The Enceladus Crisis

by Michael J. Martinez

  Surprised, Finch nodded, and shortly thereafter took his leave. Ibn Tulun was Cairo’s oldest surviving intact place of worship, and while it had been improved upon over the years, much of the interior hailed from the 9th century A.D. The mosaic work inside was said to be centuries ahead of its time, and Finch himself had spent more than a few long afternoons there, enjoying the art and consulting with the learned imams there with regard to alchemical practices that would meet with the approval of their customs and laws.

  The imams, generally speaking, were highly skeptical of the French intentions to begin with; how Berthollet managed to gain entrance was a mystery. If he had done so at musket-point, then all of Cairo would literally be up in arms, and Bonaparte would not have had time for his little scientific society this past morning.

  Finch returned to his home and his tutoring, but was distracted through the rest of the day, and admittedly gave his charges less attention than they deserved—one of them nearly created a massive explosion through an incorrect admixture, but ever-watchful Jabir quickly stayed the boy’s hand just as the final errant ingredient was to be added. Chagrined yet grateful, Finch gave his protégé half the coins from the class, as well as an afternoon at liberty. This served a two-fold purpose: To reward the boy’s actions, and to send him off whilst Finch met with Berthollet. Jabir did not understand Finch’s agnostic views when it came to politics (or religion, for that matter) and continued to voice his opinion that the French were little more than the newest wave of Western crusaders. Finch had to admit, there was a chance the boy was right.

  Now dressed in his customary Egyptian clothing—far better suited to the summer heat—Finch took a leisurely path to the mosque in order to better gauge the Frenchmen’s activities in the city. Life, it seemed, continued apace in the sprawling honeycomb of byways and alleys, with vendors hawking their wares and porters moving quickly with their oversized burdens. There were street preachers here and there, as was their wont, and some few were stark naked under the glare of the Sun, barking loudly at passersby. While not entirely common, these individuals were largely tolerated under the beys, as they were believed to be touched by Allah and given license by Him to question the ways of mankind.

  Likewise, alchemists of all stripes and talents (or lack thereof) plied their wares alongside the vendors of livestock and bread, cloth and metal. Finch nodded to a few of better repute, but got fewer acknowledgements in return. It was not that he was a Westerner, though he imagined that he might be lumped in with the French should the latter make gross missteps, but rather that he was an accomplished alchemist who taught a rigorous, demanding path to the Great Work, one that was done with the tacit approval of the imams. In Egypt, the teaching of Al-Khem was considerably more secretive, with masters accepting one student at a time, and applying their own unique—some might say eccentric—twists to the Work. Some held it to be nothing short of a religious practice, sharing the ecstatic worldviews of the twirling Sufis, while others felt it was completely unrelated to Islam, which would draw the ire of the imams if said publicly. And still others secretly hewed to the ancient Egyptian rites, calling upon Isis and Osiris and Set in their Workings—something that would get them summarily stoned to death if it came to light.

  But for all the secretiveness, the wonders of Al-Khem were on full display. Elixirs and potions of varying levels of authenticity were on offer in many stalls around the city, while the windows of wealthy homes allowed alchemical light to seep forth from shadowed corners. Tools and blades of alchemical steel glinted brightly in the sunshine, and occasionally a rich merchant or wife thereof would glide by on a flying carpet. Finch thought the carpets were highly ostentatious and utterly useless as a great Working, but did on occasion fashion them when the price was right—and he charged a great deal indeed for such luxuries.

  The alchemy stalls grew less frequent as Finch approached Ibn Tulun Mosque, for even the least devout amongst the Workers rarely chanced the anger of the imams in such things. In the heat of the afternoon, the approach to the mosque was sparsely populated, and as Finch passed under the minaret into the courtyard proper, there were fewer still inside. He walked slowly to the dome in the center of the courtyard where the ablutions fountain was housed; Finch was careful to show respect to Islam, even though he was not a believer, and after his walk, the cool waters of the fountain felt good upon his face, hands and feet. Thus purified, Finch continued toward the prayer area, where the Muslims would pay homage in the direction of Mecca, as signified by the mihrab—a ceremonial alcove—along the rear wall.

  He could see Berthollet leaning against a pillar, just inside the hall, as he approached. The Frenchman had at least eschewed his frock coat and cravat, but still looked quite uncomfortable, beads of sweat dotting his broad face, patches of wetness apparent under his arms. Yet he smiled as Finch approached and extended his hand.

  “Thank you for coming, Doctor!” Berthollet said. “I am sure you are familiar with this mosque?”

  Finch shook hands and smiled. “I am, sir. ’Tis one of the oldest in all Islam, they say. A thousand years, give or take. Is Deodat coming as well?”

  “Dolomieu has other matters to attend to, and does not know of our visit here. He is young, and does not know when to speak, and when to be silent, though he is a good, smart man despite this,” the Frenchman said, ushering Finch into the prayer area, a columned affair of impressive length, with soaring ceilings and intricate mosaics on the floor. “I have been to many, many mosques since arriving, Doctor, and found this one to be particularly interesting. Have you paid much attention to the architecture here?”

  Berthollet’s professorial demeanor gave Finch pause; there was something in the man’s tone that hinted of a discovery, perhaps. “Not as much as you, I’ll wager,” Finch replied.

  “Perhaps,” Berthollet said, his smile widening. “I do not know if you’re aware, monsieur, but prior to coming here, I had assisted in the cataloging of the Vatican Archives on behalf of General Bonaparte when he liberated the Italian peninsula. There was much knowledge in that storeroom that had been kept out of our hands for centuries, all in the name of religious orthodoxy! Can you imagine?”

  Finch could, of course. The relationship between practitioners of the Great Work and the Roman Catholic Church was far more strained than within most Islamic nations. The Church had even produced mechanical orreries that showed the Sun and the other planets going around the Earth—even though these were utterly useless for navigating the Known Worlds. Thankfully, it seemed the Church was at least coming around to the fact that the Sun was central in the Void, for it had been quite obvious for three centuries of exploration.

  Berthollet led Finch to the very center of the long, rectangular prayer room, facing the mihrab. “This is the very direction of Mecca, to the south-southeast, yes?” Berthollet asked.

  “Quite so, and they did a fine job of it, considering the age of the place,” Finch said.

  “Now look closely at the floor, if you would, doctor,” Berthollet said.

  Finch looked down at his feet. The floor was tiled in an intricate geometric pattern, one that showed advanced knowledge of mathematics. There were numerous green and blue lines on a white background, intersecting regularly. Finch attempted to discern a pattern beyond that of geometry, but to no avail. There was, sad to say, a great deal of damage done to the floor over the centuries, and it was cracked in places. He knew the imams there were considering doing away with it entirely, in favor of a simpler stone floor.

  After a minute, Finch looked up, slightly annoyed. “There is clearly something more here, sir, though I cannot say what.”

  A cat with a fat mouse could not have looked more satisfied than Berthollet at that moment. “Do you have something that might allow you to filter out colors before your eyes?”

  Finch gasped slightly as he grasped it; he had walked across this floor dozens of times over the past decade! Immediately, he began rummaging around in the small bag he carri
ed with him. He pulled out a pair of eyeglasses, one with several different colored lenses on swivels attached to the frame.

  “What have you found?” he muttered, all pretense at formality lost. He settled the glasses onto his nose and began flipping the lenses back and forth, filtering out white, then blue, then green . . .

  Until the faint outline of a red line appeared before his eyes, snaking away to the very western corner of the room.

  “What do we have here?” he said, immediately walking forward to follow the line, cannily embedded in the tiles below. So focused on his trail, Finch nearly careened into not one, but two of the columns in the room before he reached the corner, several dozen yards away. There, he saw a bright red dot, partially obscured by dirt and dust.

  “A map,” he breathed.

  “Yes indeed, Doctor. A map!” Berthollet said. The Frenchman had followed him to the corner of the room, and now stood smiling, hands clasped behind his back. “But to what, do you think?”

  Finch could not help but cast a profoundly irritated glance at the man. “Without a sense of scale, monsieur, it is quite difficult to say, but –”

  Then he saw another red line behind the other alchemist, one that deftly snaked across the multiple entrances to the prayer room. Finch set off again, following this line. It was far more jagged than the last, dipping and swooping in places, but still relatively straight. It stopped perhaps three yards past the mihrab, then curved up and disappeared into the courtyard.

  Finch looked back, then down, then back again. “I know this, somehow.”

  “You should. You’ve been here many years now.”

  Then it struck him. “Egypt!” Finch exclaimed. “This is the coastline!”

  Berthollet actually clapped his hands a few times. “Very good, sir! And so that alcove there, that would be this very spot, Cairo. And thus, that line?”

  Finch pondered a moment. “It goes almost directly east, which would take it into the very depths of the desert.” He put his hands on his hips, deep in thought. “But that leads nowhere.”

  “Surely, in all recorded history, someone from the West has made that journey, would you think?”

  It took a full two minutes of thinking and staring before Finch came upon the answer, and it stunned him to his core. “Surely not,” he said quietly. “Alexander?”

  “I believe it to be so,” Berthollet said. “The scrolls I read in the Vatican Archive were taken from Alexandria’s library itself. I believe this is the route Alexander and Ptolemy took to the temple of Amun-Ra more than two thousand years ago.

  “And,” he added solemnly, “is it too much to assume that, situated so far from the Nile and the wars of the ancient peoples, this temple may be where some of the greatest alchemical treasures of the Ancient World reside, perhaps knowledge from the Xan or the Martians themselves?”

  Finch marveled at this, and a small smile grew upon his face.

  CHAPTER 8

  June 18, 2134

  Shaila fired the Armstrong’s braking rockets a final time, causing a minor tremor to wash over the ship before it settled languorously into orbit around the tiny snowball of Enceladus. With a circumference of less than 1,600 kilometers and an exceptionally minimal gravity, Enceladus wasn’t going to make maintaining orbit easy, but Shaila managed to get the ship into something steady, just 50 kilometers from the surface. Even so, they’d be zipping around the little moon once an hour or so, which would be dizzying if anyone had the time to look out the window.

  The orbit also had to avoid the moon’s southern pole, which erupted frequently—they observed three such eruptions on their day-long approach from Saturn. The amount of water spit out of Enceladus’ “tiger stripes”—fissures on the surface that led directly to the salty ocean underneath—was minimal, but the ship’s electromagnetic shielding was already working overtime as they traveled through the more diffuse E-ring, and they didn’t want to get hit with any more ice particles than absolutely necessary.

  Two hours later, Archie was still reminding her about the dangers the ice posed. “You’ll have to take it slow getting down there,” he said as she prepared Lander One’s checklist. “No more than 100 kph until you’re within 25 clicks of the surface. Otherwise, the ice crystals could cause structural damage.” He sounded grouchy as usual, but he kept running his gnarled hands through his white hair—a sure tell if there ever was one. Shaila liked to think of him as the gruff-but-lovable great-grandfather she never had . . . or really wanted.

  “I know, Archie,” she smiled, but not without a hint of frustration. “Moon’s not going anywhere. We’ll be nice and safe about it.”

  “This is why you’re driving,” Stephane chimed in as he loaded his gear into the lander. He had pre-loaded it for Titan, but with plans having changed, he had to swap it out for his Enceladus gear. Conti and Hall were likewise bustling back and forth as they prepared to become the first humans on a moon of Saturn; if nothing else, the longer distance to Titan meant the JSC crew would at least have that distinction.

  “I’m driving because your simulation work was horrible,” Shaila teased. “You crashed the lander, what was it, six times?”

  “Five,” Stephane grinned as he loaded a container into the lander. “That sixth time, I just broke the landing gear.”

  Shaking her head, Shaila dialed up the manifest on her datapad and triple checked everything as it was loaded up. Conti was in charge of assessing organic molecules near the tiger stripes, while Stephane handled the geographical and tectonic surveys. Hall would check on water quality and the presence of any other potentially useful—and marketable—materials. Shaila had to give Hall credit for that; most corporate reps wouldn’t be caught dead in a spacesuit, but Hall was game for it, and she was one of the few “suits” with the scientific cred to back it up.

  The Armstrong’s two landers were roughly the size of cargo vans, featuring a cramped crew compartment and a spacious cargo area for fuel and equipment. Much of the cargo area in Lander One had been taken up with a giant, empty inflatable tank capable of holding 1,200 liters. Once they ascertained that the water below contained enough deuterium—something of a formality given the plethora of orbiters and landers that had surveyed the moon for more than a century—they would filter out the heavy water and fill the tank for the flight back to the ship. Then they’d spend the next 48 hours ferrying additional deuterium back and forth—and that would be just enough to get them to Titan, where their depot ship awaited them . . . if the Chinese hadn’t messed with it first.

  To be fair, Shaila didn’t think they’d go that far. Beating JSC and ExEn to Titan was one thing—possession was nine-tenths of the law, and Titan’s hydrocarbons were a rich prize indeed—but the laws of sea and space still applied to most astronauts, despite their national and corporate allegiances. Just last month, a Chinese lunar cargo hauler came to the rescue of a commercial passenger ship that had a malfunction and failed to make its lunar transit orbit.

  She didn’t expect that level of consideration from the Tienlong, but she didn’t think they’d go for outright piracy either.

  “Shay? It’s time,” Stephane said.

  She looked up from her work to see Nilssen and the rest of the crew gathered in the zero-g of the passageway, smiles on their faces. Nilssen clutched four drinking straws in his hand.

  “Short straw gets the honors,” the commander said. “Let’s get picking.”

  Shaila looked at the four plastic straws in the skipper’s fist and felt her heart start to race. Amazing to think this is how they’d decide who would be the first person to set foot on Enceladus and, in effect, go down in history as the pioneer of Saturn exploration. It seemed far too surreal.

  Nilssen floated over to Hall, who surprised everyone by crossing her arms and shaking her head. “Corporate sponsors get enough crap from the media,” she said with a smile, one tinged with a bit of regret. “I don’t want to be the poster child for corporate exploitation of the solar system.”
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  The skipper nodded and gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Understood. Tempted to make you first now, but so be it.” Nilssen deftly removed one of the straws and floated over to Conti. “Doctor?”

  Grinning broadly, the Italian surveyed the straws carefully before choosing—a long one, as it turned out. She flicked it across the room in mock disgust, but didn’t seem too put out. That left Shaila and Stephane.

  “You go,” Shaila told him. “I can’t do it.”

  Stephane quickly floated over to the skipper, almost crashing into him, and drew a straw.

  The short one.

  “All right then, Durand’s the first human being on Enceladus,” Nilssen said, extending his hand toward the grinning planetary scientist. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  Stephane shook his hand eagerly. “I guarantee nothing, but I’ll try.”

  Shaila, for her part, was inwardly disappointed, but quite happy for Stephane. He had come a long way from the slacker playboy he had been when they were posted together on Mars. She floated over and gave him a big hug, which he returned in kind. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered in her ear. “We are going to Enceladus together.”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way,” she replied quietly, giving him a final squeeze before disengaging. “All right, people,” she said to the group. “Everyone going to Enceladus, suit up. Everyone else, back to work!”

  Shaila was the first to be suited, having far more experience with EVA gear than the rest, and even took a moment to help Stephane into his suit, tsking at him for taking too long, before entering Lander One through the top hatch. She started the power-up sequence and ran through the inflight checklist carefully. She had been running diagnostics on both landers every few days since they left Earth, and all was as she expected. Unlike the controls of Armstrong itself, there was little in the way of holotech on the landers—most of the controls were touchscreens, except for the old-fashioned stick-and-throttle in the pilot and copilot seats. Hall would be her copilot on this run, with Conti and Stephane right behind them.