Connelly stood, but before she could take action, her head burst with a flash of pain so brilliant she thought it might blind her. After the brightness faded, she began to see things again, but her vision was tinted blue. She thought about moving to Robert, but her body had other plans. She watched as her arms fell to her side and she slowly walked for the door. She could hear the crew stand and shuffle out the door behind her, following her lead like the Pied Piper's mice.

For several hours, Connelly had no control of her body. She could only watch as she and the rest of the crew scoured the ship's labs, eradicating every single sample of Europian life. In one fatal burst, all the samples were blown out the airlock. Next, the crew set to work on the computers, erasing all data, video, images, personal files and logs. Their entire trip from beginning to end was erased.

Connelly realized that this was the blue Europhids. Somehow, they had left behind enough of themselves in Connelly to exact their will on the crew. Their intentions were not violent, but self preservative.  By erasing the files and samples, the crew had no evidence to support their claims of life on Europa. But she knew the word of every crewmember would be enough to convince the world of life on Europa and a second mission would eventually be launched.

But Connelly intended to refute the crew's claims. She knew such an action would make her extremely unpopular with Harris, Choi and Peterson, but she also felt confident that Willard and Robert would back her up. The existence of life on Europa would become a long standing debate…she hoped…and humanity's return to the frozen moon would, at the very least, be delayed.

To further refute the claims of the crew, Connelly and the crew wrote corresponding personal logs about the journey. Subjects ranged from a damaging solar storm funneled through the system by Jupiter's gravity, to TES malfunctions and ultimately their failure to find any life on the moon. The logs mentioned the physical realities that could not be hidden; TES was destroyed and one of the landers was lost on the surface. The story ended with them retreating from a second solar storm that caused them to crash on the surface of Europa. After losing communications, they decided to return home before the storm finished them off. The entire story was incredibly detailed, fit the physical evidence and was corroborated by every single crew member. The written accounts would prove any verbal testimonies to be false.

Still unable to move, Connelly watched as the Surveyor was set on autopilot and programmed to make the jump back to Earth. Countdown, ten minutes Slowly, calmly, the crew all returned to their quarters, stripped nude and climbed into their impact chairs.