"Hello? I'm talking here…Choi…Choi?" Peterson studied the expression on her face. She looked dumbfounded. "What's wrong?"

Choi's raised her arm and pointed straight out.

Peterson felt a sudden twist in his stomach. Peterson followed Choi's extended finger and found himself gazing out over a wide valley. His mind went blank and he could swear he felt himself floating out of his body. What he was seeing was totally, utterly, unreal.

After an entire minute of staring, he turned to Choi as she turned to him. Their eyes locked.

Choi spoke slowly. "They…they look—"

Peterson finished her thought.

"Alive."

CHAPTER 11 -- FIELDS OF RED

The agonizing slowness of TES's descent began to drive Robert crazy. He'd been pacing for a half hour and was starting to feel his muscles twitch. He paused his slow motion pace and shook out his arms. "I can't take this," he said. "How much longer?"

"No way to know," Connelly said as she hovered over the TES control panel, watching for the slightest change in the status display. "Not until we break through."

"If there's water at all," Robert said.

Willard looked up from the nearby TES panel, where he'd been lying down, enjoying the view. "What do you mean, if?"

Robert felt the urge to adjust his glasses, but they were unreachable behind his mask. "There's, ah, no guarantee we're going to find water. Science says there is water beneath the ice, but science has been wrong before."

"What about all this ice?" Willard asked. "If there's ice there's water."

"Now he's a scientist," Robert said with a chuckle. "Ice, technically speaking, is frozen water. But frozen water cannot support life…as we know it. And since this is a search for life, we need to find water of the non-frozen variety."

"But the guys at the GEC—"

"They're placing bets," Robert said. Robert knew that most scientists were also great gamblers. They pegged a theory, backed it up with original thinking, found proof that supported their hypothesis and then did the leg work, proving the theory correct. They were at the final stage in this process, final proof. Robert looked to Connelly, "You can explain it."

Willard bounced toward them and stopped next to Connelly at the control panel. Connelly took a deep breath and let it out slowly, allowing her first words to merge with her breath half way through. "There are several theories for how water might be warmed beneath the ice of Europa's surface; tidal flexing caused by Jupiter's gravitational pull, thermal venting, a molten core. The list goes on. But until someone drills a hole in the ice and sees the water for themselves, it's all just theory."

"Like the Big Bang," Willard said.

"Precisely," Robert added with a raised finger. "We've found all kinds of evidence that supports the theory, but it has never been more than that."

"Guys…"