Titan (30 page)

Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Titan

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12 APRIL 2096: ENCOUNTER

H
ere we go,” said Pancho, trying consciously to keep her tongue from between her teeth. She’d lacerated her tongue badly once in the crash landing of a Clippership, back in her early astronaut days. For years afterward she’d carried a protective mouthpiece with her when she flew, but seldom remembered to put it in place when she needed it.

Now she stood at the controls of the transfer craft and watched through the observation port in front of her as she dived the little vehicle through the Cassini gap between the A and B rings.

She could see glittering bits of ice racing toward her, pinging the craft’s hull, hitting the port’s transparent glassteel.

“Some gap,” she said. “Lots of crap in here.”

Wanamaker, standing beside her, paid no attention. He was in contact with Gaeta, who was just entering the B ring.

“Starting to ice up,” Gaeta was saying. “It’s getting tough to move my arms and legs.”

Wanamaker glanced at the readouts on the panel at his side. “Internal temperature holding okay,” he said.

“So far,” answered Gaeta.

Pancho wished she had viewports on the sides of the cramped cockpit, or cameras out there, at least. She wanted to see more than just the straight-ahead view. She wanted to see the rings and their ragged edges as she dove the spacecraft in between them. She wanted to be able to yell “Yahoo” as she dived through the plane of the rings. As it was, she couldn’t see the rings, couldn’t even see the huge glowing curve of Saturn’s massive bulk. Nothing but star-flecked darkness out there and swarms of ice particles zooming at her. It was like driving in the dark of night through a raging blizzard.

Gaeta had two contradictory worries wrestling in the back of his head. Will I be in the ring long enough to get a decent sampling for Nadia? Will I be in the ring so long that these
fregado
ring particles will cover me with ice the way they did last time? Damned near killed me.

The icy ring was spread out before him now, like a vast field of glittering snow stretching as far as he could see. Off in the distance to his right was a smear of darker stuff, like dust or carbon soot. Coming up fast, in spite of the retro burn. Glancing at the displays splashed in color along the bottom of his visor, he saw that all the suit’s functions were still in the green, except that when he tried to move his arms or legs the servomotors went into the red. Encased in ice, he realized.

Then he saw a rime of ice along the edge of his visor. And it was growing visibly.

“Visor’s getting coated,” he said into his helmet microphone.

Wanamaker immediately replied, “Life support functions still in the green.”

Gaeta nodded inside the helmet. “So far.”

“Antennas still functioning.”

“Hey, Jake, you trying to cheer me up?”

“Just doing my job, buddy.”

“The suit’s external temperature is dropping,” Gaeta reported.

“Copy. It’s within allowable limits.”

“So far.”

“You’ll only be in the ring for three minutes.”

“Gotta get there first.” He saw that his visor was almost completely covered with ice now.

“Hang tight, buddy. We’re on course to pick you up at the rendezvous point.”

“Right.”

“You should be entering the ring’s main body now.”

A flash of light startled Gaeta. “What the hell was that?”

Pancho called out, “Hey, we got a power surge here. Auxiliary power’s on—wait, hang on, main power’s back on line.”

“You okay, Manny?” Wanamaker asked.

“Got a flash, like all my displays flared up at once.”

“Now?”

“Looks normal now. Everything in here looks normal. But life support’s on battery instead of the main power bus.”

“What the hell happened?” Wanamaker groused.

“I’m entering the ring.”

Squinting through the ice that now covered almost his entire visor, Gaeta saw nothing but glittering, swirling ice particles. It was like being in a blizzard, alone in an overpowering storm of gleaming white. Except that there was no wind, no noise at all.

With a sudden clutch of fear he realized that the air fans inside his suit had gone silent.

Wanamaker saw the red light glare on his display panel.

“Air circulation system,” he muttered.

Pancho glanced over. “He can live without ’em.”

“For how long?” Wanamaker challenged.

“Long enough,” said Pancho, pecking at her master keypad.

“My air fans are down.” Gaeta’s voice sounded calm, but both Pancho and Wanamaker knew this was trouble.

“Try restarting them,” Wanamaker said.

“Did that. No joy.”

“Hang tight,” Pancho called out. “I’m adjusting our pickup point. We’ll fish you out in eight minutes …” She looked at the readout on the control panel. “Make that seven minutes, forty seconds.”

“You’ll be getting too close to the ring,” Gaeta objected.

“Shut up and save your air,” said Pancho. “We’ll getcha before you even start to cough.”

“What could make the air fans go out?” Wanamaker asked her.

Pancho shrugged. “Murphy’s Law.”

“Maybe that power surge?”

“How can he have a power surge the same instant that we do?” Pancho demanded. “Besides, it was all over in a second or two. No damage.”

“No damage to us,” Wanamaker corrected.

When in trouble, check all systems, Gaeta told himself. Life support is on battery backup, and the
chingado
fans have crapped out. No air circulation means the oxygen level drops and cee-oh-two builds up.

Power failure? Everything else is working okay. He felt beads of perspiration dotting his upper lip. The suit’s master computer has a decision tree, Gaeta reminded himself. When electrical power goes critical it starts to shut down systems in order of their importance. I can get along without the fans for ten, maybe twenty minutes. Next thing the computer’ll shut down is the exterior sensors. If the power system’s failing.

His visor was completely caked with ice now. And, sure enough, the displays from the suit’s exterior sensors went dark.
Mierda,
Gaeta grumbled to himself. Now I’m flying blind.

“Don’t fire up your propulsion jets,” Pancho’s voice warned. “Your beacon just went out so we hafta track you by dead reckoning.”

“Okay. No jets,” Gaeta confirmed, glad that the comm system was still working. Stay off my antennas, little guys, he said silently to the ring creatures. Gremlins, he thought. Little beasties that screw up your machinery.

The clock display still worked, he saw. The green LCD numerals showed that he should be in the midst of the ring. Two more minutes, at most, and I’ll be out. Then Pancho can pick me up. If she can find me.

Holly pushed through the crowd of well-wishers who gathered around her after the debate closed. Mostly women. Almost entirely women, except for Wilmot and a roundish, unhappy-looking man standing beside Mrs. Yañez: her husband, Holly recalled. A much bigger throng was swarming about Eberly, including Dr. Urbain and his wife. Eberly basked in their approval, smiling warmly, shaking hands.

The lights flickered briefly; everyone looked up to the ceiling, but before anyone could say a word the lights steadied again.

Eberly waved a hand. “We’re working on these power flips,” he said in a strong, authoritarian voice. “I’ve just replaced the
chief of maintenance and put a new man on the job. He’ll get to the bottom of the problem.”

The people around him nodded, but several glanced toward the ceiling uneasily.

“Excuse me,” Holly said over and over as she wormed through the crowd. “I’ve got to see Dr. Wunderly.”

Breaking free of the pack at last, Holly sprinted up the auditorium’s central aisle and raced outside, then headed toward Wunderly’s office.

Nadia’s got to know how Eberly’s skunked us, she told herself. She must be in her office, monitoring Manny’s mission into the rings.

The office building was dark but unlocked. Holly raced up the stairs to the second floor and saw a glimmer of light down a corridor of shoulder-high partitions. Yep, she said to herself, that’s Nadia’s rabbit hole.

Wunderly was staring at her desktop screen so intently she jumped halfway out of her chair when Holly came into her cubicle, saying, “They want to mine the rings, Nadia!”

“Manny’s in trouble,” Wunderly said. “Pancho’s got to fish him out of there as soon as she can.”

12 APRIL 2096: RINGSIDE PICKUP

C
an you see him on the radar?” Wanamaker asked, standing tensely beside Pancho in the spacecraft’s tight little cockpit.

“With all that backscatter from the rings? Only chance we got is gettin’ a Doppler fix on him.”

Wanamaker nodded and pecked at the control board’s central display screen. It showed a schematic of Gaeta’s trajectory and their own craft’s course. The two lines intersected neatly, well below the plane of the rings.

“That’s ancient history,” Pancho said, jabbing a finger at the display. “We’ve gotta pick him up a lot sooner’n that.”

“But that will take us toward the ring,” said Wanamaker.

“Yup. We’re in for a helluva ride, Jake.”

Holly stared at Wunderly’s screen.

“Pancho’s going to pick up Manny closer to the ring? Isn’t that dangerous?”

In the light from the display screen, Wunderly’s heart-shaped face looked ashen. “It’s worse than that, Holly. The course she’s on now will take her right into the ring itself.”

“But she’s not supposed to go into the ring!”

“She’s doing it. Otherwise she can’t pick up Manny soon enough. He’ll suffocate inside his suit.”

For the first time, Holly realized that Pancho was risking her own life. She could get killed! Holly said to herself.

“Can we talk to her?”

Wunderly hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “Don’t distract her, Holly. She’s going to have her hands full in a minute or so.”

Wanamaker peered at the radar display. “There!” He pointed to a smeared-out blip moving against the scintillating background. “That must be him!”

“Hey Manny,” Pancho called into the control panel’s built-in microphone. “You outta the ring yet?”

“Can’t see a frickin’ thing,” Gaeta’s voice answered. “Visor’s iced over and external sensors are out. I oughtta be out, according to the timeline.”

Turning to Wanamaker, Pancho commanded, “Jake, slave the forward camera to the radar and put it on max magnification.”

With a nod, Wanamaker played his fingers across the keyboard. The main display screen showed an expanse of glittering white ring particles.

“There,” Pancho said, pointing to a tiny oblong object moving across the field of view. “That’s gotta be him.”

“Wish we had a better fix on him.”

“I can eyeball it,” Pancho said, pecking at the controls.

A surge of thrust made them sway in their floor loops. The figure in the telescopic camera’s view grew larger, took on shape. They could see arms and legs now.

“He must be encrusted with ice,” Wanamaker muttered.

“You better get into a suit and go to the cargo bay,” said Pancho.

“Right.”

Wanamaker ducked through the cockpit hatch and pulled one of the nanofabric pressure suits from the narrow closet built into the bulkhead. He wriggled his arms and legs into it, a tendril of apprehension worming through him as he pulled the hood up over his head. Space suits should be big, bulky things, Wanamaker thought. This nanosuit looks like a plastic raincoat. But Pancho had used one, back on the Moon. And anyone who could afford it was switching to the nanofabric suits. Unlike the older pressurized space suits, a nanosuit could be put on in seconds and provided better protection against vacuum than the heavy hard suits Wanamaker was accustomed to.

Still feeling uneasy despite his attempts to reassure himself, Wanamaker floated weightlessly to the cargo hold and sealed the hatch behind him. The bay was a metal shell not much bigger than the back of a midsize van, empty except for the man-tall cryogenic freezer that would hold the sample boxes Gaeta would bring back with him.

Wanamaker knew he could operate the airlock from where he was and stay safely inside the bay. But Manny’s going to need all the help he can get, he told himself. Pancho’s good, but she won’t be able to match velocity vectors exactly.

So he pulled an air bottle from the bulkhead rack, slipped it over his shoulders and plugged it in to the collar of the nanosuit. Then he rolled the visor over his face and sealed it to the collar; it was like pressing a Velcro seal shut. The hood inflated into a fishbowl shape as air from the bottle filled it.

“You ready to open the airlock?” Pancho’s voice came through the hood’s built-in speaker.

“Opening airlock,” Wanamaker answered, leaning his nanogloved palm against the control panel.

Okay, sailor, he said to himself. Time to be a hero.

“What’s she doing?” Holly asked, her insides quivering with anxiety.

Wunderly tapped on her touchscreen and the display changed to show a real-time image of Saturn with two hair-thin lines arcing across it.

“The red line is Manny,” she said, pointing. “He’s just coming out of the ring now, if he’s still on schedule.”

“’Kay,” said Holly.

“This green line is Pancho. She maneuvering the spacecraft to pick up Manny here, where the two lines intersect.”

“That’s practically in the ring!”

Wunderly nodded. “Pancho’s velocity is going to push her right back into the ring and out the top side—if she doesn’t hit something big enough to damage the ship.”

“What are the chances that she’d get hit?”

“Pretty damned good,” Wunderly said somberly. “Most of the ring particles are tiny, like snowflakes or pebbles coated with ice. But at the velocity Pancho’s going, even a pebble can have the force of an iceberg.”

Standing alone in the cockpit, Pancho could see through the observation port that the ring was rushing toward her. It’s gonna be a rough ride, she told herself, snuggling her feet deeper into the plastic loops that anchored her to the deck.

She saw in the telltale lights on the control board that the cargo bay’s airlock was open.

“Jake, you outside?”

Wanamaker’s voice replied tightly, “I’m in the airlock. Outer hatch is open to vacuum.”

“You tethered?”

“Two tethers. One for me and one for Manny.”

“Get ready. We’re gettin’ close.”

“I don’t see him.”

“You will.” Pancho kissed the maneuvering thruster control with a fingertip. Easy does it, she told herself. No big moves. No sudden jerks.

Hovering at the lip of the airlock hatch, Wanamaker felt the slight surge of thrust. He had to half-close his eyes against the dazzling glare of Saturn’s rings. Close enough to touch, he said
to himself. Hell, we’ll touch them plenty in another few minutes.

“You see him?” Pancho asked.

“Not ye—wait! There he is!” He saw the figure of Gaeta’s massive suit, arms and legs jutting out stiffly. “He’s coated with ice, all right.”

“I can’t see a shittin’ thing,” Gaeta announced, sounding more annoyed than frightened.

“It’s okay, Manny,” Wanamaker called. “I can see you. I’m coming out to get you.”

“Wait!” Pancho yelled. “Lemme pull in a smidge closer.”

Gaeta’s figure grew slightly, then steadied in Wanamaker’s view.

“Okay, that’s as good as I can get it,” said Pancho.

Wanamaker judged Gaeta was about fifty meters outside the hatch, moving slowly across his field of view. The tether in his hand was fifty meters long, he knew. No time to get another tether and connect the two. This is going to be close.

He took a deep breath and launched himself out of the airlock into empty space, forgetting that all that stood between him and dead vacuum was a monolayer of nanomachine fabric.

Gaeta looked like an ancient mummy, gliding past him, moving out of reach. Wanamaker unhooked the tether clipped to his waist and snapped it onto the end of the tether he held in his hands. Gripping the doubled tether as tightly as life itself, he floated out to Gaeta’s ice-coated figure and wrapped the free end of the tether around the chest of the suit.

“Don’t you have any attachment points on your damned suit?” Wanamaker grumbled.

The doubled tether pulled taut. But held.

“Under the ice,” Gaeta replied, then coughed.

Not daring to let go of the tether, Wanamaker held it firmly in place around Gaeta’s chest, under his arms, then locked its end with a click his hands could feel but that he couldn’t hear because they were in vacuum. For an instant he looked out and saw that they were floating in the middle of emptiness, Saturn’s huge striped bulk and its brilliant rings hanging above them, nothing but the infinite star-filled space below. Wanamaker swallowed hard and felt bile burning in his throat.

“Okay,” he muttered, “here we go.” He started pulling the two of them back to the spacecraft’s airlock, hand over hand along the tether.

“I still can’t see a damned thing,” Gaeta mumbled.

“It’s okay, Manny. I’ve got you. We’re getting there.” Damned slowly, Wanamaker thought.

“You got him?” Pancho called.

“Got him,” Wanamaker answered, puffing from exertion. “We’re coming back to the airlock.”

“Better make it snappy. We’re headin’ back into the ring.”