The Curse of Europa Read Online Free PDF Page B

the surface below.
Turk carefully steps down to the surface, trying not to step on Hicks’ historic first footprint. He looks around briefly and is simply amazed by the beauty of the landscape. He remembers thinking Mars was amazing, and it was, in its own right, but admittedly not even close to what he is seeing right now. He sees Evans starting to descend out of the ship. “Jeez, it is very bright out here, isn’t it?” she exclaims as she is trying to force her eyes to stay open.
Turk helps her down and she unknowingly stomps all over Hicks’ footprints… oh well he thinks. They start their bounding walk in the low gravity to find their payload pods.
As Evans’ eyes adjust to the brightness of the outside world of Europa, she is finally able to look around. “Wow, yes, awestruck is a great word to describe this ,” she beams as they start their walk, beholding the sights in all directions. “It looks like a wonderful winter wonderland!”
Turk takes her hand, as best as he can with the bio-suit gloves. He can see her smile through the helmet visor. This is kind of romantic in a strange way he thinks. How many men get to take a walk with their girlfriends on a moon orbiting Jupiter? NONE! He finds himself smiling, even bigger than Juliana. He just wishes they could talk privately, but the only way to communicate is through the com units in the bio-suit helmet, which is being monitored and recorded by GSO for posterity. They both know this and understand that they need to keep their discussions professional. They also have cameras in their helmets recording panoramic 3D video of everything they see, but as long as they don’t look at their hands no one should see them holding hands. They slowly walk on, enjoying the moment and periodically muttering various adjectives describing what they see.
     
     

Chapter 5: Doughnuts and Tremors

     
“S TAND BACK…” Turk shouts, holding his left arm straight out to make sure Juliana does not get hit by the payload pod door as he opens it, causing it to fall open to the ground creating a ramp. The first thing he sees is the All-Terrain Rover and he looks at Juliana and smiles. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head as she knows exactly what he is thinking about; doughnuts… and not the kind you eat.
All the cargo in the payload pod is thoroughly secured and it takes them over an hour to unfasten and remove it all. The first thing they need to do is set up their monitoring equipment, which takes another 30 minutes. Dr. Huang is directing their progress from White-Bull-2, to make sure they set up all of the monitoring equipment and experimentation kits correctly.
Turk is very happy when they finally finish, as he knows that now they can take the rover for a spin and do some exploring. Turk grabs Juliana’s hand again and leads her to the passenger side of the rover as if escorting his prom date to his car; he gives a slight bow and flips his hand towards the seat and says, “I’d open the door for you… if it had doors that is…”
“I’m sure you would have, thank you kind sir.” Then just as she is about to climb in she pauses and smiles, “wait a minute, how come you get to drive? What if I want to drive?”
Turk says with a look of surprise, “Yeah, right. This is my baby!” Then after thinking a second he says with a sarcastic tone, “I of course would let you drive, if I could , but unfortunately you’re not authorized or trained to operate this vehicle.”
“Yeah, sure you would Patrick,” giving him a wink. Then she carefully climbs into the passenger seat while Turk climbs into the driver’s seat.
“HANG-ON,” Turk exclaims, as he punches the rover’s accelerator to the floor, making the back-end slip a little bit; although not as much as he was hoping for, as it is geared pretty low.
“Jeez, that’s it?” Juliana laughs with a smirk, swirling her finger around as if to say Ya-hoo .
All Turk could do is shrug his shoulders as if to say what