CHAPTER 33.
General Hohenheim dropped lightly from Munin’s hatch. “Good morning, Mr. Baker. You are no longer alone.”
A.J.’s grip was a little tighter than it had been the first time they shook hands, and the eyes showed immense relief. “And I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. So Odin is in orbit around Europa now?”
“Technically,” Jackie said, coming up and giving her old friend a hug—Hohenheim suspected A.J. needed one, given the circumstances—”Odin is in orbit around Jupiter, at the L1 Lagrangian point. Which puts it very close to Europa, as Europa’s mass is very tiny compared to Jupiter’s.”
“Oh. Well, whatever, as long as it’s a better setup than we had.”
Dan’s voice cut in. “How’s this? No transmission delay to speak of.”
“That’s sure a lot better,” A.J. agreed. “Is it just Dan up there?” he asked, seeing Horst coming down.
“Not quite,” Anthony said. “I am here with Dan, and so also is Brett. We can continue the work, make sure Odin stays on station—because, you realize, the L1 point is not a stable place—and assist with computing solutions if needed. Brett felt he was more useful here with the most powerful of the computers.”
“He’s probably right,” came Madeline’s voice. “Welcome back, all of you.”
“Shall we get to work?” Hohenheim asked. “You have made many plans, I think, Mr. Baker—”
“A.J., please.”
“A.J., of course.”
The sharp nod was easily visible. “Been setting up the machines to fabricate the rails for Athena, just like Brett designed. Mia, I didn’t want to try anything like putting a cradle on Athena without you here.”
The Norwegian engineer nodded with a smile. “I’m sure you would have done fine, A.J., but it’s best that we take no chances.”
“Sure as hell I’m not taking any as long as she’s down there,” A.J. said. It was spoken so quietly Hohenheim suspected that it had been intended to be private; the General decided he would take it that way, and none of the others commented. More loudly, A.J. said, “I agree. Now, the hard part’s going to be getting Athena down the rabbit hole. If you’ll look here,” their helmet displays suddenly showed a 3-D map of the region, “you’ll see that the quake caused the ice to split and then collapse over there, about a kilometer. I’ve mapped the area and it gets us down pretty darn close to the level we want—but it’s not really stable. Right now, it’s closing at about three centimeters a day, which isn’t too bad, but there’s no telling what’ll happen if we get another strong jolt.”
“All the more reason to move quickly,” Hohenheim said. “Mia, can we move Athena into Munin and fly her to the target location faster than we could drag Athena by hand?”
“I’d say almost certainly, General. That’s rough terrain, even in this light gravity, and our experience with the Nebula Storm’s rocket nozzle showed that the light gravity is almost completely counterbalanced by the difficulty in exerting significant force by hand.”
“Athena’s almost all the way up,” Horst said, obviously studying the telltales on the local systems. “As soon as she is clear of the ice, we will shut her down and detach her from the supports. The rest of you can disassemble the support framework and we will all move to Munin. Yes?”
“Works for me,” A.J. said. “Glad to see you here too, Doc,” he said to Petra Masters.
“I hope my professional skills won’t be needed, but it seemed much more likely that they’d be needed here than up there.”
“So how long until you have Athena set up to descend and start cutting through to our location?” Madeline asked.
A.J. looked at Mia, who shrugged. “I do not know that we can make a terribly good guess at that, at least at this time. If all goes well, it may be a matter of a day. If not, it could be several days.”
“Not to pressure you, but Larry and I are on a very limited timeline.”
“We understand that most keenly, Agent Fathom,” Hohenheim said. “And we shall make every effort to get to you soon. But at the same time, I believe you would not argue that we must proceed with utmost caution. We shall get only one chance to succeed at this, I think. Especially since reaching you will be only the first step.”
“No argument there, General,” Larry said emphatically. “Don’t forget to assemble anything that’s remotely likely to help seal leaks and break through ice.”
A somewhat distorted voice—clearly that of Joe Buckley—joined in. “And when you say, proceed with caution, remember to think of backup plans. Like, say, if that pit A.J. found collapses on you.”
“Here is hoping that won’t happen,” Horst said. “Because, honestly? I cannot see there is a backup plan if it does.”
Hohenheim didn’t think there was one, either. Half a kilometer and more down, they had nothing to stop that huge hole from closing—probably there was nothing on Earth short of carefully designed mine bracing that could—and while Athena might be moved laterally, there was no practical way he could imagine to bore upward with her. “So we must assume it will not happen. If it does, however, let there be no regrets or recriminations, yes?”
“General,” Helen said reluctantly, “I really don’t want you to take the chance. The rest of you can still get home. We’ve done so much work to make that possible. Maybe I’m the only one—”
“You certainly aren’t,” Madeline said emphatically, and Hohenheim felt a twinge of…what? Pride, perhaps, although that seemed utterly nonsensical. These people weren’t his crew, he had no hand in selecting or training them.
“You most certainly are not,” Madeline Fathom repeated. “General, all four of us don’t want to die, but even less would we want to think we got everyone else killed. I know we began this conversation before, but I don’t want to cut it off this time.”
“She’s right,” Joe said calmly. “Believe me, this isn’t a pleasant death we’re looking at, and I’d rather not be looking at it at all. But we all survived what we shouldn’t have, some of us more than once.” The gallows humor hurt Hohenheim more than it amused, and judging from the stiff pose of Mr. Baker, hurt him much more. “We’ve done goddamn amazing things here, all to get us home, and I think we’d be proud,” his voice wavered just a tiny bit, “to die knowing all that work wasn’t in vain, and you guys got to go home.”
“Yeah,” Larry said, echoing the sentiment. “And hell, where better for an astrophysicist to end up entombed than here?”
For a long moment, no one said anything.
“Yeah. That makes…sense.” A.J. said slowly, quietly. He straightened slowly. “But I don’t want it to be a waste, either.”
Hohenheim nodded. “Indeed, Mr. Baker. Agent Fathom…Doctor Conley, Doctor Buckley, Doctor Sutter…I am—I think we all are—touched by your sincerity, and your courage. If you were my people, I would be able to tell you that I was proud to have you as members of Odin’s crew. But instead I can only say this: that you may think of regretting the waste if we do not go, but—even upon careful reflection—we would find it an utter waste to leave without having done everything that we could, even if it risked all of our lives—to rescue our friends. We are not leaving…unless all of us are leaving.”
“So we will stay and try—even if it may get the rest of us killed.” He looked around at the others. “Are we all in agreement?”
“Undoubtedly, General,” Horst Eberhardt said firmly.
“I will not leave my friend Larry under the surface of our Europa,” Andrew said simply.
“A fossil I dug up got Helen—all of us—into this,” Jackie said, with a spark of humor. “I’ll just have to dig up a couple more fossils now.”
“Oh, that’s cruel,” Helen said with a chuckle.
The others agreed with the sentiments—and with Jackie’s cruelty.
A.J. slowly straightened and nodded. “I’d stay and try if the rest of you left,” he said quietly. Hohenheim realized he meant it quite literally. And perhaps that intensity is what brought him together with the paleontologist willing to risk her career for a discovery. “But I’m damn glad I don’t have to!” he said, with a cheery brightness that did not quite mask his near-tears to anyone listening. “Damn glad.”