ALEX INSISTED on being shown the mysterious holes in the ice for herself, before she agreed to postpone lift-off. But once she had seen them, she too was intrigued—although with Murielle dead, the prospect of in-depth analysis of anything that might be found down the holes was limited. She agreed to a postponement of three Enceladus days—about one hundred hours—and instructed Hal and Vikki to do what they could in that time.

It took Hal, Gustave, and Vikki about four hours to move the entire drilling rig from its original site to the Bala’s location, and at the end of the exercise they were all exhausted. Although they had made as much use as possible of the short-range buggy, some of the parts were too large to be transported that way and had to be lugged over by hand. Of course they weighed almost nothing on Enceladus, but it was still an effort in space-suits. Once the whole rig had been set up and Hal had initiated the lowering of a sampling probe into one of the holes, he suggested the three of them should return to base and take a few hours’ rest. The probe could continue its descent automatically in the meantime—provided it didn’t run against any obstruction.

The others couldn’t argue about that. It was an exciting moment, but they had to be patient.

It was some four hours later that Hal roused Vikki and Gustave out of their bunks. “The probe should be close to the bottom of the ice by now—if it didn’t hit anything on the way down,” he explained. “Of course, we have no idea whether the Bala—if it was the Bala that made those holes—went right down to the water. But it seems likely—it probably wanted a drink! Anyway, by the time I get there, the probe should be through, and I need to secure a sample and then start pulling it up. There’s a small infrared camera in the probe, and it may show something. Want to come along, either of you?”

“I assume the raising will take as long as the lowering—over four hours?” muttered Gustave, wearily.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll stay behind for now. I think I’ve had enough EVA for the time being.”

But Vikki was willing to accompany Hal—and it wasn’t just because of her interest in what the probe might reveal. Spending time with him while wearing space-suits wasn’t exactly romantic, but at least she was close to him, and alone with him—and that meant something.

Had Gustave been putting on an act, for their benefit? He didn’t make a habit of complaining of tiredness…

They found that the probe had indeed reached the water level, at the same depth as the first borehole: about seventeen kilometres. But the IR camera showed nothing. Vikki was disappointed, but Hal said it was only to be expected: a ‘shot in the dark’—literally! He hadn’t even deployed the camera in the first borehole. There was obviously no visible light down there, and the liquid water was so cold that nothing gave off any infrared. They would have to wait for the sample to be brought to the surface.

Hal busied himself with setting the rig going so as to winch the probe back to the surface, then he turned to face Vikki who was looking him up and down intently.

“So ‘Hal’ is short for ‘Harold’?” she remarked, having noticed the inscription on his space-suit. “Funny thing: I never knew that. Never looked. I’d always assumed it stood for ‘Henry’—you know, like the prince.”

“Harold it is,” replied Hal. “But I’ve always been called ‘Hal’, ever since I was a wee lad. Nothing princely about me, I fear.”

“Well, don’t worry, I’m going to go on calling you ‘Hal’. Just as I don’t expect you to call me ‘Viktoriya’,” she added with a giggle. “And you’ll always be my ‘prince’, whatever I call you.” Vikki was getting in a flirtatious mood once again.

They continued to gaze at one another. Reading facial expressions while enclosed in a space-suit isn’t exactly easy, but they could sense each other’s expectations. The ‘chemistry’ was sky-high! The time it took then to get back to the base must have broken every record as they raced each other with giant leaps and bounds: it was a marvel neither of them overshot or injured themselves. And the wait for the base airlock to cycle, so they could get out of their suits, seemed interminable.

At last there were the two of them in the cabin—Vikki’s this time. And there were the two jumpsuits and the two sets of underwear gently drifting to the floor, and the two bodies gently bouncing up and down as they intertwined with one another on the bunk…

---§§§---

“We mustn’t miss the probe reaching the surface,” remarked Hal, much later, as he got up and dressed. “Ready, Vikki?”

Vikki was still recovering from their exertions, but she insisted she was ready. So it was a few minutes later that they were in their space-suits again and passing through the airlock. The trek back to the rig wasn’t hurried, this time: Hal had said they’d probably have a twenty minutes’ wait before the probe surfaced.

As things turned out, they had to wait over an hour. The probe had hit an obstruction on the way up, possibly a piece of ice detached from the borehole, and the winch had automatically stopped. Hal had to remotely manoeuvre the probe until it freed itself, then re-start the winch. It seemed an age, but finally the probe emerged.

The probe was fitted with a small observation window, but it was hard to see anything while wearing a space-helmet and in the dim light. Peer as she might, Vikki could make out nothing. “Don’t worry,” Hal reassured her. “We’ll get it back to base and then everyone can take a look. Dr Ye especially—he’s the only one we have left with in-depth biology know-how.”

But Vikki was not to be deterred. Detaching her chest lamp from her suit, she switched it to maximum brightness and angled it to shine directly into the window.

“I can see something there now!” she exclaimed, in some excite­ment. “Little white dots moving about.”

“Could be just flecks of rock, or ice crystals. Let me have a look.”

“No: they’re jittering about as if they were alive. See for yourself.”

Hal peered into the window intently. “Vikki, you may be right. We must get this sample back to base and into the observation habitat. If there are living creatures in there, no way to tell how long they’ll survive.”

So it was another hurried trek back to base, gingerly bearing the precious sample probe.

---§§§---

Vikki was given first look through the microscope, followed by Hal, but all they could make out was that there were wiggly, leggy things moving about very fast. So Dr Ye took the matter in hand.

“Yes, definitely some kind of arthropod,” he muttered, after study­ing the sample for a long time. “I can’t be more precise than that, but definitely a big step up from poor Murielle’s Archaea. If only she were here to see them! I can’t be more precise, but my guess is, we’re looking at something resembling a copepod. Wait, Alex, I’ll explain,” noticing that Alex was about to interrupt. “On Earth, cope­pods are a type of tiny marine crustacean, typically not more than two millimetres long. Very abundant: they make up the bulk of zooplankton—the animal-type plankton. So—barring the possibility of contamination by space probes—we have something which has evolved in parallel with Earth-life. This is really exciting! If there are copepods, there may be larger predators feeding on them. Fish, even! If only we were not leaving Enceladus so soon! Yes, Alex, I under­stand of course, it’s necessary after what happened—but it’s real ill luck. If there’s ever a return mission, I’d love to be on it. I’d make sure to gen up on my biology. Though I’m not getting any younger...”

Alex considered for a while. “I’ll allow time for two more sampler probes to be sent down and retrieved, before we lift off. I don’t suppose SSSA will object—not when we tell them what we’ve found. And Dr Ye—I’ll certainly put your name forward to SSSA—though I can’t promise anything.”

Dr Ye was still studying the specimens. “I think I can make out at least two distinct species here. Or possibly they are male and female of the same species. Always assuming that Enceladus life has sexual reproduction. If so, we may be lucky enough to have a breeding colony. Though whether they can survive the voyage is doubtful.”

“It seems that the Bala found a far better drilling site than we did,” put in Hal, somewhat crestfallen. “If it really was an intelligent being, was it searching for Enceladean life like us? Or was it just hungry? And why three holes? I think we’d all like to be back here on the next trip.”

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“Oh—the Bala,” said Alex. “I never got round to telling you, Hal, Vikki. We’ve located our friend. It’s still on Enceladus, though now three hundred kilometres away: nearly a fifth of the way round the world. If it’s the same one.”

Vikki was taken aback. “You mean it’s still around? How did you find it? Surely our buggies—”

“No chance of a buggy reaching it,” explained Joachim. “No, it was one of our drones, hovering at the L1 Lagrange point between us and Saturn, got a picture of it. It’s almost on the limb with respect to the drone, so we got a nice profile view. It certainly looks like it, and it doesn’t show up on earlier images.”

Vikki was about to speak, but Alex forestalled her. “Sorry Vikki, absolutely no chance of us going to visit your friend. It’s got to be now regarded as dangerous, and any return trip will have to check out Enceladus and maybe neutralise any Bala encountered—or at the very least steer well clear.”

Vikki couldn’t let that remark go unchallenged. “Isn’t that rather disproportionate?” she commented. “Waging war on a super-intelligent species when they only want to exchange knowledge with us? This isn’t a War of the Worlds scenario, Alex.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Vikki! That monster killed poor Murielle. And she’d never meant any harm: she only wanted to take a small sample of the creature’s tissue to test. Maybe it felt pain—but we feel slight pain when we get our jabs—and we don’t go about murdering the nurse in revenge!”

Vikki did not respond. Maybe Alex was right. And the survivor’s guilt was still overwhelming. She couldn’t be sure she was thinking straight.

---§§§---

The second and third probes retrieved from under the ice yielded more of the copepod-like life, but no other creatures: if they were expecting something fish-like, they were in for a disappointment. But Dr Ye was quite convinced, now, that there were several distinct species—as well as males and females of the same species. This was progress!

As to the Bala—well they were all agreed now that their ‘friend’ had to be abandoned for the present. And searches had to be initiated on the other human-settled worlds: Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, Ceres, and above all, nearby Rhea—to see if any of those had been ‘visited’. So there was no other reason to delay their departure from Enceladus. They dismantled and stored the drilling rig, sealed up the base leaving it ready for future occupation, boarded the Valentina, and lifted off.

Joachim had detailed their itinerary to the gathered crew. The Valentina did not have enough fuel for an interplanetary voyage, so they would first have to make for Rhea, another somewhat larger of Saturn’s satellites. There they would take on fuel from the depot there—and in the meantime the crew could take the opportunity to acclimatise themselves to the slightly greater gravity: one-fortieth of Earth’s, as against Enceladus’ mere one-hundredth. Ideally, they would then have wanted to make a stopover on Ganymede—but Jupiter and its satellites were badly placed at the moment, so they would head straight for Ceres.

Alex announced that once on Ceres, three of the crew, Hal, Paul, and Dr Ye, would be given the choice: they could remain on the colony there, take the shuttle to Ganymede when available, or con­tinue to Earth. She and Joachim would be accompanying Murielle’s remains to Earth where, after an intensive postmortem, they would be passed on to her family to be given a proper funeral. Vikki and Gustave were required to come to Earth too, since they would need to participate in the enquiry into Murielle’s death.

Now that they were in flight and Vikki had more or less recovered from her ordeal, she wondered what a postmortem on what amount­ed to no more than a skeleton would reveal. But it was not her business to inquire.

The trip to Rhea took only a couple of days. Once they arrived at the small human settlement there, the crew had a chance to disem­bark for about a day whilst the Valentina was serviced and refuelled. Vikki—who had never visited Rhea before—found it not much dif­ferent from Enceladus: both moons were mostly covered in ice, both were tidally-locked so that they always kept the same side towards Saturn (the human settlement was on the Saturn-facing side), and Rhea’s gravity was only marginally greater than that of Enceladus. Vikki felt some sense of déjà vu, and felt little urge to go exploring—even if she’d been allowed the time to do so.

Alex was bound to issue a warning about possible Bala attacks (Vikki hated hearing the word ‘attack’)—but she was careful not to give too much away—easy enough for her because she half dis­believed what she had seen on Enceladus. She made no mention of any extraterrestrials—merely advised the Rhea base team that if they should come across any unexpected pile of snow or ice (of certain dimensions which she specified), they should stay away from it, photograph it, and contact Ceres or Earth.

Then it was back aboard ship for the much longer voyage to Ceres. This leg would take several months—giving Vikki plenty of time to reflect on her recent experiences. Would the enormity of them overwhelm her?

At least she had the comfort of Hal’s company—which was good for her sanity. Alex agreed that she and Hal could share a cabin. Hal had already promised that he would stay aboard for the onward trip to Earth. Not only was there no need for an extra drilling engineer, either on Ceres or on Ganymede, but he felt that it was best for Vikki that he stay with her.

Dr Ye had also pledged to return to Earth. Although there were good testing facilities on Ceres, they did not have an experienced exobiologist there—and he wanted the specimens examined in the best possible conditions.

Hence it was only Paul who volunteered to stay behind on Ceres. He explained that he would await the first opportunity to transfer to either Ganymede, Callisto, or Europa—whichever came first. Gustave, passing close by Vikki in the Mess, gave her a quick wink. They both knew what was drawing Paul back to the Jovian moons! But Vikki was secretly relieved. Even now, whenever she passed close to Paul, her heart raced a little. Just a little! She was thinking about what might have been, if Hal hadn’t come into her life. And the pain of Paul’s indifference still troubled her. Better that he should be nowhere near.

---§§§---

Since the Valentina was missing out on the stopover on Ganymede, with its gravity of about one-seventh gee, instead heading for Ceres with less than one-thirtieth, Dr Ye was discussing with Alex and Joachim how to help the crew to adapt to Earth gravity when they finally reached there. All of the team, of course, had been subjected to intensive zero-gravity training, to ensure that none of them would fall prey to space-sickness. But the sudden jump to terrestrial gravity would be hard on them, after months of near-weightlessness. Alex asked if it was practicable to spin the Valentina. Joachim said no, but he suggested the crew spend some time in the centrifuge on Ceres, set to deliver one-fifth gee at first, slowly rising to one-half.

Vikki and Hal were both disposed to grumble at this: both of them had been in the centrifuge before and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Why couldn’t they just experience the brief bouts of gravity when the Valentina accelerated or decelerated? But Dr Ye said that wasn’t enough: he agreed with Joachim that the centrifuge was the better option.

In the meantime, there was the long voyage to endure, most of it coasting in free fall after the ship had accelerated away from Saturn’s orbit. Vikki and Hal couldn’t spend all the time sharing a bunk. They occupied themselves with writing reports, reading, and watching holos. Vikki tried her hand at writing poetry—with limited success. Hal was playing a vintage computer game. Dr Ye—they had no idea how Dr Ye occupied himself when he wasn’t with them. And Alex and Joachim were busy taking care of the ship.

But they also had time to reflect upon what the Bala could possibly be. To discuss that, Vikki and Gustave called upon Hal and Dr Ye to join them. Alex occasionally sat in on those meetings, but did not participate. She was still sceptical about the whole thing.

The biggest puzzle was: how did a creature as large as that survive in a total vacuum and with no apparent food source? Hal surmised that it could have at least drawn up water through the three boreholes it had made. And the water contained nutrients: indeed it was richer in nutrients than that obtained from Hal’s borehole. But surely that wouldn’t be enough to sustain a living creature thirty metres long!

Vikki suggested, perhaps the Bala, being sessile most of the time and presumably inactive, didn’t need much intake. But Gustave’s argument was: look at those tentacles! They were immensely strong, as he knew from his own personal contact with them. Manoeuvring tentacles like that consumed energy—lots of it. And how many tentacles were there?

Vikki didn’t like to answer that. During that terrible final moment with Murielle, more tentacles than she could count had emerged from fissures in the wall.

Dr Ye put forward this point. Perhaps what they had seen was the adult form of a metamorphosing creature—even if its physical shape more resembled a prodigious larva! Maybe in the adult stage it did not feed, but merely survived on its stored fat: existed only to repro­duce. This was common on Earth in many species of moths and mayflies, as he was sure the others knew.

Vikki remarked that, in that case, it would have to survive the adult phase without feeding for an awfully long time! Its voyage from its home planet had taken six hundred years—and if it ever returned home, it would be facing an equally long trip. And if it wasn’t to take in food or water, what had it drilled those boreholes for? Research into possible life on Enceladus—just as the Valentina’s crew had been doing?

Possibly the ‘adult’ phase—if what they had seen was indeed the adult phase, wasn’t for reproduction, Dr Ye remarked. Perhaps for gathering of knowledge? Maybe the Bala reproduced in an earlier manifestation. And there was no reason to assume they had sexual reproduction. There might be other ways of distributing genetic data.

And there was still the possibility that the Bala was some kind of robot—in which case it had lied to poor Murielle.

They debated many times. Nothing made sense. All four of them remained baffled.

It would be a long wait to reach Ceres—and then after the centri­fugal ordeal there, an equally long time to reach Earth. There was no help for it: they just had to be patient. Perhaps there would be answers to the mystery once they reached home.

---§§§---

At last the ship docked at the spaceport on Ceres: the largest member of the asteroid belt and one of only two asteroids with a substantial human presence—the other being Vesta. Here the crew bid farewell to Paul, and Vikki felt impelled to give him a hug and kiss him tenderly on both cheeks: he could hardly refuse her that! Gustave remarked “Give our regards to Carla, won’t you,” at which Paul looked a bit bemused; Gustave wondered if he’d committed a faux pas—perhaps Paul wouldn’t be seeing Carla any more. But he kept his composure.

Once again Alex delivered her ‘warning’—why she hadn’t radioed ahead was puzzling—but again gave nothing away. That would have to wait for Earth.