Ben Bova - Titan

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.”

Gaeta 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.”