Europa

June 30, 2048

During the training session today, everyone continued as they normally would. It was as if my outburst yesterday never happened, well it was almost as if it never happened. Commander Hunt was quieter than usual. To be fair though, I found the quiet to be a nice change of pace.

I figured I would just have to wait that out for a few days and that would be the end of it. I was quite surprised this evening when there was a knock on the door. When I opened the door, I was taken off guard when I saw Commander Hunt waiting outside.

He apologized for scaring me. I must have jumped when I saw him. Jessica was usually the only member of the crew who ever visited my room, other than an occasional visit from Richard.

He didn't beat around the bush. "I'm sorry I've been so hard on you," he started. "I've been frustrated with this whole mission, and I've been taking it out on you. You don't deserve that."

He went on to talk about how frustrated he was with NASA for organizing this mission in the first place. Knowing how big of a player I was in pitching this mission in the first place he felt like it was my fault it was being rushed.

Apparently, the last mission to Mars was supposed to be his last. After spending over twelve years in space he was supposed to retire, but NASA needed an experienced Commander to lead the Europa mission, especially since the majority of the crew was so inexperienced and would not have the time to train properly. Back when he was training to be an astronaut there was a two-year training process after the candidates were finely selected from a massive group. In the case of our current group, he felt that the members of the team were not ready for the challenges of space exploration.

He wanted to reject this mission originally, but in his opinion the crew would be doomed without him. He said he couldn't live with himself if he rejected the mission only to see something go wrong that he could have avoided.

Thinking about it from his side of things I could understand his frustration. He had been up to space on three separate missions. If he said that this was the least prepared group, he'd ever been a part of, that was concerning, especially knowing that things had gone wrong on his missions before. They were bound to.

Our team had been progressing nicely, but with one more week in Huston before we head for the sea to train with the submersible, I honestly could not say we were ready. I can't even say I myself was ready, and I was pulling my weight much better than some of the other candidates. Dr. Horvat in particular was struggling mightily with the recent urgency during training.

After apologizing again and admitting that he had noticed significant improvement in my performance he asked me a haunting question. "Is this all for nothing?"

First Lee had asked me the odds we would find what we were looking for and now Commander Hunt was asking me the same thing. The questions were the same, but the scenarios could not have felt more different. When Lee was asking, I couldn't even tell if he was serious. Now that Commander Hunt had asked, I could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

I took a moment to respond. To be honest, I don't even think Commander Hunt cared so much about the scientific applications to discovering alien life. Rather, he just wanted eleven and a half years of his time to mean something. I answered in the only way that seemed appropriate. "There's only one way to find out."