Xeelee: Endurance Read Online Free PDF

in parallel rows by the prevailing wind. The ground looked raked, like a tremendous zen garden. And the lighter areas were outcroppings of a paler rock, plateaus scarred by ravines and valleys. At this latitude there were no open bodies of liquid, but you could clearly see its presence in the recent past, in braided valleys and the shores of dried-out lakes. This landscape of dunes and ravines was punctuated by circular scars that were probably the relics of meteorite impacts, and by odder, dome-like features with irregular calderas – volcanoes that spewed a ‘lava’ of liquid water. All these features had names, I learned, assigned to them by Earth astronomers centuries dead, who had pored over the first robot-returned images of this landscape. But as nobody had ever come here those names, borrowed from vanished paradises and dead gods, had never come alive.
    I listened absently as Poole and the others talked through their science programme. The atmosphere was mostly nitrogen, just as on Earth, but it contained five per cent methane, and that methane was the key to Titan’s wonders, and mysteries. Even aside from its puzzling central role in the greenhouse effects which stabilised the atmosphere, methane was also central to the complicated organic chemistry that went on there. In the lower atmosphere methane reacted with nitrogen to create complex compounds called tholins, a kind of plastic, which fell to the ground in a sludgy rain. When those tholins landed in liquid water, such as in impact-warmed crater lakes, amino acids were produced – the building blocks of our kind of life . . .
    As I listened to them debate these issues it struck me that none of them had begun his or her career as a biologist or climatologist: Poole and Berg had both been physicists, Dzik an engineer and more lately a project manager. However, both Berg and Dzik had had specialist training to a decent academic standard to prepare for this mission. Ambitious types like these expected to live a long time; periodically they would re-educate themselves and adopt entirely different professions. I have never had any such ambition. I had a good education that had bequeathed me a good vocabulary and got me selected for my sinecure as a curator, along with my father’s influence – but that was about as much use as it had been to me. Why waste time going through it all again? Besides, somehow, despite AS technology, I do not imagine myself reaching any great age.
    Their talk had an edge, however, even in those first hours. They were all ethically troubled by what they were doing, and those doubts surfaced now that they were away from Harry Poole’s goading.
    ‘At some point,’ Miriam Berg said, ‘we’ll have to face the question of how we’ll react if we do find sentience here.’
    Bill Dzik shook his head. ‘Sometimes I can’t believe we’re even here, that we’re having this conversation at all. I remember exactly what you said on Baked Alaska, Michael. If we couldn’t protect the ecology, “we’ll implode the damn wormhole. We’ll get funds for the Cauchy some other way.” That’s what you said.’
    Poole said harshly, clearly needled, ‘That was thirteen years ago, damn it, Bill. Situations change. People change. And the choices we have to make change too . . .’
    As they argued, I was the only one looking ahead, the way we were drifting under our balloon. Through the murk I thought I could see the first sign of the ethane lakes of the polar regions, sheets of coal-black liquid surrounded by fractal landscapes, like a false-colour mock-up of Earth’s own Arctic. And I thought I could see movement, something rising up off those lakes. Mist, perhaps? But there was too much solidity about those rising forms for that.
    And then those forms emerged from the mist, solid and looming.
    I pulled my helmet on my head and gripped my couch. I said, ‘Unless one of you does something fast, we may soon have no choices left at