The Curse of Europa (19 page)

Evans eyes widen and she sprouts a timid smile. The creature looks up at Evans and also sprouts a smile; making Evans’ smile grow even bigger, and then a tear trickles from her eye. She just made contact with an intelligent alien race. She wonders what is going through the creatures minds. She is obviously the alien here, the thing that is out of place; the thing that doesn’t belong. Are they intelligent enough to know that she is wearing a protective suit, or do they think it is her skin? Do they think that her head is this weird bulky thing, with one big shiny eyeball?

Evans raises her other hand and gently grabs the creatures hand; it immediately pulls it away. She raises both palms trying to signal that she means no harm, and then turns her palm over. The creature places its hand on Evans’ hand again and she gently squeezes it, and slowly shakes up and down. The creature wraps its long tentacle fingers around Evans hand and shakes back. Evans smiles; a mix of emotions running through her. Is this creature generally interested in this first contact, or will it at any second pull her into its grip and poke her with its poisonous stinger? Maybe it is so happy because it found a new large meal – finally something different to eat than glow fish all the time. She tries to suppress these thoughts; she doesn’t have time to worry about such things. Maybe she has seen too many sci-fi horror movies. These creatures look weird, terrifying really, but she is probably equally weird and terrifying looking to them.

Evans releases her grip and the creature follows suit, their hands separating. The second creature races away; back over to the first creature and blinks some communication back and forth. The second creature slightly approaches again then gestures with its arm. Evans is taken aback as it certainly appears that the creature is saying ‘come on – follow me’ with its gesture. The ‘universal’ come-along gesture immediately validating itself.

“Jeez, I can’t believe it, it appears they want me to follow them,” she speaks into her com, still commentating the recording. “I guess what do I have to lose?”

The first creature climbs on the back of the second, larger creature, wrapping its arms around its stubby neck, and they proceed to swim away. She comments, “Jeez, would you look - at - that, how the smaller creature rides on the larger creatures back, this is simply amazing. They are amazing creatures. You know… I hate calling them
creatures
. They are so much more than that. They are almost like… mermaids. Europian Mermaid Creatures. Definitely not as beautiful as the mermaids depicted in Earth stories, but jeez, who am I to judge? They probably think that I am quite hideous looking. The larger creature, er… I mean Europian Mermaid… or maybe just… Europian! The larger
Europian
must be the parent, I’m guessing the mother. I think I’ll call her… Betsy. I don’t know why, it’s just the first name that popped into my head. And the smaller creature, I mean Europian, I think it’s a boy – that is if they even have different sexes. But I’ll assume it’s a boy. Let’s call him… Bud. He just seems like a Bud to me for some reason.”

Evans attempts to follow them, half walking on the sea floor, half trying to swim – as fast as she can; but the Europians are gone. She continues as best as she can in the same direction.

A minute later, she can see a light approaching quickly, the duo has returned.
Betsy
again gestures to ‘come-along’ and watches as Evans moves along at a painfully slow pace. Half walking on the bottom and half swimming.

“Well jeez, Betsy and Bud must definitely be wondering where I came from and what the hell I’m doing here; wondering why I am so inept at swimming.”

After a minute or two of this snail’s pace, Bud swims off of Betsy’s back and then Betsy approaches Evans. Evans is breathing pretty hard from the workout of trying to keep up with them. Betsy turns her back to Evans and pats it.

“Oh my God… I think this thing, I mean Betsy, wants me to climb on her back,” Evans declares between heavy breaths. “Jeez, I’m… I’m not so sure about this!”

Then Betsy extends her hand, wiggling her fingers. Evans grabs her hand with much trepidation and follows its pull. Using both tentacle arms, Betsy hoists Evans onto her back; Evans wraps her arms around Betsy’s neck in disbelief of what she is doing. Then suddenly, Betsy springs up and starts to swim away at breakneck speed; Evans grips tighter to avoid falling off – gasping slightly. Bud is following alongside, with his arms moving like someone doing the breast stroke, the flipper on his tail vigorously flapping up and down, and his colorful dorsal fin fluttering like a sail. The moment is surreal to her and reminds her of the story she and Turk had read before leaving on their mission. It was the Greek Mythology story of Europa, where Europa hops on the back of a white bull that carries her off to the island of Crete. The white bull being Zeus, the King of the Gods.

Evans glances down at the sea floor, which is really the summit of the underwater mountain she had located, and she sees countless hydrothermal vents. She tries to shine her flashlight down without losing her grip on Betsy. They swim for almost five minutes before Betsy slows down. Up ahead the mountain goes up even higher, but at the base of the mountain she sees hundreds of lights, all moving around. As they get closer, she can clearly see hundreds of similar Europian Mermaid creatures; she has been taken to a Europian city, or nest, or habitat, or whatever you may want to call it!

The glow from all the Europians pretty much eliminates the need for her to use her flashlight. As they approach, many of the new Europians take notice and seem a bit uneasy to her grand arrival. The soft glow from the numerous Europian Mermaids now turn into a firestorm of blinking and flashing light, spreading out like dominoes. Obviously, their own rumor mill announcing to all, that Betsy and Bud have found something strange. Evans’ fears of hostility return, as she watches all of the hyperactivity from all of the Europians, probably wondering what the hell she is… she is an alien after all! She glances at her oxygen level which now reads 25 minutes, reminding her that she is going to die soon anyhow so what is there to be afraid of?

As Betsy nears the group of others, they all look very similar; the main differentiator being their floppy dorsal fin. Some have colorful stripes, some have colorful spots, and some have both, like Betsy has. None that she can see are the same. Most Europians are the size of Betsy, with just a few slightly larger. Most Europians, that are the size of Bud, or smaller, seem to ride on the bigger Europians’ backs; most likely the little-ones mothers, or possibly the fathers.

She slides off Betsy’s back and then slowly floats to the sea floor as hundreds of Europians gaze upon her. They are all still chattering, as she is bombarded with constant flashes of light, almost as if she were a movie star and everyone is taking pictures of her.

Turning to look at the new mountain top, she sees that it is full of holes, and some Europians are swimming in and out of the holes. “Jeez… this must be where they live, maybe a nest of some sort,” Evans comments into her com.

Then, her eyes widen with sudden amazement and she takes in a deep breath, “Oh jeez, would you look at that! Did
they
build
this? This – is – amazing!” She notices large columns of stacked rocks at the base of the caves; well over 100 of them spread equally apart like a fence. There are very large rocks at the base of each column, then a slightly smaller rock on top of that, and then slightly smaller rocks (and successively smaller rocks) continuing up about 4 meters high. All of the columns are all roughly the same height, each spaced about 2 meters apart. As she approaches the columns, she can see that there is some sort of clay packed in-between each rock, helping to secure the structure. Poking her finger at it, she can tell that the clay filling is actually very hard.

“This is absolutely amazing! These creature’s mannerisms remind me of primates, but look at this. Not even the smartest primates we’ve studied on Earth would be capable of the cognitive thinking necessary to construct such structures. Sure, animals build nests, but nothing like this. Look at the geometric consistency! Each column is roughly the same height and they are each spaced almost the same distance apart. Also… look down at the last few columns; they curve inward to the base of the mountain top. It is almost as if this is a fence or a wall… some sort of barrier.”

She looks at Betsy, who has been watching her study the columns. Evans gestures to the bottom of one of the structures, and then waves her hand from the bottom, upwards to the top. She is trying to show Betsy that she is impressed; not really knowing what to do next, she just claps her hands, as best as she can underwater, and nods her head. Betsy looks at her for a long second and then returns the gesture, with a clap of her own tentacle hands; looking strangely at them as if it was a weird thing to do. Then, a few of the other Europians that have been watching ‘the show,’ try it out as well. Eventually all of the Europians around them are silently clapping their hands, smiling, and nodding their heads.

Then suddenly, the clapping stops. All of the Europians turn to look the other way - behind them. Just as suddenly, all of the Europians frantically scurry away in all directions, their bioluminescent appendages flashing very fast and very bright, as if they were screaming. Many Europian creatures bolt directly at Evans, knocking her over as they scamper through the gaps between the columns. She is flat on her back on the bottom of the sea floor. As she sits up slightly, she can see it; she can clearly see what they are fleeing from and she can understand why. She gulps hard and tries to move, but she is frozen with fear; maybe Turk wasn’t joking after all, about swimming dinosaurs that is.

Chapter 23:
Top of the Food Chain

S
wimming directly at her, gliding just a meter above the sea floor, is a humongous creature; it is at least 15 meters long from the tip of its long beaked mouth to the end of its tail. Turk had joked about finding swimming dinosaurs that Evans quickly laughed off… she isn’t laughing now. If there ever was something that looked like a dinosaur, this was it! It is more like a huge thick eel than a fish, with yellow eyes and two thick fins, just below the neck. There are two smaller fins about midway down its long black-and-gray body, which tapers off into a fin to help it swim.

Inside the mouth of this huge monster, is one of the Europians’ that it must have scooped up; its head is sticking out of the left side of the monster’s mouth and its tail is sticking out of the right side. The terrified Europian that it captured is using its arms to try to pry itself out of its grip, but it is hopeless with all those teeth. This monster does
not
have human looking teeth, far from it. It however, has more than 100 pointy fangs, similar to a great white shark. The 20 centimeter long teeth are digging into the poor creature and extremely dark red blood is oozing out into the water, as it starts to chomp down.

This scene is eerily reminiscent of when she first saw Bud, as he was eating the glow fish in front of her. However, there’s not a bone in her body that tells her that this thing,
this hideous monster
, is friendly in any way shape or form. If this thing wasn’t the top of the food chain, she’d hate to see what was!

The Europian is no longer putting up a fight, its arms are now just dangling down limp and its face is no longer emanating fear; it is now just a blank lifeless stare. Probably the only thing keeping the monster from grabbing Evans at this moment is that it is busy eating its first victim.

Evans watches in disgust, as the monster rips the Europian into tiny bits, as it chews and swallows it within just a few seconds; however those seconds seem like an eternity. But now, unfortunately, that eternity is over and the monster turns and looks at Evans with its yellow eyes that seem to be glowing. Her mind is racing as the monster is looking directly at her, through the fog of blood and shredded tissue fragments.

She shines her flashlight directly at the creature, perhaps hoping that the light will blind it. She knows it is a futile effort, but it is all she can think to do. She knows she is going to die soon anyhow, but she doesn’t want to go like this. She didn’t have a chance to transmit what she found to the ship. If this monster rips her to pieces, then the discovery of this wonderland, and of all these creatures, even this monster, dies with her.

The massive monster flaps its fins and it gives its tail a few flicks to start it moving again, heading directly towards Evans, staring her down with those evil lizard-like yellow eyes. Evans is still frozen; she swallows hard, closes her eyes, and hopes for a quick painless death. As much as she wants to move, as much as she wants to get away, her brain just can’t seem to send the correct signals to her body. Then, she feels something slip under her arm. It moves up and around and then locks onto her shoulder – then yanks her backwards with a jerk. Then another jerk, and yet another; as she is dragged backwards by Betsy. The monster opens its huge mouth and lunges at Evans, just as Betsy pulls her through an opening between the rock columns.