It was powered by an onboard battery, designed to last over two weeks if needed. A cable was used to transmit commands, data, and video between the sub to the surface, only because communication by radio would not be possible through the ice.
The cable was a necessary constraint to make the mission feasible. It was a design sacrifice that was determined worth making during the preliminary planning stages. It forced limitations on the extent they would be able to explore, and there were several other drawbacks to the decision. One of them, of course, was that the cable could become tangled, cut, or simply run out and restrict their travel, but it was deemed a risk the mission team needed to make. The upside of the decision for the cable was a constant stream of reliable data and video, real-time control, and the possibility of retrieval by the crane should the power be lost. These had not been easy decisions to make, but the crew was prepared to work with what they had.
Once under the ice the scientists would determine the best course for the submersible, and Dr. Julian Dugan would be just as involved with the exploration as Mara. His expertise in planetary geology was expected to be invaluable. With Reese piloting and the two scientists giving direction, they formed the perfect team to take EUNICE under the ice.
“If we’re good, let’s see what we’ve got down there,” Mara said while they stared at the litany of onboard data, all confirming that the sub was ready for the mission.
“Do we want to make an announcement?” Reese asked.
“Yeah, we better check in. Hab One, come in. This is Mara,” she said into the comm-link. “Hab One, come in.”
“Good morning crew, Dr. Aman here.”
“Aman, we’re all go on the sub. Preparing to launch.” The excitement of the moment resounded in Mara’s voice. They were moments from doing exactly what they had come to do — what they had waited years to do. It had been a monumental turn of events, considering the quake had been less than twenty-four hours earlier. She turned to Reese and gave her a steady look. “Ready when you are.”
Dr. Aman came back upon the comm. “Mara, keep us updated at what you see… Every ten minutes. Got it?”
“Got it,” she said. “You’re getting real-time video, aren’t you?”
“Affirmative,” he answered.
“Julian, it is your call where you think you see volcanic vents. Keep an eye out for anything that could be clues to the shifting ice, understood?” Dr. Aman instructed.
“Affirmative,” he responded.
Mara gave a hand gesture to lower the sub through the cavity and into the dark ocean below.
Hanson waved his hand as he had the day before, and the mining crew moved to action.
The crane loosened the cable and the monitors imaged water engulfing each of the lens covers. One by one they displayed a cusp of water crossing the lenses and descending into pure darkness. Fins ejected from their pockets on the hull of the sub, and they sprang into the water, just as expected. The steering propellers and rotor housings also popped into place, giving the orange tube an aquadynamic appearance.
“Announcing splashdown of the underwater submersible named EUNICE into the Europa sub-surface ocean,” Mara said into the headset, seemingly aware her voice was being recorded for all time.
As the sub oriented itself the cameras sent images into their headsets, showing nothing but blackness in all directions but up. Lights shown outward in cones that disappeared into oblivion. Traces of the light could be seen penetrating dozens of meters into the murky water, but there was nothing to see, just a hazy murky darkness.
Hanson made the hand gesture to begin lowering the cable more quickly, and then he took a spot behind Mara. The scientists could sense that he was just as interested in seeing what was down there.
Complete stillness had encompassed the crew. A slight reddish hue appeared on the upper portion of their visors. They were looking at the underside of the ice-shelf, over which stood two-plus kilometers of solid ice and the mining rig itself above that.
“I’m going to direct the sub along the ice for a while,” Reese said in a hushed tone. “Let’s see if we can find more of your fish,” she said. She spoke as if she didn’t want to disturb the stillness or scare the creatures away, as if they could hear her.
The underside of the ice appeared to be a rust color as it filtered through the murky fluid. The color was confusing to Julian. It wasn’t as pristine as he had expected. Not like the ice he had just seen above them.
The constant readings from the sub told the scientists what they needed to know. Pressure 362 psi, temperature 4 degrees C. This was about as expected. But there were no creatures and no signs of life.
“Where are you?” Mara said, speaking to herself. They could tell she had expected to see more life already. She had expected the ocean to be teaming with it.
“Should we descend?” Reese asked her.
“How far to the bottom is the sonar saying?” Mara asked.
“Five-thousand meters, give or take,” Julian responded.
“Damn. How long will that take?” Mara asked.
“We can drop pretty fast now. A hundred meters a minute or so…” Reese did some quick math in her head, mumbling to herself. “Could be down in about an hour.”
“Let’s go,” Mara said. “It’s now or never. We’ll see what we can find on the way down.” She paused looking into her visor. “This water is too murky,” she commented. “Did either of you expect that? I want to see better than this. Any clue what it is?”
“Dissolved minerals and organics, most likely,” Julian told her. “Taking a sample now. Mark time and location please,” he asked.
“Get readings every hundred meters,” Mara told Reese. “I want to know pressure and temp at regular intervals. Tell me, what is the sub rated for again?”
“We can make the bottom easily,” Reese told her. “We’ve got a titanium hull, multiple redundancies, solid casings at all instruments. We’re good. We could survive a volcano down there.”
“Good, let’s hope we’ll have to,” Mara said.
Reese lightly chuckled. “We’re down one-hundred meters, temp 5 degrees C, 382 psi,” Reese mentioned. “Hanson, be ready to run the spool out, okay?” she asked.
He nodded, not realizing she had her headset on and couldn’t see her. “Ready when you are,” he said.
“Water is getting warmer, huh?” Mara asked.
“Yes,” Julian interjected. “We’re getting away from the surface ice… And, I.R. is showing us heat signatures below.”
“Serious?” Mara asked.
“I see multiple heat signatures. Looks like at the bottom of the seabed,” he told them.
“We’re two hundred meters down, 6 degrees C, 400 psi,” Reese added.
“How large are the signatures?” Mara asked. “Are they water vents or volcanoes?”
“We’ll need to get down there to know,” he answered.
Reese suddenly appeared to be having trouble, clicking the buttons a little faster than normal. “We’re getting odd directional readings. I can’t track what direction we are moving. Magnetic field is all over the place.”
“We don’t know what direction we are headed?” Mara asked her.
“I’ll follow the heat signatures and go for that, ok? We can’t get too lost down here. We’re tethered to the crane. We can follow it back when we need to. I’m not going to be able to tell exact location, however. We’re just following the heat signatures at this point,” Reese told her.
“I’ll tell them to give you some more slack in the line,” Hanson said as he walked toward his crew.
Reese kept her eye on the cameras and the readouts, concentrating on her controls. “We’re three-hundred meters, 7 degrees C, 419 psi.”
“I can’t wait to see those heat signatures,” Mara told her.
“Working on it,” Reese
answered.
They remained silent as they continued to watch the monitors for any sign of life, any subtle movement, or other clues to what may lie below. The cameras showed a murky red darkness with the occasional wisp of dust and flecks of debris that ran across the lenses.
The temperature rose as high as 10 degrees C, but then dropped as the submersible passed one-thousand meters. Julian wasn’t sure, but he thought it was likely heated water rising to the underside of the ice shelf, cooling as it came into contact with the ice, and then dropping again once it had cooled. “Some kind of massive thermal conveyance,” he thought to himself.
As they descended, the murkiness began to subside. The lights on the sub began to reflect a pure, angelic light toward the cameras. The sea became a rich deep blue that disappeared into empty darkness. There were far fewer specks of dust and irregularities in the water than above.
“I’m taking us over the heat signatures. They are almost directly below,” Reese said.
The anticipation nearing the vents had held them all in place, including Hanson, who was watching the monitors on the wall without a headset.
Reese studied the visor feeds carefully and tugged back and forth on the joystick. They could each hear her through their visors, tapping on her joystick and carefully piloting the sub. “We’re close,” she said. “Hold on, current is strong down here.”
“How far down now?” Mara asked.
“We’re only about five hundred meters from the bottom.”
“Five minutes away?” Mara asked her to confirm.
“No. I’m moving us laterally at the moment… trying to hit this hot spot.” Then Reese drew in a deep breath. “Whoa! You see that?” she cried out.
“See what?” Mara asked from the edge of her seat.
“The heat spike… We were at 3 degrees C, and now at… Uh, 50 degrees C! We’re over a vent or something!”
“Get us down! I want down there now!” Mara nearly yelled.
“It’s got to be a volcanic vent,” Julian told them. “Nothing else would get that hot.”
“The current is very strong. This is not going to be easy,” Reese explained. “We can’t go down against this current,” she said. “The heated water is rising very fast. We’ll have to come at it from the side. Moving laterally for a bit, then we’ll come back.”
“Copy,” Mara said. “You can find your way back if you need to?” Mara asked.
“I’m locked onto the heat signature. It will guide us down,” Reese answered.
Reese directed the sub backward and out of the current. It was strong enough to push the sub upwards as fast as it had come down. The current was working against them. Once out of the rising stream of water Reese reoriented the sub and began to drop again. Her piloting skills were on full display as she directed the sub against the strong crosscurrents.
They could hear Reese tapping furiously on the joysticks. None of them could peel their eyes from the cameras. Any sign of life, or a fleeting glimpse of anything passing by might occur at any moment. Seeing something in action, in their native environment, or capturing it on camera would be an amazing victory against incredible odds in every sense of the word. They were mesmerized at the thought of catching a glance of anything.
“We’re coming down, down forty-seven hundred, three-hundred meters from the surface, Mara,” Reese said.
“Still no sign of life,” Mara said.
“Keep watching. We know it’s going to be down here,” Julian
replied.
Reese continued clicking the controls at an incredible rate. Closer and closer to the vent she brought the sub.
“Forty-eight hundred meters,” she said. “We’re 8 degrees C, pressure at 1,238 psi. We’re well within expected parameters,” she told them. “Continuing descent.”
Then Julian thought he saw the faintest wisp of light from below, but he dismissed it as a reflection.
They continued to descend. Then he saw another flash, almost like there was lightning below them.
“Anybody else seeing that light?” Mara asked.
“I see it,” Julian answered, still not sure what he was seeing.
Then the headset monitors they were wearing began to give off a sign of a diffuse light source below them.
“Julian, tell me you are still seeing that,” Mara asked him.
“The blue light?” he asked her. “I wasn’t sure if I was really seeing that,” he admitted. “You see it too?”
“Yes. Is it volcanic?”
“Doubtful, Mara,” he told her. “If that is natural light, it’s not volcanic.”
“How can you tell?”
“I’ve never seen blue lava. It would have to be incredibly hot, or a chemical composition we’ve never seen.”
Mara seemed confused. “Reese, how much further?” she asked.
“One-hundred and fifty meters.”
Mara and Julian kept intently focused for any sign of the lights, or of life; anything they could use to discern exactly what they were seeing.
“One-hundred meters,” Reese said. “7 degrees C, 1,257 psi.”
“Reese, we’re sending this video directly up to Copernicus?” Mara asked.
“Yes, there is a relay from here directly to the Hab, and then to Copernicus. Why?”
“I just want to be sure they are seeing what we are seeing. Is it relayed immediately to mission control?”
“That was the way I thought it would work. You can check with Stenner to make sure he’s watching,” Reese suggested.
“That’s ok. Just make sure we are recording when we get down there,” Mara told her.
“Confirmed,” Reese said. “Still recording.”
“Good. I’ve got a feeling…” Mara said, her voice trailing off.
“Seventy-five meters,” Reese said. “7 degrees C still, 1,261 psi.”
Julian and Mara were looking through their headsets as intently as they could. They knew these were the most crucial minutes of the entire mission. In a few minutes they would be staring directly into a volcanic vent on the seafloor of Europa. Speculation about this moment had run through the scientific community for decades, more than a century even. Answers to lifelong questions would be forming before their eyes in a matter of minutes.
Silence overtook the scientists. Hanson stood watching closely as it had fallen quiet. He had become as captivated as the scientists.
Reese made her final call. “Fifty meters, 7 degrees C, 1,266 psi.”
Silence.
They were so close. Any minute they would see the bottom.
Images on the headsets went from fuzzy and diffuse then to pixilated. Pixilated went to sharpness, and the sharpness to exasperation.
“Oh my God!” Mara blurted. “Do you see them? Do you see them all? My God!”
There was silence amongst the crew aside from Mara’s exacerbated words. All eyes were on the monitors, and there were no other words from any of the crew.
“Someone say something!” Mara demanded.
There was a stillness at the console as the scientists examined their surroundings… Nobody was saying anything. More silence as they stared into the headsets.
Julian composed himself enough to finally say something as the others looked on. “Hab One… Copernicus… it appears we can confirm the presence of some kind of life on the Europa seafloor,” he said into the comm-link. Then he followed; “It looks like this was the light we were seeing, Mara.”
“Affirmative. Can you get us closer, Reese?” Mara asked. Julian noticed her voice had become excited, her airway had contracted, and it had become difficult for her to speak.
“Hab One, Mara here, come in Hab One,” she said into the comm-link.
“Hab One here, Mara. What’s your condition?” Dr. Aman asked her.
“Are you seeing thi
s?” she asked. A smile had formed across her entire face that Dr. Aman couldn’t see.
“I can confirm visuals on the seafloor surface,” he said.
The images they were seeing came even more to focus on her headset. Mara cried out to the rest of the crew. She was jubilant and unrestrained. “You are seeing what I’m seeing, right? Oh my God, Aman,” she said again.
The rest of the crew were in stunned silence.
“I… Oh my God! Do you see them? Do you see them all? Do you see the lights?”
CHAPTER 7
Sol 9; Mission time - 15:55
“Whoa!” Reese said as she steadied the sub near the vent. “You see that temperature spike again?” she asked.
A quick check of all systems indicated they were only a few dozen meters above the surface of the ocean. Mara and Julian continued to scan their headsets for life as the sub hovered in place. The lights Mara had seen were still visible, pulsing in and out of their visors. She was astounded at the sheer numbers she was seeing.
Through the lights they could make out fragments of structures that appeared to extend from the surface bottom. Mara knew something was amazing below them from the hints she was seeing, but she couldn’t tell exactly what. Her first impression was they were trees, or buildings, or castles. They could see the tallest points of them moving silently beneath the sub as it searched for the ocean bottom.
“Let’s continue to go down… slowly. I want all cameras pointed below,” she told Reese.
Mara’s voice was high-pitched, nervous, and excited. She was trying to stay as calm as could be expected. Since she had left Earth her single goal had been this moment; to explore the undersea vents of Europa and catalog the life that might exist there. She expected to find life teaming at the sources of heat and energy, not unlike Earth’s undersea volcanic vents. Being only a few meters from the bottom was as tantalizing as anything she had ever experienced. Her senses were bristling.
“Descending now,” Reese called, her voice fixated on piloting the sub.
Diamond Moon Page 11
