Europa Contagion

by Nicholas Thorp

  Making her way back to the Hydrogen Maintenance Room she grabbed some wrenches and other tools she knew she needed. This time she made much faster progress through the maintenance crawlspace, knowing exactly where to go and what to do. She had clipped all the tools to her belt and made it to the end where the valve was. Not wanting to take any chances, she left her helmet on, but it was hard for her to move her head and see what she needed to see. Alice placed a wrench on the valve. Then she pulled down, but her position didn’t allow for much force. Nothing happened. She took a second wrench and placed it over the first wrench, effectively making a very long wrench and increasing the leverage. She leaned on the wrench for all she was worth and bounced her entire body weight on it. The valve moved a fraction of an inch. It was small, but it was progress. She moved the wrenches back into the original position and pulled down again. Another fraction of an inch, a little easier to achieve this time. She continued doing this for quite a while until the valve got stuck on another metal piece that had been bent in the way. Alice could not make any further progress.

  Her back was hurting from sitting in the cramped space for so long, and she weaseled her way out of the crawl space. Her wristband was still giving the code 14. She looked at the tablet she had left in the crawl space during her previous visit. It looked like the hydrogen had been increasing even as she closed the valve, not decreasing as she had hoped. She looked at the blueprints again and noticed something she hadn’t noticed before: there was more than one valve. She used the blueprint and found several other crawl spaces nearby. Crawling into another tunnel, she saw that its valve was just like the first one: closed and bent out of shape. With the amount of time she spent just trying to open the first valve, she knew this was a losing battle.

  There would be no stopping this. With no vent for the hydrogen, it would continue to build until a spark or something else set it off. Alice needed another plan. Maybe if she could get to the Nomad she could get away before it was too late.

  Alice left the HMR and made her way to the hangar where the Nomad was. She tried to open the access door to the hangar. It began to swing outward, but stopped after a fraction of an inch. Looking through the viewing window Alice noticed that there was all sorts of debris blocking the path of the door. Without time and the right tools, there was no opening this door. So, Alice made her way through the docking bay to the elevator, thinking she could get into the hangar a second way. The control panel for the elevator was destroyed. This way would not work either.

  Had it been Kato or Felix who had destroyed these? Maybe even Sonya? Alice did not know. Luckily, she knew what to do in such a situation.

  Recalling her virtual reality session with Navya, Alice sat down at the nearest computer and began to work.

  Those Virtual Reality Emergency Drills weren’t realistic enough, Alice thought to herself. The scenario she found herself in now was far worse than anything the drills could have prepared her for.

  Alice recalled exactly what procedure she needed to follow to get to the Nomad in the hangar. She pulled up the remote systems application for the Habitat and commanded the hangar door to open. Then she made her way to the emergency exit. If she could get into the hangar she could move the debris blocking the door and get back to Navya, then get both of them into the Nomad. Alice had to use a ladder up to the surface. She made quick work of the ladder, not wanting to waste time, and walked into the emergency exit.

  She had made it safely into the emergency exit pressurization chamber. The room was small and, just like the other pressurization rooms, there were two sets of doors. Closing the interior door, Alice walked to the exterior hatch. It had a small viewing window and she looked outside. It was dark, which meant that Europa was in the tail of Jupiter. This was good. If she could get out she might have enough time on the surface without risking serious radiation exposure to make it to the hangar even without POWER modifications. To go outside, however, both doors had to be closed at the same time to depressurize the room. All she needed to do was activate the depressurization sequence and wait.

  Alice pushed the button and waited. Nothing happened. Alice pressed the button again, but still, nothing happened. She then opened a plastic cover that revealed an emergency pull handle that was unique to this door. That’s when she noticed a flashing light on the panel that gave a warning.

  *Interior Door Ajar*

  Alice knew she had closed the interior door. A ripple of fear coursed through her and her thoughts ran wild with the idea that Kato had survived the lab explosion and depressurization. She hadn’t carefully made sure that Kato had died in the explosion. Was there a third corpse that she hadn’t noticed before leaving the lab?

  As she turned around she saw what she didn’t want to see: Kato. He had jammed the door open with a metal bar and had his gun pointed directly at her. She hadn’t heard him sneak up on her.

  Kato’s EMU was blackened with burn marks. He wore an emergency oxygen mask that was also black and burned, but it wasn't sealed on his face. His face somehow looked worse than it had before. He had large red burns everywhere and half of his hair was missing.

  “Having locators on everyone was a helpful idea. I thought you were dead there for a while. I’m glad I checked one last time," Kato said.

  She cursed herself for not checking the locator to try and find him. She had been so consumed with Navya and the hydrogen problem she hadn’t even considered it.

  "Take your hand off the panel,” Kato said. He was leaning against the wall, using it for support.

  Alice lowered her hand from the panel.

  “That was a nice little trick you pulled. Barely managed to get out of there,” Kato’s breathing and speaking were labored, and his voice was muffled by the mask he wore. He pointed with his gun to the opposite corner of the room as if to say ‘move over there.’

  Alice slowly stepped in the direction Kato had pointed his gun.

  Alice still had her helmet on. She reached to her wristband and pushed a button, enabling the microphone in her suit to broadcast globally.

  “You shot Navya,” Alice said.

  Kato sighed very heavily and had a look of extreme guilt as he spoke, “I didn’t want to shoot her, but she left me no choice. She attacked me, you saw that.”

  Alice said nothing in response.

  “What’s the plan this time?” Kato asked. “Go outside and do what exactly? You know this whole place is going up in flames. I’ve made sure of that.”

  “So you’re the one who sabotaged the Habitat? Bent all those valves?” Alice asked. Her voice echoed from Kato’s suit as his speakers broadcast her words.

  “That’s right. We’ve got more than enough hydrogen in those tanks off base to fill this whole place up several times over. This is it: the final contingency plan.”

  Alice thought she understood what he meant. Kato wasn’t going to let the infection leave Europa, even if that meant killing himself in the process. Kato brought his arm and gun up and aimed it at Alice’s head. Kato’s arm wavered with the effort. He had to have been exhausted.

  “I found out what’s going on,” Alice blurted out.

  “Found out what, exactly?” Kato kept his gun trained on Alice, but it was obvious she had his attention.

  “I went back to Outpost One and sent the drone back down, into the cave.” Alice didn’t know what to say, but she kept on rambling in the hope she could buy some time.

  “What did you find?” Kato asked. She had his curiosity aroused.

  Alice paused for a moment. She thought she saw movement behind Kato. Then she focused back on Kato and kept talking.

  “A mass grave.”

  “A mass grave?” Kato looked at Alice like she was crazy.

  “Yes, I think so. There are hundreds of those larger bones we found, the ones we thought held the brain, and inside each of them are those sharp small pieces like the pieces we found in that thing in Sonya's brain. There have to be thousands of them lying around.”
/>   As Alice spoke, Kato’s gun lowered slightly.

  Alice knew that if she stopped talking that would be the end for her, so she kept talking.

  “And those rocks? The radioactive ones? There are hundreds of those rocks in there too. I think they stop…” Alice paused, not sure if Kato was believing a word she was saying.

  “Stop what?” Kato asked.

  “Stop whatever that thing is we found in Sonya,” Alice finished.

  “You mean the parasite?”

  “Yes, the parasite. Back in the lab, Felix was screaming when he was near those radioactive rocks. It must somehow stop the parasites, or at least slow them down. Whatever creatures were here on Europa must have dragged their dead to that cave and placed those rocks there. We could use those rocks as a test to see who’s infected.” Alice had no idea if anything she was saying was true or not.

  Alice saw something move behind Kato again. This time she saw what it was. Navya had slowly crept up behind Kato. She was fully suited up just like Alice and was holding a scalpel in her glove. The automatic surgery mode had clearly worked.

  “Seems far-fetched to me,” Kato said. “But even if you’re right I can’t let you leave. No one can. We can’t let the infection spread.”

  Alice focused back on Kato and continued to talk, “We don’t know if it can spread. All we know is that Sonya had one.” Alice tried to reason with Kato but felt like it wasn’t working.

  “I thought that too until we found out the UMAC had been sabotaged,” Kato said. “I’m sorry about this, but it has to be done. There’s nothing left to say.”

  She saw Kato raise his gun again and aim it at her. She knew that Kato was right, there was nothing left to say. Alice looked back at Navya again.

  Kato saw Alice’s attention was not on him and the gun as he expected and quickly looked over his shoulder. When he saw Navya was behind him he whipped his arm around and pulled the trigger just as Navya began to slash at Kato with the scalpel she held. The shot rang out and echoed in the small room and Alice leaped toward the emergency handle. Kato, seeing Alice’s sudden movement, swung back around. He quickly tracked Alice’s movement and pulled the trigger again. The muzzle on the gun flashed very brightly and the bullet struck Alice’s helmet just as she reached the corner of the room. Her momentum brought her straight down on the handle and slammed it down hard.

  The moment the handle moved to the bottom position, a mechanical lever moved a small gear, which in turn moved a small firing pin. This firing pin hit a primer which set off a chain reaction. Twenty small explosives built into the perimeter of the hatch detonated. The force from the explosives and the pressurized room sent the emergency hatch flying.

  Roughly 2000 years earlier a man was credited with an idea: ‘horror vacui.’ The idea had stuck around and been used since then. It is a phrase commonly stated as ‘Nature Abhors a Vacuum.' Literally, several millennia after Aristotle came up with the saying, Alice, Navya and Kato were about to experience this first hand in a way that Aristotle could not have imagined. The air from the main facility rushed out violently into the vacuum of Europa. The air brought along anything that stood in its way, including Kato, Navya and Alice. This in combination with the low gravity sent all three unwilling participants flying out onto the dark, icy cold surface.

  TWENTY

  Self-Induced

  Alice landed on the surface and rolled several times before coming to a stop. Her leg was throbbing with pain.

  A voice in her helmet spoke into her ear.

  “Structural integrity compromised. Seek emergency shelter immediately,” it said in a calming voice.

  Alice grunted and pushed herself up onto her elbows. As she tried to look around she saw that her helmet was cracked. The crack was scarily large and ran diagonally across the middle of her view. The usual information that was displayed on her HUD wasn’t appearing. Somehow the visor had held its shape and didn’t break away but was damaged and the helmet’s self-repair mechanism had not deployed.

  There was nothing she could do except hope that it didn’t crack more and break. Alice looked around again. It was nearly pitch black and she could see only shapes and outlines. Her helmet hadn’t turned on its night vision mode as it was supposed to when it detected low light. She reached over and pressed a button on her wristband. The night vision mode did nothing. She pressed it a few more times but still nothing. The night vision mode must have also been damaged. She pressed another button on her wristband to turn on the LD lights mounted on the sides of the helmet that should have also turned on automatically. They did nothing when she tried to toggle them on.

  If she couldn’t see, she didn’t have a good chance of getting back to the Habitat. Maybe if she found the ice wall the hangar was built into she could follow it in the dark. But that meant finding the wall in the first place. Whatever direction she went there was a chance that there would be nothing helpful. By the time she realized she had chosen the wrong direction and turned around, she’d likely be further disoriented. That meant she would have to choose the correct direction the first time by chance. Not only that, but her leg was hurt. She’d be moving slower than normal.

  Screw that, Alice thought to herself. Reaching up with her hand she slammed the side of her helmet where she knew one set of the LD lights were located. The side of the helmet where she hit suddenly lit up. For a frightening moment, she thought the crack in her helmet grew, but it hadn’t changed at all. The visor still was intact.

  She got up slowly on her knees carefully putting all her weight on her good knee first and then pushed herself up all the way. As she stood up, she swept her view across the surface. She only had one functional light. Although the light revealed where she looked, the crack in the visor made it hard to see exactly what she was looking at. Finally, she stopped when she saw an irregularity on the surface. It could have been a large rock or maybe even the door that had flung out. Or maybe it was a body.

  “Navya?” Alice spoke into her microphone but heard no reply.

  Every time she looked directly at it, the crack across her visor blocked her view, and every time she tried to look at it with her peripheral vision in the spots where there wasn’t a crack the light ended up shining somewhere else.

  She hopped on one foot over to the odd-looking shape. She got about ten feet away, just close enough to see. It was the unmistakable, burnt orange EMU spacesuit Kato had been wearing. At this point, it was truly ‘burnt’ orange. The EMU was even more black and burned, and the oxygen face mask Kato had been wearing had shattered.

  She hobbled up to him and collapsed on her knees next to Kato. She ignored the pain in her leg and sat there for a moment contemplating everything that had happened. It all seemed like a bad dream.

  She placed her hand on his suit when the impossible happened: Kato moved his arm and grabbed her hand. He swung his other arm around and pointed the gun directly at her. Alice put her arm up in front of her head as quickly as she could to try to protect herself while Kato pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  She was about to pull away and get ready to defend herself again when his grip relaxed suddenly. She lowered her arm and swung her view to look at Kato’s face. Up close like this, the crack did not obstruct her central vision. He was looking directly at her with eyes that held fury she couldn’t possibly understand. The fire in his eyes died away and whatever energy he had left him as his entire body relaxed.

  She wasn’t sure how it was possible. Not only had he survived everything up to this point, but he had also been conscious enough in his last moments in the open vacuum of Europa to still try to stop her.

  Looking down, she saw the strange-looking gun that he held. The last shot it fired in the emergency exit had been too much for the plastic gun and it had blown itself apart. There were glass pieces inside the barrel. Kato had been using glass as the bullets. The gun misfiring, the use of glass instead of metal for bullets, and the curvature of Alice’s helmet had prevented her viso
r from breaking entirely; it was an incredible stroke of luck if one could call it that.

  Before she stood up, Alice rolled Kato’s body over so it was face down. She knew it didn’t mean anything, but she felt better now that Kato wasn’t looking up at her anymore. She stood up and swung her view around the surface once again. Just as before, she stopped when she saw a strange shape on the surface. It was a few dozen yards away from where she stood and she quickly hopped over. Soon, even through the crack, she could see the orange EMU of Navya’s suit.

  “Navya!” Alice said again and she fell to her knees next to the orange EMU that Navya wore. She looked over her suit and saw a large rip in the chest of Navya’s suit. The bullet from Kato’s gun had torn through Navya’s suit. Although the suit had reacted by sealing the hole, the damage to Navya might have been fatal. Alice took Navya’s hand and looked at her wristband. It showed a large red warning:

  *No life signs detected.*

  Alice’s heart sank. Navya’s suit might be repaired, but the shot directly to her chest had been the final straw.

  For a moment, Alice contemplated staying with Navya and waiting for the inevitable. How long did she have? It was a question she had kept asking herself, and it was a question that would eventually make its answer very clear.

  Alice looked up and out across the surface until she found what she knew she’d need to make her way back to the hangar: a wall of ice. During the day it stood out like a sore thumb as it was one of the few notable landmarks on the otherwise flat surface.

  “I’m sorry, Navya,” Alice said somberly.

  Slowly, she stood up and made her way over to the wall. She’d need to follow it to the hangar. If the remote operation had worked properly, she could get into the hangar. She had to keep going.

  Several minutes later she saw a faint light. It became brighter as she moved forward. Finally, she rounded a corner to find the hangar entrance right in front of her. By remotely having the hangar decompress, it was ready for her to walk in. The Nomad sat exactly where she had last left it.