"And if anything goes wrong?" Willard asked.
"Head back to Lander One ASAP and let us know on the way. We can evac and be back to the Surveyor quicker than most ambulance trips."
Willard nodded.
"Make sure to switch your com over to your specific crew's frequency," Choi said as she moved to the rear of the lander. She punched a few buttons on a keypad built into the rear of the Lander. "Peterson and I are on Com 1, you three take Com 2. We don't want to hear everyone's conversations at the same time. If you have an emergency, switch to the emergency channel and everyone will hear you."
The rear hatch of the lander slowly opened. Two long tracks slid down to the ice. A large, thick wheeled ATV rolled gently down the tracks and stopped at the bottom. The small vehicle was sleek but sturdy—the SUV of moon rovers. A small, two-wheeled trailer was attached to the back of the ATV, designed to safely transport a wide variety of samples. It had freezers to keep ice frozen, dry tubs for soil samples, even sterile containment units for biological matter.
Connelly couldn't stand the anticipation anymore. She knew the answers they sought were still a long way away, but for the first time ever, she was going to see her creation, TES, in action. Even inside the temperature controlled PMS, she could feel her underarms beginning to perspire. She put her hand on Robert's shoulder. "Ready?"
"You kidding?" Robert said. Both of them turned and took a few steps toward TES, which could be seen as a black splotch on the white plains, one hundred yards away.
Choi took the driver's seat and Peterson climbed on behind her.
"Hey Kathy," Peterson said.
Connelly turned around as she bounced away. She could see Peterson's smiling face behind his PMS suit's mask. "Hope you find what you're looking for."
Connelly waived. "You too."
"I'm switching you off now. See you in two." Tires spun, launching the ATV forward. It cruised easily over the ice with its spiked tread.
Connelly did her best to hide her smile from Robert, who was looking at her with suspicious eyes. Using her right hand to work the control panel on her left wrist, Connelly switched from Com 1 to Com 2. "Can you hear me, Robert?"
"You two a thing now?" Robert asked, not amused.
"I'll take that as a yes." Connelly bounded forward in the low gravity, hoping to avoid the conversation. Luckily for her, Willard wasn't as interested as Robert.
Willard landed next to Connelly after taking a huge leap. "How come we don't get a speedy thingy?"
Robert chuckled. "Probably because you call it a speedy thingy."
It took the three of them ten minutes to bumble their way across the frozen surface of Europa. No one spoke much; they just looked around, admiring the never ending incredible view. Jupiter was directly in front of them. Connelly couldn't get over the planet's size. When Europa's rotation had them facing Jupiter, the king of the solar system took up the entire view. She recalled what it had been like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. The sense of dizziness and awe. The Grand Canyon was inconsequential compared to Jupiter.
Of course, Connelly knew that for all of Jupiter's splendor, it also posed one of the greatest mission threats. If the electromagnetic shielding provided by Surveyor, the landers or TES gave out, they'd have six minutes to get the system back online or get six feet beneath the ice.
Connelly took her place behind the TES control panel. The sphere, which was clear on top and solid metal alloy on the bottom, was dangling over the exposed ice at the center of TES. Three cranes, attached to TES in between the three large panels, which now lay flat, held the sphere aloft and provided electricity, heat, air, pressurization and communications. In addition, the cables also contained heating filaments, which kept the melted water from refreezing. Once a hole was melted in the ice, it would fill with water from the ocean beneath. If left alone, it would quickly refreeze and trap the TES sphere below.
Stepping away from the control panel, Connelly approached the sphere and reached out her hand, placing it on its smooth exterior. "Okay, baby, this is it. Show me what you got." Connelly slid her hand off the sphere and took a jump back. She turned to Robert, who had taken her place at the control panel. "Heating coil status?"
Robert glanced at the screen. "A-Okay."
"Support cables?"
"Holding…" Robert smiled. "Kath, we're as ready as we're going to be."
Connelly moved behind the control panel with Robert and Willard. "Guys, I just wanted to say…"
"Boss," Willard said. "Quit stalling and hit the damn button."
Connelly laughed, put her thumb on a button labeled, ENGAGE, and pushed it down. Moments later, wavy distortions of heat could be seen streaming off the metallic bottom of the sphere. After thirty seconds of silence, the sphere began to lower toward the ice.
Watching with the eyes of a hawk, Connelly saw the top layer of ice begin to melt as the sphere descended. Moments later, the sphere made physical contact with the ice. A plume of steam launched into the air, propelled by the great heat of the sphere. Connelly's facemask clouded as the area fogged over.
The entire event was perfectly silent. In the vacuum of space, which they were exposed to on the moon's surface, sound could not exist. But she could hear the loud cheers of Robert, who raised his hands in victory. "There she goes!"
The steam, which had formed a cloud over a fifty foot radius began to cluster and refreeze. The gravity of the moon, while weak, was still strong enough to pull the ice crystals back to the surface. Connelly held her hands out as the newly formed snowflakes descended.
A chill suddenly shook her body when she realized that the snowflakes looked like the explosive charged particles that had nearly destroyed the Surveyor. She began to imagine what would have happened to the ship if they hadn't been able to clear the cloud. But before her mind could fully commit to the subject, her eyes transmitted new information that took precedence over every other thought in Connelly's mind. The snow and steam had cleared enough that she could see the area the TES sphere had been.
The sphere is gone! she thought.
Connelly took a careful step forward, looking into the newly formed, ten foot wide hole in the ice. Inside was a pool of water, perhaps five feet deep, and below that, beneath the shimmering alien liquid, was the TES sphere, moving steadily downward.
She looked back at Robert and Willard, who wore smiles on their faces. "It's working. TES is working."
* * * * *
On the trip down from the Surveyor to Europa's surface, Peterson had felt a little apprehensive. He remembered what happened to Benson. The fear in his eyes. The voices he heard before dying. Convulsions. Blindness. Bleeding. All of it in just seconds. But once he had set foot on the moon, he became more relaxed. The beauty of the place usurped all his fears.
Until Choi hit the gas. For three minutes now, she'd been weaving back and forth, dodging ice heaves, taking corners at breakneck speeds, and sending the ATV catapulting in the air as the bounced over rises in the ice.
His immediate protest was met with quick, "Testing the limits of the ATV. Just hold on."
As they headed toward a steep rise in the ice, Peterson decided it would be best to close his eyes. He knew the PMS suit couldn't be torn open and the mask could reseal, but that wouldn't stop an impact from breaking his bones. As they neared the rise, Peterson closed his eyes. He could feel the ATV moving. It's rumbling engine silently shook his torso. Then they hit the steep rise, moving up at rollercoaster speed, Peterson prepared to feel the surface of the moon disappear, and then, maybe a minute later, they would crash back down to the ice and tend to their wounds.
But rather than moving up and out, Peterson suddenly felt himself jam forward into Choi's back. He heard her grunt in his headset. Then they were stopped.
Peterson hopped off the ATV and glared at Choi. "What the hell is wrong with you, Choi? First you try to kill us by driving like a madman and then you try to break my neck by hitting the brakes!"
&n
bsp; Choi was motionless.
"Hello? I'm talking here…Choi…Choi?" Peterson studied the expression on her face. She looked dumbfounded. "What's wrong?"
Choi's raised her arm and pointed straight out.
Peterson felt a sudden twist in his stomach. Peterson followed Choi's extended finger and found himself gazing out over a wide valley. His mind went blank and he could swear he felt himself floating out of his body. What he was seeing was totally, utterly, unreal.
After an entire minute of staring, he turned to Choi as she turned to him. Their eyes locked.
Choi spoke slowly. "They…they look—"
Peterson finished her thought.
"Alive."
CHAPTER 11 -- FIELDS OF RED
The agonizing slowness of TES's descent began to drive Robert crazy. He'd been pacing for a half hour and was starting to feel his muscles twitch. He paused his slow motion pace and shook out his arms. "I can't take this," he said. "How much longer?"
"No way to know," Connelly said as she hovered over the TES control panel, watching for the slightest change in the status display. "Not until we break through."
"If there's water at all," Robert said.
Willard looked up from the nearby TES panel, where he'd been lying down, enjoying the view. "What do you mean, if?"
Robert felt the urge to adjust his glasses, but they were unreachable behind his mask. "There's, ah, no guarantee we're going to find water. Science says there is water beneath the ice, but science has been wrong before."
"What about all this ice?" Willard asked. "If there's ice there's water."
"Now he's a scientist," Robert said with a chuckle. "Ice, technically speaking, is frozen water. But frozen water cannot support life…as we know it. And since this is a search for life, we need to find water of the non-frozen variety."
"But the guys at the GEC—"
"They're placing bets," Robert said. Robert knew that most scientists were also great gamblers. They pegged a theory, backed it up with original thinking, found proof that supported their hypothesis and then did the leg work, proving the theory correct. They were at the final stage in this process, final proof. Robert looked to Connelly, "You can explain it."
Willard bounced toward them and stopped next to Connelly at the control panel. Connelly took a deep breath and let it out slowly, allowing her first words to merge with her breath half way through. "There are several theories for how water might be warmed beneath the ice of Europa's surface; tidal flexing caused by Jupiter's gravitational pull, thermal venting, a molten core. The list goes on. But until someone drills a hole in the ice and sees the water for themselves, it's all just theory."
"Like the Big Bang," Willard said.
"Precisely," Robert added with a raised finger. "We've found all kinds of evidence that supports the theory, but it has never been more than that."
"Guys…"
Robert was about to launch into the history of the science versus religion debate and didn't even register Connelly's voice. "Now, if you recall—"
"Robert." Connelly's voice was firm this time and captured Robert's attention.
Looking at Connelly, Robert could see her muscles were tense, even through the PMS suit. Her hands held firm grips on the sides of the control panel.
"What is it?" Robert asked as he bumbled toward the panel.
Willard looked over Connelly's shoulder. "Something's coming through."
Robert stopped next to Connelly and looked at the display screen. Numbers were scrolling across the screen as the system analyzed the new information.
"What's it doing?" Willard asked.
"Receiving data," Connelly replied.
"Did it find something?"
Robert looked over at Willard with nervous eyes. "That, or it malfunctioned and is reporting the problem."
All three pairs of eyes were glued to the screen. The text began to transform into words. It displayed one line at a time.
EVENT REPORT
DESCENT CEASED
DEPTH — 01.534 MILES
CAUSE — NEW SURFACE LOCATED
ANALYZING...
ANALYZING...
ANALYZING...
ANALYZING...
TEMPERATURE – 55 DEGREES FARENHEIT
CONFIRMATION – LIQUID WATER DETECTED
* * * * *
"Do you realize what this is?" Peterson said, as he bent down at the edge of their earth-shattering discovery. The view before him was one hundred percent alien to Earth, yet Peterson, Choi and a few other GEC employees had seen cell samples taken from a meteorite that crashed in the arctic and killed Benson. He hadn't seen them at full size, but the red coloration and maroon soil was identical.
Choi looked at Peterson, her eyes wide. "Is this..."
Peterson nodded. "This is it. From the meteorite. This is it."
He stood to his feet and took in the unbelievable view for the second time. Spread out before him was a field, an endless field of red, gelatinous cucumber-like plants. Bunched in small groups of three to seven, they stood erect like tight clusters of crimson bowling pins. As though pushed by a nonexistent wind, they slowly danced from side to side, shimmering in the light cast by the distant sun.
Turning his head from side to side, Peterson realized that the entire expanse, which was miles long and hundreds of yards across was covered with the red organisms. They weren't just surviving on the surface of a frozen, radiation-doused moon that had the thinnest imaginable atmosphere, they were thriving!
Peterson hopped to the ATV's trailer and opened a hatch on the back.
"What are you doing?" Choi asked, crossing her arms.
"Getting samples."
"I don't have to remind you what a small amount of this material did to your crew member."
"Benson ingested it; took it into his body. I have no intention of repeating his mistake or allowing anyone else to do the same. You built the fail-safes in the lab yourself." Peterson took a small shovel and a glass canister out of the trailer and headed back to the red field. "This is what we came here for, Choi. It's why you're here."
Choi loosed her crossed arms. "If I sense anything is going wrong, even for a second, we get rid of it."
Peterson paused by the field, prepared to strike the ice. He glanced at Choi briefly, then looked back to the nearest patch of red organisms and raised the shovel up. Before he could swing the shovel down and pierce the ice, Choi had his arm locked in her grip. He starred at her defiantly. "Hey."
"The GEC gave me full authority to pull the plug on this entire mission if I thought there was a risk of infection. You're here to collect and study rocks. You answer to me. Am I clear?" Choi let go of his arm.
Peterson stabbed the shovel into the ice, just in front of the nearest patch of red cucumbers. "Crystal," he said. "Now if you'll give me some room I'd like to—" Peterson pushed down on the handle, raising the shovel up and yanking a portion of the organisms away from the field, snapping what appeared to be roots. The action caused a chain reaction. Like a shockwave, moving out from the fresh wound, the rest of the field bowed in the opposite direction, like ripples on a pond. It happened so quickly that Peterson hardly had time to register what he'd seen. "Did you see that?"
"Are you trying to change the subject?"
"No…" Peterson poured the sample he'd taken into the glass canister, turned back to the field and stabbed the shovel in a second time. Nothing happened.
Peterson pulled the sample up, again snapping the roots. Still nothing happened. Peterson sighed. "Must have been seeing things." Peterson placed the second sample into the canister.
Choi slid the cover onto the canister and sealed it. "I think that's enough."
Peterson smiled. "You should learn how to relax." He picked up the canister and carried it back to the trailer. "I think when the GEC learns what we've discovered, the balance of power is going to shift. No offense. Really. I think you need to be here, but this mission is about one thing and one thing only."
"And what is that?"
Peterson replaced the shovel and locked down the trailer. "Life."
"I suppose then, that the GEC and you should ask the question. Now that alien life has been discovered, what is more valuable?" Choi swept her hand out toward the sea of red. "Alien life, or human life?"
Peterson eyed the passenger's seat with apprehension. He didn't want another roller coaster ride. Moving as quickly as he could, Peterson bounced to the front of the ATV and hopped onto the driver's seat. He looked over at Choi and patted the passenger's seat, motioning for her to get on. She frowned and moved toward the seat.
"Choi," Peterson said. "They're little red cucumbers… If we don't eat or breathe them, what's the worst they could do?"
* * * * *
Connelly felt her knees shaking as she inched towards the edge of the newly formed, mile and a half deep hole in Europa's surface. She peered over the edge. The vertical tunnel stretched down for one-hundred feet where it met the water that rose up from the ocean surface. "Why is the water so high?"
Robert looked over the edge. "It's like a giant straw. The water pressure below is pushing it up until its weight, which is greatly reduced on Europa, balances the force. The same thing happens when you put a straw in a glass of water—the liquid rises higher in the straw. If not for TES's heated cables keeping the water warm, it would have already begun to refreeze and reseal the whole. Wounds in the surface must fill and freeze very quickly."
Connelly felt a wave of dizziness warble through her mind. She leaned away from the edge.
"Careful near that edge, boss." Willard said
Connelly turned to Willard, who was standing a few feet back, checking the time on his wrist display. "Aren't I always?" She wondered if her nervousness showed through her shaky voice. She couldn't tell.
"Astounding," Robert said. He was looking down, into the void, shaking his head. "Can you believe this worked? I mean, I, ah, I knew it would work…but on a moon?"
BENEATH - A Novel Page 11
