Angel of Europa (2 page)

“As suit tech? Kevin should have been able to cover for me.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” The captain hesitated. “As arbiter, I mean.”

Danzig now understood. Maintaining the EVA gear was only one of his jobs. His principal role in the expedition was arbiter, the crew member responsible for investigating and settling disputes among the twelve women and eight men aboard the
Zeus Explorer
.

Several years earlier, the International Space Consortium had determined that, during long-term space missions, it would be best if the captain didn’t deal with fights or quarrels among the crew, but instead delegated that responsibility to someone else. Major disagreements among crewmembers often involved decisions made by the commanding officer, so there was always an expectation that the captain would not be impartial. This had led to a mutiny once already, and the ISC wanted to avoid repeating that incident.

Thus, whenever possible, a person trained in psychology and social engineering was included in the crew of deep-space vessels. Although necessity dictated that this individual held another job — a ship’s complement is too small for someone to specialize in only one particular skill — his or her principal responsibility was to arbitrate disputes among crewmembers. It was the arbiter’s task to thoroughly investigate a problem, examining the causes and weighing the evidence, then deliver a judgment in a fair and independent manner. In this way, the commanding officer was absolved of any accusation of taking one side or another; the arbiter’s decision was final, even if the captain is at fault.

By the time the
Zeus Explorer
crossed the orbit of Mars, six weeks after the ship departed from Earth, Danzig had already arbitrated a few quarrels. They were all minor disagreements — one person accusing another of swiping stuff from his toilet kit; the life-support chief insisting that a crewman assigned to the hydroponics bay in Arm B neglected her duties and thus allowed some to die; the chef’s claim that a certain individual had been stealing food from the galley — and while not everyone was happy with the decisions Danzig made, at least there had been no incidents that put the expedition at risk. Then he stepped into the airlock …

“Must be something important,” Danzig said. “Enough for you to have Martha revive me, I mean.”

“It is … but there’s something I’d like to know first. How did you nearly get yourself blown out?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Really. I barely remember what happened. It’s like I’ve lost a couple of minutes there.”

“Dr. Philips warned me you might have memory loss.” The captain seemed to be studying him. “But we still can’t figure why you were there in the first place. The duty roster didn’t call for you to inspect the suits until we reached Jupiter.”

“That I remember. Jim Kretsche complained to me that, when he went EVA a couple of days ago —” Danzig corrected himself “— a couple of days before the accident, I mean … his comlink acted up on him. I was checking the suit he’d worn to see if there was something wrong with the radio.”

“Okay. So we know why you were there. But it doesn’t explain how you …”

“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Danzig shut his eyes, tried to bring back what he’d been doing just as the airlock opened. “I would’ve shut the inner hatch once I was inside … that’s standard operating procedure. After that—” he opened his eyes again, let out his breath “—it’s a blank. Maybe I hit the void button by mistake.”

“That’s an awfully big mistake.” Diaz quietly regarded him for a few moments, her expression hard to read, then she shrugged. “I’m sure it’ll come back eventually. Until then, I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d have someone accompany you the next time you visit the airlock. You’re just lucky Dylan picked that moment to visit H2 when you opened the outer hatch.”

Danzig couldn’t help but grin. Dylan McNeil was the chief engineer, and ever since launch he’d constantly visited the hub’s lower deck to check the major systems, as if the
Explorer
was a fragile machine that might break at any minute. McNeil’s fussiness had become a standing joke among the crew, but Danzig had to admit that it may have saved his life.

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Danzig pushed back the covers and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Philips had finally relented and allowed him to swap his surgical gown for trousers and a sweatshirt; otherwise, he wouldn’t have let Diaz see him practically undressed. “So let’s get to the important stuff … why did you have me revived?”

“Okay.” Folding her arms across her chest, the captain looked down at the floor as if to gather her thoughts. “You know we’ve been in orbit above Callisto for the last four months, right? And that we landed on Europa and established a base camp about three months ago?”

“Uh-huh. All according to plan.” Although Europa was the expedition’s most important target among the Galilean satellites, its orbit lay within the belt of intense radiation surrounding Jupiter. It had been decided that the
Zeus Explorer
would park itself above Callisto, 1,884,000 kilometers from Jupiter and outside the radiation belt, and survey teams would shuttle back and forth between the ship and Europa, 1,213,000 kilometers away. This way their radiation exposure would remain within tolerable levels.

“Right. Well, a few of weeks ago, the science team finally broke through the surface ice at Consolmagno Base. They managed to locate a point between two ridges in the Conamara Chaos where it looked like friction between two ice packs temporarily melted through the surface, so they only had to cut a hole just a little more than one kilometer deep.”

“That’s pretty lucky.” It had been previously estimated that the ice layer separating Europa’s surface from the global ocean below had an average thickness of ten kilometers. But the Conamara Chaos, a region just north of the equator, has a series of fissures and ridges which hint that it’s an area that has experienced periodic cycles of melting and refreezing due to internal heat caused by ice packs rubbing against each other. The expedition had been gambling on the notion that the ice might be thin enough at the bottom of one of Conamara’s fissures to allow a laser drill to penetrate all the way to the subsurface ocean.

“Yes it was,” Diaz said. “Once that was accomplished, they dropped a cable down the hole and used it to lower a RSV. The robot showed us a lot, of course …”

“Life?”

“Yes, and plenty of it. Rather primitive, though, with the dominant species not much more than something that looks a little like brine shrimp. Not what a lot of us were expecting. So I let the scientists do what they wanted to do all along and send down a bathyscaphe.”

Among the expedition’s equipment were a pair of tethered submersibles specially designed for this particular mission; two were brought in case one malfunctioned and needed to be replaced. Along with the laser drill, the robotic survey vehicle, and the dome shelters used to establish the base camp, the DSVs were transported to Jupiter aboard an unmanned cargo vessel launched from Earth orbit just a few weeks before the
Explorer
. The cargo carrier had gone into orbit around Europa; upon arrival at Jupiter, the expedition spent the first few weeks ferrying equipment down to Europa. Io, Ganymede, and Callisto were of only secondary interest; Europa was the Galilean satellite considered most likely to be harboring life, and extraterrestrial life was the holy grail of interplanetary exploration.

“The scientists must have loved that,” Danzig said. “Connick and Werner were drooling over those things all through training.”

“That’s not the only thing they were drooling over.” The captain shook her head. “Forget I said that. But —” she hesitated “— do you remember Chatelain? Evangeline Chatelain?”

“The bathyscaphe pilot?” He nodded. “Of course. My memory isn’t that bad.”

“I wouldn’t think you would. She’s pretty hard to forget—” a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth “—particularly if you’re male.”

Danzig tried not to take offense. Diaz was right. During the expedition’s two-year training program, there had been a lot of whispered comments among the males about who’d get Evangeline Chatelain in bed during the two and a half years it would take for the ship to complete its mission. It was a sort of sexist attitude that the men had been discouraged from taking, particularly considering that they comprised the minority of the crew, but Evangeline stood out among the women. Nor had she been exactly chaste. It had been rumored that she’d broken up with a fiancé just after the crew selection was made, and she’d wasted no time going on the rebound. Evangeline hadn’t slept with anyone during training, but Jim Kretsche had a one-night stand with her only a few days after the
Explorer
left Earth, and John Connick was pursuing a more serious relationship the last time Danzig had seen him.

“She’s a very pretty woman,” Danzig murmured. “She attracts a lot of attention …”

“Don’t be coy.” Diaz lowered an eyelid. “Every unmarried man on the ship wanted her, and I can think of one or two married men who would’ve gladly cheated on their wives for a shot at getting into her bunk.”

“Sure, but …” Something the captain just said brought him up short. “Wait a minute. You referred to her in the past tense. Did something happen to her?”

“She’s still alive, if that’s what you’re asking. But two men are dead because of her, and I can’t tell if it’s an accident or …” Diaz stopped herself. “She claims it was, but I have reason to suspect otherwise, and so do a few others.”

“So that’s why you woke me up,” Danzig said. “You want me to investigate the matter and deliver an opinion.” Diaz slowly nodded. “Who were the two men?”

“You mentioned them already … John Connick and Klaus Werner.”

Danzig was surprised. They were the astrobiologists leading the effort to locate and identify any forms of life that might be abiding on Europa. “I assume that, if a bathyscaphe was sent down, one or both of them would have been aboard … and Evangeline was the pilot.”

“Your assumption is correct.” The captain didn’t smile. “All three of them went down, but only Chatelain came back. The other two didn’t return.”

“Why not?”

Diaz was quiet for a moment. “I could tell you, but maybe you should first hear what Evangeline had to say.”

“She’s back aboard ship?”

“Uh-huh. I had her brought back from Europa and she’s been confined to quarters since then. Not that anyone wants much to do with her.” She shook her head. “To tell the truth, her side of the story is the most incredible part of the whole thing … if she’s not lying, that is.”

E
VANGELINE CHATELAIN’S QUARTERS
were two decks down from the infirmary. Until the accident, Danzig would have had no problem getting there; a narrow staircase spiraled down Arm A’s companionway, its individual risers raised into position along the cylindrical well now that the habitat arms were in full rotation. His legs were still weak, though, and walking anywhere was difficult, even with the collapsible aluminum cane Dr. Phillips had found in the medical stores. But he didn’t want to interview Evangeline from his hospital bed, so against the doctor’s wishes he slipped on a pair of loafers and, leaning heavily upon the cane, made his way downstairs.

Diaz insisted on accompanying him. He didn’t want her to come along, but she was adamant; Chatelain was to see no one without her approval. But Danzig didn’t want the captain present when he questioned the Evangeline, so they reached a compromise on the way down to her quarters: Diaz would remain outside in the foyer while Danzig spoke to Evangeline, where she would be able to listen through the door. The captain wasn’t very happy about this — the ship’s constant background hum would make eavesdropping difficult — but she relented when Danzig pointed out that Evangeline would be more likely to open up if the captain wasn’t in the room. When they finally reached the bathyscaphe pilot’s quarters, though, Diaz was the one who knocked on the door.

“Someone to see you, Evangeline,” she announced, then slid open the door without waiting for a response.

“Why, thank you, Captain,” Evangeline said from within. “Your respect for my privacy is appreciated.”

There was a distrustful look in Diaz’s eyes as she stepped aside. “All yours, Otto,” she murmured. “Call if you need anything.”

Danzig didn’t reply. He hobbled through the narrow pocket door, trying not to scowl as he put weight on the cane. The arm’s gravity gradient increased slightly each deck down; Evangeline’s room was one of four located on Deck 3-A, halfway down the arm and therefore at .1-g. Until then, he’d enjoyed living in a low-g environment — enough centrifugal force to decrease physiological stress during a long space journey, but not so much as to produce motion sickness — but until his body fully recovered even this little gravity was painful.

Evangeline’s room was the same size as anyone else’s. A little larger than a walk-in closet, it had a fold-down bunk, a desk with a built-in terminal and studio chair, a wallscreen, a bookshelf, and a small wardrobe. An accordion door led to the tiny bathroom she shared with Margaret Harris, the British astrophysicist who lived next door, and a circular porthole the size of a dinner plate was above the desk. She had made her quarters a little more homey with pictures, books, and some small Indian blankets to cover the bulkhead, but otherwise her room looked much the same as his own.

Evangeline Chatelain sat on her bunk, legs crossed together and back against the bulkhead, watching something on the wallscreen with the sound muted. She wore a pair of lavender tights and a white tank-top, but no shoes. Although she’d objected to an unexpected visit by the captain, she didn’t seem to mind having Danzig drop in.

“Otto!” A warm smile appeared. “What a surprise! I hadn’t heard that you’ve been revived! How nice to see you again!” Before he could respond, she looked past him. “Thank you, Captain,” she added, a bit more frostily. “I think you can go now.”

Danzig looked over his shoulder in time to see Diaz’s expression darken as she slid the door shut. Evangeline waited until the captain disappeared before speaking to him again. “Please, have a seat,” she said, then apparently noticed his cane for the first time. “Oh, dear … I didn’t see that. Let me help you.”