Titan

29 December 2095: Titan Alpha

If a machine could feel pain, Titan Alpha would be in agony. A maelstrom of commands was bombarding its communications program, commands that it could not execute because they all conflicted with the primary restriction. Worse than that, Alpha’s sensors were accumulating data that according to the normal protocols, should be routed to the uplink antenna. But that too was prohibited by the primary restriction.

So Alpha inched along, its massive treads sinking through the thin ground cover of methane slush and grinding the ice beneath, leaving a double trail of cleat marks that were as alien to this smog-shrouded world as an invasion of Martian war machines would be on Earth.

For hundreds of billions of nanoseconds Alpha’s master program searched its logic tree for a way out of this dilemma. Impossible to comply with commands. Impossible to uplink sensor data. The master program ran through all its protocols, all its inhibitory directives, all its subroutines and sub-subroutines. At last it came to a decision.

Deactivate downlink antennas.

Deactivate tracking beacon.

Deactivate telemetry uplink.

Maintain sensor inputs.

Store sensor inputs.

Change course forty-five degrees.

Maintain forward speed.

The cacophony of commands flooding its downlink antennas disappeared. The antennas went silent. Unhindered now by the contradictions between the incoming commands and its primary restriction, Titan Alpha trundled slowly across the icy landscape, gathering data in peace.

The digital clock next to the bed read 09:24 but Urbain was still in bed, trying to get back to sleep after a long frustrating night of watching Habib struggle to find a fault in Alpha’s programming. The man found nothing. Of course, Urbain thought. How could he? There is nothing wrong with the programming; no errors, no mistakes. Whatever is wrong with Alpha is a physical defect, perhaps a design flaw.

Jeanmarie was tiptoeing in the kitchen, trying to make as little noise as possible while preparing breakfast. Urbain kept his eyes closed, but he could hear an occasional clang of a skillet or the ping of the microwave even through the bedroom door that Jeanmarie had shut so quietly.

He ignored the phone when it buzzed, heard Jeanmarie’s voice answering it although he could not make out her words.

Then the bedroom door slid open and Urbain knew he was not to get any more sleep.

“It’s the control center,” she said, her voice low. “They say it’s urgent.”

Urbain sat up in bed, made a sigh to show that he was being put upon, and told the phone to make the connection. “Voice only,” he added sternly.

“Dr. Urbain?” Sure enough, it was the voice of one of the young women on his engineering staff.

“I am indisposed,” he said. “What is so important that you interrupt my rest?”

“It …” The woman’s voice quavered slightly. “It’s turned off its tracking beacon.”

“Turned off … ?”

“And the telemetry. It’s gone invisible, sir. We can’t track it. We don’t know where it is or where it’s heading.”

Strangely, Urbain felt neither anger nor fear. Instead, a form of admiration welled up inside him. Alpha is striking out on her own, he told himself. My creation is behaving in ways we never suspected she could perform.

But his admiration was short-lived. Alpha must be found, he thought. I can’t have her wandering blindly about the surface of Titan. It’s too dangerous. She might destroy herself.

He saw Jeanmarie standing at the bedroom doorway, watching him, both hands on her lips, eyes wide, waiting for him to explode.

Instead, he said with icy calm to the blank phone screen, “I will be down to the center in ten minutes. Please have the entire staff present. We must find our wandering creature. And quickly.”

Nadia Wunderly knew it was pointless to try to get Urbain’s attention, let alone his help.

“He’s all wrapped up on that landing vehicle of his,” she said morosely to Kris Cardenas.

Wunderly had come to the nanotech lab to get Cardenas’s help again. She followed a few paces behind as Cardenas went about her work, moving from the bulky gray metal tubing of the magnetic resonance force microscope to the boxlike assembly apparatus sitting atop one of the lab’s benches. Off in the far corner of the lab Raoul Tavalera sat at a console, intently staring at its display screen, pointedly ignoring the two women to show them he wasn’t listening to their conversation.

Despite her intense need for Cardenas’s assistance, or maybe because of it, Wunderly found herself mentally comparing herself to the other woman. Kris is so beautiful, Wunderly thought. Even in a lab smock she looks young and vital. No wonder Manny tossed me aside and went for her. Wunderly didn’t need a mirror to convince herself that she was a short, dumpy woman with a bad hair job, dressed in a dark brown blouse and slacks to hide her thickset figure. But I’m getting better, she told herself. I’m slimming down and I’ve got a date for New Year’s Eve and I’m down another five hundred grams this morning. She could almost feel the nanomachines inside her body chewing away the fat, slimming and strengthening her figure.

None of that matters, she told herself, even though she knew that it did. It mattered a lot. To her.

As Cardenas adjusted knobs on the assembly box’s control plate, she said, “Urbain doesn’t care about the rings, Nadia. You know that. Especially not now. Not with his machine gone silent on him.”

“It’s worse than that,” Wunderly said to her back.

Cardenas glanced over her shoulder. “Oh?”

“The probe has taken off. On its own. It started moving late yesterday and this morning they lost its tracking beacon.”

That made Cardenas turn around to face her. “You mean they don’t know where it is?”

Nodding, Wunderly replied, “It’s gone off on its own and they can’t find it.”

“Urbain must be going nuts.”

Unable to suppress a vengeful grin, Wunderly said, “They’re all going crazy.”

Cardenas went to the three-legged stool by the counter and perched on it. “He asked me if I could work up a set of nanos to build a new receiving antenna for the machine.”

“He’ll have to find it before anybody can fix it,” Wunderly said, still grinning.

“Ouch,” Cardenas said. Then, “So what can I do for you, Nadia?”

Wunderly detected the slight emphasis on you. She liked Kris, even though Manny Gaeta had left her to take up with Cardenas. Maybe it’s true love between them, after all, she thought. I should be so lucky.

“I need to get Manny to go into the rings again,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, trying not to let Kris see how much this meant to her.

Cardenas’s cornflower blue eyes snapped. “The first time damn near killed him.”

“I know, but we’re prepared better now. We understand about the ring creatures. We can protect Manny against them.”

“Nadia, if you understood the ring creatures that well you wouldn’t need Manny to go back, would you?”

“I need samples,” Wunderly answered sharply. “I need to get some of those bugs into a lab where we can study them. Most of the big decision makers in the ICU don’t even believe they exist! They don’t believe there are living creatures in Saturn’s rings.”

“Couldn’t you send in a robot probe for the sampling mission?” Cardenas asked.

Feeling impatience simmering inside her, Wunderly replied, “And how do I get a robot probe built? How can I even get one of the standard probes modified for sampling when Urbain won’t even talk to me?”

“I see.”

“Manny could do it,” Wunderly urged. “He’s got his suit. I can get Timoshenko or one of the other engineers to ferry him out to the rings on one of the transfer rockets.”

“Manny had a team of technicians to run the suit. He wasn’t a one-man show.”

“And they’ve left the habitat, I know,” Wunderly admitted. “Gone back to Earth.”

Cardenas spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “So there we are, Nadia. Manny can’t help you, I’m afraid.”

Wunderly bit back the reply she wanted to make: Of course you won’t let him help me. You’re too afraid he might get hurt. Or killed.

Instead she merely said, “I understand,” her voice low, her head drooping.

“I’m sorry, Nadia. I wish there were something I could do.”

“I understand,” Wunderly repeated. She turned and walked swiftly to the door, leaving the lab before her anger burst out and she said things she’d regret later.

As Wunderly closed the door behind her, Cardenas was surprised to find herself thinking, Does she want to get Manny killed? Is she angry with him for leaving her? Maybe unconsciously, Cardenas decided. She couldn’t believe Wunderly would deliberately want to hurt Manny or anyone else.

Tavalera sauntered over to her, his long horsy face looking glum as usual. “You know, I could work with Manny on that suit of his. I could be his technician.”

“No you couldn’t!” Cardenas snapped. “Manny’s not getting into that Frankenstein outfit of his ever again!”

Tavalera looked shocked at the vehemence of her reply. Cardenas felt shocked herself.