Then Urbain’s nostrils twitched. He smelled coffee and saw that someone had brought in an urn and a hot plate. The next thing they’ll do is to bring in a microwave to heat their snacks.
“Attention!” he called. “Hear me.”
All heads turned toward him. Many of them were bleary-eyed from having worked night and day, fruitlessly.
“Check Alpha’s propulsion system,” Urbain commanded.
“It was checked just a few—”
“Check it again,” he commanded. “I want to make certain that we can start the drive engines without a problem.”
“You’re going to move it?”
Stepping briskly down the central aisle between the rows of consoles, Urbain rubbed his hands together with real enthusiasm.
“The creature will not speak to us where she now sits, so we will move her. Perhaps a little action will stir her to better behavior.”
Most of the engineers looked at him with obvious disbelief. One of the women said in a stage whisper, “If it won’t work, kick it.”
“The French touch,” someone else muttered.
“I am Quebecois,” Urbain snapped, “and my sense of hearing is quite acute.”
Several of the engineers chuckled guardedly. Urbain thought that doing something, anything, was better than sitting around like a collection of mourners at a funeral.
The icy crust that capped the frigid sea was breaking against the base of the bluffs; the dark methane slush that covered the ice chunks was slowly washed off them and sank below the surface of the inky sea, revealing choppy waves driven by the turgid dark wind. Titan Alpha sat on the flat, slightly undulating tableland at the top of the bluffs, unmoving. Then it received a fresh command.
Review propulsion system checklist.
Automatically the command was routed through the central computer’s master program. The command impinged on the primary restriction, but only marginally so. Reviewing its decision tree, the master program found that the command was allowable, so the computer ran through the propulsion system checklist. The task took four nanoseconds.
Repeat: Review propulsion system checklist
The computer repeated the checklist review, as commanded.
Thirty billion nanoseconds elapsed.
Report results of propulsion system checklist review.
This command was also routed through the central computer’s logic circuitry. The primary restriction blared clearly, so the command was shunted to a subroutine for deletion.
Repeat: Report results of propulsion system checklist review.
The command was again routed as before, the primary restriction was again detected, and the command again shunted.
Six hundred and forty-nine billion nanoseconds elapsed. During that time Titan Alpha’s central computer anticipated a command to activate the propulsion system, so instead of merely reviewing the checklist it tested the diagnostic program and found that the propulsion system was fully capable of activation and operation within allowable parameters.
No command came. The earlier inhibited commands were erased from the shunt circuit, as per the master program’s normal routine.
“It must be the main antenna downlink,” Urbain muttered, bending over the shoulder of the propulsion engineer, who was seated at her console. He noticed a bead of perspiration trickling down the side of her face. She was wearing a flowery perfume of some sort, but the pungent scent of fear, of utter frustration, was overpowering it.
He straightened up and realized that his back ached from bending over for so long. Walking stiffly, he made his way along the row of consoles and stopped at the main communications post. He realized that every eye was on him. The control center was absolutely still; no one moved, even the displays on the screens seemed frozen.
“You are receiving telemetry from the comm system?” he asked the communications engineer in a quiet voice brittle with tension.
“Yes, sir,” the engineer said, looking up over his shoulder at Urbain. “The tracking beacon is coming through, too, loud and clear.”
“Very good. Run the diagnostics program, if you please.”
“For the whole comm system?”
Urbain thought a moment. “No. Merely the receiving antennas. Primary and both backups.”
The man pecked at his keyboard. Urbain noticed that his fingers were thick, blunt, the nails ragged and chewed down to the quick. The display screen flickered through long lists of alphanumerics faster than his eye could follow.
At last the engineer cleared his throat and said, “Diagnostics completed. All receiving antennas fully operational.”
“Good,” said Urbain. “Now I wish to send a very specific command to—”
“Hey!” a voice yelled. “It’s moving!”
Without being told to, the communications man punched up the satellite view of Titan with the blinking red dot showing where Alpha’s beacon was located. The red pinpoint was inching across the screen.
“It’s moving,” Urbain breathed.
“Looks that way,” said the engineer.
Raising his voice to an angry shout, Urbain demanded, “Who gave the command to move Alpha?”
No one answered.
“Well? Which of you did it?”
Dead silence.
The comm engineer cleared his throat again, louder than before, and jabbed a forefinger at one of his secondary screens. “Sir, here’s the communications log. No one’s sent any command of any kind to the lander since you ordered it to report its review of the propulsion system checklist.” He tapped his screen for emphasis, then added in a smaller voice, “Nobody’s said a word to the beast.”
My god, Urbain thought, staring at the screen. It’s moving on its own volition.
Titan Alpha’s central computer was programmed to anticipate certain problems and, within carefully preset limits, to act on its own. Even though commands from the control center usually spanned the distance between habitat Goddard and the surface of Titan in less than six billion nanoseconds there was always the possibility of some immediate emergency—a sudden fault line opening in the icy ground, an avalanche, an electrical storm shorting out communications—that would require action before the human controllers in Goddard could react. Then, too, there were periods when the habitat was on the opposite side of Saturn and commands had to be relayed to the lander through the communications satellites placed in equilateral positions around the ringed planet. There could be a lag of almost a hundred billion nanoseconds under those conditions.
Based on the latest commands reported by the main receiving antenna, Alpha’s central computer anticipated that the propulsion system was to be activated. But such a command ran directly counter to the master program’s primary restriction. The computer pondered this conundrum for more than a thousand nanoseconds, then used its decision-tree logic program to resolve the problem.
Activate propulsion engines.
Engage tractor treads.
Automatically, the navigation and reconnaissance programs also activated. The central computer immediately became aware that the edge of the bluff loomed three thousand, seven hundred and twelve centimeters ahead.