When the light had disappeared from the blue sky above, Nancy's phone rang. She held the phone to her ear and listened. "Surveyor is successfully away, ma'am."

"Thank you," she said and then hung up.

Immediately, the phone rang again. Nancy looked at the small display screen that revealed who it was calling. She read the name and answered immediately.

"Mr. President," she said and then listened. "Thank you…yes sir…thank you. I'm sure it will too."

Nancy began to pace. "No sir. No. I wouldn't worry about that yet. Yes, sir, I'm positive that this mission will go smoothly. Our technology is state of the art and if anything should go wrong, the crew is well trained and can handle it…yes sir. Thank you again, sir."

With that, Nancy hung up the phone and turned it off.

"Nothing will go wrong," she said to herself, and then repeated it in her head like a mantra.

But she wasn't entirely convinced.

EUROPA

CHAPTER 7 -- ORBIT

The view from the surface of Europa had been the same for millions of years. Jupiter always dominated the sky, its yellow, orange and red gases swirling constantly, propelled by storms the size of other planets. Alongside mother Jupiter were the sister moons, Io, Ganymede and Callisto, which glowed dully in orbit alongside Europa, whose icy surface shone brightest of all—unique among her sisters.

But a new spectacle, one never seen from the surface of the ice moon before, arrived with a flash. Like a streak of lightning it burst into the night sky—something foreign arrived. It came from the inner solar system and stopped above the moon, hovering in orbit. For ten minutes it slowly circled the ice orb; its presence revealed by the sun reflecting brightly off its shiny exterior.

A few other objects had arrived in years past, but none so brilliantly or quickly. This was new, larger, more threatening than the others.

And its arrival didn't go unnoticed.

*   *   *   *   *

The Surveyor's cameras began recording images. Photos of the jagged ice surface, which was brilliant white mixed with smatterings of light blue. Tall peaks of mountainous ice rose toward space. Deep, round depressions sunk down to a perfectly smooth covering, apparently where an asteroid had long ago hit the ice and broke through to the ocean and refroze. It was one of the first hints mankind found as to the possibility of an ocean beneath the frozen surface.