Europa Contagion

by Nicholas Thorp

  “Maybe those rocks aren’t quite as radioactive as we think,” Alice replied. “Maybe there’s something happening here that wouldn’t happen on Earth.”

  Sonya stood, thinking. It was possible, but she didn’t think it was likely. In her experience, the laws of physics applied throughout the universe. There must have been something else going on.

  “Maybe there’s something unique about these bones. After all, they are alien, too,” Navya replied.

  “I’d like to take a closer look at one of those bones. Alice, could you get me a sample?” Sonya asked.

  Sonya walked to the side of the chamber as Alice took a small, mostly intact piece of bone and put it in another container, allowing Sonya to take it out. She immediately took the piece back to her station.

  “Oh no,” Alice said. As she had worked, a light began to blink. Just then, the robotic arm that she was using swung downward in a defeated fashion. It had lost its ability to stay upright.

  Alice opened a panel from the front. This revealed the inner workings of the many mechanisms crammed into such a small place. It was rather clear, even to a neophyte of mechanics, that a gear had broken.

  “I guess we’ll have to call Felix and have him fix this,” Sonya said. She moved over to the drying ovens and placed the bone sample in them. This would be the first of many steps and tests that she would be performing on this particular sample.

  “Here we were, just about to make progress and this happens,” Alice said. “I’ll tell Felix to double-time it and get it repaired as fast as he can.”

  ----------

  Felix already had an idea what was wrong before they showed him a picture of the broken gear. He made his way to the 3D printer. Along the way, he called Kato over. He explained, in as few words as he often did, to Kato what he was doing. Kato was a very curious man and always wanted to know more about the 3D printer. It was an invaluable tool, being able to create almost any part that could break down and be replaced. The Habitat and 3D printer had been designed and built together with this goal in mind. Kato had used the printer many times to help Felix fix miscellaneous parts throughout the Habitat. Although Felix was just as adept at using the printer as Kato was at this point, he didn’t want to leave anything to chance and therefore had Kato look over his design.

  Felix had tapped into the electronic library built into the Habitat’s computers and pulled up a blueprint of the machine. With the exact dimensions of the part already specified and at his disposal, it only took a few minutes for him to recreate the part in the computer’s virtual world. With Kato’s agreement that it was the correct part, Felix commanded the computer to print the small 3D part. It was an anti-backlash gear. The printer’s stainless steel nozzle moved into position and began to create the object. The part was small, so it didn’t take a particularly long time for the printer to finish and for the material to set.

  Grabbing the gear in his hand, Felix made his way to the BSL4 lab. He wasn’t used to being in the P3, and it had taken him longer to put on his full suit and decontaminate himself than it did for the women; it was a place where they had done tremendous amounts of research but he had done almost none. He almost forgot to put the precision gear in a separate decontamination class III safety cabinet, but at the last second remembered. He completed a pressure check and moved into the decontamination room. The door automatically closed behind him. He waited while the room was sealed away from the rest of the Habitat. As he waited, he saw Sonya through a small window on the interior door that led to the lab. She was moving from her station back to Alice and was holding a container.

  With the sealing and decontamination processes complete, he grabbed the gear with his left hand and opened the door into the lab. Felix walked into the room without a hose connected to his suit. This was completely normal, as the P3 had enough pressure and power to last a short while without being connected to the hoses. However, being in an extraterrestrial BSL4 where potentially dangerous alien pathogens and alien viruses could be hiding made any sane person feel uneasy.

  “There you are,” Alice said. “Hurry up, let’s get that gear back in here so we can continue!”

  As Felix made his way over to Alice, he reached up to grab a hose and accidentally dropped the small gear he had been carrying with him. Without thinking, he bent down to pick it up with his left hand while also hanging onto the hose with his right hand. As he did this strange maneuver in his restrictive bodysuit, he lost his balance. With neither of his hands in a good position to stop his fall, he instinctively used the hose as a hold. This, however, was a mistake, as the hose simply extended. Not expecting any of this, Felix tried to correct his fall by moving his arms in the opposite direction, but he overcorrected.

  This was something that occurred with regularity when working in low-g environments for the first time. People from Earth visiting the Moon, for example, found it entertaining how much lighter they felt and how fast they could pick up speed, but quickly realized that while the weight had been reduced, their mass had not. There were plenty of times someone had not been able to slow down to round a corner fast enough before slamming into the side of the wall.

  Felix, now going by instinct, flung about, and ended up falling directly into Alice. She, in turn, fell on Navya who fell on Sonya. All four fell on the floor like a pile of dominos. As they all fell, so too did the container Sonya was holding.

  “Hey, careful! One wrong move in here could end up being deadly to us!” Sonya exclaimed as she grabbed the container from the floor and pulled herself back up to a standing position. Alice and Navya began to do the same and Felix followed suit, deeply embarrassed by what he had done. As Sonya stood up, she rubbed her right thigh. It felt like she had fallen on her car keys back on Earth. This was a rather silly thought, as she had no such car keys. Looking at the floor, Sonya saw the gear Felix had brought in. She must have landed on it as she fell.

  Sonya inspected the container that had fallen with them. The container looked sealed but upon closer inspection she noticed that the final seal on one side hadn’t fully engaged. She quickly sealed the container without comment.

  As Alice got up, she glanced at the open chamber door which had been open as they fell. She pointed at the chamber as if to say to Felix, “Don’t mess this up too!”

  As Alice was pointing, a small warning sounded in her helmet:

  *Warning. Low pressure. Possible exposure.*

  A small pain of terror hooked Alice and she began to look around her P3. As Alice began to pat herself down, Navya’s eyes widened in sudden recognition.

  “Alice, your suit! It’s torn!” Navya said, pointing to a small hole on Alice’s right elbow. “We need to decontaminate, now!”

  Quickly, Alice made her way to exit. All three others followed her. It was standard procedure that if one person had a problem with their suit, the rest had to decontaminate as well and do a thorough inspection of their suits. Alice ran into the decontamination room and hit the decontamination button immediately. Going from a biosafety level of four to a normal room meant that they had to shower down in a bath of special cleaners. She was sprayed with the special cleaner for several minutes followed by blasts of air to dry her suit. Finally, she raised her arms for the final procedure. A special high-powered ultra-violet light flashed several times, destroying any and all traces of living organisms from the surface of everything its rays touched. The moment it completed, she dashed out of the room. Immediately after her exit, Felix and Sonya rushed in and began the process once again. The decontamination room was small, and the two of them were quite crowded in it.

  Alice had already stripped off her P3. She made her way to a wash station nearby and began to scrub and clean her elbow where the cut in her suit had been.

  Felix and Sonya soon followed, scrambling out of the decontamination room and were inspecting their own suits. After a few more minutes, Navya stepped out of the decontamination room.

  She looked at everyone and said, “You kn
ow that only one person is supposed to go in at time. That room is too small to properly decontaminate more than one person.” Then, Navya looked over at Alice who had been frantically cleaning the spot on her arm where the tear in the suit had been. It was becoming red and raw from all the rubbing and cleaning. Navya took Alice’s scrubber and held her elbow, inspecting the area where the tear had occurred.

  “Alright, alright Alice. Here. I’ll get undressed and then let’s go check it out in the medbay,” Navya said. Despite their hasty exit, Felix’s, Sonya’s and Navya’s P3s appeared perfectly fine. Their suits had no tears. Finally, everyone made their way to the medbay.

  Alice was the first person Navya fully examined. She performed a visual inspection of the injured area and ran her through the UMAC. Navya also pulled up some data from Alice’s suit.

  “Well, the good news is that everything should be fine. The UMAC hasn’t detected anything, and neither have I. Also, according to this, I think your suit never lost enough pressure for anything to get in,” Navya reported.

  The P3s in BSL4 labs were positively pressurized just for this purpose. A positively pressurized suit, if torn, would have the air rushing out rather than in, preventing any potentially airborne particles from entering. For a similar reason, the rest of the lab was negatively pressurized. If the lab was somehow exposed to the outside, air would rush in, hopefully preventing anything from getting out.

  “I will be carefully watching you for a few weeks just to make sure, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Navya finished.

  Alice let out a sigh of relief. She wasn’t completely in the clear, but the fact that her suit hadn’t completely lost its pressure made her feel that she might be safe.

  Navya had the others, including herself, run through the UMAC, just to be sure nothing was amiss. The machine showed that they were all in good health if not a bit shook up by the frightful nature of their potential infection in the lab. The only injury seemed to be a very tiny cut on Sonya’s leg where she fell on the gear. The cut was so small that Navya only put a drop of ointment on it, not even warranting a bandage. However, Navya wanted to be certain Sonya’s suit was not compromised so she asked Felix to check all the gear as soon as possible. Navya didn’t bother to tell Felix about Sonya’s minor injury. Given what had happened, Felix was most concerned about the integrity of Alice’s P3.

  They all decided to call it a day. The women had spent more than ten hours without any sort of breaks in the lab and were exhausted. They made their way to their sleeping quarters.

  Before going to his quarters, Felix walked back to the biosafety lab to inspect the P3 suits as Navya had requested. Looking through the viewing windows into the lab, he saw a small piece of orange fabric on the open panel to the observation chamber. That had to have been the cause of the tear. He started his inspection with Alice’s suit and realized it was missing a matching piece of material near the shoulder and failed to hold pressure. Given the warning Alice’s P3 had generated, Felix expected this and promptly decommissioned Alice’s suit by removing its power pack and marking it as ‘inoperative’ so no one would be tempted to use it.

  The other suits appeared to be intact and held pressure. The unseen rift in Sonya’s P3 was tiny, only ten nanometers. However, the diameter of an oxygen molecule is thirty times greater than the rip in her suit. As a result, even though Felix decided to leave the suits pressurized overnight, the fault in Sonya’s P3 went undetected.

  Felix felt terrible about causing so much trouble, but in the back of his mind, he was glad it had been Alice’s suit that had torn and not Navya’s. He eventually made his way back to his bed to try to sleep.

  NINE

  Headache

  In the next few days, the crew went on and continued to perform their regular duties. Even the excitement of bones being discovered didn’t mean they could stop performing regular maintenance check-ups of the Habitat and neglect their workouts. Sonya had had a hard time sleeping, still high from the excitement of it all. She continued to keep herself occupied with her research, as she often did.

  As she was entering BSL4 a few days later, Sonya felt a small pain in her head. It was the sign of a headache. It wasn’t uncommon for her, as getting headaches and migraines were something she had been subject to in her youth after the airplane accident. Oddly, she hadn’t gotten a migraine once in the entire time she had been on the mission.

  Sometimes, if she worked and focused her attention on something else, the headache would go away. She tried to work on the radioactive rocks. Despite diligently working on her duties, the pain in her head only grew worse. She could hardly focus on the tool she was holding and her vision began to blur.

  I need to stop and take a break, Sonya thought to herself. Resting against the wall, the headache still didn’t abate. It was getting worse. It was so bad, Sonya considered going to Navya for help.

  From a very young age, she had been distrustful of doctors. She had cooperated and did what the doctors had wanted her to do to get into the Moon Base program and the Europa Mission, but in the back of her mind, she could never know for sure if they were trying to help her or were just lazy and covering their own asses.

  When Sonya was young, she and her father had been in an airplane accident. Although Sonya was not seriously injured, her father had been rushed to a hospital and underwent emergency back surgery. At the time, the surgery seemed to go well. The doctor was very optimistic about the procedure. Several weeks later, her father suddenly collapsed while working on a deck and fell off, hitting his head on the ground below. He didn’t survive the fall. Later, it was discovered that the doctors who had operated on him following his airplane accident had operated on the wrong level of the vertebrae in his spine. The vertebra that required repair never got the attention it needed, and eventually, it failed on him. Sonya was shocked to find this was a common enough occurrence that it was called ‘Wrong Site Surgery.’

  Later, the report from the investigation as to why the airplane crashed was released. A mechanic many years ago had been lazy and, in an attempt to get to a specific part of the engine, had manhandled and damaged an oil line. The line supplied oil to a turbocharger on one of the engines. Over time, the turbo ran with insufficient oil pressure until the unit tore itself apart, leading to a chain reaction of problems that resulted in the crash.

  From then on, Sonya thought of doctors and mechanics as essentially the same. The doctor had been lazy and the mechanic had been lazy. Sure, you could get a mechanic or doctor who is competent and does the job right. Or you could get a doctor or mechanic who is lazy and doesn’t do the job properly, leading to potentially life-threatening outcomes.

  While she had gotten to know Navya, and she had to admit Navya was one of the most logical and cool people she had ever met, Sonya still was wary. A person is a person and people can make mistakes, even if they aren’t lazy. Why take such a chance with your body like that?

  Sometimes though, one had to go to the doctor. The headache was so unbelievably bad that this was one of those times.

  Sonya wasn’t the only one to go to Navya. Many times the crew had made their way to Navya for medical advice. Having trouble sleeping? Go to Navya, she’ll have something. Cut on your arm? She’ll patch it up. Headache that won’t go away? Navya will have the right drug for you.

  Maybe this is a migraine, Sonya told herself.

  Navya seemed happy and surprised to see Sonya coming to her. Navya prescribed her some Zolmitriptan to counteract the headache and told her to go to her room, turn off all the lights and try to get some rest. Walking automatically, Sonya made her way into her quarters and, the next she knew, she found herself lying on the floor near her bed. Her head was pounding so badly that she wondered if she could move. She pulled herself up into her bed and collapsed into it. The combination of her bed, a dark room, and drugs finally took effect and she fell into a deep slumber.

  ----------

  Alice and Navya were read
y to make a report on their initial findings. The two stood in the mess hall when Felix and Kato walked in. The males were very interested to see what Alice, Navya, and Sonya each had to say. Felix stood by the wall while Kato took a seat and looked around.

  “Where’s Sonya?” he asked.

  “Oh, she had a very bad headache. I gave her something to help her with it. I imagine she’s sleeping right now,” Navya said, “I wouldn’t disturb her.”

  “She already knows everything up to this point,” Alice said. “We can fill her in if we come up with anything else.”

  Alice continued before anyone could say anything, “I took a look at Sonya’s measurements of the amount of radiation directly from our sample. According to her report, I think it’s the source that we were measuring from the cave. The RIID is still in Little Missy, and we’ll need to go and retrieve it physically to see what it says. The amount of radiation down there must be crazy considering how we barely were able to get there. And, it’s coming from those small rocks.”

  “So, we need to go back to Outpost One?” Kato asked.

  “Yes definitely,” Alice replied.

  “I agree,” Navya chimed in. It was her turn to report what information she had gathered.

  “I think we need to take Little Missy and shield it up even more. If we can get farther into the cave, we might be able to tell what’s going on there. Right now we don’t know much of anything.”

  “We can do that,” Kato said as he looked at Felix. “I worked on it with Felix the first time. It should go pretty quickly the second time. Anything else interesting? Other than there’s complex life here?”

  “Yes!” Alice eagerly answered. “To start, they aren’t all bones. The larger pieces are indeed bones, but the smaller pieces, as close as I can classify them, are a type of cartilage. But this cartilage is different than anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s surprisingly resilient compared to the cartilage from, say, sharks. Sharks have a cartilaginous skeleton that degrades over a short time. These have been sitting for quite some time and have hardly degraded at all compared to what I expected.”