The first sub was already in the water, wings opened full, moored to the E-DARES facility and with a gangplank rigged to an airlock in the stern-high vessel’s hull. A few more meters and this one would be down, safe and sound, as well.
The sub started swinging again, stern pivoting toward the ice. “Wilkes! Vottori! Get those boathooks out there! Stop that swing…stop it!”
This, he thought, would be the perfect time for the Charlies to come blazing up out of the badlands. But they didn’t, and the Manta continued its descent.
Ten meters, he told himself. It’s the same as 1.3 meters on Earth. If you fall, it won’t mean a damned thing.
Yeah. Not a thing except falling into water boiling and freezing at the same time.
Frank Kaminski had never cared for heights, and he’d never cared for deep, cold water. What the hell am I doing here?
It was a question with no satisfactory answer. He’d been a Marine for a lot of years now, and he’d been in some damned strange places—on Earth, on Mars, on the moon, and now on the alien ice of Europa. In fact, he was one of the handful of people who were members of the Three Planets’ Club, a rather elitist organization consisting of men and women who’d walked on at least two worlds besides the Earth. In fact, he’d been wondering if he was going to get to organize a Four Planets’ Club, once he got back to Earth.
He was no stranger to strangeness.
But the sight of that boiling, steaming water…
It was like an infinitely deep, churning pit, calling to him with a terrible, wrenching vertigo. It would be so easy to let go…to fall…
It was as though he could sense something, no—some thing…calling to him. Some thing filling him with a vast and swirling fear.
But that was impossible, right? There was the Singer, sure, but he couldn’t hear the sound waves that thing was putting out. No, he was just letting the situation, the surroundings spook him. That was it.
“Ski!” Tom Pope grabbed him by the arm, tugging him back from the edge. “Ski! You okay?”
“Eh? Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Just a little dizzy, is all.” He turned and saw the others watching him.
Shit. Ever since he’d passed out the other day, the men hadn’t quite believed he’d recovered, as though they expected him to faint at any moment. Doc McCall had suggested that his unconscious spell had been induced by the EMP from the International Gun causing the old, experimental VR implants in his brain to vibrate a bit. Made sense.
But it didn’t make him a freaking cripple, for Christ’s sake.
“Well? What are you all staring at? Get back to work! Watch that wall, damn it…we’re starting to swing! Brighton! Slower on the drop!”
“Aye, aye, Sergeant Major!”
They continued their slow descent into strangeness.
C-3, E-DARES Facility
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
2310 hours Zulu
“Enter.”
Corporal Leckie entered the C-3. “Sir, may I have a word?”
“Center yourself on the hatch.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Leckie entered and came to attention.
Jeff looked him up and down. He was wearing OD utilities, and seemed healthy enough. “What can I do for you, Lucky?”
“Sir, I’ve been hearing the scuttlebutt. I mean, about the sub raid. I want to volunteer to go along.”
“How are you feeling, Lucky? How are the legs?”
“Absolutely four-oh, sir!”
“That’s not what Doc McCall told me yesterday. He said you’d torn a ligament in your right leg, and you were going to be hobbling around for two weeks at least. He said you came this close to frostbite, and you were damned lucky not to lose any toes.”
“I think the doc was exaggerating, sir. I’m fine. And I want to go on that op!”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Lucky. There are fourteen other Marines on this station who aren’t going. Six of them have already been through that door to volunteer or to gripe at me because I won’t take them along. You’re number seven. Lucky seven! Why should you be any different?”
“Sir…I am different. I really have to go along. Sir.”
“Why?”
“Because…well…sir, I’m in love.”
Jeff’s eyebrows crept higher. “That seems to be one hell of a reason to volunteer for what some are calling a suicide mission. Would you care to explain yourself?”
“Major…I mean, well, it’s like this. I just sort of got to know her, y’see? And she volunteered, and she’s going on the mission. And I have to go along too. Sir.”
“I see. You care to tell me who the lucky lady is?”
“Not if it’s going to get her into trouble, sir.”