2061 Odyssey Three

chapter 20 Recall
'Have you seen Victor?' said Mihailovich gleefully, as Floyd hurried to answer the Captain's summons. 'He's a broken man.'

'He'll grow it back on the way home,' snapped Floyd, who had no time for such trivialities at the moment. 'I'm trying to find out what's happened.'

Captain Smith was still sitting, almost stunned, in his cabin when he arrived. If this was an emergency affecting his own ship, he would have been a tornado of controlled energy, issuing orders right and left. But there was nothing he could do about this situation, except await the next message from Earth.

Captain Laplace was an old friend; how could he have got into such a mess? There was no conceivable accident, error of navigation, or failure of equipment that could possibly account for his predicament. Nor, as far as Smith could see, was there any way in which Universe could help him get out of it. Operations Centre was just running round and round in circles; this looked like one of those emergencies, all too common in space, where nothing could be done except transmit condolences and record last messages. But he gave no hint of his doubts and reservations when he reported the news to Floyd.

'There's been an accident,' he said. 'We've received orders to return to Earth immediately, to be fitted out for a rescue mission.'

'What kind of accident?'

'It's our sister ship, Galaxy. She was doing a survey of the Jovian satellites. And she's made a crash landing.'

He saw the look of amazed incredulity on Floyd's face.

'Yes, I know that's impossible. But you've not heard anything yet. She's stranded - on Europa.'

'Europa!'

'I'm afraid so. She's damaged, but apparently there's no loss of life. We're still awaiting details.'

'When did it happen?'

'Twelve hours ago. There was a delay before she could report to Ganymede.'

'But what can we do? We're on the other side of the Solar System. Getting back to lunar orbit to refuel, then taking the fastest orbit to Jupiter - it would be - oh, at least a couple of months!' (And back in Leonov's day, Floyd added to himself, it would have been a couple of years...)

'I know; but there's no other ship that could do anything.' -

'What about Ganymede's own inter-satellite ferries?'

'They're only designed for orbital operations.'

'They've landed on Callisto.'

'Much lower energy mission. Oh, they could just manage Europa, but with negligible payload. It's being looked into, of course.'

Floyd scarcely heard the Captain; he was still trying to assimilate this astonishing news. For the first time in half a century - and only for the second time in all history! - a ship had landed on the forbidden moon. And that prompted an ominous thought.

'Do you suppose,' he asked, 'that - whoever - whatever - is on Europa could be responsible?'

'I was wondering about that,' said the Captain glumly. 'But we've been snooping around the place for years, without anything happening.'

'Even more to the point - what might happen to us if we attempted a rescue?'

'That's the first thing that occurred to me. But all this is speculation - we'll have to wait until we have more facts. Meanwhile - this is really why I called you - I've just received Galaxy's crew manifest, and I was wondering...'

Hesitantly, he pushed the print-out across his desk. But even before Heywood Floyd scanned the list, he somehow knew what he would find.

'My grandson,' he said bleakly.

And, he added to himself, the only person who can carry my name beyond the grave.