by Jeff Carlson
There was no question that this crowd would be better able to process the trench, so Vonnie and Bauman spent their time prepping gear and fielding media requests while Lam hid away with his data.
They were celebrities. For an engineer and a gene smith, playing at being popular was a fun diversion. Vonnie showed off their non-proprietary hardware and public maps of the ice while Bauman talked about the sexier aspects of gene splicing like metabolic chargers. Together they were worth a sixty-second update every day on the same news feeds that had rarely mentioned their mission during the long, tedious journey to Europa. Now they were a hot pick — girl explorers on an alien moon — and the ESA and NASA administrators allowed them to say almost anything. Both women were jubilant and loud. It was topnotch media.
Meanwhile, Lam smoldered. “You see what’s happening,” he said one day before breakfast, standing with his back to the hab module window as if testing himself.
Vonnie couldn’t leave the viewport alone. Bauman constantly made her wipe off her fingerprints. Outside, their mecha wandered across the frozen plain, glinting in the vivid, reflected glow of Jupiter. “I know it’s tough to wait,” Vonnie said without looking at him.
“You sound just like them,” he said.
“Hey, easy. I’m on your side.”
“You think I’m worried because they might grab some of the glory? Because I had to live in a box with two attractive women for eleven weeks?”
Vonnie turned at attractive, feeling a little wary. So far, Lam had been scrupulous about keeping his distance.
“You’ve seen their org chart,” he said. “Who do you think’s in charge, the people like you and me?” His brown eyes searched her face, then shifted to the viewport behind her. “It’s being politicized,” he said. “The fuel. The water. You have to listen to what they’re really saying.”
The ice. A few Earth governments had called for an end to the mining. Others had too much invested in their colonies and fleets to shut down their supplies of deuterium, hydrogen, and bulk water. Away from the pole, the mining continued. Even now, a PSSC robot ship was carefully unfolding in orbit. The mecha it carried had been funded years ago and the ship had been in transit for months. That kind of inertia was fundamental to nearly every aspect of modern civilization.
The ice. Normal water held no more than .015% deuterium, but the precious gas could be separated, compressed and pumped into containers, then lobbed out of Europa’s weak gravity. The tankers filled faster than they could be built, and escaping Jupiter wasn’t expensive, diving in close and slinging away. The old god was well-positioned to feed the inner planets. In recent years, some of the catapults on Europa’s surface had begun hurling containers equipped with nothing more than radio beacons into slow, sunward trajectories. If those containers didn’t arrive for years, even if one or two went missing, no problem, they were lined up like an endless supply train and as cheap as dirt.
The ice. Deuterium-deuterium fusion reactors kept people alive on Luna and Mars and everywhere in between. Water/oxygen futures had become more valuable than gold. The solar system was in bloom. The Chinese had expanded with total commitment, and other nations were growing as fast as possible to keep from being left behind.
“They’ve already given up on most of Europa,” Lam said. “It’s too easy. They’ve been tearing it apart for twenty years without finding anything. I even helped them. They’re all posting my sim like it’s proof — like this safe zone is the only one. SecGen Harada will make sure the expedition doesn’t find anything she doesn’t want us to find.”
The Japanese minister had been born in space, and represented six thousand colonists who made up a crucial part of the Earth-orbit economy.
“What do you want to do?” Vonnie said.
“We’ve got a little time, long enough to post so much data they can’t bury it,” Lam said. “You know what I mean. If we wait now, they’ll come up with rationales to keep waiting. First we’ll run more surveys. Then we’ll practice safety plans. Maybe they’ll send in a few crawlers. Meanwhile five or six months go by, and they’ll downplay the whole thing.”
“What do you want to do, Lam?”
“I want to go in.”
It was a career move they’d only make once. They would either be heroes or subject to a great many lawsuits, probably jail time in Lam’s case. Vonnie suspected he’d ask for political asylum. The carvings meant that much to him, more than seeing his family again, more than his apartment in Hong Kong — and for all the right reasons.
Lam wanted to save this world. He wanted proof of the diversity of life implied by the carvings and the complex food chain that must support the carvers.
There would be little or no fossil record inside the ice. At best, the tides would hold a churned-up mishmash of species carried far from their time and habitats, but that was the point. There could be priceless information everywhere. There might be life in other regions.
He accepted that the mining would never stop. Humankind’s appetites were larger than any group of protestors or indignant scientists, but the mining could be restricted. They could be more diligent.
Bauman only argued for a day. She was too much like Vonnie and Lam. Otherwise she wouldn’t have come to Europa. It didn’t help that the men on the radio talked like slaps in the face. They were terse and controlling. Bauman didn’t appreciate their arrogance. She asked Lam to concoct a sim that showed the carvings were in danger, which wasn’t untruthful. The mecha had resealed the trench with steel, glue, and tents, but the carvings were still reacting to near-vacuum. Who could say what data was being lost as the ice broiled?
Forty-eight hours later, they were given permission to enter the trench — only the trench — and Lam laughed and ran for his armor.
“Game over,” he said. “Game over. Once we’re inside, we’ll need to keep poking around, right?”
“Hold on.” Vonnie hugged them both, starting with Bauman. She blushed a little as she approached Lam. “I wanted to… You can’t feel anything in a scout suit,” she explained, and he smiled, touching her hip. Maybe it was the promise of the beginning of something more.
Each set of armor weighed two hundred and twenty kilos. Suiting up required mecha assists. First they took off their clothes. Vonnie blushed again as Lam averted his eyes. Robotic arms painted her temples, throat, wrists, and thighs with nanocircuitry. Then she climbed into the open shell of her suit. She slipped her legs in, connected the sanitary features, and extended her arms into its sleeves.
The assist lowered her helmet over her face. Her armor folded shut. Thousands of needles — some invisible, some as long as four centimeters — sank into her nerves and veins. It didn’t hurt except for the cortical jack. There was a dull, gritting pain. She was online.
Bauman and Lam repeated the process.
Data/comm showed all systems go, but they visually inspected each other’s seals and collar assemblies. They also triple-checked life support. They intended to wear their suits for a six hour shift, but no one left a ship without carrying the maximum load, which was twelve hours of oxygen and five days of food.
In space, astronauts could lug extra cylinders of compressed oxygen or run air hoses from their ship. Inside the trench, there wouldn’t be room for bulky packs or hoses.
As the crew member tasked with their well-being, Vonnie wanted a large safety margin. During training, she’d once spent an uncomfortable thirty-six hour period in her suit, mastering several tricks to recharge her air supply, swapping new cylinders into her pack by herself, adapting nonstandard hoses, changing out filters clogged with smoke or fluid. They prepared for emergencies. She would bring spare cylinders into the trench, although after a single day, even fresh oxygen could not dispel the stink of sweat. In polite company, astronauts called it living with yourself. In cruder terms, the joke went eat yourself. The suit became a toilet. More important, they had no practical limitations on power. Each set of armor contained a plutonium rod which would dri
ve it for decades.
Vonnie walked into the air lock first. The lock was big enough to hold three people in an emergency if they crammed together, but one at a time was more comfortable, so she had a few moments alone.
As she waited outside, she looked across the brittle plain unassisted by her visor. Human perceptions were self-deceiving in this environment, yet she wanted a personal connection. She wanted to try.
The curvature of the moon was noticeably wrong. The horizon seemed too small, too near, while the sun suffered its own fun house effect. It was too far away, yet too bright. The ice glistened and winked. Vonnie had the feeling of standing in a mirage. Leaning blocks of ice jutted from the surface to the northeast. Aside from this ridge, there were no points of reference, only the eerie plain dwindling into blackness and the unfathomable, looming face of Jupiter.
Europa was exotic and alluring — but slowly, a chill filled her mind. The amazement she felt became a vague fear like a premonition.
Her visor was synthetic diamond. Five centimeters thick, it could withstand small arms fire and seventy standard atmospheres of pressure. Fitted with transparent circuitry, a suit’s visor was also designed to shield its wearer from the desolation of space by swaddling her in data. Without those displays, death felt very close. It engulfed her. Vonnie was only safe because of her helmet, gloves, and armor, so she distracted herself with the superhuman abilities of her suit.
“Lights up,” she said. “Grid One. Radar active. Mecha team alpha to me.”
Lam and Bauman emerged from the ship as Vonnie organized her squad of machines — two small burrowers like meter-long centipedes — a stout digger shaped like a wheeled spider bristling with tools, cameras, and arms — and seven relays and beacons ranging in size from a fist to a soccer ball.
Blazing with cameras and spotlights, they approached the long tent erected above the trench, where other machines had prepped two additional plastic bubbles. The three people entered the nearest bubble without the mecha.
“Stage one, go,” Vonnie said.
Her visor darkened as UV lights scoured their armor, baking off every Earth smell and microbe. Next they were sandblasted with melted ice mixed with a dusting of native rock. Fans cooled the exterior of their suits to -160° Celsius, the ambient temperature
When they emerged, they approached the second bubble, which served as an air lock. They entered. The mecha thronged around their feet. Vonnie skimmed through her checklists with an up-and-down motion of her eyes. A sophisticated response program watched her retinal movements as she studied her display, allowing her eyes to dance like fingertips through its menus.
“Stage two, go.”
The mecha peeled back a steel panel, revealing the trench beneath, where they’d constructed a flex ladder. The spotlights died and their radar shut off. Their visors reverted to a 3-D map taken by wire probe, showing old readings as if these were live images. The map was enough for Vonnie to lead her friends and the mecha down to the carvings.
Lam and Bauman bickered contentedly. “I’d like to switch back to radar,” he said.
“Not a chance,” Bauman said.
“At least let me use X-ray.”
“Absolutely not,” Bauman said. “We’ll be as noninvasive as possible. That was the deal.”
Vonnie grinned and looked around. In the bevy of people and mecha, they began to generate new signals to avoid crashing into each other and to examine the carvings, but they limited themselves to sonar to keep from burning the ice with photons or electromagnetic radiation.
For Lam, this was torture. For Vonnie, it was magnificent. Their visors modified their sonar feedback into holo imagery as real as life, and the trench was richly, overwhelmingly textured: an irregular quilt of dewdrops, smooth spots, swells, and depressions. Only the carvings held a pattern.
But why here? she thought.
The trench seemed to be the upper end of a vent, which made the symbols even more intriguing. Why invest such effort marking the walls of what must be a low-traffic area?
Could this be some sort of holy ground? Maybe the carvers had come to the top of their world to pray, although Vonnie knew Lam would contend that any notions of religion were anthropomorphic. Projecting human motives onto things that weren’t human was a natural function of human thinking. It was a fallacy. They had to be careful how they interpreted things.
Vonnie supposed this open space had been a thoroughfare hundreds of years ago. The mecha had detected gaps in the ice where the trench might have branched downward on both sides until the tides squeezed it shut on one end, turning what had been a horseshoe-shaped passageway into a single, straggling tunnel.
Europa had zero axial tilt and was tidally locked, which meant it always showed the same face to Jupiter like Earth’s moon always showed the same side to its planet. On Europa, unfortunately, the consequences were dire. Their models suggested the tidal locking was imperfect.
It was only Europa’s icy crust that showed the same face to Jupiter. Its ocean and its rocky core spun at different rates, and there were no continents to impede the water. Especially on the equator, the hellish, spiraling currents distended the ice. At its poles, Europa was its calmest. Yet even in these quiet pockets, the crust heaved and split.
What had the carvers been doing at the surface? It didn’t make sense. Living here would have been risky, almost suicidal, Vonnie thought. But they came anyway.
Behind her, Lam was uncharacteristically loud, although he tried to soften his words with Bauman’s new nickname. “Look, Yankee, you’ll never pack up the carvings and put them in a museum,” he said. “We’re damaging the wall just by standing here.”
“All the more reason to be noninvasive,” Bauman said. “We don’t know how finely detailed the top layer may be.”
“We’ll get it in one full spectrum burst.”
“We don’t have enough sensors.”
“Vonnie can rig more cameras and mecha.”
“The heat will—”
Another voice intruded. “Specialist Lam,” a man said. The other ships were 2.2 light-minutes away, which could reduce conversation to a series of interruptions. “We’d like to see the first column again. Stand by for auto control.”
“Roger that,” Lam answered, holding his hands up to Bauman in an apologetic shrug. Then he switched frequencies, preparing for new signals from the PSSC ship.
His suit adjusted his upper body, aiming the gear block on the side of his helmet with machine precision. His movements were a little spooky. Their suits weren’t supposed to accept remote programs without an okay from whoever was inside, but Vonnie anticipated trouble.
When they left the trench for the tunnel, would their suits lock up? If they tried to send their data on public channels, would the broadcast come out clean or garbled?
Lam switched back to suit radio. “There’s something embedded in the ice!” he said.
“What?”
“The AI must have seen it in our telemetry. I have a new grid showing pellets inside the carvings, one at the tip of every arm. Look. They’re some kind of organic material.”
The miniscule spheres were as translucent as the ice itself.
“Are those eggs? Food?” Bauman said.
“What if—” Vonnie said, trying to get a word in edgewise.
“We can’t pull them, not yet,” Bauman said. “We’ll have to record and map it first. I guess your full spectrum burst is the best way to go, Lam. What do you think?”
“I think you’re right,” he said generously.
“Can we push a wire in? Get a sample?”
Vonnie gestured. “What if we pick through the debris against that wall?” The fourth column was the most deteriorated. Among the cluttered arms were thirteen that had crumbled, leaving piles of ice on the floor.
“You’re a genius,” Bauman said as she clapped Vonnie on the back, a dull clank.
Moments later, they had their sample. Lam and Bauman crouched over it together l
ike cavemen protecting an ember, bumping their shoulders, both of them chattering on the radio.
“The pellet weighs six point two grams,” Lam said, balancing it in his glove.
“It isn’t an egg, and I don’t think it’s a food substance, either,” Bauman said. “From the consistency and methane traces, it looks like digested waste.”
“You mean it’s feces,” Vonnie said.
“More than that,” Bauman said. “The pellet was molded with other biologics like saliva or blood. It’s swamped in hormones. It’s a message.”
“What does it say?”
“It could be a marker or a name. Everyone’s smell is unique.”
Vonnie wrinkled her nose. “You mean they sniffed it?”
“Or tasted it.”
Vonnie thought that was pretty gross, but she understood why Bauman admired the elegance of the medium. In this resource-limited environment, the carvers had found at least two ways to encode information, first shaping the ice, then preserving flavors or scents.
“So they were like dogs,” she said.
“Maybe. We won’t know until we get more samples under analysis. Are the pellets all the same? Are they different? This might have been a library. The hormones could trigger fertility, pubescence, molting, anything.”
“You think they were sentient,” Vonnie said, and Lam answered, “Yes.”
“We don’t know that, either,” Bauman said.
“Dogs don’t build libraries,” Lam said.
“What if this is a bathroom?” Bauman said. “We might be standing where they relieved themselves.”
“Nobody puts their latrine on top of their living quarters. If this is a bathroom, it would be further down. Right? Plus it took a lot of work to store the pellets in the wall.”
“That could be a function of avoiding predators or a way to keep from fouling their air. We don’t know.”