Europa Contagion

by Nicholas Thorp

  He made his way to the top of the Nomad and found that Little Missy was indeed stowed away in its cargo bay. Moving Little Missy alone was doable, but not easy. However, Felix had everything set up in the hangar next to the Nomad. All he would have to do was use the crane and lower Little Missy into position next to the construction bots and they could help.

  ----------

  Navya and Alice wound their way through BSL1, then into BSL4, suiting up, into their P3s and going through all decontamination procedures. They carefully laid Sonya on the operating table. Alice thought it was strange that the table which they all thought might be used to inspect alien life was being used to autopsy their crewmate and friend. Alice looked at Sonya and felt a deep sadness. For such a long time she had worked closely with Sonya. Now she sat here, head misshapen where her nose should have been, and an arm and leg bent at odd angles. Kato had done a hell of a lot of damage to Sonya.

  “Do we really need to do this in this room? Why not the medbay?” Alice asked.

  “The medbay isn’t set up for autopsies,” Navya replied. “This is the only room set up for a procedure like this.” Navya grabbed the tools she needed.

  Navya pressed a button on her wristband through her suit and a recording symbol showed up in her HUD. Then Navya spoke.

  “Severe blunt trauma to the head. Nose crushed. The left arm has several torn ligaments and broken bones. Same with the left knee. ACL might be torn as well.” She flipped the body over to the side and began to inspect Sonya’s neck. “According to the scans, C1 and C2 are fractured. That is likely the cause of death.” She flipped her back.

  Navya looked over the body without saying anything for a few moments.

  “Where do we begin?” Alice asked.

  “When I ran her through the UMAC, the imaging showed something odd in her brain. I’d like to start there, but we really should go through the entire normal procedure in case there’s anything else. We don’t want to miss anything.”

  Alice tried to imagine what Navya could mean by ‘something odd in her brain’ when Navya took a scalpel she had brought along and began to use it on Sonya.

  As Navya cut into Sonya’s chest, Alice’s stomach felt queasy. She was watching her friend be cut up. She forced herself to watch as Navya went through the autopsy. At some point she began to pull out organs, all the while speaking into the microphone and explaining what she was doing and her observations.

  After what felt like an eternity for Alice, it was finally time for Navya to look at Sonya’s head. Navya took the scalpel and began to run it across Sonya’s forehead and around the perimeter of her head. She then took a special saw blade and began to cut into the bone. Carefully Navya moved the saw around the circumference of Sonya’s head until she had gone around exactly one revolution. Taking her forceps, Navya grabbed a piece of the skull and pulled it up. It took a little bit of force for it to come free, but once it was free Navya set the piece down next to her. Sonya’s brain was now completely exposed.

  “Now it’s time to remove the brain,” Navya said out loud to the microphone.

  Alice had to look away. Even though she thought she could handle it, seeing her friend like this was too much. Alice didn’t understand how Navya could be so calm. It seemed insane they were doing this.

  Navya worked efficiently and removed the brain quickly. She inspected the outside of the brain to see if anything seemed wrong. She carefully ran her fingers over the surface of the brain.

  “There are several places that are softer than others,” Navya spoke so the microphone could hear her. “That could be an indication of a stroke.”

  Next, Navya cut through the brainstem and removed the brainstem and cerebellum from the rest of the brain. Then, she took a large knife and cut the brain exactly in half. Following this, she began to slice the brain into coronal sections. She was going to space the pieces out so she could carefully inspect the entire brain. After her first cut, she froze in place. She couldn’t quite piece together what she was looking at.

  “Alice?” Navya said without looking up from the brain.

  “What’s wrong?” Alice still couldn’t look at the inside of Sonya’s brain and continued to look away. Navya began checking her P3.

  “Let’s re-check our suit integrity and then you need to see this. There’s something here,” Navya said.

  Alice did a quick check of her P3 and then made her way around the table and forced herself to look at what Navya was working on. Just like Navya, Alice froze for a moment as she stared at it.

  ----------

  It took a little longer than he thought to get Little Missy down by himself. Luckily, all he had to do was lower Little Missy into the middle of the construction bots.

  He had also managed to get access to the instruments on Little Missy and had connected his tablet to get the data Sonya had wanted. Then he had run the program and the construction bots had gone to work.

  While he waited, he pulled up more information on the tablet. He wanted to know what Sonya had been doing in the communication room. He discovered that she had left a message. That wasn’t the only thing she had done. According to the computer, the communication dish was no longer able to move. The computer warned him the dish had likely come off of its track. As he worked, he tapped with a free finger on the side of the tablet, like a nervous tick. It only took him a few minutes to figure out that Sonya had programmed the dish to point at its current angle.

  How curious it was that she had programmed the dish to go beyond its intended parameters. He looked back at the message. It wasn’t that she left a message. She had sent a message. He played it back and listened. Random noises and clicks. It didn’t mean anything to him, but the sounds, for some reason, made him feel slightly upbeat. Maybe he was about to figure all of this out. He took a careful look at the message coordinates again. She had sent the same message to multiple targets, not just one. One coordinate seemed familiar but wasn’t anything he immediately recognized. The second set of coordinates was a complete mystery. Maybe if he ran the coordinates through the computer’s library it could find something.

  He set the computer to search and was going to listen to the message again when the noises from the construction bots stopped. He looked up to see that the work on Little Missy was complete. There was more shielding on it than the last time he did this, especially in a few places that had previously been a bit weak. Felix’s program had worked perfectly.

  Despite all the turmoil, Felix was optimistic. This could work. But next, he had to get the underwater droid hoisted back onto the Nomad. Again, by himself.

  ----------

  Navya and Alice sat outside in the hallway, next to a bank of computers. They had been busy for many hours performing the autopsy and had finally decided to get something to eat and talk about their findings.

  Alice had just sat down with her food while Navya had begun to pull up information on the computer when Kato walked in.

  “Kato! You really shouldn’t be walking around right now,” Navya said as she walked over to Kato in case he needed help walking.

  “I’m fine,” Kato said. “I want to know what the hell is going on.”

  Alice had never seen Kato lose his cool before. Navya knew that fighting with Kato was useless, so she helped him sit down and walked over to the computer. Alice was surprised at how well he looked considering what had just happened. In only a few hours he had gone from what seemed like close to death to walking around and talking normally. He was one tough guy.

  Then, Felix came into the room. He came over and sat down next to Kato.

  Navya made her displeasure well known by the look on her face; both of her patients were up and wandering about when they should be resting. Returning her gaze to the computer, she finished pulling up the information she had been seeking.

  A picture appeared on the screen and Navya pointed to the picture. The picture showed what appeared to be a water creature of some sort. It was tiny, about the size of
a small tadpole. It looked like a stingray with eight small legs and a long tail. The ‘head’ of the animal was shaped like an inverted V, making it look very triangular. The other end of the animal had something that looked like a tail, but the tail had small spikes. The tail was not entirely intact and looked as if it had been cut in several places.

  “What exactly are we looking at here?” Kato asked.

  “We found this in Sonya,” Alice said.

  Felix and Kato looked over at Alice and Navya in disbelief.

  “You found that in Sonya?” Felix asked skeptically. “Wait, what do you mean in Sonya?”

  “Yes,” Navya replied. “We found it in her brain wrapped around the hippocampus. Its tail was wrapped so tightly I had to cut it in several places to pull it out cleanly. Notice these small spikes here? They were digging into the surrounding tissue. I had to be extremely careful when pulling it out to not damage the rest of the tissues.”

  Felix and Kato sat for a few moments without saying anything.

  “How did you find this in her?” Felix finally asked.

  “I ran her through the UMAC and there was an unusual image that showed something in her brain,” Navya answered.

  “What I mean,” Felix said. “Is that you cut her open to find that?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Navya answered again.

  Navya noted the atmosphere of the room. Kato was sitting and staring at the image without saying anything. Felix was very distraught about it.

  “Alice, do you have any findings you can tell us about?” Navya said, hoping that having someone else talk might help relieve the tension in the room a little.

  “It isn’t anything I’ve seen before,” Alice said, her food untouched. She thought she could eat, but found that the food was repulsive to her at the moment. “I ran a comparison analysis using the encyclopedia of life on Earth, looking for similarities. There isn’t any one lifeform on Earth that matches this creature we’ve found. It’s a new lifeform for sure. I’ve been looking closely at it since we found it. See here.” Alice completely abandoned her place at the table, stood up next to Navya, and pulled up some information on the computer screen showing another diagram.

  “This diagram shows a microscopic picture of the tissue of the animal. There’s something very odd about it.” Alice said, mostly to herself. Then Alice pulled up another image and put the two images next to each other. “The structure of this animal is strikingly unfamiliar to what I had already been studying since we first discovered life on Europa. The closest thing I can compare this new creature to is the small cartilage pieces we found in that sample from the floor of the cave. The only problem is that the pieces in our sample are degraded so it’s rather difficult to make a direct comparison.

  “This is, by far, the most complicated life form we’ve found here. This is the first living, extraterrestrial complex organism ever seen. It’s probably from Europa itself.”

  “Does this explain why Sonya was attacking us?” Kato spoke.

  “It’s hard to say for sure, but it seems likely,” Navya replied.

  “The first complex life...” Felix’s voice trailed off. Felix stood up next to the computers.

  “I’ve found something out too,” Felix said. He pulled up data from the tablet he had and sent it to the computer screen. “While you were working on... Well, on that,” he pointed at the picture on the screen, “I put the extra shielding on Little Missy.”

  “You did that by yourself?” Kato asked.

  “I did. With some help, of course. I programmed the construction bots to do all the work. All I had to do was get Little Missy in the right spot. I also got some data from Little Missy and looked more closely at it. We were right about that radiation; the cave is the source of it all. It matches with the type of radiation found in those rocks.” Felix was tapping on the side of his tablet as he spoke, like a nervous tick.

  “Felix, that’s good work, but I feel like there are more pressing matters,” Alice said.

  “That’s because you haven’t let me finish,” Felix said in a very matter-of-fact way. “Sonya did something strange with the communication dish.”

  “Yes, we were going to ask you about that. She sent a message somewhere but we didn’t know what it meant,” Navya said.

  “She didn’t send just her message to only one location,” Felix was emphasizing his words carefully. "She sent it to two locations. I had the computer analyze the location that both messages were sent to. One was sent directly to Earth. The other was sent directly to the location of the sample we found with Little Missy.”

  “She sent a message to that cave?” Alice asked.

  “Yes,” Felix answered.

  “A message to the cave after we find that sample and after she’s infected with that alien creature. These must be connected somehow,” Alice said.

  “I thought so too,” Felix continued. “But that’s not all. I had the computer analyze the data from Little Missy. According to the computer, those few rocks that we got in our sample alone aren’t enough to account for all the radiation that’s down there. It’s not even close. There’s something else going on down there.” Felix was now incessantly tapping his finger on his tablet. It was so loud that no one could ignore it.

  “Felix?” Navya said and pointed at Felix’s fingers tapping on the tablet.

  “Oh, I didn’t even realize I was doing that, sorry,” Felix replied and then stopped.

  “How does this help us figure out what’s going on?” Kato asked. “What was this thing doing in Sonya’s brain?”

  “I think,” Felix answered. “That that cave has our answer.”

  “That’s a long stretch, Felix. I think we need to stick together,” Kato said. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, not really. If Sonya could go crazy and set up an ambush for me, any one of us could do the same.”

  “What exactly are you saying, Kato?” Alice asked.

  “I’m saying that any of us could be infected too,” Kato replied.

  His last statement was met with silence. It was hard to argue with Kato’s logic, but Alice had a nagging feeling she couldn’t get rid of. She knew that she would need to figure this out. In her mind, she knew she’d have to spend an exorbitant amount of time doing all the research. In the unlikely event the team found complex alien life, the original plan was to spend literally years studying the specimens. Now, time seemed against her and she felt like she had no time to do the research properly.

  Alice stood up and walked out of the room. Kato watched as Alice left. Navya waited a moment and then followed Alice. When Navya walked into the hall, Alice was already turning around a corner. Navya had to hop quickly to catch up to Alice.

  “Where are you going?” Navya asked.

  “Felix is right. Something is going on with the source of radiation. I’m going to Outpost One and I’m bringing Little Missy with me,” Alice replied.

  “You want to go alone? That’s quite dangerous,” Navya said.

  “Listen,” Alice said as she walked quickly. “Navya, you and I are the only people who are healthy enough to leave and you need to stay here and make sure Kato and Felix are okay. I have a feeling the longer I wait to figure this out the worse it’s going to get. I need to figure this out now.”

  Navya stopped and watched Alice as she walked away. Navya knew that Alice would get fully geared up, head straight to the Nomad, then go to Outpost One.

  FOURTEEN

  Discovery

  Alice had been working continuously in the Nomad for several hours after she had set the autopilot. The Nomad’s navigation AI program had learned the route to Outpost One well and was capable, at this point, of making it there with no human intervention. Eventually, Alice decided that she had done enough research to let the others know what she had found. As she got farther away from the Habitat, the connection would get worse, so she stopped working and called back to the Habitat. Navya answered the call.

  “Navya, can you
hear me alright?” Alice said.

  “There’s static, but, yes, we can hear you,” Navya responded. “Kato is here as well.

  Kato spoke up, “I told Felix that you were calling, but he said he had some work of his own to do.”

  Alice wondered what work Felix had to do at a time like this and said, “Alright. I’ve been researching since I left. I wanted to call before getting completely out of range.”

  “I assume you’ve found something if you’re calling us?” Navya asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” Alice responded. “I think what we’re looking at here is some kind of a combination of a fungus and a parasite. It’s also possible it could be a virus.”

  “That’s a lot of things it could be,” Kato’s voice was coming over the radio with some static and it was difficult for Alice to tell if Kato was saying that sarcastically or seriously.

  “Yes, it is. This is alien life we’re talking about, anything could be the case,” Alice said. “Ever heard of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis or Leucochloridium paradoxum?”

  “I can’t say I have,” Kato said.

  “Well to put it simply, and I do mean simply here, one is a fungus and one is a parasite. Each of them ‘infects’ a host and makes the host do strange things,” Alice said.

  “I think I’ve heard of these before,” Navya said. “Don’t they infect ants?”

  “In the case of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, yes. After infection, the ants start acting odd. Eventually, the infected ant will climb up the side of a tree or a branch. As long as the tree or branch is about 10 inches off the ground they bite into the surface they’re sitting on. Then, they just sit there and eventually die as the fungus feeds on them from the inside. The fungus then grows out of the ant, allowing it to spread and repeat the cycle.”