EUROPA: A Short Story

EUROPA

"Are you seeing this?" Ivan inquired, his helmet obscuring his face from my vision. The infinite beauty of the cosmos radiated against my eyes as I looked over at what he pointed at: Europa, one of the many moons of Jupiter, floating before us in this eternal vacuum of darkness. The dark film under his helmet lifted, and I could finally see his pale, young face, and how full of joy it was to really be out here amongst the cosmonauts— it was his dream since he was a child. My tender age made joy scarce, but seeing the boy's eyes light up with jollity and excitement brought warmth to my heart.

"SSS to Vulvokov, do you copy?" My communicator went off.

"This is Natasha Vulvokov, I copy. Over," I answered, shifting my attention from Ivan to the logistics of the mission as we floated humbly through space.

"SSS to Vulvokov, Kremlin wants insertion in T-30 minutes. Over," the Soviet Space Station ordered. I groaned in mild annoyance, ruining Ivan's childlike wonder.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, taking off his helmet. We were indoors, inside a small cruiser drifting just outside the orbit of Europa. Ivan didn't need his helmet on, but he wore on at all time because kt made him really feel like one of us. I thought it was strange, considering he really was one of us now, but it was adorable still, so I said nothing of it.

"SSS wants us to land on Europa in thirty minutes," I responded, shuffling reports detailing our mission— Operation CAESAR. Since the Soviet Union won the Space Race in 1968, and soon after, the Cold War, we've been quickly expanding into the Solar System, searching for life and planets we could possibly inhabit. That brought us here, to Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons. We've long theorized that Europa had oceans under its surface that could be up to a hundred miles deep, and that these oceans could potentially carry life. Ivan and I, student and teacher, were sent here on a small but important quest to place cameras under the icy surface to record the depths of Europa's waters.

"Does that mean I can finally wear the whole uniform?" Ivan smiled with the thoughtless and adorable look of a puppy. I didn't give him an answer, but I laughed and signaled him to follow me.

Our vessel, nicknamed the Explorer, slowly floated across the fullness of the solar system— a feather in a pond. Ivan and I put on our red cosmonaut suits with haste, and then, our white helmets, marked with red letters above our glass faceplate that read USSR: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

I sat at the head of the cruiser, the cockpit, and maneuvered through the deepest layer of Europa's thin atmosphere. The Explorer moved down onto the icy surface of the moon. As soon as we landed, the cold surfaces of this massive body let the cold enter the Explorer even through its thick plates of armor and insulation. Luckily, we were well accustomed to the frost.

The two of us grabbed a set of new and state-of-the-art drills to begin our work. We marched from the cockpit down the long, dull hallway of the Explorer. Ivan and I gave each other glances full of purpose as we prepared to step onto Europa. At the edge of the ship, I pressed into the bay door's keypad the four numbers that compelled the machinations of the Explorer to pull apart an exit into its whole, and for the first time, Ivan and I observed the expanse of Europa's surface through not an image on a computer, or from the cockpit, but right in front of us, only a small footstep away.

Fierce winds blasted their way into our ship as we gazed into the beauty of this place. Dark lines the color of rust stretched across the platinum surface of the moon, like varicose veins pulling across the pale legs of an old woman, and I stared into these beautiful markings. The planet's hue radiated majesty and wonder; Europa was beautiful, both from our observatories on Earth, and from where I stood now.

"How does it feel, rookie?" I asked Ivan, who stared with awe at Jupiter, which from this distance was an unfathomable giant of power that beckoned our worship and adorance. Its massiveness took over the entire sky, the way a storm cloud does on Earth, and beyond the gas giant of Jupiter was a black nothingness, peppered with stars and clouds of nebula that swayed in the wavering infinity of the universe.