The Curse of Europa (12 page)

Fedoseev looks up and solemnly watches as the ladder extends upward automatically, giving him an eerie feeling of isolation. He isn’t feeling so good about himself any longer; and his tailbone is throbbing. He grabs one of Eagle-2’s landing legs, as the ground is still rumbling slightly. He looks up precariously, at the colossal ice mountain they are sitting next to. ‘
A ticking time bomb
!’ He looks around at the rest of the Europian landscape – it is still extraordinarily beautiful, but at this moment, he would like nothing better, than to get into Eagle-2 and get the hell off of this cursed moon.

Chapter 16:
Rescue

W
hen the door on the air-lock chamber opens to the inside of Eagle-2, Glover sees both Hicks and Turk slumped inside, unconscious. The health monitoring program (HMP) shows that Hicks is in worse shape at the moment, with an almost nonexistent pulse. Glover quickly grabs Hicks and lays him as flat as he can in the cramped EVA prep compartment and swiftly unfastens his helmet. His eyes are open in slits and his face is a slight bluish color. Glover grabs an oxygen mask from a device on the wall and flips an old style manual switch, which instantly creates a whirling/buzzing sound within the device. A hissing sound is now emanating from the mask which is attached to the device with a clear plastic tube. Glover places it over his own nose and mouth first to make sure it is dispensing oxygen. It is!

Hicks’ face is even a deeper color of blue now, as Glover places the oxygen mask over Hicks’ nose and mouth, pressing hard to make a seal. The HMP starts emitting a warning chime, indicating that it cannot detect a pulse from Hicks. He is just lying there limp and is not inhaling the oxygen. Glover tosses the mask aside and grabs a protective plastic CPR screen, from a nearby medkit.

His hands are shaking, as he fumbles with the pouch it is in, trying to get it open. He pulls hard on both sides, like he does when opening a bag of potato chips, and it finally gives; springing the CPR screen up in the air. He manages to catch it, as it falls in slow motion; he looks at it for a second or two and then says, “screw it,” and tosses it aside. He tilts back Hicks’ neck and plugs his nose, then takes a deep breath. He presses his lips hard around Hicks’ and exhales, causing Hicks’ chest to rise. He does this five more times.

The HMP still does not show a pulse, so he gets on top of Hicks and does fifteen chest compressions. This makes the HMP happy as the alarm ceases. When he stops the compressions, he is pleased to see that the pulse continues on its own; as it would be impossible to use the defibrillator while he is still in his bio-suit, and removing it could take too much time. Hicks is now taking choppy breaths on his own. Glover grabs the oxygen mask that is still hissing and places it over the nose and mouth, which causes him to take some deeper breaths. The HMP is getting happier as his blood oxygen content is increasing as well.

All of a sudden, Hicks’ eyes snap open and he starts coughing, rolling over onto his side. In between coughs, he is gasping, sucking in air in long deep inhales. Tears are trickling from his watery eyes. This goes on for about 30 seconds before it starts to subside.

“…Commander, are you okay?” Glover asks again; however, this is the first time Hicks actually hears him. He has his hand on Hicks’ arm, slightly shaking him to grab his attention.

“Yes, {cough cough wheez} I’m fine. I’m fine,” responds Hicks in a raspy voice, still breathing irregular. “Where is Turk and {cough wheez} Fedoseev?”

As Glover helps him sit up he points into the air-lock chamber. He sees Turk, still in his slumped position. “Is he, is he okay {cough}?” Hicks asks, deep down fearing the worst.

“Well, he is breathing on his own and his vitals aren’t too bad, but I haven’t checked him out yet because
you
had totally stopped breathing, and I needed to work on you first. Do you think you can move now?”

Hicks pulls his feet out of the air-lock chamber and slowly pulls himself up on the bench. Then he asks, “What about Fedoseev?”

Glover responds, as he is pulling Turk out of the air-lock, “He’s still enjoying the scenery outside, until I reset the air-lock chamb---” Glover stops mid-sentence as Eagle-2 starts to shake again. “I don’t like these tremors… not at all!”

As Hicks can be heard communicating with Fedoseev on the com, Glover continues to work on Turk. He removes his helmet and then the shiny tinfoil type blanket that was wrapped around his ungloved hand.
‘Oh crap’
he thinks to himself as he sees the hand. Touching it reveals that it is ice cold and actually still has ice crystals on it that are just starting to melt. It is bluish red and looks eerily like a latex glove that someone blew up like a balloon. He is going to have to cut off the sleeve of the $220,000 bio-suit, in order to get him out of it.

“How you doing out there Fedoseev?” Hicks asks.

“Vell, doing fine, good to hear from you. I had not heard any ting for over 5 minutes. You okay - yes? And Turk too - yes?”

“Yes, thanks to Glover. He is working on Turk right now. We’ll have to get him up out of the EVA compartment before we can reset the air-lock. It will be another 15 or 20 minutes. In the meantime, you need to move the rover. It looks like you have it right under the LM, which will be a bad thing during takeoff – which we
will
be doing with-in the hour, due to the seismic activity.”

“Acknowledged,” responds Fedoseev, relieved to hear that they will be leaving soon. He hops in the rover and slowly backs it up. When it is clear he puts it in forward and turns it around to get it a little further away. He sees the rover tire tracks that leads to their drill location, and gets a sickening feeling about their failed mission, and of Evans. He knows that their nuclear heated torpedo probe,
may
still be drilling, and they
may
be able to remote control the aquatic explorer from orbit; if Turk is stable enough for them to stick around. But he feels sick that they don’t have any of their surface samples. He had collected three buckets full, but left them at the drill site in their haste to help Turk and Evans.
‘Another Europa Failure, maybe this moon is cursed!’
he thinks to himself in Russian.

The rumbling has somewhat subsided, with just a few aftershocks here and there. While he still wants to get off this frozen rock as soon as he can, the scientist in him would like to rescue some of the mission. If he has to wait around for 15 to 20 minutes, why couldn’t he return to their drill site and grab his samples? It only takes about 6 minutes in the rover. Then a few minutes to rescue the samples and check the drill, then 6 minutes back.
‘That’s my 15 minutes right there,’
he says to himself convincingly. He stomps on the accelerator of the rover and follows the tire tracks.

Turk is now out of his bio-suit and is starting to open his eyes, looking around wildly. “Juliana…,” he starts to say in a raspy voice, then his eyes widen and an expression of pain explodes on his face. He moans and grunts as he clinches his teeth, then raises his arm, taking a look at his hand. He quickly looks away and cocks his head back, clinching his teeth even harder as he groans.

“Turk, Turk, can you hear me?” Glover yells down, leaning over him.

Turk violently grabs Glover’s shirt with his good hand but all he can mutter is “ahhh, Damn… my hand!” then he lets go and slaps his good hand on the floor a few times.

“Glover, you need to get him something for the pain, or knock him back out!” Hicks shouts.

Glover grabs a small tube from the medkit and quickly pokes it into Turk’s arm. A small needle pops out and into Turk’s skin, releasing anesthetic with a short hissing sound. Within about five seconds, Turk quits slapping the floor and he becomes completely limp a few seconds later.

“Well shit!” Glover exclaims to Hicks, “now we have to get him upstairs while he is sleeping.”

Hicks climbs up to the next level, to pull up Turk such as he did in the air-lock, however, this is a bit easier as he is not struggling to breathe. They get Turk into his sleeping chamber and concoct a way to strap him in. It is not normal procedure, to have someone in their sleeping chamber during liftoff; however, this is the safest place for him in his current state. While Hicks finishes strapping in Turk, Glover goes down to the EVA compartment, to reset the air-lock for Fedoseev.

It takes almost nine minutes for Fedoseev to reach their drill location, as it seems the rover just isn’t moving as fast as he remembered. He quickly jumps off and loads the three buckets full of ice and surface samples into the back of the rover. He checks the status of the drill. The control panel is operational and it still has a data lock with the torpedo probe, but it has been stuck at its present depth for almost 45 minutes. There really isn’t anything he can do except mutter a Russian expletive and head back to Eagle-2. He jumps in the driver’s seat and punches down the accelerator. It starts to roll forward… but very slowly and jerky. It finally picks up some speed, but just seems to be going very slow.

He jumps a little as he hears Glover on the com say “Fedoseev, I just reset the air-lock, you are clear to board.”

“Copy that Eagle-2, but a few minutes it vill be.” He responds a little hesitantly, as he didn’t tell them what he was doing.

“A few
minutes
? What are you doing out there?” He hears Hicks now on the com. Hicks is up on the command deck, prepping Eagle-2 for takeoff. He pulls up Fedoseev’s video feed and is surprised to see he is driving the rover.

“Vell… vhile I vaas vaiting, figured I vould grab all samples I collected.” He says sheepishly.

“FEDOSEEV! I don’t think that was a great idea! Are you on your way back now?” Hicks grunts into the com, not very happy.

“Yes, but very slow. Right now rover is not moving too fast”

Hicks gestures a few commands into his console to bring up the rover’s component status. He sees the battery is down to a 7% charge and he has a little over half of a kilometer to go. Once he hits 5% the electric motor will cut out, the rover may not make it back.

“Well, the battery is almost dead! You will - ” Hicks was saying as another jolt of seismic energy rocks Eagle-2.

Directly in front of the rover a huge avalanche of ice and snow slides down one of the ice plumes, blocking the passage. Fedoseev stops and gazes at the pile of ice rubble, while an empty pit starts to eat away at his stomach. He realizes that Hicks was right and this was not a good idea.

Hicks announces the obvious into the com, “Well, that sucks! Hold tight.” As if Fedoseev was going anywhere.

“White-Bull-2, this is Hicks. Tucker are you still there?”

“Yes Eagle-2, this is Tucker, go ahead”

Hicks and Tucker had been conversing just a few minutes before, prepping for takeoff and rendezvous procedures.

“Mark, can you zoom in tight on the rover? Is there an alternate route Fedoseev can take, to get back here?” Hicks asks.

“I’ve got him in view now. Here, I’ll send you the video feed on channel 990.” Hicks looks at the aerial feed, while rubbing his temples.

After Tucker examines it, he gives his report; “It looks like the only route the rover could take, would be to back track for about 200 meters and head down that ravine. Then that ravine runs within 70 meters of where Eagle-2 is sitting.”

“Yeah, that’s about the only option.” Hicks responds with very little excitement in his voice. He continues, “But here’s the kicker, the rover’s battery is pretty much dead, at 6.8% power right now. I don’t think it will make it. I’m sure he can get down into the ravine just fine, but it will never make it back out.”

“Oh crap, that’s bad! I think either way he is walking then. He either climes over the avalanche rubble and walks back 500 meters, or he takes the rover down into the ravine and most likely walks back from wherever the rover dies. However, if it gets him even half of the way back, then that is probably less than 250 meters to walk.”

Hicks explains the options to Fedoseev, who opts to try the ravine with the rover; not relishing the idea of climbing over the avalanche. Plus, if he can manage to get the rover back, it wasn’t a wasted trip, as he would still have his samples.

Fedoseev turns the rover around and it slowly picks up speed, as he heads towards the edge of the ravine where he stops. As he looks forward, he can’t see the slope, so he stands up in the rover and peers over. The white blinding terrain is hard to gauge and he can’t really determine how steep it is. He sits down quickly, as he feels some shaking again, reminding him that he doesn’t have much time to ponder his decision. He slowly presses the accelerator and the front tires start to creep over the edge, then the rear tires start to make their way over as he feels the rover changing from horizontal, to more of a vertical orientation. All of a sudden, the rover isn’t so pokey any more, as it starts to race down the bumpy slope of the ravine.