White.

And above, the looming disc of Jupiter, blotting out the horizon.

Nina looked out over the ice. Inside her helmet, the hum of life support, her own breathing. She took another step, feeling weirdly buoyant without the artificial gravity of the ship, its habitat modules spinning at precisely 8.3241 rpm somewhere behind her.

She took another step. Ice, and there, in front, maybe twenty meters or so, the rectangular shape of the remote vehicle and next to it the fallen, stiff, figure of Martin. His helmet lay a few steps away from where he’d crumpled. Even from behind, his head, exposed, had taken on the weird blueish tint of human flesh exposed to Europa’s nearly-nonexistent atmosphere.

Her legs took her forward as if in a trance. She wasn’t crying, but inside felt an immense sadness that she was paradoxically disconnected from. As if looking through a window at a Winter’s day, the frosted panes somehow keeping her distanced from the world outside.

Another step, and suddenly, without conscious thought she was kneeling down next to the body. She turned the shoulders gingerly, forcing his body onto its back and stared down into the sightless eyes. No use looking for a pulse. She stood and softly jounced over to the remote vehicle, careful to avoid the perfectly circular cut it had made in the ice, and the thin cord that plunged down through the surface and into the deep waters below.

A screen on its side of the R-V glowed green. Swiping the pad next to the screen, she pulled up a diagnostics page. All systems A-OK. 4,323 meters of cord diving down through the ice, at the end of which a small camera and maneuvering unit. She swiped the pad again, noticing with surprise that her hand was trembling. The camera screen. What was down there? What had cut the R-V’s video link to the ship? What had caused the other crew to, one by one, end up catatonic or… worse?

The screen blinked over from diagnostics, cool rows of numbers and labels, to camera feed. Over two miles below, the signal from the camera at the end of the cord came through. She stared down at the screen. Strange shapes, limned with bioluminescence, floated softly past.

So there was life. Far below, in the depths of this moon’s oceans. There was life.

But no explanation.

The life support in her helmet softly hummed. She stared down at the circular hole that the R-V’s robotic arm had precisely cut in the surface ice and felt herself somehow being drawn into the inky blackness below. She took a step without realizing it. She was suspended over the hole, precisely a half meter in diameter, and she felt as if on a ledge, staring down a cliff. Something called to her, some strange unknown feeling, a song from a land without visitors. For a long, stretching instant she hovered. And then, a memory, of looking through a frosted window pane at the world outside.

She turned abruptly, grabbed the data card from its receptacle in the side of the R-V and turned towards the ship. It was time to go home.