by J. P. Landau
“AND?” urged Nitha.
“The rings, there is, I mean, they are an almost infinite source of frozen water—”
Another engineer interrupted, “You must be shitting me, Andie. You mean they go there and start collecting chunks of ice like watermelon harvesting season?” He shut up as Nitha’s glare fell upon him.
“I’m going to summarize—and correct me if I’m wrong,” said Nitha. “Andie, are you saying there’s enough fuel in Caird to get to the rings?”
“Yes.” It was patent by the noise that not everyone bought it. Nitha looked at Kostya for Caesar’s thumb up or thumb down. He had been taken by surprise, but after consulting with someone to his side he nodded.
“And that once there,” Nitha continued, “they grab some ice from the rings, melt it, and electrolyze the water to break it into oxygen and hydrogen?”
“Yes,” Andie replied.
“Then we have an Apollo 13 situation here,” said Nitha. “People, we need to figure out how to assemble an electrolyzer from the materials on board Caird.”
Having found a potential path forward, a few young engineers seemed to have flipped into brash self-assurance. “Bah, that’s elementary school physics,” said one.
“Most engineering today only goes up to 19th-century physics—elementary school physics, as you call it—yet that hardly makes it a slam dunk. I can think of two major challenges right off the top of my head,” said Nitha. “First, making a safe electrolyzer: in that same elementary school experiment you mentioned, I learned that oxygen plus hydrogen plus spark equals explosion. No bueno. Second, in weightlessness the bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen don’t naturally escape from the liquid, which could render the process unviable unless we come up with some sort of centrifugal system to simulate gravity.”
There was electricity in the air and some people were boiling over with excitement. Luca and his Caird team asked for permission to leave and go work inside the Caird replica, visible a few hundred feet away from Mission Control’s fishbowl.
“Back to Andie,” said Nitha. “Assuming we can solve the water and oxygen problem, are you implying there will be a way for Shackleton to rendezvous with Caird on its way out of the Saturn system?”
Kostya took over. “Here’s where it may get complicated.”
“I think we can manage complexity,” said Nitha.
“Even assuming Sophia and Yi recover Shack’s methane deficit, we won’t really know if it’s possible to rescue Caird until Shack exits Titan and we redo the fuel budget for the remainder of the mission. My hunch is that it should be feasible … making a few concessions.”
“Define ‘concessions.’”
“Say Shack is able to rescue Caird, then we’re only guaranteeing they are able to reach Earth. How they manage, if it can be done at all, to enter and land here is another story entirely.”
“Got it, Kostya, but that’s tomorrow’s problem—Andie, this is brilliant. Anybody have a competing idea?”
None was put forward.
“This is a really big decision. Anybody object to studying the viability of Andie’s plan?”
Andie herself raised her hand. Everyone looked confused.
“There’s no time … this necessarily requires canceling Caird’s second engine burn. Otherwise this possibility dies.”
“When … is that?” asked an alarmed Nitha.
“Very soon. We have fifteen, thirty minutes tops to call off the engine burn.”
Nitha’s heart sank. What if there’s another, better, solution? she thought. This was a life or death quagmire, and the decision needed to be taken immediately, with seriously incomplete information. It was little more than intuition supported by back-of-the-envelope scribbling.
“I need a conscientious vote from all of you. If there is one vote against, we cannot proceed.”
63 | Watering Hole
A day later, September 16 2030. Day 13
HEADING INTO THE RINGS OF SATURN
Enceladus shrank faster than Derya anticipated. Most details were now hidden behind the moon’s pristine white shine. But we, the citizens of Enceladus, know better, he thought. Goodnight Moon, good morning rings of Saturn. The last few hours had been an emotional roller coaster, one that only seems to go downhill—well, that’s not entirely true. There was a little upward slope when minutes after learning they wouldn’t reunite with Shackleton, Derya said, “I guess this is where I start saying goodbye …”
“How so?” asked Sergei.
“One of us gets to survive,” he answered.
“We’re in this together. It’s both or none.” Wow. Relieving? Yes. Unexpected? You bet. Comrade Lazarev keeps pulling mystery cards out of thin air. Yet Derya was sullen. While it’s not at all clear missing the rendezvous had much to do with Sergei, it sure as hell didn’t help—but I guess you don’t taunt Mike Tyson in the ring if you’ll be stuck with him in the locker room later. So, his negativity radiated to the Universe without a clear addressee.
The oppressively restricted communication window between Caird and Earth/Shackleton had burst open. The solitude changed but didn’t necessarily diminish, because Derya was realizing the protective shield of the transient nature of their stay had also been blown to pieces. Our new post may be forever. And like the pact between Faust and Mephistopheles, this contract is rather vague on details. One thing was certain: unless they suffered an accident, in a few hours Caird would become an oddly shaped but otherwise indistinguishable addition to the nameless trillions forming the legendary rings.
Derya ran mentally through their plight, stopping at starvation. Humans can survive a couple of minutes without air and a few days without water. They would tap into an endless source of water ice, consequently melting and electrolysis would check those two items off. But nourishment was a more complicated case. A healthy human can live forty-five to sixty-five days with no food, but as with all Freemium services, there’s always a catch: only the first month is complimentary. ‘Cause once the body finishes feasting on itself, having devoured all fat and then muscles, it’s bad guys’ prime time. Unbearably itchy skin rashes. Fire-eating whenever there’s the unavoidable swallowing. Unceasing diarrhea. Extreme irritability, which in his case seemed to have commenced early.
“This is rubbish. All a dungheap of lies,” shouted Derya. “Did you see the weather forecast the Grasshopper has been piecing together since it landed? Titan’s northern hemisphere is heading into a months-long storm—why are you smiling? That’s where Shackleton’s heading right now! Know what that means? I can think of at least four ways in which we are screwed. Shackleton descending the disturbed, turbulent atmosphere with toddlers at the wheel! A magic wand makes us survive that one; then on landing the wind topples the spaceship over! We magically survive that one too; then with a seventh of Earth’s gravity imagine the size of the wind-induced waves … and we are splashing down on the shores of a methane ocean!”
“Refueling Shackleton requires loading hundreds of tons of methane. If they are not directly on top, it’s like filling a swimming pool with a syringe,” said Sergei.
“Precisely.”
“So, what’s your alternative?”
“There is no alternative. That’s my whole point. We are bloody ruined. Look at us, mate. Days—no—hours ago we were seated on top of an ocean. We could have opened an oxygen refueling station had we wanted to. Now we’re spending all our fuel to get to a cemetery of ice blocks.”
“Cemetery?”
“You’re so ingenuous. Almost childlike,” said Derya. “We are gazelles going into a watering hole at the end of a dry summer. Crocodiles, lions, death in one hundred different shapes, silently awaiting. We hit one of the infinite chunks of ice rubble in the rings, we die. A single spark during electrolysis, we die. We will receive Hulk-inducing levels of radiation, courtesy of Saturn’s magnetic field … and throw in for free mentally enduring two more weeks inside this cage. With you.”
“You’re starting to sound
suicidal.”
“Funny you should say that.”
“I’m recovering.”
“How so?”
“Take and rub some of my optimism on your face. You might even smile. We will touch the rings of Saturn. Isn’t that worth dying for?”
64 | The Black Hole
Hours later
HEADING INTO TITAN
Sophia was trapped inside her stormy mind, her consciousness folded inward.
She glided from the flight deck to Bacchus seeking a distraction—any distraction. The room was dressed as Cracow’s rynek, its lively 13th-century main square on a summery evening. Maybe this will work, she thought, trying to be optimistic. But the illusion broke when she noticed a series of burnt out pixels in the sky above one of Saint Mary’s gothic towers. She spotted more areas. They look like termites eating up the last remains of normalcy. It made her feel ever more distant from everything she held dear.
Escaping to her room, she stopped by the Observation Window searching for home in panic. Thank God. She found the blue speck in the distance and with it, some refuge. Please, Mother Earth, help me. Embrace me. Comfort me. Looking fixedly, she grew uneasy. Something’s not right. Where’s its companion? It was the second time she had this impression in less than a day, and the first time had turned their lives upside down. And where’s the Sun? The realization that she was looking at Neptune, at the opposite direction to Earth, and at the infinity beyond the Solar System threw her back into a nightmarish landscape of desperation. The pulses and reverberations of despair were like the sound of night creatures, always there if you paid enough attention. The memory of Jimmy was a barbed nail, gashing her temples.
There’s a hole right under my toes, inviting surrender. Her body was exhausted and her mind felt like it had been hit by a speeding train. Yi’s tranquilizer pills were looking at her seductively. But it’s deceit. If I surrender, the hole will become a vortex with no escape.
I’m the commander—yes, the commander of a ship with a single sailor—if I give up our fate is sealed—and if you don’t, the result will be the same. Why fight it? ‘Don’t fail, make this count’ flashed through her mind. But he’s dead—no, not his memory—he’s dead. He isn’t looking at you down from a high place. He just stopped existing.
She forced herself to fly toward James’ hatch. It unlocked with a clean clack. She entered his cabin feeling like a burglar. You haven’t even had the decency to reach out to Belinda—I can’t! Not yet—Belinda! Your friend. She knew what she had come for, the book, but couldn’t avoid glancing around. And then she saw something totally unexpected Velcroed to the side of James’ bed. And she also knew exactly what it was and what it meant. Belinda had once shown her a picture of a smiley 8-year-old James in baggy white jeans, lime green shirt, and his dad’s oversized chainsaw helmet, failing to imitate the Buzz Lightyear action figure he held in his hand staring back at him hands-on-hips.
Sophia glided to his bed and grabbed the toy. She pictured the young James spending the entire summer running around outside or gobbling lunch, always in the company of Buzz. You’re a war veteran. The enamel around the sound buttons had rubbed off, none of them worked anymore, one wing was missing, and the left leg was bandaged in a Campbell’s chicken noodle soup sticker.
“What’s going on, Tweety?” she said, mimicking Buzz Lightyear.
“Nothing, Buzz—it’s just that I’m very scared. I have so much weight on my shoulders. And look at me! I’m tiny.” Tears beaded around her eyes. “I don’t know what to do—I can’t fail Jimmy, but I also don’t have the strength to fight. Where—how did you summon the nerve to step out of the Eagle?”
“Hold on, Tweety. You’re mixing up your heroes here. I’m no Aldrin, I’m a Lightyear.” She chuckled and rubbed the tears from her eyes. “I know one thing though. You came to Saturn, which can only mean the Force is already with you—and if you need proof, read that book.”
Sophia got closer until the book was a foot in front of her. She had heard about it from James many times but had never seen it. His talisman.
The hard cover was made of black cloth with letters and an intricate Endurance drawing on silver gilt. It was worn out, particularly the corners and spine, but instead of appearing decrepit it gave the book nobility, magnified by the musty smell. South: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition 1914–1917. This recounted the same expedition but it was different from the late-50s bestseller they all had to read as per James’ request. At the bottom of a first page missing the upper third it said “Published March 1 1919, First Edition.” The next made explicit what she should have guessed: the account of one of the greatest struggles of man against nature, told by one Ernest Henry Shackleton. At the bottom half, the start of each word was thick and stern, but the blue ink handwriting was balanced and sparse. “To my dear friend Giles. Your struggle may seem opposite, but the rival—adversity—is one and the same. Do not surrender to the inner demons. Keep waging battle and you will soon prevail. Yours truly, E.H. Shackleton, June 1920.”
As she scanned through the pages, she saw some paragraphs highlighted by Jimmy. “The temperature was not strikingly low as temperatures go down here, but the terrific winds penetrate the flimsy fabric of our fragile tents and create so much draught that it is impossible to keep warm within. At supper last night our drinking water froze over in the tin in the tent before we could drink it. It is curious how thirsty we all are.”
“Huge blocks of ice, weighing many tons, were lifted into the air and tossed aside as other masses rose beneath them. We were helpless intruders in a strange world, our lives dependent upon the play of grim elementary forces that made a mock of our puny efforts.” The black-and-white photos were bewitching. The last big push, Shackleton and five others aboard James Caird, crossing the most treacherous, tempestuous ocean in the world in an open boat for fifteen harrowing days. She felt the cold cutting through flesh, saw the mountainous waves chasing them down, tasted the salty water splashing on their faces, the ever-looming threat of starvation. And yet they made it. All of them.
Jimmy had highlighted a quote, “Loneliness is the penalty of leadership.” She was the ship’s commander. Direct in the line of succession of two of the most eminent explorers in history. Seemingly impossible odds do not dictate history, only inform it.
65 | Twilight Zone
A day later, September 17 2030. Day 14
THE RINGS OF SATURN
From their height, the A Ring resembled a behemoth vinyl record being inspected up close through a magnifying glass. Each spiral groove was colored slightly different from its siblings. Going a few hundred spirals in or out, the colors transited from dark gray to light cream, but not always incrementally. Wide areas of fair colors were interspersed with dark, and vice versa. Being the second largest and densest after the B Ring, it seemed carved out of a single piece of material.30
Derya’s wowing had become perennial as he witnessed the mysterious balancing of gravity that harnessed and safeguarded the rings over unfathomable timescales. He could visually spot forces being triggered seemingly out of nowhere, propagating through the rings. He saw jumbo waves traversing huge sections of the A Ring and splashing at its edge into vertical walls taller than mountaintops on Earth. He saw shepherd moons hurling particles thousands of miles in front and behind their wake. He saw particles clumped together into thick islands dozens of miles across, suddenly blasting apart. He saw clouds of dust kicked up in impacts between space debris and the rings. From all this it was natural to infer the ruthlessness of the rings against dissent—a chunk of ice altering the order being quickly smacked by others until its random motion dissipates back into submission. Theirs is a Roman legion constantly in motion and incessantly under attack.
Orbiting Saturn cheats its gravitational attraction by speeding around it. The closer to the giant, the stronger the gravity and the faster one must rotate.31 If Caird was heading straight to Saturn, a collision with an outlier ring particle would
be like a head-on car crash at 1,000 times the speed limit.
But Caird was floating 200 miles above the ring plane, moving from the outside toward the outer edge of the A Ring. Instead of cutting straight through the rings, the spaceship was converging into a circular orbit around the giant planet, approaching the speed and direction of the rings below. This didn’t neutralize the risk, which is why they were descending into the rings in steps, scrutinizing before committing to the next drop. And it was why they wouldn’t station for their night amid the A Ring but in the twenty-six-mile-wide Keeler Gap within.
Shackleton wouldn’t approach Caird and the rings of Saturn for over a week—if ever—so Derya had plenty of time for contemplation. Yesterday’s urgency is today’s wait.32
Derya glanced at Sergei. Even he appeared to be moved by the wonder and strangeness before them. The A Ring rim border seemed cut by a scalpel, delineated against the blackness beyond. Keeping the outward creep in check is a work of precision and love, done by the action at a distance of a confederation of moons, including Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Janus, Epimetheus, and Mimas. Derya wasn’t stunned by that anymore, though, but what he saw a few miles inside. The rings are marvels of balance between their immense width and their paper-thin height. Just not here, thought Derya. The otherwise perfectly flat rings abruptly turned into a coastal ridge of dead vertical, fluffy peaks looming as high as ten Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other. Walls of icy rubble casting long, slithering shadows over the endlessness of the ring plains below. Caird went past just a few miles above them. When they did, Derya experienced an absurd but very real fear of heights. This makes the Wall in Game of Thrones look like a track and field hurdle. And a small one at that.
Some forty minutes later, Caird was suspended 2,000 feet above the ring plane. Derya saw nightfall racing toward them in a windshield wiper motion across the rings. The rays of light hid behind Saturn, yet this was a darkness much different from that on Earth. The ring glare gradually faded to night and its golden hue became the milky white of moonlight. No twilight and no black night. His eyes followed the speeding shadow slicing the great ring expanse beyond while avoiding catching sight of the huge orb towering above them all. There can be no competition, he thought. This is the most magnificent sight I’ll ever see.