Willard interjected before Connelly could stand and start screaming. "Hey," he said, "I just got a natural history lesson from these two so even I know that there is no other place on Earth where there's a frozen lake buried under that much ice. So please enlighten us. Where on Earth, aside from Antarctica, is there a lake buried beneath miles of ice?"

Nancy smiled. "There isn't."

"I don't understand," Connelly said. "Where do you plan on using TES?"

Nancy looked into Connelly's eyes and said, "Not on this planet."

Robert leaned forward with his eyebrows perched high on his wrinkled forehead. "Come again?"

Nancy's smile grew wider. "Not on this planet... As you probably know, NASA had been planning a trip to the sixth moon of Jupiter, Europa, for years. But they ran out of support from the U.S. government. The GEC picked up the tab and have been coordinating our private enterprise with NASA and the U.S. government."

"This is unbelievable," Robert said. "Europa...but I thought they sent a probe there in 2010?"

Nancy nodded. "The Europa Orbiter. After a preliminary scan of the moon's surface, measuring density, temperature and other common elements, the probe was destroyed."

"You mean it crashed," Willard said.

Nancy shook her head. "No, it was destroyed in orbit."

Robert's forehead became even more wrinkled. "As in blown up?"

"Yes," Nancy said. "Just before contact with the probe was lost, it recorded an extreme increase in external energy. NASA believes a massive solar storm caused an overload. The rest is history. However, the mission was not a complete failure. The probe was able to determine that there is, in fact, a vast ocean one mile beneath the ice crust on Europa."

"I sincerely doubt that the existence of water alone is enough evidence to spur a manned mission to the center of our solar system," Robert said.

Nancy leaned forward on her elbows, growing excited. "Last year, a geologist named Michael Peterson, discovered a meteorite in the Arctic. It's been determined that the asteroid originated from Europa. It was the size of a football yet contained biological material swirled among some unknown elements."

Connelly, who had been lost in a sea of anger, snapped to attention, listening to every word Nancy was saying. "Biological?"

"Dead, of course," Nancy said, "destroyed during re-entry, but let there be no doubt, there is life on Europa, and we're going to get a look at it, up close and personal. We want you three to go."

Connelly looked stunned, but her defiance managed to take one last stab. "If we don't?" she said.

Nancy crossed her legs and sat back in the chair. "The project will go on without you and the operation of TES will be given to someone else.  Though I'd prefer you on the team; if something were to go wrong I can't think of anyone better qualified to make the repairs. Can you?"