A Planet Called Eden
Prologue

Enceladus

Not long before the NASA spacecraft Hobbes passed the moon, heavy ceramic shieldsrose silently and firmly into place, blocking the views from the windows, eventhe cockpit’s great forward screen. The shields were supposed to help protectthe crew from the dangers of radiation in deep space. Privately, FlightEngineer Kent Dudenhoeffer suspected that the shields were an insidious plot tomake five months flight time even more tedious.

Dudenhoeffer’s suspicions grew as theheavy shields remained in place for three weeks longer than was strictlynecessary. The Mission Commander, Jon Wroblewski, liked to claim that safetytrumped all, but Dudenhoeffer suspected that the man simply had a flair for thedramatic, because when the shields were lowered at last and the golden majestyof Saturn with its shimmering belts of rings filled the cockpit’s window, he’d gapedlike an idiot and had to wipe away a tear, despite his training, because it waswithout question the most beautiful and numinous moment he had everexperienced. For an astronaut, that was the equivalent of weeping openly andunashamed. No one saw. He made sure he didn’t see any of them, either.

The next day, when he woke and experiencedthat view again, now closer, he caught himself wiping away another tear. It wasokay; this time he’d been alone and his back had been to the mission camerathat recorded every moment for history.

After three weeks in orbit around themoon Enceladus, though, even that stunning view had become tedious.

In fact, everything about the mission haddimmed to tedium. The novelty of weightlessness? That had floated away beforethey’d even left Earth orbit. The food? Please. It wasn’t bad, not really, butvariety wasn’t exactly NASA’s specialty. Being one of the first human beings toexplore a new world? By now, he thought he had every square mile of the icysurface of Enceladus memorized. He saw it in his dreams. The sheer adventure ofjust being in outer space, away from low Earth orbit? That had dulled soonafter they’d passed the moon. Now, that faded elation wasn’t even a memory.

Plus, while the air filters stillperformed dutifully, the place was getting a little … stale. That’ll happenwhen five human bodies live in a tight, confined space for months on end.

Worse, if they didn’t replace a landing spotsoon, all of it, tedium and beauty alike, would be for nothing. The missionwould fail. They’d head back to Earth with only a few thousand pictures and afew tons of rock to show. The big questions? Yeah. Those would remainunanswered. Maybe till the next mission, maybe forever. Which meant probablyforever, because failure didn’t exactly inspire the politicians to increase theold budgets. The men and women who wrote checks liked to tout victories infront of a waving American flag. Dudenhoeffer didn’t blame them.

Dudenhoeffer unzipped his flight suit. Atleast the showers still worked.

“Kent!” Dudenhoeffer spun around. Thevoice was Wroblewski’s. He wasn’t even bothering with the comm. He wasshouting. Shouting! All the way from the cockpit. “Get up here!” Wroblewskicalled. “Fast! Fast!”

Dudenhoeffer re-zipped his flight suit. Hepulled himself along until be floated out of the inflatable habitat module andinto the main body of the spacecraft.

Beneath him, a sound. A scrape, metal onmetal. Wait. Wait. Was that the hatchto the lander?

Whoa. Whoa. If the Mission Specialistswere manning the lander—

Dudenhoeffer grabbed a handhold andpulled, launching himself down the main tube toward the cockpit. Wroblewski satin the tight confines of the port science station nook. The telescopes andspectrographs were online. Dudenhoeffer felt his eyes widen. “Did you—?”

Wroblewski nodded at the other sciencestation. “Sit down. Tell me what you see.”

Dudenhoeffer floated across the deck to aseat, squeezed himself into the alcove, and strapped himself in. The scopesshowed what Wroblewski saw. Dudenhoeffer chewed his lower lip. If the landingparty was in the Calvin, Wroblewskimust have spotted a potential landing site.

It would have to be a spot with exposedrock, ideally. Short of that, they’d have to replace a point where the ice wasthick enough to hold the lander’s weight, even after a blast from the descentrockets, but thin enough that a drill could reach through to tap the liquidwater below. Such a spot had proved elusive.

Dudenhoeffer felt his pulse quicken andhe pursed is lips. Whoa, whoa. Could this be it? Really? After all these weeks?He took a deep breath and calmed himself, just like they’d been tried. Hestudied his monitors and made a few subtle adjustments.

After a long moment, Dudenhoeffer lookedup from his instruments and met Wroblewski’s gaze. Slowly, a smile spreadacross his face. Wroblewski beamed. Dudenhoeffer nodded once, still grinninglike a jackass.

Wroblewski hit the control button on themain comm. “Houston,” he said, “we confirm liquid water within drillingdistance of the surface.” Then he leaned back and waited for the answer.

# # #

In the cramped cabin of the Calvin, Mission Pilot Katy Hinman kepther hands on the controls, fingers twitching, ready, waiting. Through the tinywindows, she could see the great mass of the Hobbes stretching out above, with its big, powerful cone enginesand thrusters, its eccentric, almost organic design, its name painted proudlyon the hull above the famous NASA logo and the American flag.

Hinman loved the Hobbes, but the tiny Calvin,that was her passion. The spidery little lander had the good old Apollo LunarModule is in its DNA. It ought to; they’d run all its test landings on themoon. But they hadn’t landed her on ice yet. Not yet.

Nobody had piloted a lander out this far.Nobody.

Hinman was going to be the first.

She checked the seals on her helmet andgloves again. All good. She clenched and unclenched her fingers. After allthese months, after all the endless hours of training and all the countlessdrills, these last seconds of waiting were the hardest.

The Mission Specialists, Michael Duraland Daryl Burnet, would be the first out, the first human beings to set foot ona world in the Saturn system. That was okay. They were scientists; it was theirmoment. Let ’em have it. The decent and landing, though, that was all hers.

Hinman started her section of thepreflight checklist. While she worked, she tried to calculate how long it wouldtake Wroblewski’s signal to reach Mission Control in Houston, and how long forthe go order to come back. About eighty four minutes each way. Shouldn’t it be here by now?

She wondered what Burnet would say whenher boot touched the surface for the first time. Hinman had no doubt she’d beenplanning her own “that’s one small stepfor man…” speech for months. Years, probably. Hinman wondered if she’d beable to keep a straight face when Burnet recited it out loud at last. Shewondered if she’d be able to make Burnet crack up. She knew she shouldn’t try.This was, after all, history, one of the great and shining moments in humanachievement. She knew she’d try anyway.

She finished her section of the preflightand passed it on. She checked the seals on her helmet and gloves one last time.Still good.

And then … from above, a loud and echoingtwa-thump of metal moving againstmetal and the hum of demagnetized couplings — the telltale sound that meant thedocking clamps were unlocked. Hinman looked around. Burnet and Dural weregrinning like idiots, and then quickly making efforts to hide it. This washistory; the cameras would be on, capturing every moment for posterity.

She hoped her own grin was at least alittle more dignified. She doubted it.

Mission Commander Wroblewski’s voice cameover the comm speaker. “Crack the plates and tighten up the screws, people. Youare go for landing.”

This was it.

“Roger that,” said Hinman. “Go fordocking clamp release in t minus six seconds. Purging the link pods now.”

“We confirm purge, Calvin,” said Wroblewski. “We’re retracting the connection tubesand docking links.”

Hinman heard more loud metallic thumps. She checked her display screen andnodded. “Confirm retraction. Switching power to onboard cells. All green.” Thecomputer completed its final pre-check.

Six seconds and a thousand heartbeatspassed. “Calvin, you are go. Ms.Himan, the lander is yours.”

“Hold on tight, kids,” Hinman said. “Thelady’s driving.”

Hinman hit the controls that released thefinal docking clamps on the lander side and touched the maneuvering thrusters.Above, the Hobbes seemed to spin away, already shrinking in the black distance.It looked hopelessly tiny and fragile.

Hinman checked at the heads up display onthe windshield. Two-hundred kilometers and dropping. Steady on, steady on. That’s my girl.

The thirty-secondDescent Orbit Insertion burn fired on schedule. The drop was easy, smooth as good,50-year-old Irish whiskey.

One hundred kilometers. Pressure was good; the fueltanks read normal. “All systems go,” said Hinman.

“We copy that, Calvin,” said Wroblewski. “All systems go.”

Seventy-five kilometers. Thrusters were respondingnormally; life support was still in the green. In the windows, the frozen,blue-green surface of Enceladus flashed with streaks of gold when the icecaught the soft glow of Saturn’s reflection.

“Fifty kilometers,” Hinman said.

“Roger that, Calvin,” said Wroblewski.“We copy you at fifty kilometers. Burn shows go.”

At fifteen kilometers, Hinman initiatedthe final Powered Descent Initiation burn. Theywere going down.

At five kilometers, Hinman turnedoff the automated landing system and switched the controls to full manual. Therewasn’t anything wrong with the automated system; she switched it off becauseshe could, because any self-respecting pilot would have done the same thing. Hinman wouldn’t be the first person out,or even the second. This, this was her moment, the landing, her one singleheartbeat on the grand stage of human history. Noway a computer was getting credit for the first manned landing on Enceladus.Besides, she had five years as an Air Force combat and test pilot under herbelt, not to mention seven years with NASA. No way the computer could matchthat.

Her fingers danced across the controls,adjusting pitch and yaw, letting the blue-green icy surface float past thewindshield, the golden majesty of ringed Saturn peaking over the horizon.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin hadlanded the Eagle on the moon for the first time — could that really be almost ahundred and fifty years ago? — they’d had a hell of a time replaceing a landingspot on the rocky, crater-pocked surface. When they finally touched down, they’dhad only about twenty-five seconds worth of fuel left, at least according tothe history books. Hell of a close shave.

Hinman was a little disappointed; herlanding wouldn’t make anywhere near as good a story. She found a perfect spotto set the Calvin down almost rightway — the ground read solid, and less than a hundred meters away from the drillsite. Barely even a stroll, even with the heavy drill equipment.

She started down. There was more steamthan she’d anticipated; the surface ice was melting faster than anticipated. Nothingto worry about, really, but better to be safe. Besides, it would keep herfingers on the controls that much longer. Hinman hit the thrusters and driftedback a bit, away from the ice and back toward a shelf of exposed rock. The sitewasn’t perfectly level but it was close enough. The Calvin’s hydraulic legs and flexible landing pads would adjust.

Hinman moved the joystick and turned theCalvin, just to give them all a good view, drifted a few meters, initiated thefinal descent burn, and set the lander down with barely a jolt.

“Contact light,” said Dural. Just he spoke,a geyser erupted, a little over three-hundred meters away, sending hundreds ofpounds of water into space. The pale light of the distant, rising sun gleamedthrough it, a miracle of light and color, spilling a blue rainbow on the icysurface toward them like a road or a promise. A round of applause from Enceladus herself.

“The Calvinhas landed,” said Hinman. Then, less than a second later, “Engines off.”

“We copy you down, Calvin,” Wroblewski’s voice crackled over the comm. Despite theburst of digital static, Hinman could hear relief and exuberance in his voice.

Twenty minutes later, when the checkswere done and the airlocks were flushed, Daryl Burnet became the first humanbeing to set foot on the surface of Enceladus. “Now,” she said solemnly, “thehuman race is this much larger, because the frontier of human experience isthis much wider. We come in peace for all mankind.”

Hinman didn’t laugh, or even crack asmile. Something must have gotten in her eye, dammit, even with the helmet on,because damned if there wasn’t a tear rolling down her cheek.

# # #

By the time Hinman joined Burnet and Duralon the surface, they already had the drill set up. She danced across the icetoward them. Every step was a leap. She felt like a gazelle, like a goddess.She was only a few meters away when she saw Dural look up from the drill. Aslow smile was creeping across his face.

“Hobbes,” said Dural, “we have liquidwater.” Then, just a few seconds later, “We’re sending a probe down.”

# # #

In the Hobbes, Dudenhoeffer andWroblewski huddled close to the display monitors on their control panels,hardly daring even to blink. They watched the countdown on their heads updisplays. It had been more than three hours since the team had confirmed liquidwater.

“The probe should be through,”Dudenhoeffer said. Jesus, why was he whispering? And why were his palms so damnsweaty?

And why in the name of heaven, hell, andeverything in between wasn’t the ground team transmitting results?

Wroblewski hit the mike button on hiscomm control. “Are you reading methane or formaldehyde?”

No answer.

Wroblewski hit the control again. “Irepeat. Are you reading methane or formaldehyde?”

Nothing.

“Calvin,are you reading any biochemical signatures?”

Still nothing. Dudenhoeffer looked overhis shoulder. Wroblewski smiled and shrugged, but his eyes were darting: excited,nervous.

Wroblewski hit the comm again. “Calvin, this is the Hobbes. Please respond. Did you replace anything that might be a signof life?”

Dudenhoeffer counted ten heartbeats, thenten more, then twenty. Nothing. Then, finally, a burst of digital staticfollowed by Mike Dural’s voice crackling over the comm. “Uh, no, Hobbes.Something … uh, something … else.”

Dudenhoeffer whirled in his seat, awarethat his mouth was falling open. Wroblewski’s eyes were wider then softballs.

“Calvin, please clarify,” saidWroblewski.

“Hobbes,” said Dural, “we’re sending youa visual. Okay? Tell me … tell me if you see what we’re seeing.”

In the tight confines of the flight deck,Wroblewski and Dudenhoeffer, Mission Commander and Flight Engineer alike,watched their screens. When the image resolved at last, Dudenhoeffer felt hisjaw drop wider. He tried to speak, but there were no words.

After a time, somewhere between secondsand eternity, Wroblewski was the first to replace his voice.

“Oh … oh my God!”