“Oh, yes you will,” the general chimes in. “Minka?”
“I’m Minka Palladin from Odessa, Ukraine. Those steps you’re standing on—they’re less than a mile from my home.” There’s a slight wobble in her voice that I’ve never heard before as she stares at the screen. “I—I’m the mission science officer. My job on the Pontus is to carry out different lab experiments that Dr. Takumi or General Sokolov assigns me, like testing different methods of creating oxygen, food, and other essentials that we’ll need when we get to Europa. Once we land, I’ll also serve as mission chemist.”
We continue with Dev, whose role as lieutenant commander includes leading all EVA/spacewalk operations and facilitating the docking of our ship with the Mars supply vessel, and Sydney, who speaks haltingly about administering the RRB, focusing more of her job description on all the medical care she’ll eventually be responsible for. And then it’s Beckett’s turn. He gives the camera a casual wave and his trademark cocky grin before introducing himself, waiting a beat for the impressed crowd murmurs that always accompany his famous last name.
“I’m the underwater specialist, which means I’m in charge of all things related to Europa’s ocean and our terraforming efforts on the ground,” he says. I stare at the floor to hide the disdain surely written across my face. It was never supposed to be you.
“Once we land, I’ll be the one making the dangerous treks below the ice, driving the submersible back and forth in a foreign ocean as we explore and develop the new world.” He gazes into the camera with an expression so solemn, it would make me laugh out loud if I wasn’t so annoyed. “It’s a serious responsibility, but my swimming career has prepared me well.”
I stifle a snort. I wouldn’t really call captaining his high school swim team a “career,” but ooookay. Just as I’m gearing up to answer the question myself, Cooper, who seems to have dropped his shyness by now, asks Beckett a follow-up question.
“Then you must be so bored on the spaceship, with no ocean yet and nothing to do!” he says, his round eyes widening. “Do you just . . . hang out and watch TV all day?”
The audience on-screen laughs at the boy’s comment, while Beckett visibly bristles.
“Hardly,” he says evenly. “I have my own highly important tasks on the ship as well.”
“Like what?”
I glance over at Beckett, and I can see it in his face—there’s no way he’s letting a twelve-year-old show him up in front of the world on live TV.
“Like being the one astronaut with access to the ship’s 3D-printing lab, where we’re developing next-level tools for surviving Europa. If you think you’ve seen high-tech before, well. Just wait till you see this.”
Beckett raises an eyebrow, practically daring the audience not to be impressed. He has nothing to worry about there. The faces on-screen light up in awe, friends and family members turning to each other with murmurs of “Whoa” and “So cool.”
My first instinct is that Beckett is lying, of course. We don’t have a 3D-printing lab on the Pontus. That’s not the kind of thing you fail to notice. But then I catch General Sokolov’s frozen expression on-screen. She looks . . . blindsided. Like Beckett let slip something he wasn’t supposed to.
“Naomi?” she says, after a beat of silence.
Everyone turns to me now, waiting for me to dive into my job description, but I’m still reeling from Beckett’s revelation. What could possibly be happening that would make Dr. Takumi and General Sokolov want to keep the 3D-printing lab a secret from everyone but Beckett, of all people? Because, based on the befuddled expressions around me, it seems most of my teammates are just as in the dark as I am. Only Minka remains poker-faced. I wonder if she’s heard him boasting about this before.
I manage to give the viewers a semi-coherent rundown of my life as the ship’s communications and technology specialist, but I’m only halfway present. What, exactly, are they making in that lab?
“Now before we throw it to our next location, we have a surprise for our Americans onboard,” Dr. Takumi says. He’s performing for the crowd now, not making eye contact with either Beckett or me. “Your families each sent a gift for you, to be opened live on-air during this videoconference. The gifts will be displayed in a place of prominence here at Mission Control, representing you in front of the many employees who are working day and night to keep you safe.”
I lean forward, my heartbeat picking up speed. Seeing what my parents and Sam picked for me will be almost like having them there.
“And the first gift is for . . .” One of Dr. Takumi’s aides hands him a package. “Naomi. Ready for me to open it?”
I nod quickly, staring at the screen as he tears off the wrapping paper. Dr Takumi lifts the lid from the box and unearths a canvas awash in shades of red, blue, and gold. It’s a painting of a woman, rising tall and mighty, her back arched in a warrior pose as she holds a sky-high staff and lifts her face to the heavens. Her jet-black hair is pulled back with a golden diadem of stars, while two towering angel wings extend from the back of her crimson dress.
“The Iranian goddess Anahita,” Dr. Takumi reads from a caption carved into the frame of the painting. “Goddess of water, ruler of the stars.”
She is magnificent. Everything about her, from her pose to expression, makes me feel proud, strong, capable of anything. I reach out a hand, wishing I could get closer to my gift, close enough to feel the paint under my palm.
“There’s something written on the back!” one of the audience members yells excitedly.
Dr. Takumi gives them a scolding glance before turning the canvas over to read, “For our beloved Naomi: a symbol of the old world and the strength and power you come from, qualities that we know will carry you through your journey into the new. Always remember how loved you are—Mama, Dad, and Sam.”
I blink back tears, but this time, they’re not from sadness. I feel them with me. And I know that it’s not just qualities like strength that will carry me through the journey to Europa—it’s love.
“Thank you,” I finally manage to say into the camera. “Mom, Daddy, Sam . . . this means more than you know.”
I only wish I had it here, to hang by my bed. I’ll have to look up a photo of the painting as soon as the videoconference is over, to save onto my tablet.
“Next up, Beckett!”
Everyone peers forward as Dr. Takumi unwraps a smaller parcel, curious to see the kind of gift coming from the realm of the White House.
“Ah . . . would you look at that.” Dr. Takumi lifts a thick black book with silver calligraphy lettering across the spine, the cover decorated in coats of arms. “A first edition copy of He Who Drew the Sword, the classic American novel published in 1938!”
I draw in my breath. That is a seriously old relic. I give Beckett a sidelong glance, but he doesn’t seem nearly as impressed with the gift as the rest of us. He seems almost frustrated, and I wonder if he was expecting something showier.
“Is there a message with that one, too?” an audience member calls out.
Dr. Takumi carefully flips through the delicate pages and double-checks the parcel, but comes up with nothing.
I think about my family’s loving words to me, and I almost feel sorry for Beckett. Almost. But the feeling slips away as fast as it came on with the first commercial break. Beckett jumps into salesman mode for the unsuspecting viewers on Earth without a hint of irony, making ACS Sportswear sound like a miracle jacket that will ward off all horrors of climate change. This time, I can’t refrain from rolling my eyes, even on live TV.
The videoconference POV location shifts from the United States to India, and I relax back into my seat as Dr. Takumi and General Sokolov fade into the background. Still, I can’t shake Beckett’s words from earlier. I can’t stop wondering about the supposed 3D-printing lab . . . and whether it holds the answer to the secrets that I know the three of them are keeping.
Eleven
LEO
I DRIFT IN AND OUT OF CONS
CIOUSNESS, CERTAIN I’M IN THE wrong place every time I open my eyes. My lids seem glued shut—it takes too much effort to pry them open, and when I finally do, I can barely see anything through my blurred vision. All I can make out is the hazy form of a console with a large, dark window in front of it. And then there’s something gray that’s moving, lumbering around me like a big, pesky fly. I reach out, trying to squash it, but my head hits the seat again, my eyes close—and I’m gone.
The next time I wake, it’s to the sound of my own screams. I’m falling, my body sliding down in its seat, only there’s no ground, no place to land. Something wet and cold presses against my forehead as a strange voice says, “The pain medicine should kick in soon. Your head took a bad hit, but you’ll be all right. Can’t launch in a tornado without consequences, it seems.”
I groan, turn my head away from the voice that I can’t see, and the background noise starts to fade. . . .
I have no clue how long it’s been when I wake up next, this time with a ringing in my ears. It sounds like an alarm of some kind, and I sit up too fast; the room starts spinning around me. I wait for it to stop, for my equilibrium to return, but it only gets worse, and now I’m whipping forward in my seat, the strap digging into my suit as my stomach plummets.
“Make it stop!” I yell, covering my throbbing head.
“Dr. Wagner, we have a big problem here,” the strange voice babbles near me. “We’re rolling, and our rate of spin is accelerating fast. I don’t know where the malfunction is, but the ship started banking and I can’t get control—”
We’re pitching forward now, and I let out a strangled scream. What is happening? Where am I, what is this?
I look up frantically, and that’s when it hits me—I can see again. The haze has cleared. And I’m looking up at a window in the ceiling that shows me nothing but a black, starry sky.
The mission. It comes slamming back to the surface, the details flooding my mind like a movie montage as I remember everything. And just in time, too—because we’re in major trouble.
My hand shakes as I swipe my wrist monitor.
“Dr. Wagner, it’s Leo. Do you copy? I seem to have sustained some type of injury, but I’m now awake and fairly alert—” My last word comes out in a yell as our capsule starts spinning even faster. “What is happening to our ship?”
“Leo, we’re running diagnostics on the WagnerOne from our end and should have our results momentarily,” Greta Wagner answers. She’s trying to sound calm, but I hear the breathlessness in her voice, the strain of fear.
I shout as the ship rolls again, tumbling once more, and now I’m not just worried about how fast we’re spinning, but the direction. We’re moving farther away from the Pontus’s trajectory, and if we don’t make it—
“It’s the maneuvering thruster!” Greta’s voice yells in my ear. “Something’s wrong with it—a short circuit in the wiring, most likely caused by the impact of the tornado when it came into contact with the ship. Let’s start with a reboot. Do you copy?”
My fingers fumble on the control panel until I find the power switch for the maneuvering thrusters, and I quickly turn them off and back on again. But nothing changes—and now we’re moving even faster.
“Approaching one revolution per second!” Kitt barks into the speaker. “How can we fix this?”
The tumbling is so violently fast it feels like the force of speed is strong enough to pull the organs from my body. My eyes return to blurring, my head about to hit the chair for the last time, when I hear—
“Turn those off altogether and use the control system thrusters at the front of the ship instead,” Greta instructs.
“It’s one of the things we practiced just the other day,” another voice calls through my headset. Asher. “You can do it, Leo.”
I can do it. I have to.
I switch off one set of thrusters on the command module and then scan the touch screen, searching for what I need. Finally, I locate the front control system thrusters, which normally shouldn’t be activated till landing—yet I have no choice but to use them now. I’m prematurely activating thrusters that aren’t supposed to be deployed until landing—the same maneuver that got Greta’s son killed on another Wagner ship before this one.
My hand freezes over the row of buttons. I can’t decide, can’t move. Until I hear Asher yell, “Now, Leo! This is all we’ve got.”
Our capsule takes another sideways dive, and I slam my palm onto the button. Relief is on its way—either that, or the end. And it’ll be another excruciating few minutes before I know which it’s going to be.
Twelve
NAOMI
AN HOUR BEFORE THE NEXT SCHEDULED ROUND OF RRB injections, Sydney and I huddle up in my room, trying to solve our trickiest equation yet.
“So, Option A,” Sydney begins. “We confront Dr. Takumi and General Sokolov with what we know about the RRB, and refuse to administer any more injections until they tell us the full truth about what kind of organism this bacteria really is, and what it will do in the long run.”
“It is the simplest choice,” I say wistfully. “But probably the most flawed. At this point, I don’t trust Takumi or the general to tell us the truth about the weather, much less something as secretive as the RRB. So I don’t think we could bank on any real answers from them. But more importantly than that, we’ve seen how the two of them can control the ship from their end. The last thing we want is a retaliation, when we can’t fight back.”
“Ugh. Yeah.” Sydney twists one of her long black curls around her finger, exhaling in frustration. “So what’s Option B? Do we even have one?”
“I was thinking we might replace the serum with something else,” I suggest. “I can try to think up and replicate some harmless control substance, like a placebo, that would look similar to the RRB on camera. I obviously can’t do it in time for tonight, but sometime this week seems doable. No one but us would have to know that it’s just a placebo.”
“I thought about that too. But then . . . what if we really do need the RRB, as creepy as what’s inside it might be?” Sydney’s face creases with worry. “What if I stop the injections and we find out our crew can’t handle the radiation without them?”
I stare at the sliver of stars through my window, equally stumped.
“We have a few more months before we get close enough to the radiation danger zone, so we could just give the control substance until then,” I muse. “In the meantime, I think the key is finding out what kind of life is in the RRB—and waiting for us on Europa. You mentioned my notes pointed to some type of . . . sea monster.” I shudder. “And I shared the same notes with my brother back home, who pointed out the similarities with prehistoric Earth creatures. So are we talking intelligent life or wild? Is it something we can coexist with or not? If we can find that out before we reach Jupiter orbit, and really know what we’re dealing with, that just might save our lives.”
“That all sounds right, but . . . how?” Sydney wonders. “You already saw all the data Dot had, right?”
“There is one other thing I can try,” I say slowly. “I can send out a signal from our ship to Europa. Whether or not we get any sort of response will tell us a lot.”
Sydney nods, and I’m surprised to feel a flicker of excitement. Though I guess it shouldn’t be too shocking. I may not have chosen to end up here on the Pontus, but there are few things I love as much as having a plan—especially one that allows me to take up the Space Conspirator mantle in the search for life.
“What did you think about Beckett’s whole bombshell today?” I ask. “Have you seen anything that could be a 3D-printing lab on the Pontus?”
“That’s what I was trying to figure out the whole time he was talking. Where would something like that be? Unless . . . was he just bluffing?”
“No . . .” My voice trails off. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it past him to lie, but I think this was him actually telling the truth. Maybe saying too much.”
Sydney f
lops backward on my bed, looking as exhausted by all this as I feel.
“What have we gotten ourselves into here?”
“Seriously.”
“To think, I just wanted to be a plain old doctor when I grew up,” she gripes. “Now look at me. I’m—I’m in a giant machine flying through outer space, strategizing about aliens with a girl who, just three days ago, I thought was probably delusional.” She pauses and gives me an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that, by the way.”
“It’s okay.” I can’t help but laugh. “Life had other plans, apparently. For all six of us.”
“I am glad you’re here, though.” Sydney sits up to face mer. “You—and Dev—make this a lot less scary.”
“Ditto,” I tell her. “Speaking of Dev. Are you two . . . a thing?” I give her a mischievous grin, and she tosses a pillow at me.
“No—yes. I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, we’ve got one Europa ‘partnership’ squared away then.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her and we both start giggling. For a brief moment, the weight of the world drops from our shoulders—and we get to be teenagers again.
I slip down to the Communications Bay after dinner, ready to enact the first step of our plan. Sitting at my touch-screen desk, it hits me—this is the first time where, instead of sliding on headphones and listening for radio signals, I am sending one of my own. It’s a move that scientists of the past, the ones I grew up learning about like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, would have almost certainly cautioned against. But we’re well past the point of caution.
I open the Deep Space Network software on my computer and begin by adjusting one of our low-gain antennas to point away from Earth, toward Europa. After that, the question is—what should I send to these hypothetical beings we’ll soon be sharing a world with? How do I send a message that manages to convey our presence without announcing ourselves as a threat; that can lead to an answer as to whether or not Europa’s life is intelligent?
The Life Below Page 10
