The Methane Sea (a teaser)

 

My Novella, The Methane sea, launches on October 30th. here is the first chapter:

Marco Lin and Kami Fenista moved down what passed for a trail between the rock formations. The methane ice was treacherous, and Lin had already fallen three times; Fenista, only twice. Their suits could survive an industrial meat grinder without much damage, but the descent to the lake was still tricky. Lin had walked this route every day for the last week, and it never got any easier. He still had a bruise on his backside from the day before yesterday. Fenista held up her hand and Lin eased to a stop. They were at the frozen waterfall, the most treacherous spot on the trail. Fenista grabbed the rope that had been pitoned into the ice wall and cautiously made her way around the frozen ice formation before starting her descent. Once she was clear of the rope, Lin followed, trying to keep one hand on the rope at all times. Fenista’s legs flew out from underneath her. She was hanging from the rope with one hand.

“You okay?” Lin asked.

“Yeah. I’m just going from hand to hand until it gets flatter.”

“Copy,” Lin said.

“That doesn’t count as a fall.”

“Looked like a fall to me.”

“Did my butt hit the ground? No fall.”

Marco Lin grumbled and followed her down the rope, keeping himself at least two pitons back. He made sure the rope was taking most of his weight. Fenista made it to level ground and gave a “whoop!” She waited for him as he slowly let himself down to join her. From there it was a flat two hundred meters to the station.

“Looks like you’re going to owe me a beer tonight,” she said. “You had three falls. I had two.”

“We’re not there yet.”

“Yes, that is why I’m going to be extremely careful for the next couple of minutes.” They made it to the lakeside station without incident. The station was an unimaginative jumble of gray cubes. They cycled the airlock and moved into the prep room where they could change out of their bulky suits. The station always smelled different from the hab, more metallic. The hab smelled more like ripe fruit. They stripped down to their skivvies. Lin pretended not to notice Kami Fenista’s taut body. He reminded himself not to think of such things. They had to work together. No good could come of it. Her short dark hair framed her face as she looked at him. Was she thinking the same thing? Probably not.

“Remember,” she said with a smile. “You owe me a beer.”

“Right.” They slipped on their station coveralls and moved into the control center.

“You guys are late,” Wach said. He was lounging in a station chair, slumped like a sack of potatoes. Some green substance was on the floor at his feet. The remains of a snack, no doubt. He was shoving something else in his mouth.

Lin pointed to it. “Do you ever clean up after yourself, Wach?”

“Not if I can help it.” He grinned.

Fenista pulled a rag and cleaner from a cabinet and handed them to Wach. “Do it.” Wach sighed and bent to the task of scrubbing his mess off the floor.

“Well, praise the Lord and all the ships at sea,” Vera Palmer said. “You actually got him to clean something.”

Palmer sat to Wach’s right. She was a veteran of three other expeditions and at forty-seven, the oldest member of the team. She was not quite as trim as Fenista, but no one could call her fat. She kept her hair long, unlike everyone else on the team. Fenista had once asked her how she could stand it, and didn’t it get caught in things? “It’s the price you pay for beauty,” Vera had replied, giving her a beaming smile.

“How are Sab and Wilson doing?” Lin asked

“They are almost back. The submersible should dock in another ten minutes.”

“Hey, I thought you said we were late,” Fenista said.

“You are,” Wach said. “So are they.”

“Anything to report?” Fenista asked.

“Just kyplankton,” Wach said. “Lots and lots of kyplankton.”

After the initial excitement of discovering the tiny pellet-shaped animal life they called kyplankton had worn off, the mundanity of seeing millions of little pellets, and nothing else (apart from some even smaller microbes) had dampened the enthusiasm of the find.

“Preparing to dock,” came Wilson’s voice over the radio. Wach and Palmer vacated their seats, and Lin and Fenista took their places.

“Copy,” Fenista replied.

“Good alignment,” Wilson said. “Docking in three, two, one . . .” There was the faintest bump, almost inaudible. “Docked.”

“Copy, docked,” Fenista said. It took a few minutes for Wilson and Sab to go through the evac procedures and traverse the vertical tunnel through the ice up to the station. Palmer and Wach were there to greet them at the entry port in the prep room and then take their places moving down the tunnel to the submersible.

“How did it go?” Lin asked.

“Okay,” Wilson said. “Same old stuff, you know?”

“You were working grid B10?” Fenista asked.

“Yeah,” Sab said. “Almost finished with it. Palmer and Wach should finish it tonight. I don’t think we are going to find anything interesting until we get off the western edge.” Sab was skinny, with a malformed right arm. But that didn’t seem to hinder him at all. He could do most things with his “goofy arm,” as he called it, and whatever he couldn’t, he made up for with his incredibly strong left arm. The right arm now carried a datapad, which he slid into the receiver on the command console to copy the data from the trip.

Palmer checked the radio contact before their departure. “Loud and clear,” Lin said.

“Copy. Everything checks out. Undocking now,” Palmer said.

Kami Fenista went back to the prep room to say good night to Wilson and Sab. “Yeah, I can’t wait to hit the sack,” Wilson said. “But we’ve got that hell-walk back to the hab. Those beds are so close, yet so far away.”

Now fully suited up, Wilson picked up the sample container and moved with Sab to the airlock.

As they cycled through the airlock, Lin went to the radio, called the hab, reported that Wilson and Sab were on their way, and recorded the time.

“Recording things,” Lin said. “Lots and lots of mundane things to record. That’s what scientists and explorers do.”

“That’s what makes us cool,” Fenista said. They both laughed, and Lin pulled a beer out of his pack and gave it to Fenista.

“How many of these do we have left?” she asked.

“I have about six left in my stash.”

“Same,” she replied.

“What do we bet with when those are gone?”

She shrugged. “It’s going to be a long Season.”

The Methane Sea