Exploring Titan

~27~

I threw my weight against the door and opened it to be almost swept away by the roaring wiping waters that zipped by at high-octane speeds.

"Whoops!" I say in a dizzy voice as I slam the door back closed, but not before getting absolutely drenched with pitch-black water, my adrenaline reaching a fevered high as my entire body began to vibrate.

I don't even know how I'd closed the door, with such massive amounts of force pushing against it once open, but I just knew that I did.

I literally felt like Hercules in this moment, able to do anything without so much as breaking a sweat.

But also at the back of my mind, I knew I was on a ticking clock.

So instead of Hercules, I was more comparable to Popeye. All this strength, speed, and power, was temporary and VERY unstable...at best.

Assess the situation, react.

Those were the only coherent thoughts racing through my head as I rushed back to my computer to get vital statistics before making my next move.

It didn't help that my ship currently tipped at a 45-degree angle, but I made it and the stats weren't looking good.

The front and sides of my ship had already tipped into a nose dive, and the ever-fast-growing currents were about to rip me to shreds or completely pull me under. Or both.

"Computer, calculate current water speeds and set up a navigation trajectory to steer me out." I call out as I enter in a manual command to deploy my two liferafts to give me some buoyancy and steal a couple more minutes for me to stay afloat.

"Current-water-speeds: 120-miles-per-hour. Predicted-to-max-out-at-300-mph-in-the-next-3-minutes."

"Gawd dayum!" I whispered under my breath.

"Best-likely-chance-to-escape-Titan's-water-current-gravitational-pull-apply-thrusters-and-aim-North-West."

"North West!?" I yell back at the computer. "But that's heading INTO the eye of the bloody thing!?"

"Once-apex-is-reached-immediately-aim-North-East-then-full-East-and-engage-boosters-to-escape-imminent-doom."

The look I gave my computer would've made it blush in shame if it had any sentience.

"You're basically telling me 'turn left to go right'! This isn't the bloody fucking Pixar Cars movie!! It's been 2 decades and I STILL don't understand what they meant by that!!!!!" I yell.

"The math checks out." Carol gives me a thumbs up with her glasses on while looking over her notes where she quickly did the computer's math to probably double check.

"HOW!?"

Freaking NASA scientist and their inhumane ability to do computational maths on a dime!

"You know what, fuck it. Just do it anyway." I turn around and start locking down shit so items don't start flying around from such an insane manoeuvre. Shutting cupboards, putting away plates and other sharp items, locking my bathroom door, and shutting off the water valves to not burst a pip leading to my reverse (treated) water tank.

"System-navigation-disabled-due-to-heavy-damaged-sustained."

I froze.

"WHEN!?" I bellow the question.

"2-minutes-ago-from-water-current-picking-up-speed-to-250-mph."

I suppress the murderous urge to scream.