Oceanworlds

  He noticed a deafening roar, like a flushing toilet and a waterfall in unison, and looked around. The giant waves had smoothed out to ripples, yet the furrows and grooves in the sea surface revealed torrential movement forward. The waters must be very deep. He had been caught by an embankment. The tar probably saved me. There was a tall rock face stretching for dozens of miles on the distant opposite seashore. Turning his head, he saw a soaring, smooth rock wall above him running straight in both directions, seemingly identical to the one on the facing coast. This is a flooded, U-shaped canyon funneling masses of … wait, it’s the Throat of Kraken. I better be on the right shore.

  He changed the display on his visor. I was dragged for almost an hour. He then attempted communication with Shackleton. I just need a few radio waves to bounce off the thick atmosphere and hit Shack’s dish antenna. No luck. He kept trying while visually searching for a way out of the canyon. The sky flowed northward, the clouds thickened and darkened. Yi identified a steep promontory that branched high up into two ridges. One of them seemed to top off the wall. Exposed but perhaps doable. From that point he may be able to cut across the mountains and eventually drop off into the bay where Shackleton was stationed.

  With no time to spare, he started hiking.

  He stopped to recover after ascending hundreds of feet uninterruptedly. Keep up this pace and we’ll live to fight another day.

  Turning toward the fall line, he found the source of the roaring. The narrowest part of the Throat was a mile or two ahead, where the wall he was climbing turned dead vertical. This has been the Panama Channel of the Kraken for tens, maybe hundreds of millions of years. If the enormous forces at play weren’t clear from the extreme rock erosion, he counted five giant whirlpools guarding the strait. He guessed any of them would have gulped down the container ship that rescued him off the coast of Taiwan.

  The sudden, unmistakable radio crackling was never more welcome.

  After the bare essentials, Sophia cut to the central issue: the Grasshopper had been airborne and was now heading toward him, its batteries still at one-third capacity. It would map the stretch between him and Shackleton and get close enough to Yi for a wireless downlink of that data so he could plot his way back.

  He knew Sophia all too well not to hear the troubled undercurrent behind the cheerful tone. “We said no bullshit. Tell me what’s happening?”

  Sophia sounded unsure, “Downdraft. Shack is starting to sway.”

  “Reloading?”

  “We’re at 69 percent.”

  I’m not the critical path to escaping Titan. Not yet, anyway. He tried to sound serene, matter-of-factly, “I’ll be back within three hours. Or I won’t.”

  He climbed the last few dozen steps of a saddle that put him over the canyon. The Throat was 1,000 feet below yet it looked even more imposing than before. It resembled an immense hourglass, its neck directly under him and each of its two bulbs, the upper and lower Kraken, hijacking both northern and southern horizons. It’s not only an allegorical clock. It quite literally measures the passing of Titanic time, in scales actually comprehensible to us humans. The sea flows south through the Throat for eight Earth-days and then north for another eight Earth-days, completing a full orbit around Saturn.

  The display on Yi’s visor showed the Grasshopper barely making headway toward him, as if ricocheting against an invisible wall. He changed the display mode and a low-resolution topography map sent via radio from Shackleton revealed the hurdle. It was trying to climb over the highest feature between him and the spaceship. His eyes gazed around for the least improbable path ahead of him. It roughly kept his current altitude by following the contour of a mountain curving south before continuing northeast, where he needed to go. The heavily serrated summit ridge, several hundred feet above his tentative route, was being battered by violent winds from the south, apparent by the drifting snow. Near what he guessed was the end of his traverse, a sharp crest was the only seemingly possible mountain pass to cross over to the other side. The crest was being pummeled, with clouds of snow clinging to it like smoke from a stack. It was the highest point of the route and he immediately knew it was the Grasshopper’s obstacle. The drone and me are looking at the same gap from opposite sides. Assuming he could negotiate the crossing of that section he should be able to glimpse salvation, the bay and Shackleton somewhere below. Going down will be much faster, by just jumping forward and letting gravity do the rest.

  Before restarting out, Yi checked his spacesuit. He had slid many times in the loose, grainy rock climbing up and the fabric around the knees already showed severe damage. I need you to hold out only a few more hours. How many? Depending on his metabolic rate, he had between 4.5 and 6 hours left before running out of oxygen. More than I anticipated, and with worsening weather certainly beyond what Sophia and Shack can afford to wait—a pair of wings would have made this a breeze. On Titan, where terrestrial rules are swept aside, the story of Icarus would have had a happy ending and a different moral. Since Yi’s 140 pounds on Earth became twenty pounds on Titan, the denser air makes the power requirements of flying minimal. Strapping on a pair of wings—or even better, a hang glider and flippers—would have put an end to his predicament. Had the Grasshopper been slightly bigger I could have been an acceptable payload. Wait a moment. Maybe—

  Around ten minutes later, any hope of deus ex machina was crushed when the Grasshopper, attempting forward movement but hardly able to hover through the relentless punishment from the developing storm, was abruptly hurled down and slammed against the rocks.

  Not all was wrong in this world though. Yi had moved materially faster than expected as he now stood before the apex of the route. Turning his head to where he came from, he gained vertical perspective on his two close calls. He was on top of a wide, featureless ice slab slanted toward the fall line, which he had clambered on to and had been scrambling across for some time. Beyond its edge came a vertical drop of about 700 feet, with dark crevasses awaiting at the bottom. The same ones that swallowed the Grasshopper. The fierce white winds he had seen from afar had disappeared. Good news welcome. Yi estimated about forty yards before the natural bridge he was standing on tipped over into the next gorge, Shackleton Bay. For the last hour he had been naming hitherto uncharted terrain, which instantly made it more familiar and less hostile.

  With hardly forty yards to salvation he resumed moving ahead, intentional and watchful of each step. This was no time to worry about Shack rocking on the verge of disaster. Which Tweety’s optimistic voice only makes more obvious. As he gained ground, the view of the other side grew. A few more steps and he saw the end of the odyssey, ahead and below: Shackleton little more than an upstanding grain of rice. Grasshopper, your ultimate sacrifice was worth it. But three footsteps later made it clear that this was not over: a blast of wind hurled his leg sideways. His last step had moved him past the corner where the rock wall that had protected him for hours gave way to southern exposure.

  He retreated to safety behind the wall and for minutes remained undecided. He had seen another plausible path but it meant backtracking a good half-hour, without any promises. At the same time, testing the wind by extending his arm forward proved it to be savage, treacherous, almost vindictive. He eventually stuck his head out too. His high vantage point exposed a sweeping vista to the south. The entire skyline had been seized by a dark cloud with three distinct layers. The bottom was almost black in a torrential downpour while the top was a gargantuan tsunami, the crest of the wave full of claws that reminded Yi of The Great Wave off Kanagawa woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai. Impossible to say how far, hopefully still hours because it looks like the Apocalypse descending upon us. This sealed his verdict: it was either onward or downward.

  He gathered strength and banished every thought from his mind. His body was now the one in control. Just thirty leaps to safety. He felt the slippery ground through his boots. There would be nothing to hold on to with his hands. He waited for the wind to abate and w
hen it did, he sprang forward. After a few leaps, a wind gust threw him down. He jumped back up but a new squall sent him flat again. He tried to crawl but an overpowering gale began sliding him. He noticed the edge of the precipice inching toward him. In a desperate move he sprung up and raced ahead, body inclined against the gale. The air resistance pressed against him but he used it to his advantage. He dived ahead and managed to cross to the other side, only to arrive and find no features to grab hold of.

  He realized the absurdity of the situation. I can’t maintain my position. The merciless wind slid him toward the void, and after a pointless battle trying to grab something, anything, dropped him into the precipice.

  He was falling on his back. The acceleration minimal, the fall gentle.

  “I’m falling.” Yi heard his own voice devoid of anxiety, not for lack of emotions but out of disbelief.

  Some twenty seconds later, the fall was slow enough to see himself disappear inside a crevasse.

  He opened his eyes amidst darkness, panting in pain. The worse the condition, the louder the pain speaks. He scanned his body. Nothing’s missing. The pain was horrible. Broken joints? Feet, okay. Ankles, okay. Knees, okay. Hips, okay—I should be able to walk out of here—Hands, okay. Elbows, okay. Wait … His right arm bent backward well past its shoulder’s range of motion and was looking very wrong.

  The golden-brown sky did not seem far, but the V-shaped icy walls in which he was wedged made it unattainable. How to get out—but before anything else he had to answer a despairing Sophia.

  Sophia was not taking it well.

  After a long pleading both ways, Yi cajoled her into programming a rule into TiTus. That way she wouldn’t kill him. A computer would. Whenever the swaying, shaking spaceship moved twelve degrees past vertical, TiTus would trigger the countdown and Shackleton would launch autonomously soon after, with or without Yi. Methane loading was 89 percent, enough to escape the Saturn system and let the Sun’s gravitational influence claim it back.

  Sophia knew the fall had killed him even if he wasn’t quite dead, yet Yi’s voice over the intercom sounded serene and thankful, which wrenched her soul. “I won’t be able to claim my life insurance, but maybe I get to be called a hero instead.”

  She mustered a tragic smile while two transparent streams connected her eyes to her lips.

  “Did you bring your Titan samples on board?” His voice suddenly picked up.

  “Yes,” she lied. That comforted him.

  “I need to go now,” Yi finally said. “Knowing you was one of the greatest pleasures of my life. You … you are that sibling I looked up to but never had.”

  Between sobs Sophia tried to say something, but he had turned his radio off.

  73 | Titan’s Farewell

  An hour later

  Yi came out into the open again.

  He had spotted a sliver of twilight to his left soon after falling inside the crevasse but decided not to tell Sophia. It would have given the illusion of possibility while snowballing the chance of disaster.

  The sky was murky and overcast, an inverted stormy ocean rocking in heavy swell with strokes of surf riding fluid mountains. It was also raining, but the mammoth storm hadn’t arrived yet. He could hear it approaching, though. Colossal thunders cracking open the inner ear. Big, pear-shaped methane drops floated down from the sky at the speed of snowflakes, splashing on and plodding down his visor. The shadows had become piercingly sharp, as if the contrast had been dialed up inside his retinas.

  He was trudging through eternal ice fields, stabbed each step by throbbing pain, when he heard it. Shackleton’s engines roaring with a fury that left no doubt they were flying out of Titan. On his count of seven their sound had been buried under the storm’s howling, yet he knew Sophia and Shackleton had left forever.

  A wave of peace overwhelmed him. We did it.

  Had he sat down, the cold would have soon tempted him into a painless, timeless sleep. Instead, he had continued ahead and a long wide beach greeted him under the cliff he now stood on. He still had two hours before asphyxiating, according to the visor, but he already felt the effects of hypoxia.

  A shrine of five round stones on top of one another was before him. Under it the letters “Jamesburg” were carved in the ground.

  Uncanny, he thought. What’s the chance two stones spontaneously arrange themselves one over the other? Three stones? Four? Five? Six? At some point the probability of self-arranging becomes effectively zero. Am I … seeing evidence of intelligent Titanian life?

  He lost his train of thought. Bemused, it took a few seconds before he could focus again. He saw the five round stones anew. Imagine the day there’s an Earth colony here: sky covered in airships, sea ships approaching and leaving its port. And if we ever master nuclear fusion, we could heat a giant settlement, maybe even the entire moon, by harvesting helium-3 from Saturn’s atmosphere. And every element of the periodic table exists in incalculable quantities, easily accessible among the moons of Saturn. If I had a say as the first pioneer, I would have proposed baptizing—

  He noticed the letters in the ground and was first startled and then embarrassed. The cognitive slide had started. I’ll never be whole again, and in two hours I’ll be no more. I’m ready to go. I … I only wish I could have wandered more.

  Yi stared into the distance. He thought he could see a large, fast-folding curtain shape against the twilight sky. Like those hypnotic bird cloud formations shifting in seemingly impossible synchronicity back on Earth. He couldn’t be sure. He no longer trusted his mind.

  I now know the greatest cost of exploration: incurable longing. Longing for having uncovered some of the great mysteries encircling and staring at him. Longing to return to Earth, to be re-embraced by nature’s leafy arms, to have rejoined humanity. Longing for falling in love again. But for the next hour my mind travels faster than the speed of light. He went back to his 8-year-old self, rubbing hands over a wood cooking stove while admiring through a fogged-up window the snowy, triple-peak mountain looming over their Inner Mongolian village, daydreaming of once reaching its summit and being able to see as far as Beijing and Moscow and America. I’ve reached the summit of my own metaphorical mountain, Titan. And I’ve seen the Universe and its unfathomable immensity. And I’ve come further than it was thought possible to travel. Now at the end of my life, I can look back and ask, was it worth it?

  As further evidence of the breathtaking, heartbreaking, otherworldly beauty and weirdness around him, the Kraken had developed an unbroken rainbow spanning the sky, with a perfect reflection in its surface, completing a full ring of reds, yellows, greens, and blues.

  Awareness became sparser as ever more regions of his mind capitulated to the perpetual veil of darkness. His memory was fracturing into tangled fragments without chronology and too small to be coherent, yet he remembered himself many years back, hopelessly lost in an endless ocean. Now he was by another ocean. But I’m no longer lost. I have finally found my destiny. The turmoil in his soul had been replaced by peace. He only wished to have spoken with Sergei one last time. His last conscious thought was for him. Before you quit, try. Before you die, live.

  74 | Saturn’s Farewell

  Three days later, September 28 2030. Day 25

  THE RINGS OF SATURN

  Shackleton hovered half a mile above the Keeler Gap.

  Sophia floated above the Observation Window, which looked down at the slowly approaching Caird.

  She remained oblivious to one of the most magnificent views in the Solar System. And as much as she tried to look forward to the rendezvous and their reunion, her spirit flickered between an empty shell devoid of emotions and one bleeding them as a branding iron of sorrow smoldered within.

  Both seem so relieved, thought Sophia, while having dinner at Bacchus the next day. And look at them, it’s as if they can anticipate each other like those old couples killing days sitting out on the porch. They went out as opponents and came back as brothers. What did I miss?
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  She was appalled at Derya’s appearance. Not only had he lost a fourth of his former weight, but the compression fractures in his spine had left him hunchbacked. Sergei, on the other hand, had put on some weight.

  That night, after each of them had time to read and ponder the dossier sent by Mission Control and ten or so hours before the engine burn that would propel them out of the Saturn system, the moment to make the fateful decision regarding the energy budget had arrived.

  “Closing in on Earth solves nothing,” Sergei was saying. “I’ve told you already, our problem is speed. We’ll be moving at twenty miles per second, almost three times the fastest Earth re-entry ever attempted, even by unmanned vehicles. We have to shave speed. Take my word for it, you can’t really assimilate what a re-entry is until you’ve done one.”

  “But there’s a way around that. I say we go for the stone-skipping maneuver and hope for the best,” said Derya, while his eyes ping-ponged between Sophia and Sergei, hoping one of them would budge. “For Christ’s sake, people. Jupiter? Really?”

  “I am with Sergei,” said Sophia. “At that speed nothing man-made can intercept us. We’ll have the largest audience in history but besides the prayers and moral support, we will be completely on our own. And it’s a pretty stark menu: we continue falling into the Sun, or we burn trying to enter Earth’s atmosphere, or we pull off a landing.”