The Curse of Europa (20 page)

The monster’s snout crashes into the columns, causing it to withdraw in pain and shake its head. A few of the upper most stones from one of the columns breaks off, and falls down to the sea floor. Betsy pulls at Evans again, swimming towards one of the cave openings. The monster swims up and looks over the top of the row of columns, but there is not enough room between the columns and the face of the mountain for it to enter. Evans looks up and can see the monster’s yellow eyes, glaring down at them over the columns, seemingly wondering what to do next in order to get at them.

It turns around and whips its massive tail at the columns, causing a few more rocks to crash down. One of the bigger rocks smashes into Betsy, pinning her tentacle tail to the sea floor; an obvious expression of pain explodes onto her face and she releases her grip on Evans. The monster takes another swipe at the columns, knocking a few more small rocks over, but the columns are holding.

Evans rushes over to Betsy and pushes on the huge rock, but it is very large and doesn’t budge. The monster is now swimming back and forth in front of the columns, like a prison guard keeping watch. It swims up and peers over the top of the columns again, and then swoops back down, frustrated. It randomly swats at the columns, again and again with its tail, but nothing happens. It swats a few more times to no avail. Whatever they used to build the columns, whatever they used to bind the rocks together, it was holding.

Evans pushes harder on the rock that is pinning Betsy down but she still can’t get it to move. It doesn’t even budge. Betsy shakes her head as if saying it is of no use.

The monster decides to perform another head butt, this time on purpose. It swims a few meters back, turns around, and then swims back at them, slamming the butt of its boney head into two of the columns. The columns hold and the monster shakes its head in pain. It paces a few more times and then swims out a few meters farther; obviously, its appetite is overriding its disdain of pain. It viciously kicks its tail, thrusts its body, and propels its fins to pick up speed, swimming as fast as it can. The monster bears down and smashes its head into the same two columns, the inertia causing its whole body to come crashing out of control, into the columns like a derailed train. One of the columns tilts forward and a few more rocks tumble off the top of both columns.

The monster is slowly recomposing itself from the impact, shaking its head again, and trying to figure out which way is up. A few more rocks fall off the column that tilted and then suddenly it starts to topple completely over, narrowly missing Evans and Betsy as it collapses to the sea floor.

Evans is still desperately trying to move the huge rock on top of Betsy. It is no use! Betsy grabs Evans’ arm again and shakes her, then points and gestures for her to get into the cave. But she can’t just leave! This creature… Betsy… saved her life just a few moments ago. If she hadn’t done so, she would be safe herself inside of the caves.

Evans looks over and sees some of the other Europians peering out of the caves, watching the action. She waves her arms up and down frantically and then gestures for them to come out and help. “HELP – PLEASE! I need help down here to move this rock! Jeez, don’t any of you CARE?” she yells out hopelessly, as if they could hear her – as if they’d understand. Most of them just keep looking out; a few turn around and go deeper into the caves, most likely understanding her plea after all, but yet unwilling to risk their lives to help.

As Evans is pondering what to do next, something smashes her in the back, hurling her forward towards the caves onto her hands and knees. As she flips around, she sees that it was the snout of the monster that pushed her. It has obviously recomposed itself and is resuming the attack. It is poking its snout in through the wider opening it created between the columns. She is out of reach now, but not Betsy! Betsy is ripe for the picking; and this thing still looks mighty hungry.

As she gets back up she feels the bulky pouch on her suit, and wonders if there is anything in there that would be of any use. ‘
The flare gun!’
she finally remembers. It still has one shot left and it is already loaded. It is not intended to be used as a weapon, but it may just work in this case.

The monster’s jaws start snapping at Betsy; plucking at her like a pair of long nosed tweezers, trying to latch on to something – trying to latch on to any part of her it can. Evans pulls the flair gun out of the pouch and half-runs, half-swims towards the flapping jaws, with adrenalin rushing through her body. She only has the one shot and she intends to make it count. When she is just centimeters away from the huge mouth,
the huge teeth
, snapping like a crocodile, she aims and waits for it to open wide.

“HERE… EAT THIS YOU UGLY SON OF A BITCH!!” she screams as she pulls the trigger.

Evans just watches in amazement as flames shoot out of the gun as the flare is released. The flare rockets directly into the monsters mouth, and then rockets part way down its throat. It instantly pulls back and shakes its head, crashing its head into more of the columns, causing another one to topple over backwards.

The monster squirms and flips around violently as its neck begins to emit a bright yellow glow. A blinding array of light beams shoot out of its neck, like a laser light show, as the flare burns completely through its skin. Then instantly, the light show stops as the flare runs out of fuel. The monster continues to squirm and flail around brutally for a few more seconds. It swims up and does a few circle flips, and then just starts to float down towards the bottom, with a few random convulsions. It lands upside down on the sea floor, one of the large side flippers still twitching; a cloud of red blood and burned skin fragments seeping out of the gaping hole in its neck.

Betsy just stares at the conquered monster in amazement and disbelief. What Evans doesn’t know, is that this one monster has been feeding on, and terrorizing, the Europians for decades. It was always this same one every time, as if this was its territory; or possibly there are no other ones, they really don’t know. All they know now is that a huge veil has been lifted, thanks to this stranger, this alien with strange skin and an even stranger head. An alien that can lob magic light balls of death and may even be intelligent enough to communicate at a basic level. It can at least repeat “hello” on its strange light source, that isn’t even connected to its body; and perform the greeting gesture. It can’t swim very well, but does seem intelligent, maybe even close to their own intelligence level, some of the Europians deduce.

Some of the other Europians are now coming out of the caves, now that it is safe. Evans turns to look at Betsy, and then to the large rock that is still pinning her tail down to the ground. She motions again for help and this time she gets it. About five of the larger Europians wrap their tentacle arms around the rock and start flapping their tails; then two of them actually dig their tails into the ground and push. This tips the rock just far enough for Betsy to pull herself out, using her arms to crawl on the sea floor.

Betsy tries to move her tail, but it is obvious that doing so causes considerable pain. Evans rushes over to Betsy and holds up her hand for the greeting gesture, hoping that this gesture may also let her know that she is thankful. Betsy places her hand to Evans for a few seconds then gives her a nod, then she grabs Evans’ hand and shakes it up and down a few times with a big smile.

Bud zooms over and latches onto Betsy’s back, tightly wrapping his arms around her neck. Betsy reaches around and strokes his back. Evans watches the touching moment in astonishment, knowing for sure that these creatures are not only intelligent, but compassionate, and loving. They are also fearful and self-preserving, as she witnessed from the lack of help she received in moving the rock. But yet, in Betsy’s case, she knowingly risked her life for Evans, and tried to get Evans to leave her behind, and urged her to head into the safety of the caves.

Evans checks her oxygen level and panics as she sees that she is down to only 11 minutes remaining. She needs to connect the antenna now and start transmitting the last hour of her life to the ship, her final hour, but oh what an hour it was! She sits on the sea floor facing Betsy who still has Bud on her back. They watch Evans intently as she carefully slips the backpack off and gently sets it down next to her. She grabs the antenna that is still dangling by the wire and pushes it into the slot and waits for a com-link.

Chapter 24:
Take Care

J
ust a few seconds after connecting the antenna, Evans gets a com-link connection with both ships and calls out, “Eagle-2, Eagle-2, do you copy? This is Doctor Evans, do you copy?”

She doesn’t have to wait long for a reply, as Turk has been staring at the radio display for the last 10 minutes. He instantly blurts back, “JULIANA! Thank - God! We were getting worried! Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine… for now anyhow,” then utters out a frail laugh; knowing that she won’t be able to say that for long. “Can you guys hear me okay? Have you started downloading my video recordings?”

“Yes, we are picking you up loud and clear actually, very little drop-out. Glover is accessing your bio-suit computer right now, to download all the video. My God… I just triangulated your position, how did you swim three Kilometers in your bio-suit in just an hour?” Turk asks.

“Well jeez, that’s a long story actually,” Evans responds, “let’s just say I hitched a ride. I guess you’ll have to watch the video to find out. It’s amazing actually! Hey… if my signal is better do you think you can bring up my live video feed?”

Turk looks at Glover, re-asking the question via a rise of his eyebrows. Glover responds, “Yeah… I think so, the signal is pretty good. I’ll keep it at just basic HD so it doesn’t slow down the data transfer of the video files too much.

“Yes,” Turk responds back to Evans, “Glover is working to bring up the feed right now. Why? Did you find your aliens? Or a dinosaur?”

“Well jeez… I’d have to answer YES! and ah… YES! to both of those questions,” Evans retorts with a little cockiness in her voice; looking at Betsy and Bud and then turning her head to glance at the corpse of the monster she had just put down.

Before Turk could question her on her response, Glover announces: “Okay, I’ve got the video feed coming up now, I’m putting it up on a big screen and you can pull it up on your own screens as well if you wish. It is very garbled right now though.”

A black image appears on the screens, then they see a large rock appear but the picture freezes there. The picture then goes to a mosaic of colorful blocks for a few seconds and then switches to a frozen image of Evans’ hand grasping the flashlight, near the sea floor. After a few seconds of that, suddenly they all snap their eyes open and stare in disbelief.

“What the hell are
those
things?” Hicks quickly asks after seeing a frozen image of Betsy and Bud on the screen.

Evans excitedly responds, “Those are my friends, the bigger one I’ve simply been calling Betsy and on her back is Bud. Bud is the first one I encountered. They have intelligence far greater than a primate, and they communicate with each other.”

“Hold on,” says Turk, “we are not getting a good video feed. Glover, can you fix it?” Glover motions some commands into his computer terminal frantically, then reports, “I think the video feed, combined with the upload of her video recordings,
is
just eating up too much bandwidth right now. But the recordings will be finished uploading in about 90 seconds, actually quicker if I turn off her video feed for now!”

“Okay do it,” Hicks interjects. Glover cuts off the video feed.

“So what
were
those things? Some kind of octopus?” Turk asks.

“Well… I don’t know, kind of. They have three tentacles. Two are used like arms and one used as a tail. But the most incredible thing is that they have a structured language. They have a bioluminescent organ on their chests that help them see down here in the dark, but they also use it to communicate. They are able to rapidly communicate, by blinking out patterns of varying lengths and intensities. Similar to Morse code. I sure hope you get my recordings, and I tried to narrate, but I really have no idea what I even said. I was scared to death when I first encountered them. I didn’t know if they wanted to say hello, or eat me!”

“Okay, the video upload is complete and the file integrity is good,” Glover proudly declares, “I got it all! I’ll turn back on the live video feed now.”

Evans continues, “Well they didn’t want to eat me, but… there was something else down here that did. In fact, it ate one of the Europians right in front of me, and was planning on me for dessert, I imagine. But Betsy saved me; pulled me to safety.”