Space Voyage #1

[Pyrotex]

It was a good meeting, but my tolerance for community yap-yaps is inordinately low. I always figure that the meat and core of what is going to be said, is always said in the first 45 minutes. I gave it an hour and a half. Phew! However, I must admit that Mercedes' performance was worth the applause it garnered.

 

I was headed for ten-forward, but took a wrong turn. Instead of going back, I just kept going. I eventually wandered by the "radio shack", where all the comm comes in and goes out, and heard somebody hollering. I slipped in.

 

"But, dude! It's like, no way! Go check your freakin numbers again and fix the problem! Like, outa my face, dude!"

 

I vectored toward the arguing pair and volunteered my services. In short order, the scheduled floorchief told me to go off and train the 'dude' how to fix his silly UFO problem. UFO?

 

I took the 'dude' by the arm and casually pulled him away from the biggest source of noise in the room. He pointed out his station. Pretty vanilla. Two 28" flat panels, one for databases, searches and such, the other with specialized apps for displaying radio flux from "out there". I asked to show me his 'UFO'.

 

He pointed to a red pixel in a sea of navy blue pixels and said, "It's not no goddam UFO and mister bigmouth knows it. He just doesn't want it reported on his shift, if'n you know what I mean."

 

I peered over my platinum framed pince-nez reading glasses and stared at that red pixel while 'dude' filled me in on all the rambling details of how he found it, what happened next, what he did, what the apps said, blah, blah. I grunted appreciatively every 22 seconds. I got him to pull up a Fourier transform app displaying frequency/amplitude discretions over time squared, and twiddled the discriminators, until I was zeroed in on the phantom signal.

 

"Ya see," whined 'dude', It ain't no natural radio signal, and it's moving with Europa. It's on the moon's edge right now, so if I'm right, the signal should wink out when Europa turns a few more degrees. I grunted. We waited. The signal blinked out. I grunted even more appreciatively.

 

"Ahh, dude, what's your name?"

 

"Anthony, but my friends call me Tony."

 

"Tony, let's keep this between ourselves, shall we. There may be a big reward in this for you, if this is what I think it is."

 

"Sure. Remember, it's Tony, okay?"

 

"Right! Check you later, Tony!"

 

I had surreptitiously piped the critical info to my stateroom monitor, and after several hours of analysis, I came to the following conclusions:

 

Something or somebody on Europa was sending a radio signal.

The signal contained intelligent information, therefore the sender was intelligent. Probably. MTV sends signals with intel info, but nobody accuses *them* of being intelligent.

The signal was being aimed at the Prophecy, so there was an intentional message. Part of the message, maybe all, was graphical in nature, carried in multiple displays of 53 by 59 pixels.

One of those displays carried a fair representation of the Prophecy.

There was also some phonetic information.

 

The sender appears to be named "Llanea".

 

And I'll be damned, but I think it/he/she wants to hitch a ride!!!!!

[ronthepon]

<During the meeting, for god's sake, Pyro>

 

For a moment, it seemed like I was missing something. But I relaxed when I saw Mercedes collapsing. Someone helped him back to his chair, I didn't bother to look that way.

 

It was clear. This group would refuse to buckle so easily. had seen this scenario coming for a long time. It however came quite late. Most of them were surprised... perhaps it was my little part in it that prevented my reactions of surprise. Countless messages, well encrypted and containing snatches of the ship's achievements and developments had been sent by me back to my seniors. I never used the somewhat vulgar term 'information leak'. After all, most of it was scientific stuff.

 

But this was suicide. They could not straight out refuse to cooperate as their current tone suggested. I stood up. I had no idea of how to tell these guys.

 

"What are you suggesting? Do you realise the magnitude of the trouble that you're bringing down on yourself?"

 

I realised that I was shouting. So much for staying low profile during the meetings. I took a gulp of air to try and calm my self. Too bad the others had already planted their somewhat hostile eyes on me. I'd have to continue more carefully.

 

"Look. I know that you're aware of the consequences of this opinion, but I have to warn you all..." My voice trailed off. I had no idea about how I could persuade them.

 

I tried to use the first idea that cropped up in my mind. I remembered the self control classes I had when I was ten.

 

"Look. There are a great number of people who are contributing positively to this ship. The working of this ship determines the future of almost all the fresh ... brains that are involved with the project. Do you realise what I'm refering to? Yes, I am reffering to every one else, present outside this room. All of them, working... playing their parts in the ship, so that everything goes smoothly and as brilliantly as it is. They are perhaps the most qualified people for the jobs they are alloted to. Most have been handpicked from all over the home planet."

 

I eyeballed some of them. They were listening to me. My stomach churned.

 

"You are prepared to offer resistance to attempts of external control. The consequences of failure in this regard will be serious. Each person associated with the project could be..." My vocabulary failed here. "...screwed for the tiniest bits of incompetent moments, or whatever they get their hands upon."

 

To keep it clear, I did the quotation marks finger gesture and gave a special emphasis on the word 'they'. But the idea was already clear by now.

 

"Are you willing to take the risk? The risk of destroying the careers of the large number of members associated with the project? If I'm not wrong, then there are a large number of people here who will consider their participation in this project as the strongpoint in their future... profiles."

 

I really needed a thesaurus. But my words were getting the effect had hoped for. They were thinking on this. This could work for me.

 

"At this point - excuse me for saying this - you are almost gambling with their futures. Are you really willing to do this?"

 

Too bad, the tenseness had returned. But I sat down. Yes, I was perhaps one of the very few who were actually immune to the future effects of this business, but for now it was meant to sound like I was one of the worst affected victims.

[Pyrotex]

I have decided not to attempt any communication with the being on Europa ("Llanea") until discussions with key members of the crew, despite the tremendous urge to do so right now. Better safe than sorry.

 

I put my calipers away in my MacGyver box, and after due consideration, took out a vintage Sans & Streiffe bamboo sliderule, fully restored of course, in a tooled faux-leather hip case, and a variable nib electronic draftsman's pencil.

 

I flipped on the comm and dialed it for bridge conference room, playback, double speed, to catch up on anything I might have missed from the big yap-yap. It was getting late, so I changed into black and plum, full-formal silk tuxedo pajamas, with crimson sash and matching full-contact juditso sandals. I strapped on the sliderule and slipped the pencil into the jacket pocket--just as ronthepon got hot and heavy into his speech.

 

I stopped and listened. I began to burn under the collar. Then I froze.

 

At first, I reached for the obvious conclusion that RTP was either naive or... or very naive. Then I remembered that this could not be true. Therefore...

 

...therefore, RTP had something up his (rather out of fashion) sleeve. Something big. Something dangerous. And he was keeping it a secret. For all the wrong reasons. Despite his good intentions, there was another piece of information that *I* had and *he* did not -- that changed everything.

 

I bolted from the room and headed out into the hallway at a brisk walk.

[Llanea]

Stuck on the station and floating in geosynchronous orbit:

 

I have attempted to make contact with the unidentified ship, my scanners show that these are humanoid lifeforms, my attempts to make contact have been unsucsessful so far, though i have only tried graphic communication believing this to be mainly universally understood, perhaps they do not understand? My ststion is now out of range and with no power to move from behind the moon i will have to wait almost 38 cycles(minutes) My situation is getting desperate and lifesupport systems have been damages beyond my capabilities to repair, meaning i have no more than a week of air left due to the artificial CO2 scrubbers which are aso at critical. I truly hope that the universal translater(Dr. Who :>) will function or that they will understand my tongue.

 

M scanners show that somone aboard the ship has picked up the distress signal prior to my loss of communication. Perhaps, one of the humans have taken the matter up with a superior?

 

38 cycles later:

 

The ability to communicate with the ship has been regained, though i had to do some bypassing and rewiring, if this attempt is unsucsessful it will eat up all power and i will have 30 Quartz(hours) of life support left, i must take the risk and hope that these beings aren't hostile.

"Mi khan du samareznah, Mi khan du samarezna, zine taras Llanea, persu omren nien"

(attention alien vessel, attention alien vessel, this is Llanea, please render assistance)

 

At this point i activate the universal translater and hope they understand because i am now down to 29 Quartz...

[Pyrotex]

I was just about to head off to RonThePon's stateroom (funny, but I always think of him as 'Ron, The Pon', as if 'Pon' were some kind of noble title--exactly what is a 'Pon'? short for Pontiff? somehow I doubt that. Pontificator? that's better), but on a hunch, I went to the radio shack.

 

Tony (the 'dude') and his supervisor were at it again, shouting and shaking fists. Without a word, but with a big smile, I gently grabbed Tony's arm and led him to his work station. I said, "show me". He showed me. I printed out the very recent message from LLanea. The graphics were very understandable. LLanea had left the surface of Europa and was now in an orbit synchronous to Europa's surface. The graphic of a "fuel tank" or "energy reserve" becoming empty was painfully obvious.

 

There were two graphics showing two configurations of Jovian moon orbits. I took a guess and assumed it was a way of describing a length of time. I whipped out my Sans & Streiffe, my fingers moving so fast, they were a blur. Tony's jaw dropped. If I was right, LLanea was trying to tell us that in... (mmm, divide by 60, move the decimal point, mmm...) 28.3 hours from transmission, he/she/it would be dead.

 

"Tony, when was this message received? Quick!"

 

"Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh... exactly 17 minutes ago, mister Pyrotex."

 

I turned and ran, simultaneously slipping my trusty Sans & Streiffe into its case, executing a perfect "six-gun twirl and slam". Next stop, The Big Dog. We didn't have much time.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I was eating a sandwich and trying to watch six readouts from six different construction bots simultaneously. I wasn't having much success, mostly because I wasn't paying much attention.

 

After Ron's little outburst of altruistic concern for the crew (kinda weird, coming from Ron, who had always struck me as disturbingly single minded and methodical.) I'd gone back to the shop and taken an informal straw poll of the crew.

 

Not one of them had seemed even concerned. Oddly enough, we all seem to have signed on with the idea that the journey of the Prophesy was a one way trip. I knew I had.

 

Bot 4 beeped at me. Something about a lost carrier on the control frequency. Some kinda interference. Big J's magnetosphere played havoc with the joviostationary (is that a word?) com-beacons we'd placed around it. Although they allowed us to communicate with remotes and rovers when the big guy was in the way, occasionally a signal would bounce around out there for a while before it came home.

 

It used to happen on Earth all the time with ham radios, but it was still a little disconcerting when it happened. We'd gotten a post-mortem from a crawler that had been damaged by an Ionian eruption almost a week after the probe stopped responding at one point.

 

I punched the reset for the wireless modem on the bot, but nothing happened - it still couldn't find the ships carrier signal.

 

"What the hell..." I muttered, and leaned closer to the readout. I had to put down my sandwich.

 

"Unrecognized command," beeped the system. The new voice-rec software was a little buggy still. But better than the old terminals.

 

"Radio, conbot 4."

 

The display came up. That was odd. I didn't have quite the software the guys down in Radio Astronomy had, just enough to debug the radios, but I could tell a carrier wave when I saw one. And there was one.

 

Not at the normal 3Ghz band the Prophesy used either. Higher. Much Higher.

 

"Huh." I turned off the Prophesy bot controller, and glanced quickly that all the other conbots stopped and awaited instructions.

 

The 3Ghz signal disappeared from the scope. Still, there it was though, that strong 30Ghz line. (Damn, that's high. Even high speed terrestrial point-to-point links were only 20Ghz.)

 

I was no radio expert, but I knew enough to know that the wireless USB signal used by the prophesy was WAY lower than that. 30Ghz was about what was used for Uncompressed HD video - but the range on that stuff was only a few meters.

 

It was outside the range of most of my radios, I'd only caught it by accident - but what could be bouncing around out there at 30Ghz. It was a weird have. Steady. Like a carrier almost - not that I could tell. Without a dedicated modem for the frequency, there was no way I was going to decode something modulated at that high a frequency.

 

Odd.

 

I called Radio Astronomy over the intraship cellular.

 

"Hey Tony, this is Stone down in the machine shop. Listen, I've got kind of a strange signal on one of the control radios, and I can't pinpoint where it's coming from - could you take a look at the 30Ghz band and tell me if you can ID a pulsar or storm or something?"

 

I glanced back over at the monitor. The signal was gone. The receiver on the conbot wasn't registering anything at all - most of the prophesy internals were filtered out, and the radio wouldn't go above 30Ghz.

 

"Oh... uhh never mind. Signals gone now. Some kinda weird bounce, I guess. Maybe I'll send you the log and you can look at it."

 

Silence. On the other end furious typing and a few muttered curses.

 

"Tony?"

 

"Yeah, I know. Listen, Stone, I've got to find that signal. It's been broadcasting for about a day now, and now it's stopped."

 

"Any idea what it is?"

 

Silence again.

 

"Tony?"

 

"You better ask Pyro." Then he hung up.

 

TFS

[Pyrotex]

It was a damn good thing I had these silk tuxedo pajamas designed to enable fast walking. Else I would be falling all over myself. Doors were flying by me. Then I came to a sudden halt and almost fell.

 

Just where was The Big Dog? Stupid! :hihi: I turned into the nearest fresher. Just inside the door, opposite the sinks and mirrors was a general purpose computer. I tapped in a few commands, inquiring where TBD was. I looked in the mirror to make sure the folds of the jacket lay correctly. One misplaced sleeve could make me look rather silly.

 

*bleep* Ahh, there it was. He had left the bridge conference room and appeared to be headed either for his stateroom, or the commisary in the next ring over. Then there was another *beep*. It was TFS. {damn! why do I always automatically think: the facefull stoned?} I put him on audio.

 

"Pyro? Just talked to Tony in Comm about a strange 30 GHz signal that Tony doesn't want to talk about. He said to talk to you."

 

"Hi, TFS! Yes, there is a bizarro 30 GHz signal coming from the surface of Europa, sending a sequence of 2D panels, each 53 by 59 bits. Probably just some sort of alien contact message. I wouldn't worry about it. So, how are the bots doing?"

 

"Bots?! [long pause] Uhhh, they're doing fine I guess. Pyro, did you say 'alien contact message'?"

 

"What?! What a dreadful thing to say! I'm sure I didn't. Perhaps you might want to join me at Big Dog's stateroom so I can correct any misunderstandings. Okay?"

 

"Uhhh... [long pause] Okay. I'll be right there. Out."

 

I logged out, adjusted my sash so the sliderule hung more naturally, and dashed back into the hall. Damn, I really like that TFS. It's so much fun messing with his head. :xparty:

[TheBigDog]

I was sitting in the conference room listening to the conversations. It seemed fairly unanimous that we should kepp on going on our own authority.

 

Sometimes you are easily distracted, other times you realize tht you have been distracted for some time. I am not sure exactly when I tuned out of the meeting. But I was suddenly aware that I had walked out. I was sweating. Damn it was hot in here! I paseed back through the Con with a haze of colors swirling in my vision. I was dizzy, and felt like I needed to sit down, but I was nausious, suddenly I had the overwhelming urge to vomit. My mouth was wet, my face sweating, I needed to get into my room. Above all I need to keep my composure!

 

"Get to your room, Bill" I heard myself say out loud. Did I say that out loud? I had not referred to myself as "Bill" since the pre-takeoff party at Area 51. Just a few more step to my floor, then one door down... It is almost just a reflex now...

 

I feel pain all over, but I don't care. Am I sleeping? Am I dreaming? I think of opening my eyes and I am greated by a smiling face. He cannot be here! "Daddy, tell me the story about the bear that saved Christmas, but no tickling!!" I took my four year old son into my arms and began to tremble uncontrollably. I could not remember the story.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I walked up the ring towards BigDog's stateroom. JQ had joined me on the way up there - he'd also located that signal, and was curious about it.

 

"Pyro thinks it's an alien signal," I said, half mockingly.

 

Apparently he didn't think it was funny, since he looked at me with a dead straight face and said "Could be."

 

"Okay... seriously? A 30Ghz signal? It's probably some kind of weird terrestrial signal that got away, or a stellar event bouncing around the the magnetosphere."

 

Above our heads, in the windows, a cloud of ionized gas from one of the conbots working on repairs to the Prophesy's skin lit up like Christmas tree - forming a brief aurora which quickly dissipated and fell spinward as we rotated around it.

 

"Look, those are a new phenomenon. We didn't even notice them until we got under the Jovian magnetosphere and started doing repairs. The magnetosphere is going crazy lately - we could be getting a gamma ray burst from across the galaxy or something. I doubt it's an alien."

 

"Could be," said JayQu - but he was looking ahead and not at me.

 

There was BigDog, laying in a pool of his own vomit in front of his cabin, stretching his arm out toward the cabin and mumbling something about bears and tickling.

 

This day was getting weirder all the time.

 

 

TFS

[Pyrotex]

I entered the module deck where Big Dog lived just as TFS and JQ came in from the opposite end. Between us, Big Dog lay lifeless on the floor. There was a small pool of vomit around his face. Nasty stuff. I detected the faint odor of 3,5 diethyl, 1,3 dimethylene, cyclotoxolocine tartrate. Bacterial food poisoning.

 

"Quick! Help me pick him up and carry him to sickbay. JQ, contact sickbay and tell them we're on the way. Big Dog has food poisoning."

 

The three of us lugged him quite rapidly down the hall to the elevator, where we popped a folded gurney out of the wall, zipped it open, lay Big Dog on top and strapped him down in the time it took to get from deck 2 to deck 3. Then we flew like the wind.

 

As we ran, TFS asked, "What's this about an alien?"

 

I panted, "It's the real thing. On Europa. Running out of energy or oxygen or whatever. We got 27 plus hours to get there. Have to use a pressurized scoutship."

 

They took the news in stride.

 

"You mean one of the taxis? We got one that will hold all of us?"

 

"Sure." I said. "All three of us, a dozen bots, and a pair of 400 pound gorillas, if they're good friends. I already sent an electronic request to have it loaded with extra fuel tanks and oh-two. We have to jet in three hours if we hope to make it. I was gonna get permission and advice from Big Dog, but it looks like we're on our own."

 

JQ said, "Cool. Let's rock. Is Big Dog gonna be okay?"

 

I glance at TBD's throat. there was still a strong pulse, and his breathing wasn't labored. He had gotten vomit all over my tuxedo pajamas, though. If it were anyone else but TBD, I would have tossed him in the nearest airlock and blown the outer hatch. But it was TBD. He can vomit on my entire wardrobe if he wants to. He's my captain.

 

"He's gonna be fine as frog hair! There's the infirmary and here come the emergency staff to meet us! Let's peel off and head for the hangers!"

[Mercedes Benzene]

My nose was was burning. What exactly did I do to expose myself to that bromoform.

I couldn't remember. eh.

 

While I was giving myself a saline nasal enema, I noticed a red box flash to life on my laptop on the table next to me.

An accompanying voice shouted sensually (shouted sensually? does that make sense? I smacked myself).

"Contamination alert! Abnormal chemical presence detected in sector 4, area 2."

I pressed the query button, and a detailed outline presented a brief analysis:

"3,5 diethyl, 1,3 dimethylene, cyclotoxolocine tartrate"

 

Hmm... that's strange. A chemical I've never heard of before. I think the computer is taunting me again.

I left to check it out, and made sure that I brought a gas mask with me.

 

While I rushed down the hall, and up two levels, I ran into JQ, TFS, and Pyro...

[Jay-qu]

MB still looked a little dazed from his brush with the Bromoform, we breezed straight past him at a light jog "chemical cleanup sector 4:2" I called over my shoulder, it was best that vomit was taken care of by a chemical technician asap - we would hate for it to somehow infect more people.

 

My mind was racing, Pyro was dead set that we where going to find an alien out there and I always trusted Pyro's hunches. Perhaps part of me was just wanting this to be true rather than taking a look at the scientific evidence. But there was no time for that now, either we would find something or this would become a nice sunday arvo swing around the Jovian moons.

 

We were on a timeline so I was trying to think of anything we would need. Medical supplies.. would ours even be suitable? I decided to just put my faith in Pyro, he was on fire today - no one was stopping him, he was a man on a mission.

 

Just then we reached the inner bay doors, those techs better have everything ready, every second counts now.

[Llanea]

Still on the station:

 

My systems were reaching critical, one of the consoles started beeping and sparks began to fly everywhere. In a matter of seconds i was being thrown across the room because of an explosion from the main sensor console which just took another hit from some of the debris (leaving me blind from intrusion) falling from the ceiling as the structure if the station was falling apart from the meteor hit which shot the station to the moon in the first place. Pinned under a Kartren (kind of like a steel beam which holds the place up) my vision began to grey and the nausia hit me like a train wreck, with no others still alive on the station as my team had all been killed in the initial crash, for whom i felt a pang of sorrow at the loss of some very dear friends, i had no hope of medical assistance. After a shift in the unstable Kartren i felt pain blossom in my side and the darkness which had been swimming on the edge of my vision prevail in pulling me under still clutching the Gersan (a multifunctional gizmo that is very handy in these situations) to my chest...

 

My Sarehms (dreams) took me to a place of the past where my friends lived and my loved ones were happy, as i was, a place before that ill-fated mission and before the allience relations grew strained. This place was peaceful, serene, and buzzing with organisms which had a puropose and a presence where even in their many things remained in a state of serenity (great film).

One of the young ones played with one of the Lovagra (pet-dog) one Gersan in each of their hands, i felt at peace in this place and found it a delightful place to meet my end, with my family and friends. *I stayed that way for some time still hopeful for rescue from the humans but prepared to stay in this place until the Mantred (grim reaper-wanted a little religion from the alien culture my character came from to crossover here) came to take my Morsan (life/soul)*

 

------------------------------------

just incase you guys wanna kill me off... if this sub plot will interfere with the main story too much, don't worry i won't hold any grudges :)

btw-Llanea's description...deffinately smaller than a pony :D about 5''8. amber coloured hair, fire-eyes(amber), really pale complection, human looking otherwise, amber clothes, sort of like a cloak with out hood attatched (voil) to a floor length dress all in voil exept under dress which goes to just above the knee, which is orange material. Basicaly all the warmest colours, yellow, orange and reds

I wrote her for a fiction of mine but i like the character so i'm gonna bring her in as me in this but with a different personality-mine :naughty:

 

And if i do get to stay, i wanted to meet bigdog in the infirmary ;)

[Pyrotex]

"See, I told you guys there was plenty of room in here! All it took was tossing out two of the six spacesuits, and two of the six seats. If LLanea is smaller than a pony, there should be plenty of room. Now, gentlemen, strap yourselves in or hang on as best you can."

 

The main nav control of the "taxi" was highly graphical, and could be used by anyone who had taken the 4-hour taxi-nav class that I taught. A few more keystrokes and our orbit was laid in. Warnings were issued by the nav system both verbally and via klaxon and flashing light. A countdown from 30 started, at the end of which was, Igntion! And away we went at one quarter standard Gee.

 

"Okay, we are on our way. Jay-Qu, why don't you pass around the iced tea and sandwiches to those who are interested."

 

TFS said, "Are we gonna get there on time? You said we had about 28 hours. that was two hours ago."

 

I nodded grimly. "I believe we will. Actually, I had been a little pessimistic. There was enough fuel added, that with the mass we tossed out, we can afford a higher accelleration then the 'point two' Gee that serves as standard thrust. We should get to low orbit around Europa in about twenty hours."

 

TFS nodded, just as grimly. "No joke. There's an alien at Europa?"

 

"No joke. In fact, Tony in the radio shack just told me half an hour ago that another message arrived from LLanea, as she calls herself. He hasn't decoded all of it, but he is sure that she is doing fine." I paused while Jay-Qu handed me a sandwich. "The thing that bothers me, is that Tony doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would be good at decoding, and his supervisor still doesn't take this seriously."

 

TFS said, "I noticed you changed into ordinary ship-issue coveralls." He grinned, "Are you feeling okay?"

 

I put on a pained expression. "Come on TFS! Just because I like to dress neatly doesn't mean I'm a fanatic about it."

 

We all grinned.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Twenty hours in a cramped shuttle with Pyrotex and JQ wasn't necessarily my idea of hell, but it wasn't really my idea of a good time either, so I signed up. If there was an alien, I wanted to get a good look at it's ship. Maybe something I could use. If not... well, I could use a break. I was one of the few crewmembers who hadn't had a chance to go on a side mission, and frankly, I was getting kinda bored with replacing tools on the big omni-bots.

 

After Pyrotex had talked my ear off about fashion for three hours, I changed my mind. Sartre had it right. How much payload weight was spent on his wardrobe alone?! Jesus.

 

While Pyro was talking about the advantages of silk over satin in zero-g, and JQ was staring out the port at the stars (I knew what he was thinking - how long would it take him to claw his way through two inches of polycarbonate and aerogel window?) I tried to look busy by rerunning system diagnostics on the two general purpose bots we'd brought with his. The half-dozen buggers I'd grabbed would need to be run off one of the big omni's control computers.

 

Unfortunately, that was pretty easy. It had taken me about 45 minutes to switch them over. And it took me about 15 minutes to take the big ones through POST. And 20 more for pretty much a full systems check. I was running out of things to do.

 

Oh God... now he was talking about cords vs hems. I contemplated turning one of the laser welders onto an O2 line.

 

There had better be an alien (riiiight) or I'm gonna toss Pyrotex and his Gucci coveralls (I knew he'd never wear issue...) out the airlock.

 

TFS

[Pyrotex]

Damn, these ship issue coveralls itched liked hell. The piece of crap must contain more than 50% low-grade, multi-sidechain polyesters. So, I sit here in this taxi, with JQ and TFS. They asked me four times if these coveralls were "gootchy". I said no, and then tried to prove it to them by showing how the crinkle reflectivity of cheap industrial fabric could never be confused with... oh, why the hell do I bother?

 

So, I sat back and listened to them discuss technical issues aboard the ship and napped. Klaxon.

 

Hunh! I came instantly awake. That was the ten minute warning for our major decelleration burn to achieve orbit around Europa. The moon itself more than filled the cockpit window, and was as bright as looking at snow in the daytime on Earth. Craggy mountains and smooth plates jumbled together in the Conamara Chaos region.

 

The cracks in the surface were, in places, discolored, as if they were fresh. Could be. I knew that since Europa was the second nearest of Jupiter's major moons, it suffered a lot of gravitational stresses from being so close to Jupiter. In fact, the amount of tidal heating that Europa got would be only an order of magnitude less than what Io got. Perhaps enough to maintain liquid water below its surface. One area of the surface, in particular, looked like the ice was awfully thin.

 

I heard the ship say, "...four...three...two...commit...ignition...control green...nav green...". A quarter Gee felt like a feather's touch. JQ and TFS didn't even seem to notice. They were staring out the cockpit windows, their faces almost plastered to the "glass".

 

I said, "we should be coming up on the position calculated to be the alien's base on Europa. I doubt if we're close enough to see it visually, but it should be just ... just ... THERE on those ice rafts."

 

The engine cut off as TFS reached for some electronic binocs. He said, "Pyro, can you show me where you mean?" I called up an external cam on my monitor and crosshaired the approximate location from memory. I clicked on external laser pointer. A red line flickered into existence from the outer hull and swung around to a fixed spot on Europa's surface as it flowed past us. TFS followed the laser point with his binocs. His fingers twiddled the focus and power.

 

"What? Damn! GODDAM!! I SEE IT!! I SEE IT!! It's a hemispheric dome right in the middle of a triangle of short rills that looks like the numeral '4'. I can just make out what looks like some kind of rocket launch pad."

 

Stunned for a second, I fumbled with the mouse, but quickly found my way to the zoom button on my display, and held it down. The floating ice rafts expanded rapidly, until I was looking at the alien base through the taxi telescope. No ****.

 

JQ piped up. "I'm getting a radar return coming up over the horizon. It's not moving relative to the moon's surface. Gotta be LLanea's ship. If we wanna rendezvous this orbit, we gotta lose another 2 meters per second really quick. Shall I do it?"

 

I said, "Sure. Why not?"

 

TFS shouted, "ENGAGE!!"

[Jay-qu]

I had only moments to input the new flight plan, but this was standard procedure by now. I hit a few buttons and thew the switch right as TFS shouted "engage" perfect timing :phones:

 

The cabin lurched as we reached our new acceleration, trying to make Geo-synchronous orbit in time so we could match the alien's ship's speed.

 

Even with the extra weight aboard we where be doing fine, the engines are at full burn and everything is in the green.

 

I convinced myself everything was ok long enough to get a peak out the window at Europa's surface - it was one of the few moons we had not got to study from the surface. Funnily enough it holds the most mystery and intrigue to me - what lies beneath the ice? Perhaps the alien could enlighten us!

 

And we would get to do just that in a around an hour, that is if we can fashion an airlock between our two crafts...