The Curse of Europa (6 page)

All the cargo in the payload pod is thoroughly secured and it takes them over an hour to unfasten and remove it all. The first thing they need to do is set up their monitoring equipment, which takes another 30 minutes. Dr. Huang is directing their progress from White-Bull-2, to make sure they set up all of the monitoring equipment and experimentation kits correctly.

Turk is very happy when they finally finish, as he knows that now they can take the rover for a spin and do some exploring. Turk grabs Juliana’s hand again and leads her to the passenger side of the rover as if escorting his prom date to his car; he gives a slight bow and flips his hand towards the seat and says, “I’d open the door for you… if it had doors that is…”

“I’m sure you would have, thank you kind sir.” Then just as she is about to climb in she pauses and smiles, “wait a minute, how come
you
get to drive? What if
I
want to drive?”

Turk says with a look of surprise, “Yeah, right. This is my baby!” Then after thinking a second he says with a sarcastic tone, “I of course
would
let you drive, if I
could
, but unfortunately you’re not authorized or trained to operate this vehicle.”

“Yeah,
sure
you would Patrick,” giving him a wink. Then she carefully climbs into the passenger seat while Turk climbs into the driver’s seat.

“HANG-ON,” Turk exclaims, as he punches the rover’s accelerator to the floor, making the back-end slip a little bit; although not as much as he was hoping for, as it is geared pretty low.

“Jeez, that’s it?” Juliana laughs with a smirk, swirling her finger around as if to say
Ya-hoo
.

All Turk could do is shrug his shoulders as if to say
what can you do, it is what it is
. He knows he can’t really try doing any doughnuts with all the eyes and ears on them.
Maybe later!

They drive off in the battery powered rover, taking in the spectacular sights, with a massive Jupiter peeking slightly up on the horizon; they seem to be driving right into it. Some of the terrain is very smooth, but other areas are quite challenging and bumpy; much to the delight of Turk, but not so much to Evans.

There is so much to take in visually, yet they need to keep an eye on the instrument panel, specifically watching the readings of the ice penetrating radar that estimates the thickness of the ice they are driving over. They are looking for the best place to drill their hole down into the Great Schmidt Lake.

After a bit over an hour of exploring, they have located their prime spot. They found a deep wide groove that is traversable with the rover, while pulling the Nuclear Heated Torpedo Probe. This torpedo probe will be used to drill down through the ice.

“Yes, this should do nicely,” Juliana says while setting up a surface monitoring device. “The ice is at least 450 meters thinner here, which should shave off a few hours of drilling.”

“Great,” says Turk pulling the rover up to where Juliana is. “Is that thing all set? We need to get back to Eagle-2. We have less than 45 minutes of air left.”

“Yes, all s-- Jeez, do you feel that?” She grabs the tripod stand of the monitoring device to steady herself.

Turk, who is sitting in the rover’s driver seat just looks at her strangely and says, “Feel what? I don’t feel anything. Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine… but it felt like the ground was shaking,” she responds, gesturing down to the ground.

“Hmmm, I didn’t feel anything; maybe you just got a little dizzy. Check your oxygen mixture,” Turk suggests, seemingly throwing out a random suggestion.

“It’s NOT my oxygen; the ground moved, I swear it.” Evans retorts, a little annoyed at him.

“Okay, okay,” Turk hops out of the rover and stands as still as possible. “I still don’t feel anything…”

“I guess it’s gone now. Maybe I
was
dizzy… I don’t know... no, I don’t feel anything now.” She starts to climb into the rover. “That was just a weird feeling though. Okay, let’s go.”

Turk punches the accelerator again and gets going as fast as he can, to make it up the slippery slope of the groove they are in. It jerks to the right and then slips to the left, as the wheels spin on the ice, spitting out tails of crystalized snow. He spins the steering wheel one way, then the other, as he fights to get them up to the top.

“Come on Bessie!” he shouts, as they are almost to the top but almost stopped also, all four wheels spinning and causing them to slip all around. Finally the front wheels reach the top and somehow find enough traction to pull them out. As the back wheels lurch over the lip of the incline, and with the accelerator still punched to the floor, the rover does a complete 360 degree spin, much to the delight of Turk.

“Yee-Ha!” he shouts as he straightens it out and heads in the direction of Eagle-2.

“Yeah… somehow I knew you’d find a way to do that! Now I
am
dizzy,” Juliana says while shaking her head.

Turk just smiles and says, “Oh, sorry, that was totally an accident I assure you!”

“Ah huh… whatever you say
Lieutenant.
All I know, is that my bio-waste container is full, and I really need to, well, relieve myself, and that sure didn’t help matters any!” Evans says, realizing after she said it that it is now recorded for generations to come.

“Well, sorry about that. Maybe you should lay off the liquids,” he suggests.

“Jeez, I barely drank half of my water supply today,” she starts explaining, then decides to change subjects, “you know… I really don’t want to discuss this
on the com.
”

Turk just laughs and then announces on the public com band, “Eagle-2, this is EVA Team 2, we have located our drilling location and are en-route back to base for the night, ETA 5 minutes.”

When they pull to where Eagle-2 is perched, they see that Hicks and Fedoseev are already back, as their rover is parked out front, with the solar panels extended to recharge the batteries. Turk pulls their rover beside the other and also extends their solar panels, so it will have a good charge for the next day. They climb into the air-lock chamber, close the hatch and wait for 90 seconds for the pressure to equalize to the interior cabin.

Chapter 6:
Relationship?

A
fter Turk and Juliana change out of their bio-suits, they are required to do a workout. Even though they had been outside moving around for nearly seven hours, the light gravity doesn’t work their muscles enough. After their required workout time, they are talking in the sleeping cabin, where they finally have a little privacy; if they keep their voices low.

“Wow, that was mind boggling today, surreal, I really don’t know how to describe it,” Juliana says in a soft voice, looking at Turk with a smile; a look of complete satisfaction on her face that is still flushed from the workout.

Turk returns her stare with a smile of his own and responds, “Yeah, that was great! Better than I expected really. The way she whipped around with all the tires spinning… ah that was fun!”

Juliana cocks her head sideways looking at Turk, “I’m
not
talking about your stupid doughnut on the rover!” Then she gently smacks him on his chest with the back of her hand.

“You’re not?” Turk sarcastically replies in a long drawn out fashion, and smiles. “Oh… that was classic though!”

Juliana just giggles and shakes her head. Then she sits down with a plop, on a built-in bench connected to the wall and continues, “I’m
talking
about just being out there, on Europa, on the surface of a moon orbiting Jupiter. All the ice, the ice mountains glimmering in the glow of the Sun and of Jupiter. Seeing the long reflection of Jupiter on the ice during our trip back home, back here.” She leans back and crosses her legs, wondering what smartass response he is going to come back with next.

“Yes, yes,” Turk says being more serious now and sits down beside her, “it was awesome, wasn’t it?”

Juliana grabs Turk’s hand, pleased that he is being more serious now. “Do you know what the best part was Patrick? And DON’T say the doughnut!”

Turks smiles big at that, but refrains from making a follow-up joke and just places his other hand on-top of hers and asks, “What?”

She locks her eyes to his and says, “The way you took my hand when we were walking to the payload pods. Although I longed for our hands to be flesh to flesh, like they are now, it was very sweet and very romantic. We’ve never taken a walk
outside
before, and for our first real walk outside to be on Europa, was very special.”

“I was thinking the same thing actually!” Turk responds then continues with much inflection in his voice, “I was thinking… how many guys can say they’ve taken their girl for a walk on a moon? Nobody! Forget Paris,
we’ll always have Europa!
”

Juliana giggles at that and then says, “Yeah, well you just better not take off without me though!”

“I’d Never!” he retorts, snapping his head back as if surprised she’d even suggest such a thing. “I’ve never seen that old movie but actually… I think it is the girl that leaves the guy behind anyhow.”

“Well, jeez, I don’t plan on doing that,” Juliana says along with a squeeze of his hand. “As special as our little moon walk was today, I still long for the day where we can take a
moonlight
stroll back on Earth.”

Turk smiles as he pictures that scene and describes it to Juliana. “Yes, me too. I can picture it right now. You and me walking hand-in-hand back on the old Jersey Shore Boardwalk near my home. After a nice dinner at Martells’,
they have the best shrimp around
, we would grab an ice cream at the Sweet Shop and walk in the moonlight. Then maybe we’d find a bench, or sit out on the pier, and gaze up into the night sky.” Turk looks up to the ceiling of the sleeping cabin, as if it really was the night sky, and points up. Juliana looks up as well.

He continues, “While gazing up, we notice a small bright dot, the brightest dot in the sky besides the Moon, a dot that we know is Jupiter. Then we would look at each other nonchalantly and say: Yeah, we’ve been there, we visited her moon Europa and took a stroll hand-in-hand.”

Then Juliana adds, “…and then we’d say - We’ll always have Europa!” They both bust out laughing, hunched over now, trying not to be too loud and attract attention.

Turk gently places his hand on her cheek, to return her gaze to his eyes and says, “Yes, it’s a little strange isn’t it? We’ve spent our whole time together so-far in space and now on this moon. I guess you can say we have a
far out
relationship!”

“
Oh Jeez!
” she says shaking her head, as she does a lot with Turk, as he is always saying something off-the-wall. Then she perks to attention and says, “Hey… wait a minute, did you say
relationship
?” She locks her eyes to his, still being a bit silly.

“Ah, well, what I mean by that, is… well, you know…” Turk says, playfully stuttering, now looking at the floor.