Oceanworlds

  At the planning stage, the Navigation Team and mission managers used celestial mathematics to map out orbital trajectories bordering on art. Six weeks and tens of millions of miles on the spaceship’s odometer on a series of tangled loops maximizing the mission’s science and exploration return, requiring a grand total of one single engine burn and a dozen attitude thruster burns to nudge the ship. They were puppeteers shrewdly using the gravity of Saturn and its biggest moon, Titan.

  Shackleton’s stay in the Saturn system would last a few weeks after Caird settled back inside its belly with a priceless payload: Sergei, Derya, and the ocean samples from Enceladus. The Enceladus part of the mission would be either twelve or seventeen days long, depending on how much time it took to land Caird and then for Waltzy Mole to cut through the ice shell and pierce into the ocean. This dual rendezvous timeline was dictated by Newton and was absolutely inflexible. Shackleton was about to intercept Enceladus, flying by 400 miles over its surface, and since the moon and spaceship orbited Saturn at different speeds, they wouldn’t cross paths for two more years. However, that’s where Titan’s gravity would act as a virtual gas station, bending and tweaking Shackleton’s trajectory so they run into Enceladus on day twelve and day seventeen. And if Caird doesn’t encounter Shackleton by the first or second date? Better not to think about that. After Enceladus, Shackleton would navigate around the Saturn neighborhood, flying by a handful of other moons and grazing the rings a dozen times. Not a bad scientific harvest at all, thought James, pleased at the proposition.

  After checking screens and confirming everything to be in order, the view inevitably drew James to the flight deck’s Observation Window. The sight was surreal and alien. Having cleared the rings, the only thing in the blackness of space was a white marble seemingly hanging from a hidden thread. There were no dimensional cues regarding scale. Enceladus could have been the size of a coin. Only the tortured face of the whitest object in the Solar System, criss-crossed by terrible scars etched onto its surface by wrenching gravitational forces and geological activity, betrayed its cosmic timescales.

  James had violated the protocol and was back in the cargo area. Only for a few minutes. Come on, rules are sometimes meant to be broken—this is history in the making, James tried to convince his conscience. Nobody else seemed to mind or notice. The robotic arm was inserting the ten-foot-long, torpedo-shaped Waltzy Mole inside Caird. Weightlessness allows astronauts to perform Herculean feats with the touch of a finger, but the nuclear payload was deemed too delicate and hazardous for them to manually load inside. For now. Because severe weight restrictions mean that’s exactly what Sergei and Derya will do in reverse after landing, with the additional complication of Enceladus’ gravity. Although a timid 1 percent of Earth’s, the punishing 1,700 pounds of Waltzy Mole back home become little more than a ridiculously large inflatable pencil on Enceladus.

  At this point, a movie would go into a poignant orchestral crescendo that stirs the audience and gives them goosebumps, thought Sophia. But there was no music, only the unromantic humming and clacking of Shackleton. There are plenty of goosebumps though. Whichever way you spin it, the coming days were the climax of eight years of preparation and the most dangerous part of the entire mission by a wide margin.

  It was time. The goodbye was hurried, anxious, all too sudden.

  Sergei opened Caird’s hatch and unceremoniously got in. Derya said it well, this dude doesn’t spacewalk, he space waltzes. He moved his suited, weightless body with the ease of a memorized routine, contorted and arched through the narrow opening like a high jumper, and waited to help a clumsier Derya from the inside. A couple of minutes later the hatch closed.

  “Don’t screw up being me,” said Sophia over her hands-free headset. This is bullshit flashed through her mind for an instant. She was the astrobiologist, not them. It stood to reason she should have been inside that capsule. Problem is, I’m also the Mission Physician. The rules had been known since she joined six years earlier but it still tasted bitter. She had taken solace in the fact that the real sample analysis would happen back in Shackleton, done by her. Derya and Sergei were doing the all-important blue-collar job of digging and sampling. I get to wear the white coat, yay. Sucks to be me—but think of it this way: how scared stiff and distraught would I be alone with a bear, in a space no bigger than a tent, for what will be, best-case scenario, a week and a half? One more thing for Derya to fret about. And there’s yet another threat for Mr. Radiation Hypochondriac Extraordinaire: the Mole itself.

  Sophia and Yi donned their helmets, then checked and okayed each other’s life support system. Sophia walked to the wall and set the go-ahead command. For the next twelve minutes, the cargo area transitioned from an oxygen-rich environment to vacuum. With the inside and outside equalized, the cargo door opened to space.

  The robotic arm locked with Caird and in precise slow motion moved it outside and projected it away from the spaceship.

  Almost physically forced by Yi, Sophia pulled her head past the hull into the nothingness beyond like a parachutist about to jump into a battlefield. She felt a rush of adrenaline and an unexpected elation at not being inside Caird. Staring forward, the fast-approaching Enceladus was no longer a toy.

  “All Caird systems nominal. Ready to disengage.” If Sergei’s surgical voice was at odds with the significance of the moment, it more than compensated with its reassuring tone.

  The separation was slow. Only half an hour after, when Caird became small and distant, its engines fired, directing it to the icy moon.

  Once back on the flight deck, Sophia, Yi, and James remained fixed at the Observation Window long after Caird turned into a dot and then dissolved against the backdrop of the mysterious waterworld, mesmerized by the promise of discovery.

  “The most significant attempt yet to answer what may be the most important question ever poised, posed? Posted?” Yi scrambled for the right word. “Anyway, ‘Is there intelligent life out there?’”

  “After reading the news this morning I wonder whether we should first answer Arthur C. Clarke’s favorite question, ‘Is there intelligent life on Earth?’ A classic if ever there was one,” said Sophia.

  41 | Oceanworld

  Two days later, September 6 2030. Main Mission day 3

  ON BOARD JAMES CAIRD

  “Look at its profile. First time George Lucas got any physics right,” said Derya.

  “Who’s Joerg Lucas?” asked Sergei.

  “Are you—? Mate, your cultural reference blind spots are the size of the Motherland. Did you even hear of TVs in that Arctic Circle hometown of yours? Was school past the abacus? Did you drive around in a sled drawn by reindeer?”

  As usual, Sergei did not answer. Derya began taking pictures of Mimas transitioning in front of the immense orb of Saturn through one of Caird’s five windows. Enceladus’ darker sibling was scarred by craters, including one a third of its size. It really looks like the Death Star with a severe case of smallpox, thought Derya. From here, Mimas appeared about the size of the Moon as seen from Earth. Saturn, five times further, dominated the firmament at fifty times that size.

  Tediousness and confinement had made for two endless days. The longest ones in my admittedly youthful life. Over that time the spaceship had completed seventeen information-gathering, height-decreasing orbits around Enceladus. Right now, they flew nearly twenty miles above the north pole, a cratered surface that hadn’t rejuvenated in eons and was thus of no interest. The goodies are at the other extreme, where a young, essentially impact-free, geologically active surface full of troughs, scarps, and belts of grooves and ridges expressed dramatically in four canyons, each one hundred miles long, the Tiger Stripes: Alexandria, Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus. It was here where hundreds of geysers spewed water vapor out into space from that mysterious warm water ocean sloshing for billions of years somewhere beneath the ice. And where the key to humanity’s biggest riddles may lie within.

  Derya stared at the spectacle before
them. Caird was crossing the plume nine miles above the surface. It is snowing on Enceladus. For the first time in three years, the engulfing darkness of space gave way to the glittering of a trillion tiny suns reflecting and refracting from snowy ice crystals. The particle density soon increased to the point where it resembled a blizzard in low light conditions. This is why it’s the whitest, most reflective object in the Solar System. The geysers shoot water ice out into space, most of which settles back down, spray-painting the moon’s surface in freshly fallen, pristine snow.

  “We may be hitting microscopic aliens as I speak. I say we sample right now.” No answer from Sergei. “These monologues are really getting old, you know,” Derya said, more to himself than anyone. He peeked at Sergei, who was trying to narrow down the landing area by reviewing the high-resolution topography they had been collecting and enhancing on each new pass over the south pole. Abacus man again. “There must be a better way than a human scouting visually. Ever heard of computers, Sergei?”

  Minutes later, three rapid beeps broke Derya’s lethargy and he threw out a triumphant guffaw. Caird’s ice-penetrating radar antenna, sending radio waves down into the ice sheet and gathering back the echoes, had just encountered water. That’s how you do things, with science! Same principle why an ice cube doesn’t melt inside a microwave oven: microwaves and radio waves pass straight through ice without interacting. He impatiently adjusted a digital knob on his tablet, modifying the radio wave’s frequency bouncing off the radar. The vertical ice sheet profile in his screen changed almost in real time. Derya confirmed and reconfirmed he was looking at the subsurface ocean circling the moon and not a large water pocket, part of the web of communicating vessels to the surface. We crossed half the Solar System to sip from the real thing.

  “We found the ice/water boundary,” Derya said. Now I have your attention? I’ll delay the gratification and make you salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs, bitch. The interior ocean’s depth beneath the ice shelf was the critical parameter for the Mole’s digging time span and thus the duration of their stay on Enceladus.

  After a few seconds, Sergei succumbed. “Can you …”

  Derya obliged with six Mississippis. “The thinnest ice section is roughly the same at the bottom of Baghdad and Alexandria canyons, at 3.3 to 3.5 miles.”

  Sergei seemed uneasy, “Hardly the onion skin we were counting on. Egg shell at best—that’s above the upper boundary …” The gravity measurements performed by the Cassini probe leading to its 2017 burn up in Saturn’s upper atmosphere indicated that Enceladus’ global ocean lie beneath 12.4 to 15.5 miles of ice on average, thinning to 0.6 to 3.1 miles at the south pole.

  “It’s no longer speculation but fact,” said Derya. “I think that’s worth the extra distance.”

  “I triggered the automatic descent.” Sergei’s low-pitched voice woke Derya from an edgy nap. He felt his heart thumping in his eardrums. Even with a drifting mind the body didn’t forget what was coming. “Time to make the landing call,” Sergei continued. “Seven hours from now I’ll take over for the last few miles of descent. Were you visualizing where to touch down just now?”

  Are you being funny? Sergei! “You know what they say,” replied Derya, “failing to plan is planning to fail.” Sergei stared back at him, unimpressed. “I didn’t think you were serious an hour ago … I mean, what do I know? But thanks for asking …”

  “You Westerners preach collaboration. I’m playing ball, as you say. Besides, I crash and you die.”

  “And you die as well,” Derya replied, almost as a question.

  “Correct. We both die.”

  “You’re the boss, boss. I worry this extra-large dildo is killing us softly. Even you’re starting to look a shade too green. So, whatever you decide, just remember that fast is good and faster is better.”

  The lean, ten-foot-tall Mole rested diagonally from floor to roof between the two seats. For the benefit of the ones handling it back on Earth and to the vexation of Derya, it was illustrated with reminders of its contents: skulls, crossbones, and ionizing radiation symbols. It was loaded with uranium-235. The fuel of choice for power plants, submarines, and bombs of the nuclear flavor.19 Sweet dreams tonight.

  “Alexandria is too high-risk, which leaves Baghdad. This area at the bottom of the canyon is flat enough for a landing,” Sergei pointed his finger at a photograph in the Dragon’s big touchscreen hanging from the roof, “and is ideal from an exploratory point of view. Down there we’re not only the closest to the ocean beneath us but we may even be able to sample the geysers.”

  “Brilliant! See? There was never any need for my input. This is good. While we wait for the burrowing Mole, we sample the geysers directly from the tap. Two independent water tests. Perfect. We could be analyzing for signs of life tomorrow instead of waiting a week! Mate, this is real good. I’m informing Mission Control.”

  “That’s not all. See the swarm of gray tongue-like shades in and around the landing area?” said Sergei.

  “Yes.”

  “Anything strike you as odd?”

  “Hmm, not really,” said Derya, squinting at the photograph. There were countless scattered silhouettes. They reminded him of tombstones in a cemetery. After a while, it dawned on him. Are—are those alien structures!? “They all point in the same direction!”

  “Correct. This was five orbits ago when the Sun was hitting the canyon at an angle. Shadows. Boulder shadows. School trigonometry and you end up with ice blocks five to ten stories tall.”

  “You mean … a minefield? Bloody hell, Sergei, shouldn’t you have started with that disclaimer?”

  “I hadn’t finished. Everywhere inside the canyon will be littered with frozen rocks. There are no easy spots. Risk mitigation is about picking the lowest density area, which I just did.” Sergei stopped Derya from interjecting. “That’s not all. If we encounter slushy, pulpy terrain—which we won’t know until touchdown—it may be too late.”

  Too late for—supper? but Derya knew the answer. “Then the decision seems crystal clear, Sergei. We must land on the plains above the Baghdad gorge.”

  “Had your measurements shown a shallower ice crust, yes. But they didn’t, so no. We don’t have the luxury of an extra half a mile of digging. We land inside Baghdad.”

  “You asked for my opinion!” cried Derya.

  “Out of politeness, and you waived your right. Twice.”

  “And if we find nothing? I want to make sure you’re prepared for that outcome,” said Sergei.

  He’s definitely seeking reconciliation. You don’t deserve a thing—But I need to speak with someone, even if it’s you. “I don’t believe in gods but I believe in justice and fairness. It would have been too much toil, sacrifice, and risk for nothing. It simply wouldn’t make sense.”

  “That’s putting a lot of hope on us. Being able to discriminate life from everything else. Or hoping that a miserly straw tapping into an ocean bigger than the Pacific will be representative of what’s down there …”

  “Come on. Cut yourself some slack. Don’t be so damn austere all the time. Allow yourself to dream, to hope a little. Barring a catastrophe, this metal rod will pierce into an alien ocean within days … we may be about to change the course of history, a before and after. In millennia, when a kid opens a book or a hologram or whatever it is, he’ll see Sergei Dmitrievich Lazarev and Derya Terzi along with the likes of Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and Marco Polo … the Motherland will no longer be remembered for Ivan the Terrible, or Stalin, or Putin.”

  A hint of a dimple may have flashed in Sergei’s right cheek. I’ll take it. When a paraplegic moves an inch, it’s unequivocal progress.

  “On the ice thickness … it all but guarantees missing the first rendezvous. And burrowing down could conceivably take double what we have been estimating, which cuts it tight for the next and final rendezvous,” said Sergei.

  “That’s a problem for tomorrow. Our job right now is to think, what would Sophia d
o?”

  “Our role is making it back to Shackleton with the collected samples. Skipping the first window leaves us no margin of error. We miss the boat five days later …” Sergei’s eyes fixed on somewhere far, far away.

  “It’s likely … we die.” Sergei remained mute, seemingly avoiding Derya’s eyes, which got him restless. “What am I missing?”

  “The cargo will be invaluable with or without alien life. It’s our responsibility to do anything in our capacity to deliver the payload to the mother ship at any cost. Shack could spend the saved propellant from the Orbit Insertion to put itself in an intersection course with Enceladus about ten days later. No food for a week is fine … the real survival problem is the water and oxygen balance. I redid the calculations. It may be possible to stretch them for a person being absolutely inactive … the samples are worth more than anyone’s life …”

  “That doesn’t—” The realization left Derya speechless. Seconds ticked by, and with a dry mouth he continued, “You can’t really be thinking …”

  “The mission is more important than you, or me. For now, it’s a low probability event. But if and when the time comes, a decision will be made. One of us gets to survive and make a stab at reuniting with Shackleton.”

  Derya glanced at the impassive eyes, unable to move. The total absence of human decency petrified him. Unless this monster is in suicide mode, it’s pretty clear who would be saying goodbye to dear life.

  “Would you eat me?” said Derya.

  “You are not religious.”

  Almost whispering, “I’m inside a fucking cage with Hannibal Lecter … would you eat me?”

  “I’m undecided.”