The Curse of Europa (5 page)

“Okay now people… hold on, we’re coming in a little hot,” Hicks yells out. “Crap… Crap! We’re going to overshoot!
We’re going to overshoot!
Well Shit!
Hold on! Hold on!
”

Besides overshooting the designated landing spot, they are coming up fast on another huge ice mountain on the other side of the valley, as well as rougher terrain. Hicks swears a few more times, and then reduces thruster power. He then pushes his control stick down hard to speed their descent, so they don’t run up the side of the mountain. They hit the surface hard, depressing the landing legs shock-absorbers all the way down to their limit, with a loud metallic clank, and then immediately Eagle-2 bounces back up, as the shock-absorbers spring back up. Everyone suddenly realizes that they can feel gravity again. Evans gasps loudly and then grabs her arm-rests even tighter.

A few seconds later they hit the hard icy surface again and also lurch forward, tipping a bit, then they launch a few meters back up into the air. They are almost upon the base of the huge ice mountain, as the now askew Eagle-2 hits down again with just one landing leg, spinning it around before the other legs touch down, skidding on the ice, and finally staying grounded. They skid for a few seconds more… then nothing; they are down, just three meters from the base of the mountain.

After a few seconds of silence, Turk blurts out, “Whew, now
that
was fun! Let’s do it again!”

“Once is enough for me, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!” Evans quickly screams back, her white knuckled hands still grasping the arm rests.

“This is Commander Hicks at 291 hours, 51 minutes mission elapsed time,” Hicks says into the radio. “Eagle-2 has landed!” Turk and Glover can also be heard in the radio broadcast, whooping and cheering. Evans and Fedoseev just stare at each other, the looks on their faces seemingly saying that they are amazed they are still alive.

“Tucker here, acknowledge touchdown at 291-51. Congratulations Eagle-2, Great job!” Cheering can be heard from the command module also.

Hicks radios back to Tucker, “We overshot the landing a little, how far are we from the designated landing mark?”

Tucker replies, “You’re about half a click east from the designated landing mark, where pods 1 and 2 are. However you’re actually a little closer to pods 3 and 4, about 400 meters.”

“Acknowledged,” Hicks shoots back.

The landing wasn’t great and they missed their mark a little, but they are down safely and so far everything looks good.

Chapter 4:
Extra Vehicular Activity

A
fter a few hours of performing post landing tasks the first Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) is ready to commence. Commander Hicks and Doctor Fedoseev are EVA Team 1 and will debark first. Hicks will make the first historic steps on the icy surface of Europa, then Fedoseev. Shortly after Turkovitch and Evans, who make up EVA Team 2, will debark from the ship. The two teams will make their way to the payload pods. Lt. Glover is the Europa Base control officer and will remain inside at all times.

“Okay Commander,” Lt. Glover pipes up, “post landing check list complete. All systems diagnostics show normal. The air lock chamber-test just finished and is ready for use. We are ready for EVA anytime you guys are.”

“Great news! Curse / Smurse I say. Let’s go do this!” Hicks responds.

“Oh great… you just jinxed us now Commander,” Turk spits out slyly. “You couldn’t have waited until we got home to say that?”

“What, why? Are you little superstitious or something?” Hicks fires back.

“Well, no, not really, I think the curse is just a big joke, but I guess I wouldn’t go around mocking it… so I guess maybe that does make me a little superstitious, I suppose.” Turk replies.

“Yeah, I agree,” Glover interjects, “Let’s just not talk about it.”

“Da, I vill agree. Let us no talk about it,” Fedoseev says with a Russian accent while twirling the end of his mustache.

“Jeez, you guys are a bunch of superstitious babies,” Evans pitches in.

“Oh… What! I thought
you
were the coward,” Turk retorts surprised by her response.

“Well… I may be scared of real life things, like crashing during landing, but not of hokey curse stories. That’s just a bunch of B.S.!” she responds.

“Okay… whatever! Let’s just quit talking about this… please,” Glover pleads as he nervously massages his fingers through his short black hair.

Everyone laughs, except Glover who seems to be a bit more superstitious than the rest.

Hicks belts out with his booming voice, “Okay, yes, enough of that. I’m sorry I said anything. Fedoseev… are you ready to go for a walk?”

“Da!!” he says with much excitement.

Hicks and Fedoseev suit-up in their bio-suits. Unlike pressurized suits of the past, that were like wearing balloons, the first layer of these suits are made from form fitting polymer, custom tailored to each crew member. This polymer layer maintains body pressure, simply from the tight fit and elasticity. The outer layers of the suit provide heat and thermal insulation, as well as protection from the massive amounts of radiation that Jupiter rains down on Europa.

They put on their protective helmets, which
do
maintain normal air pressure inside of them. The visors of these helmets are also transparent computer screens that they can interact with, to control their bio-suit computers. All input and control of the computer is done entirely by optical eye tracking sensors. All they have to do is move their eyes to control the pointer, to select various options such as: checking their oxygen level, turning on and off their communication (com) unit, accessing informational databases, or to simply play their favorite music.

Once they have their suits completely assembled and all connections fastened, they enter the air-lock chamber. Once the air pressure is equalized to the extremely thin atmosphere of the moon, Hicks unlatches the hatch and opens it. A telescopic ladder extends down from the hatch automatically, until it reaches the surface below.

Hicks starts his historic climb down the ladder, which is a little tricky in his tight fitting bio-suit and large boots. He doesn’t want to slip or fall as he knows there is a camera recording his every move. The surface of Europa is extremely bright as well, making it hard to look down, until his eyes can adjust to the intensity.

He starts an audio broadcast, “This is Hicks, starting descent down to the surface. Lt. Glover, what is the mission elapsed time?”

“Mission elapsed time is 293 hours and 24 minutes.” Glover responds on the com.

Hicks continues “What a
beautiful
sight… we are surrounded by nearby mountainous ridges and deep gorges. It looks like it does right after an ice storm. It is very bright out here and my eyes are still adjusting to it.”

Hicks is at the bottom rung of the ladder and he pauses for a second, in a panic, as he can’t remember exactly what his line was that he was going to say when he planted his foot on the surface. Then he thinks he remembers and steps down, planting a footprint in the icy snow-dust.

“That’s another small step for a man, but it’s an even larger leap for mankind,” Hicks mutters out. He still isn’t sure if that’s exactly what he was going to say… but close enough. GSO wanted it similar to what Neil Armstrong said, as this is the first landing on a moon other than Earths’. Europa and Earth’s moon are very similar in size and have roughly the same gravity, about 15% that of Earth. Once Hicks is all the way out, he enjoys a few bounding leaps as he explores the nearby surroundings.

Fedoseev follows soon thereafter and tears up as he takes his first few steps and feasts his eyes on the stunning alien terrain at ground level. He sees the magnificently large ice mountain they landed near. His father had climbed quite a few mountains in his day and he figured he’d love to climb this one; glimmering in the glow of the Sun and of Jupiter. There are huge icy plumes shooting out of the side of the mountain; some of the massive chunks of ice seemingly suspended in mid-air.

The two men pull out some monitoring equipment from the LM and place them around the ship, and then they start their walk to payload pods 1 and 2.

Inside Eagle-2, Turk and Evans have put on their bio-suits; all but the helmets. Turk asks Evans, who looks a little paler than normal, “So are you nervous about this also?”

“Oh yes…” she says very fast, “nervous, scared, excided, giddy, anxious; pretty much any adjective you can think of and I’m it!”

“Well in 5 minutes, we’ll be out there, and I think the only adjective that will probably fit will be
awestruck
. You’ll be fine,” Turk says with a big smile, putting his forehead against hers looking deeply into her eyes. “Ready?”

“Ready sir!” she says a bit sarcastically.

He kisses her forehead, smiles, taps her once on the nose and says, “Then let’s go! Get that helmet on.”

They get their helmets on and enter the pressure chamber which then depressurizes to match the almost nonexistent atmosphere of Europa. Turk unlatches the hatch and opens it, seeing the telescopic ladder reaching down to the surface below.

Turk carefully steps down to the surface, trying not to step on Hicks’ historic first footprint. He looks around briefly and is simply amazed by the beauty of the landscape. He remembers thinking Mars was amazing, and it was, in its own right, but admittedly not even close to what he is seeing right now. He sees Evans starting to descend out of the ship. “Jeez, it is very bright out here, isn’t it?” she exclaims as she is trying to force her eyes to stay open.

Turk helps her down and she unknowingly stomps all over Hicks’ footprints…
oh well
he thinks. They start their bounding walk in the low gravity to find their payload pods.

As Evans’ eyes adjust to the brightness of the outside world of Europa, she is finally able to look around. “Wow, yes, awestruck is a great word to describe
this
,” she beams as they start their walk, beholding the sights in all directions. “It looks like a wonderful winter wonderland!”

Turk takes her hand, as best as he can with the bio-suit gloves. He can see her smile through the helmet visor. This is kind of romantic in a strange way he thinks. How many men get to take a walk with their girlfriends on a moon orbiting Jupiter? NONE! He finds himself smiling, even bigger than Juliana. He just wishes they could talk privately, but the only way to communicate is through the com units in the bio-suit helmet, which is being monitored and recorded by GSO for posterity. They both know this and understand that they need to keep their discussions professional. They also have cameras in their helmets recording panoramic 3D video of everything they see, but as long as they don’t look at their hands no one should see them holding hands. They slowly walk on, enjoying the moment and periodically muttering various adjectives describing what they see.

Chapter 5:
Doughnuts and Tremors

“S
TAND BACK…” Turk shouts, holding his left arm straight out to make sure Juliana does not get hit by the payload pod door as he opens it, causing it to fall open to the ground creating a ramp. The first thing he sees is the All-Terrain Rover and he looks at Juliana and smiles. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head as she knows
exactly
what he is thinking about; doughnuts… and not the kind you eat.