"Come in, Harris, are you reading me? Over." Choi's voice seemed like a thunderous boom in Peterson's ear. He shook and crashed his knee into the console. "If you can hear me, something strange is going on down here. The Europhids…I think there is more to them than we know. I think you should watch Peterson more closely. I'm going to call the TES crew and rendezvous with them back at Lander One unless you tell me otherwise. If you are receiving this, reply when you have coms back. Over."

Peterson squinted and glared at the surface of Europa with the intensity of a coiled snake, ready to strike. Through gritted teeth, he spoke, "Decontamination."

*   *   *   *   *

A dull, constant pain twisted in the sockets behind Robert's eyes. With every movement, the pain cut through his skull. And it didn't help that he was moving as quick as he could. He was working the new lighting controls at a frantic pace, setting them up to all turn on at once. It was more difficult than he thought it would be. Connelly was ready at the sphere's control stick, waiting for the world to glow.

"Robert," Connelly said, her voice stretched with tension, "when I said, 'go,' and jumped up here I thought you were going to turn on the lights?"

"Almost there…" Robert's squeezed his tongue white between his lips. His fingers flew over the keys, finalizing the procedure. "Got it!" Robert slammed down the final key.

Bright white light burst into the water like a flash-bang grenade. But in that blinding moment, Robert refused to close his eyes. He had to see what lurked outside the sphere. When he saw the beast, he wished he hadn't.

Robert scanned from left to right. Hovering just feet from the sphere's exterior were two lips. Each lip was a foot tall and stretched endlessly to each side. Two softball sized, obsidian, eyeballs, only two feet apart, which seemed unnaturally close for a creature of this size, rested just above the top lip. The leviathan's skin had the texture and color of sand, while its two gargantuan lips looked a shade darker.

It took Robert only two seconds to get a full view of the creature—exactly the same time it took for all hell to break loose.

In reaction to the blazing light, the predator lurched back and sunk its eyes back into its head, concealing them from the light. The plan had worked, but Robert quickly noticed a deadly side effect. As the creature reeled from the light, it opened its titanic mouth, which appeared to be large enough to swallow a bio-whale whole, and sucked in. Ocean water, and everything in it, was pulled toward the beast's mouth.

"Dive, Connelly! Dive!" Robert's voice cracked as he pushed the shout out with every decibel his voice box could manage.