The pain.
The pain of the body.
The pain of not-being.
The fear.
The pain of fear.
There is:
The not-all.
The not-all separates the all and the I.
There no longer must be:
The umbilical cord.
There no longer will be:
The umbilical cord.
The not-I.
The pain.
The Age of Questions is the Age of Struggle, of Movement, of Time, of Curiosity, of Experience.
December 20, 2046, Valkyrie
“Martin, you should hurry up.” Francesca sounded calm, but there was a vibrato in her voice that scared him.
“What is going on?” he asked.
“Just get on board.”
Never had he tried to dock a suit and get out of it so quickly. He was still wearing his onesie when he hurried forward. At first sight, everything appeared to be normal.
“What happened?”
“We lost the laser,” Francesca said.
“What did you say?” Frantically, Martin looked around. “Everything looks normal. Neumaier to commander, come in.”
The loudspeakers remained silent.
The pilot explained, “I checked everything. Nothing is going out from here. But what is worse, nothing is coming in.”
“But everything looks so …” Martin said.
“I just turned off the searchlights when you came in. So we are barely using any energy right now,” Francesca said in a low voice. He saw that she clenched her fist and put it in her pocket.
“Maybe it’s just that the concentrator is out of alignment? Jiaying and Hayato are probably working on it already.”
“Then we should at least be able to create a connection to them, because the signal is being fed in separately. Yet everything is dead…” Her last word was deliberately slow and harsh.
Martin thought of Jiaying. How will she react to the fact that any contact with Valkyrie is lost?
He asked, “Do you have an idea…”
Francesca stood in front of Martin and placed her right hand on his shoulder.
“Martin, you know I did not want to be here,” she said insistently. “I really hope this is not the end. I hope you can get us out of here. You know the technology of Valkyrie. I am just the pilot.”
I would prefer to hear some comforting news, but she is right. Back then, when they voted, he had not been on her side. He wanted to continue the mission. If one of them was responsible for the situation they were in now, he was the one. Martin turned around and started working on the computer.
“Okay, Francesca, I checked the signal transit time. We have about six kilometers of cable hanging from the stern. Three are missing.”
“The cable must have some problem inside the ice layer. Maybe it’s a kink?”
“That’s impossible,” Martin replied. “It’s frozen solid in the ice. It would take a quake to bend it. But there are no tectonic forces here.”
Francesca sat down on her chair, placed her arms on the console, and put her head on them.
“And now what?”
Martin could not answer that question. At least not yet. First I have to check all options on the computer. “Really, Francesca, we’ll manage it, you’ll see.”
She heard him, but she didn’t answer. Not a single muscle moved in her face. He had never seen the pilot act like this. He cast his eyes downward and looked at his display. I will find a way out. If not… he was feeling hot and cold at the same time. I have to.
“We can forget about the direct way back. The battery would never be enough for drilling. But you know that better than I do.” Francesca now sat in front of her display, her hands in her lap. The light in the cockpit was dim. They were saving electrical energy whenever possible.
“We just have to find a different way.” Martin tried to express confidence. But I don’t sound very convincing, he himself noticed.
“Or we stay down here, explore the ocean as much as we can, and then we die. If we are frugal, we have eight or at most nine days before we run out of energy,” Francesca said grimly.
“We should be able to do something with the battery. Can we somehow send signals?” he asked.
“Maybe. If we find the end of the cable, we could use it to send signals. But if we get our fingers on it, could we patch it?” Francesca looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“A 5 MW cable? We could never fix it with on-board tools so that it would reach its full capacity, and we need that capacity. Unfortunately, it won’t be enough just to wrap duct tape around it.”
“So is it even worth looking for the cable?” she asked.
Martin shrugged his shoulders. “Good question. At least we could send a farewell message.”
Then silence, Martin was thinking.
Finally, he asked, “Approximately how long would it take us to reach the Tiger Stripes, Francesca?”
“Probably two or three days.”
“And if we go fast?”
“Then we get there earlier, but also die faster. The battery…”
Martin interrupted her, “Sure, we cannot outrun death.”
He remembered a book written long ago. He had found this ‘utopian novel,’ as they used to call it, on his great-grandfather’s bookshelf, A Journey to the Center of the Earth.
“Do you know Jules Verne?” he asked.
“I am sorry, never heard of him. Who was he?”
“A French author, from the 19th century.”
“So he’s been dead a long time,” Francesca said. “How could he help us get out of here?”
Martin explained, “In one of his books, a team of scientists enters a volcano. They discover a subterranean world, just like we did.”
Francesca looked at Martin in exasperation.
“Do you know how they finally leave the volcano?” he asked. “They go through a vent.” Martin answered his own question.
“Really? That’s rather unrealistic,” the pilot said. “You should know that, after taking all those courses in geology.”
“Yes, but we have a kind of cryovolcanism here. The Tiger Stripes connect the ocean with the surface. There must be a passage somewhere, otherwise ELF could not have discovered signs of life,” he said.
“How do you know how wide the passage is?” Francesca’s expression brightened a bit, but she was still not convinced.
“You’ve seen the root of one of the stripes. I don’t know anything more, although with smaller obstacles we could still use the drill jets. In the end, it could only be ice that’s in our way,” Martin said.
“And what do we do once we are on the surface? The lander can’t pick us up. We were supposed to come out in its immediate vicinity.”
“I guess then we have to walk,” he said.
“Almost 55 kilometers across a terrain full of crevasses, craters, and canyons? How long do you think that would take?” Francesca shook her head in dismay.
“I don’t think we can cover more than three kilometers per hour. The suits provide air for six hours, less in case of physical exertion. So we have to come up with an idea.”
“Then get started on having ideas.” Francesca laughed anxiously. Martin did not dare to get his hopes up, but for the sake of the pilot he ventured a smile.