Europa Contagion

by Nicholas Thorp

  “How sure?” Dimitri asked.

  “Positive,” Bailey responded.

  “Roger, take semi-automatic control,” Dimitri replied.

  Bailey placed her feet on the support pads and wrapped her gloved hands around the joysticks. She had control of the Lander and used the propellant to slow their landing more than the computer had been doing.

  “4000 feet,” Dimitri said. “3000 feet.”

  Bailey slowed their descent even more.

  Li was monitoring the approach from the Seeker. “Careful, you’ll have to abort if you use too much propellant,” Li said.

  Bailey had heard what Li said, but didn’t respond as she was focused entirely on the screens showing their descent.

  “1500 feet,” Dimitri said. “500 feet. Coming down at twenty-five, thirty-three degrees.”

  “Ninety seconds of propellant left,” Li said.

  Bailey took in all the information. She was coming down at twenty-five feet per second and was at an angle of thirty-three degrees to the horizon. She had used more propellant to slow their descent faster. She was trying to not overshoot the landing pad.

  “300 feet. 200 feet. 150 feet. 100 feet. Four down. Ten forward. Thirteen degrees.”

  “Thirty seconds of propellant.”

  Bailey leveled the Lander out so the landing pads would be perfectly horizontal to the surface.

  “Fifty feet. You’ve got the horizontal line pegged, looking good,” Dimitri said. “Contact light.”

  Finally, small icy particles began to appear on the monitor and the Lander touched down gently.

  The Lander was finally on the surface, but not on or even near the launch pad. Bailey’s manual control had helped them not overshoot and land in large ice rocks, but instead, they had undershot their target. It put them farther from the Habitat than normal.

  ----------

  Bailey and Dimitri stepped out of the Lander and set foot on the icy surface. Their boots crunched with each hop as they made their way to the Habitat. The helmets of their suits had turned on night vision mode. It helped them enough to see where they were going, but like the Lander, not enough to make out details at a distance.

  As they hopped toward the Habitat, they neared the hangar. Strange looking debris was littered around them. Not wanting to stay on the surface any longer than necessary, even with their POWER modifications, they didn’t stop and continued toward the hangar.

  “Is the hangar door open?” Dimitri asked as they approached. The hangar door was open, but only partially. Like a garage door that decided not to close all the way, the hangar door was open a few inches from the ground. Dimitri made his way to the main control panel from the outside, located near the entrance. He took a cable from his EMU and plugged it into the panel. His helmet lit up an icon indicating that he had correctly plugged his suit into a socket. Even though he tried, he couldn’t access anything.

  “I’m plugged in, but I’m not getting any readings at all. It looks like there’s no power to the hangar,” Dimitri reported. “We can’t get in through here.”

  “I guess we’ll have to use the manual door. Where was that again?” Bailey asked.

  “It’s around the corner over here. Let’s check it out. This spot is completely dead right now,” Dimitri responded.

  Bailey momentarily lost track of Dimitri. “Dimitri, where are you?” she asked.

  “Over around the corner of the hangar. I think you might want to see this,” Dimitri answered.

  Bailey hopped to the corner of the hangar. This was the same side where the manual door was located. As she rounded the corner, she saw Dimitri on his knees inspecting something on the ground. Dimitri was kneeling over what looked to be a door.

  “What the hell?” she said as she knelt to look at the door.

  The door itself didn’t look to be in such bad condition. It was still completely intact and had maintained its shape.

  “Look here,” Bailey said. She was on the other side of the door. She pointed to equally spaced black and brown burn marks along the entire perimeter of the door.

  Dimitri looked at the marks.

  “These are the emergency explosives, aren’t they? Could they have accidentally gone off?” Bailey asked.

  “They’re manually connected to the panel in the room and can only be detonated if someone physically moves the handle,” Dimitri answered.

  They looked at each other and then looked to where the manual entrance was. They left the door and began to hop over to the entrance. As they made their way there, they noticed other small debris littering the ground. A few pieces of metal here, a few cables there. It wasn’t much, but it was very worrisome. Several seconds later, they made it to the entrance only to find what they had feared. It was the door to the entrance they had seen on the surface. It had indeed fired its explosives, ejecting itself at a high speed, flinging it away from the Habitat.

  In the distance, they could see the refueling station was destroyed. It appeared to have exploded, leaving very little of its structure standing.

  “I guess Control was right about option Number Three being the best idea,” Bailey said. “I didn’t like it, but I was wrong. If we hadn’t followed their advice, we’d be stranded here.”

  Dimitri decided to say nothing.

  Looking inside the entrance to the Habitat, the two found that nothing inside seemed better than outside. The entrance had no power and was pitch black. As they stepped inside, their suits detected no light and turned on the external LD lights attached to the sides of the helmet. The stark beams of light swept across the inside and they were shocked to see the interior door open, as well. With both the exterior and interior doors open, that could only mean there was no more atmosphere in this part of the Habitat. Hopefully, the safety precautions had been followed and the Habitat had sealed the next closest door.

  “What happened here?” Bailey asked as they made their way farther into the facility. She went to the interior door and pushed it with her shoulder. At first, it didn’t move. Then she looked at the hinges and saw a large metal bar jammed into them. Pulling with all the strength she could, she freed the metal bar from the hinges and was able to open the door entirely.

  As they entered the hallway, it was becoming clear something catastrophic had happened. With no power, the only lights came from the lights on their helmets. They made their way to the adjacent room and found the ladder leading down to the main part of the Habitat. Slowly, they climbed down. It was clumsy, negotiating a ladder with their bulky EMU and POWER modifications on.

  The deeper part of the Habitat was also without power. As they each stepped off the ladder, they were greeted with yet another door. This one was closed.

  “Oh, thank God. Maybe everything is okay with the rest of the Habitat,” Dimitri said out loud.

  Bailey was quiet, thinking the worst had happened; she had little hope for the rest of the Habitat. Bailey began to remove her POWER modifications.

  “Is that a good idea?” Dimitri asked.

  “We’re deep enough to be protected from the radiation from above. And nothing in the Habitat is radioactive. I think we’d just be hindering ourselves if we kept them on.”

  Dimitri gave a brief update to Li and then they filed into the next pressurization room and closed the outer door. Without power, Dimitri pressed the ‘emergency egress’ button on the inner door. Nothing happened. Dimitri pulled and forced the inner door open, revealing the hallway to the next room. As they walked into the hallway Dimitri closed the airlock door behind him.

  While there was no power to the pressurization room, there was still some power left in the rest of the Habitat. Red emergency lights were on as they walked through the hallways.

  The devastation was shocking. The entire facility was blackened and scorched from burns. There was debris everywhere.

  For quite some time they silently walked around looking at all the damage until they got to the medbay.

  “This looks like a
fire,” Bailey finally said as they stopped in the medbay. A fire in a confined space was an incredibly dangerous thing. It could easily burn and get out of control. This was especially true in a pressurized area like the Habitat where oxygen and hydrogen were present.

  “What about the fire suppression system? I don't see any signs that it activated.” Dimitri was walking around looking in the cabinets and checking the walls of the medbay.

  “That’s because it didn’t activate,” Bailey said. “Where is everyone? I haven’t seen a single sign of anyone yet.”

  Dimitri bent down and righted a chair that had been knocked over. He plugged his suit into a panel on the wall in the room and was looking at his computer and said, “I don’t know, but we’ve got to make a decision soon.”

  “What’s that?” Bailey asked.

  Dimitri continued to look at the computer readout and answered, “We’ve got enough air in our suits for about five hours. By then it’ll be dangerous on the surface and the Seeker will be out of range of the Lander. We either stay here and try to repair the Habitat enough for us to stay longer, or only stay here for about an hour and then go back.”

  “What are the chances of fixing the Habitat?” Bailey asked.

  “The entire Habitat?” Dimitri finally looked up from the computer as he began to answer. “Not possible for us. What we need is one room that we can fix and use. I’ve been checking the medbay out. I think that we can fix this room. Look here.” Dimitri showed what he had grabbed from the cabinets. They were oxygen bottles. “I’ve been checking the integrity of the room. The computer says that the room is structurally sound. We could redirect the last of the power here and manually use the pressurizing room. We’ve got more than enough in these oxygen bottles and our suits to stay here and wait for the Seeker to be in position again.”

  Bailey sat down next to Dimitri and thought. It was a tough decision. Finally, she spoke.

  “I say we do it. We’ll spend the next forty-five minutes working on this room. If we can’t get it working, then we’ll have to leave. If it looks like we can make this work, we’ll stay and see what else we can find. Where do we start?”

  “The outer doors,” Dimitri pointed at each door leading into the medbay. “We’ll close off and seal one of them permanently. The other one we’ll close and use as our pressurization room to get in and go out. We’ll leave this room here pressurized at all times. As long as we have power, we can use the pressurization room. Without power, we can still use it, but we’ll be using up more oxygen so we’ll do our best to reduce how often we leave and enter in that case. Bailey, you should check out the storage closet. There might be extra scrubbers for our suits. That will help. I’ll see if I can turn on the normal lights.” Since entering the Habitat, the red emergency lights had continued flashing.

  The crew members got to work. Bailey went off in search of scrubbers while Dimitri checked a computer and worked on the medbay doors. Despite its appearance, the medbay was in good condition for their plan. After a minute, the red flashing lights turned off and white lights replaced them. Dimitri got one door sealed, and then the other. Bailey came back holding several objects.

  Bailey said, “I managed to find four scrubbers. That’s two more for each of us.”

  “Perfect, let’s get this room pressurized,” Dimitri said. He looked at the readouts the computer was giving him as they waited and released the oxygen from the bottles. “Looks good. The room is holding the pressure perfectly,” Dimitri took off his helmet. Bailey followed his lead and removed her helmet.

  “Now we have some time to figure out what’s going on here,” Bailey said and sat down next to a small computer console next to Dimitri.

  “I was having trouble with the computer and couldn’t override the safety systems, but I managed to power everything else down as much as possible and redirected all the power to this room.”

  “What type of problem with the computer?” Bailey asked.

  “I can’t access most of the data from the Habitat. I only have basic access at the moment.”

  “What’s the plan now?” Bailey asked.

  Dimitri thought for a moment then spoke, “I think we should spread out and do a thorough search of the entire Habitat. We can use the rest of our scrubbers on that, then come back to this room. We’ll swap out for new scrubbers and talk about what we found.

  “Bailey, see if you can find out how to access the rest of the data from the Habitat. I’ll be on the lookout for the others. I’m going to see if I can find the source of the fire.”

  TWENTY TWO

  Recovery

  Several hours passed as the two crew members from the Seeker worked. Dimitri had followed the damage to what he thought was the source of the Habitat’s demise before his suit gave a warning telling him he should replace his scrubber soon. As he made his way back to the medbay, he saw Bailey was back in the room working on the computers. Outside the medbay, there were stacks of blackened objects piled on top of each other. Bending down to get a closer look, he saw they looked like body parts. He looked to the side of the parts and saw another blackened shape. It was a body.

  Dimitri just stared.

  Without saying a word, he entered the pressurized room, sat down in the medbay, and took off his helmet. Both Dimitri and Bailey hung their heads down in a defeated look.

  They sat in silence for a short while. Considering the state of the Habitat, they had feared that everyone would be dead. Actually knowing they were dead was heartbreaking.

  “While you were gone, I looked around. I found a person in the lab. I think it’s Felix, but he’s badly burnt. There were also… body parts… in the lab. I think it’s Sonya.” Bailey was barely able to get the last of her words out.

  “What happened?” Dimitri asked.

  “I don’t know. Body parts? Could the fire have done that?” Bailey asked.

  “It wasn’t a fire,” Dimitri answered. “I think I found the source. The damage got worse the closer I got to the hydrogen storage and venting location. By the time you get to the venting station, the entire area is gone. That’s the source of this.”

  “An explosion then,” Bailey said. “That shouldn’t have happened. We stored all hydrogen far enough away from the Habitat for that very reason. This place should be fool-proof.”

  “Yes, it should,” Dimitri answered while thinking.

  “That’s not the only thing I found,” Bailey said.

  Dimitri looked at her expectantly. Bailey took a container and set it down in front of her. “I found this. It’s a sample container.”

  Dimitri looked at it and said, “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yes, and it’s sealed,” she responded. “That means there’s something in it. And that sample container is the only one we have in the Habitat. It came from the chamber in BSL4.”

  “This was only to be used if we found a sample of complex life,” Dimitri said. “So there’s something in there?”

  “There must be,” she said. “We won’t know until we get back to the Moon base. The Seeker doesn’t have biosafety labs like we have here on the Habitat.”

  “If that’s true, that might be one of the most important discoveries ever,” Dimitri said.

  “We’ll bring it back with us and see. In the meantime we have to keep moving forward.”

  Dimitri looked at her and asked, “Did you have time to figure out the computer problem?”

  “I’m about to,” she responded. “I need to do a reboot and then I think I can access everything I need. We can finally look at the logs and see what happened.” She sat, thinking for a moment, before speaking again. “That’s only two people we found. What about the others?”

  “Unknown,” Dimitri answered.

  She said, “When I reboot the system we can use the locators to find them.” Then she pressed a button on the keyboard. The screen closed the applications that were open and then turned black. Suddenly the lights in the room went dark. A few moments la
ter they flickered on with the red emergency lights that had greeted them when they first entered.

  “I have to reboot the entire Habitat so everything has to reset,” Bailey said. “It’ll be a few minutes.”

  Dimitri looked up and said, “I tried to check the hangar. I couldn't get access to it because of the damage. I don’t know if the Nomad is still there or not. Someone could have used it to escape.” There was a trace of hope in his voice as he spoke.

  The red lights turned off and the regular bright white lights turned back on.

  “Looks like it worked,” Bailey said. “I can access everything. I’ll use their locators. We can use the radar dish to find the Nomad.” She punched a few commands into the keyboard.

  “Uh oh, that’s not good,” she said.

  “Great, what now?” Dimitri said.

  “The backup batteries must have been damaged. They’re depleting much faster than I thought they would,” she said as she tapped away on the keyboard for a few more minutes.

  “I can either do a backup of all the logs and data, or I can have the radar dish locate the Nomad and search for the others. Either way, that will drain all the power.”

  “Doing a backup of the logs will drain that much power?” Dimitri asked.

  “There’s petabytes of information stored here, almost an exabyte. I don’t even know if we’d have enough time to copy all the files and bring them with us,” Bailey answered.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “We have to decide right now. There won’t be enough power to do either one soon,” she responded.

  “Have it locate the others,” Dimitri said.

  Bailey pressed a few buttons. A topographical map appeared on the screen as well as a detailed blueprint of the Habitat. One green dot appeared. Then a second. The first dot appeared on the blueprint in the Habitat next to the medbay. The second and third dots were outside the perimeter of the Habitat and showed up on the topological map. Time passed as the radar dish swept its radio waves across the surface. A minute later two dots appeared in the same location: one blue, one green.