What does this obvious living layer consist of? he speculated. In the low-oxygen deep seas of Earth, I would assume it to be a colony of anaerobic algae. I wonder what it is here, 1.2 billion kilometers away from Earth. Perhaps it is primitive bacteria, or has it already evolved into multicellular organisms?
The first results showed up on the screen. These were snapshots because the instrument could not arrange the cells properly. Instead, it just took photos at various wavelengths and resolutions. Afterward, the software attempted to filter images belonging to the same object and combine them into an overall picture. The longer the analyzer worked, the more precise its results would become.
After the first photos, however, Martin slumped in his seat. His expectations had been too high. The structures he saw on the screen were clear and precise. This is not a good sign, since it means they are simple, even more so than I had hoped. Life has not used the long time in the ocean to refine its structure. Maybe evolution has not worked here because there is no competition, no conflict for survival, ending with the extinction of the inferior species, he speculated. The species of primitive cells Martin saw on the monitor might be billions of years old, but it probably had changed little from its ancestors.
He sat up again and scolded himself. We have made a groundbreaking discovery. Life is not a lucky accident. Even in our own solar system, it has developed twice under very different circumstances. The universe must be teeming with life.
Age of Questions, Line
There is:
The I.
The thoughts.
The ages.
The ages are not, they come and go. They are recorded in the Forest of Columns.
The First Age is the Age of Birth.
The Second Age is the Age of Struggle.
The Third Age is the Age of Peace and of the I.
The Fourth Age is the Age of Questions.
There is:
The doubts.
The waiting.
The curiosity of incomplete knowledge.
The pain.
The pain of the body and the pain of the questions.
December 20, 2046, Valkyrie
All of humanity wanted to congratulate them for their great discovery. Yesterday, Mission Control had transmitted greetings and congratulations from the U.S. President herself, the Chinese Prime Minister, the Russian Prime Minister, the German Chancellor, and the Japanese Emperor. Martin had avoided watching any of the news programs. I hope everything will die down by the time we return, so I will at least be able to go shopping in a supermarket without people bothering me. If not, I will have to volunteer for the next Mars mission.
He was tired. As the saying goes, you should ‘quit while you’re ahead.’ Arriving back in Earth orbit, then eight weeks’ vacation in the Caribbean with Jiaying—what a wonderful dream. He calculated it. I should be pretty well-off by the time I get home. I will have more than two years’ worth of salary in my account, more money than I have ever seen in one place.
However, the journey was not over yet. Mission Control had developed a systematic research program for him. When all is said and done, they do not want anyone to say they might have overlooked things, he surmised. We will collect so much data that researchers can use it to write dissertations for years to come. Even the analysis of the ELF data had taken years, though the amount of data gathered during this mission would be 50 times larger. Afterward, humanity would know the Enceladus Ocean inside and out, and there would be lots of new questions.
Valkyrie, Francesca explained to him, would systematically search a rectangle of 40 by 80 kilometers at the bottom of the Enceladus Ocean. They would take samples and classify them in order to generate as complete a picture as possible. Afterward, they would look at the water column above it. Temperature, pressure, salinity, pH value, currents—they would measure whatever could be measured. The Deep Space link of the spaceship would be pushed to the limits of its transmission capacity.
For Martin, this mostly meant boredom. The vehicle drove itself, and Francesca would supervise it. While her job did not sound particularly exciting, Martin’s task would be limited to watching her do this. Once a day he was supposed to talk for half an hour about the fascination of space, which was supposed to attract more viewers. Martin yawned.
“Look, back there,” Francesca said, tapping Martin on the shoulder. He opened his eyes.
“What?”
“On the radar image. At the range limit,” she directed.
The horizon, which otherwise was a straight line, seemed scraggly there.
Unsure, he asked, “What is that? An interference?”
“I already checked it while you were still asleep. That is no artifact. It is real.”
“Where are we? And where is that?”
“We have covered 35 kilometers. The radar echo is about 70 kilometers north-northeast,” Francesca said.
“That is not part of our plan, is it?”
“No.”
“Yet we are going there anyway, aren’t we?” Martin guessed.
“Sure, what did you expect?” Francesca placed her hands on her hips.
“Should I ask?”
“It is better to ask for forgiveness… and remember the dark sediment in the Tiger Stripes. We haven’t seen that again since we landed.”
Francesca is right. We will still have enough time to finish the research plan, he presumed, checking the position of Valkyrie. The pilot had already changed course. She seems as bored as I am.
Two hours later, scanning in all wavelengths, they came upon a formation of pillars. The Forest of Columns, Martin thought, and then wondered how that name, quite apt, had entered his mind.
“Looks like stalagmites,” Francesca observed.
Martin shook his head. “But they are immersed. How is the liquid supposed to drop down onto them so the sediments grow upward?”
The closer they came, the more obvious it was these columns had nothing in common with the limestone formations in terrestrial caves. They were perfectly round and did not taper upward. The instruments informed them that the columns had a height between two and ten meters.
“An enchanted forest,” Francesca said and gaped at the display. It was a grandiose scene, aloof and exotic.
“These are definitely not sediments,” Martin said. “The instruments show no currents that would regularly deposit material here, and even if there were, the columns would not have grown into perfect cylinders.”