The first book in the Galahad series, Dom Testa's science fiction epic
When the tail of the comet Bhaktul flicks through the Earth's atmosphere, deadly particles are left in its wake, and mankind is confronted with a virus that devastates the adult population. A renowned scientist proposes a bold plan: to build a ship that will carry a crew of 251 teenagers to a home in a distant solar system. Two years later, Galahad and its crew is launched. If their mission fails, it will be the end of the human race…
After triumphing over a saboteur bent on destroying Galahad, Triana and her Council are eager to avoid any further complications. But as Galahad swings around the ringed planet Saturn, they encounter a mysterious metal pod orbiting the moon of Titan. The teens prepare to bring the pod and its contents aboard, only to be faced with a another crisis: an illness that is beyond their medical experience. Dozens of crew members fall into a comatose state, only to awaken with strangely glowing eyes. To make matters worse, the systems of Galahadbegin to fail. With time running out, can Triana and her shipmates escape the Web of Titan?
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Release date:
June 22, 2010
Publisher:
Tom Doherty Associates
Print pages:
272
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1
The storm raged quietly along the surface, a swirl of colors colliding, mixing, weaving. Layers of gas clouds tumbled across one another, their brilliant shades of red and purple highlighted by short bursts of lightning. Winds galloped along at more than a thousand miles per hour, stirring the atmosphere and keeping the roiling chaos churning in much the same way it had for billions of years.
Above it all drifted the jeweled rings, chunks of ice and dust that varied in size between grains of sand and ten-story buildings. Their dense orbits stretched out hundreds of thousands of miles, occasionally sparkling like a crown in the dim sunlight while casting a thin, dark shadow across the face of the storms. The tightly packed debris in the rings rolled along, nudging and shoving, forever keeping watch over the unruly gas giant below.
Saturn toiled along.
Scattered near and far, its squadron of moons maintained their dutiful orbits, subjects kneeling before the majesty of the king, tossed about by the immense gravitational tugs and seared by the overwhelming inferno of radiation. Several dozen of these minor bodies drifted near Saturn’s dazzling rings, themselves a product of an earlier moon that had been shattered by a rogue asteroid or comet, the pieces now trapped in a mindless dance that circled the giant planet.
Keeping a respectful distance, and shrouded in a cloak of dense atmosphere, the largest of these moons obediently tracked through the vacuum of space, cutting a path that kept it clear of the rings. Dwarfed by the Herculean planet, it still laid claim to its own cloud system and weather patterns. Rather than water, its rivers and oceans were pools of liquid methane, carving channels and shorelines that dotted the surface, a surface impossible to see through the screen of haze and fog. An eerie orange glow masked the surface, bathing it in a dull light that made the large moon seem almost alive, breathing.
Titan.
As it circled Saturn, a route that took it a little more than two weeks to complete, Titan had its own companion in space. Right now, in an artificial orbit, a metallic pod shot around Titan, spinning slowly as it navigated, the light from Saturn occasionally glancing off its sides, mixing with the orange tint of the moon to form a ghostly shade. The smooth steel of the pod was uniform except for two small windows on one end, and exhaust ports on the other. During its slow, deliberate trek around the moon, block lettering could be made out on one side, along with small emblems of flags that lined up under a window. Inside it was dark, quiet, waiting.
It would not be quiet, nor waiting, much longer.
Lita Marques sat before the mirror in her room. She deftly tied the red ribbon into a knot, pulling her dark hair into a pony-tail and lifting it off her shoulders. She eyed the end result with a neutral glance, then gazed past her own reflection to the smiling girl who sat cross-legged on the end of Lita’s bed. “All right, Channy, what’s so funny?‿
Galahad’s Activities/Nutrition Director, clad in her usual bright yellow shorts and T-shirt that made a startling contrast against her chocolate-toned skin, replaced her grin with an expression of innocence. “Funny? Oh, nothing funny.‿ She uncrossed her legs and scooted them over the edge of the bed. “Just wondering why you bother to make yourself look so pretty every day and then refuse to let me set you up with someone.‿
Lita’s eyes rolled. “Why did I bother to ask?‿ She made one final appraisal in the mirror, then turned to face Channy Oakland. “I appreciate your intentions, Miss Social Butterfly, but I’m perfectly capable of meeting a boy on my own.‿
Channy raised one eyebrow. “Uh-huh. And quite a great job you’ve done in that area, too. We’ve been away from Earth for, what, four months now? Not counting your lunches with Ruben Chavez, you’ve been out with. . . . hmm, a whopping total of zero boys.‿ She leaned forward and picked a piece of fuzz off Lita’s shirt. “And we won’t count Ruben. You only talk with him because he’s from Mexico, like you.‿
“Hey, I like Ruben. He’s one of the nicest guys on the ship.‿
“Of course he is. But you know darned well what I’m talking about, and it’s not chatting over an energy block in the cafeteria.‿
Lita shook her head. “Channy, do you think it would be possible for you to go two days without trying to play matchmaker? When I’m ready to see someone, I will. Besides,‿ she added, “I haven’t seen you exactly setting the shipboard romance gauge any higher.‿
“That’s because I’m still in advance scouting mode right now,‿ Channy said, winking. “I’m compiling data, see? Give me another few weeks and I’ll set the hook.‿
“Right,‿ Lita said. “Compiling data. I like that.‿ She smiled at the Brit, then stood up and walked over to the built-in dresser and rummaged for a favorite bracelet. The dorm rooms on Galahad were relatively small but comfortable. Each crew member shared space with a roommate, but the work schedules were usually staggered to the point that each person was able to have time to themselves, a valuable commodity on a ship loaded with 251 passengers. Lita, one of Galahad’s five Council members, was responsible for overseeing the ship’s Clinic, or Sick House, as it was lovingly referred to by the crew. Her roommate, an outgoing fifteen-year-old from India, was currently at work in the Engineering section. Channy had stopped by to accompany Lita to dinner.
Finding the accessory she wanted, Lita slipped it over her wrist and turned back to face Channy. “Let me ask you something,‿ she said. “Are you as curious about our upcoming appointment at Titan as you are about my love life?‿
Channy shrugged. “Of course. I’m just not sure exactly what we’re doing. I asked Gap about this . . . this pod thing we’re supposed to pick up, but he was pretty busy at the time and never really explained it to me. And good luck getting a straight answer from Roc about anything.‿
This brought a laugh to Lita’s lips. “Oh, he’ll shoot straight with you eventually. What exactly do you want to know?‿
“Well,‿ Channy said, “if this pod is supposed to have been launched by the scientists on the research station orbiting Titan, how come we haven’t heard from them? Nobody seems to be saying much about that.‿
“Yeah, it’s a little creepy,‿ Lita agreed. “Thirty scientists and engineers, all working for a couple of years on a lonely outpost near Saturn, and suddenly nobody can get in touch with them.‿ She walked over to the desk across the room and called out to the computer. “Roc?‿
“Hello, Lita,‿ came the very human-sounding reply. “What’s on your mind?‿
Lita couldn’t hear the computer’s voice without seeing the short, lovable genius who had programmed the machine. Roy Orzini, one of the champions of the Galahad project, had been responsible for outfitting the ship with a computer capable of controlling the life-support systems, lights, gravity, and other crucial functions of the spacecraft. As a bonus he instilled an actual personality into the thing; his personality, it turned out, for the talking computer soon demonstrated the same wit and sarcasm as his creator. Roy’s Computer was soon shortened to RoyCo, and eventually to Roc. He was indispensable to the five Council members, almost an older brother along for the ride.
“I’m trying to explain to Channy about the pod we’re picking up pretty soon,‿ Lita said. “About the research station that has gone silent. But I’m not sure I really know exactly what it’s all about.‿
Roc remained silent a moment, then said, “Well, if you love mysteries, you should really love this, because it’s not just one thriller, but two: the disappearance of the research crew, and this metal pod we’re supposed to snatch out of space.‿
“What’s the story on the scientists?‿ Lita said, sitting down at the desk. “Who are these people anyway?‿
“A combination of biologists, medical researchers, engineers, and technicians,‿ said the computer. “Maybe not the group voted ‘Most Likely to Party in Space,’ but all brilliant in their fields. The research station is a small space station in orbit around Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, and one of the most important bodies in the solar system.‿
“Why?‿ Channy asked. “What makes Titan so special?‿
“Life,‿ Roc said. “Or, at least one of the best chances at finding it off the planet Earth. Titan, you see, has an atmosphere, and oceans.‿
“Not the kind you’d want to surf in, my friend,‿ Roc said. “These are oceans of liquid methane. But bubbling around in that poisonous soup are a lot of the building blocks that eventually led to life on Earth billions of years ago. This research station has been studying Titan for several years.‿
Lita picked up a stylus pen from the desk and tapped her cheek with it while she listened to Roc. Now she paused and said, “What have they found?‿
“That’s just it,‿ said the computer voice. “All of their reports have been labeled ‘Classified,’ and ‘Top Secret.’ Nobody knows what they’ve found. But apparently, at about the same time Galahad launched, something happened around Titan, and all contact with the scientists was lost. The last message was pretty garbled, didn’t make a lot of sense. But it mentioned a small pod that was jettisoned into Titan’s orbit, waiting.‿
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