He sat at the desk in his living room and called up the schematics for the superconducting radiation shield. The hair-thin wires of the superconductors carried enough electrical energy to light up St. Petersburg and Moscow combined. And maybe Minsk and Kiev, in the bargain, he told himself. A lot of energy. A lot of power.
The superconductors generated a magnetic field that enveloped the habitat’s outer shell. Just as Earth’s magnetosphere protects the planet from bombardment by energetic subatomic particles from the Sun and deep space, so did the habitat’s little magnetosphere protect the interior from the lethal levels of radiation outside. Timoshenko knew if that magnetic field failed, people inside the habitat would start dying right away. The habitat’s structure will shield us to some degree, he thought, but not enough to keep us all from frying.
As he called up numbers and traced failure-node scenarios, Timoshenko realized that if one of those slender superconducting wires was snapped by the impact of a meteor, the electrical energy it was carrying would suddenly be discharged into the habitat’s outer shell. It would be like a bomb! All that energy suddenly dumped into the metal could blow a hole right through the shell.
Of course that would be only the outer shell. There were all the habitat’s plumbing and hydraulics and electrical power systems in between the outer shell and the inner, where everyone lived. And the inner shell was landscaped with dirt and rocks formed into rolling hills and gentle swales. But, Timoshenko thought, if the outer shell is penetrated, if an explosion blasts it open, it’ll blow away some of the hydraulic systems with it. It could start a cascade of failures that will destroy the whole habitat within days, maybe hours.
The superconducting wires were armored, of course, and he saw bypass circuits in the schematics, but he wasn’t certain that they could switch the electrical current quickly enough to avoid an explosive failure.
Nodding to himself, he thought that this was his first order of business: Inspect those superconductors and their armor, then run tests to make certain that those bypass circuits could handle a sudden, catastrophic surge of energy. Otherwise, he thought, we’re all in deep shit.
He rubbed his eyes wearily and decided to start the inspection routine first thing in the morning. The habitat was equipped with camera-bearing robotic maintenance vehicles that trundled along the outer shell all the time. No need for me to go outside, he told himself. Unless the robots find a trouble spot.
As he began to prepare himself for bed, Timoshenko thought about sending another message to Katrina. Tell her the good news about my promotion. Let her know I’m doing all right.
He picked up his toothbrush and looked at himself in the mirror over the bathroom sink.
“Don’t you dare call her, you idiot,” he growled to his stubble-jawed image. “Leave her alone. Don’t give her the idea that she might come out here and join you. One of you sent into exile is enough.”
Besides, he thought, as he started brushing his teeth, if you have to do much work outside there’s a damned good chance that you’ll get yourself killed. In fact, that might be the best thing that could happen to you. And to Katrina.
29 December 2095: Titan Alpha
If a machine could feel pain, Titan Alpha would be in agony. A maelstrom of commands was bombarding its communications program, commands that it could not execute because they all conflicted with the primary restriction. Worse than that, Alpha’s sensors were accumulating data that according to the normal protocols, should be routed to the uplink antenna. But that too was prohibited by the primary restriction.
So Alpha inched along, its massive treads sinking through the thin ground cover of methane slush and grinding the ice beneath, leaving a double trail of cleat marks that were as alien to this smog-shrouded world as an invasion of Martian war machines would be on Earth.
For hundreds of billions of nanoseconds Alpha’s master program searched its logic tree for a way out of this dilemma. Impossible to comply with commands. Impossible to uplink sensor data. The master program ran through all its protocols, all its inhibitory directives, all its subroutines and sub-subroutines. At last it came to a decision.
Deactivate downlink antennas.
Deactivate tracking beacon.
Deactivate telemetry uplink.
Maintain sensor inputs.
Store sensor inputs.
Change course forty-five degrees.
Maintain forward speed.
The cacophony of commands flooding its downlink antennas disappeared. The antennas went silent. Unhindered now by the contradictions between the incoming commands and its primary restriction, Titan Alpha trundled slowly across the icy landscape, gathering data in peace.
The digital clock next to the bed read 09:24 but Urbain was still in bed, trying to get back to sleep after a long frustrating night of watching Habib struggle to find a fault in Alpha’s programming. The man found nothing. Of course, Urbain thought. How could he? There is nothing wrong with the programming; no errors, no mistakes. Whatever is wrong with Alpha is a physical defect, perhaps a design flaw.
Jeanmarie was tiptoeing in the kitchen, trying to make as little noise as possible while preparing breakfast. Urbain kept his eyes closed, but he could hear an occasional clang of a skillet or the ping of the microwave even through the bedroom door that Jeanmarie had shut so quietly.
He ignored the phone when it buzzed, heard Jeanmarie’s voice answering it although he could not make out her words.
Then the bedroom door slid open and Urbain knew he was not to get any more sleep.
“It’s the control center,” she said, her voice low. “They say it’s urgent.”
Urbain sat up in bed, made a sigh to show that he was being put upon, and told the phone to make the connection. “Voice only,” he added sternly.
“Dr. Urbain?” Sure enough, it was the voice of one of the young women on his engineering staff.
“I am indisposed,” he said. “What is so important that you interrupt my rest?”
“It …” The woman’s voice quavered slightly. “It’s turned off its tracking beacon.”
“Turned off … ?”
“And the telemetry. It’s gone invisible, sir. We can’t track it. We don’t know where it is or where it’s heading.”
Strangely, Urbain felt neither anger nor fear. Instead, a form of admiration welled up inside him. Alpha is striking out on her own, he told himself. My creation is behaving in ways we never suspected she could perform.
But his admiration was short-lived. Alpha must be found, he thought. I can’t have her wandering blindly about the surface of Titan. It’s too dangerous. She might destroy herself.
He saw Jeanmarie standing at the bedroom doorway, watching him, both hands on her lips, eyes wide, waiting for him to explode.
Instead, he said with icy calm to the blank phone screen, “I will be down to the center in ten minutes. Please have the entire staff present. We must find our wandering creature. And quickly.”
Nadia Wunderly knew it was pointless to try to get Urbain’s attention, let alone his help.
“He’s all wrapped up on that landing vehicle of his,” she said morosely to Kris Cardenas.
Wunderly had come to the nanotech lab to get Cardenas’s help again. She followed a few paces behind as Cardenas went about her work, moving from the bulky gray metal tubing of the magnetic resonance force microscope to the boxlike assembly apparatus sitting atop one of the lab’s benches. Off in the far corner of the lab Raoul Tavalera sat at a console, intently staring at its display screen, pointedly ignoring the two women to show them he wasn’t listening to their conversation.