The rain comes just once every thousand years. Torrents of liquid methane pour from skies painted an eternal twilight orange. At 290 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, the cold is a lethal assault. And in the hazy sky, the ringed planet looms large.
Saturn.
Here on Titan, Saturn always hovers in the consciousness, like a watchful parent peering over the shoulder. Ever since man first set foot on this garish orange landscape, he has always had one eye on that planet. Not that he could ever walk there. No, for all its size, the immense ringed planet, greater than 700 Earths, is lighter than water. It is said that, if an ocean big enough to contain its 75,000 mile diameter was found, it would float, bobbing around like a colossal yellow sponge ball.
Titan, though, that’s something else entirely. At times it’s drier than the Sahara, but every millennium it’s awash, flooded by the methane that scours out river valleys and soaks into the surface until the ground becomes like crème brûlée. That’s why we’re out here – the methane. There are enough hydrocarbons frozen beneath the surface of this one moon to ease concerns about oil shortages for years to come.
The Americans landed first, but the Russians weren’t far behind. Even some of the Middle Eastern states got in on the act. None of them wanted the others to get a monopoly. There hadn’t been a land-grab like it since the days of the Scramble for Africa or the Wild West frontier. And, just like in the days of Empire, the land went not just to the man who would claim it, but the man who could hold it.
Looking back, someone should have foreseen what would happen. Rival factions clashed. Fighting broke out. Border regions became more like the demilitarised zones you see in the archive footage of twentieth century Middle Eastern conflicts than sites of science and engineering. Like oil barons of old, the company bosses held away. All or nothing was their motto, and they were willing to gamble with lives as well as money.
Lives like that of my brother,
He was a good man, my brother. Chris. Cocky, brash, a little gung-ho, but basically a good kid. He was young, eager to see new worlds and ready to grab whatever opportunities life threw his way. He signed with Titan Hydrocarbons the day he left college; the ink on his diploma was still wet.
It was his idea for me to come too. I was stuck in a rut, he said. I needed to get out and see more of life. I knew my way around machines, had been working with them ever since high school. It wasn’t hard to persuade the company to hire me too. Their books were stuffed full of brilliant scientists, but scarce on the type of people who can fix a broken valve when the team’s already behind schedule and the boss is screaming to have the job done yesterday.
Chris and I were sent out as part of an exploratory team. There were untapped veins to be exploited, and Titan Hydrocarbons wanted to be the first one to do so. There was always pressure, always pushing. More, more, more. Faster, faster, faster. We all worked double shifts, triple if we had to. Armed guards followed us to and from site every day. They’d heard rumours that Saturn Petroleum had had their scouts in the area too.
And that was how the ‘accident’ happened.
Afterwards, when his ashes had been sent back to our grieving parents on Earth, one of those bosses came up to me. He clapped me on the shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, “he was a good man,” and “he will be missed.”
Then he turned to go, and, as he did said, “we’ll see you back at work tomorrow. There’s a new well being opened up.”
Beautiful detail, nicely realistic scifi, well-told tale on a routine death out among the stars. Excellent flash, Stephanie!