. He bad-mouths me, too."

  Sitting at the shuttle control desk, Mission Commander Mike Goffin looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow at them. Above him, Enceladus was already huge on his view screen.

  "Stop it, all of you."

  "Yes sir!" said the tech, and grinned.

  "Read the mission profile again, Phil. A mission specialist was a must. The only debate was whether it would be a geologist or an astrobiologist, and the bug people won. The only reason we're here is because the water is easy to get to. The Europa team is understandably furious about their budget being cut so we could get our one chance here. One shot, people, so you'd better be able to work together on this. It's a long way back to Earth for anyone who can't do it."

  There was a long silence after Mike said that.

  Herschel Base was fifty kilometers west and north of the South Pole, and the view screen showed a new yet strangely tortured surface there. Unlike the northern, lightly cratered hemisphere of Enceladus, the southern area, at long distance, appeared relatively smooth and thus geologically more recent, but close inspection had long ago revealed a jumbled surface of cracks and rills, valleys and depressions as if some great glacier had spread there. Saturn was a bright ball thirty degrees in diameter, rings edge-on and faintly visible. Icy Mimas was beginning a transit, and Titan was a large, fuzzy orb in a black sky as the shuttle began its vertical descent to the base. Looking at Titan, Anna thought of the research platform orbiting above its hazy atmosphere. It had been her home for the past three years.

  At fifty kilometers altitude, four fractures were clearly visible, bounded on either side by ridges, features that had been known as "tiger stripes" for well over a century. Closer, the fissures seemed choked with shining blocks and boulders—water ice with traces of ammonia, methane, and other simple organics. Out on the horizon, a plume of vapor rose far above the descending shuttle.

  Water vapor, thought to be coming from eruptions of liquid from a surface whose average temperature was only seventy-five degrees Kelvin.

  Below the surface of Enceladus, liquid water had to exist.

  And where there was water, there might be life.

  Anna Hegel had arrived with the intention of finding it. This was an ambition she shared with three generations of women in her family. Time had run out for two of them, and was getting dangerously short for the third. Herschel Base appeared below them as a black, fifty-meter-diameter spot on a chaotic jumble of ice in the fissure, or sulcus, known as Damascus. The roof and access module bristled with instrument arrays and a microwave dish. There was a jolt beneath their feet when shuttle lock occurred. Anna felt a subtle gravity, one hundredth that of Earth, but she'd been living with ten times that on Titan Station for three years. Despite regular exercise her limbs were like sticks, and within a year or two she would have to decide whether to remain in space or abandon her life's work and return to Earth as her mother and grandmother had done.

  For them, it had been too late.

  The floor hatch screeched as Mike pulled it open. He gestured to Anna.

  "Ladies first."

  Anna looked down; saw hands waving to her from the end of a hollow cylinder a few meters long. She made a little hop, and dropped like a dust mote. Several seconds later, hands grasped her and pulled her to one side as the others came down.

  A slender, blond woman reached out her hand.

  "Welcome to Herschel."

  "Wow, it's cold in here," said Anna, and shivered.

  The woman smiled. "Nothing like outside. It'll be better down below."

  Three men were with the woman, and reached up as first Phil and his tech came down the tube, then Mike after them. The woman shook Anna's hand. "I'm Helena. I'll be your lab tech, and introduce you to Commander Kassner."

  The space they occupied ended in a shaft angled at thirty degrees from their vertical, and lined with hand rungs. Anna followed Helena through it with practiced ease, and they came out into a living space shaped like a ring. There were instrument panels and video monitors floor to ceiling. One monitor showed a tech guiding Mike into the shaft above them.

  "It's smaller than I expected," said Anna.

  "There are several levels," said Helena. "Bunks and mess are just below this one, but you'll be working out of the lower levels. The whole base is a tapered cylinder, and most of it is insulation and concentric vacuum layers. They literally pounded a cork into a volcanic vent when they made this place. And the two outer layers are spring-loaded composites that flex. The ice is constantly moving around us. You'll hear it soon enough."

  Anna felt tightness in her throat, and Helena smiled.

  "Don't worry
. I've been here four months, and we haven't been crushed yet. This place really only has to last another two weeks if you people get your job done."

  A joke, perhaps, but Anna wasn't amused by it.

  Helena showed Anna around the ring. A central shaft with rungs on a pole took them down to the next level where the odor of coffee was in the air and Mike was talking to a tall, square-jawed man in astronaut blues. The conversation stopped when Helena and Anna approached them, and Mike smiled.

  "This is Doctor Anna Hegel, sir."

  "Eric Kassner is our base commander," said Helena.

  Kassner stuck out his hand, and his grip was bone hard. "It's a small Universe. I knew your mother years ago. How is she these days?"

  Anna blinked. "Sorry to say she's dead, sir, waited too long to return to Earth. Her heart couldn't take it."

  "Sorry to hear that. She had everyone's respect on Europa. It has been a tough mission there."

  "Too much ice, sir. I doubt if they'll ever get through it. I guess that's why I'm here."

  "Plenty of ice here, too, but an ocean is right beneath us, and you people are going to tell us what's there."

  "Yes, sir."

  "So when do we see it?" asked Mike.

  "Soon enough. The time is short, but we're not going to rush unnecessarily. The submersible has to be proven at depth, and we don't even know what we're diving into yet. This module is plugging what used to be a volcanic vent, and the shaft down has been changing ever since the water flow was restricted. We're floating in the thing, and sonar returns are garbled. There could be a sea, a lake, or a puddle down there. First job is to find the end of the shaft and scan what's below it. There won't be much room for maneuvering."

  "I'm sure Phil Yallowitz can handle it. The vessel is his baby," said Mike.

  Kassner turned back to Anna. "Your mother was a patient person, and I hope you are too. The first dips will be with tech and pilot only."

  "I understand, sir," said Anna, "as long as you remember we only have two weeks until our return window to Titan."

  Kassner nodded. "I know that, Doctor, but I also intend to send you home alive."

  Anna suddenly felt a vibration, and the floor tilted beneath her feet, nearly tipping her over. She grabbed Mike's arm, as there was a terrible screech from the walls, like some metal talon was scraping there. Anna's heart hammered from the shock of it.

  Kassner looked at her calmly. "Vapor bubble. You'll get used to them. Earthquakes are less frequent, but scarier. The water reservoir below us is under pressure, and is either very small, or there's a big heat source there. Please keep in mind this is an extraordinarily dynamic environment. Yes, we want to explore it as quickly as we can. We just don't want it to kill us."

  The commander reached out and shook their hands again. "Welcome to Herschel Base. Helena will show you where to bunk, and there will be a general briefing for all of you in the mess in exactly two hours."

  Helena touched Anna's elbow. "This way," she said, and took them away to their quarters.

  Sleep was a challenge. Anna's satchel was inclined slightly from the vertical in a six cubic meter niche behind a poly-steel grill. It was not totally unlike the shuttle, but that had been quiet during what passed for night, and she'd floated around in her bag. On Herschel the floor and walls were forever heaving and shaking, and the constant groaning and screaming of hard ice and rock scraping metal kept her awake for most of her sleep shift. She fought off the effects with strong coffee until Helena gave her something that knocked her out cold, and life was good again.

  Mike and Phil and two techs made the first dip two-work shifts after arrival. Anna went down to bottom level to watch their progress on a television monitor after they'd submerged. Phil's submersible was shaped like a shallow, inverted soup bowl with ports on the sides, bow steering and diving planes, and a nose bubble. Two retractable claws folded up along two sides, and there were three directional lights forward. Armor was sufficient for two thousand feet Earth-side, and was definitely overkill for what they were expecting, but in Phil's own words: "You never know."

  There were no screws; three ports aft were all there was to see of a jet propulsion system fueled by hypergolic Anistol, as used for maneuvering by the shuttle. Water and hydrogen were the only emissions, and viewed as safe in any oxygen-free environment.

  Anna watched as Mike, Phil, and two techs opened the hatch on top of the submersible and climbed in. The yellow paint of the hull complimented the yellowish-green of the water it floated in, and there was a musty odor in the air. Commander Kassner manned the comm panel and Anna joined him there while a base tech closed and sealed the hatch.

  "Diving," said Phil, and there was a roiling on the water surface where the submersible floated in its tank.

  "Opening lock," said Kassner, and moved his hand. The submersible dropped into a lock below the tank, where pressure could be varied in transferring the vessel to the outside.

  "Pressurizing," said Kassner, and Anna felt the floor move beneath her. The walls around them groaned. Kassner looked at her. "It's okay. We bob up and down a bit. In the low gravity, pressure changes are subtle. If there's an ocean below us I doubt if it's very deep." He looked up at a monitor. "Lights on. Opening outer door."

  On the monitor, silvery doors slid aside and three bright beams of light disappeared into blackness, the beam edges tinged green.

  "No particulates," said Anna.

  "Pieces of ice once in a while, and those bubbles that come from some depth." Kassner smiled. "I'm sure you'd like to see something more interesting."

  "That's why I'm here. Right now, I'll settle for water samples."

  "Automatic, and real-time." Kassner pointed. "Follow that monitor. Readings are every four meters."

  When Anna looked at the monitor, a simple spectrum was already building there: traces of ammonia, methane, sulfur, and iron.

  "The vent is widening," said Mike, and Anna looked at the other monitor again. Blackness ahead, the faint glow of ice from the sides. Suddenly, there was a faint reflection from something in front of the submersible.

  "Slowing," said Phil. A shelf of ice came out of the blackness, oriented left to right and descending at a steep angle.

  "The shaft turns here, and I see an edge to it. Cracks all over the place."

  There was a faint, blue outline of something, and blackness beyond it.

  "That's what has been scattering our sonar," said Kassner. "I'd put the first buoy right where it turns."

  "Okay," said Mike, "but let's find the end first. I see it. We'll put the first buoy there."

  "Don't go beyond that point. We'll check out the vessel at depth tomorrow. I want those relays in first."

  "Right."

  The monitor image faded, and then went to random noise and cosmic background. "What's happening?" asked Anna.

  "They're around the corner. A relay buoy will go at the shaft opening, another at the turn by the shelf, and we should have data communication the rest of the way if there's really a large body of water there."

  They waited nervously for half an hour, and suddenly the monitor showed a picture of ice close-up and a conical package anchored to it by a short chain.

  "Are you getting sonar yet?" asked Mike, and his voice was extraordinarily loud and clear.

  Kassner leaned to his left and looked at another monitor. "Got it. Multiplexing. The phones are even more exceptional. Sounds like you're with us here. So, let's see what we have down there."

  They watched the multiplexed pattern of the pulsed sonar build for fifteen minutes before Kassner said, "It's a small sea or a lake, running parallel to the fissure. Depth goes to two or three hundred meters, and it's big, maybe ten klicks long, three wide. The vent comes out of the ceiling of the thing. The bottom reflections are coming up with rough areas, like there's some structure down there. And no, you can't take a quick look."

  "Figured," said Mike. "Take'er up, Phil."

  The men returned to the base in a
jubilant mood.

  And Anna didn't sleep a wink that night.

  It was three Earth-days until the next submersion. Erratic readings in the vessel's pilot deck were finally traced to a damaged optical cable, and a new one threaded through a wall to replace it. Only Mike and Phil would go down this time, and Anna tried hard to be patient.

  "There's room for me, and all I want to do is look outside," she said.

  "You'd do better to watch the spectrometer readouts here," said Mike. "This is a systems check, and we won't be going anywhere near the bottom."

  "Watch the monitor," said Phil. "There's nothing to see until we go deep. You'll be bored."

  Inside, she despised Phil's condescending tone of voice, but Anna kept her face expressionless.

  "I can do that quietly, and not be in the way, Phil. And if you see anything at all interesting, I'm sure you'll be alert enough to include me in the discussion of it."

  "Absolutely," said Mike, but Phil said nothing and looked away from her.

  The submersible disappeared beneath the yellowish-green surface with a gentle roil of bubbles. After a few minutes, Anna dismissed her irritation and carefully watched the spectrometer readings as the vessel reached the shelf at the bottom of the vent and sailed out into open water.

  The water there was even more pristine than in the vent. The lines for ammonia and iron nearly disappeared. After a few minutes a small peak developed for sodium when the vessel was sailing near the ceiling of the mammoth cavern, and at one point there was a small spike in sulfur. Anna noted the exact time of each event; it was something to do. Commander Kassner's attention was focused on the sonar readings the entire time.

  A few minutes later, things got more interesting when Phil began putting his machine through her paces, beginning with a test of the bow planes in turns and steep dives. The bottom was at three hundred meters at that point, and the dive went to one hundred. Anna stared hard at the monitor, but there were only three beams of light disappearing into darkness. Whatever was on the bottom was a poor reflector. But when she looked back at the spectrometer readings, a sharp line for sulfur was growing, and it suddenly stopped as Anna noted the time again.