Methane Men

I do remember the night well when I saw a Burner on Chris Torzan’s methane clipper. It was clear out, as clear as it ever gets on Titan, in the winter. There were only two seasons on Titan: the spring, when you could see the sun, and winter, when the sun disappeared and the rings around Saturn glowed in the silhouette. Each was only a few biological weeks, but its something else biological that gets to a man when he can’t see the sun.

I was second navigator on the ship. Aircraft don’t do too well in the atmosphere there, so all the moving was done on big insulated ships. We called her Threecie, for Captain Chris’s Clipper. Three C’s, you see. Heh. Anyways, she was about thirty-six meters long, with enough breadth for plenty of cargo. She got tossed around a bit by some of the oxygen tankers, but we liked her well enough. Had two jet engines under the methane that got us from one continent to the other in about a season, and a big old heated blade on the front that cut through the ice, when there was ice.

If I recall, we were carrying pumping components for the big water rigs that drill the stuff from underneath the ocean. We had been at sea for about two biological weeks then. It was just after mess hour towards the end of the week when the captain usually let most of the crew off to do games or cards or smoke. There was nothing pleasant to smoke on Titan, but they did anyway. Most of it gave me a headache. Nothing like tobacco. Some people got tobacco grown hydroponic, but they were valley types. City people who lived in the cracks where oxygen sank down and you didn’t need an airlock, just a coat. None of that for us. Just foul methane plants that weren’t poison. No wonder I volunteered for the watch.

The First Navigator, Met, had gone off for a video game, so it was me and the Captain alone on the bridge. Threecie had a little gamedeck in it, and that night, like most like it, the men were getting noisy. It was almost completely dark now, and after a time, I got tired of noise and dark and radar screens, and tried to chat.

“Never really liked games,” I grunted.

“Me neither,” said the captain, swishing around in his chair, “Not contemporary ones, at least. In school they made us do Myamoto and Hirai, the old masters. I think I rather liked that.”

I nodded. That was the sort of man Captain Chris was. Things like that made us trust him.

We sat there for a while, staring at the blue mists while the men downstairs made a perfect racket of the place. There was ice tonight, but not water ice. We had the cutter on, but you could barely hear the stuff coming apart over the men and the engines. I suppose I was just staring at a wall when the captain saw it.

“There’s something floating out there,” he said, jumping up.

I looked at the monitor. It was blank, save for out little dot in the center. Radar and thermometers were normal.

“Sure it isn’t more ice?” I said.

He took a glance at it, and turned back to the front window.

“Forget the radar, there’s something dead ahead. Look.”

Following his pointed finger, I was the second to see it. A gray shape in the mist, coming out of a hole in the ice, and we were getting closer. We both looked at it until the captain shouted, breaking the spell. “Turn off the cutter, and chuck it to full reverse until we stop!”

I don’t know what he was doing while I set the engine overrides and turned off the heated blade, but when I was done and reaching for the emergency alarm, I heard the electric click of the PA system. Captain had gotten to it before I did.

“Get your heads out of the VGD’s and back on Titan. I want all crew to the bridge; repeat, all crew to the bridge.”

Without taking his hand off the button, he turned away from the window for the first time in minutes and looked at me.

“Did you get it to reverse, Mister Irving?” he boomed. I flashed a thumbs-up. “Good.” he said, finger still on button and eyes locked to the bow again.

“Those that can’t make it in the bridge should get to a porthole. Those that can’t get to a porthole should get to an airlock. By God, boys this is something special.”

They all clambered to the holes below, sealed in their own little rooms so heat and air couldn’t get out. Men were starting to pour in. Threecie had a modest crew, only about thirty men for all of the loading and lifting, but we still had to squeeze to fit.

The captain was practically jumping now, shouting “It’s happening, it’s happening! It’s unfolding! For God’s sake be quiet.”

We all squinted to see the gray blob in the water. Thanks to me, we had some to a full stop and it was about fifteen meters from the tip of the bow, maybe a bit to the left. The man who had managed to get a seat on the controls in front of me was blocking my view, but we could all see as the grey shape grew larger and larger in the mist. It wasn’t swelling, but spreading across the ice. From under the methane it grew and flattened out until it was a great, mottled, wet-looking pancake on the sea. It was about three or four meters across, and now we could see that it was lit from within by a warm orange light, strange in a sea of blue.

“Hey…” said one man, after a time. “I recall I saw something like that once. Or heard of it.”

The others began to nod in vague recognition. I struggled with it for a while, as the captain paid no attention to the rest of us in the ship. Something from school hit me, and I spoke.

“Sir, do you think it could be…”

“A Burner.” he finished. Save for a few gasps, he bridge fell silent. “A Salmowe. A Lighthouse Jelly. They live underneath and dig up through the ice when it’s dark.”

He would have said more, but one man piped up in the back, “But ain’t they all dead?”

The captain said nothing.

“My grandpa used to hunt those things. I remember now. My ma has a big picture of him. His helmet, too. He had to stop ’cause they thought they all died.”

“The Burners were hunted to extinction in the late 3040’s,” The captain whispered, frowning for the fist time in a while. “And there it is all the same.”

“Why ain’t it burning?” yelled an ignorant man. “Shouldn’t it be smoking or summat?”

Captain Chris stood back a second, thinking like we'd never seen him before.

“I…” he said, turning to the controls. “…You know, I’ve always wanted to try something.”

He half-pulled, half-threw the man off the panel as the rest of the crew made room.

“It’s a mating ritual,” he said as his fingers found the switch for the blue warning lights. Looking like he might break the window with his laserlike focus, he flicked the lights on, then off, then on again. We waited in suspense a few moments, and then, gloriously, the animal lit.

First was the holes. Like a thousand gaping mouths, or bubbles in a burnt griddlecake, little gaping holed opened all around on the great animal’s flesh.

“Used for filter feeding…” said the captain.

Next came a sight that was at once mysterious and familiar to all of us. Out of the holes came that pristine clearness.

“Oxygen.” said the captain. “Separated from molecular water with enzymatic processes. Takes years of heat.”

Its glow got brighter, and as always happens when methane and oxygen are sparked, a great plume of blue flame erupted from the holes. It swept across the entire breadth of the creature like an oven burner, turning what had once been ugly grey into sapphire blue, beautiful, pure, and warm. The mists parted from the flame, and the sea in a great circle around us was clear and lit.

And as we stood there , we thirty odd men on a moon that was not our own, staring at this wonder of nature, another small blue light flashed on the horizon, twinkling in the darkness.

(edited for formatting)