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Jupiter's Child

by Lawrence Dagstine

      Her black hull looked as though it had been dropped gently on the surface of the ice like a confectioner’s decoration on a white cake frosting. It seemed inconceivable that an interplanetary ice barge such as the Weston could even chisel its way through Europa. It was hard enough just transporting the snow excavation ship by negative matter freighter from Earth.

      “We’re here for some bacteria,” Commander Saul M. Shrine said to his staff. “Earth’s overpopulated, the rich and the affluent are buying up all the real estate on Mars, and it’s the explorer’s jobs--that means us--to please an ever-growing human populace by going out there and finding a possible colonization core for future generations.”

      “Hey, I guess the Company doesn’t pay us the big bucks for nothin’,” his chief officer, Henry Geotz, smiled and said. “Besides, nice pension, universal healthcare, and some big incentives for my children’s children should they ever expand themselves.”

      “Exactly.” Saul blinked at him. “And our names in the National Geographic Archives. So let’s make this mission work to our advantage, boys.”

      Saul, a naturally husky old man, looked like a well-stuffed teddy bear in his radiation and foam heat-pressurized suit. He had the most advanced fiber optic camera equipment slung over both shoulders, a special communication transfeeder in his helmet for talking, and a polarized face shield. Now, as he was trying to slide down the side of the Weston, without damaging the ice fractures or his expensive equipment, he tested the transfeeder by relaying up: “Better get a lot of pictures. Oh, be careful of these fractures too. They’re thin. No one back home will believe this unless you do.”

      Geotz opened the second hatch and disembarked from the other side with team two. Geotz, younger and fair-haired, was the epitome of a middle-aged pro at ice climbing and surveying. “Know what you mean, Saul,” he responded through his helmet, looking at the frozen tundra before him. A remarkable and uncanny landscape, he thought. The artist-rendered images on microprocessors back home were nothing next to the real thing. The experience of itup close and personal. The surroundings were cool, calm and collected of methane ice, with hints of nitrogen and carbons from beneath the surface, and radiant frost particles which stretched as far as the human eye could see; not even the probes of yesteryear could identify all this scientific wonder.

      Geotz looked at Jupiter’s Child in all its majesty, for it was the same wonder that the rest of them felt. “Europa’s underground oceanic canals have part volcanic activity on the basin floors.” He pointed skyward, and team two looked to the north. “See those obelisks in conjunction with each other? The Company put those atmosphere processors up about thirty years ago. Heat from the basin floors beneath the ice help bring warmth and other natural resources up to the surface to create a breathable but filmy air. You might say it’s a form of manufactured oxygen. You can’t change the super cold temperatures on one of the outer satellites, but you can make it a little more traversable and bearable to endure.”

      “Teaching the kids a thing or two, eh, Henry?” Saul asked.

      “If I can pass some wisdom on to the next guy in line for my job, then hey, why not?”

      Later, when a path was navigated and made for the barge, and when Saul brought all of his chilled equipment back inside the warm ship, moisture from the air condensed and froze on them. In minutes his cameras and suit’s protective shell was encrusted in white rime, like the coils of a generator powered refrigerator. “Time to get these picks and berg feeders running,” he said, as he approached the operations deck. “The Carpheous Freight Liner should be back in two weeks, after it drops off their pyrite consignment. And that’s when we have to be ready for them to pick us up.”

      When the Weston submerged that afternoon, they could see on the giant geological landmass computer monitor a long cigar-shaped hole in the ice a few depths below them, and to Saul, it was the perfect outline and trail of a heated trench where oceanic bacteria could migrate for centuries. They had already seen colossal patches where evidence of it festered, and wherever there was dead bacteria there had to be living bacteria. They used their fusion propulsion bilges to generate speed and power within severely fractured waters, then set their course for the Northern Hemisphere. The Sedna Tract, some called it. All through the night they sped northward, the ice and bacteria composition detectors on analysis bearings and the geological computer banks scanning the surfaces in vain for thin patches of ice where volcanic ash might have existed or still exist. However, as night fell, their plans to surface precisely and successfully at the poles began to look hopeless.

      In the cafeteria, over a deliciously machine-processed three-course dinner, they took out their geological--and a few past biological--findings and discussed what they should call attention to: the vital areas of Europa’s thin ice fractures beyond the Sedna Tract and in the pole regions. Actually, they were newly frozen leads from recent volcanic activities in the area, but for the otherworldly explorer or researcher that seemed an awkward way to put it. Geotz came up with an idea and offered up, “Why don’t we pay attention to the crystal ducts? The trench walls are pretty much lined with them. There’s proof refractive bacteria and micro-organisms lived for a short period of time in these stalactite-littered waters.”

      That is what the icy crystal formations along the Sedna Tract resembled: stretches of blue and purple-hued glass, like sharp jewels, in an otherwise black ocean, never melting but melding instead over billions of years. Ice crystals or crystal ducts they would be.

      But they found no such crystals as they approached the Northern Hemisphere. They cruised slowly, adjusting their course carefully as Saul finally brought them into the spot where every direction now went south. It was about sunrise again by this time, and crew and engineers alike had used the GMAST and measured the distance from the Sedna Tract region with a compass beacon attached to one of the propulsion-activated nose chisels outside the Weston. Saul determined position the old-fashioned way, by observation of a far off sun, and when he was certain they reached the poles, he planted every ounce of data and new coordinates into the computer. Soon the technology before them took over with the new coordinates.

      With the marvel of inertial navigation, they had reached their destination with little difficulty, but resurfacing would be a different matter, for there was not a sign of thin ice to break through. The barge, now acting as a submarine, 300 feet below, Saul raised the lanthoscope—or Sightseer, his special nickname for the underwater landscape periscope —and concentrated on what was in front of him and above the upper shell. Nothing. Not even the faintest glimmer shone through the fractures above; they were sealed in.

      They began to intersect-search in the immediate area, proceeding at very slow speed and using Sightseer’s guiding lights as well as the ice detectors and every computer. Still nothing. Well, Saul thought, they would just have to keep circling and wait and see; being trapped beneath foreign waters wasn’t something to be happy about. Several hours went by and several ideas were brought, once again, to the operations deck.

      And then they saw it. At first it was just a faint glimmer of sea blue and snow-white, visible only through Sightseer’s lens. It looked very small for the barge, but it was worth investigating. Carefully they maneuvered under it, the trace on their detectors displaying thin ice. They drifted up to 100 feet. The crystal ducts, slightly visible, were doglegged in shape and treacherously smaller this time; no one had ever attempted to break anything like this, and never on another world; even fusion propulsion generators or reactors could do little in outer satellite waters.

      However, if they could break the upper layeror even pop the ice like a needle going through a balloonthey would be held tightly as in a vise, with no damage from drifting; hopefully, the chisel and feeders would plow and tear and take over from there. “Twenty-five seconds available at this ascent. Stand by to hit the ice,” he said. “Bring her up.”

      “All right, people! You heard the man. Flood her down!” Geotz said. Reluctantly the barge began to sink back into the cold black depths. Time was short on such propulsion-activation, and they couldn’t afford to waste their reserve bilges. Patiently they realigned her under the opening and tried again; but again they missed.

      “We’d better try the offsets,” said Lincoln, one of the on-deck officers. He calculated how far to the side they should position themselves in order to come up and find bearing. Painstakingly they were maneuvered into a suitable position. Saul continued listening to his staff for other options. But again, as they started upward, Lincoln reported heavy ice overhead. The top of the Weston was only 30 feet below the ice, and they forced to lower Sightseer and the front chiseling needle, otherwise risk losing it in the ascent. Without a lanthoscope, too, they were blind except for the computer monitors, which showed only a fuzzy edge of the heavier sheets and fractures.

      Saul considered some more. “Being trapped in a thick arctic trench beneath Martian waters and some of the waters back home never pleased me, men, but we have to make it work. If we could do it there, we can do it on Jupiter’s Child. Keep trying.”

      When Geotz noticed the sullen expression on Saul’s face, he got up from his terminal and tiptoed on over to him. “What’s going on, Saul?” he asked in a whisper.

      “What do you mean what’s going on? Nothing. Trying to break the ice, resurface the Weston—hopefully, in the poles—and leave this godforsaken Sedna Tract behind us.”

      “Don’t bullshit me. I’ve been doing these interplanetary barge and sub gigs ten years with you, and I know when something’s wrong.”

      Saul was silent for a moment. “What makes you say that?”

      “Well, for starters, instead of using the fusion or propulsion bilge reserve power supply, you decided to absorb all power from the outer drills, chisels, and feeders’ system to try and ascend fully. You don’t want to waste the fusion power, means it’s there for us as a last resort.” There was another moment of significant silence. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

      Saul now faced his chief officer. “Keep your fingers crossed. And let the staff officers try and come up with a solution. Right now I have to save that extra power.”

      “But what if it can get us out?”

      “It might,” the commander then considered, “but we’d be stuck off course, where the Carpheous can’t set down to retrieve us. Yes, the Northern Hemisphere. We have plenty of processed foods, but once the Weston’s outer shell freezes, then the cold works its way into the inside. We’d freeze to death in about three months once the heat and generators go. And like I said, there’s no place, no area in the poles, no iceberg large enough for the Carpheous to land. Europa would be our graveyard.”

      “Well, I hope you do know what you’re doing. I didn’t spend almost ten years of my life in an Ivy League aerospace naval academy just to turn forty on some distant rock and freeze to death.”

      Now the top of the barge was only 20 feet under the ice. “Are we stuck?” Lincoln was unsure. “No, wait—” He flipped two switches on the bank above his head. “Heavy ice, still thick!” The strain was apparent in his voice.

      Saul had tried but could wait no longer. “Flood her down—emergency!” he snapped. The wave of air pressure slapped into his ears as Lincoln and Geotz released the negative flow tanks and sent tons of subzero water into the ship. “Suit up, then sit back down! Ten minutes is all you’ve got!” Quickly they fell away from the ominous ice cliffs.

      “Blow negative to the mark,” Geotz ordered, as he put on his helmet and threw down the face shield. He tried to regain control of the now swiftly falling Weston. The bellows of Europa’s air, unprocessed from the atmosphere towers on the surface, filled the deck.

      “Blow secured; negative at the mark,” reported Lincoln. “All staff and crew suited.”

      “Raise the heat too,” Saul pointed, as he strapped himself down. “Things are going to get very icy in here.”

      “Okay. Shut the flood, vent negative, pump from auxiliaries to Europa’s ocean,” said Lincoln. Slowly their downward momentum slackened and finally, far deeper than they had intended to go, they were once again motionless.

      Beneath a protective face guard, beads of perspiration were on Saul’s brow; he could sense the feeling of strain throughout the ship. With grim determination, they started all over again. “There are heavy pressure ridges coming from the crystal ducts on either side of this opening at the dogleg corner,” Lincoln reported a second later.

      Once more Lincoln calculated the offsets required, allowing for a little less drift. The crew attempted to set the barge near the corner of the calcified-looking ridges and, above all else, avoid the sharp crystalline areas Lincoln had mentioned and the bottom layers of the trench itself. The whir of the trimming pump announced their slow ascent.

      “Damn! The ice is still too thick,” intoned Geotz with a voice of doom. But there was enough room and maneuverability to bring Sightseer down again.

      “Wait!” All eyes were on Lincoln and all the staff’s hearts skipped a beat. “Thin ice. I see a thin blanket.” Everyone started clapping. “There she is, guys,” he exclaimed joyfully and sighed. “Looks safe enough to ascend.”

      The visual systems showed everything up close. They braced themselves, and with a sickening lurch they hit and broke through. “Don’t let her drop, Geotz,” Saul warned. He had the feeling of having a tenuous foothold at the top of an impossible peak; even more, he was reluctant to surface blind, but when the Sightseer went up it revealed nothing but a field of blue on blank white.

      He glanced at the diving instruments; they were holding their position well. Then he looked at the outer chisels and drilling equipment. Intact. If they could break through it completely, now, they would be the first oceanic research barge on another world to ever accomplish such a feat. “Stand by to surface at the Hemisphere,” he then announced over the communication system.

      Preparations were made swiftly, and Geotz turned to him with a smile. “Hey. Sorry I ever doubted you. Ready to surface?”

      Slowly they blew the tanks completely and the Weston moved reluctantly upward. It was apparent they were under the heaviest ice yet, but not like before. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the upper hatch was far enough above the ice to be opened.

      The barge was free.

      “Get the chisels and drills operating,” Saul called out. “Don’t stand around, men. We should have had momentum building in those nose feeders long ago!”

      Geotz laughed. “You heard the man,” he said. “Get your picks and gear and open that primary hatch!” Everyone did as they were told and raced up the ramp.

      Saul left the bridge, and both he and Geotz were struck by the first heavy winds they had experienced so far on Europa. “Atmosphere processors seem to be working up in the north,” he said, “but you better keep your shields on just to be sure.” The subarctic winds howled and swirled across the open ramp, laying expanse to a whole new icy tundra. The stinging frost particles cut at their suits like flying sand and daggers. Heavy blueish-gray clouds hung in the sky; the impression of a volcanic basin beneath the ocean at work and the impression of a stormy twilight about to fade into night. Geotz was mostly impressed that there was some kind of precipitation at all, especially in the north.

      After setting up the lighting equipment and a brisk walk on the icy summit, Saul and Geotz told the staff that they had noticed something about their new surroundings. They had remembered the underwater crystal ducts along the Sedna Tract. Ice crystals. Much to their surprise, and upon closer inspection, they saw a trail of them—and strewn in the same stalactite fashion—leading up to the Hemisphere’s peaks.

      Lincoln climbed up to the side of a ridge and knelt down with his detectors. “Fellas, I think you should have a look at these crystal formations,” he said through his helmet. “As if there’s something inside them.” Down below, the Weston was hammering its front and back chisels into the heavy fractures, pounding and drilling methodically.

      When Saul and Geotz climbed up to Lincoln’s part of the summit, the commander of the mission said jovially, “Good thing we didn’t give up on Jupiter’s Child yet. There may still be hope for this frozen ball.”

      “And the human race,” noted Lincoln, “in time to come.”

      Geotz couldn’t see at first. “Looks like the same crystalline formations as before, only above the surface this time. The Sedna Tract’s ducts were more defined.”

      “Look closer…”

      Geotz knelt down and put his eyes on what was frozen in-between the ice, and in the very middle of its core. “Mother of—” He was ecstatic, but refused to show it. “It can’t be! The bacteria?”

      Saul smiled through his polarized face shield, using the microscopic filter processors to see what Geotz saw. “The bacteria we’ve been looking for.” He began melting the crystal. “We’ll bring this back to Carpheous’s lab for research. The results, with our technology, and if properly tended to in a warm environment, may open doorways yet for the colonization of Europa.”

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