Oceanworlds
Page 22
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19 Little Boy carried 140 pounds of the stuff, yet only two pounds of that became the runaway U-235 that killed over 100,000 and turned Hiroshima into a smoldering radioactive ruin.
42 | Communion
Hours later
ON BOARD SHACKLETON
“You are not yourself today. Is everything all right?” Yi asked over the intercom. He floated outside the spaceship, past the flight deck’s Observation Window, by Shackleton’s conic bow. James was two arms away, wrestling to bolt a device the size of a suitcase to the hull while Yi tried to hold it in place. Sound didn’t exist in vacuum, but the incongruency of James’ amplified puffing and the mute running power drill still felt preposterous.
“You want me all smiles. Give me a break, okay?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Jimmy, it’s just that …”
“And stop playing damn Freud. Piss off.”
“Okay.” Yi was hurt. Words in space were more incisive, psychological wounds healed slower, emotions ran shallower. So shallow that I need to stop myself from crying? Come on. Tears in the vacuum of space had nowhere to fall, so they stayed put. Behind a helmet, no rubbing meant blurred vision to the end of the spacewalk at least an hour away.
He distracted himself by playing with the two umbilicals connecting him to the fuselage, but seeing the narrow tip of the spaceship below gave him vertigo. He concentrated instead on the scenery. He saw nothing but night in front. Turning to his right, he spotted something he would have sworn fake if it wasn’t right there: three crescent moons, all three identical in shape but different in size, like scattered Russian dolls on a black cloth. The big one was Titan, which they would fly by the following day. The second should be Rhea but could well be Dione—the third and smallest may be inhabited by several alien species, but at the very least contains two specimens of the Homo sapiens persuasion. Turning his head back offered the immensity of Saturn. What if the giant took our Moon’s place? He got the chills, like a shipwreck survivor, when he envisioned the tides. Wait, I am a shipwreck survivor. The rise and fall of sea levels because of the gravitational force of the exchanged moon would surge almost one hundred-fold. He remembered a sea level rise map showing the consequences of an extreme climate change scenario that melted all ice at the poles and mountaintops. It was about 230 feet, and both Shanghai and Beijing disappeared under the sea. Entire countries—the Netherlands, Bangladesh—disappeared underwater as well. But this would be much, much worse. Taller, plus ebb and flow. A giant tsunami engulfing the coasts every twelve hours. Maritime transport would become impossible, which in turn would destroy the global econo—
“Goddammit. Sophia, over. My visor is showing the installation instructions. In Italian,” said James.
“On it.”
“I’ll keep you entertained while you leisurely peruse through the files. ‘Far slittare il radar sull’apposita guida finché non si blocca in posizione. Connettere il cavo di rete e, successivamente, quello elettrico. Il dispositivo è pronto per essere acceso. Quando inizia a trasmettere, evitare di guardare direttamente l’antenna a distanza ravvicinata: gli occhi sono la parte del corpo più sensibile alle onde elettromagnetiche.’ Sounds as scientific as a Puccini libretto.”
Titan would be the mission’s steering wheel and gas station, achieved by making Shackleton fly by at skimming distance of its atmosphere. This was an irresistible opportunity to obtain high-resolution mapping of the vast methane seas in the north polar region. Shackleton had ferried a Synthetic-Aperture Radar that would capture 3D images in unprecedented detail. Protruding from the hull made it infeasible during launch, plus being a short-lived protagonist justified it being stored as cargo until today.
“Unfortunately, it turns out we don’t have them in English. I sent the request to Mission Control,” said Sophia.
“What do I do meanwhile? Work on my nails? Nobody bothered to check this in three years!?”
“That includes Your Royal Highness. You’ve been cranky the whole day. No need to infect everyone with your stinky mood.”
The radio crackled. Enceladus was calling.
“Shackleton, over!” Sophia counted one, two, three, four, five, six—
“You’ll never know how much I missed this voice. If you ever thought Shack was claustrophobic and constrained, well, you know nothing Sophia Jong. Over.”
The audio was crisp and immediate, never mind the fact the two ships were twice as far from each other than any of the Apollos ever were from Earth. Every soundbite flew at light-speed for almost three seconds before reaching the receiver.
In the fifty-seven hours since parting ways they had established communication on nine occasions. This was about to change dramatically. Radio waves have proven their worth in transmitting data to and from astronomical distances. Voyager 1 and 2’s unassuming twelve-foot-wide dish antennas communicated with Earth from interstellar space until the 2020s, half a century after launch, at a distance fifteen times further than that of Saturn—and their last goodbye wasn’t for lack of broadcasting range but electrical power to sing back to us.
But like all superheroes, thought Sophia, radio waves have a glaring weakness and a formidable arch-enemy. Matter. They conquer unfathomable distances throughout the void of space, yet a few millimeters of metal are an impassable barrier. Or enough inches of rock and ice, as in this case. The atmospheric bouncing on Earth makes us forget that electromagnetic waves propagate in straight lines. But in space, block the line of sight with matter and it’s game over. Once Caird landed, the transmission window would shrink dramatically.
“The decision … Sergei … and I—it’s been decided to land inside Baghdad. Over.”
Sophia was elated and yet torn.
As an astrobiologist, landing inside one of the four canyons had been a wishful aspiration. But they mapped the Tiger Stripes and seem to have found a safe way down! Having the ability to sample directly from the geysers gushing out possibly not-yet-frozen seawater was tantalizing and made the search for signs of life much more thorough.
As a shipmate, she pitied Derya. The solitude will be brutal. Maybe the worst isolation ever experienced by a human being—no, make it a terrestrial being. She wondered how bad the communication breaks would be.
“In case you were wondering, yes, it will be dreadful,” Derya said. “The transmission window with Shack will be under 1 percent of the time. With Earth, it will depend on how narrow the basin is and how steep the canyon walls are where we land. Probably one third … I know, I know. Wanna reach me, call my landline. They’ll in turn reach me wireless. So, the Shack–Caird communication window will look somewhat like this: six seconds roundtrip during 1 percent of the time. Two-and-a-half-hour roundtrip via Earth for a third of the time. Incommunicado, two thirds of the day. Over.”
The rest of the talk was mostly one-sided. She tried interrupting a few times, but without fail it would develop into exasperating over-talking by Derya, who would not let her get a word in. In summary, inference by indirect means pointed to a global ocean covered by an ice shell fourteen miles thick, thinning to three under the Tiger Stripes. No surprises there. The ocean depth, however, was fantastical. Average ocean depth on Earth was 2.3 miles. Average depth in Enceladus? Roughly nineteen miles. And beneath the south pole? Over thirty. Earth’s Mariana Trench, at just under seven miles deep, now sounds lame.
TiTus’ androgynous voice interrupted to warn that the connection would drop shortly.
James and Yi had been offline, removing their spacesuits in the cargo area.
Last chance to say goodbye before Sergei and Derya are GO for landing and remain out of reach for days. Sophia glided toward the cargo area in a hurry. “If you want to tell me any secrets, now’s a fitting time—” was the last she heard from Derya. When she reached the spacewalkers, the connection had dropped. Bad form at best, bad omen at worst.
It was a quiet, downcast lunch at Bacchus when Sophia said, “You’ve been very out of character today. I did
n’t even know a ‘James the asshole’ existed.”
Yi stared down at his reconstituted mushroom and pesto risotto. He was still uneasy with the disregard for rank and the straight, almost confrontational American style.
“It’s been a bad day.” James sounded low-spirited. A mission first, thought Yi.
“For all three, but it needn’t have been that way. You’re not just one of us, as if that needed saying. You’re our commander, we look up to you … you’ve let us down—” Yi tried to interrupt Sophia, but she countered, “I’m not talking to you, Profe. Don’t wanna listen? Then move out.”
Which Yi did, promptly floating toward the hatch.
“It’s one of my black dog days. But you’re right, as usual,” said James. “Yi! Man, brother, please come back. I owe you an apology.”
It ended up being one of those long, late conversations. Usually lubricated with red wine—unless you’re marooned, incarcerated, a teetotaler, or one of us, thought Yi.
“… yet you’ve been preparing for all this during the past ten years. And we’re finally here. This is it, right here, right now,” said Sophia.
“And that’s the problem, I think,” said James. “We’ve given so much while the rest bask in enjoyment, lapping up the entertainment we and they have turned us into. To many this may be the best show ever: it’s fun, it’s enlightening, it thrills, it moves … but the sacrifice. Emma will be 6 when we get back, to be embraced by a stranger claiming to be her dad … and look at us here: we’re stuck in a spaceship, but no less spectators to what will happen in Enceladus than someone sitting in a bar in Madrid. In a strange way, and it may be ennui so bear with me, this is less epic than I once imagined.”
“No need for a pep talk, Jimmy. I’m not going anywhere. Go Shack!” said Sophia.
“This mission changed, maybe saved, my life,” said Yi. “Don’t underestimate its power. It’s the five of us, but it’s also so much more than that. It belongs to everyone watching us. In the cynical society of today we—that’s you, Sophia, Sergei, Derya, maybe me—represent idealism. Unity. Inspiration. Second chances. We defied and conquered the impossible. Just imagine how many kids are becoming scientists and engineers because of you, Jimmy Egger. And all here, all of this, it’s your brainchild.”
“Brain tumor, Yi. A doomsday vision that cannot be described. Something so terribly tangible and intense that it never felt like a dream. It was its own separate reality.” James hesitated. “And after torturing me for so long, it’s gone, erased from my unconsciousness. But I’m not at peace. Because I can’t see the logic. There was no emotional release. No closure. It’s just … gone. It fled without ever saying goodbye or explaining why—it didn’t bother me before because I was single-minded about getting here. The Orbit Insertion long ago became the be-all and end-all. And it’s over. It’s as if the taut shock cord that pulled me here finally snapped and sprung back to Emma and B. The mission climax may be starting, but I just want us to turn around and go back as soon as we possibly can.”
“By the way, how’s Emma?” asked Yi, trying to gently bend the conversation.
James’ eyes lit up as he grabbed his tablet. “Look at this picture. Anything seem different?”
Yi was clueless. Sophia looked over and said, “She’s starting to look a lot like Belinda?” James’ face betrayed nothing. “She’s dressed very English proper? … her hair is getting darker? …”
“I couldn’t stop thinking her body was incomplete because of her deafness, that we shortchanged her, that she would always miss out on fully experiencing the world around her. Until this photo.” He could hardly manage the excitement. “B had called her a few times and she didn’t react … want to know why? Because she opted for silence! She just turned off the sound processor of her ear implant! She wanted some quiet time before being drowned in noise again! Then it hit me. We go through life gauging things with our measuring tape, assuming our perception of reality is the only truthful, possible actuality. But that’s blinding smugness. It’s looking down at a peasant in a Nepalese village, pitying her small world, her ignorance of the thrills of New York … my 3-year-old daughter, who I haven’t even met, taught me she doesn’t lack one sense, she has four very enhanced ones.”
43 | Prepare for Landing
Hours later
ON BOARD JAMES CAIRD
The silence was deafening and the moment strangely anticlimactic. Like crippling Saving Private Ryan’s D-Day landing slaughter by playing it on mute, thought Derya. He was unemployed, killing time by looking around or counting up in powers of two, as Sergei maneuvered the tiny Caird down the last mile. Boredom was much stronger than anxiety. If anyone can land this canister, it’s the brute to my right.
Enceladus’ puny force of gravity meant the capsule needed to orbit at 350 miles per hour so as not to fall into the moon, barely 60 percent of the cruising speed of a commercial airplane and a measly 2 percent of the speed needed to orbit around the Earth. Caird was now free-falling at a feathery nine miles per hour, and without atmosphere to buffer against, it would decelerate right before touchdown with a short burn. Little more than an engine fart will do.
Derya looked around the cockpit meets kitchen meets latrine meets bunk bed. Very practical, but multi-functionality isn’t free. The French know it well. Mix the right kind of smells and you get Chanel No.5. Mix the wrong ones and you get this sleek cabin, combining disinfectant, garbage, body odor, farts of various provenances, and that most ignoble of gases, the unmistakable reek of human scheisse or doo-doo.
No magic fairy dust around here. Sergei released a load of Number 2 six hours before and it still lingered as new. Sensorial abuse and all, not much that can be done. The life support system doesn’t care about feelings, only about constantly sucking the CO2 that lungs expel out of the cabin, thus keeping air at 100 percent oxygen plus the aforementioned trace scents. But my elementary schoolteacher told us air is only a fifth oxygen, you say? Others may remember 1967’s Apollo 1 fire tragedy on the launchpad, which cost the lives of three astronauts because of a pressurized pure oxygen environment, flammable materials, and one spark. All true, but risk mitigation in space is about imperfectly minimizing hazards, frequently lowering safety in one area to increase it in another.
Caird’s challenge was boringly predictable: extreme weight restriction. A 100 percent oxygen environment achieves the same breathability as regular air with only a third of the cabin pressure. Over the coming days, each time we exit or enter the capsule, the air mass is vented and lost to the vacuum of space—tomorrow’s hatch opening will sanitize, although not eradicate, this foul pestilence, restarting nature’s cycle—fire risk is alleviated by low air pressure and having little combustible material, that means leaving behind nude calendars and other memorabilia hanging from the walls. If that makes Caird’s inside look like a Jesuit cell, welcome to the faith.
It pays to be unoriginal in space. James Caird was an unmodified SpaceX Dragon, the same reliable spacecraft that had regularly ferried people and cargo to and from Low Earth Orbit since 2019.20 390 cubic feet of internal volume—that’s a small bathroom, Tokyo small, five comparatively lush windows, a spartan interior exposing structural beams and piping, two Bauhaus-looking ergonomic seats with harnesses, a long rectangular touchscreen hanging from the roof divided into four panels full of data meters and graphs and flashing readouts. That’s all Folks! This house is now our life, both literally and figuratively.
Attached right under the Dragon was a custom-built trunk, essentially an engine and propellant tank to increase the spacecraft’s range many times over, allowing a descent to and launch from Enceladus plus a contingency buffer for the unexpected.
When they were 2,100 feet above the target landing site, Sergei rotated the vehicle ninety degrees. The frustum was now sideways, allowing visibility from three windows. Hopefully to the terra firma below.
“Inspect landing conditions. This is your one task until I say so,” said Sergei.
“On it.”
Derya squinted past the windows, trying to decipher the terrain below. But Baghdad was a canyon and the flanking walls were seemingly vertical in places. With the Sun no longer directly above, the left wall shadowed the entire gorge. The rays reflecting on the opposite wall illuminated the dark, but not enough to make the bottom features discernable. At least not yet.
He checked himself. Thinking about this descent back in Shack invariably sent my balls running for groin cover. Yet here he was, adrenalized but still cool. It reminded him of Jimmy talking about the difference between looking down at the precipice while climbing and then after when at the top. One elicited almost no reaction, the other churned the stomach. It’s the frame of reference. In the vertical, the brain has accepted and adapted to a risky situation. In the horizontal, the brain instinctually reacts violently against voluntarily putting oneself at risk.
“Check the horizon!” said Derya. The apparent straight line of Earth here became an aggressive curve. A person would disappear from sight after walking half a mile in any direction. And yet Yi, that lovely nerd, said the other day that it would take 300 Shanghais, the world’s largest city, to cover the entire surface of Enceladus. It’s tiny for planets, it’s huge for humans. Frame of reference again.
“Looks like Le Petit Prince’s Asteroid 325.” Derya was effectively speaking to himself.
Cassini’s photograph was prophetic. A 2005 image of Enceladus’ south pole taken by Cassini on its closest flyby, at twelve feet per pixel, showed what at a distance appeared to be flat, smooth areas turning into irregular terrain littered with ice boulders tens to hundreds of feet tall. Before his eyes, what seemed featureless from afar had become littered with blocks of ice of all sizes, some as high as buildings, farrowed by the tectonic wrestling of an icy outer shell fully decoupled from the moon’s core, floating over the mysterious global ocean. Caution is in order.