The Web of Titan

One common trait people have carried through the years, with a few exceptions, is fear of the unknown. Humans need a comfort zone of the familiar, and when that’s shattered the automatic response is often dread, anxiety, or downright terror.

Take our good friends on the spacecraft called Galahad. Their entire mission is a voyage to the unknown, and it’s unfair to think that an ample dose of fear doesn’t ride along with them. Each day they move farther away from the warm embrace of Earth, and deeper into the infinite void of space.

If you missed their exciting first adventure, my obvious suggestion is to stop right now, find it, and read all about it. But if you want to wade in right here, I’ll try to catch you up.

What appeared at first to be an ordinary comet, named Bhaktul, instead turned out to be a killer. As Earth passed through Bhaktul’s tail, microscopic particles contaminated the atmosphere, leading to a grisly disease that would ultimately take down every adult on the planet. Kids were mostly immune from the ravages of the disease until around age eighteen, and nobody knew why. Worst of all, there wasn’t time to find out; Bhaktul was not only deadly, it was quick.

So when Dr. Wallace Zimmer, an eminent scientist from America’s West Coast, proposed building a large ship that could safely transport a few hundred kids to another world, most people supported him. A few, however, were violently opposed. They believed it was wrong to break families apart, even though that separation meant the sparing of hundreds of lives. In the end Zimmer’s project was successful, and an international crew consisting of 251 of the world’s brightest kids—all of them either fifteen or sixteen years old—launched in the ship christened Galahad. Its destination: two Earth-like planets circling a star called Eos.

The trip would be made in five years, but soon after the launch it seemed the crew would never even make it as far as Mars. An intruder aboard the ship threatened to destroy Galahad, and . . .

But wait. For the sake of those of you who have skipped the first adventure, known as The Comet’s Curse, it would spoil the excitement to tell you everything now. Read it, quickly, and then rejoin us, please.

Of course, if you’re new to our tale, and still reading—stubborn, aren’t you?—then you are probably curious about who I am. My name is Roc, and I’m the only nonhuman crew member of Galahad. To refer to me as simply a computer would do me a grave injustice. That’s like calling the Amazon or Nile Rivers “streams.” Or calling Mount Everest a “hill.” Or taking a fudge brownie, buried under a scoop of ice cream and ladled with chocolate syrup, nuts, whipped cream, and a cherry, and calling it “a snack.”

I’ve never had a fudge brownie, obviously, but I’ve seen your reactions when you eat it, and no snack ever caused that kind of ecstasy.

I oversee most of the basic operations of the ship and provide guidance to the ruling body known as the Council. Those five crew members, as diverse as the kids they represent, do a fine job on their own, but who would pass up advice from a mental wonder such as me?

The one thing I can’t advise them on is this other pesky emotion that seems to raise its head when teenagers are thrown together. You probably know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m aware of the drama that is taking place between several of our Council members, and I certainly don’t mind commenting on it. Who wouldn’t? I just hate to see these kids get their hearts trampled on, even though history seems to suggest that it’s going to happen, regardless of what you or I or anyone else says to them.

That pretty much sums up things to this point. As our latest adventure unfolds, Galahad is four months out from Earth, past Mars, past the asteroid belt, even past the orbit of Jupiter. The giant gas planet Saturn lies dead ahead.

And so does that nagging feeling I’ve had for quite a while. You wanna talk about fear of the unknown?

Acknowledgments