James Cambias - A Darkling Sea

The base itself was nothing but a squat foam-covered cylinder, about the size of a lander, standing on a cleared patch of ice on the floor of the crevasse. Clumped nearby were a power plant, an antenna mast, some machinery for making rocket fuel out of ice, and the gaping hole of the shaft down through the ice to the ocean beneath. Some distance off was the plasma furnace for waste disposal, which had made a huge ugly stain of soot on the ice for kilometers around. The whole place was surrounded by a litter of construction equipment and scrap.

Another suited human met them at the airlock, and made some gestures of greeting before they all went inside. According to the glyphs on the hatch, the airlock was built to hold four humans, so two humans and a pair of Sholen made a very tight fit.

Within the habitat it was cramped, overheated, and foul-smelling. The crew consisted of three male humans and one female, and all were dressed in very dirty suit liners. A male with a hairless head stepped forward and extended his hand in a gesture of greeting.

“Welcome to Shackleton. I’m Claudio Castaverde, director of operations up here. We have a room for the two of you, if you need to rest.”

“Very kind of you, but we rested in the lander,” said Gishora. He spoke the most common Terran language far more fluently than Tizhos could. “We must go down to the main base as soon as we can.”

“The elevator is on its way up now. There’s nobody aboard so it will be here in just a few hours. In the meantime, if you’d like something to eat or drink, we were just about to have dinner. Would you like to join us?”

Tizhos felt her mouth grow dry with disgust at the thought of eating in such a foul-smelling place, but Gishora was a hardened diplomat. “Thank you very much. That would give us great pleasure.”

They did not actually eat any of the Terran food. Tizhos knew that Sholen could safely eat the starches and sugars, but she also knew the humans had a dangerous habit of flavoring everything with animal proteins that would almost certainly cause an allergic reaction.

So Tizhos and Gishora dined on the food they had brought along. Their rations were simple balls of blended carbohydrates and lipids, but each was flavored with a mixture of aromatics, pheromones, and psychoactives, and the balls were coded to be eaten in sequence. The meal began with subtle vegetable tastes mixed with stimulants, progressed to strong spices and disinhibitors to improve the conversation, and wound up with aphrodisiacs and a mild narcotic with a blend of pickled fruit flavors. Tizhos felt mellow and well-disposed toward everyone afterward.

While they ate, Gishora and the Terrans discussed the scientific research they were conducting. The hairless one, Castaverde, was studying the ionosphere and magnetic fields of Ilmatar, and how they interacted with the more powerful fields of the giant planet it orbited. The female was using a series of laser reflectors to measure the movement of the ice plates. The other two males were in charge of maintaining the base and the elevator. All four of them seemed desperately eager to show the two Sholen around. Tizhos had to suffer through a trip out to view the waste incinerator, and tried to stand patiently as the female human went on endlessly about the accursed thing.

“The shell’s just hull plating we scavenged from some of the cargo drop pods. Inside it’s all lined with native basalt. Satoshi and I spent two weeks in the crawler dragging a sled full of rock back from the nearest outcrop. There’s a pure oxygen feed and a hydrogen plasma torch; anything organic gets completely burned up in minutes. No contamination.”

“But it produces much soot,” said Tizhos. “One can see it from orbit.”

The female made a gesture with her shoulders. “The original plan was just to dump all the waste on a piece of rocky surface somewhere and let it sit there for the next billion years. But you guys wanted us to burn everything. Burning stuff makes ashes.”

“You could take it all away from this world.”

“Are you kidding?” her voice was shrill over the radio. “That’s what, ten kilos of fuel for each kilo of garbage? We’re already mining as much ice as you guys will let us.”

Tizhos looked over at the station and saw that the elevator capsule was just emerging from the top of the shaft.

“I have enjoyed speaking with you, but I see the elevator coming up. I need to go now.”

Despite their best efforts to make the humans hurry, it was more than an hour before Gishora and Tizhos could board the elevator, and then more delays as their gear was loaded and two of the Terrans checked out all the onboard systems. So when the ice wall began sliding upward past the tiny porthole in the hatch, Tizhos felt a tremendous sense of relief.

The elevator was a little self-contained habitat unit, almost as big as the surface station. It had four human-sized beds, a table, a little waste-disposal unit, and a cabinet stocked with dehydrated Terran foods. The two Sholen had their own foodmaker and distilled water to drink, and plenty of time for conversation. The descent took thirty-six hours to give their bodies time to adjust to the pressure.

Tizhos actually enjoyed the elevator descent. She and Gishora had complete freedom to talk about their work—Ilmatar and the Terrans. It was almost like being a student again. Tizhos could simply enjoy the company of another smart, curious Sholen for the better part of three Shalina days. Their sexual play became more than just an official duty.

She briefed him about the planet and its inhabitants. “Of course,” she cautioned, “most of what we know about Ilmatar comes from the Terrans. They may well have learned more since my last opportunity to read their findings.”

“I must ask you to compare what you have read with what we see here,” said Gishora. “Note any differences. If you find anything the Terrans have concealed, let me know at once.”

“I believe you said we did not come here to judge.”

“True. But we must strive for accuracy and impartiality. Just as I cautioned against too much suspicion, we should also avoid trusting them too much.”

“I understand.”

“Please proceed,” said Gishora.

Tizhos called up an image on her terminal. “The moon Ilmatar orbits the giant planet the humans call Ukko. I believe these names derive from the mythology of a human culture exterminated long ago by a more aggressive one. Ilmatar fits a standard model for giant planet moons far outside the life zone of the central star: a rocky core covered by a thick layer of water ice. Diameter of 6,400 kilometers. Tidal heating has liquified the interior, creating an ocean two kilometers deep, buried under a crust of ice a kilometer thick.”

“Hence this long ride down. I understand the physical details. Tell me about the things which live here.”

“Life on Ilmatar resembles similar ecosystems on other subglacial ocean moons. We know of three others. On all of them, volcanic vents on the seafloor serve as energy sources, giving off warm water and carbon or sulfur compounds. The native organisms make use of both heat gradients and chemical energy.”

“Tell me how such a low-energy system can support intelligent beings.”

“The Ilmatarans descend—according to human scientists—from smaller species which live as scavengers and predators around energetic vents. At some point the Ilmatarans became intelligent enough to cultivate chemosynthetic organisms, and eventually developed a sophisticated analog of agriculture, using stone pipes and channels to conserve and distribute energyrich vent water.”

“What sort of communities do they form?”

“Again, the information I have only includes archaeological data and some images taken from a distance. It appears that the Ilmatarans live in small communities, each centered on an active vent. They have some sort of division of labor, as the humans have observed individuals performing distinct tasks consistently.”