Pew! Pew! - Sex, Guns, Spaceships... Oh My! Page 9

The boat is fifteen meters long, with a shallow draught, not too different from the diinghies of my youth, except for being three times larger so that it won’t sink in the methane. In my high-viz exosuit, I must look like a Lego man sailing a toy yacht. The carbon-fiber mainsail and jib bulge in the chthonic breeze. Two km from shore … time to come about. I shall now fix the tiller and drop Sammy Sampler6 into the cryogenic ooze.

  Later

  While watching Sammy’s tether unreel over the side, these lines came to me:

  O small, tough machine

  Diving into the cryogenic depths

  How like unto my soul

  When returning to Camp Squalor

  Emptyhanded

  Every bloody time.

  I have now hauled Sammy back to the surface. As predicted by the Muse, he has not a single molecule of H2O in his sample canisters. Damn it! My convection hypothesis does not depend on the existence of water ice at the bottom of Lake Eerie, but—no, it does. It does. If interior heat were seeping through the crust into the lake floor, it would bring some water with it, and that water would remain trapped under the methane.

  But there is convection. I have already measured statistically significant heat differentials at the surface and at 20 meters and 40 meters!

  I just haven’t been taking samples in the right places. Will go out again tomorrow.

  Even Later

  When I returned, Ramaswamy said, “So you didn’t fall in?”

  “Yes, I fell in,” I replied, to see if he would notice what an idiotic question that had been.

  “Kepler was looking for you.”

  “Why?” I said warily.

  “Something wrong with the microwave?” Ramaswamy shrugged.

  “There’s been something wrong with the microwave ever since Pushever nuked his wet socks.”

  It was a mistake to mention Pushever. Ramaswamy’s face took on that furtive malicious expression that only a Scot of Hindu extraction can pull off without looking like an investment banker7. For the next half hour, while I mended the microwave, he leaned against the counter by my side, bad-mouthing our Fearless Leader in a poisonous hissing whisper. I nodded in what I hoped was an offputting manner, although it failed to off-put Ramaswamy. What good does it do to complain about Pushever? He is not going anywhere. And neither are we. For another 302 days.

  4 It was thought necessary to publicize this expedition by inviting American schoolchildren to name the features of our neighborhood on Titan. Sadly, spelling does not seem to be their strong suit. For instance, our camp is located on the ‘Bear Plane.’

  5 Meteorologist. Utterly humorless. Eats natto, a major factor contributing to the unholy smell that hangs in the kitchen. Zoya cannot forgive him for successfully fermenting natto from rehydrated soybeans while she continues to fail with her yogurt.

  6 Sampling robot. Like the boat, he has a titanium skin. However, I named him after Pushever on account of his usefulness = nil.

  7 Ramaswamy’s field of endeavor: geology. His actual endeavors: occasionally stepping outside, picking up a rock, taking it into the cold lab, and smashing it with a hammer while pretending it is Pushever’s head.

  DAY 55

  I hate Pushever.

  Hate, hate, HATE him.

  I would like to shove him out the airlock in his “I Fucking Love Science” t-shirt and nut-huggers and watch him turn into a human popsicle. I would even lick the Pushever-popsicle, to demonstrate my utter contempt for him, if not for the risk of getting my tongue stuck to … no. No, no. That is too revolting an image to contemplate. Delete. Why doesn’t the delete command on this thing work anymore?

  Bad enough that he doles out computer time like an Irish granny doling out sweeties (“one for you, one for you, NONE for you you bold wee schemer …” and the one thus named and shamed must laugh with the rest).

  Bad enough that xenobiology is not. A. Field. Of. Science. It. Is. A. Punchline.

  There is no xenobiology.

  There is no biology anywhere in the solar system except on Earth.

  And I suspect that Samuel Pushever, Ph.D. if you please, knows this as well as anyone else, and that is why he has funnelled his considerable energies into power games and bureaucratic tyranny. Sometimes I even feel sorry for the man … but NOT TODAY.

  He pissed in my sample canister.

  This is neither guesswork, nor delirium tremens. (I never touch Ramaswamy’s hooch. How dare Pushever accuse me of being drunk? I haven’t been drunk since the night Marlene filed for divorce, in 2093.)

  Pushever collected his urine in a sample vial, took it outside, froze it, crushed the resulting pissicle, and placed some granules of this ammoniac ice into my canister, which I had left outside overnight.

  When I got around to analyzing the sample in the lab, to confirm Sammy Sampler’s quick dirty & dispiriting analysis, I discovered water. My shout of “Eureka!” was heard throughout Camp Squalor. Grinning, everyone crowded into the lab. They stood watching as I next discovered absorption lines for ammonia. They saw the truth dawn on me. Then they fell about laughing.

  At first I didn’t know which of them it was. That’s what hurts. I could not rule out a single one of them.

  Clarity came later, when I ran a DNA test on the sample, and cross-referenced it with our medical database.

  “Ha, ha, Pushever. You think you’re very funny, don’t you?” was all I said as I laid the results of the DNA test on the table before him, and dignifiedly withdrew, to the other side of the paper-thin wall that separates the kitchen from the cubicle I share with Ramaswamy.

  I can hear Pushever in the kitchen now, claiming that I faked the DNA results. And accusing me of drinking on the job. He will have them all believing him by supper-time.

  I’ll tell you one thing, Diary. I am finished with this lot. They can pick up their own mess, clean up their own spills, and plunger the toilet out themselves.

  Now Pushever is saying I should not have left the canister outside overnight. It was “sloppy” and “undisciplined” not to have done the analysis immediately.

  Technically, this is true.

  But since when does anyone ever tidy up after themselves on Titan? I am merely conforming, by gradual degrees, to the general lack of standards.

  DAY 58

  I have stuck to my guns.

  I have not mended Zoya’s hair dryer.

  Or taken the organic waste out to the rubbish dump.8

  Or replaced the filters in the CO2 scrubber.

  I have not inventoried or tidied the pantry, let alone the kitchen table, which now resembles Mt. Vesuvius, as each person in turn clears a small inlet for their plate or computer terminal by pushing the mess further into the center of the table, where it towers higher and higher in the low gravity, before collapsing in landslides c.f. Pompeii. The landslides in turn cascade onto the floor which is now ankle-deep in wrappers, packages, offprints, and unspeakable squelchy objects. 298 days from now they will unearth our bodies from this self-generated landfill. By that time our bodies will be frozen, as the increasing levels of dust and particles in the air are sure to clog the CO2 scrubber, killing us all in our sleep, whereupon the heating, which is controlled by motion sensors, will shut down.

  I expect I will lose my nerve and spring-clean the whole damn hab before this nightmare vision comes to pass. But for the time being, I am rather enjoying NOT being a timid loser.

  Pushever, sensing the encroaching chaos, has begun to wheedle at Kirsty, whose job it is, after all, to keep Camp Squalor habitable. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

  In the meantime I have been writing a lot of poetry. Strong emotions always make me break out in iambic pentameter. See attached file, The Dawn of Squalor: The Tragedy of 22nd-Century Humanity’s Dependence on Domestic Robots. Smart Houses, & Underpaid Service Professionals, Viewed from Titan, Where There Are None of The Above.

  Now it is time to do some science. Hey, nonny, no, off to get the boat out.

 
Later

  Disaster!

  Kepler foisted herself upon me as I was leaving Camp Squalor.

  How am I supposed to get any science done with her around?

  She is hunched in the other end of the boat looking like a despondent Lego man (red helmet; mine is green). I have disabled my exosuit’s transmitter so that she cannot hear me recording the following conversation which took place as she trailed after me to the lakeshore.

  Kepler: “God I’m so depressed.”

  Ben: “You could always go off and have an adventure.” (Hint, hint.)

  Kepler: “There is nothing to climb up, into, or around on this [bleeping] moon. My sponsors are very unhappy.”9

  Ben: “Mind that rock.”

  (Kepler trips and falls headlong. Titan’s micro-gravity makes walking in an exosuit quite tricky.)

  Kepler: “See how rusty I am?” (Picks self up. Totters to lakeshore. Wades in until liquid methane licks over boots.) “Maybe I should try diving.”

  Ben: “No! Please! Come back! Right now!”

  Kepler: “Why Ben, I never knew you cared.”

  Ben (giving thanks for exosuit visor which hides blush): “You’ve got to be careful, that’s all.”

  Kepler: “It’s just not in my nature to be careful.”

  Ben: “You’d better be careful in the boat …” (Cue long spiel about dangers of falling into methane.)

  Kepler: “Yeah uh huh.”

  Both get into boat, which now rides unpleasantly low at the gunwales. Hoist sail, head for new sampling location.

  Ben: “Here we are. Now I am going to drop Sa … er, my sampling drone into the lake.”

  Kepler: “I’ve been getting the feeling you’re a bit pissed off at me, Ben.”

  Ben: “Really?” (Do tell.)

  Kepler: “Maybe I’m wrong, but you just seem kind of … detached. I’m talking about the last few days. Like, this morning. I sat down for breakfast and you didn’t even say hi.”

  Ben (thinking back to breakfast; did not even see Kepler on account of towering height of Mt. Vesuvius in middle of table): “It’s not you, Kepler. It’s everything.”

  Kepler (laughs bitterly): “That’s like the new version of ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ huh?”

  Ben: “What?”

  Kepler: “Oh, forget it.”

  I still cannot work out what she was getting at. Am I supposed to have slighted her in some way? Was she not among those who stood in the door of the lab, eagerly witnessing my humiliation at Pushever’s hands?

  I do not understand women. Marlene and I married as undergraduates. I had no idea she was unhappy with our marriage until she left me for an associate professor of neurochemistry.

  Anyway, this illustrates what I am up against, Diary. Kepler has not even noticed the ongoing transformation of Camp Squalor into an indoor landfill, any more than the rest of them have.

  Well, Sammy’s line has stopped unreeling. I suppose I’d better pull him up …

  Huh?

  Oh!

  Sweet Jesus!

  Even Later

  I hardly know where to begin explaining what happened this afternoon.

  It has overturned the unexamined foundations of my life.

  If this were a movie, the director would have to switch to a jerky handheld camera effect to portray the turmoil of my emotions.

  There is an alien in the cold lab.10

  All right, let me try again.

  There is an alien in the cold lab, consuming the contents of the recycler’s feed bin.

  So far it has eaten plastipaper cups and plates, food wrappers, a broken stylus, and someone’s nylon panties with strawberries printed on the crotch (Kirsty?). Jesus, it just ate a broken sampling vial!

  Ramaswamy and I are taking turns peeking around the seismometer at it.

  The others hover outside the cold lab, saying things like “Is it really real?”

  Yes, my friends, it is real. I inadvertently hauled it out of Lake Eerie this afternoon.

  Here is what happened.

  As soon as I tried to haul up Sammy Sampler, I felt resistance on the line. I assumed Sammy must have got stuck down there, and hauled harder. The exosuit has powerful servos, so I did not realize what I was actually hauling up until it broke the surface of the methane and flopped and scrambled into the boat, nearly capsizing us.

  It is about four feet long. It has a rubbery brownish-black hide the color and, I suspect, the texture of an inner tyre. The best way I can describe its physiognomy is as follows: Imagine a six-flippered seal with the whiskers of a catfish and the yawn of a hippo. Now imagine that this monster contrives, against all probability, to look cute.

  Its foremost flippers have powerful claws. It is now using these to drag the feed bin out of the recycler and up-end it on the floor, the better to nosh on its contents.

  Ramaswamy is saying, “Look at that, look look.”

  Yes Rammy, I am looking.

  “It’s separating the rubbish.”

  I already did separate the rubbish. The stuff in there is several days old now, mind you.

  “Well, you didn’t do a very good job, did you? There’s food stuck to those plates. It’s scraping it off and making a neat pile of it. It doesn’t want to eat that stuff.”

  He is right.

  “All it wants to eat is …”

  “Plastic!” That was Pushever. He has come barging into the lab. “It evolved on a moon entirely lacking in water, but amply supplied with liquid hydrocarbons. Naturally, it eats plastic!”

  He has overcome his fear. He is dancing around the thing, photographing it from all angles.

  It eats plastic.

  This is not good news.

  All the instruments in the cold lab have some plastic components.

  Why did I bring it back with us? I should have hurled it overboard. The boat was close to sinking. But Kepler wrapped her exosuit’s arms around the monster and refused to let go.

  “I came to Titan for an adventure,” she told me defiantly. “Now an adventure has come to us! We’re keeping it!”

  So, like a fool, I let her bring it back here. And who is happiest of all with this turn of events? Why, Pushever, of course, the famous xenobiologist.

  What is it, Pushever?

  “It’s an alien, of course!” he exclaims in delight.

  We can’t just call it ‘the alien.’ It needs a name.

  Ramaswamy has a thick Scottish accent. “Wot?”

  8 Rubbish on Titan is a contentious topic. Before coming out here we were threatened with the direst penalties should we contaminate the pristine landscape with crumbs, feces, salad dressing, etc. Additionally, we have to recycle all non-organic waste into feedstock for the printer that makes plastipaper, spare parts, and so forth. So we are required to strictly separate organics and non-organics before taking both out to the cold lab and putting the former into the rubbish, the latter into the feed bin for the recycler. This is one of the root causes of the squalor: no one can be bothered with the separation bit. So they just sort of wander away, assuming someone else will do it. And I do, I do, because I notice it, and it drives me bananas. Correction. I did do it. Not any more! I am on strike! Unfortunately they have not noticed this, either.

  9 Kepler is a professional explorer. Her job is to look glamorous whilst risking her life. She is actually doing this every time she eats off that kitchen table but the subtle drama of Bacteria vs the Human Organism is lost on her sponsors.

  10 The cold lab is a sort of barn outside the hab where we keep the instruments that must be at ambient temperature, e.g. my rain gauge and mass spectrometer, Hiroto’s IR cameras, Ramaswamy’s laser reflectometer, Zoya’s seismometers, etc. It has walls and a roof. Titan's atmosphere is constantly dropping a thin waxy precipation on the surface of the moon from polymerization of methane in the atmosphere. The roof is necessary to keep the instuments clean of precipitation. It is also a good place to sit and compose poetry while wondering how long a y
ear can possibly last.

  DAY 59

  The alien is now semi-officially known as the Wot.

  It is still in the cold lab.

  I am worried that it may be eating my mass spectrometer.

  Kirsty is worried that it may be cold out there.

  I said to her, “It came out of a lake of liquid methane. It does not know the meaning of the word ‘cold.’”

  Pushever then took over the discussion in his usual manner akin to Cortés taking over Mexico.

  “This is a history-making, ground-breaking, just unbelievably important discovery.” That is how he talks. “We need to study the Wot, I mean the extraterrestrial entity, with appropriate academic rigor, and to facilitate our process planning, I have drawn up some guidelines. Just suggestions, of course.”

  He passed out sheets of recycled plastipaper. We were all sitting at the kitchen table at the same time, a historic occurrence. Furthermore we could all see each other because the table is now as clean as a pin.

  How did this happen? It was almost as unexpected as the Wot coming out of the lake. A while before our meeting, Pushever, in a spasm of wholly uncharacteristic humanity, took me aside and said, “Ben, I know how hard you have been working to ameliorate the side-effects of our absent-mindedness.” First time I knew he had even noticed. “Now, to thank you for your small but crucial role in this great discovery, allow me to take over. No ifs, ands, or buts! From now on, I shall be in charge of tidying up.”

  He kicked us all out of the kitchen, making a great production of his noble undertaking, and when he allowed us back in, the place was sparkling. It still is, apart from the vicinity of the microwave where congealing splashes of tomato sauce and ramen testify to the usual horrors of lunchtime with this gang.

  My emotions are complex. I am both grateful and resentful. Pushever has got the kitchen cleaner than I ever did.