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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: A troubled couple staffing an isolated research facility on one of Saturn's moons watches helplessly as the Earth consumes itself in a senseless war. Meanwhile, out in the cold ammonia fog, something is watching ... and waiting.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Asimov's, 1995
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2003

24 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [72 KB], eReader (PDB) [30 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [17 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [16 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [66 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [88 KB], hiebook (KML) [66 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [47 KB], iSilo (PDB) [14 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [18 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [45 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [26 KB]
Words: 4725
Reading time: 13-18 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The communications room was a weird place. Jax wanted to hunch his shoulders against the close metal walls, against the silent machines that smelled faintly of ozone and heat. An array of yellow telltales glowed steadily on the panel over his head; the blank, grey screen hung before him like an open mouth. The one decoration in the barren cubicle was a software ad-fax Maddy had taped to the wall--INSTANT ACCESS, some sort of file-retrieval utility, the first word highlighted in blue and the letters slanted, trailing comb-like filigrees denoting speed.

There was something that drew him to the place, though, and he caught solitary time there whenever he could. He imagined himself a point of light on the far tip of a rocky promontory, a beacon rising above a dark, endless ocean.

Jax heard a sound behind him and turned around. Maddy stood in the doorway. She had been working out and her shirt was damp with sweat. Ringlets of dark hair framed her face; red splotches stood out high on her pale cheeks.

"What's up?" she asked, still a little short of breath. "I didn't hear a comm bell..."

"Nothing," Jax replied. "I'm just hanging. Fog's really bad--we can't even watch the slugs."

Maddy shrugged. The slugs didn't interest her much--anything that happened on time scales shorter than a thousand millennia slid under her radar. Titan itself, though, was to her like a blood-glittering, faceted ruby to a gemologist. Ammonia seas, vast lava fields laced with veins of waxy, frozen hydrocarbons. She was taking ultrasound readings to map the moon's crust and mantle. Jax had never seen her so engaged, but the news from home was like a tidal force pulling at her from another direction. "Anything new on the laser feed?" she asked.

Jax knew that, decoded, the question was, 'War news?' Or more specifically, 'How bad does it have to get before we can go home?'

She had family in the EC, in Paris, and the information that came in on the feed was frustrating in what it withheld. It was like deducing the shape and texture of an object by studying the shadow it cast in bright, white light.

They did know that a couple of days ago, PacRim had lobbed a mini-nuke at one of the EC's factory-continents in the Indian Ocean, claiming a territorial incursion. The EC had followed suit by vaporizing Jakarta. There had been some sporadic ground combat in New Zealand and Antarctica and a lot of saber-rattling, but no further nuclear exchanges. The North American Free Trade Coalition and the Russian Hegemony were sitting back and waiting, urging restraint and dialogue in the emergency League session and keeping ground and space defenses at full alert.

"PacRim's been making noises about a nova bomb, but nobody really thinks they're that crazy. Naft's warning everybody off their wind farms in the South Atlantic--that's not exactly news, not since Johannesburg." Jax shook his head. "The Net's going completely apeshit, of course. Traffic volume's sky high..."

She took a step toward him and he stood up and put his arms around her. They stood like that for several minutes, their breathing merging slowly to unison. She smelled of sweat and of the hydroponics media she had been working with earlier that morning. The taut, lean muscles of her back relaxed to a yielding firmness under his hands. She began to move against him and she gently pushed him back into the chair.

"Wait," he said. "Not here. Let's go to the pod."

Maddy nodded without speaking and turned around, reaching behind her back for his hand. He took it and trailed her down the narrow corridor. They passed other passageways branching off, leading to sleeping quarters, the galley, the labs. At the end of the corridor, standing like an abstract sculpture, was a gleaming, twisted piece of obsidian Maddy had brought in from one of Titan's lava plains. Oxidation from the station's atmosphere gave its surface a rainbow sheen. A rude step was carved into its side with a hand laser. Above it was a round, open hatch. Maddy let go of his hand, stepped up onto the rock, and pulled herself through. Jax followed behind her, emerging into a crystalline bubble surrounded by a sea of swirling mist.

They had grown the pod from a single crystal into a transparent, 5-meter hemisphere. It was light and thin, but strong enough to keep out the deadly hydrocarbon brew that was Titan's atmosphere. The fog was beginning to thin a little, and through it Jax could see the frozen landscape glittering in tenebrous, diffuse light. He caught a glimpse of a herd of slugs on the shore of the nearby ammonia sea. Their shiny, chitinous bodies were scattered across the lava beach in a rough pattern like sheared concentric diamonds, slowly shifting.

Maddy had already taken her clothes off, and she stood facing him, waiting. Jax stepped out of his shorts and put his arms around her again. They stood there, rocking slowly, then together they sunk to the carpeted floor.

When Maddy came, a shuddering ripple passed unseen through the pattern made by the slugs' bodies. Jax's pleasure shortly afterward sent another wave passing through the pattern from the opposite side. The ripples collided and scattered, each leaving an imprint of its shape on the other.