Cronus

Fiction - by J. M. Eno

Kristen’s mother had always told her that real climbing meant losing a piece of oneself during the ascent and finding a new piece at the summit. What piece would she lose here, so far from home, Kristen wondered. What piece would she find? 

Her boot slipped in the shallow methane snow. She raised her pickaxe over her head and drove it decisively into the hardpack, using it as an anchor to regain her footing. Methane snow was tricky stuff—it flowed, slick as an oil spill, over the solid ice below.  

Above her loomed Cronus, the highest peak on Titan and one of the few, great unclimbed mountains in the solar system. Her mother Olga had been the last to attempt a summit, some twenty years ago. 

Mr. Roberts, her climbing robot, followed just behind, carrying oxygen, a tent, and the other supplies necessary to keep her alive on the cold and destitute world. He had a square head, a round, metallic body, and three corrugated limbs, which were usually legs, but could be reoriented as necessary to function as arms. His chassis was gathering frost and glowed an eerie yellow, the same color as the sallow sky surrounding them. 

Kristen was ensconced in a lime-green exosuit, but she could still feel the wind whipping around her. She hoped it was not the beginning of a methane storm. Limb after limb, she pulled herself up toward a buttress, a low shelf of ice where she could rest for a moment.

The air, thick with nitrogen and methane, felt as heavy as water. Stranger still was the low gravity, about one seventh that of Earth’s. As she pulled herself up the mountain, Kristen felt like a ship welder in an old rubber diving suit, heavy and leaded, floating up through a cold, dark sea. She anchored herself wherever she could; with so little friction, a slip down the mountain would be certain death.

At last she reached the ice shelf. She detached herself from her ropes and began to install new anchors, hammering a piton into a substantial block of ice in the corner where the shelf met the cliffside. A heavy stroke of her hammer, and the piton slid in, burying itself completely into the hardpack. Beneath her, fine lines crisscrossed the ice, spreading out like bolts of lightning in a gray sky. The ice groaned and sputtered, and all at once she was falling.

Kristen sat on the floor of her bathroom, on a shaggy blue rug, head in hand. Next to her was a small plastic stick that had been carefully unwrapped and dipped in urine, and now showed two red lines. On the counter above were three other types of sticks: one showing a plus sign, one with a smiley face, and one that said, most straightforwardly, pregnant. 

To say this was unfortunate timing would be an understatement. Two weeks from now, Kristen was supposed to be launched into outer space for a five month tour, which included a three week climb on Titan. 

Pregnant persons could travel in space—that had become commonplace some years before. But Titan meant temperatures below -180 degrees Celsius, a toxic atmosphere, and no doctors nearby, all amid a grueling climb that no one had yet survived.

She thought back to her mother’s departure for Titan. A twelve-year-old girl then, she had put on a brave face, wishing her mother luck, all while knowing she would miss her for five months in the best of cases. Their relationship wasn’t perfect, but when she hadn’t come back, Kristen had been heartbroken.

Since then, Kristen had been chasing her mother’s accomplishments, checking off one peak after another: Everest, Annapurna, K2, Mons Olympus on Mars, and Mt. Hesiod on Enceladus. Cronus was supposed to be her chance to step out of her mother’s shadow, to conquer the peak that had bested her. 

But perhaps most alarmingly to Kristen, she had no idea how to feel about the idea of motherhood. Her boyfriend Chris had no interest in being a father; he had made this much clear. Kristen’s mother had been so focused on becoming the top climber in the solar system that she hadn’t had much time to, well, mother. Kristen had a vague notion that she wanted to have a child at some point, but she had always thought that would come later, when things were settled and she was firmly established in the life she wanted. The older she had become, though, the less she knew what that life looked like.

Kristen rose to her feet. She had never been one to wallow, and she wouldn’t start now. Before she decided anything, she would have to inform her mission team and hear their views of the situation. One step at a time, Kristen thought to herself. There was never any other way.

Kristen was dangling, her legs swaying above the mountain. She used one hand to brush off her visor, which was so covered in yellow methane frost that the icy world looked to her like a sepia-toned desert.

Her other hand was held tightly by Mr. Roberts, who had anchored two of his limbs into the hardpack. He retracted his third limb to pull her up over the face of the fresh cliff. 

“Are you all right, Ms. Larsen?” he asked, earnestly.

“I think so,” she said, over the comm system integrated in her exosuit. “Give me a moment.”

Lying on her back, she looked up at the sky. Even in the daytime here, the sun’s light was dim enough to reveal a field of stars, though the configuration was different from her night sky on Earth. She tested her limbs, and everything felt intact. “I’m all right. Not to sound ungrateful, but how far did you lift me?”

“I’ve lifted you to the precise altitude you fell from. No upward assistance, so your potential record for a solo climb is still on track.”

“Thanks. I owe you one.” She squeezed his hand and shouldered her pack.

Some time later, Kristen found herself in the shadow of a large ridge, about a days’ climb from the peak. In the distance, small clouds were swirling an ominous black and yellow.

“Don’t tell me that’s a storm system,” she said to Mr. Roberts.

He took a moment to scan the area. “I’m afraid so.”

“How long until it hits?”

“Could be hours, but it is moving quickly. I suggest we try to find a safe place to wait it out.”

Instead, Kristen increased her pace. 

It had been less than an hour when she saw the first drops of sleet, and liquid methane began to pool on her exosuit. The clouds were larger now, pregnant with the alien moisture of the world. The sky darkened, and she heard a colossal boom once, and again, as it echoed off the mountain. 

Kristen picked up her pace again. The precipitation had only made the surface of Cronus more slippery, and she had to take care not to fall. In the thick atmosphere, the driving winds of the squall felt like a rip current pulling her out to sea.

To her right, a small glimmer appeared through the weather. Desperate for a break from the storm, she drew her binoculars. The sun’s light was faint here, worlds away from Earth, but it was strong enough to reflect off of icicles surrounding the mouth of a small cavity in the mountain.

The Titanese thunder cracked again, and this time it was directly overhead. Kristen saw a flash of light and dropped to the ground. 

The pitter patter of soft hydrocarbon rain gave way to a bruising onslaught of hailstones, which clanged off Mr. Roberts and pummeled Kristen. She rose and ran toward the possible shelter, Mr. Roberts following behind her.

“I’m pregnant.” The words had dropped like a stone in a puddle, threatening to upend a mission that had been years in the making. Kristen’s climb would be undertaken alone, but the preparation for her journey had taken a team of dozens. There were scientists, doctors, mountaineers, engineers, and communications people, all of whom had been working tirelessly on Kristen’s prospective climb. Kristen had convened the senior leadership by video conference to inform them of her situation.

“How could you be so careless?” said her mission director, James.

“James!” said Natalie, the head of engineering for the mission, and Kristen’s closest friend. 

“He’s right; it was a mistake,” said Kristen. “I’m sorry for putting people in this position, but I’m not sure what to do from here. Can we make this mission happen while I’m pregnant?”

“Can we postpone until she’s, you know, had the baby?” asked James, awkwardly miming a child coming out of his groin.

“We have a narrow launch window,” said Natalie. “The next favorable date will be twenty-two years from now.”

Together, they thought through the potential hurdles. Kristen would need a higher caloric intake, but not by much. The exosuit might fit a bit more snugly, but she would only be three months along when she started the climb. Finally, she could go into labor prematurely, but she would be back on earth before she was six months’ pregnant, which meant that the risk was low. 

“What about morning sickness?” asked an engineer. 

“The exosuit can deal with disposal of all fluids,” said another. “Plus, she’ll be out of her first trimester by the time she’s wearing it. My wife said the first trimester’s the worst.”

Jenna Rhule, the head of the Planetary Federation’s space exploration program, cleared her throat, and everyone fell silent. “First, I want to thank everyone for their contributions to the mission so far. We wouldn’t be here, on the cusp of launch, without the hard work of everyone on this call. Unfortunately, this recent development has put us in a difficult position. I don’t think we can get behind this mission if Kristen is pregnant. We can’t be seen to support a mother taking her unborn child on a climb of this sort with all the attendant risks. Nor do we wish to be seen as encouraging a mother to terminate her pregnancy. We think it would be best to handle the situation quietly, under the radar so to speak. You understand, right, Kristen?”

Kristen nodded.

“Do we have options, Dr. Spence?” said James.

“Termination of the pregnancy at this point would be very low risk and should keep everything on track,” said Dr. Spence.

“Obviously the decision is up to Kristen,” said Jenna.

“Obviously,” said Natalie, sarcastically. 

“It is up to Kristen,” said James. 

Kristen thought back to the time she and her mother had been climbing in the mountains near their family’s summer cottage. She was eleven years old then, and her mother was on top of the climbing world—absolutely outclassing the competition, on Earth and off. 

Kristen had just pulled herself up over the top of a chimney, and beneath her a valley of golden spruces opened up in the cleft between two smaller peaks. Still in her harness and anchored to the top of the chimney, she looked out of the valley, admiring how far they had climbed.

Without warning, her mother swept her legs from under her. She dropped three meters through the thin air until her harness caught her. Her mother then left her, dangling, and continued up the mountain. She said later that Kristen’s technique was sloppy, that Kristen needed to understand what it was like to fall.

Kristen had been furious, but from that moment she had also been hooked. The adrenaline coursing through her as she had fallen was the greatest high she had ever felt. She climbed peak after peak looking for that rush.

It was a good thing her mother was gone, thought Kristen, because she would never be able to admit that Kristen was the better climber, even after she bested Cronus.

“We’ll take care of it,” she said, finally. “We can’t let anything distract us from success.”

Kristen arrived at the small opening in the mountain she had seen through her binoculars. Here she was no longer in the direct path of the storm, though she could still feel its powerful gusts.

She pulled out her datapad and checked on the status of her ship, which was orbiting around 150 kilometers over Titan, waiting to descend to pick her up from the summit. A clear line of sight was required for communications, so she would have to wait until the storm had cleared to call it down.

Ducking under an array of icicles, she squeezed through the opening. She turned on her headlamp, and its bright beams bounced lazily off the drifting fog. The cavity, which had appeared to be no more than a small grotto, was in fact a massive cavern of ice and rock, glowing with iridescent light. A stream carved a smooth path through the middle of the floor, weaving through stalagmites and under stalactites.

The cave was quiet save for the low trickling of the stream. She was at once conscious of her footsteps, which echoed around them.

“Where are we?” she asked Mr. Roberts.

“I’m not able to locate us underground,” he replied. “But this seems to be an ice cavern created by thermal activity under the mountain.”

“And the stream?”

“Scanning now… it appears to be primarily methane.” 

“It feels warmer in here,” she said, turning down the heat controls on her exosuit.

“Much warmer than outside,” said Mr. Roberts. “Still not quite shorts weather, though.”

Sometimes Kristen wished that he had been programmed with a bit less personality. “Can you look around to see if it’s a suitable place to camp out for a bit?”

She followed the riverbank through the room. Toward the far side of the cave was a low, flat clearing.

Mr. Roberts began to survey the clearing as Kristen looked about the cave. The methane stream seemed to disappear at one end of the cavern. She leaned in to look more closely and saw that the liquid fell over the edge of an ice shelf and into a smaller chamber.

Mr. Roberts interrupted her examination. “Ms. Larsen!” he said. “I’ve found something.” He led Kristen further upstream.

Half-buried in frozen sediment was a climbing anchor, a length of rope, and a pair of boots bearing the name “O. Larsen.”

“I’m having second thoughts,” Kristen said to Natalie over coffee, one week before the scheduled launch. “I feel like I can’t turn down the chance to climb Cronus, but I also feel like I can’t turn my back on the chance to be a mother.”

“What does your heart say?” said Natalie.

“I feel like I have two hearts, and they each want a different thing. My mother drove me so hard. She was ferocious, relentless, unyielding. It made me the climber I am today, but, if I’m being honest, I never loved her like a mother. She was more like a coach to me. I don’t want to bring a child into an environment like that.”

“I hear you. My mother poked and prodded at my body growing up, always letting me know when she thought I had gained too much weight, and I had such an unhealthy relationship with food for so many years because of it. But I told myself that when I raised my kids, I would never shame them for what they ate, or how they looked. And I’ve got three happy, healthy kids, whom I love dearly. It was the right decision for me, but to get there I had to let go of some of the anger I was holding onto.”

“And what if Jenna is right? Is it too big of a risk for an unborn child to go on this mission?”

“The thing they don’t tell you about being a mother,” said Natalie, “is that there’s risks everywhere. You raise your kids in the city, they could get run over by a subway train. You raise your kids in the suburbs, car accident. Raise them on a farm? Combine mishap. There’s nowhere safe to have a kid, on this planet or otherwise. We went through all the contingencies. If it’s what you want, there’s no reason other than optics you can’t climb Cronus and have this baby.” 

 “Car crashes and combine accidents? Motherhood sounds like a set of impossible choices.”

“Everything about motherhood is impossible. But somehow we make it work.”

Kristen awoke in her tent, uneasy. She eyed the climbing equipment they had found by the river. In preparation for the trip, she had studied her mother’s notes for the ascent carefully and had generally followed the same route. But what were the odds she would have found her way into the precise cave her mother had visited? And what had brought her mother here in the first place?

“I’ve taken a look outside,” said Mr. Roberts. “The storm has passed, and the path to the summit is clear.”

“Very good,” said Kristen. “Let’s start packing up.”

“You know,” Mr. Roberts grumbled as he began to disassemble the tent, “‘let’s’ is a contraction for ‘let us,’ implying that multiple people would be doing the packing.”

Kristen ignored his carping and followed the path of the stream, which had grown from a trickle to a swollen, turgid flow.

At the far end of the cave, where the stream disappeared into the floor below, there was a half circle of ice peppered with stalactites. The round shape and the spiky stalactites made the opening look like nothing so much as a mouth agape with frozen fangs.

Kristen felt drawn to the area for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate. Her mother had been in this cave as well; she wondered if she, too, had looked upon this stream. She and Mr. Roberts had searched the entire cave the previous evening, looking for any more traces of her mother, but they had found nothing.

Approaching the mouth from the bank of the stream, she peered into the opening. The stream fell down a long shaft of hollowed out ice. She could just make out the bottom, about ten meters below.

“Ms. Larsen, we really should be going,” said Mr. Roberts. He had finished packing and stood near the clearing. “We have about a day’s oxygen supply left. We’ll be fine if we begin our final ascent now, but we shouldn’t delay much further.

That was the problem with Mr. Roberts: for all his simulated personality, he still thought in 0s and 1s. Kristen leaned in for a closer look. She wondered whether the smaller chamber contained more clues about her mother’s demise, perhaps objects that had been washed away by the stream. 

Kristen’s left foot was just touching the edge of the stream when she began to slip. Before she knew it, she had fallen backwards and was sliding along its slick, icy bed. As her legs entered the mouth, she grabbed at one of the stalactites above her, but it snapped off in her hand.

In the low gravity, Kristen’s fall felt like diving into a pool. She floated down, a meter at a time, fading out of the stream and into the open shaft. The liquid methane fell beside her, each trickle coagulating into huge spherical drops that reflected the icy blue and dusty yellow hydrocarbon ash surrounding her. She began to turn, slowly at first, and then more quickly, and the cave seemed to spin above her like a merry-go-round. Finally, after what felt like hours, she hit the bottom, hard. 

To Kristen, the foam-filled examination tables in doctor’s offices had always seemed too small for an adult and too large for a child. The paper wrapper covering the bed crinkled as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She stared at the black plastic sleeve of the blood pressure gauge hanging on the wall next to her and wondered if she could operate it. Nearly every time she came to the doctor someone had measured her blood pressure; they would wrap the velcro strap around her arm, pump the valve, and slowly release air that had built up inside while listening for her pulse. She must have watched others do this hundreds of times, but could she do it herself? Could she be trusted to read it accurately when the patient’s life was in her hands?

Dr. Spence knocked softly and entered the room. Kristen usually saw him in the mission facilities, so seeing him here in his offices felt a bit strange, like seeing a teacher outside the classroom.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“I am.”

“The medication is called Omphalos” he said, setting down a small, red pill on a plastic tray. “After you take it, your body will begin to absorb the fetus. You’ll have a small amount of spotting and probably some cramps. Listen to your body: if you need rest, take it, but otherwise you can feel free to go about your normal activities.”

“Got it,” said Kristen.

On the counter was a clear jar of cotton swabs, just like the one Kristen’s childhood doctor had used. At the end of fifth grade, just before her summer vacation, she had broken her arm jumping off the jungle gym. Her mother had picked her up and driven her to the doctor, who set the arm in a cast. How itchy her arm had been, trapped in a cast for eight long summer weeks.

On the way home, Kristen’s mom had brought her to a diner, a kitschy restaurant housed in an old railway car that served grilled cheese sandwiches with oozing, sharp cheddar and perfectly creamy milkshakes. They had laughed about the accident and gossiped about the girls at her school. It was her favorite memory of growing up. How could that be the same mother who had kicked her off a mountain? The same mother who had abandoned her to chase her legacy on Titan?

“Could you give me a minute?” said Kristen.

“Of course,” Dr. Spence said, and left the room.

She picked up the pill and held it in her hand, staring at it. Her hand was sweaty, and the pill stuck to the skin, leaving a thin red residue. She took a sip of water, holding it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing. Finally, she jammed the pill into the bottom corner of her pants pocket.

After a few minutes, Dr. Spence came in and saw that the tray was empty.

He began to go over again what to expect over the next few days. Kristen nodded along, not hearing any of it, her heart pumping faster than it had in years, since the day her mother had thrown her off a mountain and she floated in the thin air, devastated and exhilarated in equal measures.

She left the facility and squinted at the harsh natural light. On the curb next to her was a storm drain. Her hand shook as she removed the pill from her pocket and threw it down the drain. 

In a nearby tree, a bird was singing and fluttering from branch to branch. Maybe it was building a nest, thought Kristen. Maybe she could build one, too. She’d seen hundreds of nests.

Kristen laid on her back, afraid to move her limbs, afraid, in fact, of whether she would be able to move them at all. She was in a smaller cave about the size of a large bathtub. All around her was solid methane ice, and the stream trickled through, exiting through an even lower hole in the floor that was too small for her to traverse.

She tested her fingers and her toes, and they seemed to wiggle. Her back and left leg smarted. She thought of her belly, and the baby inside. Did it survive the fall?

“Ms. Larsen!” said Mr. Roberts, sounding alarmed over the comm system.

“I’m all right,” she said. “At least, I think I am.” She flexed her legs and slowly stood up. Her left heel had taken the brunt of the landing, and was very sore, but she was able to put weight on it. “Are you near?”

“I’m here at the stream’s exit. Give me a minute.”

Kristen looked up and saw Mr. Roberts poke his head and the top of his torso through the stream’s exit. “Can you reach down?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Roberts. He extended an arm as far as he could, but it only reached about halfway down the shaft separating her from the upper cavern.

“I need you to grab my pickaxes and crampons,” she said. “I’ll have to climb out.”

Mr. Roberts brought her equipment over and gently tossed it in. The crampons and axes fell through the thick air like the last leaves falling from a tree in early winter. 

Kristen looked around the smaller chamber where she had fallen. She touched the wall and could feel the immense cold, though her exosuit protected her fingers from the deadly temperature. It was only through an exosuit that Kristen could be here, close to where her mother had perished. Even if she could find her body somewhere, she wouldn’t be able to touch her, not really. She would never again be able to hold her mother’s hand, or give her a hug, or cry on her shoulder. Nor could her mother reach out to touch her, whether to lift her up or kick her down. She had known this, of course, in theory. But a part of her had always thought that if she could find her mother’s body she would be able to tell her all the things she had not been able to voice when she was around, the things she had been too young and too scared to say. 

Kristen began to climb on the side of the shaft opposite the methane flow, securing herself with crampons and pickaxes. When she had reached the halfway mark, Mr. Roberts offered his arm, but she declined. The beams of Kristen’s headlamp cut through the smaller cavern one last time, but Kristen saw nothing more of her mother there.

She pulled herself up, limb by limb, until she had reached the mouth. Only then did she grab Mr. Roberts’s arm, using it to steady herself as she crossed the slick stream.

Outside the cave, the storm had cleared the skies, and Kristen could see the summit. She called down her ship and prepared to make the final ascent.

A few hours later, she walked the last few steps to the peak of Cronus, and below her the barren Titanese landscape sprawled forth, its peaks and valleys tinged with the atmosphere’s yellow haze. When she had visualized this moment from Earth she had expected to feel triumphant, but now that she was here at the summit, she felt most of all a sense of relief, as if she had been carrying a great burden and finally laid it down. Her hand found her belly, which was just beginning to swell. She felt fine after her fall, but she was anxious for her ship to arrive so she could run diagnostics to ensure her child was all right.  

At her request, Mr. Roberts handed her the climbing anchor, rope, and boots they had found in the cave. These were all she would find of her mother on Titan, and she could think of no more fitting place for them to be than at the summit. She laid them down in a small pile which she encircled with a length of her own rope, cut from the strands she had used to climb the mountain.

Her ship made its final descent and hovered near the summit. She stepped on board, and, as the metal hatch began to close, looked back at the mountain one last time.

On a warm summer Sunday, Kristen watched as a tall and spirited three-year-old stood proudly atop a jungle gym in a park lined with spruce trees.

“I climbed all the way up, momma!” said Zoe.

“You sure did, my dear!” said Kristen.

Zoe squatted down and raised her arms, which meant, as Kristen knew well, that she was about to jump. She flung herself forward, head raised and arms outstretched, her audacity a reminder of her mother or perhaps even her grandmother, and Kristen was there to catch her