Europa (Satellite) -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Survival -- Fiction
She was no longer Lois. Now she was an older woman, with a bit of added
weight and thickness. She was still beautiful, but more matronly than
she had been as Lois. About her was none of the warm-blooded ardor she
had displayed the night before. And no remembrance of it in her eyes.
I poured a cup of coffee.
"Just how long do you figure we've got?" I asked Burgess.
"Mr. Lutscher--" he addressed me by my last name, as was his custom
with junior officers--"I will not equivocate. We have fuel enough to
furnish us with heat and electricity for well over a year. But our food
will last less than two months, even with strict rationing."
So there it was. In two months we'd probably all be dead.
* * * * *
Someone back on Earth had erred badly. In their calculations every item
had been gauged closely, as was necessary. But they should have allowed
safety margin.
The take-off had been calculated nicely. Ships had already been sent to
the moon and to Mars. But this was the first trip this far out. We had
not intercepted Europa quite as plotted. We had to chase it halfway
around Jupiter, and land with the satellite going away, rather than
meeting us. After we landed and new calibrations been made, we made a
discovery. Our fuel was too short for the return trip.
Kohnke was our lone hope. A metallurgist, he knew the properties of the
ship's pile.
But Kohnke was insane.
I had not liked the man from the first. With his nervous, subservient
personality, he had been a constant irritant in the confining quarters
of the ship. And during the early weeks of the flight I observed the
slow dawning of an awful awareness in our weak-charactered member.
He was realizing for the first time the prodigious and unpredictable
forces to which he had exposed himself. Soon he was convinced of the
certainty of death.
He did not have the mental stamina to cope with that certainty. When we
missed Europa on the first pass, Kohnke's mind cracked.
My attention returned to the anamorph. She was staring at me now,
her features white and strained. She must have read what I had been
thinking of Kohnke.
What was there about the crazed man that frightened her so? I wondered
again.
I went out into the bubble. The rocket man, Andrews and I spent the
next several hours adding another compartment to the main room. Andrews
fed dirt into the hopper of the converter while I operated the nozzle.
This was more difficult than the original bubble had been. Normal
air pressure was enough to keep that expanded; but here we had to
make supports and rig up an auxiliary vent. Also it was cold near the
walls, a cold that sucked at the heat in our bodies; Europa has a mean
temperature of -140° Centigrade.
When our job was finished I left Andrews at the door of his cubicle. I
glanced back and saw that he hadn't gone in. He was standing with his
head down and his shoulders slumped.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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