During their previous excursion on the moon, Willard found it near impossible to tear his eyes away from the view above, but with the majority of the sky blotted out by Jupiter's dark side and the remainder of the view obscured by TES's bright lighting, there wasn't much to look at. Willard turned to the control panel and began a series of simple diagnostics on the TES system. Unfortunately, Robert had designed the system so well that, not only was there nothing worth reporting, but the results had come back within seconds.

Willard decided that with twenty minutes before the next scheduled check-in from Connelly, he had time to take a stroll. The hard metal of the TES panel connected solidly with his booted feet and sent him further into the air than the ice. He reached the ice in six large bounds and jumped out onto it. After spending so much time in the Antarctic, the frozen texture of the moon's surface felt familiar to him. Some of the tension wearing at him faded.

He hated being left behind, especially on a mission that was potentially dangerous. He had pleaded his case to Connelly on several occasions, explaining in detail all the problems that could arise, all of the situations that might require his physical presence. But she was hard set in her ways, as usual. She wanted him topside, even insisted he could do more for them from the surface. Willard cringed. He was becoming a grunt on this mission.

Sure, he still wasn't a scientist, but his skills were the ones that kept curiosity from killing the science cat. What was worse about all the waiting was that he knew something was going on down there, and he was missing it. He could hear the excitement in Connelly's voice last time they spoke. And the confusion about the lights being on. And that sound...

What the hell did they find?

Willard stopped and looked back at TES. All was quiet. The cranes sat still, holding the cables in place directly over the melted hole. The bright lights illuminated the black metallic surface of TES, and made the ice around its border glow like a white hot sun. Through the light, Willard could see the green screen of the control console. It hadn't changed. Everything was normal.

Sighing inside his facemask, Willard looked up expecting to see the black nothingness of Jupiter, but instead found himself looking up at a spectacular light show. All across Jupiter he could flashes of light zipping from horizon to horizon. His brow furrowed as he tried to remember hearing anything about this aspect of Jupiter. During their training back at the GEC headquarters, they had been fed an annoying amount of information about Jupiter, Europa and the other neighboring moons, but he couldn't recall any information or images that showed these lights.

Maybe no one knows about them? Maybe I'm the first person to discover them!