“No good, Jason. Not enough mass.”
“There’s got to be some way I can stay on the ship and live.”
“As I have already pointed out to you, if you stay on this ship, you will die anyway.”
Jason bounced off the ceiling and headed towards the far wall. I switched on a rear camera in time to see him narrow his eyes and smile. “Maybe I can survive off the ship.”
“How?”
He floated to the supply closet, grabbed the handle, and opened it. “In the EVA suit. That way, we can reduce the mass of the ship but I won’t die.”
“Jason, your EVA suit is not suitable for prolonged exposure to an atmosphere as dense as Titan’s. You would burn up in descent, and hit the ground just as hard.”
“That wasn’t what I meant, Zec. There’s no point in jumping out of the ship without a parachute. But what if you put me in orbit above the atmosphere? And came back for me after refueling on Titan?”
I considered this idea for a moment. It could conceivably work, but only if the timing worked out correctly. I calculated the time it would take for the Zecca to land, be refueled, take off, and match velocities with an orbiting astronaut. The conclusion would have led me to shake my head, if I had had one.
“Sorry, Jason,” I said as softly as I could. “You would be stuck in orbit for two hours and twenty minutes. You only have enough oxygen in the suit for fifteen minutes. No tanks. And even if you had—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’d overheat, pass out, and—damn. I guess there is nothing I can do, is there?”
As gently as I could, I said, “I am afraid not. I am truly sorry, my friend Jason.”
He pulled at his fingers, a nervous habit of which I had been unsuccessful at dissuading him. “So this is it. I’m going to die.” He started crying. “Damn. If only I hadn’t been sleeping. Strauss always said this would happen.”
“Who?”
Jason wiped the tears from his eyes. “I never did tell you how I got stuck with the outer solar system run, did I?”
“No.” I tried to put the proper inflection into my voice, of interest and caring. I wanted to keep Jason talking, so he could reconcile himself to his fate.
“Not much to say. I screwed up once before, and Strauss—my commander at the time—busted me for it. Went from the cushy Earth-Luna-Mars run to the past two years of hell. It hasn’t exactly been good for my marriage.” He stopped to wipe away a few more tears.
“Anyway, he always got on my case for mistakes, and claimed that one day I’d make what he called The Big One. And now it looks like I’ve proven him right.”
He banged the console. “Damn that sanctimonious bastard! He wasn’t even a pilot, just a desk jockey who got his rank from his computer skills. He—”
Something changed in Jason’s manner. He got quiet all of a sudden, and I saw what seemed like a hopeful look in his eyes. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Computers.”
“What about computers?”
He laughed, pushed himself down to the floor, and opened the cargo hold. “I saw one with the medical equipment. If I can just find it in time...”
“What?” I asked again as Jason began to rummage through the hold.
He didn’t answer me, but a minute later he pulled one of the boxes out and whooped for joy. “A neural mapper! They did request one!”
“Yes, of course,” I replied. “Besides diagnosing brain injuries, it can also be used to study neural activity in developing life. But I do not understand—”
“Don’t you see?” he said, opening the box. “You have an interface for this thing, don’t you, Zec?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then you can scan my brain with it! You can do a complete mapping of my neural functions.”
“Jason, even if I stored your mental pattern—”
“I’m not talking about storing the pattern, I’m talking about running it!”
It took me a second to assimilate what he was saying. “You mean like an AI program.”
“Yes! That’s exactly what I mean. Now where’s your medical interface port? Oh, yeah.” He walked over to it and began to plug the scanner in. I swiveled one of my cameras to get a more direct look at him.
“Jason, that will not work.”
He stopped short of affixing the remote scanning patch to his head, then slapped it on. “Why not?”
“It has never been done before.”
“Sure it has; I’ve read about it. They’ve scanned brains on Earth and kept the pattern in a computer.”
“Jason, the most research anyone has done has been to model a fixed human brain pattern, not a changing one. The closest brain that has been copied and run in active memory is a chimpanzee brain.”
“It’s still the same principle as that behind AI, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but my patterns are different from yours. There is no guarantee that this would work.”
“Zec, it seems to be my only chance. I’m willing to take the risk.”
“There is another problem.”
“Now what?”
“I do not think I have enough memory capacity to run both of us.”
He looked sad for a moment. “Well, Zec, I hate to tell you this, but I can land this ship as well as you can. Either one of us can be the intelligence in the ship’s computer, and the mission will still be completed. So—” He hesitated for a moment—“I order you to download my mind.” He turned on the neural mapper.
“Jason, I do not wish to do this. I do not wish to risk my own existence.”
“Damn it, Zec, you’re a computer! A robot! Your programming tells you that my life must take precedence over yours. You have no choice.”
“I did not say that I would not do it. I merely said that I do not want to. I do not wish to relinquish my own existence any more than you wish to relinquish yours.”
“You got a better idea? Now’s the time.”
I had none, and I did not speak. The silence lingered, and when Jason spoke again, his voice was softer.
“Look, Zec. I’m sorry about this. We have been through a lot together, and—and I’ll miss you. I don’t want you to have to die either. But I’m terrified of it myself. And I’m human. I take precedence over you.”
“That
