BENEATH - A Novel (34 page)

Decontamination
. Her specialty.

At once, she understood why the Europhids wanted her alive. She contained the sum of human knowledge on what the Europhids feared most—infection. Peterson had given the necessary clue when he spoke of decontamination. From experience, Choi knew that such intense fear of infection typically took hold of individuals or populations that were particularly susceptible to disease, especially new, introduced variations. The susceptible hosts naturally adapted a disease to suit their biology, even if it originated in another species. Even among humans, the origins of plagues like AIDS were speculated to have stemmed from an SIV—
simian immunodeficiency virus. The original host for AIDS was most likely one of these individuals, whose bodies adapt viruses to human physiology.

The fear of infection exuded by Europhids hinted that they too might be susceptible to foreign disease, whether or not it was originally designed to affect Europhids. The only path to freedom became clear in Choi's mind. She hoped the reaction would be quick enough.

Choi took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the plastic smelling air inside her PMS. After letting it out slowly, Choi lurched her head back and brought it down like a cannon ball. The Europhid's beneath her head splattered under the force, coating the surrounding Europhids with their innards. Choi noticed a sudden change in her motion. The pressure that had been building around her thighs and moving towards her waist paused.

It was as though the Europhids sensed Choi's intentions.

Not wanting to give them time to react, Choi slammed her face down on the tunnel floor a second time. A wet ooze beneath her nose told her she'd been successful in reaching the first goal in her plan—her nose was dripping blood. She could see it gathering on her facemask, wet, thick and full of Hepatitis C. Her own blood was considered a hazardous material and handled with the greatest of care. She was about to expose the Europhids to it.

There was no way to know what effect her poisonous blood would have on the alien creatures, but other options did not exist. She smashed her head into the ice one more time, with all the force she could muster. A loud hiss signified success. A small crack had been opened in her facemask, and as her air was sucked out into the vacuum of space, her blood—her personal toxin—went with it.

Choi held her breath and closed her eyes tight. The vacuum of space stole her air at the same time it extracted her blood. Her chest burned with the need for oxygen. The hiss of escaping air became higher pitched as the self healing facemask resealed. An abrupt silence followed.

The mask had mended.

Choi let her lungs fill with air as she opened her eyes. She couldn't see her blood sprayed across the surface of Europhids, but she knew it was there, coating them in a thin mist. Not wanting to spur the Europhids into action, Choi waited without moving. The tunnel had become still. The undulating creatures had stopped moving.

The change came so slowly that Choi wasn't sure if she were seeing things or not, but as the effect spread, she knew it was a reaction of some kind. The Europhids were expanding. Swelling. The confines of the tunnel began to expand around her, exerting a painful strangle on her lower body. Her upper body became ensnared as well, and she feared being crushed to death.

Then the reaction grew. The swollen Europhids began pushing and pulling at Choi's body once again, but this time action seemed more like an uncontrolled frenzy—a panic. More importantly, the direction had changed. She was moving up. The Europhids were working as a group, perfectly synchronized, even in their hyperactive state. The result was that Choi's acceleration up the tunnel increased rapidly. Within seconds she'd been vaulted forward to the speed of an Olympic sprinter.

She rocketed towards freedom. As her body continued to accelerate, her mind came to a screeching halt. She was about to be launched out of a thirty degree tunnel at nearly forty miles an hour and would be entering the low gravity atmosphere of Europa. Her eyes widened as she neared the exit.

She was about to be launched into space.

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An indistinct shadow emerged around Connelly's kneeling form, revealing that something large had loomed over head, blocking out the red light cast down by the Europhid-coated ceiling. Looking up, she saw Robert and Willard looking down at her, arms crossed.

"What's it going to be, boss?" Willard asked. "You can go on your feet or over my shoulder. Either way, we're leaving now."

Connelly knew he was serious, and that ultimately, she should listen to him. What she'd discovered on the cave floor only reinforced the idea that they were in a dangerous environment. But she couldn't leave without taking the body. It was a perfect specimen, and it was already dead. She was sure they'd agree once they saw it.

As though revealing the latest car model, Connelly shuffled to the side and swept her hand over the dead creature. Upon seeing the small beast, Robert and Willard's eyebrows sprang up. Connelly returned her eyes to the creature and made mental notes as she examined it.

Four double jointed limbs tipped with serrated edges grew from the creature's sides. They were either very good at climbing or killing…or both. The coloration of the beast's smooth and tightly stretched skin was pale green. Unlike the other creatures they'd observed so far, this had opaque skin, like a frog's, but tougher. She imagined that while standing on all four limbs, the creature's height would hover around a foot tall, while its length, if including the ten inch tail, stretched out two feet. It had no mouth, nose, ears or eyes to speak of.

Two syringe tipped, retractable tentacles extended from the front of the creature's triangle shaped head. While retracted, they might look like fangs, but they were more like flexible straws, most likely for sucking in a liquefied food source. Connelly imagined that the appendages would make efficient weapons when speared forward, like an iguana's tongue tipped with a spider's fang.

Starting at the center of the creature's head and moving down the back in a straight line were four red humps of flesh that appeared to be growing right out of the beast's back. Connelly found it odd that the humps color and texture appeared identical to the Europhids.
Perhaps the Europhids are also parasitic
? Connelly wondered. She felt suddenly glad to be wearing an impenetrable space suit.

Connelly reached out slowly, taking hold of one of the creature's legs.

"Umm. Kathy…." Robert didn't have to finish his sentence. Connelly knew he was telling her not to touch the creature.

She ignored him.

With a quick flip, Connelly turned the creature over onto its back, revealing bloated stomach.

"All right, that's enough," Willard said. He knelt down next to Connelly and clenched her arms. Looking into his eyes, Connelly could see that he meant business. "You have ten seconds before I drag you out of here."

Connelly nodded and gently took hold of the creature, placing her hands under two of the limbs. She stood and held it up for Robert to see. "I don't think this could be classified as either mammal or a reptile." Her excitement was palpable, but Robert was unaffected.

"Better put it down," Robert said.

"What? Why?" Before Robert answered, Connelly noticed that his eyes were not on her, they were locked on the back wall through which they had entered the cavern. Something was behind them, blocking their exit.

Connelly turned around slowly, hoping that what she was about to see wasn't nearly as bad as the horrified look on Robert's face indicated. As the embankment came into view, Connelly dropped the dead creature, letting its body fall to the hard cavern floor. The spectacle before her was like a nightmare. Unlike the other cave walls, the back wall was completely free of Europhids. The stone was full of holes, thousands of perfectly cut holes, each a few feet in diameter. She immediately saw the wall for what it really was—a nest.

Willard leaned over and in the most serious voice Connelly had ever heard him use, he said, "From now on you do exactly what I say when I say it. You debate, you get left behind.
Am
.
I
.
Clear
?"

Connelly nodded, but she was sure there was nothing Willard could do to save them. Not if the horde of alien creatures, each a clone of the one she had found dead on the floor, became violent.

Connelly pushed the image from her mind. She'd found years ago that imagining her own gruesome death was a sure fire way to trigger an anxiety attack, and the one building pressure in her chest was already about to explode.

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If a crowd of circus fans had been flown into orbit along with the Surveyor they would have been cheering madly when Choi rocketed out of the Europhid filled tunnel like a futuristic human cannon ball. Only there was no net to catch her when she inevitably fell back towards the hard ice surface. If she returned at all.

Choi fought waves of dizziness as she looked down at the fading landscape. She'd never been afraid of flying, but this was different. Floating free above the moon's surface was as close as anyone ever got to flying, really flying. Europa's faint gravity was barely holding her from the cold grip of space. She had no wings to alter her trajectory and no air resistance to slow her down. She was a helpless projectile.

The surface of Europa seemed to glare brilliantly at her, as though she had just stepped out of a dark movie theater and into the light of day. She noticed a radiant spot on the horizon, like a double bright but half-sized Earth moon.

Ganymede
, Choi thought.
It must have cleared the dark side of Jupiter, reflecting the sun's light.

 
The largest of Jupiter's moons, Ganymede's surface was a thick sheet of ice. It was the perfect surface for reflecting sunlight, which it did now, brightly enough to illuminate the surface of Europa.

Looking down, Choi wished Ganymede had waited to cast its light on Europa. Passing below, the field of red Europhids spilled out in every direction—for miles. She'd be lucky to ever find TES or her crew again.

Before she could delve deeper into worrisome thoughts, Choi noticed a violent chain reaction reshaping the Europhid field. A growing darkness expanded below her, spreading out from the epicenter where she had been launched. Her infection had been fully adapted, with disastrous effects and was spreading like wildfire. The Europhids, all of the Europhids below her, were dying.

A twinge of guilt wrenched her chest into a tight knot. She may have inadvertently destroyed Europa's entire ecosystem. Already, thousands of organisms had been killed by her single act, and for what, to save her own skin? Even if the Europhids were evil, did saving her own life justify wiping them out completely? As Choi watched the Europhid-covered ice pass by below, she doubted she'd even succeeded in saving herself.

A warmth, like a giant hot compress, squeezed her body. In an instant, she knew she hadn't come close to saving her own life. If anything, she'd be better off back in the ice tunnel with the Europhids. Cruising across the lower atmosphere, far from the ATV, Lander and TES left her out in the open, unprotected from Jupiter's deadly radiation. Six minutes…that's all she had. If she didn't crash to the ice and snap her neck in the next six minutes, she would be cooked alive inside her space suit.

The warmth turned uncomfortably hot and her muscles began to ache. Her insides began to revolt, twisting within her like a dying snake.

She knew the first step to surviving the next six minutes was to get back to the surface. If she could find another ice cave or thick overhang, she might be able to wait until the others found her…if Peterson didn't get them first. Choi had forgotten all about Peterson and the charged particles. Her feeling of hopelessness spread like a plague. It took all her mental focus to push her thoughts beyond the worsening circumstances and physical pain she was enduring.

One step at a time.

Choi extended her arms, fighting the urge to curl into a fetal position. Simultaneously, she spun both her arms in a counterclockwise motion, putting her body into a spin. She needed to be facing away from the surface, but there was no way to stop spinning once she had started. Her vision became a confusing swirl of the gently glowing Europhid field, the horizon, Jupiter's blackness, the horizon, the Europhids, Jupiter…over and over again.

A spew of vomit exploded from Choi's mouth, brought on by the spinning and the radiation poisoning her system. With her facemask covered in bile, she couldn't see which direction she was facing. Held in place by centrifugal force, the vomit didn't budge from the face mask. Choi was blind.

Precious seconds were passing by as Choi panicked. Her plan was to release a burst of the compressed oxygen from her spare tank attached to her belt, but if she had it pointed in the wrong direction she might launch herself into space. Left with little choice, Choi reached down, felt for her spare tank and detached it.

Holding the small air tank in both tanks against her torso, Choi prepared to open the valve. Just before opening the valve, she pointed the tank to her right and let out the faintest of bursts. She didn't feel any change in motion at all, but within a few seconds she saw the result of her modified plan.