Titan (44 page)

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Authors: Ben Bova

BOOK: Titan
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G
aeta sank to his knees as another beam of intense green light flashed past him.
“The
chingado
laser’s shooting at me!” he repeated. Goddam plug must’ve worked loose out of the mounting, he added silently. He realized his left arm was flaming with pain. The life-support displays were going crazy. The suit had been penetrated and the automatic safety system had sealed off the whole arm.
Down on all fours in the soupy black muck, he found that he couldn’t put any weight on his left arm. Must’ve broke my friggin’ arm, he groaned to himself. He dragged himself behind the return pod’s bulk. Maybe the laser can’t see me back here, he hoped. But I gotta climb up into the rig before I can light off. The whole arm was numb now. He could feel the pressure cuff squeezing tightly on his shoulder but below that, the arm was frozen.
“What is your situation?” Fritz sounded testy, alarmed.
“Climbing into the return pod.”
It took a painful effort, with only one working arm. Even in the relatively light gravity of Titan, and with the servomotors amplifying his muscular strength, the suit was desperately heavy. Sweat popped out on Gaeta’s brow, stinging his eyes. He could feel cold perspiration soaking his coveralls.
“Habib has turned off the laser,” Fritz said. “The lander is accepting commands from the control center now.”
“Glad … to hear it.” Gaeta puffed, as he climbed into the pod and slid his boots into the slots on its flooring. It was like standing in an open coffin, narrow, confined. Through the spattering rain Gaeta could see Alpha, a squat blocky shape sitting on the mushy ground. It looked alien, completely out of place.
“Ready for launch,” Gaeta said, his shoulder flaming with agony, his breath rasping. Without waiting for Fritz to confirm it, he reached for the toggle switch that would ignite the rocket engine. “Initiating launch sequence,” he said, grateful that the switch was on the side of his good arm.
Pancho looked across the cramped bridge of the transfer vessel at Wanamaker. “We’re gonna have company in half an hour,” she said.
“Less,” Wanamaker replied. “Timeline calls for rendezvous twenty-three minutes after he lifts off.”
“Hairsplitter,” Pancho sniffed. “I know—”
“Ms. Lane,” von Helmholtz’s voice crackled from the comm speaker. “This is an emergency situation.”
“Don’t I know it,” Pancho snapped. Then she had to wait nearly twelve seconds, fidgeting nervously and staring at Wanamaker.
“Gaeta’s air tank is leaking badly,” von Helmholtz replied at last. “Down on Titan’s surface, under the heavy pressure of the atmosphere, the leak is bad enough. Once he launches and gets into the vacuum of space the tank will degas in seconds.”
“So he’ll be breathin’ the air inside his suit,” Pancho said. “How much time’s he got?”
Again the agonizing time lag.
“No more than fifteen minutes,” von Helmholtz answered at last. “Closer to ten.”
“We’ll hafta pick him up soon’s he pops up above the atmosphere,” Pancho said.
Wanamaker nodded once, then ducked out into the passageway that connected with the cargo bay. And the suit lockers, Pancho realized. Sure enough, Jake came back with a nanosuit in his arms and began unfolding it.
“Yes,” von Helmholtz said. “It is imperative that you capture him at the earliest possible moment—without endangering the rendezvous itself, of course.”
“Sure,” Pancho said cheerily. “Grab him quick but make sure we don’t miss him. No sweat.”
Wanamaker was pulling on the nanosuit. Pancho grinned at
him and said, “Hurry up and take your time, that’s what that peckerwood wants.”
“Just like the Navy,” said Wanamaker. But the expression on his face was dead serious.
Standing in the coffinlike return pod, Gaeta thought that Berkowitz would want him to say something. But he had to conserve his air. Let ’em hear my heavy breathing, he decided. Zeke can fill in with all the commentary he wants.
The launch sequence for the pod was only thirty seconds long, yet it seemed like hours as Gaeta stood there, his arm as dead as a chunk of marble, chest heaving. Maybe the air tank’s already empty, he thought. He remembered that he’d switched off the computer’s voice. The computer control keypad was on the left side of the suit. I’m not gonna even try to move that arm, he told himself. Yet he tried to wiggle his fingers. A lance of pain shot up the arm.
Arm’s not completely dead yet, he told himself. That’s something. Now if the air holds out long enough … Why haven’t we lifted off? Maybe the launch sequencer’s malfunctioned, he thought. Or the rocket’s no-go. It’s more than thirty seconds now. Got to be. Maybe—
The rocket lit off with a thundering roar and the pod lurched into the air; the surge of thrust would have buckled Gaeta’s knees if he hadn’t been standing in the suit.
“Yahoo,” he said in a throaty whisper that hadn’t the faintest trace of excitement in it.
“How low can you go?” Wanamaker asked nervously as Pancho maneuvered the transfer craft closer to the orange-gray clouds of Titan.
She realized her tongue was between her teeth, a sure sign that she was keyed up. “Won every limbo contest I ever was in,” she answered.
“That isn’t a dance floor down there,” said Wanamaker.
“Don’t sweat it, Jake. Just get yourself zipped up in that suit and open up the cargo bay. We’re gonna pick up Manny just like a frog snaps up a fly.”
Wanamaker pulled the nanofiber hood over his head and sealed it the collar of his suit, thinking that a fly really doesn’t do so well when a frog snaps it up.
Gaeta realized he must have passed out briefly from the strain of the launch. One moment he was lifting off Titan’s surface, the next he was up above the clouds, in space, with nothing but the cold and distant stars around him.
He coughed. Air must be getting sour, he told himself. Sure, he realized, the tank would blow out completely once I’m in vacuum. I’m breathing the air inside the suit now.
“Hang in there, Manny.” Pancho’s voice, he recognized. “The cavalry’s chargin’ in to the rescue.”
Pancho stood alone on the bridge now that Wanamaker had gone to the cargo bay. She focused her attention on the display screen that showed Gaeta’s planned trajectory, a thin green curve that rose from the surface of Titan and bent into a graceful elliptical orbit around the frozen moon.
The red dot that revealed where Gaeta actually was showed that he was almost exactly on the nominal trajectory. Pod’s guidance system works pretty good, Pancho thought. Farther along the curving green line was a yellow dot that marked where the transfer craft was calculated to rendezvous with Gaeta. Too far, Pancho knew. He’ll be suffocating on his own carbon dioxide by then.
She had already instructed the guidance program to lay out a plot for the earliest possible intercept of Gaeta’s trajectory. Now she was flying that course, one hand on the T-shaped control yoke that projected from the instrument panel. She felt the craft yaw to the right, making her sway slightly in the plastic loops that held her soft-booted feet to the deck.
The cargo bay hatch’s monitor light turned red.
“Hatch is open.” Wanamaker’s voice came through the control panel’s speaker.
“You tethered?” Pancho called.
“Double length,” said Wanamaker. “Ready to go out on your command.”
I’m givin’ orders to an admiral! Pancho thought. Then she shook her head disapprovingly. No time for silly crap, she said to herself sternly. A man’s life is on the line.
Clicking the communications switch, she called, “Manny, how you doin’ out there?”
She heard him cough, then his voice came through, sounding weak, tired. “I’m on … a wing and a … prayer, kid.”
Despite it all Pancho grinned. Been a long time since anybody called me
kid
, she said to herself.
Timoshenko felt astoundingly calm as he slowly took off his space suit. It took a while to do it all alone. After making certain that the airlock was properly sealed he had walked to the lockers where the suits were stored. Sitting heavily on the bench in front of the lockers he had disconnected his life-support lines, lifted off his helmet, and took a deep double-lungful of the habitat’s air. After the canned air of the space suit it tasted like spring wine. Then he wormed out of the backpack. Next came the gloves, and after them the boots. All very calmly, carefully. He laid the items on the bench in a neat row.
I’m alive, he told himself. From now on I appreciate every moment of life, every breath I draw. Slowly he lifted the hard shell torso of the suit over his head and rested it against one of the lockers. Then he tugged off the leggings.
Once he had the entire suit properly stowed in its locker he took another deep breath, then started along the passageway that led back to the green and spacious interior of the habitat. It’s not a prison, he told himself. It’s my world. Heaven or hell, it’s the only world I have. My world. My life.
Her eyes fixed on the display screen, Pancho saw that the red dot representing Gaeta’s position and the blue dot showing the transfer craft’s position were overlapping. She was getting a good blip from his suit on the ship’s radar, too.
“You see him?” she asked Wanamaker.
“Not yet.”
She had left the comm line open, but Gaeta hadn’t said anything for the past few minutes.
“Manny,” she called. “Can you see us?”
No reply.
“Damn. He must be out cold by now.”
“I see him!” Wanamaker yelled. “He’s still in the pod.”
Pancho punched up the radar data and began to adjust the transfer craft’s velocity to match Gaeta’s.
“Too far to reach,” Wanamaker said, his voice high with strain.
“Manny,” Pancho called. “Can you maneuver?”
She thought she heard a moan. Maybe a cough. “Hang in there, pal,” she said. “We’ll come and getcha.”
With the deftness of a concert pianist Pancho worked the keyboard that controlled the craft’s maneuvering thrusters. Easy now, she told herself. No big moves. Jest a leetle touch …
“I think I can reach him!” Wanamaker sang out.
“Go for it, Jake,” she said. “I’ll nudge us closer while you’re out there.”
The mission control center was absolutely silent. Cardenas held her breath as she listened to Pancho’s radio chatter. Manny’s suit must be filled with carbon dioxide, she thought. No oxygen left. How long can he go without brain damage? Or dying?
Wanamaker glided out of the transfer craft’s airlock, unreeling the double length of tether that was clipped to the waist of his nanofiber spacesuit. In his mind he rehearsed the procedures for unlatching the grips that held Gaeta in the narrow confines of the escape pod.
“Hey, Manny,” he called. “How’re you doing?”
Nothing. Wanamaker didn’t even hear breathing in his earphones.
He reached the pod and unlocked the grips as swiftly as he could, then wrapped the tether under Gaeta’s shoulders and hauled his weightless bulk out of the pod.
“Just like we did at the rings,” he said to Gaeta. “We’ll have you back in the cargo bay in a few seconds.”
It seemed to take forever to work their way back to the transfer craft, and then even longer to close the airlock hatch and wait for the pumps to fill the cargo bay with air.
As soon as the keypad lights turned green, Wanamaker tore open the hatch at the rear of Gaeta’s suit. “Breathe, Manny,” he urged. “Take a good, deep breath.”
Reaching awkwardly inside the suit, Wanamaker wrapped his long arms around Gaeta’s chest and squeezed. Then he relaxed, then squeezed again. Three times. Four …
Gaeta gagged and coughed. Wanamaker pulled his arms out of the suit, banging both elbows painfully on the edges of the hatch. But he heard Gaeta sucking in air, wheezing, coughing.
“He’s alive, Pancho!” Wanamaker shouted happily. “Let’s get him back home.”
G
aeta opened his eyes slowly and saw that he was lying in a hospital bed. The sheets were crisp and smelled of disinfectant. Monitors beeped softly on the wall to his side.
His left arm was enclosed in a dark gray plastic sheath from shoulder to fingertips. And Kris Cardenas sat asleep in a chair at the foot of his bed, her head half-sunk in a thick pillow that was propped on her shoulder, her feet tucked under her. Even with her bright blue eyes closed and her golden hair tousled from sleep she looked beautiful.
I made it, Kris, he said silently to her. I came back to you. He smiled at her.
He yawned sleepily. Looking around, he saw that he was in a private room, bright pastel walls and even a window with sunshine streaming through. Nice, he thought. First-class treatment. Then he looked at Cardenas again. She looks like a kid, sleeping all curled up like that. A golden-haired angel. He sank back into sleep watching her.
Holly was sitting on the sofa in her living room beside Tavalera, running through the video images she intended to show at the final debate, scheduled for this election eve.
“I checked all the numbers with three different sets of astronomers on Earth and Selene,” Tavalera was saying. “Over the past hundred years an average of sixteen comets have come out of the Kuiper Belt each year. That’s comets bigger than five kilometers across.”
Studying the chart displayed on her smart wall, Holly said, “And they all enter the inner solar system?”
“Most do. Some get pulled in to Jupiter space, some to Saturn. Most swing through the inner system once and never come back—or at least their orbits are so long that they haven’t come back yet.”
“That’s a lot of water, though.”
“Billions of tons each year,” said Tavalera, almost smiling.
Holly closed her eyes briefly, then said, “So here’s my main points for tonight’s debate: One, the creatures in the rings are really nanomachines, built by aliens who-knows-when.”
“So we don’t dare start messing with them.”
Nodding, “Two, the power outages we’ve suffered were caused by electromagnetic surges from the nanocritters.”
“Maybe those surges are signals,” Tavalera coached. “Don’t forget that point.”
“F’sure. But who’re they signaling?”
“The aliens who planted ’em in the rings.”
“Or maybe they’re trying to get
our
attention?” Holly suggested.
Tavalera shrugged. “Either way, we can’t mine the rings. No way.”
“’Kay. Third point: We can still get rich by capturing comets and selling their water.”
“As long as
they
don’t have anything living in ’em,” Tavalera said, almost in a grumble.
“Astrobiologists have been studying comets for a century, almost,” Holly countered. “Lots of prebiotic chemicals, amino acids and stuff, but no living organisms.”
“So far.”
Holly tapped his chin with a forefinger. “We’ll examine each comet before we start chopping up its ice. If we find anything we’ll leave that one to the scientists. There’s plenty of others.”
He grasped her hand and looked into her eyes. “Holly, you’re gonna win this election, you know.”
“Maybe.”
“What happens to us when you do?”
She felt a lump in her throat. Swallowing hard, she replied, “I don’t know, Raoul. I guess what happens is up to you.”
When Gaeta opened his eyes again, he saw that Cardenas was standing at the foot of his bed smiling at him. A chubby, round-faced man in a white medical smock stood beside her; he was smiling, too.
“Good morning,” said the doctor. “I am Oswaldo Yañez, your attending physician.”
“Good morning,” Gaeta echoed. The gray plastic sheath still covered his arm, but he felt clear-headed, bright. No pain.
Cardenas stepped swiftly to the side of the bed, leaned over, and kissed him hard. Gaeta grasped her with his good arm and held her tightly.
“You’re going to be all right,” she said, half-whispering as she leaned against him. “I’ve got nanomachines repairing your arm. You’ll be fine in a few days.”
She pulled away from him at last as Yañez took a palm-sized remote from the pocket of his smock. An x-ray picture of Gaeta’s arm appeared on the wall to his right.
“The bone break is already healed,” the doctor said cheerfully, “with the help of Dr. Cardenas’s little devices. Repairing the damage caused by the freezing will take a while longer, however.”
“You saved my arm,” Gaeta said to her.
“I want you all in one piece, with all your parts working right.”
He grinned. “Me too.”
Yañez coughed politely. “Do you feel strong enough for visitors? There are several people outside.”
“Sure,” said Gaeta. “Send ’em in.”
Pancho and Jake Wanamaker trooped in, together with a darker-skinned guy with a trim little beard fringing his jawline.
“This is Da’ud Habib,” Pancho said, without any preliminaries. “He’s the one you were talkin’ with when you were down on Titan.”
“I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing Alpha back to life for us,” Habib said. Gaeta saw that the man’s eyes were glistening; he was on the verge of tears.
“I guess Urbain is pretty damned happy, huh?”
Habib stiffened slightly. “Dr. Urbain is dead.”
“Dead?”
“He suffered a massive coronary attack while you were working on the surface. By the time we found him in his office it was too late to do anything to help him.”
“Holy shit,” Gaeta said fervently.
“But you brought
Alpha
back to life,” Habib said. “The probe is under our control and sending streams of data. For that we owe you our eternal thanks.”
Impulsively Habib grabbed Gaeta’s right hand and pumped it. Then, as if embarrassed by his burst of emotion, he dropped Gaeta’s hand and stepped back from the bed.
Before anyone could think of something to say, Fritz von Helmholtz stepped into the little room, impeccably attired in a navy blue blazer over a golden yellow turtleneck.
“Hi, Fritz,” Gaeta said. “Join the party.”
Fritz smiled tightly and offered, “Apparently you are well on the road to recovery.”
“That’s what they tell me,” said Gaeta.
“Your mission to Titan was a great success financially. We will clear slightly more than fourteen million, even factoring in medical expenses.”
Gaeta laughed. “You frozen Popsicle. You were worried about me, admit it.”
“I knew you would survive,” Fritz said, unruffled. “And Dr. Cardenas’s nanomachines will repair your arm, no?”
Cardenas said, “Damned right.”
“So,” Fritz said. “The mission was a great success.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Pancho.
Still focusing on Gaeta, Fritz went on, “Requests are pouring in. We are doing preliminary studies of a trek across Mercury at perihelion.”
“Not me,” Gaeta said. “I’m retired.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Fritz, a tiny smile twitching his lips.
“For keeps,” said Gaeta, reaching for Cardenas with his good arm. “When you and the crew head back to Earth, take the suit with you. I’m finished with it.”
Cardenas squeezed his hand so hard Gaeta was surprised at the strength in her.

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