Postcard from the Edge

Nascha walked alone along the shale beach of Mayda Insula, the large island in the centre of the titanic methane sea. It was almost time to leave Titan and journey on to the next part of the mission to explore Saturns inner system and the other three crew were busy making final preparations on the shuttle. She felt very reluctant to leave this strange and majestic world, especially after seeing the first evidence for extraterrestrial life on the playback from the ROVs cameras. The brief appearance of what appeared to be a Titan native organism had excited the crew, but after it abruptly vanished, neither Tom nor Inga could find any trace of it in the murky darkness of the crater. Tom had volunteered to dive in the Extreme Environment Suit and look for further indications of life, but after Tor Skarvald had seen the data from the ROV and the way the little creature had completely disabled the vehicle in order to make its escape, the mission commander forbade any direct interventions. It was too risky, even in the heavily armoured suit, to go anywhere near such a potentially dangerous organism, so the crew would have to make do with the brief segment of video and the sensor data collected by the ROV. As she wandered along the shore, the sky darkened and one of Titans strange weatherfronts gathered overhead. Nascha debated running back to the shuttle for cover, looking across the frosty beach towards it, but the large oily drops had already begun to fall. Rain on Titan was always a spectacular affair, especially when a rent in the clouds allowed Saturns cold light to shine down. The lighter gravity mean the drops were larger and fell slower than on Earth, but the simple hydrocarbons contained within them were a nightmare to clean from the joints in her suit and she resigned herself to several hours patiently scrubbing the filters and seals when she made ship again. As she gazed out across the Kraken Mare, the huge inland sea, the saturnine light caught the falling drops and a lambent rainbow spread across the waves before her. She smiled, wondering how lucky she was to find herself here on this alien beach, annointed by starlight and visited by spectral arcs. As quickly as it appeared, the shower passed away to the West. Nascha turned on her heel to walk back to the ship, but realised that she had wandered into the shallows and her boots were splashing in the liquid ethane sea. She cursed in her native tongue, realising her cleaning and decontam chores had just trebled. As she moved to go, something bumped against the toe of her boot. She bent and picked up what she at first mistook for a chunk of stray ice, a small lozenge of greenish glass. Lifting it up to her helmet light, she saw fluid drain from tiny fissures around its hexagonal sides and realised that this must be the shell of one of the mysterious creatures disturbed by the ROV. The delicate silicate shell looked like it had been blown from dirty glass, the surface, pocked with dents and ridges was full of streaks and dots. Holding it close, she could see tiny striations running through it and minute bubbles or pockets inside the shell itself. She gasped, realising that her boot had almost crushed this delicate treasure and that this transparent shell must be all that was left of one of the titanese creatures. Perhaps it had died and the soft, vulnerable body inside had dissolved away leaving this empty vessel. Or maybe it had cast off the shell as crabs did and was still drifting somewhere beneath the silvery waves, in a newly formed glassine armour. This was what she had joined the mission for, this was what she had wanted ever since she was a little girl, to know if we were alone in the universe or whether life did exist on the far flung worlds that shone down on her from the night sky. Carefully, she dropped the shell into a sample bag and and strode purposefully back in the direction of the lights from the shuttle, her heart pounding in her chest.


See previous episode here.