Destination Europa: Chapter 2

An Unplanned Trip

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, habitat engineer Quill struggled with a flashback to a traumatic event back on Mars. But when he sought escape by relaxing with his crewmates, he found himself taking an unexpectedly high dose of psychoactive substances…

The stars beyond the viewport shimmered and pulsed in the depths like shoals of newborn jellyfish, planets blurring into planulae, firing like dinoflagellates. Quill let the last shreds of guilt sink into the black, his consciousness slipping into the ocean of space until he thought he could see the vacuum itself bubbling, spitting and swallowing electrons and positrons and photons like sparks from a forge.

Jupiter slid into his field of view as the Leifr rotated. The gas giant was still less than half the size of a full moon seen from Earth. He stretched and felt the four-hundred-and-fifty million miles they had already travelled, and the incalculable miles beyond on every side, pressing on their tiny cocoon of life with all the weight of his own loneliness, and he felt the cold of space pulse through him. They couldn’t see Europa yet, but now he felt himself tumbling towards the ice moon, falling until the images and landscapes he had looked at and walked through in the sims were huge and real. He floated above the crevasses that ground and snarled in the ice like wolves. He saw the frontier station, the site of the future colony. He saw a path and a rise behind, and somehow it looked like the ridge behind Ransom City.

He reached the top of the ridge, and looked down at the oxygenation grove, and started down into the trees, the tall thin trunks and branches trailing upwards like seaweed, the tens of thousands of leaves  like scalpel-blades. Then he turned the corner and saw her. Priska, sitting on the steps of the shelter, turning a chunk of rock over and over in her hand. He felt the sweat on his shoulder blades, cold and clammy. He tried to speak to her, but no sound came from his mouth. She stepped closer, and looked right at him, but her eyes were all wrong. Dead vortices. She took off her mask and opened her mouth, and her teeth were sharp and vulpine. She put her hands on his shoulders. He screamed and clawed, but couldn’t stop what followed. The trees overhead were glowing, and he saw tiny fish like diamonds high above. And then he saw nothing at all.

“Quill! Quill! Wake up!”

Someone was shaking him by the shoulders. Safira, he realised, as he slowly opened one eye and then the other.

“Bad trip?”

He nodded slowly. His mouth was dry. The room was dark, and he could just make out the others by the faint green glow of the emergency light.

“Drink this.”

He propped himself up on one elbow and sipped the bitter brew Safira handed him.

“Thanks,” he croaked. He checked the time. Only half an hour had passed. It felt like an eternity. He could still see Priska’s eyes, the dead eyes from his hallucination, not the eyes sparkling with joyous mischief that he still mourned, not even the eyes hard with anger and disappointment that he remembered from their last meeting. He felt sick. “What happened?”

“You started bugging out,” said Safira. She had volunteered to be the safety anchor for that session. “Screaming and shaking and all.”

“I think I got the wrong dose,” he replied weakly.

“Come on,” she said. “Bowen knows his stuff better than that. Although he did say he’s been experimenting with a new strain. Maybe it’s stronger than we thought.”

Quill sat up. Both Demas and Bowen were still under, and from the looks of them still enjoying their trips. “The others are OK,” he said. “You don’t think that’s weird?”

“Chill,” said Safira. “You’re fine. You know how it is, sometimes people react different. That’s why I’m here.”

She ran a hand gently across his clammy forehead, brushing a stray curl out of his eyes. Quill tried to edge away, but the motion made him feel nauseous. He lay back down and closed his eyes, trying to avoid seeing the slow motion of the stars in the viewport.

Something occurred to him. He opened one eye again. “Saf, did I say anything while I was, uh, bugging out?”

“What kind of thing?” she asked in reply, one eyebrow raised mischievously.

“I, uh, I dunno, anything personal?”

“Relax, honey. Your secrets are safe with me.”

“Saf!” He pushed himself onto his elbow again and tried to look at her properly. “Don’t tease me, come on!”

She relented. “Relax, Quill. Whatever you were seeing, you didn’t say anything coherent about it.”

Safira pushed him gently back to a lying position and ran her fingers rhythmically through his hair, as if she were soothing a large cat. Quill would have preferred her to leave him alone, but felt unable to say anything. It took another half-hour before he could get up and stumble back towards his cabin. He still felt queasy, but he needed to get away. He needed to sleep. He needed to pray.

It was well past midnight by ship’s time, and the corridors of the Leifr were in night mode. Quill turned his vision filters up to compensate as he followed the pale blue of the strip light towards Deck 8. He felt himself constantly veering to one side as he walked; he wondered whether the psilocybin had somehow snarled his adjustment to the ship’s Coriolis force. He even wondered whether it was just psilocybin, or whether Bowen had added anything else. Shrooms had never had this effect on him before. The thought of having to confront Bowen about it made him feel sicker. He hated confrontation. Even without wondering whether one of his few friends had spiked his dose, he felt sick at the thought that he had lost control. He never lost control. He couldn’t afford to.

On Deck 8, he started up the ladder to the Green Ring, feeling his body get lighter as he climbed. He still felt dizzy. Halfway out of the ladder hatch, he froze. There was a dark shadow down the corridor ahead of him, near his cabin door. Somebody walking softly with their back to him, the pale green of the strip light faintly illuminating their legs. He blinked. There was something odd about it. He blinked again, checking his visual settings. The menu glowed too bright, hurting his eyes, but there was no mistake. The figure had no aikon.

“Hey!” he called, quietly, so as not to disturb those sleeping in the narrow cabins that lined the corridor.

The figure froze mid-step, and turned its head. It was too dark to see clearly, but without thinking, Quill lunged forward out of the hatch.

“Priska!”

His body staggered to the left and in the lower gravity of the Green Ring he hit the wall limply, like a bundle of old clothes. When he righted himself and looked back towards his cabin, the corridor was empty.

What was I thinking? What am I doing? How did it come to this?

Quill sat with his head in his hands, staring at the grey-green dots on the cabin floor, until his half-hour reminder flashed. His Habitat Engineering class was that morning. He pushed himself up and pulled his last fresh t-shirt out of the drawer. His laundry slot was that afternoon.

He looked hard at himself in the mirror as he shaved and brushed his teeth in the 8C bathroom. His hair was greying faster than he’d like, and his skin was pale and puffy. I shouldn’t have come. Breaking up was the right thing, for me and for her, but I shouldn’t have taken this assignment. I’m a mess.

“Alright, mate?”

Quill looked up, startled. One of the other engineers was waiting to use the sink.

“Sorry, Haoxiang,” he said. He stowed his toothbrush and moved out of the way. Haoxiang’s aikon hovered near his head as it should; his visual display seemed fine this morning. He thought about going to see Doc Engebretsen about the hallucination, but hastily rejected the idea. He didn’t want to get anyone into trouble over non-prescription psychoactives, however many psil-pills the sick bay handed out to passengers who were getting spacey.

His students, half a dozen young Earthers, were already gathered in the meeting room when he arrived for the class. Crossing the threshold, he felt his mood shift as he stowed his doubts and emotions down and switched into professional mode. The class was one of the highlights of his week. He enjoyed teaching, and he thought he was probably good at it. It might even be a career option after this mission was over. And the class was one of the few opportunities he got to interact more deeply with the Earthers, without the prying eyes of his compatriots.

He was pleased when Tark loitered at the end of class. She was his favourite student. Apart from being the sharpest of the Earther engineers, she had trained at the SymbioNor Academy in Tromsø where Quill had once worked as a postdoc, and he felt that gave them a kind of connection.

“Hey, Dr. O,” she began.

“Hey,” he replied, gathering up the printed models he had used to demonstrate different biosphere designs. He believed firmly that a true engineer had to feel and handle real objects, not just walk around a sim, and in any case the Leifr’s ai didn’t have enough capacity to generate sims on demand. “How you doing, Tark? And like I keep telling you, it’s Quill. Unless you want me to start calling you Dr. Tarkovskaya.”

She gave him a dirty look. Like many of the Norskers, she preferred to go by her nickname.

“Yeah. I just wanted to ask about the stress-strain ratios you were talking about for the cross-beams? I didn’t totally get what you were saying about the tolerances for seismic events on Europa.”

Quill set down the models and began to explain in excited detail. He loved his profession, the idea of sheltering life from the hostile forces of cold and poisonous air, and he loved talking about it with others who enjoyed it as much as he did. He also hoped it might lead to something more. Many Earthers avoided the twenty-odd Martians on the ship, or interacted with them only as much as necessary. Tark was different.

“Thanks, Dr. O,” said Tark when he had exhausted the technical explanation.

“No problem.” He hesitated. It was nearly noon. “Would you like to go for lunch? I’m happy to talk some more — about this, or about anything else, really.”

Tark straightened up from where she had been examining one of the models. “Thanks, Dr. O. Maybe another time.”

Quill nodded and smiled as brightly as he could, but he felt his mistake. Overdone it. Too eager. She thinks I’m hitting on her. Memories of the night before seeped into the now empty meeting room, and his mood was dented. He decided to grab a yoghurt rather than join the others for lunch.

His countdown flashed while he was on the way back to his cabin. 1916. That was the war with the trenches, wasn’t it? Trenches is kind of where I’m at these days. I want to go home. That’s all I want, to go home.

We are now three months out from Europa. Quill looked at the words, deleted them, retyped them then deleted them again. I’m homesick, I spend most of my time hanging out with other Martians, and I was out of my head on shrooms last night. Oh, and on my last mission, I was in an illicit relationship but since that broke up I’ve been slowly going insane. He deleted those words too, closed the shell, and crumpled onto the floor.

It had once felt, not easy, but exciting. Thrilling. Infiltrating the camp of, not exactly the enemy, but a system that stood opposed to so much of what he held dear. Fighting for hearts and minds, under the very noses of the FSS authorities. He remembered stepping off the train in Inverness, his first day of his first assignment, not long graduated from his PhD at the Mars Institute of Engineering and straight out of the Alliance training course in Olympus. He remembered how heavy Earth had felt at first, and how the low winter sunlight had lit the water of the River Ness, and how he had stopped to marvel at the sight of more water than had existed on the surface of Mars for aeons, and how the raw cold air scoured his cheeks and stroked his neck in a way no sim could ever do. He remembered the warmth of Rob's handshake, the sparkle of his eyes welcoming a new comrade to the cause, the joy of their weekly meetings to check in and discuss strategy. The tiny encouragements of reporting on friendships being made with his new colleagues at SymbioNor, on significant conversations, on seeds being sown, connections made.

What would Rob think if he saw me now? Quill rubbed his face with his hands, smearing away the tears that had formed at the corners of his eyes. Rob was Mars Home Director now, overseeing all the Alliance’s operations on the Red Planet out of the Ransom City office. He would probably be General Director some day. Not that General Director of the Presbyterian Missionary Alliance came with much in the way of material perks, but Quill knew how much cachet the role carried, the mystical aura inherited by the spiritual successors of the great Taylor Campbell. Quill had soaked in the many sims of Campbell’s sermons himself when he was younger. He had basked in that aura. He had even daydreamed of being, not GD, that was too high, but perhaps one of the Council. But the aura had faded since Tromsø. Since Priska. I’m not even sure if I believe in the mission any more.

Quill only got off the floor when he remembered his laundry slot, and had to scramble to grab his bag of dirty clothes and take it down to the laundry room on Deck 10.

He went to dinner half an hour earlier than usual, hoping to eat and get out before the others arrived. He opened an interface on the table, next to his tray, and read his book — The Thirty-Nine Steps, one of his childhood favourites — while he ate his fauxmon and potatoes.

He wasn’t quite finished when he heard Demas’ booming voice carrying across the mess.

“Rodin! There you are! What the • you doing lurking over there by yourself?”

Demas plunked his own tray on the table, and lowered his bulky form into the seat opposite Quill.

“Hey,” said Quill weakly. He closed his interface.

“The others are just coming,” said Demas, sliding his tray open.

Quill took his last forkful of fauxmon, swigged some water and slid his tray closed, then shuffled in his seat.

“Heard you had a wild ride last night,” said Demas, spearing a potato and dipping it in the sennepssaus.

Quill looked carefully at Demas, trying to detect any signs of teasing.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I, uh.. Were you OK?”

“I asked Bowen to make it deep, and he made it deep. Real good. I’d say he’s on a winner with this new strain he’s bred.” Demas chewed speculatively. “Could be a market for it, know what I’m saying?”

Quill stirred impatiently. “I’m not interested in that.”

“Oh, of course you’re not,” Demas replied sarcastically.

Safira and Bowen appeared with their food. Bowen ushered Safira to her seat with a strangely quaint and courtly gesture, his eyes fixed on her with the dreamy look he got sometimes. Safira took his hand and gave it a little squeeze as she sat down in a mock curtsey, her eyes dancing with amusement as Bowen blushed and grinned. Quill wondered if he knew how transparent he was.

“You alright, Quill?” asked Safira.

“Yeah,” he replied. “But I think I’m going to stay away from shrooms for a while.”

“Oh,” said Bowen. “Sorry about last night, man.”

Quill frowned as he examined Bowen’s face. Bowen had glanced at him briefly but was now intent on Safira again.

“Oh yeah?” said Quill, a little more aggressively than he intended. “Sorry for what, exactly?”

Bowen looked at him, startled, then looked at his dinner tray.

“Sorry, bro, I messed up your dose.”

“Accidentally, or on purpose? Because there’s a big difference.” Calm down. This is not how I’m supposed to behave.

Bowen’s face flushed a little deeper. “It was a mistake! •, Quill, you think I would spike you on purpose?”

“I dunno, you tell me!”

“Guys, calm down,” said Safira. She had narrowed her eyes and seemed to be trying to communicate something to Bowen.

“I said I was • sorry!”

Quill got up from the table, unable to continue the conversation, his heart racing. He jerked his tray from the magnetic strips a little too forcefully, rattling the cutlery, the recoil almost unbalancing him. He was still breathing hard, trying to control himself, when he clipped his tray onto the return conveyor.

“Hey, Dr. O.”

He jumped at the voice behind him, and spun round to find himself face to face with Tark.

“You OK, Dr. O?” She gave him a searching look. “I was wondering if I could talk to you about something. I, uh, I think it might be important.”

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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.