Ben Bova - Titan

Negroponte knocked softly on Urbain’s office door. When no one answered she rapped harder.

So much to tell him, she thought. But he’s so wrapped up with his Titan Alpha that nothing else matters to him.

Still no response.

“Dr. Urbain,” she called. “It’s Dr. Negroponte. I must speak to you. We’ve made an enormous discovery.”

Silence. She felt resentment simmering inside her. The pompous fool, she said to herself. So focused on that precious probe of his he doesn’t care if hell freezes over.

Angrily she slid the door open and strode into Urbain’s office. He sat slumped over his desk, his head in his arms, quite dead.

Gaeta 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.