“Why haven’t we seen anything like it before?” Kato asked.
“Europa’s ocean is absolutely massive,” Navya jumped in to answer. “We’ve only barely begun to explore it. We haven’t even been able to get to the deepest parts of the oceans yet. In fact, there is more water here on Europa than on Earth!”
“So there could be complex life deeper than we’ve searched?” Kato asked.
“Yes,” Alice responded this time. “On Earth, there is a lot of energy on the surface that comes from the sun. Here, there’s essentially no energy at the surface. Without some sort of energy source, life can’t exist, much less complex life. On Europa, the only energy that life could use seems to be coming from the ocean floor.”
“Like near those heat vents we found,” Kato said. “We already found basic life near those. Why not complex life?”
“The vents we found were blowing out pre-super-heated water. It’s an excellent place for life to get energy from. But only after life has evolved to a certain extent. We haven’t found vents that have more moderate heat that allows for serpentinization,” Alice said.
“Serpentinization? What’s that?” Kato asked.
“It’s a particular process that operates on rocks,” Navya began.
“It allows certain fluid chemistries thought to be necessary for life by leveraging a specific source of energy. At least, life as we understand it,” Alice had taken over and finished Navya’s sentence.
Kato stared ahead and scrunched up his face. He thought hard about what they were saying but didn’t have the knowledge to truly understand what they meant.
“So there could be these vents deeper in the ocean producing this serpentinization that created life in the first place?” Kato asked.
Alice and Navya looked at each other for a moment, then both answered at the same time, “Yes!”
“And those pieces we found,” Alice began again. “I think I’ve got a rudimentary idea of how they fit together.”
At this point, Alice pulled up an image on the screen that showed the original pieces as they sat when they first viewed them.
“I’ve taken the 3-D model we scanned and started moving the pieces around to see how they might fit. Most of the pieces are small. Upon further inspection, it turns out they are quite sharp. Surprisingly so. I think they might be a kind of weapon, like claws or teeth. The longer pieces look like they might form a very basic skeleton-like structure. I think that they might fit together like this.”
The larger pieces on the screen moved, leaving the smaller pieces alone. The longer pieces moved together to form a longer chain that looked a little like fitting pieces of bones together on the human arm.
Kato thought it looked familiar, but couldn’t place what it looked like. Then, it hit him.
“That looks like a tentacle of a squid,” he said.
“Yes, I thought so too,” Alice began. “Except that squids or octopuses don’t have bones and the only cartilage they have is in their beaks. Whatever this is might have some properties of a squid or octopus but with a skeleton structure.
“The real problem is that I can’t figure out how the smaller pieces fit,” Alice continued.
The smaller pieces on the screen moved and lined up in different ways, but none seemed to truly fit.
“Is there any chance it’s intelligent life?” Kato had asked the big question.
“It’s not impossible,” Navya began, “We haven’t seen any signs of intelligence, but maybe in the deepest parts of the ocean there’s an entire ecosystem. There could be intelligent life there, but it would be primitive. We haven’t detected anything that would indicate advanced intelligence.” Navya paused for a moment and thought, then continued. “We found a piece that looked like a cranium; a place where a brain might go. It was small and would allow a brain about the size of a cat. I think.”
“Yes,” Alice said in the middle of Navya’s sentence again. “Speaking of which there are some strange markings in that piece that sort of look like scratch marks. The smaller pieces may fit in there, but I don’t know how a brain could fit in there with all those sharp pieces. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done. Or that it couldn’t be intelligent. Of all the neurons an Octopus has, about two-thirds of them are not in the brain but in the rest of the body. Intelligence may have evolved in a completely different way here.”
Felix couldn’t help but notice how often Alice would interrupt Navya. He never could understand why anyone would want to interrupt Navya.
“I think it’s clear,” Kato said. “We need to look further into this. I say we get the drone back, shield it up more, and send it back. We’ll tell Sonya once she’s feeling better.”
With that, the meeting concluded.
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Sonya woke. She opened her eyes to see that only darkness greeted her. She had been lying face down on her bed. Turning herself over, she looked at the ceiling. A red projection of the time was displayed, and she was surprised. She had slept through her regular alarm. It looked like she might have slept for about eighteen hours. It was the longest time she had slept since she was a kid sleeping in on Summer mornings. Still a bit groggy, she suddenly remembered the terrible headache, and slowly sat up to the side of the bed. As her body woke up, she felt strangely good. Her headache was completely gone and she felt well-rested. She leapt up out of bed onto her feet, testing to see if the headache was actually gone or if it would come back with a vengeance.
For once, she thought to herself, Drugs were the right choice.
She changed from the outfit she had fallen asleep in and took a shower. Feeling fresh and ready to go, she dressed in her normal ‘jeans and a tee-shirt’ elastic jumpsuit and walked out into the hallway. A strange nagging feeling in the back of her mind troubled her, but before she could figure out what it was that bothered her, her stomach growled. The need for food had overridden the feeling. She made her way to the mess hall.
The duration and unique trip to Europa meant food had to be able to last many years, be easy to handle, easy to store, easy to clean up, and most importantly to the crew, be palatable. The entire collection of food sent ahead of time was either freeze-dried or dehydrated or both. With the limitless supply of water on Europa, it was simple enough to add hot water to a premade meal and let it warm up. Alice looked at all the options available to her. There was Korean, Chinese, Russian, American, Japanese, and even Indian food. She grabbed the meal she liked best: mashed potatoes with ionized meat. It didn’t taste like its counterpart on Earth, but considering all the options, this was the one she liked best. Sonya got hot water and filled up the small package of mashed potatoes, letting it cook while the meat was heated up in a microwave. She cracked each knuckle on her left hand starting with her index finger. It didn’t take long before everything was done. She ate ravenously.
As she was finishing her meal, the nagging in the back of her mind crept back into her consciousness. She couldn’t quite explain why, but she felt compelled to do something. Perhaps she was a bit anxious considering the recent events.
As she was enjoying the last of her meal, Kato and Alice walked in.
“Hey, Sonya!” Alice said cheerfully as she sat next to Sonya. “We wanted to fill you in on our last meeting.”
“Oh, meeting?” Sonya said, taking another bite of her food. “Wait, you had a meeting when I wasn’t there?”
“Yes ma’am,” Kato said. “Navya said you had a headache and were sleeping.”
Sonya finished her bite and said, “You could have waited. Hey, what about my report?”
“I read your report,” Alice said. “It was very thorough. Good work, as always.”
Sonya sat there looking at her food. Alice had taken the report that she had worked so hard on and just read it to everyone.
Kato spoke this time, “We decided that we are going to bring back Little Missy and add more shielding to help protect it against all the radiation. We told Felix to order another constructi
on bot to use its shielding too.”
Sonya was still thinking about what Alice had done and hadn’t heard what Kato said.
“Sonya, are you alright?” Alice asked.
“Uh-huh,” was all Sonya said.
“That’s about it,” Alice said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kato began to make his way out of the room, “I’m going to go and get ready for our trip.”
Alice also stood up from the table and said, “I’ll go too.”
They left Sonya sitting in the room alone. The nagging feeling she had before she ate her food came back. The more Sonya thought about Alice reading her report at the meeting, the angrier she got. For once, just for once, Sonya thought that maybe the work on this sample would be it: The Big One. Now, Alice had taken that away from her.
Sonya stood up and threw the last of her meal away. It was bad practice to discard food before finishing it with such limited resources on Europa, but Sonya did not care one bit about it this time. Why was everyone so adamant about stealing everything from her?
She quickly hopped away around the corner of a hall when she almost bumped into Navya. Considering the rather cramped living quarters, it was a common enough occurrence.
“Oh! Hey Sonya, how are you feeling? Headache gone now?” Navya asked her.
“Yeah, fantastic,” Sonya replied sarcastically.
“Good,” Navya said. She had always known that Sonya didn’t like talking about medical problems, so she tried to change topics. “We talked with everyone and decided to get some more shielding on Little Missy. Alice read your report. It was excellent.”
Sonya was already annoyed, but now she was getting angry.
Of course, Sonya thought to herself. She’s just rubbing it in, isn’t she?
Even though Navya’s drugs had helped, she still felt like she couldn’t trust her. Alice was taking away the work Sonya had done on the most important sample Humanity had ever taken and Navya was rubbing it in her face.
Navya could tell that Sonya was not in the mood to keep talking.
“Just wanted to let you know,” Navya said. “I’ve got some work to do. See you around.” Sonya cracked her knuckles again. The cracks were loud enough that Navya looked back over her shoulder before rounding the hallway and was out of view.
Sonya decided to keep walking and hope that she could calm down. She hadn’t been this angry in a long time. She had been annoyed before, but this time was different.
Storming away from the hallway, Sonya had decided to confront Alice. That’s when she ran into Felix. Normally she was happy to see Felix, but this time she was not.
“Felix,” Sonya was about to say something nasty but decided against it. Alice and Navya were the ones who were going to feel her scorn, not Felix. “You were at the meeting, right?”
“Yeah,” Felix said.
“You heard Alice read my report?”
“Yeah,” Felix said again.
“How did she seem when she was reading it? Happy?”
“Yeah,” Felix felt like he wasn’t having a two-way conversation at all.
“Of course she was,” Sonya said. “She and Navya think they can do that, huh?”
Felix was normally a man of few words. However, he thought about what he could say to help calm Sonya down.
“Yeah,” Felix said once again. “Alice and Kato are going to be leaving soon.”
“Leave where?” Sonya asked.
“Outpost One,” Felix responded.
Sonya looked like she was going to hit something and Felix wasn’t sure what to say this time, so he simply stood there. Then Sonya calmed down for a moment.
“Thank you, Felix. As always, good talk,” and Sonya hopped away.
She couldn’t get Alice and Navya out of her thoughts. It was difficult to focus on anything else. All she wanted to do was work and get the credit she deserved and they just constantly interfered. She always had a knack for being right about things. Her physics thesis back at University had almost been stolen from her by her Advisor. At the last moment, she had managed to get it back and it panned out beautifully, just as she thought it would. Not to mention all the other major discoveries she had been right about.
The nagging feeling telling her to do something came back. She felt a persistence that she hadn’t felt before. Perhaps a good workout will do the trick, she thought to herself.
She felt good after her workout. Other than the nagging feeling, she felt physically better than ever. Her workout reflected this. She lifted more weight and ran farther faster than ever before.
The thought of the two crewmates did not go away. Her thoughts expanded to the other crew members. Everyone seemed so… insufferable... Alice. Navya. Kato. Felix. she repeated to herself. Even Felix was caught in her dark thoughts. It didn’t stop there, though. As she entered the shower and the warm water began to hit her, her mind began to think of the other three crew members who were at Ganymede. They had at least three weeks of research to do out there before they would be heading back. It wasn’t just Alice and Navya. Bailey had taken credit on the earthquake report, too.
Bailey, Li, Dimitri, She thought to herself over and over again.
Further, still, her mind wandered. To all the people she knew on the moon base. To everyone, she had met on Earth.
Earth, she now thought to herself. A place where billions of people lived. It was a number that was hard to fathom, but it seemed so annoying to her that there were so many people there. So many people who could steal her credit. A strange feeling overcame her. She thought about how nice it would be to, for once, get what she deserved. Surely being on Europa studying alien life would do the trick, but it didn’t. The nagging feeling was back again, stronger than ever. She thought she knew what to do to show everyone that she, alone, deserved the credit. Everyone would see it. Everyone.
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For once Felix felt like maybe he had had a good conversation with Sonya and helped her feel better. She seemed to calm down after his discussion with her, and he was feeling good about it.
Felix was considering exactly what he’d have to do with Little Missy to beef up the shielding. He would have to program another construction bot to come back to base. Since his last efforts on Little Missy were fresh in his mind, he could get all of the tools and equipment ready to go while the bot traveled to the Habitat. Once he had the materials, he could properly shield up Little Missy in about an hour by himself. With Kato, it would go faster. He already knew a few new places he had wanted to shield before and had some ideas for improving another spot.
He went to work and began to get everything ready. As he moved toward the hangar, he stopped by the workstation and got all the tools he would need. Then, he set up and prepared a work area in the hangar next to the Nomad.
After setting everything up, he decided to do a quick check on the Nomad. Everything had checked out last time, but anytime the crew took it outside, it was a good idea to double and triple-check everything. The Nomad was exactly as it had been: in perfect working condition. He marveled at how good it looked. It had come back not too long ago a complete mess. He always felt good about taking something chaotic and making it perfectly ordered again. Now it was time to check the other parts of the Habitat.
With the construction bot ordered to come to the Habitat and some time to spare, Felix resumed his other duties. Then he came up with an idea. He might be using the shielding from the bots, but that didn’t mean the bots were useless. He got to work on the computer. He had detailed diagrams of anything he wanted to look at, so he pulled up the details for Little Missy and the construction bots. In only a few hours he had outlined the code for a new program for the construction bots. With a single click of a button, the construction bots would do all the shielding work: the first bot would take the shielding off the second, and then the two would work together and place the shielding on Little Missy, according to his code.
He included a note in the code explaining the purpose and
implementation of the new program and that all one had to do was run the code and the bots would do the rest. The bots would get this job done in less than half the time he would require and free him up for other tasks.
As Felix worked on his programming, Alice and Kato suited up in their EMUs and made their way to the Nomad in the hangar.
“So, back once again,” Alice said.
“Yes ma’am, it looks that way. If we do see any earthquakes, we’ll be fully prepared this time,” Kato replied. If Felix was going to add even more shielding to Little Missy then they would need to retrieve the drone from the outpost. They could also examine a few instruments from Little Missy like the RIID that would tell them the exact amount of radiation that was present in the cave.
The two got in the Nomad, waited for the hangar to depressurize, the elevator to bring them to the surface, and the doors to open. The six engines hummed as they began their journey across the icy plain toward Outpost One. The trip was becoming very routine for them. They were able to make it to Outpost One in record time: nineteen hours.
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Sonya hadn’t answered any of Navya’s calls. It wasn’t that Sonya was ignoring calls. Instead, the incoming calls weren’t going through at all. This was strange. As long as Navya had been on the Europa Mission that had never happened.
Navya used the crew-finder to pinpoint Sonya’s current location. The request to the computer to find Sonya’s location had failed, twice, when she happened to find Sonya in the communications room.
Sonya’s back was to Navya and she was hunched over a control panel. Sonya’s upper body and arms were halfway through the panel. It wasn’t typical to find her working in tight places on something like this. Every once in a while Navya could see her head bobbing around in her workplace. The communications room held all the important hardware for the communication dish that was vital for staying in contact with the Seeker and Earth. Its normally-cramped space was even more cramped as toolboxes and tools were scattered around the place. Navya looked down at her feet as she maneuvered around the room closer to Sonya trying to make sure that she didn’t step on something or trip.
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