Europa Mon Amour

Chapter 2

After several hours of feeling annoying and vibrations, hearing frigtening noise, and experiencing a mild G-force, we felt the ship fall silent. We got up and began the torturous process of removing our suits. I looked like a women trying to remove a girdle, which made Marie giggle. After removing our suits, we stashed them in special closets specifically designed to keep them clean and properly suspended.

Both of us wore the tight elastic heat resistant undergarment that covered everything except the hands, feet and face.

“I just thought of something,” I said, looking bewildered.

“What?” she asked, looking amused.

“I never gave it a thought as to what we would wear while on this mission.”

“They should have stocked clothing in the bins above our cots,” she said.

I stared at her for a moment before holding a hand up like a traffic cop. “I’ll tell you what; you go and get into more comfortable clothes while I spend some time here at the command station to make sure everything is working properly.”

She nodded and walked away. I watched her move up the wheel as if she were walking up a wall. Eventually, she ended up walking on the ceiling, but it was only an illusion because of the way that the crew compartment wheel creates artificial gravity.

I sat down and typed: COMA, WHAT IS OUR PRESENT STATUS?

COMA replied: EVERYTHING IS RUNNING SMOOTHLY, RYAN. WE ARE CURRENTLY TRAVELING AT 230,500 MILES PER HOUR.

I typed: DISPLAY PARAMETERS, COMA.

The readings for each of the ship’s systems were neatly displayed on the main screen. Most of it was superfluous because there was nothing we could do about it if anything was out of normal range.

I typed: THANK YOU, COMA.

COMA replied: YOU ARE WELCOME, RYAN DEAR.

I smiled. Obviously the people who programmed COMA had a sense of humor.

Marie eventually returned wearing a white short sleeved tee, shorts and flip-flops. I examined her nicely curved legs and her soft smooth skin before looking at her face.

“Do I meet with your approval?” she asked with a serious expression.

I put on a serious face. “Actually, you don’t.”

Her eyes grew large for a second before narrowing. “What?”

“You’re hiding the left side of your face from me. Why?”

I saw her eyes glisten for a moment before blinking several times. “I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . I have a deformity.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “A deformity would prevent you from being an astronaut.”

“It’s a burn,” she blurted. “I was involved in an accident . . . a lab explosion and fire . . . I suffered a . . . “

“So, it’s not a deformity but rather a disfigurement. That’s different, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your job performance.”

She stared at me with confused eyes. I pulled my chair closer to hers and reached out to grab her face with my left hand and then use my right hand to sweep the hair away from the left side of her face. She had a patch of rough scarred purple skin that covered her cheek up to her left temple. Her left ear was only a rough gnarled facsimile of an ear.

“Hmm, I’ll bet that hurt.”

She tried to pull away, but I tightened my grip. “I want to examine this more closely, please.”

“You’re not appalled by it?” she asked, her eyes large with surprise.

“Absolutely not. It’s a burn. I’ve seen burns before, many much worse than this. There’s no need for you to hide it from me.” I smiled. “May I touch it?”

She didn’t respond so I gently explored the rough seared flesh that constituted the scar with my fingers. “Fascinating. I’m surprised that your hair didn’t get singed.”

“It did, but the underlying areas were spared.”

“Why couldn’t they do a skin transplant?”

“They tried but it failed. They said that my immune system is too active. I could have taken immunity suppressant medications, but I didn’t want to jeopardies my chances of getting an assignment.”

I released my grip. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She smiled for the first time. “You surprise me. Most people find my . . . they look at me as if I were a freak.”

“I’m not like that,” I said. “I see a beautiful girl with an insignificant cosmetic defect.”

She frowned. “You are mocking me.”

“Not at all,” I immediately retorted. “I’m just trying to tell you that I don’t have a problem with your scar. You don’t have to hide it from me.”

She stared at me as if she were not sure of my statement. For a second there I thought that she was going to cry, but she snapped out of it and returned to her professional aloofness.

“What’s our status?”

“COMA said that everything is running smoothly. All system parameters are in the normal range. We are on course for Jupiter with an ETA of five months.”

“What will we do for all of that time?” she said, pouting. “This vessel certainly doesn’t need our attention.”

“Well for one thing, we need to stay in top notch physical condition,” I said. “The real fun will come when we land on Europa and use the submersible to penetrate the ice crust and explore the ocean underneath.”

“How are we going to exercise in this cramped crew compartment?” she asked.

“We can run around the wheel and there’s a resistance machine in a wall compartment that we can use to build up our upper body strength.”

She pouted. “That sounds boring. I don’t understand why they trusted this important mission to two teens like us.”

I rubbed my face. “I’ve been wondering about that myself. The only conclusion I could come up with is that we’re expendable.”

“We may be expendable, but this very expensive ship isn’t,” she said sounding offended.

“That’s true, but think about it this way. The ship is able to get to Jupiter and Europa on its own. The only dangerous part of the mission is going down into Europa’s ocean. If we don’t report back after a given time period, they could simply make the ship return and let someone else try.”

She sighed. “I hadn’t though of it that way. That makes sense.”

 “We have no idea what’s under Europa’s ice crust. There could be all sorts of life there or it could be nothing more than a dead ocean. If we do find life and return to tell about it, we’ll be celebrities.”

“If we die there, we’ll be forgotten,” she said.

“I’d prefer to be more positive. Failure is not an option.”

Her eyes expressed tacit approval of that optimistic mantra.