Fiasco

by Stanisław Lem

  The pilot smiled. Drops of sweat glistened on his forehead. The fair hair bore the mark of the helmet's pads on top.

  "I would take a radiator with me. A gigajoule, from the ship's bay. The helicopters at Grail could never lift that, but for the Digla even a hundred tons is nothing. I would go and have a look around… Marlin's wasting his time searching from the air. I know there's a lot of hematite there. And mist. From the copters you can't see a thing."

  "And you'll take the machine straight to the bottom."

  The pilot's smile widened, showing his white teeth. Goss noticed that this kid—because it was practically a kid, only the size of the suit had added a few years—had the same eyes as Pirx. A little lighter perhaps, but with the exact same wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. When he squinted, he had the look of a large cat in the sun—both innocent and crafty.

  "He wants to enter the Depression and 'have a look around,'" Goss said to London, half as a question, half ridiculing the audacity of the volunteer. London didn't blink. Goss stood, removed the earphones, went to the cartograph, and pulled down, like a blind, a large map of the northern hemisphere of Titan.

  He pointed to two thick lines that curved on a yellow-purple field cut with contour lines.

  "We are here. As the crow flies, it's 110 miles to Grail. By this route, the black, it's 146. We lost four people on it when the concrete was being poured for Grail and ours was the only landing field. At that time, pedipulators on diesels were used, powered by hypergols. For local conditions, the weather was perfect. Two teams of machines reached Grail without a hitch. And then, in a single day, four striders disappeared. In the Depression. In this circle. Without a trace."

  "I know," said the pilot. "I learned that in school. I know the names of those people."

  Goss put a finger on the place where, along the black trail north, a red circle had been drawn.

  "The road was lengthened, but no one knew how far the treacherous terrain extended. Geologists were called in. It would have made just as much sense to call in dentists—they're experts on holes, too. No planet has traveling geysers—but we have them here. The blue in the north is the Mare Hynicum. We and Grail are deep inland. Except that this is not land—it's a sponge. The Mare Hynicum does not flood the depression between us and Grail, because the entire coastline is plateau. The geologists said that this so-called continent resembled the Baltic plate of Finno-Scandinavia."

  "They were wrong," the pilot put in. This was beginning to sound like a lecture. He set his helmet down in a corner, sat back in the chair, and folded his hands like an attentive student. He did not know whether Goss intended to acquaint him with the route or scare him away from it, but the whole situation was to his liking.

  "Of course. Beneath the rocks lies a slush of frozen hydrocarbons. An abomination discovered by the drills. A permanent ice, treacherous, made of polymers. The stuff doesn't melt even at zero Celsius, and the temperature here never gets higher than ninety below. Inside the Depression, there are hundreds of old calderas and extinct geysers. The experts said that these were the remnants of volcanic activity. When the geysers came back to life, we received visitors with higher degrees. Seismo-acoustics discovered, far beneath the rocks, a network of caves that branched to an extent never before seen. There was speleological research—people perished, and the insurance companies paid. Finally the Consortium, too, opened its pocket book. Then the astronomers said: When Saturn's other moons are between Titan and the Sun, and the gravitational pull reaches its maximum, the continental plate crumples and the fire beneath the mantle expels magma. Titan still has a hot core. The magma cools before it rises from the depths in vents, but, cooling, it heats all of Orlandia. The Mare Hynicum is like water, and the bedrock of Orlandia is like a sponge. The plugged subterranean channels soften and open. Hence the geysers. The pressure reaches a thousand atmospheres. One never knows where the damned thing will erupt next. But you have your heart set on going there?"

  "I do," replied the pilot in a studied manner. He would have liked to cross his legs, but could not in the suit. He remembered how a colleague of his once tried that and fell over, taking the stool with him. "You mean Birnam Wood?" he added. "Am I supposed to flee now, or can we talk seriously?"

  Goss, ignoring this, continued:

  "The new trail cost a fortune. One had to nibble away, with successive charges, at that ridge of lava—the main flow from the Gorgon. Even the Mons Olympus of Mars can't compare with the Gorgon. Dynamite proved too weak. There was a guy with us, Hornstein—you may have heard of him—who proposed that instead of breaking through the ridge they should cut steps in it, make stairs. Because that would be cheaper. In the U.N. Convention there ought to be a rule barring idiots from going into astronautics. The Typhon Ridge, anyway, they breached with special thermonuclear bombs, after digging a tunnel. Gorgon, Typhon—we're lucky the Greeks have so many monsters in their mythology for us to borrow. The new trail was opened a year ago. It intersects only the southernmost extension of the Depression. The experts pronounced it safe.

  "Meanwhile, the migration of underground caverns is everywhere—beneath all of Orlandia. Three-quarters of Africa! When Titan cooled, its orbit was highly elliptical. It approached the Roche Zone, into which a multitude of smaller moons had fallen. Saturn ground them up to make its rings. So Titan cooled while boiling; great bubbles were created in the perisaturnium of the orbit, and they froze in the aposaturnium; then came sedimentation, glaciations, and this bubble-ridden, sponge-like, amorphous rock was covered and pushed underneath. It's not true that the Mare Hynicum flows in only during the ascension of all the moons of Saturn. The invasions and eruptions of geysers cannot be predicted. Everyone who works here knows this, and the carriers, too, including pilots like yourself. The trail cost billions, but it ought to be closed to heavy machines. All of us keep to the sky. We're in heaven here. Look at the name of the mine: Grail. Except that heaven has turned out to be damned expensive. The whole thing could have been set up better. The bookkeeping is a nightmare. Payments for those who die are hefty, but less money than it would take to reduce the danger. That's about all I have to say.

  "It's possible for the men to crawl out, even if they're submerged. The tide is receding, and the armor on a Digla can take a hundred atmospheres per square inch. They have oxygen for three hundred hours. Marlin sent out robot hovercraft and is having two superheavies repaired. No matter what you can accomplish, it's not worth it. It's not worth risking your neck. The Digla is one of the heaviest—"

  "You said you were finished," interrupted the pilot. "I have only one question, all right? What about Killian?"

  Goss opened his mouth, coughed, and sat down.

  "It was for this, wasn't it, that I was supposed to bring him?" added the pilot.

  Goss tugged on the bottom edge of the map, which made it roll up with a flutter, then took a cigarette and said over the flame of his lighter:

  "That's his specialty. He knew the terrain. Also, he had a contract. I can't forbid operators to do business with Grail. I can hand in my resignation, and I will. Meanwhile, I can send any hero packing."

  "You'll give me the machine," the pilot said quietly. "I can talk with Grail right now. Marlin will jump at the offer, give me the job, and that'll be that. You'll get an official pat on the back. Marlin doesn't care whether it's Killian or me. And the instructions I've memorized. We're wasting time, Mr. Goss. Give me something to eat, please. I'll wash up, and then we can go over the details."

  Goss looked to London for support, but found none in that quarter.

  "He'll go," said the assistant. "I heard about him from that speleologist who was at Grail last summer. This one's cut from the same cloth as your Pirx. Still waters. Go and wash, hero. The showers are below. And come right back up, or the soup will get cold."

  The pilot left, giving London a grin of gratitude. On his way out, he lifted his white helmet with such energy that the tubes slapped the sides of his suit.

&nb
sp; As soon as the door was closed, London began clattering pots and pans by the hot plate.

  "What good will this do?" Goss threw the question angrily at his back. "You're a big help!"

  "And you're spineless. Why did you give Pirx the machine?"

  "I had to. I gave my word."

  London turned to him, a pot in his hand.

  "Your word! You're the kind of friend that if you give your word that you'll jump in after me, you keep it. And if you swear that you'll stand there and watch me drown, you jump in anyway. Am I right?"

  "Who knows what's right?" Goss said, defending himself halfheartedly. "How will he be able to help them?"

  "Maybe he'll find tracks. He'll be taking a radiator—"

  "Stop! Let me listen to Grail. There might be some news."

  Dusk was still far off, although the clouds settling around the illuminated mushroom tower made everything dark. London set the table while Goss, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his earphones on, picked up the small talk between the base at Grail and the tractors that had been sent out after the copters returned. At the same time, he thought about the pilot. Hadn't the pilot changed course too readily, without questions, to land here? A twenty-nine-year-old captain of a ship, licensed to operate long-range spacecraft, had to be tough, hot-blooded. Otherwise he would not have risen so quickly. Danger was a lure to plucky youth. If he, Goss, was to blame, it was for an oversight. Had he asked about Killian, he would have sent the ship on to Grail. Chief Goss, after twenty hours without sleep, was unaware that in his thoughts he had already laid the newcomer to rest. And what was the kid's name? He'd forgotten it, and took this as a sign of advancing age.

  He touched the left monitor. In green rows the letters went:

  SHIP: HELIOS GENERAL CARGO II CLASS

  HOME PORT: SYRTIS

  MAJOR PILOT: ANGUS PARVIS

  COPILOT: ROMAN SINKO

  FREIGHT: ITEM LIST

  ???

  He turned off the screen. They came in wearing sweatsuits. Sinko—thin, curly-haired—greeted them with embarrassment, because the pile turned out to have a leak after all. They sat down to canned soup. The thought occurred to Goss that this daredevil who would be taking the machine out had a jumbled name. He should have been not Parvis but PARSIFAL, which went with Grail. Not in the mood for jokes, however, Goss kept the anagram to himself.

  After a short discussion on the subject of whether they were eating lunch or supper—unresolvable because of the difference in times: the ship's time, Earth time, Titan time—Sinko went down to talk with the technician about the defect scope, which was being set up for the end of the week, when the pile would be cool and the cracks in the housing could be temporarily sealed. The pilot, London, and Goss meanwhile viewed a diorama of Titan in an empty part of the hall. The image—created by holographic projectors, three-dimensional, in color, with the routes drawn in—went from the northern pole to the tropic parallel of latitude. It could be reduced or enlarged. Parvis studied the region that separated them from Grail.

  The room that he was given was small but cozy, with a bunk bed, a little desk that slanted, an armchair, a cabinet, and a shower so narrow that when he soaped himself he kept banging his elbows into the walls. He stretched out on the blanket and opened the thick handbook of Titanography he had borrowed from London. First he looked in the index for BIRNAM WOOD, then WOOD, BIRNAM. It was not there; science had not taken cognizance of the name. He leafed through until he came to the geysers. The author's account of them was not exactly what Goss had said. Titan, solidifying more rapidly than Earth and the other inner planets, locked in its depths enormous masses of compressed gases. These gases, at the folds in Titan's crust, pressed against the bases of old volcanoes and against the subterranean veins of magma that formed a network of roots for hundreds of kilometers; at certain configurations of synclines or anticlines they could break into the atmosphere in fountains of high-pressure, volatile compounds. The mixture, chemically complex, contained carbon dioxide, which froze immediately into snow. Carried by strong winds, the snow covered the plains and mountain slopes with a thick layer. Parvis grew annoyed with the dry tone of the text. He turned out the light, got into bed, was surprised that both the blanket and the pillow stayed in place—accustomed as he was, after nearly a month, to weightlessness—and fell asleep in an instant.

  Some internal impulse brought him out of unconsciousness so suddenly that he was sitting when he opened his eyes, ready to jump out of bed. Blankly he looked around, rubbing his jaw. The jaw reminded him of his dream. Boxing. He had been in the ring against a professional, knew the blow was coming, and fell like a ton of bricks, kayoed. When he opened his eyes wide, the whole room reeled like a cockpit in a sharp turn. He woke completely. In a flash everything returned to him—yesterday's landing, the malfunction, the argument with Goss, and the council of war around the diorama. The room was as cramped as a cabin in a freighter, which brought to mind Goss's parting words: that in his youth he had served on board a whaler. Shaving, Parvis reviewed his decision. If it hadn't been for the name Pirx, he would have thought twice before insisting on this excursion. Under the rush of hot, then ice-cold water, he tried singing, but it lacked conviction. He was not himself. He felt that the thing he had asked for was not merely risky but bordered on stupidity. With the stream in his raised face, blinded, he considered for a moment the idea of backing out. But he knew that that was out of the question. Only a kid would do such a thing. He toweled himself vigorously, made the bed, dressed, and went to look for Goss. Now he was beginning to hurry. He still had to acquaint himself with an unknown model, practice a little, recall the right movements.

  Goss was nowhere. At the base of the control tower there were two buildings, one in either direction, connected to the tower by tunnels. The location of the spaceport was the result of an oversight or an outright mistake. According to unmanned soundings, mineral deposits were supposed to lie beneath this once-volcanic valley, while actually it was an old crater whose basin had been pushed up by the seismic contractions of Titan. So straightaway machines and people were thrown in, and they began to assemble the barrel-like conduit of living quarters for the mining crews—when the news came that a few hundred miles farther on was an incredibly rich and easily accessible lode of uranium.

  The project administration, at that point, underwent a split. One group wanted to abandon this spaceport and start all over again to the northeast; the other group insisted on remaining, arguing that, yes, beyond the Depression there were surface deposits, but they were shallow and therefore would yield little. Those in favor of dismantling the first bridgehead were called, by someone, Seekers of the Holy Grail, and the name of Grail stuck to that area of opencast mining. The first spaceport was not abandoned, but neither was it expanded. A weak compromise was struck, necessitated by the lack of capital. Thus, although the economists calculated x times that in the long run it would pay to close the landing field in the old crater and concentrate all the activity in a single place—Grail—the ad hoc logic of meeting the demands of the moment prevailed. Grail was unable to receive the larger ships for a long time; but, then, the Roembden Crater (named after the geologist who discovered it) did not have its own repair docks, loading derricks, up-to-date equipment. And there was the constant debate over who served whom and who got what out of the arrangement. Some of the top brass still seemed to believe that there was uranium under the crater. Some drilling was done. But the drilling went slowly, because as soon as a few people and a little power were allocated here, Grail immediately expropriated them, intervening at headquarters, and once again construction halted and the machines stood idle by the darkening walls of the Roembden.

  Parvis, like the other transporters, did not participate in these frictions and conflicts, though he had to have a passing knowledge of them; that was required by the delicate position of everyone in transport. Grail still wanted—by dint of the de facto situation—to dismantle the spaceport, particularly after t
he expansion of its own landing field, but Roembden thwarted Grail. Or, whether it thwarted Grail or not, it demonstrated its usefulness when the excellent concrete at Grail began to sink. Personally, Parvis was of the opinion that at the root of this chronic schism lay psychology and not money: that two local and therefore mutually antagonistic patriotisms—of the Roembden Crater and of Grail—had arisen, and everything else was a rationalization favoring one side or the other. But this was best left unsaid to anyone working on Titan.

  The passageways beneath the control tower brought to mind an abandoned subterranean city, and it was painful to see how many supplies were piled up, untouched. He had landed at Roembden once before, as assistant navigator, but they were in such a hurry at the time that he did not even leave the ship during the unloading, to supervise it. Now he looked upon the unpacked—still sealed, even—containers with disgust, especially since he recognized among them the ones that he had brought then. Annoyed by the silence, he began yelling as in a forest, but only an echo boomed dully down the corridors of this storage section.

  He took an elevator up. He found London in the flight-control room, but London had no idea where Goss was, either. No new communiqués had come in from Grail. The monitors flickered. The smell of bacon filled the air; London was making scrambled eggs in bacon fat. The shells he threw in the sink.

  "You have eggs here?" The pilot was amazed.

  "Oh, plenty."

  London now spoke to him as one of the crew.

  "There was an electronics guy, with ulcers. He brought a whole chicken coop with him—watching his diet. Well, there were protests at first: people complained that he was stinking up the place, and what would he feed the chickens with, etc. But he left a couple of hens and a rooster, and now we love them. Fresh eggs are a delicacy in these parts. Have a seat. Goss will turn up."

  Parvis felt hungry. Stuffing his mouth with unaesthetically large pieces of scrambled egg, he justified this to himself: in the face of what awaited him, he ought to stock up on calories. The telephone buzzed; Goss wanted to talk to him. Parvis thanked London for the feast, bolted the rest of his coffee, and took the elevator down a floor.