The Titan Probe Read online

  He would not miss this job in the future. His days here were numbered. Two years from now he would have all day to devote to his books. Life could be so simple. Back then, over 40 years ago, such a life would have seemed a nightmare to him. Remaining all the time at the same place? How deadly boring! By now he understood that his location had nothing to do with him being content. By using his books he traveled faster, more comfortably, and ultimately spent less money. What use was it to suffer the heat of summer in India or be bothered by the flies in the Australian outback? His books could take him anywhere.

  “Robert!” Mary really stretched the ‘o’ in his name. She was in total panic. He knew she could not stand tardiness. What an evil twist of fate that she has to suffer me, of all people. She would probably be happy when he retired two years from now. But of all the researchers who used to work at the Green Bank Observatory, only a few had decided to give up a scientific career when the research institution had been turned into a science park for budgetary reasons. For over 30 years Robert had been a glorified tour guide, if even that, explaining to school classes how a radio telescope worked. Now, shortly after Christmas, it was peak season, as the boarding schools wanted to offer something to students staying behind during the short break.

  I really should get going. Robert opened the door of the small break room and entered the lobby, which had been given the grandiose name Science Center. But now it looked rather like the entrance of a cheap movie theater. There was a smell of popcorn that could be bought from a vending machine. The wallpaper was peeling, the display cases had not been fixed for ten years—there was no money for renovations.

  Mary waved at him. She was sitting behind the information desk. She has short hair and a neutral face, neither beautiful nor ugly. When word got around that his wife had moved out, she had made obvious advances. I am still glad I never reacted to them. He did not even know whether she had a family, though it was hard to imagine.

  “Come, come,” she called, as if he was a little child, and then she smiled at him. A thought stabbed his heart. Mary probably wanted to have kids all her life. He did not know why that thought had occurred to him now, but it was so tangible it must be true. The idea made him so sad he had to rub his eyeballs. He thought of his own son, Martin, whom he had not seen for such a long time. Maybe now would be the time to forget the hurt and to call him. But he knew it was pretty much impossible, right now.

  “Watch out!” Mary’s warning reached him just in time. The automatic sliding door once again had not reacted to his presence. He managed to stop just in time to avoid banging against the glass.

  “Shit,” he said quietly. His wife had always scolded him when he used that word.

  Outside was the bus belonging to the Radio Astronomy Science Park. The chaperone stood at the door of the bus and took care that none of her charges left the vehicle. She had wrapped her coat tightly around herself. The wind was cold, even though the winter had been rather mild, with no snow so far. Inside the bus, Robert heard the level of noise typical of a school class, which he initially had hardly been able to stand. He had gotten used to the constant chatter a long time ago.

  “So, you are finally here,” the woman said to him. She was young, under 30, he estimated. Maybe an intern, or perhaps a young mother. Schools have to save money, too. So they send anyone on these trips who can be spared. He shook her hand and looked at the name tag on her blouse. Her name was also Mary. How practical!

  “Hi, Mary,” he said. “I am Robert, but you can call me Bob. Let me show you the dish.” He made a sign for the woman to get in and followed her up the short steps. She was wearing a gray, smooth skirt. Through it, he could see the outline of her panties. He bit his lips.

  The driver held out his hand, and he high-fived him. His name was Ricardo, and he was Hispanic. Robert had never seen him outside the bus. He almost seems to be living there. Mary claims he sometimes spends the night in it. Yet Ricardo had told him of his family, so he must have a real home.

  “Let’s go,” he said to the driver, picking up the microphone.

  December 27, 2046, Enceladus

  Marchenko turned around. The bottom of the crevasse measured about six by two meters. One side was vertical, the other one slanted. He had probably landed on the slant and been slowed down before hitting the ground.

  It was as dark as it would normally be on Earth two hours before sunrise. In a corner he saw something that looked like a pile of snow, as if someone had swept freshly fallen snow from the surface. He knew that at these temperatures, close to 200 degrees below zero, it could not be snow. Snow crystals required much higher temperatures. Could he build a kind of pedestal from this stuff? He stepped closer, bent down, and picked up a handful. He could feel the stinging cold even through the material of his suit. The crystals trickled from his palm like sand. He rubbed them between his thumb and index finger. They were also hard, like the sand on Earth. The substance was completely useless for his purposes.

  He noticed a dark hole at the other end of the crevasse. It appeared to be some kind of tunnel leading deeper down. Maybe this crevasse was connected to other ones. In times of strong geological activity, when Enceladus was particularly close to Saturn, water might rise up through this channel. On satellite images he had observed how the activity of ice volcanoes then increased as a result. Disappointingly, the tunnel was definitely too narrow for him and offered no way out.

  He turned around and looked at the wall of ice. It should be pitch black down here, like in a very dark cellar. He moved his head very close to the wall. A soft glow seemed to come from the ice. It reminded him of the phosphorescence of some plankton species on Earth, but he could not locate its source. He rubbed his hand across the ice. In spite of wearing a glove, it felt rough.

  Marchenko wondered how he would have solved this problem on Earth. He was never much of a mountaineer, but he once saw mountain climbers scale a narrow cleft by pressing arms and legs against opposite sides. He shook his head. This crevasse was too wide for that, and when he merely thought about raising his right arm, a jolt of pain shot through it.

  He did a rough calculation of how high he should be able to jump on this moon, although he had never been particularly good at mental arithmetic. He knew that the height of the jumps here depended on the gravity, which was only one-eightieth of that on Earth, but this did not mean he could jump 80 times as high. He should be able to jump up eight to ten meters, shouldn’t he? And how would his right arm react? He would have to risk it. As long as the pain was not strong enough to make him lose consciousness, he would reach his goal.

  Okay, then. He did not have enough space for a running start. Instead, he bent his knees, as much as the suit allowed, and then he put all the strength he could muster into his thighs and straightened his legs. He was flying! Marchenko was surprised at how easy it was. He held out his left arm to avoid colliding with the wall, but luckily, he soon reached surface level, flying close past the edge of the crevasse. And now? He wiggled his legs, but his suit still kept rising. He must have put a bit too much force into his jump. Marchenko felt panic rise in him, and a shiver ran down his spine.

  Just stay calm, Mitya. It often helped when he talked out loud to himself. "What goes up, must come down," and he was right. Physics was on his side. When he was a medical student he always hated physics because they were tortured with it during their basic coursework. Then, the laws of physics sent him battered motorcyclists to operate on. Now they were helping him. As long as he did not fly faster than the escape velocity, which would be more than 860 kilometers per hour, gravity would pull him back to the surface, and he would not impact harder than the force with which he had jumped up.

  His movement was already slowing down. The moon’s gravity decelerated him in slow motion and then took him in its arms again. He estimated he was about fifteen meters above ground level. Marchenko used this opportunity to look around. South of him the land was more cragged, crisscrossed by fissures and bi
zarre mountains. To the north, shorter structures predominated. This was where the lander must be located—or had been located, because he realized that he was probably all alone by now. He suppressed that disturbing thought because he had no use for fear. As he descended, he took aim to hit the edge of the crevasse rather than falling into it again.

  He slowly approached the ice. The illumination made the shadows appear extremely sharp, as if they could cut you on contact. Just before returning to the surface he stretched out his left leg. This little movement was just enough to make him bounce off, this time diagonally, so he landed across on the other rim of the crevasse. A bit of ice dust sprayed up.

  “Step Two completed. Well done, Marchenko,” he praised himself.

  He looked around. When his fellow astronauts had exited the lander, he had envied them for seeing what he could only witness via camera displays on board the ILSE spaceship. Now he could enjoy this majestic scene himself. Toward the east there seemed to be a huge, spherical mountain range. It was actually Saturn, the planet Enceladus orbited as a moon. Saturn appeared much larger than anything Marchenko had ever seen in the Earth’s sky, although he could not detect the famous rings. He knew they should be seen as a fine line, but the visor of his helmet still did not display such details. He could barely recognize the sun. Here, the sun seemed to be so small, so fragile compared to the giant planet, particularly with Saturn being so close to the horizon right now. The perspective appeared strange, since the horizon was much closer than he was used to on Earth. Right away, it was clear that the sphere of the moon was much smaller than on his home planet. The curve of Enceladus seemed to drop off right ahead of him, though this could have been an optical illusion.

  Marchenko lifted his left arm. Time to face reality. He was afraid to look at the display that would tell him how much time he had left to live.

  December 27, 2046, Earth

  The engine of the bus roared when the driver put it in reverse. Robert waited until the warning signal stopped beeping, cleared his throat and turned on the microphone. After introducing himself, he moved on to cover the most unpleasant part of this excursion—getting everyone to turn off their electronic devices.

  “As you saw in the short video, we are about to enter a protected area. Our radio dishes are able to receive very faint signals from space, but only under ideal circumstances. Electronics emit waves you cannot hear, but our radio telescopes definitely can.”

  That was the theory. In reality, there was nothing to be disturbed because no research had actually been performed at the Green Bank Observatory for some time. For a while, the radio telescopes were rented out to rich individuals who wanted to listen to space and maybe discover extraterrestrial signals. Unfortunately, space did not call. It remained silent, so the hobby researchers eventually gave up and invested their money in other pastimes.

  Robert hoped none of the school kids had paid much attention to the introductory video. Sometimes, though, these groups contained a know-it-all who pointed out this inconsistency: with no activity, what harm could having cell phones turned on do? Nevertheless, as an employee, Robert needed to follow the rules, and that was what he would say to such an objection.

  Actually, for him it was all about respect, but only those who knew these iron giants would understand this as well as he did. The antennas—the largest of which contained an active area with a diameter of 100 meters—deserved to be approached with an attitude of quiet reverence. Even if humans no longer analyzed their signals, these antennas were still listening more deeply into space and time than a humanoid brain could imagine. Radio astronomers were gazing at the edges of the universe and back into a moment shortly after the Big Bang. Robert still felt goosebumps when he imagined it.

  He realized now it had never been about having a flashy career when he studied astronomy and then specialized in radio astronomy. The hope of being able to occasionally open a young person's eyes to the miracles of space was the real reason he was still at the observatory. He successfully managed to do it with his son, who otherwise wouldn’t be where he was now. This was at least one solid achievement he could ascribe to his influence. Other than that, there was nothing he could really be proud of. Robert wondered why he was feeling so sentimental today.

  “Go on, turn off all devices.” The students complained, but they seemed to obey. Robert wondered whether he should take out the detector for electromagnetic frequencies from below the passenger seat, but it didn’t seem to be necessary to do so today. There did not appear to be a know-it-all on board this tour. He regretted it a bit, since it also indicated the interest of the students was generally low.

  Sometimes he got lucky on these tours, like last Thursday, when one young girl listened with gleaming eyes when he explained how planets developed. He remembered that look, which focuses both far away and inward. His son had been just as amazed when he had taken him as a six-year-old to the observatory for the first time. Since then there hadn’t been another opportunity, even though Robert had found out that his son had moved to the U.S. and was currently working for NASA.

  Robert was shocked, and quickly brought out of his reverie when the bus driver’s hand touched his thigh. Yes, I have a task here, he reminded himself. The bus was driving past the 85-foot dish of the GBI, the Green Bank Interferometer. He described to the students the dark heart of the Milky Way, the giant black hole Sagittarius A* in its center that had been identified by GBI in 1974.

  Shortly afterward they passed the Tatel Telescope, the observatory's first large dish. Its designer, Howard Tatel, was brash enough to use his wife’s fruit bowl as a model. Later, the legendary radio astronomer Frank Drake started to listen to possible signals from extraterrestrial civilizations here.

  “Does anyone here know the Drake equation?” No one raised a hand. Robert was disappointed.

  “Drake first presented it in 1961, here at the Green Bank Observatory. The equation allows you to calculate how many intelligent civilizations there are in the Milky Way.”

  “None. Einstein already said it.” The class laughed. The speaker was a slender boy of medium height wearing an old-fashioned tweed jacket. He appeared to be the science nerd of the class. Robert wondered why young people interested in topics beyond the mundane always appeared to be a bit off. According to his personal observations, this seemed to be more than a stereotype.

  “The equation contains too many unknowns,” Robert explained. “For instance, on average we don’t know for how long a civilization survives. Also, many aliens probably are not interested in establishing contact with others.”

  “Why shouldn’t they be interested? Wouldn’t every intelligent being want to know whether it is unique?” The boy was asking clever questions.

  “Perhaps they consider it a futile prospect. Even using optimistic assumptions, the average distance between civilizations would be 5,000 light years. If they sent a question, they would have to wait at least 10,000 years to get the answer. So this notion of contact is really impractical.” Robert hated his answer because it was at the same time so hopeless and so logical. Yet, the curious young man was not content.

  “What about the discoveries on Enceladus? What about life in the ocean there? The whole world is talking about it.”

  “Well…” Robert began, and then hesitated. “We still know too little about it. True, there appears to be life there, but it is probably too alien to be able to communicate with us. And it is unclear whether it is intelligent.”

  “Just a moment,” he then said. The bus stopped near a small parabolic antenna standing on a flat pedestal. “This is the Reber Observatory.”

  “It’s rather small.” A lanky girl spoke from one of the last rows.

  “Yes. Grote Reber, a radio engineer, built it himself in his backyard in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1937. The dish has a diameter of more than nine meters. He used it to discover many bright radio sources.”

  “Cool guy,” the nerd said. Robert did not have any time to respond to
these comments because they had just reached the big dish—the 100-meter radio telescope—which represented the high point of the tour. Everyone got off the bus, even though the wind had increased and it was starting to rain. Robert stood by the bus and shivered, since the microphone cable reached no further.

  “You are allowed to go up to the fence,” he said through the microphone. Most of the students saw this as a challenge.

  “Once upon a time this was the largest radio telescope in the world consisting of a single rotating antenna,” he explained. The nerd stayed next to him, as well as the lanky girl.

  “Those are a lot of qualifications,” the boy said.

  Robert smiled. “Yes, just like in advertising. There have been much larger antennas for a long time, but they cannot be rotated in any random direction.”

  “Does this mean that they can only observe a single point in the sky?”

  “No. First of all, they always see an entire area, and secondly, Earth rotates in all directions during its orbit.”

  “Sure,” the girl said. “Though the astronomer would have to be patient, then.”

  Robert nodded. “Some phenomena are so short-lived that we don’t want to see them in the radio spectrum at some later time, but in the here and now. In order to do this, you have to be able to rotate the antenna. I am going to show you later.”