The crew had quite a few plans. Most of all, they wanted to remodel the garden. Sol would start to crawl around a few months from now, so he should have a safe playground. Mission Control had given permission for this. The resource usage was back in the normal range. Therefore, they would not need the eco module for growing food or generating oxygen. Nevertheless, there ought to be a few plants there, so the child grew up with a little bit of greenery. They would just have to make do without fresh food.
They had more time for their return trip than planned, as their stay on the surface had been shorter. This allowed for a bit of sightseeing in the solar system. The planned course would lead through several fly-by maneuvers around other moons of Saturn and then initially into a wide orbit around Jupiter. Space probes rarely came by here, so the scientists would be happy about every scrap of data the crew could transmit back to Earth.
For the time being, Francesca had taken over Marchenko’s cabin. She said she would manage and just needed some time.
Every day, the research community on Earth sent new questions the astronauts could not answer. The scientists would have liked them to have continued the mission. There appeared to be two factions among them. Some scientists could not believe what Martin and Francesca had reported from the depths of the ocean, and therefore they tried to find natural explanations in the dataset. The others were fascinated by the idea of communicating with an alien intelligence and pushed to build suitable devices for this, maybe giant antennas. Martin preferred the skeptics, for if they won out, the Enceladus Ocean would remain undisturbed for the foreseeable future. If someone realizes what this could mean for developing theories of physics, the alien intelligence might become a slave of humanity. After this intelligence had just accepted the idea of not being alone in the universe, it might not be able to withstand the arguing power of humans.
The media on Earth had turned all the astronauts into heroes, with Marchenko being far ahead. In his home country, he had even replaced Yuri Gagarin as the most famous space pioneer. One advantage of his being a dead hero was that he could not refuse when politicians of all stripes claimed him.
Jiaying had already been offered a high position in the Communist Party. She had asked for some time to think about it. Martin feared their return to Earth.
Hayato Masukoshi took care of Sol whenever he had the time for it. Martin had never seen him this happy—even when Sol cried for hours, Hayato never became impatient. It was a quiet, shy happiness that deeply touched Martin.
He himself ignored journalists’ requests for interviews. The PR department was very unhappy about that. Sometime during the next few days I will have to change my mind, he knew. Luckily, live interviews were impossible. That would give him sufficient time after each question to think about an answer.
Amy seemed quieter than she used to be. Martin suspected she felt that the events, particularly Marchenko’s death, were partially her fault. How could she have known what ideas he would come up with? Per standard procedure, NASA was already investigating if someone had made mistakes.
Amy and Hayato had invited them to dinner. There were six places set, but one stayed empty. Hayato held the child in his arms. The boy was sleeping.
“Dear colleagues… forget that. Dear friends,” she said. Hayato nodded.
“Today I would like to thank you for doing everything you could to support the mission, and, more importantly, to help each other. No one can take that away from us. Yet I would like to thank one person in particular.”
She looked at the empty chair.
“Marchenko, you cannot be with us today. But I hope you won’t think it arrogant, but rather an expression of our sincere gratitude if we also name our son after you, by giving him a second name. Dimitri Sol. I think that sounds great. And I hope we will soon be able to tell him about you, Mitya.”
Francesca sobbed, and Martin had a hard time suppressing his tears.
Author’s Note
Thank you for coming on this journey with me! I can’t tell you how much it means to have your support and your company on this long expedition to the outer regions of the solar system. And now, let’s sit down together and I’ll tell you a bit about myself.
When I was a child, I always wanted to become an astronaut. I’m sure I shared this wish with many of you. I was only three years old in 1969, so I don’t remember Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. However, I have a clear memory of the last ones in 1972. It was so cool seeing Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt – admittedly I didn’t recall their names and had to look them up – driving around on the moon in their Moon Buggy, even if it was on a black and white TV set. I really wanted to be next but unfortunately, theirs was the final mission of the Apollo program.
So I chose my second-favorite career path, to be a writer. After studying physics, I worked as a journalist for many years, writing about science and technology and, yes, space. The magazine I work for, not coincidentally, is called SPACE. I get to see contemporary space hardware, follow launches (my last one was from Vandenberg AFB in May 2018), and interview people involved with what has now become a viable industry.
But I want to write about more than today’s reality. Even if I never become an astronaut, I can imagine adventurous spaceflights and write them down—I am still hoping for Blue Origin to offer affordable tickets to space, and yes, I have already registered my desire with them. In the meantime, my kind of fun is to make my fiction as realistic as possible, based on current science – a degree in physics certainly helps – but also based on viable technology. Prognoses are hard, especially concerning the future, but I have a bit of hope that someday you might say, Wow, what’s happening now is pretty similar to what I read in that book! I can’t remember the name, but it was written by that Morris guy with the middle initial Q.
Of course, I hope that you will continue to travel with me. The story of the ILSE expedition is not over. The first three chapters of the next book are included below. As the story develops, the crew must overcome a much greater threat than on Enceladus. Titan, another moon of the ringed planet Saturn, ist most notable for its thick atmosphere. Did you ever try to fly? On Titan you could, and Francesca will even show you how to make your own wings. You can preorder The Titan Probe, the sequel to The Enceladus Mission, now for only $3.99 at Amazon by opening this link:
See you back in space!
If you register at hard-sf.com/subscribe I will inform you about future publications of my science fiction titles. As a bonus, I will send you the beautifully illustrated PDF version of The New Biography of Enceladus for free!
On my website at hard-sf.com you will also find interesting popular science news and articles about all those worlds afar that I’d love to have you visit with me.
I have to ask you one last thing, a big favor: If you liked this book, you would help me a lot if you could leave me a review so others can appreciate it as well. Just open this link:
Thank you so much!
