Chapter Two

 

Cramer reported to a sister company of Olympus Mons Mining called Jovian Satellites Incorporated, located on Ganymede. He looked forward to meeting two other crew members for the new venture. On the approach to Ganymede, Cramer admired the wondrous sight of Jupiter with its complex cloud patterns and the ever-present red eye, angry in its baleful watch of everyone who came its way. He wondered if spacecraft would ever be perfected to plunge into that swirling mass and discover its secret.

He turned his attention to the nearness of Ganymede with its mosaic of geologic activity. The white splashes emanating from fresh craters showed the abundance of water ice. A multi-passenger space taxi took him and others down to the surface near one of the ice flows. The other passengers scattered, leaving Cramer headed for the office by himself. He looked forward to the meeting and to learning the identity of his co-workers. He expected different people this time since mining operations weren’t involved.

The huge crater in the background rose at a shallow angle toward the sky where Jupiter dominated. A one story building nearby perched against the crater, out of place in the desolate landscape. The other passengers beat Cramer to the atmosphere tunnel. The gravity here on Ganymede equaled Earth’s moon, making a gravity generator unnecessary. Jupiter shine, enhanced by special skylight windows, provided its natural light. It gave everything a skin-toned cast.

Cramer moved his own direction, the hallways marked by signs that led him to a conference room. A sign on the door announced a two hour wait until his meeting. He checked into his room where he would be staying for approximately thirty hours before transport to wherever the assignment would lead him.

He appreciated the coziness of his room on an iceberg like Ganymede. It always seemed natural to him that he desired a warm room when surrounded by ice fields on the outside. He settled to read about the major satellites of Jupiter while waiting for the conference to begin. He brought just a few things such as his flight coveralls and other articles of clothing, knowing everything else awaited him.

He arrived early for the meeting and wound up last to enter the room. His wishes came true as he saw the other two with whom he would be working. “Mona! Floyd!”

“Plenty of time for socializing later,” said Sanchez, the moderator. “You’re all here because of your reputation in bringing back what you’re sent for.”

Mona made a slight head nod to Cramer, and Floyd displayed his typical sunken mouth smile. Regardless of the assignment, Cramer was upbeat about it.

“Brad Witherspoon, the solar system’s resident trillionaire, is willing to pay you handsomely if you bring him what he wants,” Sanchez said, then paused as he usually did for dramatic purposes.

Anxious to hear of the assignment, Cramer did not give Sanchez the satisfaction of his unchained curiosity. Cramer viewed him as a bit arrogant.

When nobody asked the obvious, Sanchez finally continued, “Witherspoon has an extensive collection of fish, but he wants one or more blind fish that are supposedly living in the Europan Ocean that’s just under the crust.”

“I’ve done a little reading, and there isn’t real proof they exist,” Mona said.

“He believes they exist, and he wants them in the worst way.” Sanchez then handed each of them the meager data gathered on these mysterious fish. The information consisted of hard copies, only two pages total. He also told them to read up on Europa.

“You’ll leave for Europa tomorrow. Once there, you will be taken from the landing field to the camp and all the equipment. You’d better get your academic brains in gear.”

With that, Sanchez left the room. This weird request dumbfounded Cramer. He didn’t remember reading anything in Mona’s background about being knowledgeable with sea taxis, and Floyd lacked the experience too. Worse yet, Cramer came up short as well.

“I hope one or both of you have experience in this sort of thing,” he said.

“We’ve known each other a long time, Joe, and you know I’ve done nothing like this,” Floyd said.

“I’ve done some reading, but that’s it,” she said.

“Well, despite being in the dark on a task like this, I’m glad to be trying it with the two of you.” Cramer waved his hands palms up toward Mona and Floyd.

“I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll turn in,” Floyd said.

“I need to do some heavy reading other than what little Sanchez gave us, so if you’ll excuse me.” She rose and followed Floyd out.

Disappointed neither of them wanted to chat for a while, Cramer hoped the trip to Europa would be different.

~ * ~

Europa, orbiting on the other side of Jupiter, would take two days to reach by the space commuter. Cramer rested in the plush seat and looked out the port at Jupiter. Its swirling mass of gases seemed to churn, or so he thought. The Great Red Spot faced away at this vantage point. He pulled a small computer monitor out on its extendable arm and tilted it upward a bit, then punched the small keypad to bring up information on Europa. The night before, he’d read what little Sanchez gave them about the alleged blind fish. Mona sat across from him and Floyd settled in next to him. Mona looked at several pages of hard copy she’d downloaded, and Floyd poured over the particulars of piloting a sea taxi on his computer screen.

“Did your ankle heal okay?” Cramer asked Mona.

“Yes.” She spoke without looking up from her papers.

He surmised it would be a long two days to Europa with his fellow crew members studying the details of the assignment. He took that cue to do the same, at least for now.

He soon became entranced with the odd surface appearance of Europa as seen from space. In the days of the old Voyager flybys, the markings on an otherwise bland surface of Europa baffled astronomers. The light and dark lines, visible only at very low sun angle, crossed the satellite’s surface in long sweeping curves sometimes regular in their placement. Impact craters in the ice came and went like the summer rain in an otherwise drought-ridden season in Midwestern United States. The icy surface constantly changed, a nightmare for him, Mona, and Floyd with regard to keeping bearings. The old astronomers correctly judged the thick and somewhat powdery ice surface as concealing a water ocean.

Cramer considered their mission to plunge into the ocean in search of blind fish for Witherspoon. Density gradients existed in the ocean beneath the icy crust. The saltwater currents coursed in bands just like Europa’s mother, Jupiter and her gaseous strips. Mixing did not occur between the high density strip and its lower density neighbor because the salt source kept feeding brine to the higher density channel. The low-density channels ran deep, and the high-density ones flowed just beneath the icy shell, a condition just the opposite of what one would expect. The salt source came from the bottom side of the icy crust. Those flows of high-density brine froze at a different temperature than the dilute saltwater channel. The tell-tale dark and light streaks on the surface of Europa resulted from ridges formed by the denser salt water forcing its way to the top and freezing.

He strained his thinking cap to take in the significance of this marvel. It would allow them to find the blind fish. The creatures preferred certain density salt water and could not tolerate change of that physical property. The fish swam in those high-density channels. Cramer and crew could drop their sea taxis into one of those surface features thus placing them in the heavy salt brine channel where the blind fish preferred. In theory, at least, it should be feasible.

He noticed Mona and Floyd were in their seat’s reclined position, apparently sound asleep. He took the cue to do the same. Before drifting off, he looked out the port. Jupiter showed its limb and the crescent of Europa infringed in the darkness of space near Jupiter’s edge. He closed his eyes. Sleep came, a sleep disturbed by a dream of Cindy—a healed Cindy—but Cramer couldn’t reach her. A black gulf separated them. It became a nightmare as her healthy body receded into a speck.

“No,” he yelled, then felt someone shaking him.

“Joe, wake up,” Mona said.

Cramer looked at her. Genuine concern creased her forehead with wrinkles. “Sorry,” he said.

“That must have been a terrible dream. What was it about?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“You know I’m still concerned if there’s something in your background that may affect your job performance.”

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll pull my weight on this task.”

“I still think there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I didn’t falter in Cassini’s division, did I?”

“No, but…”

“But what? What can I do to convince you I’m fit for this job? What am I saying? I was asking you the same question on Iapetus.”

Mona drew a deep breath and sighed. “Apparently, Witherspoon, Sanchez, and your friend, Floyd, have confidence in you. I’ll have to go on that. There’s another reason I’m concerned in relation to your performance, but you’ll have to wait until we land on Europa.”

“I don’t like cliffhangers, especially about this job. I believe we’re all in the same boat. I don’t know that any of us has expertise here,” Cramer said.

“Oh, you think you know all about me because you’ve read my info cube. Here’s a newsflash for you. Not everything is on there.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I’ve had experience with ice skimmers on Mars Polar Cap, but the ice on Europa is far different from what I’ve read.” Cramer hoped to get out of this conflict mode with Mona. He noticed her face relaxed.

He glanced out the viewport when Mona didn’t make a return comment. The crescent of Europa had grown while he slept, but it still appeared rather bland. Floyd stirred awake.

“Floyd, you never told me how you escaped your brush with the sun,” Cramer said.

Floyd cackled, his nose and chin framing a smile. Cramer tried to quench the image of Floyd’s age.

“Gravity assist from Le Verrier’s planet,” Floyd answered.

“Wait a minute. The existence of that planet was disproved by Einstein’s relativity theory,” Cramer said.

“Well, it’s there, much closer to the sun than the thirteen million miles,” Le Verrier said. “No one has really cared about it after it was explained away by Einstein’s relativity. Mercury is not the innermost planet, Joe.”

“Was it a thousand miles in diameter like Le Verrier predicted?”

“I was a bit busy at the time. I can only tell you its surface is cratered and baked. It might have been my imagination, but I thought it appeared to be glowing a dull red.”

“I’m just glad you made it okay. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you on that occasion. It was all I could do to keep from crashing on Icarus.”

“I was worried about you too, Joe.”

Cramer busied himself reading about the sea taxis, information Floyd shared with him. He wondered about Mona’s reading material but refrained from asking her. He would find out soon enough.

~ * ~

The space commuter locked into a spiral course toward a landing on Europa. Cramer looked out his port at the satellite, now swollen to take in almost all the view. Indeed, it did look smooth, like a cue ball with thin magic marker streaks running over its surface. He still couldn’t see craters, but within the next hour he could make out an impact mark at Europa’s equator. He watched it pass out of sight, the streaks now whipping by more rapidly. The dark side appeared as the ship dropped lower. The daylight side appeared again, and he could see the icy landscape. He felt the braking and hovering rockets kick in, creating a slight shake.

Near the crater’s base, the ship gently planted itself on what appeared a more substantial field than they could expect on the rest of Europa. Cramer, Mona, and Floyd grabbed their flight bags and prepared to leave. The atmosphere tunnel met the commuter, and Cramer followed Mona and Floyd through it to the small building nestled in the powdery ice surroundings.

The chilly atmosphere tunnel made Cramer shiver; the blast of warm air from the building didn’t help. He pulled his flight jacket closed. Within the more comfortable confines of the building, Sanchez met them and led them immediately to a conference room. Cramer took a seat at the end of the long side of the conference table and dropped his flight bag beside him. Floyd plopped into the seat next to him, and Mona sat across from them. Sanchez settled at the position at the head of the table.

“Let’s get one little detail taken care of right now. Ms. Watson shall be in charge of this mission,” Sanchez said.

He’d treated the cliff hanger as a “little” detail. Cramer tried to contain his shock. He and Floyd glanced at each other at the same time. Clearly, he also felt experience should count for something. Sanchez picked up on that.

“This was Mr. Witherspoon’s requirement, and Ms. Watson has knowledge of marine life.”

“There’s more involved to this than taking care of fish,” Cramer said, looking first at Sanchez, then at Mona.

“You all were chosen for your abilities, and every team needs a leader. Now to the details of your work,” Sanchez said with off-handed attitude.

He flashed various visual aids illustrating the surface of Europa in the area where they would drop to the ocean below. Scant footage showed only a prediction of the vertical drop to the ocean. Cramer tried to concentrate on the information and not let the surprise from discovering the youngest member of the team was in charge prey on his mind.

~ * ~

Cramer, Mona, and Floyd each examined their individual submergible which doubled as an ice rover. Cramer looked at the one assigned to him. The huge tires dwarfed the body of the craft. He felt the tire. Smooth and spongy, he marveled at the spandasteel fabric. Miraculous technology produced a material that integrated spandex and steel together into a tough but pliable substance. The tires contained argon gas, suiting them well for the rough and cold ice fields of Europa.

He continued to walk around the sea craft. He noted Mona and Floyd did the same, some distance away from him in the spacious hanger that adjoined the main building. The tiny ladder leading up to the craft’s cabin barely accommodated his number twelve foot plus a little more for his space suit boots.

He mounted the steps, opened the metal door with its thick rubber seals around it, climbed inside, then sat in the controller’s chair. Powering up the panel caused the controls to shine like a multitude of holiday bulbs. Impressed by the myriad gauges and readouts, Cramer checked them one at a time. The instruments told the pilot everything he needed to know about the condition of the craft. Of particular interest was the sensors that became active when the sea craft was submerged. He could monitor the ocean current flow rate, brine composition, and at the heart of the sea craft detectors was a sensitive camera system that would allow imaging any creature, its shape, size, and movement, distinguishing it from a nearly identical environment. If the blind fish were there, these detectors would see them. As he gazed at the monitor screen in front and slightly above his eye level, Mona startled him from behind.

“I suggest you get some rest. We’re leaving in ten hours.” She started to leave.

“What’s our plan of attack?”

“I’ll go over that with you and Floyd on the way to the ocean drop point.” She turned to leave again.

“Would you like to go with me for a snack before turning in?”

“No.”

Her formality bugged Cramer so much he dreaded this mission. Mona, talkative and outgoing during the Saturn mining mission, now seemed distant, cold, and not at all cordial toward him. Perhaps she felt the need to be removed from her crew of two while in charge. He hated that possibility. Maybe the responsibility of this task weighed heavily on her mind. He dismissed the fruitless effort of trying to figure her out.

~ * ~

Cramer followed Mona and Floyd across the powdery, icy snow fields. Jupiter peeked above the distant horizon, looking like a severed dish with streaks of tomato sauce, mustard, and swirls of blue Jell-O. The pizza moon, Io, a distant red disk, peered above Jupiter’s limb. A ridge of ice towered off to Cramer’s left. He judged the ridge no more than fifty meters from top to bottom.

He headed toward a similar rise farther away, spotting something else, or at least, he imagined he did. It appeared to be a glint of metal, somewhat out of place in the washed-out white landscape. He trained a metal detector in that direction, but nothing showed in the readout.

“Did either of you see a reflection off to the right just now?”

“I didn’t see anything, Joe,” Floyd answered.

“There are no structures out here. You probably saw a reflection off a smooth flat piece of ice,” Mona said.

“No, I’m sure it was metal. I couldn’t pinpoint it with my detectors,” Cramer said.

“We’re coming up on the first relief,” Mona said. “I’ll go through at this end. Floyd, you go about halfway down the trench and drop to the first opening you find. Joe, go to near the end and do the same.”

“Okay. As soon as I get into the ocean channel, I’ll let you know,” Cramer said.

A few minutes later Mona’s craft drifted through an opening in the channel. He checked a sensor as he passed to the side of her entrance. It conveyed the ocean nearly ten kilometers below. His instruments showed her craft floating and lightly touching the walls of the opening as it fell toward the ocean.

Thirty minutes later, Floyd’s craft did the same, and Cramer proceeded. An hour later, he spotted an irregular opening just before the end of the channel, and he steered toward it. Then he saw it again. This time his detector gave an image of another rover somewhat different in design. It hugged the edge of the ridge above him. He recorded its image, then slipped into darkness.

Cramer activated the special detector mode and observed the irregular sides in hues of blue as he went through the jagged wall opening. The craft bobbed against an occasional ice crag that jutted into his passageway as he traveled toward the brine ocean. The descent seemed long but only lasted fifteen minutes.

The contact with the ocean jostled him from one side to the other, like being on a carnival ride. He pumped some of the gas from the large tires into a metal holding tank, the process making an audible hiss in his external suit mike. Soon he and the rover submerged into the brine sea and joined the current. He checked his sensors and located Mona and Floyd’s crafts then adjusted his propulsion system and headed their way. As he closed on their position, he sent the image he recorded of another rover.

“Is Sanchez checking up on us?” Cramer asked.

“No. That doesn’t look like one of Witherspoon’s company rovers,” Mona said.

“Pirates,” Floyd said.

“What?” Cramer and Mona resounded simultaneously.

“I’ve run across them before on jobs that pay well. They try to move in after you have stowed your find. They’ve tried to kill me a few times,” Floyd said.

Cramer detected motion behind him at his entrance point. “We’re being followed.”

“We’ll have to play this by ear,” Mona said. “We’ll begin our search. I’ll go from my entry point, Joe, you move the direction we came from the complex; Floyd take the opposite direction.”

Cramer angled his craft, sheering forces of the natural current nudging him as the engines strained against the swift stream. He checked Floyd and Mona’s progress. The dot representing Floyd’s craft took on an erratic movement, but Mona was smooth and moved rapidly up current away from him. Cramer checked the pirate’s craft. The one lone craft kept pace with him, ever at the fringe of his detector’s range, appearing like a specter, menacing, advancing slowly.

An hour went by. He changed his detector range to keep Floyd and Mona on screen. Then Cramer spotted something on his fish detector channel. At first he worried organic debris carried by the swift brine current fooled his detector, but the motions appeared too orderly. Several spots moved in unison just below him, close to the next lesser dense brine level. Blind fish.

He angled downward, closing in on the school of fish. Apparently sensing his approach, they darted away. He pursued them, gaining, but then a larger blob appeared. Without fear, this living creature bore down on him. With purpose it came, giving him the impression it guarded the much smaller blind fish.

That made him sick to his stomach when he thought of the task for which Witherspoon hired them. Cramer wasn’t a creature activist, but he didn’t relish the idea of picking these fish from their natural brine ocean and imprisoning them in Witherspoon’s species vaults either. That assessment plagued him even more as he recognized the huge fish in its protective role of the smaller fish.

Cramer angled down and came too close to the density barrier. The small fish and their guardian shied away from that area and swam upward, disappearing from his screen.

He remained firm to this task like other jobs, but he hated it. The fish appeared at the edge of his scope, popping in and out of detector range like a shadow on a partly cloudy day. They rode the swift current, and he did the same, committing his submergible to the natural wash of the brine channel. He gained on them, kicked in his assist motors, and readied his capture tank. The guardian fish swimming ahead of his school turned to confront him and his vessel.

Cramer veered downward, barely avoiding the large creature. As it passed above him, he angled upward again and swept some of the blind fish into his holding tank. At the moment of the capture, he veered until he was at a right angle to the brine current, popped in the thruster engines, then sped away leaving the slower guardian fish behind. At that moment the pirate craft closed on him fast.

He dove and hailed Mona and Floyd with his position and briefly his catch. He thought he heard one of them reply, but the signal faded into the background hiss. The density barrier came up to meet him; he confirmed the seal of the holding tank, then burst through that barrier into a lower density medium.

Cramer plunged downward out of control, surprised at his speed of descent in the lighter water. He noted his instruments by a swift glance. The density of the water dropped to one fourth its previous value. He heard the craft’s structure groan from the increase in external pressure the deeper he plunged. A warning light indicated the approach of crush depth. He angled upward, bringing in the booster engines, and spotted the infrared signature of the pirate’s craft on an intercept course. Another craft appeared on his screen, bearing down fast.

“Joe, set your tank loose,” Floyd said.

Cramer always trusted whatever Floyd planned and released the holding clamps on the tank. The jolt and increase in speed, shook Cramer as his craft became free of its burden. Floyd sped straight toward the pirate’s ship, as if to ram them head-on. Such a collision would kill him and those aboard the pirate’s craft. The intruders avoided Floyd and shot a small projectile at Cramer, puncturing a tire and sending his craft into an uncontrollable downward spin. Floyd chased the pirates away and grappled Cramer’s tank, but he lost visual on his detector as he continued deeper.

Two warning lights glowed on his dash, indicating crush depth seconds away. He reacted by pumping the gas from his three remaining tires, and the craft stopped its spinning. He lost some stability to the maneuvering and found it difficult to steer with the limp tires flapping in the swift current of the low-density layer.

Slowly, the craft rose, but when he reached the density barrier, no amount of steering or thrust of the engines could break through into the higher density brine. He kept his craft at the density interface, moving along it, hoping to think of something. That barrier of low- and high-density channels presented the proverbial brick wall. He felt like an ant trying to crash through it.

His course computer took him toward his entrance point. Long range sensors didn’t show Mona, Floyd, or the pirates. All alone and disabled, his childhood nightmare repeated itself. The horror in sleep land presented him with a falling sensation through a realm devoid of form. Nothing substantial ever showed in his nightmares, only the feeling of ever drifting.

Then he spotted something different on his sensors. Although faint, this strange structure protruded downward into this vast ocean. Out of place, it defied the different brine compositions. The scientists argued for and against this phenomenon for years. The icy column, a thin crust covering a hollow opening probably extended all the way to the surface, showed on his sensor as a nebulous, blob with a temperature difference between its exterior and vacant interior.

Cramer brought his craft to bear against it with a gentle bump. These structures, giant stalactites of ice, must be rare since the pressures of the ocean depths would crush them, allowing the jetting of the brine sea to shoot up their interior maybe as far as the surface. Therein lay a hope for him. He detected the thickness of the formation, hoping to break through it, get his craft inside and rise up to the surface.

Uncertainty plagued Cramer as his sensors hid those details from him. Would the whole mass collapse at once when he breached the wall? Would the sea water freeze instantly when contacting the colder atmosphere of Europa inside? Would there be enough pressure to thrust him all the way to the surface? Could he and his craft stand the acceleration through that opening toward the surface? His head ached of those questions as he readied himself to find out.

He considered a way to crush that layer. Releasing the ballast tank that held the argon from his three remaining tires would do it. Coupling that with maximum thrust from his main engines would keep his craft from being propelled away by the explosive release of the gas. He adjusted the control jets to release outward through the punctured tire. Nestling the ruptured tire up against the icy crag, he tightened his seat restraint and allowed his suited finger to hover over the vent switch a few seconds. Squinting his eyes shut, he then punched down on the switch, simultaneously hitting the thrusters.

The hard vacuum inside the submergible shielded any noise, but he felt the results. He jostled back and forth, the seat straps gouging his shoulders even through the thick space suit. His sensors gyrated, numbers increasing, decreasing, going over range, under range. He didn’t need the sensors to tell him he’d broken through. His body crushed into the seat, bottoming out on its springs as he rode the rising geyser upward. He felt like the ancient astronauts as he watched the old vidicubes of their bodies shaking violently from the rocket thrusters propelling them skyward.

A beautiful sight greeted him out the front windshield. Jupiter in all its multi-colored, banded glory bulged on the snowy horizon. As the craft fell back toward the exit hole, he saw by the downward camera, the sea water mush beginning to freeze from the frigid Europa temperature. He landed in the slush, which turned solid and held him fast.

The craft sat partially topside but not buried enough to completely jam the doors. He hoped to be found without having to leave the comfortable confines of his rover. He flipped on the emergency beacon, and anticipated Floyd or Mona arriving soon. Then he noticed something that caused his stomach to roil. The output power of the beacon put out a puny five milliwatts which wouldn’t reach more than a hundred meters. Power waned everywhere in the craft. The dash lights dimmed noticeably. Before the power completely failed, he checked the direction of the complex and prepared to strike out on foot, a terrible choice, but decidedly better than if he were to remain with the craft and never be found.

He fastened a spare oxygen pack around his waist, opened the door, which scraped on the ice, stepped out, and started walking toward the complex. He resisted taking advantage of the low gravity by bounding his steps, for fear of using more energy and oxygen in keeping his balance.

Looking to the sky, he was thankful Jupiter and the sun both provided him with light. Inwardly, he chastised himself for not boning up on the motion of Europa with respect to Jupiter and the sun. He spotted a dark disk shadow on the face of Jupiter, probably Io. He longed for walking across a snowy field during the winter in the Midwest on Earth, listening to his feet crunch the oftentimes frozen surface of the snow.

Here, on Europa, he could only hear his own breathing and the barely audible whirl of his suit’s circulation system as he trudged across an eternal wintery scene. The almost imperceptible hiss of his radio receiver added to his senses, a sound he wished would be interrupted. He tried calling several times but without a power boost from the rover, the suit radio only put out milliwatts.

His suit radio, set on receive only, picked up the homing beacon from the complex. Cramer wished the radio’s attenuator readout showed nine. He’d be on the doorstep of the building complex, but all he saw was a one on his helmet face plate. He uttered a groan. At least the homing signal, a constant hum, came through clear.

The snowy surface all looked much the same as he continued his trek. He longed to see the crater peek over the horizon, signaling the closeness of the complex. The attenuator number now showed two, and he didn’t try to figure his walking speed and compare it with the rover’s speed. Even thinking about it depressed him. His primary oxygen pack pressure neared the warning value. He intended to use it right up to the last moment before switching to the spare pack.

He thought of Cindy. Would he ever be able to locate someone who could cure her? Oh, how he longed for the day when her gaze would rest upon him and she would speak to him, calling him Daddy. That meant everything to him. With gladness he would switch places with her. He envisioned her as an astro engineer, one devoted to making space travel safe through advanced innovations in ship designs. Memories of her gave him more encouragement, something he needed to continue on across this washed-out white existence.

The attenuator changed to a three when he saw a rill up ahead. He must climb down and then up the opposite side to stay in a straight line. Without hesitation, he went over the side of the slope. He lost his footing and tumbled to the bottom in a slow somersault that spooked him more than it hurt him. Shadows enclosed him at the bottom. As soon as he stopped tumbling, he lost his orientation and could barely hear the homing signal.

He stood and looked up at the brightly lit upper parts of the trench. Jupiter, at his back, displayed its strange hue on one side. He needed to scale that side. The homing signal, although weak, seemed to be coming from two directions. As he turned away from the wall illuminated by Jupiter, the signal warbled. Turning the other way, the signal, although weaker, rang clear and pure. That confirmed the slope of his choice as the right one.

The wall, hard and slick from the freezing and thawing between light and shadow, provided hand and foot holds. Once he slipped and barely managed to swing by his hands and gain another notch for his foot. He emerged from the shadows and into Jupiter light. Beads of sweat streaked through his eyebrows and into his eyes, the salty liquid stinging them. His suit’s circulation system struggled to keep the condensation off his faceplate.

At the top, he dropped to his knees, more exhausted than he believed possible. He changed out his primary oxygen pack with his spare. Since it was smaller in size, it would press him to make it to the complex in time on the extra pack. The attenuator numbers responded in a nonlinear fashion, changing more rapidly as he approached the complex. He now saw a four on the display.

The big tire of the rover startled him as it ground to a halt beside him. Cramer felt a moment of relief until he turned to face a blaster leveled at his mid-section. The helmeted figure of the pirate motioned angrily for him to get into their rover. Cramer didn’t have to be told twice. The blaster could kill with its high energy beam and it would be a tossup as to which would take his life first—the decompression of his suit or the blaster beam frying his guts. It was obvious these men didn’t intend to rescue him by picking him up. They rode in silence until he noticed the attenuator reading on his receiver blink to a seven. The crater and building complex appeared ahead.

“This is Dirk. We have a member of your crew. We’ll deliver him safely if you give us the storage tank with the blind fish,” Dirk said into his suit mike.

“No deal,” the answer came over Cramer’s receiver as well. He recognized Sanchez’s voice.

“Then we’ll kill him,” Dirk replied, no hesitation, no uncertainty, no bluffing in his voice.

Deep despair filled Cramer as he pictured the proverbial plug nickel of higher worth than his life. He confirmed that feeling as he spotted on top of the main building a large canon swiveled in their direction, its spherical energy storage chamber behind the ribbed barrel glowing bright red.

Simultaneously, the rover driver jumped out his door, and Dirk reached across in front of Cramer for the passenger side handle, but he beat him to it. He opened the door and leaped for the snowy surface just as the canon emitted a scarlet beam in their direction. The blast exploded the pirate’s rover into a thousand pieces, the debris striking Cramer and sending him tumbling in space away from the blast. During his somersaulting, he spotted Dirk flying above him, frozen entrails trailing his lifeless body. Cramer couldn’t see the other man among the tiny pieces of metal and plastic from the exploded rover.

His own suit lost pressure. The self-sealing mechanism kicked in and just managed to handle the small leak. He lost consciousness as his oxygen pack provided him its last gasp of air. At the point of blackout, he saw Europa’s icy surface coming up to meet him. His whole life seemed to flash before him like the time on Earth when he fell into the old fishing hole and almost drown forty years ago. The last image burnt into his mind before oblivion struck was Cindy’s face in the Martian hospital.