‘Moons of Saturn’ by James Dorr

Phoebe, with her retrograde motion … 

We laughed about that when the Voyager photographs were on TV. Her real name was Phoebe, named for the mother of the Sun. Or that’s what she said.

“You must be Enceladus,” she said on a different night, when the news showed the space probe closer to Saturn. Never mind my real name or background. “Enceladus was the most powerful of the storm giants. Savage, yet noble. And, according to the Greek legends, he was born not in the usual way, but from the spilling of his father’s blood.”

“Shouldn’t I be Iapetus instead?” I asked. “The creator of man? Or, more to the point, the moon whose orbit is closest to Phoebe’s?”

“No,” she said. “Between us, we encompass all the moons” — that was before Mimas’s pictures were broadcast — “you next to the brooding bulk of Saturn, the god-devourer of his children, and me the outermost moon of them all.”

“And you with your retrograde motion,” I said. “Widdershins to the others’ orbits.” 

Discovered in 1898, the TV continued, flashing back to the Voyager pictures. Phoebe circles more than eight million miles from Saturn, one of only two of the moons with its orbital plane tilted at an angle to that of the rings … 

“Another difference. Another out-of-stepness,” I said. 

We laughed again, Phoebe and I. Phoebe, with her passion for ancient legends and myths. Her fascination was not so much with science as with the fantasies that could be spun from it.

As for me, as I say, never mind my name or my background. You may have known me. Suffice it to say that I had money willed to me by an aunt, enough that I needn’t work unless it held my interest. That I had had a good education.
That Phoebe and I loved each other deeply.



Discovered in 1789, the TV news said. This was for Mimas.

“The year of the guillotine,” Phoebe broke in, as if the announcer were talking to her. “Of revolution and blood in France.”

“Shhhh,” I said as the voice went on. … discovered the same year as Enceladus. There was a shift as a picture of my moon formed on the TV so they could be compared. Mimas orbits less than 120,000 miles from its parent, while Enceladus, the next moon out … 

“No,” Phoebe said. “Saturn was never our father. You, Mimas, the storm giants, I, were all born of Gaea and Uranus. Saturn, too, was a son of Uranus.”

“I know, Phoebe,” I whispered. I kissed her. 

“Wait,” she said. “Before, I’d forgotten Mimas, the innermost moon. The one of our siblings who freed Earth’s volcanoes. And now they say there are other, tiny moons even closer to Saturn than he is. But last night I had a dream about Mimas. And you and me. The two of you are bound together — discovered the same year — and thus, somehow, Mimas is bound to me also.”

“I heard you scream last night,” I said. “While you were sleeping. It was only once, so I didn’t wake you.”

“I haven’t been feeling well,” she said. “It’s probably nothing.”

I kissed her again, harder this time, and she kissed me back. That night we made love in front of the TV while Voyager’s arc swung it closer to Saturn. We watched, in each other’s arms, as the pictures formed on the screen.