Europa Mon Amour

Chapter 16

Our ship was near Enceladus, which meant that it was time for us to go down to the surface. We got into our radiation hardened spacesuits and went through the tortuous procedure of boarding the shuttle lander.

“Well, this is it,” I said after we were stuffed into our seats on the lander. “Please Lord, keep us safe.”

Marie made a sign of the cross.

After the shuttle bay door opened, I activated the launch sequence. The shuttle slid out of the bay and moved ahead of the ship before the breaking engines fired to drop us down to Enceladus’ surface. I took over manual control to begin the final approach.

“Six to the left,” Marie said.

I twitched the joystick to the left.

“Up three.”

I moved the stick forward a bit.

“Down four.”

I twitched it back.

“Slow to 1.2.”

I moved the throttle back slightly.

“Right there,” she said, pointing at a clear area near the saucer-shaped craft.

I hit the thrusters to slow our descent and put in as near to the alien object as possible. The engines shut down and we were on the surface.

“That was easier than Europa,” I said.

“We’re about fifty meters from the alien craft,” I said. “We should be able to walk there.”

“The gravity is only 0.013,” she said. “That’s almost like walking on air.”

“We’ll have to be careful not to start bouncing,” I said. “That could be dangerous.”

“We’ll do all right,” Marie said, smiling.

We cracked the hatch and climbed down to the surface, making us the first humans ever to set foot on a moon of Saturn. We were immediately mesmerized by Saturn’s majesty with its magnificent rings dominating the sky. Although still blazingly bright, the sun was a lesser light in the sky at this distance.

The surface of Enceladus was a lot more rugged than I had anticipated. We had to be careful not to brush against a sharp outcrop of ice. At this low of a temperature, ice could be as sharp as a steel knife.

The walk to the alien craft should have taken a few minutes, but we proceeded carefully and took a full ten minutes. A thin layer of ice covered the alien object. Roughly twelve meters in diameter, the object was basically a saucer with a curved upper surface, making it appear as a low mountain of ice. The mystery for us to solve was how to gain entry.

We walked around it and soon found something unexpected.

“That looks like an opening,” Marie said, pointing at what appeared as dark round mark on the side of the object.

I went up to it and used a chisel to crack the thin layer of ice covering the roughly round dark mark. My tool made a hole. I hacked away to create a round hole roughly the size of the entrance. I activated my lamp on top of my helmet and ducked to climb inside. Marie followed me with her lamp activated. The beams of light from our lamps illuminated an alien interior. This became an exciting as well as a frightening moment for us. I noticed that my helmet readout for my bio-sensors wee indicating that my respiration and heart rate had risen. I’m sure that Marie was experiencing the same.

A small tunnel led to a central round chamber. My lamp revealed all sorts of strange objects hanging from the chamber’s ceiling. They looked like those disco balls from the seventies. The chamber had two chairs, but they were unlike our chairs. They appeared to be made of metal and curved into a pouch-shape.

What we saw in the pouch chairs made us cringe.

“They’ve been reduced to bones,” Marie said. “And, the bones are no longer connected.”

“I don’t like the looks of this,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“This craft had to have crashed here relatively recently,” I said. “The last survey of Enceladus took place last year. At this low of temperature, we should be finding a preserved body, not a bunch of bones.”

“Yes,” she said. “You’re right, but what could have happened to them?”

“I don’t want to think about that,” I said. “Something picked their bones clean.”

“Maybe they brought what ever did this with them,” she said.

“Or, it’s something on this moon,” I said.

“That would imply that whatever did this is capable of living in a near vacuum at extremely low temperatures and high radiation levels.”

“I think we’ve been had,” I said.

“How?”

“We were sent on these missions to discover extraterrestrial life, but I believe that they wanted us to find a weapon.”

“A weapon?”

I looked at the entrance. “Yes, and I think that the weapon has found us.”

She turned to look. “Oh my God!”

“We have to get the hell out of here,” I said. “But, whatever they are, they’re not moving that fast. Let’s gather up some of these bones and haul them to the shuttle.”

We wasted no time in gathering up the bones and placing them in our sample bags. I made recording of the interior of the alien ship before we took our leave.

We could see what we were up against. Crab-like creatures were slowly making their way toward us. They weren’t moving that fast, but there were thousands of them.

“They must have come out of a fissure,” I said.

“That means that they’re very tenacious,” she said. “Not only is the temperature only 40 K here, the radiation is very high, probably in the hundreds of REM’s, and there’s almost no atmospheric pressure. We wouldn’t stand a chance if they get to us.”

“Let’s boogie,” I said.

We stepped up our pace back to the shuttle, but something happened that put our plight in question. Marie tripped and fell. She bounced two times and landed on a sharp ice shard.

“I can’t get loose!” she cried as she struggled to pull her leg loose from a mound of ragged ice. “I’m stuck!”

I came to her and saw that an ice shard had snagged her suit. I tried to pull it off, but I had to be careful or I could end up puncturing her suit.

The creatures were slowly approaching us. They appeared to have armored shells and many legs. I could see why they are able to strip a living thing to the bone. They had two claw appendages that appeared to be powerful, but the real danger was a beak that resembled those of octopi. They looked like they could tear flesh as if it were cotton candy.

“Leave me,” Marie cried. “Save yourself!”

I ignored her. What a way to go. We would end up being torn to shreds by a life form from a stupid little moon out in the boondocks of space. I had the urge to run and leave her, but something made me stay and suffer my final fate with her.