Destination Europa: Chapter 19

The Millstone

This is Destination Europa, a psychological sci-fi thriller set aboard the R. G. Leifr, a colony ship headed towards Jupiter to establish a settlement on the ice moon Europa.

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Previously, Quill told Tark about the threat to the Leifr, leading her to propose a new theory for the anomalies they’d noticed on board: a stowaway. Desperate for the ship’s command to take the threat seriously, they sent their data to the Captain. While waiting for a response, Quill was awoken to the sound of Demas being arrested by Security.

Apparently he was building a bomb using print powder and weld gel

No, dude hadn’t actually done anything apart from paint that weird •

I heard he was at the psych office last week and Doc E warned the Captain about him

Nah, that’s not how it works, psych appointments are confidential you know

Not when there’s danger to the ship or crew

I heard he was doing like a crazy Martian voodoo ritual when they caught him

Like those suicide nuts in Finland in the Liberation?

More like those ancient Japanese fighter dudes

Quill turned off the chat. He had turned to the SymbioNor feed to see whether anyone knew what was happening to Demas, but there was nothing beyond the howling sandstorm of rumour upon rumour. He wanted to defend his friend, but there seemed little point shouting into the storm. Besides, there was a more urgent task at hand. He re-opened the video Safira had sent him a little earlier that morning.

The central shaft of the Leifr, stretching into the darkness. The lights were in night mode, four orange-red strips extending forward and aft along the length of the shaft. The person taking the video was standing at the Deck 8 hatch; Quill could see the gently glowing number 8 opposite. The lights were turned up suddenly, and a Security officer’s face appeared to the left, eyes wide and white, mouth opening and closing in urgent speech, though the clip had no audio; the more senior of the men who had arrested Demas. The image moved jerkily as the videographer moved around him, then twisted and tumbled as they pushed off the hatch, taking advantage of the shaft’s lack of gravity to soar to Deck 9. The image righted itself then, looking perpendicularly across the shaft at the huge letters scrawled on the wall opposite.

The lettering was much bigger than the text painted opposite Quill’s cabin, but used the same rich red paint. It started further aft, near Deck 10, and extended forward beyond Deck 8. The videographer panned slowly left to right to capture all of it. It was written in antiquated Norsk this time, all in block capitals, the letters leaning and running forwards and trailing gobs and smears like clots of blood, as if the writer had been in a hurry.

OG EN VELDIG ENGEL LØFTET EN STEN SOM EN STOR KVERNSTEN OG KASFET DEN I HAVET

“Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea,” Quill translated softly.

The videographer — presumably the junior security officer — carried on aft. Quill turned off the video. Although the new text was written in Norsk rather than English, he recognised it as the same hand behind the writing outside his door. He turned the video on again and paused where there was a clear view of most of the lettering. There was something familiar about it, something in the sharp clefts of the Vs and the downstroke of the Gs, something more familiar than just the hand of a fellow Martian.

He turned up the chapter again, in the book of Revelation. Chapter 18, verse 21. The same chapter as the previous writing, just a little further along. Probably the most misunderstood book in the whole of Scripture. But no way is this anything to do with Demas. We have to do something. I have to do something.

“Smells in here,” said Safira, wrinkling her nose. She sat on Quill’s bunk, bouncing as if to test the mattress, as if it were any different from anyone else’s.

“Sorry,” said Quill. “Shower slot’s supposed to be today.” He scratched his side awkwardly, and forced himself not to run his hand through his hair. It looked bad enough as it was. “You sure it’s OK for you to be here?”

“Look outside. Everyone’s moving around, and Security isn’t doing anything. I assume that means they think the problem’s solved now. Which we know it isn’t.”

“Right.”

A ping in his visuals. Quill opened it without looking at the sender, then groaned. Hi, Dr. O, is there class today? One of his Habitat Engineering students. He’d forgotten it was Thursday, his usual class time. He dismissed the message impatiently.

His door beeped. He opened it to let Tark in. There was a catcall, a voice from someone passing in the corridor, “Whoa, O’Neill, threesome, eh?” followed by a burst of coarse laughter. Quill flushed. “Sorry,” he said to Tark. She shrugged and squeezed past him into the tiny cabin, nodding at Safira, and sat on his chair.

“Well,” said Quill. “Welcome. My original idea was to set up some kind of secure call, but I guess it does make more sense for us to talk in person at this point, huh?”

Safira nodded crisply. “The time for secrecy is past, honestly. Priority now has to be stopping the terrorist. Because you and I know Demas ain’t him. Or her.”

“How are you involved, exactly?” asked Tark.

“Oh, for — for crying out loud. I thought Quill explained things, since he — never mind. Quill, I was about to bust your balls for spilling the beans, but I guess I don’t have to just yet. Right. We’ll worry about the legalities later. Let’s just say, I’m not just a terraformer. I have information of a threat to the ship—”

“Oh, so you’re, like, intelligence?” said Tark.

“Never mind!” snapped Safira. “The thing is, we believe there’s a terrorist aboard. The numpties in FSS Security — no offence — are all caught up on Demas’ campaign for better pay.”

“But how can they possibly connect him with the writing?” asked Quill.

Safira shook her head wearily. “I’ve spent the last two hours arguing with my FSS counterpart about this. Hansen and Johnson — the two morons who arrested Dem — bumped into him coming out of the bathrooms just after they’d discovered that writing. I take it you’ve both seen the clip?”

Tark nodded. “I think everyone on the ship has by now.”

Safira snorted. “So much for Gundarsson keeping a lid on it. Anyway, they’re holding him because he’s Martian, because he was agitating for stuff, and because he’s proficient at handwriting.”

‘Huh..” Quill remembered his own surprise at seeing Demas’ handwriting on the protest letter. “But it’s clearly not his writing.”

“And we know it’s not him, because of the stowaway,” said Tark.

“What?” said Safira. She looked at Tark, then at Quill. “Explain.”

Quill nodded at Tark. “You go.” Tark swung the chair around and straddled it backwards, leaning on the backrest, and summarised the anomalies they’d noticed, the evidence she believed pointed to an extra person aboard.

There was a short silence when she finished. She’d mentioned everything except the sighting of the aikonless person at the water dispenser. Quill felt a stab of guilt. I should have told her. Saf knows about that anyway, but I should’ve told Tark.

“Right,” said Safira. “You know what? Crazy as it is, I think you might be right. Because Security have spent the morning scanning for optics from whoever painted the new stuff. Nothing. Like a ghost did it.”

“You hear anything from the Captain yet?” Quill broke in.

Tark shook her head. “I’ll check again.” Her eyes blinked as she accessed her messages, but she shook her head again as she refocused on the room. “Nope. Think I should push?”

“I’ll do it,” said Safira brusquely, already initiating a call. Tark looked as if she was about to say something, then changed her mind.

“Alex, hi,” said Safira. “Listen, some intel here, might be useful — damn!” She looked up at Quill and Tark, frowning, then tried calling again. “•, not connecting,” she said.

They all got the ping at the same time. Urgent, All Hands.

All Hands, Security Alert. You will be aware of the ongoing security investigation. Further to this morning’s incidents and the proliferation of harmful rumours which may be prejudicial to the investigation and to safety and harmony on board, non-essential interpersonal digital communication is suspended until further notice. Personal inbound and outbound transmissions have been suspended as of 0300 this morning. Please be aware that the restrictions on personnel movement have not been lifted, and you must remain in your quarters other than necessary visits to the mess and bathrooms. A manual head count will commence at 1100. If you are currently outside your quarters, return there immediately. Gym slots are suspended until after the count. I appreciate that this is a confusing time but I am certain that with your cooperation and the dedication of our Security team, remaining questions will be resolved quickly. The ship’s library of games, sims and movies is still fully available, so please take this opportunity to relax and rest. Captain T. Strand.

Quill dropped into the last push-up of his set then shoved himself upright and stripped off his sweat-patched t-shirt. He checked the time. 11:16. He had paced his cabin floor until deciding he may as well use some of the time and nervous energy to exercise. He didn’t know where the head count had got to, but suspected he was going to miss his shower slot. I stink, even to myself. And I’m stuck here, blind as a bat and deaf as a post. After the Captain’s announcement, Tark had returned to her own quarters and Safira had gone to try and use her privileges to convince the FSS of the gravity of the threat. Quill pulled a clean t-shirt out of a drawer, then in a flare of anger kicked the laundry bin where he had just dropped the dirty t-shirt. He thought of his missing shirt from a few days earlier. Would a stowaway really have taken that? Are we completely chasing up the wrong tree here?

He asked AiLeifr to show the view from the forward camera again. There was Jupiter heavy against the starfield. Quill imagined the gravitational field stretching through the darkness, the tiny dent Jupiter’s immense mass made in spacetime. A mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea. The context is clear enough — judgement on Babylon — but why choose that particular text? Is Jupiter the boulder? He re-read the rest of the verse, and shivered. With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down…

He’d seen a millstone once. It had been near Tromsø, not long before the end of his term, a team outing during the midsummer holiday. Rob, or maybe Kristy, had decided they should visit the Scandinavian Lifestyle Heritage Park outside the city. They had traipsed around looking at the reconstructions of a longhouse and a stave church, then stumbled on the Norse mill. There had been a man dressed as a medieval miller demonstrating how the water wheel drove the heavy gneiss millstones. Rock hard as death and old as life on earth, glinting a pink-tinged grey in the midsummer sunlight, grinding to fine dust the handful of barley kernels the miller fed in as the stone turned on its shaft. The stone turning on its shaft… Quill’s face paled and his pulse soared. Something was whispering, nudging his consciousness, like a fish half-seen beneath the surface of a pool, or a riddle half-grasped in a game of wits.

“AiLeifr, how long until we begin braking for approach to Europa?”

“Hello, Dr. O’Neill. I regret that I am unable to provide you with that information at this time.”

Quill blinked. “What do you mean? Isn’t that public information?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. O’Neill. I do not know why I am unable to provide this information. I only know that I am unable to provide it.”

“Shit,” said Quill, out loud. His aural filter blocked the sound of the word from his hearing as he said it, but he barely noticed the oddness of that sensation as the implications of AiLeifr’s response sank in. “Shit, shit, shit.” He flung himself towards his desk, opened an interface with a calculator, fumbled for his stylus and began to scribble equations.

Five hours later, Quill dropped his stylus on his desk and rubbed his cramped fingers. His hand was shaking. Every flat surface in his cabin had an open interface, a sprawling tangle of differential equations and data tables and pages from his old orbital mechanics textbook. He ran his eyes over his working again, but he’d already checked it several times, and had AiLeifr check each step. He’d eaten nothing since breakfast, other than half a packet of old jelly beans he’d kept in his desk drawer for emergencies. He’d barely glanced at the FSS crewman who’d looked in the door when the head count reached his corridor. He looked again now at the output of his calculations. The braking burn for orbital insertion should begin within twenty-four hours. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon.

I have to show Safira. Quill began to save his calculations onto a data qube. I have to show Saf, and she can talk to Alex. He’s Navigation, as well as Intelligence… I mean, presumably the crew are gearing up for the burn already, but why have there been no announcements about it? Don’t they usually give everyone a few days to prep?

He glanced at the interface showing the forward camera view, left over from the morning. Jupiter, its gases and clouds an ocean, a sea. The habitable section of the Leifr, rotating like an upper millstone on its axis, the cargo section fixed like the lower stone. I don’t have much more than a hunch to go on, but the symbolism’s too blatant to be anything else. A symbol become reality. The millstone hurled into the sea. Somehow, they’re planning to sabotage the burn. They’re going to fire the ship into the planet. Judgement. The flagship of FSS colonisation, plunged with all the power of the Harland engines into the storms of ammonia and H₂O, ship’s shell and crew’s bones crushed, liquefied like a witch’s brew, fire burn and cauldron bubble, long before cells unspooled and molecules cracked deep in heat and toxic stink. And the ai was blind, the Captain and crew oblivious.

Quill stuffed the qube into his pocket. I have to show them. And then something else crystallised, distilled, sifted from his doubts and dreams; metamorphised, like gneiss, immanence to imminence, insubstantial to iron-hard, ice-sharp. Symbols and reality. Long happy arguments walking by the fjord, skipping stones on the water; perdition and salvation, eschatology and prophecy, literalism and figurativeness, heaven and hell. Quill opened the his cabin door and ran. I know who it is. I know who’s behind this.

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Cover image of Jupiter © National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, colour modification by SDGL.

Divider image: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team, adapted by SDGL.