Well, it's time to welcome a new guest to Europa...     ------            "Welcome to Europa, General," Madeline said as he stepped out of Munin.        For a moment, he didn't answer. He had seen many spectacular and awesome views already on this journey, enough to make him fear at times that he would lose the capacity for wonder. But the sight of mighty Jove looming above the jagged-spiked horizon, looking down upon the small white-shining collection of shelters and the bronze-colored alien shape of [ Continue reading... ]

  Now, they have to deal with a subtle but definite problem of space travel: low gravity...   -----          "Argh!" A.J. said with articulate precision.        Joe looked over at his friend, who was currently settling back down to Europa's surface, still clinging to one of the wrenches designed for use in space-walk conditions. "Didn't lock yourself down again, eh?"        A.J. muttered something that didn't sound at all friendly. "I keep getting focused on getting the work done and forget where I am. Stop [ Continue reading... ]

  Well, they'd made an interesting discovery and were hard at work...   -----     "You know," Jackie said, triggering a Cancel and clear on her workspace, "we've been wasting just a ludicrous amount of time on this hookup."   Horst scratched his head. "But we need to have the access to Nebula Storm, and it has to spin –"   "Yes," Jackie interrupted, "but we're going about it all wrong, probably because we were trying originally to figure out how to make it work with Nebula Storm and Munin, and then trying to [ Continue reading... ]

Madeline still had things to worry about, though...     -----     Chapter 18.        "… and the rest will be up to Dr. Glendale. You all understand the timing and the necessities of the situation, Maddie." The well-loved face had a few more lines, but the iron was still in Director Hughes' voice – along with the underlying affection. "If you can maintain your timetable, while there will be questions about the official version of events in Jupiter system, the co-operation of Ares, the IRI, and the EU will be able to [ Continue reading... ]

  Helen had made a discovery, but that has consequences...     -----          "Well, I've got good news and bad news," A.J. said to the others, studying the images in front of him.        "What is it? Can't you get Athena restarted?" Madeline, currently taking a break from outside work, was up beside him almost instantly – not surprising, he knew, since Athena was one of their most crucial pieces of equipment.        "Oh, I can, but I can't do it here. Now that I've got her down to her prior level, I [ Continue reading... ]

  So Helen was no longer bored...       -----     "You've got to be kidding me," Jackie said, glancing at the image of Helen in the upper-right corner of her HUD, then back at the crescent-shaped line cutter she was using to cleanly removed the cracked section of piping for part of the Odin's neo-NERVA rocket nozzle assembly. "A Bemmie arm-plate? In the ice?"   At their current distance, the delays were only a couple of seconds, so she simply had to be patient. Helen answered in a moment. "I'm not saying [ Continue reading... ]

  There's exciting work to do.  Unfortunately, there's some not-exciting work to do, too...     -----            "This," Helen said to apparently empty air, "is possibly the most boring thing I have ever done."        "Coming from someone who used to think spending weeks scraping away a centimeter of rock from some dead bone using dental tools was fun, that's a hell of a statement," A.J. said.        "It's nothing but the truth. At least with those rocks you got to do something. With this," she [ Continue reading... ]

  So our friends were getting ready to rescue the General... and rescue themselves with Odin...     -----     Chapter 14.        "Disconnecting in three, two, one – off." Horst, with Anthony's help, dragged Munin's small section of the thick, insulated, double-wrapped cable back and stowed it securely near the reactor housing. "Everything stable?"        "No problems, Horst," answered A.J. "Batteries all full, we're running on them, drain shows what we expected. Get back here in a couple of weeks and we [ Continue reading... ]

  Our friends were settling in finally, and maybe there's a little time to relax...   -----          "Alone at last," Jackie said, deliberately using the old cliché.        "Yes," Horst agreed, looking surprisingly nervous. "We are."        One of the additional inflatable hab units had been transformed into Vacation Hotel Europa, as A.J. had dubbed it – a place where people could go for time separated from the group. The unit, originally meant as two separate living spaces, had been made into a single larger [ Continue reading... ]

  Well, our friends had gotten bad news...     ====            "So there's no chance of repairing the reactor?" Madeline asked, looking mostly at Jackie but keeping an eye on everyone else in the conference room of Munin. This was a crucial factor, and she had to make sure that no decisions were made without as much certainty as possible.        Like most engineers, Jackie instinctively shied away from absolute certainty. Centuries of experience had taught the profession that real life machines and [ Continue reading... ]