His outer skin wasn’t just some bulky spacesuit, it was part of his own body. In other words, the founders had thought that humans would never feel at home on Titan if they always had to be inside a spacesuit, so they developed the outer skin. But then what about the Wnutri? They weren’t any less authentically Titanian than the Snarushi.
He stood up and donned the goggles, switching to radar, which allowed him to identify the relief of Titan around himself. He saw a flat mountain in the east. It reminded him of a thick pancake rising out of the plains. That had to be Coats Facula. A thick pancake made out of ice right in the middle of a dark, rocky plain. How had it gotten there? Was it the ejecta from some ice giant that just happened to land there? Had the rock plate been ripped open, letting ice swell up from below onto the surface?
They should reach Doom Mons tomorrow. Who was the one who came up with that name? Would Jenna keep her word and go gliding with him off the peak? That’d be good for some fun. Wnutri generally had a harder time flying in Titan’s atmosphere, because their spacesuits were cumbersome and a suit weighed more than his outer skin. But with some skill and practice, those obstacles could be overcome. Boris felt happy. He felt that she would keep her word.
Slowly he walked back to the others. His boots made a creaking sound with each step. It was a noise that had an odd soothing, hypnotic effect. The walk had made him tired, which is what he had hoped. Were the others already asleep? He reached the rover, placed himself next to the driver’s seat, and inspected the control system. They had enough energy for the drive.
He could see that the light had already been dimmed through the front window of the cabin. Then he walked to the back of the rover toward the tank and past the side windows. His gaze flickered over the dark outline of a clearly naked woman. Was that Jenna? He didn’t believe his eyes and stopped. He shouldn’t try to look closer, but his curiosity won. He took a step back. The light was off, and the cabin was dark. He must’ve imagined it.
He removed his boots in front of the tank. Using his arms, and as quietly as possible he pulled himself inside where it was nearly dark. Anna had left a little light on for him. The liquid dampened all sounds and it grew quiet. All he could hear was his heartbeat. He slid next to his sister. The tank automatically pumped out the amount of solution that his body displaced. Anna seemed to be asleep already. Her eyes were closed, and she was breathing quietly.
He turned to the side, always mindful not to disturb her. They were used to sleeping in tanks by themselves, but it would be much too inefficient to take along two of them on long expeditions. In his mind, he wished Anna a good night and closed his eyes.
4790.9
The small convoy stopped at the northeast face of Doom Mons. They wouldn’t be able to get much higher with the vehicle, because the incline was too steep. Doom Mons was made of ice and some parts had become brittle over time.
“You really think this is a good idea?” Anna asked.
“Just let me have my fun,” Boris said.
“Don’t you mean, let us have our fun?” asked Jenna.
“You ready?” he asked her.
“Almost,” their expedition leader said.
“Don’t you want to come along?” he asked Anna on a private channel.
She shook her head. “You go ahead. I think it’ll be good for you to spend some time with other people. You’re starting to worry me. I don’t like how cynical you’ve become lately. Maybe this will help you start trusting Jenna.”
Trust. That was a big word. Maybe he should learn how to trust himself first. But actually, he wasn’t that down on himself. No, trust in himself wasn’t a problem. And if trust in general was a problem, it was up to others to earn his trust.
“Suit yourself. We’ll have fun without you,” he said.
The airlock opened with a hiss, and a figure in a spacesuit stepped out. Whether it was a man or a woman, he couldn’t tell. The person came closer. He read ‘Tamarastir’ on the nametag. Jenna! Now he could also see her face behind the glass. She smiled, and that touched him.
“Let’s go then,” she said. “First one to the top’s the winner.”
She started running, which was bold. He had to orient himself first. He folded down his goggles, which were set to infrared. It looked funny how Jenna was trying to race up the mountain. He saw her as a red human shape flailing in an orange-colored housing that was much larger than himself, carrying a white backpack.
Boris switched to navigation. Doom Mons had two peaks. They wanted to launch themselves from the ridge that ran between the two peaks. He stored the destination. Now illuminated arrows appeared on the surface of his hand. He took the wings from a storage compartment in the rover, waved to Anna, and hurried off to catch Jenna. She had a head start, so he was already well behind her.
But it didn’t stay that way. Jenna’s spacesuit had force boosters like his outer skin, but her suit weighed more, so he could go faster with the same energy output. He caught her in ten minutes. For fun he gave her a small push from behind and then held on tightly to her shoulder so she wouldn’t fall.
“Hey... wait, when... I... get...”
“Save your breath for the climb,” he called.
He sped up a bit, but that wasn’t a good idea because it got even steeper just then. His outer skin couldn’t supply an unlimited amount of air per unit of time. It wasn’t a simple tank that he could just open a little more. Instead it was an organism that needed time to adapt to different conditions. Now he was gasping for air, and Jenna retook the lead. Stupid outer skin, he thought. But that was unfair. Jenna also had to wear her own heavy spacesuit, and her wings in her backpack were larger and thus heavier than his own.
Slowly the outer skin adapted itself to the new demands, and he started up again. He looked upward through the goggles and could see the ridge already. Crazy, he hadn’t climbed a mountain that quickly in a long time. Jenna was still two meters in front of him. Now or never! He sprinted the last remaining meters, 10, 12, 20 steps, which he covered without taking a breath.
Ha! He’d reached the ridge before Jenna. Now he had to slow himself down so that he wouldn’t go tumbling down the other side. Exhausted, he laid down on his back on the thin, spotty snow cover.
Jenna threw down her backpack, which just missed him, and collapsed to the ground next to him. Then she sat up and leaned against his bent legs. “May I?” she asked.
“Of course.”
Gradually his heart rate returned to normal. It was pleasant lying in the snow. The coating was quite thin, but it felt almost like a blanket. It didn’t bother him at all that Jenna was leaning against his legs. Could she be someone he could be around without becoming too stressed out?
Suddenly she jumped up again. She brushed the snow off her butt and took her wings out of her backpack.
“Come on! Time to take off,” she said.
The ridge was too narrow for them to do running take-off leaps next to each other, so he turned his back to Jenna and spread out his wings.
“On three,” he said.
“Ready,” she said. Now she sounded excited, but maybe that was just something caused by the radio transmission.
“One... two... three!” He ran along the ridge with his wings extended. After ten steps he turned to the right—and flew. “Yahoooo!” he yelled. It was fantastic. He should go gliding much more often.
He heard Jenna yell, “Wow-wow-wooow!”
He looked to the right. She was flying somewhat below him. She must have lost some altitude due to her heavier weight, but now she was holding steady. She flapped her wings so that she could gain some altitude and fly closer to him. He remained simply gliding. One beside the other, they flew into the yellow mist that was slowly creeping up the face of the mountain.
Then they were hit by a thermal. The rising flow of air struck him in the stomach and lifted him, further and further. Jenna remained back below him.
“Don’t try to fight the thermal,” he said by radi
o. “Probably best if you fly in circles where you are. I don’t know how far this thermal’s going to take me.”
She started into a curve, and then she too began rising.
“Isn’t this the best?” he called.
“It’s mind-blowing!”
Then the updraft suddenly stopped. He flew over the lower peak of Doom Mons and zoomed in on the plateau. It was interesting because the mountain didn’t have a solid surface there. Instead, there seemed to be a depression filled with liquid helium. The small but deep lake looked like a sea of volcanic lava—only it wasn’t warmer, but colder, than its surroundings. Boris noticed too late what that meant for him. The cold air over the methane lake flowed downward, instead of rising. The peak was sucking him downward, and it wasn’t helping no matter how wildly he flapped his wings.
“Everything okay?” Jenna asked.
“Yes. But you better keep your distance. There’s a strong downdraft here and it’s trying to pull me down.”
He turned around to look for her. Jenna had arranged her wings so she was flying a large arc around him. That was smart. On the path she was on now, she’d avoid the suction that was pulling him down. There was a loud siren in his mind. That was the altitude warning. Shit! He hadn’t been watching the ground. He was only five meters above the peak and basically flying on a crash course.
Boris flapped his wings once forcefully. He was not about to let himself fall into the icy methane. Three meters, one meter, and he contacted the icy ground at the edge of the summit lake. He ran a few meters to build up his momentum again. He could still save this flight so they could continue gliding. All he needed to do was run over the ridge to the other peak and launch himself from there again.
“Everything’s okay,” he called. “I’ll be back up again in a second.”
Another siren sounded in his head. What’s happened now? He started the diagnostics program, and a red symbol that looked like a foot started blinking on the back of his hand.
That had never happened to him before! It indicated the outer skin on the sole of his left foot had been lacerated. There was liquid bandage spray for this sort of thing, but, of course, he hadn’t packed any for their excursion. What a shitty situation. The cold would penetrate him. It would kill the outer skin from the inside, and the inner skin from the outside. It would be the same effect as if he’d cut open his skin and poured sulfuric acid into the wound. He could say goodbye to his foot. And then he might as well just sit there until he’d used up all his resources.
Boris felt something touch his shoulder—oh, Jenna’s hand. Apparently, her warmth penetrated through her thick gloves and his thick outer skin. She knelt beside him and looked at the sole of his foot. He was grateful that he wasn’t alone.
“That’s some bad luck,” she said.
“First aid supplies are down below in the rover. But half my foot will have frozen off before we’d get there. Then you’d have to dig up the ship with an invalid.”
“Calm down. I’ve got repair spray with me.”
“For your suit? That stuff’s inorganic. It can’t heal this cut.”
“True—but it’ll seal it up until we get down below. Then you can use your healing spray.”
“You think?” Boris started to feel a glimmer of hope. Okay, yes... it might work. But he wouldn’t be able to step on it. The repair spray could only seal the area, not provide strength. How was he supposed to get down the mountain?
“Don’t worry, Boris, you won’t have to step on it. We can glide down together.”
He couldn’t just hop into the air and flap away. That wasn’t how gliding worked. “But what about takeoff?”
“We’ll fly together. Between us, we’ve got three working legs. We’ll fasten your injured left leg to my right, and then we’ll take off together using your right wing and my left.”
Boris was skeptical. “You think that’ll work?”
“I tried it once before with a friend. Both of us were wearing spacesuits, and we still made it work.”
Jenna already had the repair spray in her hand. She started spraying the sole of his foot, and immediately it started feeling warmer. The excess material dripped down the side. But it only filled the cut, it didn’t stabilize it.
Now Jenna was wrapping a safety line around his left leg and her right leg.
“Can I help?” he asked.
“I’ve got it.” She seemed to know what she was doing. She pulled the line tight and tied a knot. Then she pulled the wing off his left arm and put her right wing back on. “So, we stand on three. One, two, three.” She pulled him up, and he helped with his good leg. It worked! They wobbled a bit, but they managed to stay standing.
So far, so good.
“Now comes the hard part. You’ve got to run normally with your right leg but relax your left as much as possible. We’ll have to move with an ambling gait. When I give the signal, I’ll move our joint middle leg forward. Then we’ll take a step with the outer legs. It’ll work like that, trust me, but you’ve got to relax your left leg and concentrate. Otherwise we’re going to stumble and slide down the mountain, instead of flying.”
“Got it. No pressure.”
“No pressure, of course.”
Boris laughed. The situation was absurd, and Jenna started laughing, too.
“Okay, let’s go. Stay loose. Middle leg first. On three.”
“Ready,” he confirmed.
“One, two, three.”
His left leg moved forward all by itself, controlled by Jenna. He tipped slightly to the left as he balanced to move his right leg forward. Relax the left. Move the right. Left loose. Right forward. They got quicker. Left loose. Right... He lost contact with the ground under his foot.
Boris panicked. But no, they were flying! “Hey, it worked!” He wasn’t going to die up on top of the mountain. And he’d be able to keep his foot.
“Did you have any doubt?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said.
That was a lie, but he meant it more as a promise for the future.
He let Jenna steer. They landed right on target, a few meters behind the convoy. Jenna had already informed Anna about their little problem, so Boris’s sister was waiting there with the healing spray.
Boris stripped off his wing. Supported by both women, he hobbled over to the rover’s driver’s seat.
Anna wiped away the remains of the repair spray and then applied the healing spray. “So, you should be good as new by tomorrow,” she said.
“I was afraid that you’d all have to dig up the spaceship without me.”
“Well, we would have managed,” Anna said.
“I’m sure you would have,” Boris replied, and he wasn’t exaggerating.
“So, what the hell were you doing? Didn’t you tell me that boots save lives?”
“Yes, Anna, you’re right. But when you’re gliding, any extra weight becomes a burden.”
“Well, it all turned out okay,” Jenna said.
“You two were quite a sight. You looked like some kind of giant bumblebee lurching crazily toward us out of the sky,” Geralt said from the cabin. “I filmed it all. You want to see the video before I send it out?”
“Ugh. Sounds too embarrassing, my friend.”
“Probably the best thing for you is to disappear into the tank,” Anna said. “Your foot would heal quickest in there.”
“Yes, doctor. But wake me before you start digging up that ship, promise?”
“I promise,” Jenna said. “It’s great that everything’s going to be okay.”
“Yes. Thank you, Jenna... For everything.”
Boris didn’t quite know what he meant by that. All he could tell was that he felt bewildered. It must’ve been a side-effect of the healing spray.
4790.10
“Yes, Geraldine,” Boris said.
“And no more side trips?”
“I... No, of course not.”
“Do I have your word?”
“Yes, Geral
dine.”
“Good. Let’s talk again when you’ve found the ship. I want to be informed every step of the way.”
“Of course.”
The connection was cut. Had Jenna ratted him out? Not that he didn’t deserve it. But after their shared flight yesterday, he’d thought their relationship might be a little different. What an ill-fitting word. Their work association, he meant, of course. But no, it wasn’t just an association. The way they had worked together...
“So, are you flirting with the commander again?”
Boris turned around, surprised to see Anna because he’d thought everyone was asleep. Maybe he’d awakened her when he climbed out of the tank. She was sitting next to him in the second driver’s seat.
“Were you listening?”
“I only heard the loud parts. ‘Yes, Geraldine,’ ‘Of course, Geraldine,’ ‘You’re right, Geraldine.’ It sounded awful.”
“She threatened to pull me off the mission immediately.”
“You probably deserved it. But she wants that ship, that’s clear. It’d take too much time to have to take you all the way home first.”
“Do you think Jenna told her to talk to me?”
“So she could give you a scolding? That’s all your interpretation. I was the one who informed the commander.”
“What? My sister ratted me out?”
“Jenna’s become your accomplice. I had to escalate my complaint up a level all by myself, to make sure you two came back to solid ground.”
“Us two? It’s not Jenna’s fault at all.”
“I’m assuming Geraldine is giving her a lecture right now. It’s sweet how you want to defend her, but she’s the leader of this expedition. She should’ve been holding you back, instead of encouraging you like she did.”
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