Titan. Stephen Baxter

why are you so prickly?’

      ‘I’m not prickly, damn it –’ Benacerraf subsided, and Jackie grinned at her.

      It was a familiar argument to Benacerraf. What is it with you young people? What in hell happened to the work ethnic? Don’t you take anything seriously? …

      It was a long time since Jackie had tried to push ahead with her journalism. At times Benacerraf felt she couldn’t stand to see Jackie drift through her life like this, like so many of her age group, floating from one career option to another, passing through relationships that coalesced briefly – sometimes leaving behind kids, as had Jackie’s brief marriage – and on to the next vague destination.

      It wasn’t the structure of Jackie’s life that bugged her, but her casualness, her lack of seriousness. There seemed no need to struggle, to take responsibility – no attempt to build things.

      She suppressed the impulse to snap. Now, of all times, wasn’t the moment to pick a fight with her daughter.

      Anyhow, she thought, maybe Jackie and her generation are right. Look at me, slaving here in the small hours, over this huge Titan boondoggle. Maybe my day is done. Maybe this project is the last spasm of whatever drove us, in the last century, to our great, ambitious endeavours. Perhaps when this is over – when my generation has gone, the last great rocket ships fired off – the world will sink back, lapse into a kind of high-tech pastoralism.

      Jackie got up and walked to Benacerraf’s back, and took over rubbing her neck muscles for her.

      ‘That feels good,’ Benacerraf said.

      ‘Just like when I was a little girl, huh?’

      ‘Even then you always had good hands.’

      ‘All that tennis I played.’

      ‘You could have been a surgeon. A physiotherapist –’

      Jackie laughed. ‘A carpenter, like Jesus. Come on, Mom; you’re sounding like a cliche again.’

      ‘Sorry.’

      Jackie pointed to the softscreen, which Benacerraf had folded over. ‘You going to tell me what you’re working on?’

      I’m not supposed to, Benacerraf thought. But you deserve to know.

      ‘Here.’ She unfolded the softscreen and smoothed out its creases.

      Jackie sat down again, pulled the softscreen to her, and ran her finger over its smooth fabric surface, a reading habit she’d developed as a child.

      … The purpose of this memorandum is to obtain your approval to use Space Shuttle and ancillary technology to fly an open-ended manned mission to Saturn’s Moon, Titan, in the short-term timeframe, with a resupply and retrieval strategy in the medium-term based on new-generation Reusable Launch Vehicle technology.

      My recommendation is based on an exhaustive review of pertinent technical and operational factors and also careful consideration of the impact that either a success or a failure in this mission will have on the future of the Agency.

      My objective has been to bring into meaningful perspective the trade-offs between total program risk and gain. As you know, this assessment process is inherently judgemental in nature. Many factors have been considered during a comprehensive series of reviews, conducted over the past several months, to examine in detail all facets of the considerations involved in planning for and providing a capability to fly a crew of five or six on a Titan landing mission. A key benefit for the Agency is the motivation such a mission provides for maintaining funding and commitment for the upcoming RLV program.

      In conclusion, but with the proviso that all open work against the open-ended Titan mission is completed and certified, I request your approval to proceed with the implementation plan required to support an early launch readiness date.

      Turning to details of the –

      Jackie pushed the softscreen back across the table to her mother. ‘You can’t be serious,’ she said.

      Benacerraf sipped her apple juice. ‘Never more so.’

      ‘Is this to do with all that JPL shit? My God, the arrogance. You can’t even fly to orbit and back without crashing all over the place. How do you imagine you can send people to Saturn?’

      Benacerraf shrugged. ‘Do you really care? You’ll learn all about it when it gets made public, if you’re interested.’ As, she thought sourly, you probably won’t be.

      But Jackie was staring at her. ‘Oh. Hold up. Hold it right there. I think I’m just starting to figure this out.’

      ‘Jackie, I –’

      ‘You want to go. Don’t you? To Titan, on this ridiculous one-way jaunt.’ She slammed the table. ‘Mother, you are not going to Saturn.’

      Benacerraf was taken aback by her anger. ‘Jackie –’

      ‘Don’t you know what it’s like for me, when you fly in space, in that ludicrous old technology? Every moment you were off the ground in Columbia, I could think of nothing but the danger. And when Columbia went through the crash, I was convinced I wouldn’t see you again. Right now the kids are too young to understand, but soon … And now you talk about this, about leaving the Earth altogether?’

      ‘It isn’t like that. There’s a retrieval strategy, based on –’

      ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ Jackie’s eyes were dry, her expression hard. ‘Listen to me. Flying into space is meaningless. It always was. The technology is antiquated and unsafe, and there’s nowhere to go, and all your language of risk reduction is just a play with words. And for what? The whole thing is just a selfish stunt.’

      Benacerraf felt her own anger building in response. ‘I won’t be called selfish by you. I’m more than just your mother, damn it. I’ve raised you, as best I could. And now you’re grown, my life is my own –’

      Jackie snapped, ‘Why don’t you put that in your report?’ She walked out of the kitchen.

      Benacerraf sat for long minutes.

      Then she pulled the softscreen towards her.

      

      Hadamard hauled on the thermal meteoroid garment. It was a heavy, floppy, deflated balloon made of tough white Beta-cloth. There were sockets over the front, where he plugged in his backpack umbilicals for oxygen, water and telecommunications.

      Alongside him, Buzz Aldrin – thirty-nine years old, bald as a coot, and eager as a virgin – was climbing into his own suit.

      The Moon suit, authentically rendered, was unbelievably primitive, Hadamard reflected. To think you actually had to assemble it, here on the lunar surface. It was incredible none of the Moonwalkers had been killed, betrayed by leaky plumbing.

      When his suit was closed Hadamard flicked a switch, and the pumps and fans in his backpack started. He heard the hum of machinery, and oxygen whooshed across his face.

      The veracity of the experience was extraordinary, right down to the sensation of increasing pressure in his ears.

      He gave Aldrin a thumbs-up, and through his shining bubble helmet, Aldrin grinned back at him.

      The first line in the script was Hadamard’s.

      ‘Houston, this is Tranquillity. We’re standing by for a go for cabin depress, over.’

      Tranquillity Base, this is Houston. You are go for cabin depressurize, over.

      Aldrin opened the valve that would vent Eagle’s oxygen to space. The pressure crept downwards, much more slowly than Hadamard had expected, despite his detailed knowledge of the timeline. It took all of three minutes to get down to four-tenths of a pound.

      ‘Everything is go here,’ Hadamard said. ‘We’re just waiting for the cabin pressure to bleed, to blow enough pressure to open the hatch …’ Hadamard could hear