Well, thought Duncan, I’ve got nothing more to lose. It can only go uphill from here. He plunged into his prepared speech.
“The history of my world goes back little more than halfway to the event we are all celebrating next month. The first manned ship touched down on Titan in 2015-but the first permanent base wasn’t established there until considerably later-2046. Even then, it was only a scientific observation post, with the crews rotating back to Earth every few years. There was no thought, in those days, of a selfcontained colony that might eventually develop its own culture, just as happened on this continent. In any case, the twenty-first century was too busy dealing with Mars and the Moon to have the energy, or the resources, for activities farther afield.”
Could that have been a yawn he spotted there, near the back of the hall?
Surely not so soon! He was being morbidly sensitive; that sea of hats
was getting 138 him down. Most of the faces beneath them seemed to be reasonably attentive…. But how to make these sleek and elegant matrons -not one of whom, probably, had ever been farther than the Moon-understand the harsh realities of his distant world? It was a challenge, and that was something that no Makenzie could ever resist.
“You may wonder why anyone would want to settle down in a place where the temperature never rises above a hundred below zero, where the atmosphere is poisoned by methane and ammonia, and the sun’s so feeble that you can’t detect its heat when it shines full on your face. Well, I won’t pretend that Titan is an atractive tourist resort-though we have some tourists, believe it or not. But it does have certain unique advantages, which is why it’s become important in human affairs.
“First of all, it’s the only place, outside the Earth, where a man can move around on the surface without a full spacesuit. That may surprise your after what I’ve just said about the conditions there! I don’t deny that we need protection, but it’s much less than required on the Moon, or even on
Mars. The atmosphere is so dense it allows us to breathe with simple oxygen masks, though we have to be extremely careful to avoid any leaks. If you’ve ever smelled ammonia, you’ll know why. And lightweight thermosuits can cope with the temperature, except in very bad weather.
“Having an atmosphere-even a poisonous one! makes life easier in dozens of ways. It means that we can use aircraft for long-distance transportation.
It protects us from meteorites-not that there are many out there-and from the temperature extremes that a completely airless world would have. And, most important of all-we’ve got an atmosphere we can burn, and use as a source of energy. “It,s just the opposite of the way things are on Earth. Here, you burn hydrogen compounds, and -the atmosphere supplies the oxygen. On Titan, we have to provide the oxygen, and we burn that in the hydrogen atmosphere. But the final
result is the same-heat and energy, to warm ourselves and drive our vehicles “That hydrogen-rich atmosphere is Titan’s greatest asset, and the reason men settled there in the first place. For without hydrogen, our spaceships cannot operate. Our chemical rockets burn it, and our fusion rockets—er-fuse it. Hydrogen is the key to the Solar System.
“And there are only two places where it’s easily obtainable. One is right here—in the oceans of Earth. But it’s expensive, lifting it out into space against the huge gravity field of your world-the one that’s keeping me pinned to this chair right now.”
Duncan paused hopefully, and got a few encouraging smiles.
“The other place is Titan. It’s a filling station, if you like, halfway to the stars. And because of its low gravity, we can export hydrogen cheaply, to anywhere in the Solar System, using robot tankers carrying up to ten thousand tons. Without us, space travel would be at least four times as expensive as it is now, and interplanetary commerce would be crippled.
“And how we get that hydrogen is interesting. We’ve been called ‘sky miners’ because of the way we take it out of the atmosphere. Specialized aircraft’ramscoops’-fly at high altitude and ever-increasing velocity, collecting hydrogen and liquefying it, then jumping up to orbit when they have a full load. There they rendezvous with the space tankers, deliver the goods, and go back into the atmosphere for more. They stay up for weeks on end, and land only when it’s time for servicing, or a change of crew.”
Better not overdo the technicalities, Duncan told himself. It was a pity, but he’d be wise to omit the most dramatic part of the whole operation-the fall down to Saturn after the robot tanker had escaped from Titan, and the hairpin loop around the giant planet taking advantage of its gravitational field to launch the precious payload to the customer who was waiting one or two years in the future. And he certainly couldn’t do justice to the most spectacular trip in the Solar System-the Saturn sleigh ride as it had been aptly christened by one of
the few men who had 140 raced across the thousands of kilometers of spinning ice that formed the rings.
Duncan bravely resisted these temptations. He had best stick to history and politics-even though, in this case, both were largely by-product of technology.
“One could make a very interesting comparison,” he continued, “between the settlement of Titan and the opening up of this continent, three or four hundred years earlier. I’m sure it took the same kind of pioneering spirit, and in our case we’re lucky because we have films and tapes and cassettes of the whole period. More than that-some of our pioneers are still around, ready to reminisce at the drop of a hat. In fact, quicker than that, because hats drop slowly on Titan….”
That was rather neat, Duncan told himself, though it was undoubtedly inspired by the view in front of him. Why did they wear the damn things indoors? Obviously, they were trying to outdo each other. Most of these creations were not merely useless; they looked as if they would take off in the slightest wind.
A flicker of movement caught Duncan’s eye. I don’t believe it, he thought.
Then he stole another quick glance, hoping his interest would be unobserved.
Either he had taken leave of his senses, which was an acceptable working hypothesis, or there was a live fish swimming around in the third row. It was orbiting in a tiny crystal globe, surrounded by a tasteful. display of corals and seashells, on the head of an intense, middle-aged lady who, unluckily, was staring straight at him with popeyed concentration.
Duncan gulped, gave a sickly smile, and stumbled on. He tried to push to the back of his mind the baffling problem of the fish’s life-support system. If he stopped to worry about that, he would be tripping over his tongue in no time at all. Where was he? Oh, back with the pioneers, difficult though it was to focus on them in this lavishly decorated and slightly overheated room.
“I’m sure many of you have read Professor Prescott’s famous book With Axe and Laser. A Study of 141 Two Frontiers. Though he draws his parallels between America and Mercury, everything that he says is also applicable to Titan.
“As I recall, Prescott argues that Man’s conquest of the wilderness on this planet was -based on three things: the axe, the plow, and fire. He uses these symbolically rather than literally; the axe stands for all tools, the plow for agriculture, and fire for all forms of power generation.
“The axe cut down the forests, shaped homes and furniture. More refined tools manufactured all the other necessities of civilized living, from cups and saucers to aircraft and computers.
“The axe wasn’t much use on the Moon, or Mercury-or Titan. What took its place was the power laser. That was the tool that carved out our homes and, later, cities. And it opened up the mineral resources, buried kilometers down in the rocks.