Angel of Europa (7 page)

Danzig remembered that it was at 37 fathoms that Evangeline claimed DSV-1 encountered the creature that wrecked the bathyscaphe. So far, though, they hadn’t seen anything larger than mariners. The pilot had fallen silent; she seemed tense as she maneuvered the submersible in a broad, clockwise spiral that took them ever deeper into the subsurface ocean. She was obviously searching for the creature, hoping that she’d find it again. If it really existed, that is …

“Perhaps it’s moved on.” Danzig glanced at the depth gauge; the bathyscaphe was at 51 fathoms. Only seven more meters to go before they reached the end of the tether. “The robots didn’t find it when they were sent down here,” he went on. “Maybe they …”

“I know what you’re thinking.” Evangeline didn’t look at him, but continued to stare straight ahead. “I was making it all up. It’s not really there.” Then she looked at him, and Danzig was surprised to see hostility in her eyes. “No one’s ever going to believe me, so why bother? This is a waste of time.”

“I didn’t …”

“Hell with it.” She pulled back on the joysticks, ending the spiraling descent. “I don’t care what you think,” she said as she reached for the ballast control panel. “If I’m going to …”

Something bumped against the bathyscaphe.

The impact was soft, no more violent than one car tapping bumpers with another in a parking lot, but it came from the aft port hull where nothing else should be.

Evangeline’s hand stopped in mid-reach, her eyes wide with surprise. “Did you …?” Another impact, harder this time, from the starboard side just behind Danzig’s porthole.

He looked around just in time to see something move past the thick glass. He couldn’t clearly make it out, but he caught a brief glimpse of a fin before it disappeared.

“I see it!” he yelled. “There it is.”

“Switch on the recorder!” Evangeline snapped. She didn’t wait for him, though, but instead reached across Danzig toward the communications panel, intending to activate the bathyscaphe’s video recorder.

As Danzig watched, she tapped another button by mistake. He didn’t say anything, though, but quietly corrected her error by touching the right button. Then he noticed that the button she’d pressed was the one for the ELF transceiver. It was switched on again, but in her moment of distraction she’d turned it off. He didn’t have a chance to mention what she’d done before something moved on the other side of the forward porthole.

“Here it comes again,” Evangeline said, a little more calmly now.

An instant later, the creature was squarely within the searchlight beam. Two enormous eyes, with bloodless-pink irises and broad black pupils, contracted slightly in the glare, and a lipless mouth opened to reveal a fibrous membrane. For an instant it seemed as if the creature was going to collide head-first with the bathyscaphe, but at the last moment it turned to the left. As it swam past DSV-2’s port side, Danzig saw a fleshy body, albino-white, with narrow slit-like gills and a stubby fin along its side. About three or four meters long — he couldn’t tell for sure — it didn’t quite look like a fish, but not like a mammal or reptile either. Some new kind of animal, utterly alien.

“I’ll be damned.” Danzig caught another glimpse of the creature as it moved past the porthole on Evangeline’s side of the cabin. “It’s …”

Then the extraterrestrial hit the bathyscaphe again, hard enough this time to shake the entire submersible. “I don’t care what it is,” Evangeline said. “If it keeps doing that, it’s going to damage my boat.”

“Maybe it’s attracted by the searchlight.”

“You may be right.” Another glance out the forward porthole, then she reached forward to switch off the searchlight. The portholes went dark, save for the distant flash of a mariner’s bioluminescence. A moment passed, then there was another hard bump against the hull, again from aft but not nearly as hard as before, almost as if the creature had struck the submersible by accident.

Evangeline looked at Danzig. “Seen enough?” she asked, and smiled when he nodded. “Good. So have I.”

She voided the ballast tanks and Danzig felt the bathyscaphe begin to rise, heading swiftly toward the ice layer that hid the ocean from the sky. Taking the joysticks again, Evangeline maneuvered the bathyscaphe toward the hole; there was a sharp tug from above as the bathyscaphe’s computer sent a signal up the cable to the winch, commanding it to automatically begin reeling in the tether.

Danzig didn’t mention to Evangeline the error she’d made when she’d switched off the ELF while reaching for the video recorder, yet he knew that this would explain DSV-1’s mysterious communications failure. Yet this was almost beside the point. The creature existed, just as Evangeline had claimed. Danzig had seen it with his own eyes, and its image had been captured by the recorder.

He couldn’t help but smile. The angel had her alibi.

“S
IX METERS AND CLOSING,”
Kevin said. “Five … four … three … two … one …”

A muffled clang as the shuttle’s docking collar mated with the
Zeus Explorer
. The pilot reached up to snap a couple of switches before looking over his shoulder at his passengers. “Okay, folks, we’re here. Don’t forget to tip the waiter on the way out.”

“Put it on my tab,” Danzig replied, and Kevin laughed as he continued to shut down the spacecraft. Danzig unbuckled his seat harness, then turned to Evangeline. “Ready to go aboard?”

“Certainly.” She’d already opened her own harness. “Never thought I’d be happy to see the ship again.”

“I’m sure you are,” he said, and caught a brief smile in return. A four-day round-trip aboard the shuttle was enough to induce claustrophobia in anyone, and Consolmagno Base was hardly the most comfortable of places. The
Explorer
was a luxury yacht by comparison. But there was more to it than just that, wasn’t there?

“Hold on. Let me open the hatch for you.” Kevin left his seat and pushed himself toward the bow hatch. As the pilot pumped the lever that would equalize pressure between the shuttle and the
Explorer’s
docking port, Danzig stole a glance at Evangeline. She’d changed over the last couple of days; there was no longer a haunted look in her eyes, and it seemed as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. And for good reason. She’d left the
Explorer
a pariah; now she was returning, if not a hero, then at least vindicated.

Even before Walter relayed the DSV-2 video to the
Explorer
, it was clear that the accusations against her would be dropped. There was no longer any doubt that the creature was real; now that Danzig had seen what was being regarded as Europa’s largest inhabitant, no one could claim that Evangeline lied about its existence. The worst that could now be said about her was that she’d reacted rashly when it attacked her DSV-1. And even then, no one could really blame her for trying to save her own life.

Someone knocked twice against the outside of the shuttle hatch. Kevin knocked back, then grasped the lockwheel and twisted it counter-clockwise. A faint hiss as the hatch swung open, then a voice called from within the airlock.

“Welcome back,” Dylan McNeil said. “Glad to see you made it in one piece.”

“How dare you slander me?” Kevin replied in mock protest as he pushed himself through the hatch. “You’re insinuating that I’m an unsafe pilot. I should sue for libel.”

“Yeah, sure.” Dylan helped his friend come aboard, then reached back through the hatch to offer Danzig a hand. “How ’bout it, Otto? Are you willing to arbitrate this dispute, or should I get a lawyer?”

“Sorry. You’re just going to have to work this out on your own.” Danzig grasped Dylan’s hand and let the chief engineer pull him into the airlock, then he took hold of a ceiling rung and waited for Evangeline to follow him. He noted that Dylan seemed more than willing to help her come aboard; only a few days ago, he’d pointedly snubbed Evangeline when she and Danzig were about to leave the ship.

Dylan wasn’t the only expedition member who’d had a change of attitude. During the long flight back from Europa, Evangeline had used the comlink to speak with various people aboard the Explorer about what she’d found. Captain Diaz, Margaret Harris, Rita Jimenez … all wanted to know more about the extraterrestrial, conveniently forgetting that they’d previously called her a murderer, a slut, or even worse. Which only figured. It hadn’t taken very long for word to reach Earth, and since Evangeline was the only surviving member of the team that first sighted the creature — tentatively called a pseudocetacean for the time being — she was being credited as its discoverer. Once the
Explorer
returned to Earth, she’d become one of the most famous members of the International Jupiter Expedition. Her former adversaries knew this, and also that it didn’t pay to make enemies with a hero. Better to bury the hatchet than continue carrying a grudge.

For now, though, she’d have to settle for no longer being under suspicion. Danzig could see the relief in Evangeline’s face as she let Dylan help her through the hatch. Once she was aboard, though, she left the chief engineer behind and pushed herself over to Danzig.

“So … what now?” She smiled at him as she took hold of the same rung he was using, her fingers lightly touching his own.

Danzig shrugged. “Life goes back to normal, I suppose. At least I expect it will, once I deliver my report to the Captain … and I’m sure you know what it will be.”

“I’m sure I do.” Evangeline let herself drift a little closer to him. “Thank you, Otto. I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me.”

“Yes, well …”

“Do you remember what I said to you? How I’d be grateful for any help you could give me?” He nodded, and her smile became more suggestive. “Come down to my quarters in a little while,” she said, her voice a near-whisper. “After you’ve seen the Captain, I mean.”

Danzig felt his face grow warm. Kevin had already left the docking port, but from the corner of his eye he could see Dylan pointedly looking the other way. “If you’d like me to …”

“I would.” Evangeline pulled herself closer, and her lips briefly touched his own. For a moment he felt the sensual tension of her body against his, then she pulled herself away. A meaningful wink, then she disappeared through the airlock hatch, heading for the hub carrousel.

Danzig looked over at Dylan. The chief engineer’s back was turned to him as he sealed the port hatch, but the grin on his face made it obvious that he’d witnessed the whole thing. “I see your job has its own rewards,” he said quietly.

“Um …” Danzig floundered for the right thing to say, then he remembered some unfinished business. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you … thanks for saving my life. During the blowout a few months ago, I mean.”

“Sure. No problem.” Dylan pushed himself away from the hatch. “If you really want to thank someone, though, you can tell Evangeline how much you appreciate what she did. That way, you’ll be even.”

“Huh?” Danzig shook his head. “Sorry, but I don’t understand. What do you …?”

“She never told you?” Dylan stopped at the docking port’s inner hatch. “I would’ve never known you were in the main airlock if Evangeline hadn’t told me.”

“What?”

“You didn’t know?” He raised a querulous eyebrow. “I was on my way down to Deck B when I found her coming the other way. She told me she thought someone was trapped in the airlock and that she was on her way to get help. So I headed for the airlock and —” a shrug “— well, there you were.”

“I didn’t know that.” Danzig hesitated. “Was there anyone else on Deck B at the time?”

“No. Just her.” Dylan pushed himself through the hatch. “Anyway … so now you know. You owe her a kiss for that, at least.”

Danzig didn’t reply. He waited until Dylan was gone, then left the docking port and pushed himself down Hub Deck 2’s passageway. The docking port was located on the same level as the airlock in which he’d nearly lost his life. Up until then, he’d avoided visiting the place, but now it was important that he see it again.

There was a small control panel on the bulkhead outside the airlock’s inner hatch. Opening its safety cover, Danzig studied its buttons. He’d already known that the airlock’s outer hatch could be closed from this panel; that was how Dylan saved his life. However, Danzig hadn’t realized what should have been obvious: the outer hatch could be opened from here as well.

He lingered in the passageway for a few minutes. Then he went to see Captain Diaz.

T
HE DOOR TO MARGARET
Harris’s quarters clicked softly as it slid shut. Danzig glanced about to make sure that he was alone, then he knocked on Evangeline’s door.

No response. He was about to try again when the door slid open a couple of centimeters. Evangeline peered at him through the crack. “Hello,” she said quietly, smiling at him. “Come in … I’ve been waiting for you.”

Opening the door a little further, she took Danzig’s hand and pulled him into the room. The lights had been turned down low, but he could see that she wore an oversized
Zeus Explorer
T-shirt that fell down around her hips … and, so far as he could tell, nothing else.

As Evangeline closed the door behind him, Danzig opened his mouth to speak. Before he could say anything, though, she slid her arms around his neck and, standing on her toes, planted her lips firmly against his. Her mouth was as soft as it had been in the airlock, but this time the kiss lasted much longer. He could the warm, supple strength of her body, and when he placed his hands upon her waist, a single touch was all it took to confirm his suspicion that she was naked beneath the T-shirt.

“I was hoping you’d come to see me,” Evangeline whispered as she pulled her face away. “I owe you something.”

“Evangeline …”

“No. Enough talk.”

Resting a hand against his chest, she gently pushed him backward. Even though it had been nearly a week since he’d been revived from hibernation, Danzig was still too weak to resist; the firm but insistent pressure was all it took to make him fall back upon her bed. Its covers had already been pulled aside. In the next instant, Evangeline was on top of him, her legs straddling his body as she reached down to rip open his shirt. Then, as she placed her hands on either side of his shoulders, she descended upon him, her long brown hair falling down around her face as her eager mouth found his own.