Black Undertow

Another startling image showed the light beam from the probe, bent like a warped twig! It had been captioned: "Here, the probe's flood light reveals the great pressure at seventy kilometers down, a place where visible light is bent."

The last plate was of the IR image of the structures, believed to have originated from the sea floor: At ninety kilometers down, the drop camera sighted vast spires, which looked like the tops of towers, of methane and water-ice, forty-plus kilometers in height. Before the probe could send back any more data on these tantalizing structures, its telemetry was lost, to the great compression at that depth. Miceli removed his eye rest and swiveled in his seat to face the memo file. That's it! he thought. I understand now, Barry.

The blue light played on his face, as he entered the memo about what he would say to the Committee to justify the expense of the Aristarchus Project. Behind him, outside the office in the street below, the usual flashing police lights were shining on the warehouse across the street in response to yet another gang-related combat action.

AUGUST 3rd

Levitt was talking to Miceli on a common downlink from his suite at the CenComm Frontier Expansion Center. "Okay, Vince, what have you got for me? Actually, anything you've accomplished, you've done on behalf of a Hamill Witherspoon. I just found that out recently---I guess I'm behind in my homework. So give me the bad news first." He was gazing out the window of a darkened room at the lunar nightscape, three stories below. The lights of the linear accelerator complex raced off in the distance, from the end of the logistics building. Directly below, the long rows of lights marking chemical treatment, hydroponics and treated effluent plants illuminated vast strips of the harsh landscape.

Miceli's face on the monitor was backdropped by the austere furnishings of his recognizable office. "Well, the bad news, Barry, is I won the Senate---but before you start jumping for joy, it was only a partial win. The committee has authorized funding of a three-tiered program for the Aristarchus: one manned mission to Callisto, one to Ganymede two years after that, and a third manned trip to Europa, two years after that. The first mission, to Callisto, will do a swing-by of Europa and drop---deploy---the Barracuda, in a deployment container-but I have to tell you, if the first two missions don't yield some really exciting research data about those two worlds, the Barracuda could end up just sitting there, and never be un-shrouded from that deployment conex-box."

"Yeah, yeah." Levitt seemed utterly undaunted by his friend's cryptic warning. "And if the first two trips are bounties of scientific data, and assets are found on those two worlds to justify a trip to Europa, as well as answering that mystery under its waves, then what?"

"Well-then, two more vessels of identical design will be built. They will have improved technology, wherever made possible by mission-research data."

Miceli took a long breath. "Barry . . . you want to go on the third flight, don't you?" Levitt smiled at him, already certain that he would. "Okay, Barry. As you might have guessed, Pearson is the man they’ve chosen to skipper all three missions. I can just bet that if he has the pleasure of serving with you on the Europa trip, he will see a serious challenge to his command authority."

Levitt chuckled and grinned. "Naaaaaaw."