“How did you know my blood type?”

“Type O is a universal donor. The Rh-negative factor is common in fifteen percent of the population. Everyone selected for this mission has both type-O and Rh-negative blood.”

*   *   *

An hour later, I found myself drinking coffee in the galley with Dr. Amanda Lynn Moss. The scientist smiled when I told her of my conversation with her “compatible” sub pilot.

“Yoni gets very emotional about these things. But you’d have to agree, the odds of all twelve crewmembers possessing the same blood type and Rh factor are too high to be random. So the question becomes why. Why are we really going to Europa?”

“Blood type aside, why do you think you were selected?”

“I am an exobiologist. Exobiology focuses on how life came to be on Earth, specifically the chemical reactions that led to life’s origin.”

“By chemicals, I assume you’re referring to the primordial soup flowing out of those hydrothermal vents we capped last night.”

“Submarine vents don’t make organic compounds, they recycle and decompose them. It’s more likely life originated from Earth’s primitive lakes and lagoons, the shallows being far more conducive for prebiotic reactions to occur. Back in 1953, a University of Chicago graduate student working in a lab sent an electric current through a vat containing a mixture of water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen—essentially the same elixir found in the planet’s bodies of water three-point-five billion years ago. The simulated lightning strike yielded organic compounds including amino acids, the building blocks of life. How these chemicals came to be found on Earth remains a mystery. Some may have arrived in meteors and asteroids, others by comets or cosmic dust. I believe these chemicals will also be found on Europa, and with them life.” She paused, gauging my expression. “What?”

I shook my head, feeling the blood rush from my face. “The mixture of chemicals you just recited … it’s the same ones we used in GOLEM’s biotic algorithm vat.”

Chapter 12

12

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work.

I want to achieve it through not dying.

—WOODY ALLEN

“Your first week is over, Professor Eisenbraun. Have you determined whether one of the Beta Squad males possesses a psychological disorder?”

I gazed across the science lab at the spherical entity floating in the vertical column of liquid, my mind still struggling with the absurdity of my predicament. The last seven days had been physically and mentally exhausting, and now that I was about to trade shifts and join Andria and Commander Cock-Block on Alpha Squad, I wondered how I was going to deal with the additional emotional stress.

First, I had to deal with GOLEM.

“The Beta Squad males appear to be functioning within acceptable psychological parameters.”

“Commander Read, Jason Sloan, and Egor Vasiliev are the three Alpha Squad males. Determine the sociopath and report back at once.”