Impact

by Brandon Q Morris

  “She just wanted...” Boris stopped. Yes, what did she want? To get closer to one of the members of her crew? To have an exhilarating flight with him? If he only knew for sure! But did it matter? He decided it didn’t.

  “Good morning, you two!”

  Boris smiled involuntarily. Jenna’s greeting hadn’t come over the radio, but through the air, so she had to be outside. He turned around. There was someone in a spacesuit just now bending over a flap at the rear of the rover and putting something away in a compartment.

  “Good morning,” Anna said. “I thought everyone was still sleeping in the cabin.”

  “Geraldine woke me up to give me a stern talking-to.”

  “Me, too. We owe that to this one here,” he said, pointing to Anna.

  “That was my guess,” Jenna said. “You did the right thing, Anna. I wasn’t taking my responsibility as head of this expedition seriously enough. I offered to Geraldine to give up my position.”

  “Oh,” Boris said, “I’m sorry.” He really was sorry—although everything would be much simpler if he were to lead the expedition.

  “She rejected my offer. You’ve got to put up with me a little longer, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re doing quite well,” Boris said. His face started to feel warm. He was sure his cheeks were turning red. Luckily, nobody could see that under his outer skin.

  “Thanks. That’s nice of you to say,” Jenna said. “I know that I’m rather inexperienced. I’ve only ever dealt with other scientists.”

  “What does today’s plan look like?” Anna asked.

  “Shouldn’t we talk about this with Geralt, too?” Boris asked.

  “I already informed Geralt in the cabin,” Jenna explained. “We’ll drive as close as we can get to our destination. Then we’ll let you two down on the cable with the detectors, and when you’ve found the ship, we’ll free it from the ice. And then we’ll go from there. We don’t know what condition it’s in yet.”

  The rover made a strange crunching noise while rolling over the ice, not a crunching sound as if driving over sand, but an octave higher. The six wheels kicked up fine ice dust from the subsurface, which Boris could see with the help of his goggles because he had activated the laser scanner. The grains of water ice, which drifted slowly back to the ground, reflected light much better than the flakes of organic compounds responsible for most of the mist on Titan.

  They approached the Patera from the north. The map showed a kind of entryway, a flat, trench-like channel that broke through the icy ring wall. One could almost believe that some sorcerer from a fairy tale had erected a gigantic icy wall around his fortress, which had been razed by attackers many thousands of years ago. But in reality, it was all the work of the forces of Titan and its host planet, Saturn.

  The ground sloped downward more steeply now. Boris kept wanting to point out one obstacle or another to his sister, but he managed to restrain himself. He had no reason to complain about her driving. She must’ve had an excellent teacher. He was so damned proud of her.

  How far would they be able to go with the rover? The terrain had looked more dangerous on the map than it appeared right now out the window, probably because the elevation scale on the map had been exaggerated. They didn’t have a bottomless pit in front of them, no entrance to a hellish underworld, but instead an especially deep valley that was unusual only due to its almost circular shape.

  At some point about halfway down, however, the slope would exceed the rover’s capabilities. They would have to stop before they reached that point—but not too early, because otherwise they would have to carry all the equipment and gear too far, and it would be much more difficult for them to make it back to the cabin or the tank.

  The warm spot in the sky disappeared. That meant they must be so deep in the caldera that the sun had just become blocked by the rim.

  “Did you notice that too?” Boris asked by radio. “The sun’s gone.”

  “Yes. It must’ve happened at about the three-hundred-meter mark,” Jenna answered.

  “How do you know that so precisely?”

  “I calculated it before. Approximate position of the sun, diameter of the Patera, slope of the route... Simple trigonometry.”

  “Ah, right, I could’ve worked all that out myself, too,” he said.

  “Yes, you could’ve worked it all out, too,” Anna said.

  No one spoke for the next 20 minutes. It was getting darker and darker, and now they couldn’t see the bottom of the depression, presenting the most significant danger yet. If this were the patera of a volcano on Earth or Venus, they would have to be on the constant lookout for gas outbursts or swelling lava. But cryovolcanoes weren’t so violent, only slowly extruding ice over thousands of years. The team could have been relaxed—but they weren’t. The general silence in the rover was the most definite sign of that.

  Anna reduced their speed but made no signs of stopping. Boris estimated the slope already at 12 degrees. When would the rover start to slide? He felt somewhat concerned and anxious due to the tank on the trailer at the back of the rover. Because the tank was full, the trailer was much heavier than the cabin.

  “Maybe we should walk the rest of the way,” Geralt suggested.

  “I’ve got everything under control,” Anna said. “The tank’s still not giving me any problems with braking.”

  “I trust you, Anna,” Jenna said. “You’re the best judge for when we need to stop.”

  “If you want, I can take over the controls,” Boris said.

  Shit, that was a stupid thing to say. It must’ve sounded to Anna as if he didn’t trust her to do the driving. “I mean, only if you want to take a break.”

  “That’s what I thought, little brother.”

  “Twenty degrees slope,” Boris said.

  “I see it. Are you trying to tell me something?” Anna asked.

  “No, just giving you information.”

  “That’s very helpful, but I’d rather know how far we still have to go to the bottom.”

  “Eight kilometers, if the data’s correct.”

  “That means we’re only halfway down. If we have to carry all the gear that far, we’ll never get it done.”

  “I can’t say you’re wrong, but the most important thing is we get down to the bottom safely and uninjured.”

  “Why don’t you just come out and say it, little brother?”

  Boris looked at the sole of his foot. Where the cut had been, there was now only a white line. It was somewhat warmer than the surrounding skin. The healing spray had helped. But if Jenna hadn’t smartly and alertly applied the repair spray, his foot probably would have had to have been amputated.

  He had every reason to thank Jenna. Maybe the best thing he could do would be to invite her for a meal at the base when they get back. The thought made him feel good, even if it would only stay a nice idea.

  Because, where could a Wnutri and a Snarushi eat together, without one of them suffocating or freezing?

  “So that’s it.” Anna said. “I think this is as far as we can go.”

  Boris took a deep breath. He had held back his fears the whole time, in order not to make his sister nervous. It was at most a downward slope of 30 degrees. Usually that wouldn’t have concerned him much. Was his uneasiness due to the fact that he wasn’t the one in control?

  The rover and trailer slowed down. Anna was holding the steering mechanism and staring intensely straight ahead. Boris could feel how she was bringing the vehicle to a stop. She had a look of enormous concentration on her face.

  Soon he could get out and start putting together the boxes of gear that they’d need down below. He prepared himself mentally for the packing. Where had he put the melting equipment? The detector was at the back left in the storage compartment.

  He looked down. The rover was still very slowly sliding over the ice, and had almost come to a stop. Then it started moving faster, barely noticeable, but he could feel the acceleration shifting their direction o
f motion.

  “Shit,” Anna said, “the tank’s pushing us forward!”

  They were moving so slowly that he could climb out and check the trailer. “Should I take a look?” he asked. “I could set the emergency brake.” That was a mechanical device that secured the trailer in place when it was parked. It worked as if stones were put in front of all four wheels simultaneously. If that didn’t stop the sliding, then nothing would.

  “Wait. If you get out, the rover will be lighter, and it’ll be even easier for the tank to keep pushing us.”

  They were in quite a dilemma. If he got out, they would slide faster. If he stayed in the rover, he couldn’t activate the parking brake on the trailer’s wheels.

  “I’ve got to try, anyway,” he said. “It gets even steeper further down. We won’t have any chance at all if we go much farther.”

  “Wait,” Anna pled.

  Nonetheless he climbed out onto the ground. The longer he waited, the more their chances decreased. The rover slid past him. As Anna predicted, it looked like it was starting to move faster. There was no need for him to walk toward the tank—it was moving toward him all on its own. It looked massive, and he knew he’d never be able to stop it just with his own strength.

  Where was the emergency brake? He reached out and grabbed a bar mounted on the side of the cylindrical tank and set his feet to see if he could slow the vehicle. But no, the tank pulled him along as if he weighed nothing.

  He had to get to the brake! He worked his way forward while holding onto the tank. The lever was located in the center of the tank’s front side. Between the tank and the rover’s cabin was only 30 centimeters of space. Approximately—it varied between 20 and 40. If he was unlucky and something slowed the rover, the tank would crush him against the back side of the cabin. The next time Jenna came out of the airlock, she’d find his flattened body attached to the door. He would have to be careful.

  “Please don’t brake right now, Anna,” he said over the radio.

  “Ok.”

  He swung himself into the gap and spotted the lever. He needed to push it down, and then the mechanism would force a block in front of each of the four wheels.

  Now! He pressed with all his strength. Probably, nobody had ever before tried to activate this system while the tank was moving. This was crazy. Hopefully there wasn’t some safety device that disengaged the mechanism while the tank was moving. What if the tank bucked like a horse, tilted forward, and came down on top of him, burying him underneath in the ice?

  It was too late to do anything about that now. The lever moved down, and at the same moment he heard a terrible grinding noise coming from the wheels. The braking blocks were made out of metal covered with plastic. The plastic must’ve been worn away almost immediately. The grinding changed into a high-pitched squealing.

  The tank stopped abruptly. It had worked! The rover jerked on the coupling briefly, but then it, too, stopped. Boris quickly made his way out of the gap—just in case the tank started moving again. Then he went back to Anna in front of the rover.

  Nobody said anything.

  “Um, I guess we’re here then,” Jenna finally announced over the radio. “Thanks, Boris.”

  He turned back to look in the direction from which they had come. They’d left deep tracks in the ice the last several meters.

  “I’m not sure if you really should be thanking me yet,” he said. “Take a look at our way back. I don’t think we’re going to be able to get the tank and trailer back up there.”

  “Then it’ll have to stay here,” Anna said. “The rover can make it if it’s not pulling anything else.”

  “But we need the tank to make it back to base. The two of us would run out of air in the rover before we could get there.”

  “Don’t worry, Boris, I’ll make a call to Geraldine,” Jenna said. “She’ll send us a new tank that can wait for us at the entrance to Sotra Patera. And until the replacement is here, nothing can happen to you two.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That the others will help us? Of course.”

  “No, that you can get a call through to her? We’re stuck more than a kilometer down in the deepest hole on Titan. Radio connections are difficult even when we can see the sky.”

  “Wait... I’ll try,” said Anna.

  Boris looked at his sister.

  She gave him a thumbs up and then slowly turned it so it was pointing down. “You’re right, Boris. I can’t get through. I’m sorry. But when they don’t receive an update from us, they’ll send help. I’m sure they were counting on communications to be cut off when we’re in the Patera, but they’ll start to worry by tomorrow morning if they still haven’t heard anything.”

  “I agree,” Geralt said. “So I think we should just go ahead and do the job we came to do. That will pass the time much quicker until help arrives.”

  His friend Geralt didn’t speak up much, but he always had something important to say when he did.

  “All right. Let’s go,” Boris said. “It’s only three more kilometers. We’ll leave the tank here and take the rover down with us. According to the radar, the slope is at most 30 degrees. It should be able to handle that, don’t you think?”

  “Sure. Piece of cake,” Anna said.

  “Okay then, let’s do it,” Jenna said. “We’ve got a ship waiting for us.”

  “Who said the ship would be here waiting for us?” Geralt asked.

  Boris stopped and shined his searchlight into a half-meter-wide crack in the ground. The team had split up. Jenna and Anna were searching the western part of the Patera, he and Geralt the eastern. Here at the bottom it looked much different than anything they had imagined. The Patera didn’t simply end in a hole. Over millions of years, ice flows had carved out a giant chamber at the bottom of the depression, its walls made of dirty ice.

  Geralt was standing in front of one of the ice walls and making scratch marks on it with a tool. “Quite hard,” he observed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m testing the material.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what researchers do. Who knows what we could use it for?”

  “So, what’s this ice made out of?”

  “That’s an interesting question. Most of it appears to be carbon dioxide ice.”

  “And that’s unusual?” Boris asked.

  “Yes and no,” Geralt replied. “Sotra Patera is a cryovolcano. Water ice comes out through it from the inside of the planet. The channels here probably reach 50 kilometers down into the ocean. The ice volcano acts, to some extent, like a pressure-relief valve for the ocean. It helps to balance out the pressures.”

  “So, there must be water ice all over here.”

  “Exactly. Dirty water ice, so to speak, contaminated with additives like ammonia, so the water stays a liquid much longer. But the walls of this cavern are made out of carbon dioxide ice.”

  “Which shouldn’t be here at all.”

  “That’s the problem. But I’ve got an explanation.”

  “Of course you do, Geralt. You’re a genius.”

  “Don’t make fun of me or I won’t tell you anything more.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. Now, a large part of Titan’s atmosphere consists of nitrogen, with a certain amount of carbon dioxide. The ice might be part of the atmosphere that’s become frozen down here.”

  “But carbon dioxide doesn’t freeze out of the air.”

  “Not currently, no. But maybe there were cold eras a long time ago during which it could. What we’ve found here might just be the remnants of an ice age long ago. I really am a lucky star.”

  “I think the saying’s ‘lucky dog,’ though.”

  “Star. I’m no dog, Boris.”

  “Oh, and I am, I guess? Does it have to be a self-reference? The saying really is ‘lucky dog.’ I would have thought you’d have known that. It’s practically ancient.”

  “Whatever.”

>   “So, why are you so lucky, anyway?”

  “I... There’s no knowledge of any ice ages in Titan’s past, according to our research records. I’ve discovered it. This layer of carbon dioxide ice was produced during the Jumilasson ice age. There, I’ve named it.”

  “Jumilasson ice time? You’re crazy.”

  “Ice age. Scientifically, that’s what they’re called. But it’s true, there’s ice here all the time. And ice ages are often named after their discoverers.”

  “And how does any of this help us?”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t, Boris.”

  Geralt turned toward him, shining his lamp straight into his face. Boris instinctively raised his hands in defense.

  “Sorry,” Geralt said. Then he turned to the left to perform some other test. Boris watched the small space-suited figure take an instrument out of his pocket, record a reading from it, turn to the right, and repeat the process.

  “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing there?”

  “Yes, but first promise that you’ll mention the Jumilasson ice age in your report.”

  “If it’s that important to you, then I will. Promise.”

  “Thanks. So, as long as we’ve been here, there haven’t been any ice ages.”

  “No, it’s never been especially cold.”

  “Let me explain. The ship we’re looking for came here over five thousand orbital periods ago. The last ice age, however, was probably five million orbital periods ago. So where should we be looking for the ship?”

  “Somewhere above this layer here.”

  “Yes, so does that help us now? The direction we’re headed keeps going down.” Geralt gestured to the left. “And in this direction, the ground goes up. I think we need to go in that direction. The ship can’t be deeper than this layer,” the archeologist said, pointing to the right.

  “Anna and Jenna already went in that direction,” Boris said. The thought made him strangely happy, even though it significantly reduced his chance of finding the ship himself.