The Io Encounter: Hard Science Fiction (Ice Moon Book 3)

by Brandon Q Morris

  The chasm in front of them revealed the multiple layers that made up the thin crust of Io. Francesca was almost embarrassed to be staring into the innards of Zeus’ lover this way. About one and a half kilometers lay open, and perhaps they could mine this open wound for the minerals they needed to survive. This was going to be fun—and not in a good way—because someone would have to climb down on a rope for more than a thousand meters. Since there was no atmosphere, there was no terminal velocity—54 meters per second—as is reached on Earth. If one fell from this height, he would descend faster and faster, and might soon reach the terrestrial speed of sound—343 meters per second—while still in freefall, despite the low gravity on Io.

  Francesca turned around. Hayato seemed bored, fidgety. She waved at him.

  “Great view, you really missed something.”

  He just mumbled a non-answer and they continued their journey. They soon reached the mountain range. It turned out not to be much of a problem. Mostly they had to be careful not to tear their suits on the hard rocks, which in the absence of weather showed no sign of smoothing from erosion. Francesca stopped at the highest point of the rock stacks and made a visual survey of what lay before her. The view was absolutely breathtaking. This is what Earth must have looked like in ancient times, before soft greens and cool blues changed its character, she marveled.

  She signaled Hayato to stand next to her, and this time he accepted her invitation. They saw a ring of steep, jagged mountains casting long, hard shadows into the foreground, backed by a kind of halo from the black sky. The northwest segment was missing, and from there a glowing stream flowed into the round caldera, with fumes billowing above it. The stream ended shortly before the center of the crater, not even 500 meters from a lake filled with a reddish-yellow liquid. A rivulet of this liquid seemed to run from the lava stream into the lake. Francesca tried to see additional details in her binoculars, but the image was blurry. Io had no atmosphere, but this did not seem to be entirely true above the lake and the lava. Otherwise the image would be more precise.

  “We have to get closer to it,” she said. Hayato interpreted this as a request and started the descent. Francesca would have liked to enjoy the panoramic view a bit longer. It seemed to her as if she had seen it before, as if it was deeply embedded in mankind’s collective unconscious, but how could that be?

  The engineer was already 50 meters ahead when she finally managed to tear herself away from the compelling vista. The descent was even easier than the climb, so they reached the bottom of the crater after only fifteen minutes. When they stepped from the shadow of a smaller hill, Francesca noticed the surface looked different here. It was black, almost as if it had been burned, and it seemed to have been viscous not so long ago, but appearances were deceiving.

  Several million years ago a large object might have impacted here, causing Io’s thin crust to burst open. Francesca imagined it as a bleeding wound where fiery magma would have oozed out and gradually filled the hole formed by the asteroid. The wound never seemed to have ‘healed,’ or closed completely, because if it had, the center of the crater would no longer be hot. The reason was probably the lava stream from the north that had at some point found its way into the crater. Its weight pressed down more and more on the thin scab over the wound, forcing it down and increasing the pressure on the reservoir below the surface, thus squeezing out more molten material.

  Such processes were rarely possible on Earth these days, she knew, since hot magma cooled down more quickly due to the influence of Earth’s atmosphere. Four billion years ago things on Earth had probably been quite different, and the first predecessors of life must have formed under similarly inhospitable conditions. What might be happening here on Io? Did the warning sent by the Enceladus creature have anything to do with it?

  She looked through the binoculars and activated the rangefinder to indicate the distance. “It is 12 kilometers to the lava lake.”

  Hayato just nodded and walked ahead. He is really tough, she thought, looking at him admiringly. He does not show any sign of exertion. And he does not whine like Martin. She ran after Hayato.

  About six kilometers later they took a break. The flexible part of Francesca’s spacesuit chafed her inner thighs. Hayato sat down on a hip-high black boulder, spreading his legs particularly wide. She saw through his visor he was drinking liquid through a straw.

  “They are bothering you, too?” She pointed at his thighs.

  Hayato nodded with a laugh, and choked on his drink. “I think it is because of the jumps,” he said when he could talk again. “When you take off, the fabric is pulled down by gravity, but when you land, it is compressed again.”

  “Isn’t it the same when you’re walking?”

  “Yes, but to a lesser degree. If we go on like this, our skin will be raw.”

  “It would be nice to have some lotion.”

  Hayato pointed at the fastener that provided the airtight connection between the upper and the lower part of the spacesuit. “Sure, if you want to take off the lower part for a moment...”

  Francesca seriously thought about it. It would not work with this type of spacesuit, but what if the upper part of the suit was constructed to be flush to the body? “Let’s assume the HUT would sit here,” she said, pointing at the area of her belly button, “forming an airtight connection on my skin. Then I could take off the lower part.”

  “The airtight connection could also be up here,” Hayato said, pointing to her throat. “Only your head needs oxygen and normal air pressure.”

  “I could actually pee normally,” Francesca said. She liked the idea, particularly as it was certain she would have to use her underwear and diaper for this purpose during the next few hours.

  “Sex on the moon—just imagine! The infinite possibilities.” Hayato was laughing.

  “But without kissing.”

  “Well, who wants to kiss, considering how rarely we have a chance for bodily hygiene?”

  She slapped her hand on Hayato’s shoulder. It was fun being with him. She had gradually come to understand why Amy had fallen in love with this guy.

  “Let’s go on,” she said.

  They resumed their march. They still had a good hour of walking ahead of them and were right on schedule, so they left out the painful jumps. By now, the ground was no longer black. Instead, it kept changing through a range of colors. They were crossing a strip with crystals glittering in the sun—probably yet another form of sulfur. She seemed to perceive a sulfurous odor, knowing it had to be a product of her own imagination.

  Hayato suddenly stopped, and Francesca immediately realized the cause—about 150 meters ahead was what looked like the edge of a golf course. Such luscious greens! she thought in amazement.

  “It must be olivine,” Hayato said.

  Francesca walked swiftly toward it. From close up, she saw there was no actual grass growing there. The ground was still covered with small stones, but the substrate consisted of a different material. She waved at her companion, and then they continued on their way.

  After a while Hayato said, “Your idea a moment ago, with the separable spacesuit, has a big catch. If you expose your bare skin to a vacuum, the boiling point of water in your cells drops below 37 degrees. The water vaporizes, and the cells burst. This is extremely painful, and it moves inward through the skin layers.”

  “I suspected as much,” Francesca said.

  “You could have a pressure suit tailored to be very snug, but the entire body still has to remain pressurized. Sorry.”

  “So no real peeing, then?”

  “I regret it as much as you do,” Hayato said.

  By now, the lava stream for which they were headed had noticeably increased. Its shape reminded Francesca more of a glacier, only it was not frozen water slowly pushing forward, but viscous rock. Before they were close enough to examine this magma glacier, they first came upon the lake.

  “Watch out, Hayato,” she said. “This is no normal lake.”
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  “Okay then,” he simply said. He walked with small steps toward the shore, which was about ten meters away. “You had better wait at a sufficient distance, Francesca. I do not want both of us getting into danger. I already have the tools with me,” he said, pointing at the bag on his shoulder. Of course he was right that she should stay back.

  She noticed this was not a lake in any normal Earthly sense. They knew it consisted of sulfur, which in its pure state melts at about 115 degrees. Francesca took the binoculars and looked out to the center of the lake. There, bubbles seemed to rise from the liquid mass, while at the edge everything was calm. But where exactly was the edge? Io’s surface temperature of minus 150 degrees constantly cooled the sulfur lake at its edges, solidifying the sulfur there. Since heat was constantly provided from below, the scene resembled a frozen Earth lake that was slowly thawing. Solid shelves formed along the ‘shoreline,’ below which was liquid sulfur.

  “Please watch the ground, Hayato.” Francesca’s request sounded unintentionally fearful. No, it wasn’t unintentional, she thought, I am afraid for him.

  “I know, I could break through,” he replied. “But as long as you stay on safe ground, we can risk it.”

  “It’s good that you know it. It would be even better if you stopped walking around there.” She saw him taking a quick jump backward. “I...”

  “That was close,” he said. Before taking the next step, he tested with just one foot to see if the ground was solid. “Another two meters, I would estimate.”

  “Do you have to do this?”

  “We need to get samples. That is why we are here.”

  “Okay, you’re right. I’ll shut up now.”

  Francesca saw him pull a telescoping rod from the bag and screw a sample container onto the tip. Then Hayato extended the rod to its full length and tried to reach the liquid sulfur, but the distance was still too great. “Shit,” he said.

  Francesca suppressed any reply. She did not want to make him nervous.

  Hayato steadily edged forward. He slid his right foot ahead and then gradually shifted his weight onto it, followed by sliding his left foot forward, all done so slowly that it almost appeared he was performing an odd pantomime.

  “Well, I hope this is far enough...” He once more extended the rod with the container toward the lake. This time it worked! The container dipped into the lake and filled with its ‘water.’ Hayato pulled the rod back and collapsed it, closed the container, and put everything into his bag.

  Then he carefully turned around. “How did I get here?” His question sounded quite innocuous.

  Francesca held her breath. “I didn’t pay attention.”

  “It is not far. Stay calm.” Once again, Hayato pushed one foot after the other across the thin ice. It was maybe eight meters to the area that was definitely safe. “One step after the other,” he said.

  Francesca admired his stoicism. One, two, three steps, she silently counted as he grew closer to the safe area. Was that a cracking sound? It would be impossible to hear in a vacuum, she thought, but in slow motion, Hayato’s foot disappeared into the liquid sulfur. He tried to pull it out.

  “Damn, this stuff is as sticky as chewing gum,” he said as he tried to pull his foot from the muck. His boot was now stuck ten centimeters deep, and Francesca frantically glanced down at her feet. The boot, which was part of the hard section of the spacesuit, was at most fifteen centimeters high. Above it there was only fabric, with much less insulation potential.

  Hayato only had a few seconds left, so Francesca broke into a sprint from a running start. She reached the engineer, grabbed the strap of his bag, and pulled him toward safety with all her strength. His foot popped free. The abrupt impulse made him stumble over her legs as the bag pulled him toward her, came off his shoulder, and fell to the ground. Unfortunately Francesca could not stay upright, and they both fell face down on the surface of the lake.

  Francesca looked around. It was safe here.

  “Thanks,” Hayato said. “That was close.” He tried to get up, but fell on his butt again.

  Francesca knelt next to him. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  Hayato nodded, but did not say anything. He was breathing heavily. It must be the shock, she suspected. She looked at his boot that had been stuck in the sulfur.

  “Stretch out your leg.”

  Hayato followed her command. “Everything is fine,” he then said, sounding somewhat surprised.

  Francesca took another look at his boot—it was covered by a layer of hardened sulfur. She carefully crumbled it and removed pieces, and below she found undamaged fabric. “Looks good,” she said. “It seems to be relatively okay.”

  “The boot is supposed to withstand temperature of up to 300 degrees,” Hayato said, “but I’d rather not test it.”

  Francesca got up. “Well, we just made it,” she said as she looked around. Hayato had pulled the tool bag toward himself. Good, so this risky maneuver was not in vain, she thought.

  “Take as long a rest as you need, and then we’ll go on.” Francesca noticed that she herself had started to sweat. Her heart was beating faster as well.

  “I’m okay,” Hayato said. He got up carefully.

  “Any pains?”

  He shook his head.

  “Good,” she replied. “I suggest we pass by the lake on the right, at a safe distance from it, until we reach the lava stream. It’s a bit farther that way, but then we won’t have to cross the rivulet connecting the lava and the lake.”

  “We had best keep away from liquid sulfur from now on.”

  “Agreed. But you do know the magma in the stream isn’t just 120 degrees? It’s more than 1,000 degrees.”

  “Well, that is nice to know!” he said.

  They started walking hand in hand, but it did not feel strange to Francesca, not in the slightest. Hayato was a good friend.

  They reached the stream about two hours later. Meanwhile, Francesca had managed to move past the moment she dreaded most, even though she had been an astronaut for a long time—she urinated in her diaper. It was still a challenge for her, though, and at the time she had asked Hayato to walk a few steps ahead of her.

  The lava glacier glittered before them in the sun’s light—by now the sun had reached its zenith. The closer they got to the formation, the less it looked like something one might also find on Earth. Instead it seemed more and more alien in appearance, like a big, fat worm eating everything in its path. The worm was fed by a far-away volcano, a type not found on Earth—a simple hole in the ground oozing lava. They wanted to take samples here as well, because they would be interesting for two reasons. One was due to the message from Enceladus. The other was that the stream contained molten minerals from deeper inside Io’s crust and they might need them for survival.

  “Now it’s my turn,” Francesca said. Hayato did not answer, so she simply held him back by grabbing the strap of the tool bag. Hayato then pulled back.

  “You really want to mess with me?” laughed Francesca, for the slightly built Hayato must surely know he had no chance against her in a physical contest. And he did give in, but then he pulled again on the strap when she loosened her grip.

  “Not this time, my friend,” she said, finally getting hold of the bag.

  “Be careful!” warned Hayato. This time he kept a safe distance while she approached the lava stream. However, the material of the stream did not look molten at all. She immediately put away the sample container she had already prepared.

  “This stuff is hard as rock,” she said into the microphone.

  “That was to be expected,” Hayato replied. “It has a very high viscosity level, otherwise the stream would have reached the lake long ago. It cannot be moving more than a few centimeters every year.”

  “Great. And where do we get our samples now?” wondered Francesca aloud.

  “We could drill a hole into it,” he suggested.

  “How would we drill a hole?”

  “Your
tool bag contains a drill.”

  “The material is hard as rock, so it would take forever,” she said. “Isn’t there a quicker method?”

  “C4.”

  “Explosives, Hayato?”

  “Yes, C4. It is also in the bag.”

  “In the bag you dropped earlier?”

  “Yes, but there is really nothing to worry about. You could hit the stuff with a hammer and nothing would happen. During training we once used two sticks of C4 as fuel for a cooking fire.”

  “And how do we get it to explode?” she asked.

  “With detonators.”

  “Also in the bag?”

  “Correct.”

  Francesca laughed. “No matter what I ask about, it’s in the bag, right?”

  Hayato did not immediately answer, but then asked, “Should I take over?”

  “No,” she replied, since she had already found the explosive and the detonator. An instruction sheet was attached to the C4, and she promptly followed the few steps described there.

  “Finished.”

  “And now attach it to the lava stream,” Hayato instructed.

  Francesca approached the ugly worm, and she quickly felt the heat it radiated.

  “I can’t get any closer than two meters,” she said.

  “That is bad,” Hayato said. “There is no blast wave here. The explosive must be in direct contact.”

  “Do you think it might start burning instead of exploding? Right now, I am measuring more than 1,000 degrees.”

  “Not if the detonator goes off before then.”

  “Is the detonator more sensitive?”

  “Yes, definitely, but don’t worry, Francesca, it would not do more than tear off one of your fingers.”