BENEATH - A Novel (24 page)

What bothered her most was the knowledge that only she possessed—if Peterson's infection became deadly, she doubted there was anything she
could
do to save him. The time it would take to understand and study what the alien substance was doing to his body could only be completed post mortem. Her only consolation was that the infection seemed localized. Chances of the substance infecting another crew member were slim to none. Peterson might die, but the rest of them, barring another accident, would survive.

Choi sighed and looked up at Jupiter, watching the pink lightening flash. Every streak lit up a portion of Jupiter's surface, each the size of Europa itself, maybe bigger. She marveled at the raw power of the planet. If she had been anymore entranced by the sight, she may not have noticed the flicker of motion at the edge of the Europhid field.

Whipping around toward the field, Choi's headlamp illuminated the area with a sudden brilliance that the Europhid's seemed to lean away from. But other than that, nothing appeared to be moving.

Maybe they react to the lightning on Jupiter? Choi thought.

To test her theory, Choi extinguished her headlamp. The surrounding area plunged into darkness.
 
After a minute, her eyes began to adjust. The bright stars to her right and left seemed more brilliant and more numerous than ever. But the most astonishing sight was the flashes of light within Jupiter's clouds.

She gazed up through the darkness of space and saw more and more flashes of light. They were dimmer than the others, which she assumed was why she couldn't see them with her headlamp on—like looking at the stars in the city. Her bright light overpowered the distant dim light.

But the brighter flashes, the planet sized ones, were so brilliant that Choi felt herself occasionally squint from the light. She then noticed that the light from the brighter flashes of light, the pink, yellow and blue, all reached the surface of Europa. With each flash the ice and Europhid field were briefly and faintly illuminated.

Throughout a series of these flashes, Choi watched the Europhid field. The motion was faint, but she could see that they reacted to the light. If they react to light this dim, Choi thought, the sun's light must be extremely powerful. Choi wondered if this extreme sensitivity to light was part of how the Europhids survived in such an extreme environment.

The lightning stopped flashing as the storm mellowed. The landscape descended into a ceaseless darkness. If Choi couldn't feel the seat of the ATV beneath her and the warmth of her breath within her facemask, she might believe she'd entered limbo. She forced herself to look toward the horizon occasionally, to focus on the small band of stars visible past the outline of Jupiter. They looked brilliant, but the light they cast on the surface of Europa was imperceptible to Choi's eyes.

But what about the Europhids?

A flash of light, which may have been on par with previous displays, though it seemed brighter, shot through the clouds of Jupiter, momentarily revealing a mass of angry swirled clouds. Choi looked away from the harsh light and down at the Europhid field.

What she saw made her shudder.

Choi gripped the sides of the ATV.
I must have seen wrong
, she thought.
It isn't possible
.

Moving slowly, Choi reached for her headlamp and switched it on. The blinding glow of light shot stabs of pain through her eyes and she had to shield her face from the majority of the view while she readjusted. She only hoped her eyes adjusted before... No.

She was wrong.

She
had
to be.

Choi moved her hands slowly away from her face and looked out over the Europhid field. The majority of the field looked the same. The closest area, only ten feet from her perch atop the ATV, held Choi's gaze. She had taken samples, at least thirty of the Europhids, and sealed them in level five containment units. She had carefully and methodically tagged them and placed them inside the ATV's storage trailer.

But the eight foot swath of ice she had cleared was now covered. The Europhid's were back!

Choi slid off the ATV and moved toward the back of the ATV's trailer. She kept a close eye on the field as she moved. Her breath came slowly, and her head began to pound with tension. She shook her hands out as she reached for the trailer's handle. She took hold of the door and unlatched it. Swinging the door open, Choi jumped back, unsure of what she would see.

She felt a measure of relief when she saw that all the containers were still fixed in their places and secure. At least the Europhids weren't smart enough to mount an escape from sealed containers. Still…

Choi turned her attention to the field, which was as innocent looking as ever. She scoured the area with her eyes, making sure she didn't miss anything, any kind of clue to what really happened here. She continually reached the same conclusion. The new Europhids didn't spontaneously grow to replace the ones she had removed.

It was much worse than that.

When darkness had enveloped the area and blinded Choi to her surroundings, the field—the entire field of Europhids—had inched toward her.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*
  
*

An attack never came.

Connelly had expected a violent reaction from the creature. She had no idea why, but the twenty-five foot creature just hung in the water, staring at them through its two charcoal eyes. Connelly wasn't sure who was more curious, this creature or her? It certainly seemed to be watching them.

The beast was the approximate shape of a blue whale, wide and tall at the head and tapering back toward the rear. In place of flippers this creature had undulating "wings" like that of a manta ray, only these ran from the head all the way to the tail. Its black eyes were placed one each side, much like a terrestrial mammal. Its gaping jaw opened vertically, like elevator doors. The creature's gargantuan mouth opened and closed causing its body to expand and shrink—breathing water.

Beyond all of the outstanding features on the behemoth was the single attribute that garnered Connelly and Robert's attention in the first place. Its skin was clear, like a pane of glass and its organs and veins glowed with vibrant colors. A beating blue heart rested at the center of the creature's body, partially obscured by various innards, but it could be seen inside, thumping away.

Connelly thanked God they thought to install cameras on the outside of TES. This was footage she would want to see over and over again.

A deep cry exploded from the creature's mouth, causing a rainbow of colors to ripple across its exterior, from front to back. It was a light show the likes of which Connelly had never seen, not even on the most dazzling of Earth's bioluminescent denizens.

Robert fell to his knees, his hands shaking. "Holy…"

Then the response came.

From behind.

Connelly whipped around. Swimming past, no more than twenty feet away was an entire pod of the creatures. They had snuck up in silence while she and Robert were captivated by the smaller one outside the sphere. Connelly realized the creature they'd had the staring match with was the smallest of the group, perhaps just a baby.

Connelly kneeled next to Robert. They looked like two praying saints, but neither could speak a word. The only sound that escaped their mouths was the occasional gasp as they were simultaneously gripped by awe and fear.

Twenty-odd creatures swept past, gently propelled by their wavering wings. The largest of the group looked to be at least seventy-five feet long. With each roll of flesh, the wings shimmered bright pink. Connelly realized that this is what they had seen from a distance. The colors from the interior of the creatures were beautiful but in sheer brilliance, the light emitted from the outer edge of the wings was staggering.

Connelly's vision blurred from tears, swirling her world into a tie-dyed rainbow. She quickly wiped the tears from her eyes, which beaded on the outside of her PMS and rolled off onto the floor. She didn't want to miss a second.

Another call beckoned, returning Connelly's attention back to the baby. A gentle rocking caused Connelly and Robert to fall forward, but both were able to catch themselves on the console that ringed the interior of the sphere. When they looked back up, the baby's right eye starred at them from only inches away. Only the thick glass of the TES sphere separated them.

Connelly reached out and placed her hand on the glass, wishing to God she could touch the creature, just once. A distant call sounded, followed by three dull clicks. The baby, Robert and Connelly looked toward the source. The pod was moving off. The baby called back and was answered promptly. The message was clear, even to Connelly;
time to go
.

The baby turned back to the sphere and let out a high pitched whine. Then, with a graceful twitch of its wings, floated back, spun around and chased after the pod. As Connelly's vision tracked the baby's retreat, she realized that her eyes had completely adjusted to the dim environment. She could see the bottom, hundreds of feet below, alive with color. Creatures scurried back and forth. Multi-colored plants and coral-like organisms swayed brilliantly in the deep ocean currents. In the water, schools of bioluminescent fishlike creatures of every size, shape and color, darted about. This was a massively intricate ecosystem on par with Earth's.

 
"Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" Robert said.

Connelly knew the answer—no—she hadn't even dreamt of anything so magnificent. But she never spoke the word. Her mind was elsewhere. Despite the splendor surrounding them, she couldn't move past the brilliance of the bioluminescent whale-like creatures—bio-whales, she decided to call them. They displayed intelligence equal to a dolphin's, at least, if not more, and she couldn't accept just letting them swim away.

They might never see them again. They had to be observed for as long as possible.

Connelly stood quickly, her body language resolute. She strode to the sphere's main console and worked the keyboard with electrifying fervor.

Robert snapped his head toward Connelly, recognizing the series of keys she just struck. "What are you doing?"

Connelly smiled wide. "Hold on, Robert. We're going for a swim."

During their previous excursion on the moon, Willard found it near impossible to tear his eyes away from the view above, but with the majority of the sky blotted out by Jupiter's dark side and the remainder of the view obscured by TES's bright lighting, there wasn't much to look at. Willard turned to the control panel and began a series of simple diagnostics on the TES system. Unfortunately, Robert had designed the system so well that, not only was there nothing worth reporting, but the results had come back within seconds.

Willard decided that with twenty minutes before the next scheduled check-in from Connelly, he had time to take a stroll. The hard metal of the TES panel connected solidly with his booted feet and sent him further into the air than the ice. He reached the ice in six large bounds and jumped out onto it. After spending so much time in the Antarctic, the frozen texture of the moon's surface felt familiar to him. Some of the tension wearing at him faded.

He hated being left behind, especially on a mission that was potentially dangerous. He had pleaded his case to Connelly on several occasions, explaining in detail all the problems that could arise, all of the situations that might require his physical presence. But she was hard set in her ways, as usual. She wanted him topside, even insisted he could do more for them from the surface. Willard cringed. He was becoming a grunt on this mission.

Sure, he still wasn't a scientist, but his skills were the ones that kept curiosity from killing the science cat. What was worse about all the waiting was that he knew something was going on down there, and he was missing it. He could hear the excitement in Connelly's voice last time they spoke. And the confusion about the lights being on. And that sound...

What the hell did they find
?

Willard stopped and looked back at TES. All was quiet. The cranes sat still, holding the cables in place directly over the melted hole. The bright lights illuminated the black metallic surface of TES, and made the ice around its border glow like a white hot sun. Through the light, Willard could see the green screen of the control console. It hadn't changed. Everything was normal.

Sighing inside his facemask, Willard looked up expecting to see the black nothingness of Jupiter, but instead found himself looking up at a spectacular light show. All across Jupiter he could flashes of light zipping from horizon to horizon. His brow furrowed as he tried to remember hearing anything about this aspect of Jupiter. During their training back at the GEC headquarters, they had been fed an annoying amount of information about Jupiter, Europa and the other neighboring moons, but he couldn't recall any information or images that showed these lights.

Maybe no one knows about them? Maybe I'm the first person to discover them!

Willard's mind began making mental leaps, plotting how the discovery would alter his future. Of course, they'd name the lights after him, Willard's Display or Ethan's Lights. He laughed.
That
would never happen.