The Ice Dragon's Song by Bud Sparhawk

The monstrous snow snake roared past Paul Levin at fantastic speed, leaving a 
falling mist of slush and ice behind. The mist was so dense that he couldn't 
even see giant Jupiter's rosy form above the horizon. 
The habitat could only be a few hundred meters further, Paul thought. He 
cautiously skied ahead, probing the ice with the tip of his ski before 
transferring his weight forward.
Suddenly a massive jolt shook the ice pack. He was violently thrown off his feet 
and tossed about. It felt as if all of Europa had shifted beneath him. He was 
terrified as the surface continued to tremble. Paul didn't know whether he was 
going to live or die as the tremors continued.
* * *
It was only yesterday that he had been climbing the ladder to the cab of his 
father's harvester. From that vantage he saw four sets of snow snakes leaping 
near the horizon, five or six kilometers away. They were backlit by Jupiter's 
ruddy glow. The snakes were particularly active today, he thought, throwing 
their coils high into Europa's tenuous atmosphere. Four snakes at one time were 
far more than usual.
From their position Paul estimated that they had to be erupting from the minor 
cracks that branched from the thick width of the main Sarpedon Linea, the 
fissure the Levins had drawn for harvesting. 
Paul knew that they weren't really snow snakes. They were really the plumes from 
the linear geysers that routinely spewed up gases, soft ice, and particulate 
matter from Europa's core. They were just slush thrown up as some ice floes were 
squeezed together by Jupiter's massive gravitational effect. 
Still, he wished that the snow snakes he'd fantasized about when he was younger 
had been real. That would have made this hideous dead moon a place more alive, 
more like somewhere a human being could live comfortably.
Paul squeezed though the harvester cab's narrow opening. The opening was barely 
wide enough to allow his bulky suit to clear the frame. He settled into the hard 
seat before the console. Through the thick insulation of his gloves he could 
feel Europa's angry song as the harvester tore at her skin, peeling away the 
dross of silicates to expose her pristine white skin beneath. It was a slow 
dirge that rang in his helmet, but so soft that he had to strain to hear it at 
all. For a moment he allowed himself to be immersed in the counterpoint of the 
harvester's mechanical beat and the moon's slow song.
"Paul, have you adjusted the blade depth yet?" The voice of his father startled 
him. Damn, just like his father to catch him daydreaming again! 
"Working on it right now, Dad," he replied and started to crank the big wheel 
near his right side. About twenty turns, his father had instructed him, then he 
was to wait a minute and check the harvester's feed rate. Paul waited and then 
did so, and waited still another minute to be certain that he had gotten the 
blade adjusted properly. He wanted to make certain that it met his father's 
strict standards so he wouldn't get yelled at again.
The feed rate was a measure of the depth the harvester's blade bit into the thin 
topmost crust of Europa's soft ice. The deep geysers that erupted from the major 
lineae, such as Sarpedon, were rich in particulates and minerals that JBI 
industries wanted, particularly the various forms of corundums-mostly rubies and 
sapphires-and an occasional diamond. 
If the blade bit too deeply the particulate layer that the harvester scooped 
from the surface would be diluted by too much slush, which would overload the 
processors. Set it too shallow and the harvester would leave too much of the 
layer behind. Only by having the blade adjusted correctly to the layer the 
harvesters were passing through could they make JBI's quota. The layer was so 
variable that the harvesters required constant attention, which meant long hours 
working the string back and forth.
His father usually did this alone, but with the break in classes Paul was able 
to help out and relieve the family of some of the neverending labor.
He checked the feed rate again, turned the wheel back a few turns, waited, and 
then looked at the feed rate once more. He'd learned a long time ago that he had 
to check everything he did for his father at least three times to be absolutely 
sure. His father was only interested in perfection-anything less was failure in 
his eyes. He wondered if Vincent, his brother, had faced the same demanding 
criticism before he finally left home.
His father's approval was particularly important today, because Paul was going 
to ask for his permission to enter the big Aphrodite race next month, the race 
that would show everyone that Paul wasn't a kid anymore, that he could run the 
ice as well as anyone.
"Pee, why aren't you done yet?" his father barked impatiently over the laser 
link. "I thought you knew how to set a blade." 
"I do, Dad, but I . . ."
"If you're finished then get over to the next one," his father barked. "We need 
to get all of these set right before dinner!" Paul cringed at the disapproving 
tone of his father's voice and knew that he'd screwed up again.
It was so unfair, he thought as he climbed down and put on his skis. He was just 
trying to do things right.
* * *
Much later, after Paul finished adjusting the last harvester in the line, he 
climbed down and headed across the ice fields, pushing one ski ahead of the 
other in a steady, efficient, distance-consuming rhythm. His ears filled with 
Europa's song as the broad skis alternately compressed the coarse-grained ice. 
Here in the softer ice on the fringe of Sarpedon, her song was gentle, 
serenading him as he headed for the family's hab.
When he had first asked about the singing that pervaded every movement of the 
hab across the ice, and that reverberated in his suit whenever he skied, his 
mother had replied that the songs were the dragons' cries, ancient legends that 
they sang from their caverns far below the ice. Only the strongest and best 
songs reached the surface, she declared, so he must listen closely and try to 
understand their deeper meaning.
His mother had tried to make this place acceptable to his young mind. At nights, 
as they huddled in the tiny habitat, she would tell him fanciful tales of the 
denizens of the deep oceans within Europa, of the dragons that ate stone and 
spat diamonds, of snow snakes that leaped in Jupiter's light. She would weave 
tales of the deep forests of silicon trees and calcinate grasses, speaking of 
vales and meadows of metallic weeds. With her words Europa changed from a dead, 
frozen wilderness into a place more rich and strange. With her tales Europa had 
become a place of wonder.
Of course now he knew that the mythical dragons beneath his feet weren't really 
singing. He now knew that the song was just an effect caused by the compression 
of the ice, the pressure of his passage momentarily boiling the thin shell of 
liquid that surrounded each uniform, icy grain. It was the same effect that 
caused the singing and booming sands on the distant Earth that he would probably 
never see again, thanks to his father's decision to exile them to this cold and 
horrid world.
The continual deep song of Europa was caused by the violent compression of floe 
against floe, of one continent-sized mass against another. As they ground in 
opposition, the vibrations thundered to the surface, there to be dissipated by 
the covering of snow and ice.
When the song changed, Paul knew that he had crossed over from the coarse to the 
fine-grained, nearly solid ice of the Cadmus region-the older glacial formation 
through which the Sarpedon crack ran.
The smoother, more compressed ice grains allowed Paul to ski along at a faster 
rate. Push, slide, push, slide, push, slide; he fell into an easy rhythm, 
careful not to exert too much downward pressure against the ice. He'd done that 
too often when he was first learning how to propel himself across Europa's 
endless ice fields and had paid the price with embarrassed pratfalls. Since 
Europa's surface gravity was only a fraction of Earth's it was all too easy to 
launch yourself right off the ice-and pay the price by landing on various 
anatomical elements, none of which were padded with dignity.
The harvesters were now passing through an unusually level section of Cadmus, 
which meant that he didn't have to work his way up and down the ubiquitous 
pressure ridges that dominated the landscape elsewhere. He spotted his family's 
hab just a short distance away and stroked toward it, lessening the distance 
with each bar of Europa's song.
He noticed that his mother had once again let the mobile hab draw closer to the 
Sarpedon fault, which probably meant that his father would raise hell with her 
when he got back. Safety was such a big thing that steering the hab too close to 
Sarpedon's instability was a sure way to raise his ire, just like that crap 
about having the emergency gear lying out all the time! As far as Paul was 
concerned all that safety gear took up too much of the severely limited living 
space inside. Still, his father always got his way, and his mother went along 
with whatever he said.
Paul hoped that he could correct the hab's drift before his father noticed. No 
sense listening to his safety-conscious father berate his mother yet again.
* * *
"Rough day, today," Abraham Levin reported as the three of them sat in the tiny 
galley, eating their evening meal. "Noticed there's a lot of variation in the 
particulate layers-seeing mostly tan stuff instead of the brown."
"You've got good eyes," Paul's mother, Sophia, replied as she wiped at her eyes. 
She was always rubbing at them because of the fumes at the assay bench. "The 
daily samples show that all we're getting are silicates, not much in the way of 
metallics at all, and nearly no corundum particles."
His father nodded. "I assume the volatiles have all boiled off as well?" As 
Sophia slowly nodded agreement, Abraham continued; "Just our damned luck to draw 
another worthless section of Sarpedon. Why couldn't we draw a rich section and 
get ahead of the game, just for once?"
"Now Abraham . . ." Paul's mother put out a consoling hand and rested it on her 
husband's shoulder. "We'll get lucky some day. God always rewards hard work."
Abraham jerked back as if struck. "Don't preach to me about God's rewards, 
Sophia. Not today! If God gave out rewards, I wouldn't be busting my ass out 
here on this frigid whore's tit of a forsaken moon where nobody can ever tell me 
which direction to send my prayers." 
Paul watched his mother's face fall, as she blinked back her tears at the harsh 
rebuke. Paul was about to say something, anything, to change the subject when 
his father put an arm around her waist. 
"I'm sorry, Sofia," he said. "It's been a hard day out there and I'm in a bad 
mood. I shouldn't take it out on you. Forgive me?"
Paul seethed. It was just like his father to manipulate his mother. He knew how 
to keep her under his control.
"Of course I do," his mother said softly and she pressed against her husband. 
"After all, it is my fault we are here-don't blame yourself for my sins." Sophia 
gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and then tweaked Paul's cheek between her 
thumb and forefinger. "But, Abraham, I wish you'd watch your language with the 
little one here."
Paul pulled away as much as he could in the tight space of the galley. He wished 
his mother wouldn't treat him like such a kid-next week he was going to be 
fourteen, hardly a baby anymore. "Aw, Mom . . ." he began.
"Hush!" his father said suddenly, putting up a hand to silence them.
Paul listened. All he could hear was the creaking of the hab's tractors as they 
pulled the hab slowly across the ice, the whirling and clicking of the various 
life-support machinery, and the constant hiss of the environmental unit. After a 
day of working in the noisy suit, the hab was practically a sea of calm silence. 
What had gotten Dad's attention? What had he heard?
Then Paul listened to Europa, the neverending song that permeated everything. It 
was so constant that he'd stopped hearing it after a while-stopped being aware 
of its constant presence beneath the overlying mechanical noise.
Until it changed.
"What do you think is happening?" his mother whispered. "Are we in danger?" 
Europa's mid-range song had fallen half an octave and now possessed a deeper, 
richer quality.
"I don't think so," his father replied. "But I've never heard her sing this deep 
before. Something must be happening down below."
Down below! The words fired Paul's imagination as he tried to picture what could 
be occurring far beneath their hab, down below the fifty-kilometer-thick crust 
of Cadmus, the crust that lay over the incredible liquid oceans of this world. 
Was it possible that mysterious creatures swam in seas dark beyond comprehension 
down below? Was it possible that somewhere down there dwelt life forms strange 
beyond imagination, with biologies bizarre and varied? Could there really be 
dragons subsisting on wisps of sulfur, perhaps with skeletons of silicon, and 
skins of glistening jewels in place of scales? Could it be that when the dragons 
moved they shook the world and changed Europa's song?
He dismissed the thought. Such dreams were childish fantasies of a moon more 
alive than this proved to be. He had discarded such fantasies long before. The 
change was probably just another shifting of the floes.
"It's probably nothing." His father confirmed Paul's own thoughts. The words 
brought Paul's mind back to the present, back to the tiny galley, the 
constraining embraces of his too-familiar family. 
"We need to get those assays uplinked by Greeley." Abraham changed the subject 
abruptly. "I'll put the weekly reports together. JBI should be satisfied with 
the progress of our harvester string this past week despite the poor assay-we've 
made twenty kilometers, that's four over schedule. We can send the samples down 
to Simon to take with him on next week's run to Marcus."
"That's a long time to wait for . . ." Mom said brightly with a quick sideways 
glance at Paul. "Could we ask Simon to make the trip earlier and pick, uh, it 
up?" 
"I don't think . . ." his father began to protest, with a quick glance at Paul.
"I could make the run," Paul volunteered quickly. "I could get the samples there 
quicker. I know how to drive the scooter, and I could follow the Wholephore link 
there and back, and it's only a day's drive each way, and could I, Dad? Could I 
do that?" he said without pausing for breath, so intense was his desire.
"No!" his mother said at once. "You are still too young to make such a long 
drive. There's no telling what could happen to you on the way."
"Yes," his father said with a rare hint of a smile barely glimpsed beneath the 
corners of his mustache. "You're so young and full of fresh meat that the ice 
dragons might get you if you aren't careful." 
Paul felt his face grow red. His father had always kidded him about his belief 
in the dragons when he was younger. Paul could remember overhearing him 
complaining to his mother for filling his son's head with such nonsense when he 
was trying to instill some sense of survival into the boy. Did he bring it up 
now just to remind Paul that he was still just a child?
"Your mother is right," his father continued, heedless of Paul's embarrassment. 
"You're still too young. I'll ask Simon to go ahead of schedule, Sofia."
Paul shrank back, his hopes disappearing like an ice fault flexus during 
sunside. It was obvious that neither of his parents was in a mood to discuss him 
entering the race. If Mom wouldn't let him drive the scooter to Marcus Station 
then there was no way she would let him enter the race-no way at all! Maybe when 
he was alone with his father, he could ask, man-to-man. It would have to be 
later, when they were away from his mother's overly protective influence.
* * *
"I want you to run an errand for me," his father said casually the next morning, 
during breakfast.
Paul's heart jumped. For a moment he hoped that his mother had relented during 
the night and they were going to let him take the scooter to Marcus after all. 
But his hopes were dashed with his father's next words.
"I want you to run our weekly report over to Simon at Greeley station. Make sure 
that he knows he has to transmit it right away."
Paul felt a rush of excitement. It wasn't a run to Marcus, but just being out 
there on the ice with the scooter would be great fun.
"Oh yes," his father added as Paul got up from his seat to find his suit. "I'll 
need the scooter this morning so you'll have to ski over. Be sure to put a 
reserve pack on your suit-don't want you to get caught out there without 
backup."
Paul fumed. He was old enough to be able to take care of himself. He didn't need 
to be reminded to take routine safety precautions, like some dumb kid. Not using 
the scooter was disappointing, but Greeley was only twenty klicks 
away-practically next door-and well within range of his normal suit's twelve 
hour air and power supply. 
He was still seething over both his father's unnecessary safety reminder and the 
lack of scooter as he struggled to position the massive life-support pack onto 
his shoulders, straining his arms to jockey the thing onto the hangers at the 
back of his suit. He wished that he had a better build and more muscles. His 
brother, Vincent, had taken after their father in that respect. Vincent had his 
father's thick body and large hands while the slender and wiry Paul had 
inherited his mother's physique. He was strong for his size, but relative 
strength didn't seem to matter that much when you had to horse around something 
as bulky and massive as a suit pack with the reserve unit attached.
The pack finally slipped into place and connected with a loud clang that 
reverberated in his helmet. He listened to the smaller connectors clicking as 
they automatically locked the recycler, air supply, power, and scrubber units 
into place. He shifted his boots to find his balance. The extra mass of the 
reserve pack added half again the mass and made him somewhat back-heavy.
Paul moved through the hatch, unshipped his skis from their rack, and stepped 
outside. He could see Jupiter's rosy edge peeking over the western horizon. In a 
few weeks he'd be able to see more of the giant planet as their harvester string 
approached the meridian. With a rotation rate of three and a half days and 
Europa taking the same time to revolve around Jupiter, one side of the moon was 
always facing the planet.
He put the skis down on the ice at the edge of the hab's ramp and snapped his 
boots into the toe clamps. Leaning forward, he slid the skis back and forth to 
cool them down before shoving off. If you weren't careful about doing that you 
could easily melt into the soft ice and catch a tip when you skied forward. 
Cooling the skis was another trick he'd learned the hard way, much to the 
amusement of his older brother, who never seemed to make mistakes. Satisfied 
that he was ready to go, he pushed off and began striding away from the hab. 
His anger quickly subsided as he fell into the smooth rhythm of the skis. His 
father had been letting him do more than usual this time he came home from 
school. Working alongside him on the harvester string was a big advance. Vince 
hadn't been allowed to do that until he was a year older than Paul was now. And 
taking the trip to Greeley and the drill rig was a new responsibility. 
Greeley hab was located about twenty kilometers directly ahead. It served as one 
of the beacons for steering the harvester lines along Sarpedon. Although it was 
too faint for him to see, he could imagine the pencil-thin, blue-green 
navigational beam that linked the controlling harvester to Greeley. When the 
geysers were really active and provided a slight atmospheric mist, he could see 
the link's brilliant line shining in the perpetual twilight. His father, and the 
other harvester operators, paid a portion of their profit to Greeley for this 
navigational service.
The Richards, who operated Greeley, were relatively new to Europa, which was why 
they had the uninteresting job of maintaining the navigational hab. After a few 
years they could earn enough credits to qualify for a JBI loan, get a harvester 
string of their own, and start to earn their way to a better life.
Visiting the Richards' place would be a treat for Paul, for it would give him an 
opportunity to be with their daughter, Dolores, who, in his humble opinion, was 
the most beautiful, charming, and intelligent creature that God had ever 
created.
But he couldn't go directly to Greeley, which was probably why his father had 
wanted him to take the extra pack. Instead he had to deliver a package from his 
mother to the drill operators twenty kilometers to the west. "They deserve some 
home cooking," she had said with a smile. "Give them these cookies for me."
The drillers were melting a new bore hole to power some sort of scientific 
station JBI was going to move to that location. The bore would feed the 
Patterson cells that provided power for the station. With a ready source of 
water they wouldn't have to switch power units every week like the harvesters.
Paul fell into a steady rhythm as he moved along, occasionally varying his 
movements to impart changes onto the song of the ice. When his father's hab 
disappeared behind him all he could see was the ice, the stars, and Jupiter's 
gigantic presence peering above the horizon. A few of the smallest snow snakes 
accompanied him, criss-crossing his path as they followed the tiny lineae that 
marked minor fractures in the floes. The smaller regions of the ice were in 
constant motion even as the larger floes, nearly continental in size, drifted 
against one another with glacial force. Europa rearranged her topography more 
rapidly than Earth did its continents, but the principles were the same.
Soon Paul saw the tall tower of the drill. He didn't relish the idea of stopping 
at the station. The men at the bore were rough sorts-they'd been prospectors, 
they said, until they got a call from JBI to do some contract drilling. The two 
of them had stopped to call on his father when they passed the harvester string 
several weeks before. The tall one was named Jack. Rob was the short, kidding 
one. There was a hint of menace in their eyes and Paul didn't like the way that 
Rob looked at his mother. 
When he drew closer Paul noticed that the bore tower was canted from the 
vertical. The tilt was just enough to be noticeable. He momentarily wondered if 
something might be wrong as he headed toward the tiny hab next to the tower.
"Something big hit ‘er during the night," Jack told him as they shared some warm 
tea with him over the opened pack of cookies. Snickerdoodles, his mother called 
the tiny disks.
"Ice dragons did it," Rob spat knowingly. "Something big moving around down 
there," he pointed at the floor. "Really big, too!"
"More likely it was just a floe shift," Jack continued, dismissing Rob's 
sarcasm. "I think our shaft got caught between two shifting masses."
Paul nodded toward the hatch. "I didn't see any shift in the ice cap out there. 
I thought Cadmus was a solid ice shield all the way down."
Both of the ex-prospectors laughed. "I wasn't talking about these little bitsy 
pressure floes you see on the surface. Hell, they don't matter at all! No, kid, 
down under the calm surface you see are the major floes, almost like continents. 
When they move there's a lot of energy involved."
Then Rob added, "That's where the ice dragons live, down there in the dark 
below." He was so serious that Paul took a minute before he realized that Rob 
was pulling his leg. But how had the man known of his mother's fantasy, of his 
own childish beliefs?
"Could that be why the song changed last night?" Paul asked, ignoring the bait.
"What the hell are you talking about, kid?" Rob said abruptly. "What ‘song'?"
Paul carefully explained the shift his family had heard. "But my father says 
it's nothing to worry about," he ended.
Jack rubbed his chin in thought. "Might be. For sure, something big is happening 
down there and I'm pretty sure that we're right on the edge of it. No way of 
telling whether it's going to bring us good or not. Maybe we'll hit bottom soon 
and be able to get away from here."
"Or maybe we'll tap into a thermal upwelling," Rob said. "A nice mineral 
well-lots of ways we could get lucky on this."
Paul considered their words for a moment and realized the note of concern 
beneath their bantering. Both Jack and Rob were worried, but were trying hard 
not to show it. "You don't think there's any danger, do you?" What if something 
happened to his mother, his father, and the rest of the people who were in the 
area?
"Danger?" Rob laughed. "Listen, kid, we're sitting on a frigid ice planet with 
almost no atmosphere. You're sitting right over one of the major floes and right 
next to one of the biggest cracks on Europa's surface. Of course there's danger, 
but more from our own failures than the moon's. Think about it, kid: If we lose 
power, lose our air, if our recycler breaks down, or one of the other dozen 
things we depend on fails, we'll die. What's a moonquake or two compared to 
that?"
Paul had no answer.
* * *
Several hours later, nearly at dinnertime, he was settled into one of Simon and 
Rachel Richard's warm chairs, watching their daughter, Dolores, fixing a hot 
meal. Paul loved watching her silky movements, observing the supple grace with 
which she moved her long legs, the darting dance of her delicate hands as she 
drew supplies from the cabinets and deposited them on the preparation surface. 
He loved the way her hair spun around her head when she turned, the way her 
tongue licked her lips as she read the instructions on the packages, trying to 
decide on which to pick. He adored the blue of her eyes, and the way the edges 
crinkled when she smiled. As a matter of fact, there wasn't a thing about her 
that he didn't think was absolutely perfect in every way.
"So, how are your parents?" Dolores asked as she puttered around. "I talked to 
your mom last week when she came by to send some messages."
His mother had been to Greeley last week? She hadn't mentioned that to him, but 
then why should she? He'd probably been busy doing one of the innumerable and 
endless chores his father had set for him and hadn't noticed.
"Are you going to go to Galileo Galilei for the race next month?" she asked as 
she finally made a decision and tossed one of the packages into the heater. "I 
hope you like soup."
From your hands I would eat garbage and consider it an honor, Paul thought, but 
couldn't say that aloud. "Sure," he replied instead.
"I think that Philip is going to enter the race, you know," Dolores continued. 
"You remember Philip; he's the one I've been dating at school. Tall guy, black 
hair?"
"Yeah," Paul certainly did remember Philip. He was everything that Paul was 
not-tall, muscular, mature enough to boast a thin mustache, and, worst of all, 
the same age as Dolores-seventeen! Paul had hated him ever since he saw Philip 
holding Dolores' hand in the hallway between classes. He hated the 
self-satisfied smirk that Philip had on his too-perfect face, and wondered if 
the clod really and truly appreciated the gift that this lovely girl had 
bestowed upon him by giving him access to her heart. If Philip ever hurt 
Dolores, Paul swore, he would kill him. Of course, if Phil happened to die or 
break up with her before then, Paul wouldn't be too torn up. He'd surely be 
there to comfort the grieving Dolores, to take her in his arms and hold her 
close in her moment of sorrow.
"I admire anybody brave enough to enter the race," Dolores went on, unmindful of 
Paul's wishful fantasy. "Going out there on the ice for two days of continuous 
racing takes a lot of guts. I just wish I had nerve enough to enter myself." She 
put the bowl of warm soup in front of Paul.
"Uh, yeah," Paul said, digging his spoon into the steaming container and taking 
a mouthful, burning his tongue. As he took a drink of cool water he wondered why 
he always seemed so tongue-tied around her. Why couldn't he talk to her like 
anyone else? Why couldn't he tell her that she had stolen his heart, his very 
soul, and that he was hers to command? Why couldn't she see how deeply and 
purely he loved her?
Dolores was still going on about the race as he prepared to leave. If he left 
now, he could still make it home before bedtime. Dolores was prattling on and on 
as if there were nothing more important in the solar system than the damn race 
that his mother wouldn't let him enter. He sat down in the vestibule to pull on 
his boots.
"I mean, being out there on the ice, all alone in the dark, racing across 
Aphrodite, having to keep going and going without resting-it must really be 
scary, don't you think?" she asked.
"I won't be scared," Paul exclaimed suddenly, the words springing from his mouth 
of their own accord. "Being in the race won't bother me!" he went on, his tongue 
forming words beyond his control. No sooner than were they out of his mouth that 
he immediately regretted them. Why had he said that? 
Dolores smiled and quickly sat beside him, her hip touching his, her hand on his 
arm. "Really," she said breathlessly. "You're going to run the race?" There was 
no mistaking the admiration in her voice.
Paul sat back, momentarily basking in the glow of her smile. "Sure, it's just 
two days across the Aphrodite plain. Shoot, I've gone on runs for Dad that were 
longer than that." Well, it wasn't exactly an outright lie-he had gone on longer 
runs, but there had been places to stop, rest, and get fresh packs. Yeah, and 
his mother had been with him too, but there was no sense bringing that up right 
at the moment.
"Well, what have we here?" Simon Richards remarked as he stomped into the hab. 
"Down for a visit, Pee Paul?" Simon had always used Paul's nickname ever since 
he arrived on Europa.
"Paul brought the weekly reports for us to transmit to Marcus," Dolores told her 
father. "And guess what-Paul is going to race the Aphrodite next month! Isn't 
that exciting?" 
Simon glanced at Paul and grinned. "He tell you that? Why, Paul, I'm surprised 
that someone as young as you are would even think about being in the race. Have 
you told your mother yet? And how about your father-does he know?"
Paul was trapped. On one side was his Dolores, adoring him, noticing him as a 
person for the first time he could remember. And on the other side was her 
father, a rude intrusion upon the scene, demanding truth in place of his lies, 
making him expose his innocent deceit to the girl he loved. His ears grew hot 
and he knew that he was blushing beet red from being caught in a lie. "Not 
exactly," he mumbled as he pulled his other boot onto his foot, stamped to the 
lock, and pulled the pack into place.
"Bye, Dolores," he said plaintively as he lowered his helmet. She didn't reply.
"See you at the finish line, Pee-Paul," her father grinned widely and laughed as 
Paul cycled through the lock, stepped into his skis and slid away into the 
twilight. Paul could feel Dolores' disdain boring into his back as he raced away 
from the hab, could feel her acid disapproval burning into his heart, searing 
his soul, melting away any chance that she would ever speak to him again without 
laughing at his childish behavior.
How could he ever get the nerve to face her again? He knew that he would have to 
be in that race, with or without his father's approval! Somehow, some way, he 
was going to prove to Dolores that he hadn't been lying, that he was as brave as 
she thought him to be, as capable of testing himself against Aphrodite's ice as 
that boob Philip and his over-muscled companions. 
He glanced back once and saw the blue-green flash of the link arc through the 
night. His father's reports were already flashing their way along the Wholephore 
network on racing photons to Marcus. Ordinary radio communication was impossible 
on Europa because of Jupiter's intense magnetic fields and the continuous 
bombardment of charged particles raining down, unimpeded by the moon's tenuous 
atmosphere. To overcome this difficulty JBI had installed a link of Wholephore 
repeater stations across Europa's face. These used modulated blue-green lasers 
to burn through the haze of water vapor.
Some of the more well-financed JBI groups used fancy spread-spectrum radio units 
for short range work, but such devices were beyond the means of marginal 
harvesters like his father.
Which brought him back to the present. What if Simon Richards told his father 
about his bragging before he had a chance to talk him into giving permission for 
the race? His father would have a fit, and probably put more restrictions on him 
than usual.
There was a chime in his helmet, which puzzled him for a moment until he 
realized that it was the air supply warning. Damn, he'd been in such a rush to 
leave Greeley that he'd forgotten to check the pack. He reached back to flip 
over to the reserve. Then the power unit beeped, and the regeneration unit as 
well. Now he was really in for it! How could he have been so stupid as to forget 
something so basic? When his father saw that he had to use the reserve unit he'd 
really be pissed. Paul would probably get another lecture on safety and have to 
do safety drills for a week! That's what his father would really be mad 
about-being stupid about safety.
Paul wondered if he could come up with an excuse before he reached the hab, but 
his racing mind couldn't produce a credible story that he thought would fool his 
father.
The ice sang a sad accompaniment beneath the slow progress of his skis.
* * *
As Paul was nearing home, he looked toward the Sarpedon Linea to see if he could 
spot the harvester string. Aside from a lot more snow snakes than normal 
erupting from the minor cracks, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary. The 
five harvester units were creeping along at their normal pace as they chewed up 
the deposits on the surface and spit out the processed slush. A tiny spark of 
light moving among the machines told him where his father was working the line. 
He was probably adjusting the blades and checking the hoppers, as usual.
As Paul slid down the side of a small ridge he detected a change in the song, 
just like the other night, only this one dropped deeper and deeper to a bass 
tone. Something was happening, just like the prospectors had said-something big 
was happening!
Then he saw it coming from the distant horizon. It was a huge snow snake, racing 
along Sarpedon like a rushing freight train. As it came closer, a matter of only 
a few seconds, he saw that this was no snake, no tiny linear geyser spewing tiny 
bits of ice and slush into the air. No; this was a dragon of a geyser, a monster 
that was pitching its coils far into the dark sky, maybe all the way up to the 
edges of the thin, one hundred-kilometer deep atmosphere.
But there wasn't time to ponder escape velocity as the dragon roared past, 
obscuring the harvester string in a fierce blizzard of mist and snow. He felt 
the deep-throated thunder of the monster's passing through his boots. It 
reverberated in his suit and rattled his teeth. Paul's vision was blurred as the 
icy mist enveloped him. 
Then the monster was gone. Even Europa's nearly constant voice was momentarily 
stilled by its fury. Paul stood quite still, hoping that he had not turned 
around in his excitement. He hoped that he was still facing directly toward the 
hab, even if he couldn't see it through the enveloping mist. He cautiously slid 
one of his skis forward, testing the new layer of ice, and then followed with 
the other ski. The ice coated his suit, forcing him to stop and wipe away the 
thick layer. Slowly, carefully, blindly, Paul strode toward home.
He hadn't gone more than a few hundred meters when Europa's song returned, angry 
and discordant. Paul scarcely had time to wonder at what this meant before a 
hammer blow threw him off his feet.
The ice beneath him felt as if it were alive. The surface rippled and twisted. 
Paul felt as if he were on a floe in some raging, storm-tossed sea. But that was 
ridiculous, the Cadmus ice shield was fifty kilometers thick. The raging ocean, 
if that was what was causing this, was too far beneath the surface to affect 
him! Something else must be causing this heaving and thrusting! Paul stayed 
perfectly still and prayed that whatever happened would spare him.
Finally the trembling stopped. Paul found himself lying on the side of a sheet 
of ice that sloped upwards at a thirty-degree angle. He struggled to get the 
skis under him so he could stand. He put them crosswise to the slope so that he 
wouldn't slip back down while he got his bearings.
Which way was the hab? The upheaval had disoriented him completely and the haze 
of falling ice crystals prevented him from gaining any visual clue as to 
direction. He couldn't even make out Jupiter through the thick mist. He topped 
the ridge and slid down the other side where he encountered another ridge. 
Whatever had happened had turned the flat plain he'd been traversing into a 
pressure ridge. What had happened to the flat ice plain?
Paul considered. If the Sarpedon crack had been forced open then any pressure 
ridges would have formed parallel to it. All he had to do was follow the flexus 
between the ridges to maintain his original direction, parallel to the fault, or 
so he imagined.
After what seemed like an hour of cautious movement, but which turned out to be 
a mere fifteen minutes when he checked his timer, the mist began to clear. Paul 
climbed to the top of another ridge to see if he could get some idea of his 
location. 
So changed was the area before him that Paul could make no sense of what he saw. 
Floes projected up everywhere in a random fashion, punctuating the area with 
their sharp forms. The only sense of order he could discern was the evenly 
spaced pressure ridges that rippled away from where he stood. The mist seemed to 
be thicker on his left, toward Sarpedon itself.
Then he spotted something two ridges over-something large and metallic. Could it 
be the hab? Paul decided to find out and headed in that direction. A few moments 
later he saw one of the hab's treads rearing toward the sky instead of being 
planted on the snow as it should have been. The entire hab was tilted at an odd 
angle into the sky. He pushed ahead, concerns about his father and mother 
driving everything else from his mind.
One side of the hab was half buried under several large ice sheets that had 
overlapped it. There were no lights, meaning that the power was probably out. 
Paul kicked off his skis, climbed up to the hatch, and wrenched it open. He 
climbed down into the lock and used the mechanical controls to cycle himself 
inside. He was glad to feel the pressure equalize. The hab had maintained its 
atmospheric integrity, which was a good sign. He found one of the emergency 
lamps right where his father had left it and flicked it on. 
At first Paul couldn't make sense of the scene before him when he removed his 
helmet. Everything loose was all jumbled together. The walls made odd angles to 
the floor so that he couldn't quite figure out where . . .
Then he saw his mother on the floor, her leg bent under her at an awkward angle. 
"Mom!" he shouted and kneeled at her side to feel for a pulse. She was still 
breathing and her heartbeat seemed strong. There was a cut over her temple, and 
blood spotted the shoulder of her coverall. When he turned her head he noticed 
the trickle of blood coming from her ear and nose and wondered if she had 
suffered some sort of concussion. He pulled back an eyelid and saw the dilation 
of her pupil. He thought hard about what that could mean. Was it concussion? Or 
worse?
Paul snapped the med kit from its fastenings and tried to treat his mother's 
obvious injuries. He gently felt her bent leg, fighting his embarrassment at 
being so familiar with her, but forcing himself to follow the medical protocols 
his father had drilled into him. He thought he felt a break, just below the 
knee. Maybe there was damage to her knee as well, but he couldn't tell that with 
just a hand exam. As gently as possible, he straightened her leg, wrapped a 
splint, and inflated it. Sofia moaned softly as he did so, but did not wake. 
The air started to get close and Paul wondered if the hab's recycler had 
stopped. Sure, if the emergency power hadn't come on then the recycler would 
have stopped as well. Damn, what else could go wrong?
Moving as quickly as he could in the mess of the tumbled habitat, Paul found the 
spare backpacks, disconnected his spent unit, and attached a fresh one. He made 
certain that the pack's air, converter, and batteries were all fully charged 
before doing anything else, just as he'd had to do in the drills. 
Then he realized something. While the hab was maintaining its atmospheric 
integrity, there was no guarantee that it would continue to do so. He had to 
prepare for the worst. 
He pulled his mother's suit from the storage compartment and slipped it over her 
form as gently as possible. Getting the splinted leg into the suit was the most 
difficult part of the job, but he managed.
Sofia had something clenched tightly in her hand. No matter how hard Paul tugged 
he could not pry her fingers loose. Since there was no need for her to use the 
gloves anyway he just stuffed her arm into the suit, clenched fist and all. When 
that was done he attached a back pack and made sure that the air flow was set 
properly. Satisfied that he could do no more for his mother for the moment, he 
went outside to look for his father.
At first he didn't know which way to go, the landscape had been so ripped 
asunder. Then he saw Jupiter's rosy rim through the diminishing murk and 
determined the direction where the harvesters must be. He raced up and down the 
ridges, pushing on the skis as much as he could, ever wary of suddenly finding 
himself floating from too hard a push.
Suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks. The jumble of ice fragments and floes 
stopped a few meters on the other side of the ridge he'd just ascended.
The previous day there had been the Sarpedon fissure, a rough, nearly straight 
white cleft in the ice running from horizon to horizon. On either side had been 
the brown and tan deposits, the detritus of earlier geysers that his father 
harvested. The white and dark bands of ice had gently undulated away from 
Sarpedon as if they were shallow, frozen waves on the icy plain.
But now there was no Sarpedon Linea, no clean cleft bounded by the lines of 
brown ice. There was only a smooth icy surface, a frozen river that stretched as 
far as Paul could see in either direction. Near the center, where he estimated 
that Sarpedon had been, was a bubbling cauldron of warm, erupting slush spewing 
up and spreading out, losing heat to evaporation and conduction with the ice 
beneath as it froze into an even, solid sheet, beneath which lay the harvesters.
And his father.
* * *
Paul stared dumbly at the spot where he should have seen the harvester string. 
There was nothing there save a widening sheet of slick ice. He continued to 
stare for long moments, wishing and hoping, as if sheer desire could animate the 
scene and bring the line of metal harvesters back into sight. Paul blinked, 
hoping to see his father's form climbing among the metal machines but, when his 
eyes opened, there was no trace of them. No matter how hard he stared at the 
growing river of ice could he detect even the slightest trace of evidence, the 
merest hint, that his father had somehow, miraculously survived the cataclysm.
Paul expected that such a shock, such a sudden loss of his father, the solid, 
uncompromising constant of his life, would leave such a void that he would fall 
into a pit of sorrow. Instead he felt nothing, an absence of any emotion 
whatsoever. How could he feel no sadness at this sudden loss, he wondered? 
Shouldn't he be crying? Shouldn't he feel an aching sense of loss? Had his 
father's presence meant so little that he couldn't even feel a tug of remorse 
that his father's body now laid buried deep beneath the ice? 
Paul headed back to the hab, disgusted with his lack of emotion, disappointed 
that he couldn't even shed a tear for the man who guided and controlled his life 
for so long. He was more upset by the helplessness of his mother, at her 
injuries, than he was by the death of his other parent.
With that his thoughts turned to his mother's condition. He had to get her to 
the Richards' place. Surely they wouldn't refuse to help him, to help her, in 
the face of such a disaster. Yes, his first priority should be to get help for 
his mother. He hurried across the ice to her. She was depending on him now. He 
was going to have to take care of her.
* * *
Getting his mother out of the hab presented problems Paul hadn't anticipated. 
The floor had tilted a bit more since he left and was now at a precipitous 
twenty degree slant-not difficult to negotiate if one were careful, but damned 
hard when encumbered by a surface suit. Paul struggled, climbing up the slope to 
the hatch. Dragging another person who was also clad in her surface suit was 
hard work. Her limp body was just dead weight. Paul had to handle her very 
carefully. He was afraid that he'd do further damage to her broken leg and 
aggravate her internal injuries, particularly that concussion. As he strained to 
lift her over the edge of the hatch he wished again that he had more muscle.
The tiny hatch compartment presented a problem. The space between the inner and 
outer hatches was very constrained, with barely enough room for a fully suited 
person, let alone two of them. That it was on a steep angle did not help a bit.
Paul solved the problem by embracing his mother with both arms, pulling her 
close, and backing up and into the compartment. He was nearly lying on his back 
by the time he got the inner door closed.
Paul awkwardly cycled the hatch with his free hand. His mother and he were face 
to face, his helmet touching hers. Her slender form limp against him, so limp 
and submissive. How many times had his father held her so, Paul wondered, and 
was suddenly aware of their intimacy and the weight of her body pressing against 
his own. Much to his surprise he felt himself getting an erection. Shame washed 
over him as he struggled to suppress it, but to no avail. Finally, the air 
pressure dropped and their suits inflated to push them apart. The outer hatch 
finally came free and with it escape from his embarrassment.
Once outside Paul secured her on their utility sled. He braced her into a 
sitting position as best he could. The sled was made to be pulled by their 
little scooter, which his father usually kept at the side of the hab that was 
now buried in the ice. He found the short-range communication laser they used to 
talk to the harvesters where it had fallen from the rooftop mounting. It 
appeared to be intact when he pulled it from the ice and examined the case. He 
hooked it up to his power pack and was gratified to see the ready light glow 
green.
He struggled to climb to the top of the hab, which had visibly tilted even 
further. The ice beneath it must be collapsing, he concluded, and hoped that he 
had time to ping the prospectors' hab. He oriented himself and pressed the 
unit's switch as he watched the receive light. There was no response. He held 
the switch closed and swept the laser back and forth, sweeping the general area 
where the transceiver might be in hopes of raising a response.
But there was no reply, which could mean that their unit had been damaged by 
whatever had happened. Worse still, he worried, perhaps their place had suffered 
just as much damage as his own. 
Paul leaped from the top of the hab as it listed suddenly. No sooner than his 
feet touched the ice than he grabbed the lines he had rigged to the sled and set 
out toward the prospectors' rig. He didn't look back once at the sinking 
habitat.
Nor to his father's ice-filled grave.
* * *
Paul quickly learned that the sled prevented him from going in a straight line, 
over the tilted, broken floes. Not only because it exerted too much drag, but 
because he was afraid of what the jostling might do to aggravate his mother's 
injuries. Instead he diverted around, dodging the blocks of ice as if he were 
wending his way through some dim, frozen maze. Occasionally he had to climb a 
floe to get his bearings from Jupiter's familiar face.
At one point he encountered an open chasm where a small linea had separated. It 
might be just narrow enough for him to leap across safely, but it was certainly 
too wide to do so while pulling the sled behind him. Apparently whatever had 
cracked the depths of Sarpedon to release its deep waters had also spread the 
minor lineae that radiated from the central rent. Paul decided to take the 
prudent step of finding a route around the gap, which required him to travel an 
hour at right angles to the direction he was heading before he found a place 
narrow enough to cross without endangering his mother. Then he had to trace his 
way back, which took as long.
Suddenly, the ice before him was pierced with sharp black daggers of all 
lengths, forming a forest of dark forms. The exposed portions of the daggers 
ranged in length from tiny pieces the length of his arm to monsters taller than 
him. In the middle of this strange new forest was a shattered wreck, all that 
was left of the prospectors' hab. A truncated portion of the drill rig still 
stood and, from its center, a tall, impossibly thin line extended far into the 
sky before it looped over and abruptly ended. 
It took a moment before Paul realized that the tremendous energy released from 
the Sarpedon fault must have forced the drill tube out of the hole, driving it 
right from its icy sheath and shattering its segments, which then rained 
destruction as they fell. If the prospectors had been in the hab when the deadly 
rain of black fragments began, they wouldn't have stood a chance of survival. 
With a sinking heart he fought his way through the fragments toward the shell of 
the hab, preparing himself for the worst.
One look into the roofless hab was enough to tell him what he needed to know. 
Judging from their unprotected forms, both prospectors had been caught trying to 
reach their suits. Paul was horrified and fascinated at their bodies. Both must 
have been flash frozen at the moment of death and then decorated by the deposits 
of falling ice. They would have been glittering ice sculptures of unearthly 
beauty had it not been for their agonized postures. Their frozen forms reminded 
him of those ash-formed plaster casts made at the ruins of Pompeii that he had 
seen in school.
But there was nothing he could do for either Jack or Rob except recite a brief 
prayer over their frozen forms before continuing his trek toward Greeley 
station. He added a prayer that Dolores' family had survived, for neither his 
own nor his mother's pack were sufficient for the long trip to Marcus Station. 
If Greeley hadn't survived they would both die cold and alone, like his father 
and the prospectors.
What was he going to do now that his father was gone, Paul wondered? There was 
no way that he could support his mother on his allowance. There was no way that 
he could pay back the debt the family owed to JBI for the harvesters and the 
hab. He knew that his brother wouldn't be able to help; the money that Vince got 
as an apprentice down on Jupiter barely paid for his keep, let alone having 
anything to spare.
Maybe, Paul hoped, Vince could come back and take care of Mom so he could go 
back to school. Then reality dawned-there would be no more allowances, no more 
school without the harvesters. He would probably have to take some menial, 
low-paying job at Marcus, something suitable for a kid with no education, to 
support the two of them. In all probability he'd be stuck on this stupid moon 
for the rest of his life, unable to buy passage home!
Damn, he cursed as the tears filled his eyes, why did his father have to die? 
Why did this have to happen? It was going to screw up his entire life! He was so 
angry that he wished that he could scream at his father for his stupidity at 
being on the harvesters when the dragon struck. He should have been at home, 
with Mom. Damn him, damn him to hell and back!
The grains of ice beneath his feet seemed to chant an angry curse at 
circumstances as Paul slid along toward his uncertain future.
* * *
The alarm for the primary air supply pinged just as he spotted Greeley. It was a 
welcome sight. Best of all, the lights that marked it glowed like a bright 
beacon on the dim landscape. The Richards' hab had escaped the damage! 
Everything was going to be all right, he practically sang with joy as he skied 
toward the glow. Simon and Rachel would take care of his mother. They would call 
Marcus and have a medic come to care for his mother. With a buoyant heart he 
hurried across the singing ice.
As Paul drew closer to the hab he started to notice signs of damage. For one 
thing, the hab was at an odd angle, but not from subsiding into the surface. 
Instead, it looked as if the entire block of ice on which the hab was anchored 
had shifted to a fifteen-degree angle to the plain. The slim towers that held 
the navigation markers for the harvester strings were snapped off at their 
bases. What was worse, the laser array the Richards used to contact Lugh crater 
seemed to be intact, but they were canted so steeply toward the sky that they 
were practically useless. Paul wondered why Simon hadn't fixed it as he tugged 
to open their hatch. Wouldn't communications be their most important priority?
* * *
Dolores and her mom welcomed him as if he were some sort of savior come to their 
rescue, all smiles and joyful cries as he stepped inside. Their happiness fled 
as soon as Paul informed them that Abraham would not be following. Their faces 
fell when he told them that his father was most certainly buried beyond recovery 
in a frozen river that was light-minutes from the warm deserts of his 
birthplace.
After the Richards got his mother out of her suit and comfortable, Paul noticed 
Dolores' father, Simon, lying nearby. He was quite pale and obviously 
unconscious. There was a splint on his arm and a large bandage around his chest. 
His breathing came ragged and fluttery, as if he had a bad cold. Rachel 
Richards' eyes darted to him whenever he groaned, momentarily distracted from 
tending Sofia.
"Dad was on the tower when the shock hit us," Dolores explained as she helped 
Paul remove his suit. "He fell," she said simply, biting her lip. Then she 
continued; "The quake shut off our primary generator, so we're running on 
emergency power. That gives us about a week, unless you know how to fix the 
generator," she added hopefully.
Paul tried to think of what the loss of the Patterson generator might mean. All 
of Greeley's power came from the forced cycle of water over the palladium 
pellets at its core. He doubted that the cell's core had cracked. Even so, there 
was no way he could fix it. It was more likely that the feed line to the heater 
buried beneath the hab had snapped when the ice shifted. They were lucky that 
the shaft hadn't rocketed up through the ice like Jack and Rob's had done. He 
shuddered when he thought of what that might have done to the beautiful, lovely 
Dolores.
"I don't think I'll be able to fix the generator," Paul explained as he slid his 
legs from the bottom half of the suit. "I'm not as technical as my father . . . 
was." He paused for a minute, afraid that he might suddenly burst into tears. 
But the momentary pang of sadness he'd felt quickly disappeared. "But a week's 
more than enough time for Marcus to send someone out for us."
Dolores made a face. "I'm afraid not. We don't know if what happened was local 
or wide-spread. Even if it was just here there is no way that Marcus would know 
we're in trouble. We only used the link when we had something to transmit. We 
could sit here for days, weeks maybe, before someone at Lugh wondered why we 
hadn't called in."
Paul thought furiously; with the tower leaning as it was, the Wholephore link 
was useless. But there had to be some way to send a message. There had to be 
some way to let Marcus know that they needed help!
He started to pull his suit back on. "I'm going to try to realign the laser," he 
announced as he tugged the bulky suit over his hips. "Where does your father 
keep his tools?"
* * *
The climb up the tall, leaning tower was long and hard, particularly due to the 
precipitous angle. At the four-hundred-meter mark he was nearly twenty meters 
away from plumb, and it would be much worse at the top, far overhead. Paul 
lashed himself in place to a strut once he reached the level where the laser was 
mounted. He pulled out a long-handled wrench and began to loosen the fittings on 
the mount. The barrel of the laser, which had been pointing skyward dipped 
slightly, warning him that the bolt was nearly too loose. Paul steadied it with 
one hand while he carefully loosened the remaining bolt with the other. This was 
no trivial lightweight unit like the one he used back at the hab. This was an 
industrial sized unit that massed as much as he did.
According to the directions Dolores had given, he had no trouble lining up the 
barrel to Jupiter's disk just above the horizon. From this spot on Europa, the 
rings on Jupiter's face were nearly perpendicular to the horizon. Dolores had 
told him that the closest repeater was even with the right edge of Jupiter's 
disk. Because of the angle the beam's path looked as if it would barely clear 
one of the cross-braces. 
"Fire it up!" he told Dolores over the intercom they had rigged. Although he was 
prepared for it, he was still startled when the blue green pencil-thin beam 
arced toward the horizon. It missed the edge of the brace by not more than a few 
millimeters.
"No ping," Dolores said over his suit intercom. "Try moving it a little from 
side to side." After Paul did so, by using the handle of the wrench as a lever, 
she suggested, "Try moving it up a hair and then going from side to side."
"It's no use," Paul finally admitted when nothing they did seemed to work. "The 
repeater tower must be down as well. Can we aim this at the next one?"
Dolores sounded puzzled. "I don't think that would work. Even if the next 
repeater farther down the link is still working we can't see it. It's below the 
horizon from here."
"Well," Paul answered after thinking for a minute, "If that repeater is working, 
then somebody could go there and use its transmitter to let Marcus know that we 
need help."
There was short silence as Dolores considered his suggestion. "That's a good 
idea, Paul, but my Dad's not in any condition to do that, so who do you 
suggest-Mom or me?"
Paul considered the options as he climbed back down to reenter the hab. Mrs. 
Richards couldn't go because either she or Dolores had to stay to take care of 
Simon and his own mother. What's more, neither Rachel nor Dolores had the 
experience with the ice that he had accumulated over his years on Europa. And 
his mother certainly couldn't do it, not with a broken leg she couldn't. He 
smiled as he reached the only logical conclusion.
"I'll do it," he announced as Dolores helped him pull the top part of his suit 
off. Dolores's mouth formed a small "O" of surprise, but she said nothing.
Paul settled down on a bench and let her help him with the boots. "I'll go down 
the line to the first working repeater and use it to ping Marcus. If I can use 
your scooter it should only take a few hours to get there."
Dolores rested her hand on his arm and squeezed gently as she smiled. "That's 
very brave of you, Paul. But think about it for a little bit before you decide. 
I'll fix you something warm while you think it. I think it's too dangerous."
As Dolores turned away Paul swore that he would never wash that arm again, no 
matter what. He wondered how long he would feel the warmth where her hand had 
momentarily rested. Only when she glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him 
did he start thinking about what he would need for the brief trip. There was no 
turning back now-he'd look like a coward if he didn't go.
The first Wholephore repeater should be almost two hundred kilometers away. That 
would be at the limits of a single power pack if he were skiing, but well within 
range if he used a scooter. He pulled down a fully charged pack, strapped on a 
reserve unit, and dragged the heavy pack to the hatch. He was about to turn away 
when he recalled his father's frequent cautions against taking unnecessary 
chances. Yes, better to be safe, he thought and decided to take two packs and 
one emergency unit with him. That way he could make it back after he sent the 
signal, even if he had to ski the whole way.
He drank the soup Dolores had prepared as quickly as he could, not even pausing 
to chew the solid bits that floated in the broth. He washed the soup's taste 
away with a few quick swallows of water and a piece of bread.
When he finished, he noticed the two women hovering around his mother. When he 
came close, he heard his mother mumbling something over and over. "My fault, my 
fault, my fault," she kept saying, broken only occasionally by a sob so 
heart-rending that Paul wondered if, despite her unconscious state, she knew 
that Abraham, her husband-his father-was dead.
"She had this in her hand," Rachel said as she handed Paul a small square of 
worn cloth. It was no bigger than the palm of his hand.
"It's my father's," he said softly and took it from her. He brushed the soft 
silk threads with the fingers of his other hand. "This is the last bit of a rug 
my father said that he'd brought from Earth," he explained. His father always 
kept a tiny piece of it with him in the knee of his suit. That way he could pray 
in the tradition of his family. Whenever the old one would wear out, Paul's 
mother would take another small bit of the rug and sew it into the suit. Perhaps 
she was doing so when the hab was struck.
Paul realized that he was holding a piece of his own family history in his hand, 
perhaps the last physical trace of his father that he would ever touch.
And still the tears, the sadness would not come. The emotional void remained in 
his heart. He carefully handed the little fragment back to Rachel. "Keep this 
for when she wakes. It will mean a lot to her."
He certainly didn't deserve to keep it.
* * *
"I am not sure that you should go," Dolores' mother announced when she heard of 
his plans. "The ice is dangerous, and for one so young even more so! No, I think 
that all of us should wait here until they can get to us."
Paul was furious. "You can't just sit here in the hope that someone will come 
for us. You know that they won't realize anything is wrong until they haven't 
heard from you for a few days."
"Mother's right. Maybe someone from the other habitats . . ." Dolores began.
Paul didn't wait for her to finish. "For all we know, the other habs might be in 
worse shape than we are, so we can't depend on them for help. We have no way of 
knowing how extensive the destruction has been! No, we cannot depend upon anyone 
coming to help us except Marcus."
"But what if Marcus station was destroyed as well?" Rachel wailed. "What if 
there is no help?"
Paul smiled. "Marcus station was built in the Lugh crater, right on top of the 
biggest undersea mountain on Europa. It's the most stable place on the whole 
moon, the only place there's any sort of solid ground.
"Besides," he added quietly and with resignation, "If Marcus is destroyed then 
we are all dead anyway." With that sobering thought he began to don his suit for 
the long trip. Dolores helped him as her mother sat between Simon and Sofia and 
cried uncontrollably.
"She'll be all right," Dolores whispered bravely. "It's just that this is such a 
shock to her." The sweep of her hand took in the damaged hab, the emergency 
lighting, and the unconscious forms of her father and his mother.
"I understand," Paul said sympathetically. He wondered what her reaction would 
be if he took her into his comforting arms, but was afraid to try. "Take care of 
all of them until I get back," he added as bravely as he could. Somehow their 
roles had become reversed; the children had become responsible for their 
parents.
"I will," Dolores promised and then, impulsively, leaned forward, just as Paul 
was lifting his helmet into place, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. "Good 
luck and . . ." she said quickly as she stepped back. The helmet clicked into 
place and cut off her words.
Paul was so shocked by Dolores's sudden display of affection that he nearly 
forgot to double-check the status of his pack as the hatch cycled. Was it 
Europa's faint gravity that made his steps so light or his sudden feeling of 
euphoria? What did it matter-Dolores obviously thought of him as a hero, someone 
who would rescue her from the destruction wrought by the ice dragon.
The ice sang a gay song as he attached the utility sled to the scooter and 
strapped the packs in place. He could hardly wait to discover what Dolores' 
welcome might be when he returned.
The surface seemed to grow smoother as he followed the blue-green strobe that 
flashed overhead toward Jupiter's red grin. He'd asked Dolores to strobe the 
laser every hour on the hour to provide a guide that would keep him on track. He 
drove cautiously along for there was no telling if the dragon would awaken once 
again and turn the ice beneath the scooter's treads to fluid. Caution was his 
watchword. 
The monotonous landscape of pressure ridges soon lulled Paul into a dreamy 
state. Up one slope he would go, tip over the crest, and speed down the reverse 
side. Then he would cross the valleys between and repeat, again and again. It 
felt as if Europa was breathing, as if the moon's breast was heaving and falling 
in time to the ice dragons' slow movements beneath. He recalled how wondrous 
Europa had once seemed to him-the barren ice plains, the cold stars above during 
the three-day-long sun cycles, and the ever-present brooding giant of Jupiter 
forever peering over the horizon between.
When they'd started this year's harvester string over two hundred kilometers 
further away from the meridian, Jupiter had been hardly more than a slim frown 
at the horizon. Now, he was so close that nearly one-third of Jupiter's face 
could be seen.
Paul increased the scooter's speed, ashamed for being so slow and cautious while 
Simon and Sofia were desperate for medical aid, possibly dying, behind him. Not 
even when the scooter shot off the top of one sharp crest and floated softly to 
land mid-way down the slope did Paul slow down.
The suit's timer chimed and Paul glanced up to see the scheduled blue-green 
strobe. At that moment the scooter hit something and tilted wildly to one side. 
Paul twisted the handlebars to the right as the machine bucked from side to 
side, but succeeded only in rolling the vehicle.
Over and over he tumbled, the thick suit pack thudding hard every time it hit, 
wrenching his shoulders time and again. He was afraid that the scooter would 
crash into him, smashing his suit, cracking his helmet, or tearing off an arm or 
leg. All of these possibilities flashed through his mind as he rolled down the 
slope.
Finally he stopped.
He found the scooter twenty meters away. It was lying on its side. It had hit so 
hard that its nose was buried in the tilted slope of the next ridge. Paul walked 
around it, trying to figure out how to right the machine so he could continue. 
He located the sled a little further along. Apparently it had become detached at 
the moment of impact and continued over the ridge and up the next, where it 
perched on the crest. Surprisingly, it was still upright with its load still 
attached.
He'd struck a sharp shard of hard ice, which had sent the scooter out of 
control. From where he stood the shard looked like nothing more than a large 
tooth of some primitive carnivore. Perhaps it looked like a dragon's tooth, Paul 
thought fancifully, remembering his earlier dreams of Europa's dark beasts.
He discovered that he could tip the scooter by grabbing one handle and leaning 
backward, using the combined mass of him, his suit, and the backpack to 
counterbalance the scooter. After several jerking motions he managed to tip the 
machine far enough that it came free and settled on its treads.
Paul attached the sled before setting out once again. No more daydreaming, he 
promised himself. He would stay alert. He would use caution. He would keep his 
eyes on the ice just ahead of the scooter. 
Which was why he nearly missed the first repeater tower and had to double back 
to find it. The line-of-sight Wholephore repeaters were spaced just near enough 
that the arrays on their tops could be seen above the horizon from the next one 
in line. 
But there was no way that he could use the tower to spot the next in line. The 
remains of the repeater tower were scattered over nearly a kilometer. One of the 
tall tower's anchors had torn loose during the cataclysm and, when the surface 
shifted, had allowed it to fall. The huge laser housing was buried a meter deep 
in frozen slush with just its leads showing where it had landed. It was far too 
heavy to lift and, even if he could have moved it, he wouldn't be able to place 
it high enough to see over the horizon. Neither could he locate the unit's power 
supply.
Paul considered his options. The two additional packs would easily last until he 
reached the next tower. He'd still have enough left to make it back to the hab . 
. . and Dolores. He was glad that he'd thought to bring the extras along with 
him.
The going was easier the closer he got to the meridian. The ridges were not so 
sharp, nor so tall. Whatever had caused the dragon to roar seemed to have played 
out as it travelled along. Perhaps he could get back to some flat ice plains 
further along and make better time.
* * *
Paul began to be concerned when the scooter began to slow down two hours later. 
There was enough power, according to the instruments. He began to worry that 
something had been damaged by the crash, something that he hadn't noticed until 
now. Maybe the slowing was due to nothing more than a connection that had 
jiggled loose. He decided to check, so he brought the scooter to a halt.
Paul could hear the song as he stepped onto the ice-a muted, bitter tune that 
seemed to hint at trouble. He'd heard that song once before, but, at the moment 
couldn't place where that had been. He vaguely recalled something his father had 
warned him about . . . 
Then it struck him; this was the song the slush made as it was in transition. He 
glanced overhead at the brilliant dot of the sun. Of course, the slight 
radiation from the distant sun was enough to sublimate certain types of grains 
during the day cycle. He glanced at his boots and saw the ice creeping around 
the edges. If he stood here long enough he'd sink into the surface. Well, he 
probably wouldn't be here long enough for that to happen, he thought. He lifted 
the lid of the scooter's power unit to see which of the leads had come loose.
He wiggled the connectors but all of the leads seemed to be tight. He checked 
the battery and, when that looked like it was supposed to, checked the power 
train connections. Surely something had to be loose to cause the scooter to lose 
power like that. What could it be?
Then it dawned on him. Of course; if it hadn't been for his helmet he would have 
smacked himself on the forehead. It was the slush itself that had been slowing 
the scooter-apparently he had been driving all this time right into the middle 
of a polyna, one of the pockets of warm, unhardened slush that occurred this 
close to the meridian. That's what his father had warned him about, that's why 
it sounded so familiar.
Ruefully, he closed the lid and started to throw a leg across the scooter when 
he noticed that it seemed to be sitting a little lower than before. He glanced 
down and saw that the slush was coming up, over the scooter's foot rests! The 
heavy mass of the scooter had been sinking while he'd been fooling around with 
its innards. He leaped into the seat and threw the power onto high.
A plume of slush shot from beneath the scooter. It buried the sled behind it in 
a glistening coating of ice, but didn't impart any forward motion to the 
scooter. Paul gunned the scooter again and again, pulsing the drive belts and 
applying as much torque as he could get out of the motor. All he managed to do 
was dig the scooter deeper and deeper into the polyna.
When he took a quick look back, Paul saw that the sled was beginning to tip 
forward into the growing depression. In a panic he slid off, untied the sled, 
and pulled it to one side, where it would be safer, he thought.
He dashed back and tied a line to the scooter's cowling, backed away, and 
wrapped the other end around his waist. He pulled with all of his might, but he 
could not pull the scooter loose from the tightening grip of the slush sink, not 
with his limited strength. He continued to pull, each tug driving his boots 
deeper into the slush, but the scooter remained trapped in its hole, its nose 
tilting skyward.
Paul was pulling his boots free and trying to figure out what to do next when he 
noticed that a larger depression was growing around the small one the scooter 
had dug. It looked as if the whole area, the entire polyna was going to subside!
In a moment of sudden terror he untied the line about his waist and threw it 
free. He scrambled away as fast as he could move, panicked by thoughts of 
sinking into the ice. He pulled the sled with him and made his way to a nearby 
floe-an outcropping of hard ice adjacent to the sink. No sooner than he had 
reached the refuge when the center of the polyna abruptly collapsed, consuming 
the scooter in its cold maw as the surrounding slush closed in to fill the 
depression. In a matter of seconds the scooter had vanished. The polyna resumed 
its placid, non-threatening appearance.
Paul cursed himself. If he had just taken it easy and not panicked maybe he 
could have pulled the scooter free. What if he had taken it slowly after 
detaching the sled instead of gunning the power? What if he had locked the drive 
on and simultaneously pulled on the line? Yes, surely that would have worked. A 
dozen other possibilities that he had not tried came instantly to mind, all 
seemingly foolproof methods of saving the scooter, all unrealized, all futile 
speculation. If only he had been smarter, stronger, faster.
Like his father.
* * *
The plain was cold and lonely. Because he had long since passed beneath the 
horizon of Dolores's hab he could no longer see her hourly strobe signal and had 
to rely on the face of Jupiter to guide him. He kept heading toward that fifth 
band from the right, the tan one. The one where, Dolores had promised, the tower 
was located.
He had been walking for hours, sliding his skis slowly over the ice and 
listening to Europa's angry song about his stupidity. If there were ice dragons 
beneath the ice they were probably laughing themselves silly over his actions. 
Imagine, he could hear them giggle in their dragonish way, a mere child trying 
to best the ice. How ridiculous, how insane. How futile!
But Paul continued to push onward. He had no choice but to reach the next tower 
if he was to send his message. He couldn't make it back with the air and power 
in the remaining packs.
An hour later he arrived at the second repeater. This one was just as useless as 
the former one. The tower was erect, but the laser housing had shifted so that 
the Marcus-side barrel was canted at a steep angle toward the ice. Although Paul 
tried mightily, he could not shift the heavy unit back into position. Even the 
wrench was an inadequate lever.
He tried pulsing the unit a few times by shorting the power leads, but the beam 
hit the surface just a few hundred meters away. It made a tiny puff of 
sublimated ice where it struck.
Paul considered his options. He had enough air and power left in the packs to 
maybe make it to the next tower, just barely. But that shouldn't be a problem; 
the rescue squad could pick him up on their way to the Richard's hab. They could 
even take him with them to save time.
For a moment he relished how Dolores would react when she saw him riding to her 
rescue; a brave knight who had gone forth to slay the ice dragon. Well, not 
really slay the dragon, but to beat it, perhaps, he added wistfully. Then she 
would throw her arms around him and kiss him long and deep, pressing her body 
against his as if promising greater delights to come. 
Yes, he decided, he would certainly ski to the next tower. After all, it was 
only another hundred and fifty klicks or so. So he, Dolores's brave hero, would 
go on for her, for his mother, and the others! He would save them all!
* * *
The snow snakes grew less frequent as he plowed along, denying him their fickle 
company. All he had besides the constant movement of one ski before the other 
was Europa's constant song. He started to imagine that a huge green dragon was 
following him, hissing about all of the stupid things he'd done. That was as it 
should be. If his father had been around, he would have cursed Paul for being so 
dumb and unmindful of his own safety. 
And Paul would have stood silently by, listening to the sad iteration of his 
mistakes-his stupid errors-and be shamed to tears, wilting under his father's 
harsh criticism.
Why had he panicked when the scooter was trapped? He knew that panic was just 
proof of his lack of courage. Behind the brave exterior he had displayed to 
Dolores and her mother was the reality of his hollow, shivering, shaking, 
cowardly self. 
You are a pitiful creature undeserving of your mother's love and affection, let 
alone someone as wonderful as Dolores, the green dragon whispered in his ear.
Then a blue dragon joined the first. The true story of your bumbling will 
eventually come out, the blue dragon promised him. You'll never be able to tell 
a consistent lie, it said. 
Yes, Paul agreed, and Dolores and the others would all laugh at him, ridicule 
him for thinking that he could win against the ice. How did he expect Dolores to 
ever believe that he would race the Aphrodite if he couldn't even drive a stupid 
scooter a few hundred klicks and make a simple signal, the green dragon asked?
Paul's fantasies of Dolores' admiration faded away like the sublimating mist 
before the green dragon's harsh revelations.
The ice dragons' songs were a critical chorus, repeating over and over as he 
plodded along.
* * *
Paul felt that he had to rest. It had been nearly twenty hours, he realized, 
since he'd slept. It seemed an eternity ago. His legs were burning up and sweat 
was pouring down his back. In a way that was funny. Here he was standing on the 
surface of a moon whose average temperature was nearly 140 degrees below zero, 
surrounded by hectares of ice and standing on a frozen crust a hundred 
kilometers thick and he was working up a sweat! He settled onto the sled, 
wedging his behind into the space between extra packs.
He felt hungry. After all, that bowl of Dolores's soup had been the last food he 
ate. He sucked on some ProGoo-Protein Paste, Type IV, Edible-the JBI label read. 
The stuff tasted like gritty dough, and tasteless dough at that. But he was 
hungry, so he gulped some more, not stopping until the tube was empty. He washed 
the last mouthful down with a swallow of tepid water from his recycling unit. It 
tasted faintly of ammonia, as usual.
The ice for the last few kilometers had been singing a different song. The 
surface appeared less grainy and he'd encountered stretches of solid ice. On 
those occasions he'd been able to slide nearly effortlessly, with just slight 
pressure on his skis. But those stretches had been rare. Most of the past 
kilometers had required the tiring push and slide.
Jupiter appeared to be slightly higher now, or was that just wish fulfillment on 
his part, he wondered. As he lazily watched, the ruddy planet seemed to wink at 
him and then slide to one side, tipping over and drowning in a darkening sky.
The blue dragon erupted from the snow with a mighty heave of its coils. The 
green one followed close behind, moving in concert with the blue's. Paul 
understood that their cries were of responsibility and duty, of his failures and 
his shame, even if he couldn't make out their exact words. He winced beneath the 
dragon's assault. He put his arms above his head, trying to protect himself as 
their sharp words rained down.
But the dragons would not let up, would not give any quarter, so fierce was 
their attack. Paul felt like crying. There was nothing he could do, nothing to 
stop their words.
He glimpsed a rose-colored dragon moving behind the other two. Its graceful form 
hinted of promise, of fulfilled dreams and desires. Paul knew in the depths of 
his heart that the rose would give him peace, that it was love made real. He 
reached out a hand to beckon it to him and . . .
Paul snapped awake. The ice was empty. The stars and brooding Jupiter dominated 
the sky. There were no dragons.
How long had he slept? He glanced at the time and realized that he'd been 
sleeping for nearly three hours. That was three precious hours that could have 
taken him that much closer to rescue. He flogged himself to full wakefulness 
with a curse. The snow song chided him for his laziness as he trudged along. He 
could still feel the hot breath of blame from the dragons on the back of his 
neck.
The air alarm chimed a little later. Paul kept going until the air grew stale in 
his suit. He wanted to stretch his pack's resources as far as he could, but 
didn't want to push his luck too far. "Better to lose a little air than your 
life," his father had always cautioned him on their long trips. It was good 
advice so Paul detached the spent pack and attached his suit to a fresh one. He 
debated carrying the spent pack with him, but decided against it. The sled was 
growing increasingly difficult to pull as he tired, and less weight translated 
into more speed and less energy expended. Without the added weight of the pack 
maybe he could make up for the time he'd lost while napping. He perched the used 
pack on a crest of ice, where it could be easily spotted for later retrieval. He 
skied away as rapidly as he could, the dragon's cries and the song filling his 
ears.
* * *
Four hours later his left calf started to hurt. It started with a tight feeling 
in the back of his leg, which he dismissed as nothing more than 
weariness-another sign of his physical inadequacy, or so he thought. Neither 
Vince nor his father would have allowed the ice to tire them so easily. He tried 
to ignore the occasional stabs of pain and growing heat in his left leg as he 
pushed relentlessly forward, heading always toward Jupiter's frowning face.
When the cramp struck he thought that something had struck his leg, hard. He 
pulled his left leg up to relieve the pressure without thinking and pitched 
forward. He rolled across the ice in agony as his calf muscle kept tightening 
and tightening. It felt as if the cramping muscle was going to pull his leg 
apart. It felt as if the contractions were going to rip muscle from bone at heel 
and knee. The arch of his foot screamed in pain. He tried to clench his foot to 
relieve the stress, but it did no good. He reached down to massage his leg but 
his gloves only struck the unyielding outer skin of his suit, beneath which his 
leg was surely tearing itself apart.
Paul beat on his leg, hoping somehow that the pressure of his blows would 
penetrate the suit and help relax the rock-hard muscle. But his blows were 
futile as the leg continued to throb and pull in agonizing waves of pain. Relax, 
he told himself and tried to will his muscles into relaxation, tried to order 
them to cease, to rest, to do anything except continue to pull, pull, pull until 
he felt as if he would scream.
Then he did-long and loud, protesting against this attack by his own muscles. He 
cried out, protesting the failure of his body to respond as he wished. But the 
screaming did no good, neither did the steady stream of orders for his muscles 
to relax. Nor did his attempts to ignore the pain that seemed to grow to fill 
his mind.
What were the blue and green saying now? Where was the rose that promised so 
much? Were the two dragons laughing at his woes, at his pitiful whimpering over 
a little physical discomfort? Surely they must be joking at his puny efforts, at 
his attempts to conquer their domain.
How had his father fared in the depths, he wondered, half out of his head with 
agony. Paul could imagine Abraham battling these dragons as he descended into 
the ice, fighting them all the way, forcing them back with each breath of his 
limited air, fighting his cooling suit, denying them his dying body as long as 
possible. Yes, his father wouldn't have submitted easily-he would have fought to 
the very end, using every fiber of his body, every bit of his energy to try to 
escape, to evade the greedy monsters of the deep and deny them their victim. And 
it had all been for nothing. The dragons had won after all. His father had died.
And still the tears did not come.
* * *
A long, agonizing time later, the vise finally released his leg muscles. Paul 
rested for a few moments as the cramp relaxed. He reveled in the cessation of 
pain, enjoying once again having control. He wiggled his toes and, with great 
caution, tested his leg. It hurt to move, but not so much that he couldn't 
continue. He slid the skis forward and back, wary of putting too much stress on 
his sore leg and causing it to cramp once more. He continued his trek more 
slowly and cautiously than before. 
The snow snakes blew by him several times. The larger ones warned him of 
dangerous cracks in the ice, the small ones indicated tiny lineae that were no 
problem. After a while Paul grew so tired that he stopped paying attention to 
them. He stopped noticing anything except the texture of the ice immediately 
ahead of his skis and the ever-present tan band on the face of Jupiter.
His hunger had grown to be nearly unbearable over the last few hours. His belly 
growled continually, echoing within the hollows of his empty stomach. He 
regretted eating the entire supply of paste. He should have saved some for 
later, when hunger struck again. The reflection did little to still the growling 
cries of his stomach.
Paul recalled the last time he had eaten real food: It was that bowl of warm 
soup that Dolores had fixed for him before he left. Yes, he recalled, the soup 
had potatoes, carrots and peas in it, plus either chicken or turkey or beef. He 
could remember the thick broth in which the various components floated. It had 
been a rich brown fluid that was spotted with circles of fat that had merged and 
separated when he stirred them with his spoon. He tried to recall the smell from 
the wisps of steam that rose from the soup's surface as he drank, but he could 
not. 
Why had he wolfed the soup down so quickly? He should have taken his time. He 
should have savored every morsel, every sip of the rich broth. He should have 
paid attention to every single one of its complex flavors. He should have 
carefully extracted each slice of potato, each pea and carrot, each floating bit 
of celery, and tasted them individually, rolling them around in his mouth, 
indulging his taste buds in their natural flavors and the way they blended 
indescribably with those of the total mixture. He should have . . .
A sudden snow snake erupted to one side, spewing a geyser of slush higher than 
Paul's head. Paul tried to dodge away from the falling ice and, in so doing, 
struck the edge of a crevice. The ice under his skis gave way and he felt 
himself falling as the horizon whipped around him.
It was over in a matter of seconds. Paul found himself wedged in a crack just 
below the surface of the ice. He was lying on a thirty- or forty-degree angle to 
the surface, with his head at the lowest point. His skis were still near the 
surface. The tip of the right one was still caught on the edge.
Paul checked himself to make certain that he hadn't broken anything, that the 
fall hadn't harmed the integrity of his suit, that the impact hadn't damaged his 
survival pack. Everything seemed to be all right.
He felt so stupid. Why had he been daydreaming about that damned soup instead of 
paying attention to where he was going? There would be plenty of time to eat, to 
enjoy much finer food than instant soup when he led the rescue party to Dolores 
and his mother. Daydreaming-it was just another one of those things his father 
had criticized him for. Why was he always thinking of something else instead of 
paying attention to what he was doing? Paul could practically hear his father 
saying those words-and, for a brief second, imagined his large form standing at 
the edge of the crack, peering down and shaking his head at this latest evidence 
of Paul's ineptitude. Paul thought that it served him right. He had been 
daydreaming instead of paying attention.
Well, no sense staying here chastising himself, Paul thought and tried to pull 
himself up. He tugged again, trying to rotate his shoulders to extend his reach. 
But it was no use. No matter what he did he could not budge.
It was ridiculous. His head couldn't be more than a meter below the surface, 
resting in a crack only slightly wider than his shoulders. Why couldn't he move?
Paul carefully reached up with one gloved hand and took hold of the edge of the 
fissure and pulled while trying to bend his right leg. He moved a little and 
then stopped. No matter how much pressure he exerted he could not get loose. It 
was as if there were something holding him back.
Paul wiggled his hips and moved his left ski. Everything from his waist down 
seemed to be free, so whatever was holding him in place must be located higher, 
somewhere around his shoulders. He rotated his shoulders, extending one arm and 
then the other. From what he could feel, it seemed as if it was his back pack 
that was stuck. All he had to do was release it and climb out.
Right, all he had to do was cut off his air and the power that kept his suit 
warm. That would be smart, wouldn't it? It would also limit his survival to 
about five minutes, give or take a few breaths of freezing air. Dropping his 
pack was as smart as opening his helmet to take a breath of barely present, but 
fresh, atmosphere of ammonia and methane.
Yet, what choice did he have? He couldn't just lie here and wait for the end. 
Maybe, just maybe, he could retrieve the pack once he got himself out of the 
crack and reattach it in time. He put his hand on the pack's release handle and 
then hesitated. If he tugged the release he could be signing his death warrant. 
He could be committing suicide out here on the icy plain where no one would find 
his body. Then he imagined how stupid they would think he'd been if they did 
find his frozen form. He could hear their words of scorn-Only a fool would 
release his pack without having a spare handy!
Wait a minute! Perhaps the sled with the extra pack hadn't fallen into the 
crack. Maybe it was up there on the ice, out of his sight. Sure, it was just 
sitting there, waiting for him to attach it once he was free. In that case 
releasing the pack would let him reach the emergency pack, that was all.
As the certainty of the sled's existence grew in Paul's mind his hand clenched 
on the release. Paul took one deep breath, wondering if it was the last bit of 
fresh air he would ever experience, and pulled. The releasing connectors clicked 
off, shutting down air, power, and recycler.
Paul grabbed the edge of the crack and pulled, half afraid that he would still 
be unable to move, fearful that he had not only cut himself off from his only 
chance of survival but had failed to consider something obvious. He pulled hard 
wit both hands at the same time that he flexed his right leg and swung his left. 
With great relief he felt himself break free.
Within seconds he was climbing out of the crack and scanning the ice for sight 
of the sled. But it was nowhere in sight! Paul panicked and threw himself belly 
first on the ice. He reached down into the crack. He grasped the sides of the 
wedged pack and tugged hard. When it didn't immediately move, he twisted it this 
way and that, shifting it back and forth as he desperately tried to get it loose 
from where it was stuck.
The pack moved slightly, but Paul had difficulty pulling it to the surface. He 
considered the situation for a minute as the air in his suit began to chill and 
grow close. He wondered how many minutes of life remained to him. Was the air 
running out already? Was the cold creeping in on him? 
He had to get that pack out! He tried to slide it to the side as he twisted, and 
then tried the opposite direction. Then he alternated, switching it right and 
left as he tugged furiously. Finally, the pack came loose and flopped onto the 
ice beside him as he went over backwards.
Paul, gasping for breath, brushed the shards of ice from the pack's connectors, 
making certain that there was nothing to interfere with their seating properly. 
He positioned himself over the pack and leaned backwards. He shifted slightly 
and arched his body to bring his suit parallel to the face of the pack. He 
wiggled around, praying for the connectors to slip into their receptacles before 
he died from lack of oxygen. Why wouldn't they click home? What was he doing 
wrong?
Then he felt the primaries click home, followed quickly by the secondaries. 
Immediately he felt a welcome rush of fresh air flow into the helmet. He 
breathed deeply of the pure air. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet.
He pulled himself to his feet and looked into the crack. Farther down, below 
where he had been wedged, was the sled. There was no way he could reach it, no 
way he could retrieve it.
He checked the time he had remaining on his pack. It had been eight or nine 
hours at least since he had activated it. That only gave him another three 
hours, four at the outside, to find the tower, call Marcus, and be rescued. If 
he didn't get the tower to send that signal he was going to die!
He quickly oriented himself to the giant disk and set off as quickly as he 
could. His eyes scanned the horizon for some sign of the tower, some evidence 
that he was nearing his goal. His mother was depending on him, Dolores was 
depending on him. If he died then they would too-and he would be responsible!
* * *
The green and blue dragons continued to curse Paul as seven kinds of a fool. 
Look at all of your mistakes since setting out, they scoffed. Why had he thought 
that he could do such a stupid thing? He was just a kid, as his father had told 
him so many times in the past. He had no business setting out on this insane 
rescue mission.
Paul wondered; had all this merely been to prove to his father that he could do 
something brave and difficult-to give his father a reason to be proud of him? 
But that was a stupid reason, he corrected himself-his father was dead and 
frozen into the depths of the ice. His critical father was now the companion to 
the ice dragons. No matter what Paul did there was no way he could ever again 
impress his father. 
There is no way that you will ever hear words of praise from his frozen lips, 
the dragon promised.
But perhaps it had been Dolores, not his father, that he had been trying to 
impress. Paul recalled that how he had puffed with pride as he announced that he 
would bravely set out to save them all. He remembered the admiration that he saw 
in her eyes. He recalled that brief, sweet touch on his arm, and the quick kiss 
that followed. Was it for those things that you set out? the dragons asked.
Paul wondered if Dolores had encouraged him to do those things while laughing 
inside at his childish pretensions. Maybe the kiss was only to encourage him. 
She knew full well that he probably wouldn't succeed but was willing to let him 
take the chance to save her life and that of her parents. 
What a fool you've been, the dragon crowed as Paul plowed onward, slide and 
step, slide and step, slide and step until the ice, the song, the keening voices 
of the dragons, and the steady hiss of the recycler and air blended into a 
single orchestration of self-pity.
* * *
All Paul wanted to do was lie down and rest. After he had something to eat, that 
is. And drink. To conserve air he was trying not to breathe too deeply. To 
stretch the pack's power supply he'd cut back on the suit's heaters. As a result 
his feet were so cold that they'd stopped hurting and felt more like blocks of 
ice. He could no longer feel his toes. He had to look down to see if his boots 
were still attached to the skis.
He kept sucking on the dry water nipple but, with the recycler on low, water 
production was slight to none. Occasionally he managed to get a drop or two out 
of the reservoir, but it was never enough to slake the fierce thirst he'd 
developed. He could go without water, he knew that, and the hunger pangs were 
nothing to worry about. Right now his body was probably burning the fats and 
sugars in his cells, cannibalizing his own tissues to fuel his efforts as he 
pushed himself beyond endurance. He tried to ignore his protesting belly.
The ringing in his ears occasionally managed to drown out Europa's song and the 
dragons' cries, but he didn't know which was preferable.
His hands were numb from the cold that penetrated the gloves. His fingers felt 
like swollen sausages-deep-frozen sausages at that. Damn, have to stop thinking 
about food, Paul cautioned himself. Can't risk losing concentration again. Don't 
want another accident. Had to push on! Had to get to the tower! Had to send the 
signal that would save his mother and the others! Had to show her that he was as 
good as his father!
The snow sang a slow tango in time with Paul's heavy movements.
The emptiness in his stomach was constant, nearly overwhelming. It was matched 
only by the soreness in every muscle of his body. He no longer noticed the pain 
in his legs, although always alert for any sign of another imminent cramp. He 
didn't know what he would do if that happened. He didn't have enough time left 
to deal with another delay. If he fell he would die, he would simply die!
The possibility wasn't that fearful now. Dying, he realized, would provide 
relief from the hunger, the pain in his arms and legs, and the constant cries of 
failure from those damned dragons that he still heard whispering in his ears, 
crying their triumph over his puny efforts to best the ice. He tried to ignore 
their mocking voices as he pushed forward, driving his legs beyond anything he 
had ever imagined he could do, driving himself beyond his physical limits.
He started to see the dragons in the murk, or perhaps they were simply snow 
snakes transformed into fierce and glowering dragon shapes. The green hissed 
menacingly of his failures to measure up to the standards his family set for 
him, his physical inadequacies, his lack of foresight, his daydreaming, his 
false pride. For some reason the blue dragon said little. It remained aloof and 
cold, intimidating him with its huge, overwhelming presence.
The smaller rose dragon still lurked behind the others. It was a quiet one, 
scarcely making a sound as it coiled itself over and around, twisting sinuously 
on the ice, presenting itself in ways at once inviting and menacing. Paul tried 
to get a clear view of the rose dragon as it faded into and out of sight behind 
the others. Why, he wondered, wouldn't the blue and the green move out of the 
way so that the rose could reach him? He tried to focus on it, tried to mentally 
force the dragons aside so he could understand what the rose promised. He 
thought that she resembled Dolores in the face, a lovely dragon indeed. Yes, 
definitely a she dragon!
Paul halted suddenly, teetering to a stop on the edge of a high cliff. It was 
almost a hundred meters to the plain below. It took a moment for the meaning of 
the cliff to sink into his weary mind. Somewhere along this ridge must be the 
tower he was supposed to reach. Paul tried to figure out where the tower might 
be if not here. He was pretty sure that he'd maintained the right heading, had 
kept his track as close to a straight line as possible to the tan line. But, if 
he had done that then where was it? He scanned the ridge from horizon to 
horizon, searching for some sign of the tower.
It was nowhere to be seen.
He looked across the plain toward Jupiter's giant face. From this close to the 
meridian he could see nearly 70 percent of the planet's face. He tilted his head 
to better observe the ruddy planet's glowing orange and brown disk, a friendly 
globe of apparent warmth among the icy diamonds of its companion stars. He could 
clearly see the curve of Europa's too near horizon, nearly twenty kilometers 
away at this height, against the bright rose disk 
On the plain down below, halfway to the horizon, was a glint of light, a bright 
speck in the rosy murk. That, he knew, would be Marcus station, humanity's main 
habitation. Down there were hundreds of souls, people who could help him, if 
only he could reach them. If he squinted, he could just barely detect the 
outline of the Lugh crater in which Marcus station rested. He estimated that the 
station was merely fifty or sixty kilometers away from the bottom of the cliff. 
He would have thought that quite close, under normal circumstances, that is.
But before he could traverse that short distance he had to climb down the icy 
cliff before him. He prayed that he had enough time left on the pack. He was 
afraid to check his telltales for the grim truth they might reveal.
Nearby he found a rough shelf that ran downward on a slight, twenty-degree 
slope. It was wide enough for him to walk sideways, but he had to remove his 
skis to do so. There was no way he could climb down the cliff with them 
attached. He felt the dragons' critical eyes upon him as he stepped onto the 
ledge and started down. 
The ledge narrowed to hardly more than a boot's-width when he was just a hundred 
meters down the cliff. To continue onward he had to turn to face the cliff. That 
way his pack wouldn't force him outward over the emptiness. He moved carefully 
sideways, solidly planting each frozen foot before putting his weight on it. He 
flexed his body to throw his weight inward, toward the cliff. He moved step 
after tiny step as his gloves constantly searched for handholds to stabilize and 
balance him. It was difficult to feel the holds with his frozen fingers, but he 
managed.
Then his left foot came down on emptiness. The shelf had run out and he was 
barely one-third of the way down the cliff. Paul strained his neck as much as he 
could to look along the cliff. He could hear the dragons hissing their poorly 
concealed humor at his predicament.
Just to his left there were some projections that looked as if they might 
support his weight, but to reach them he had to reach out further than the tiny 
steps he had been taking. Once his foot rested on the nearest projection there 
would be no way that he could recover. There would be no way for him to return.
You've been a fool, the green dragon hissed. Taking foolish chances without 
checking first. You don't deserve to survive!
Go forward, the blue dragon ordered and offered a coil for Paul to step upon. 
Come dance with me, the blue invited him. You will die anyway, so you might as 
well die trying, just like I did.
Paul snapped awake! Was that what the dragons were, phantasms of his father, his 
critical, unbending, demanding father? But the green wasn't like his father, not 
at all. His father had been a hard-working, loving man who cared deeply about 
Paul-that was what all the criticism had been, a way of molding Paul into 
someone who could defeat the ice. His father's advice had helped him come this 
far. The blue was right-better to die trying, better to fight to the end!
As best he could tell, it looked as if there were a wide ledge just beyond the 
footstep. To reach it he would have to step and then, using his momentum, step 
again to gain the ledge. He would have to dance with the dragon. It would only 
take one misstep, one missed grip of either hand to send him crashing to his 
death. 
Paul held back for a few minutes to gather his remaining strength. If he moved 
his right hand over to grip the hold under his left hand, moved his right foot 
closer, and then moved his left hand to that first bit of projection, then he 
just might be able to cross the gap to the ledge on the far side.
Paul could feel his heart racing, taste the acid bitterness of his empty stomach 
in his mouth, and feel the contractions in his scrotum. He had never been so 
afraid in all of his life, never faced the certainty of his own death so 
directly. 
Dance with me, said the blue dragon. What have you got to lose?
Yes, what were his choices: to return to the top of the cliff and die while 
watching Jupiter or to hang here until his pack expired and he blacked out? No, 
he had to make the attempt to reach the shelf. He had to dance with the dragon!
He moved his feet into position, braced himself, switched the handholds and 
lunged. The instant his left foot extended over the precipitous gap, his left 
hand reached out and he pushed with his right foot as hard as he could.
His left boot struck the projection and he pushed on it, not taking time to even 
wonder if it would hold, and swung his body over the pivot point. Both hands 
scrabbled for a hold on the frozen face of the cliff as his momentum continued 
to carry him across.
Then his left hand contacted something. He pulled desperately just as the 
projection under his left foot collapsed. For one stomach-wrenching microsecond 
he was supported only by that single grip, that single point of contact with 
Europa. His shoulder felt as if it had been pulled from its socket from the 
strain. He felt his fingers slipping, opening despite anything he could do. He 
screamed and felt his bowels spasm with raw fear.
His feet struck first, a solid thump as the left and then the right boot struck 
the ledge. For a moment he teetered on the edge, the pack threatening to 
overbalance him and tip him backwards into the void. Paul dropped to his knees, 
his fingers dug into the ice in desperation even as his brain was trying to 
catch up to events.
Paul pressed his helmet against the surface of the ledge, breathing raggedly as 
he hugged the ice. He had made it! He had survived the gap. He had danced with 
his dragon and survived!
He wiggled around so he could sit up and regain his composure. He had to rest 
for a few moments before he could continue. He stared back at the gap he'd 
crossed, unbelieving of his good fortune. Had the ledge been on the same level, 
as he'd thought, there would have been no way he could have reached it. 
He gazed across the plain. Marcus was just as close as before. At the same time, 
Marcus was just as far away. He still had to get down the rest of the damn 
cliff. He looked to the right to plan his next few moves. 
The ledge where he sat continued for another few meters and then disappeared 
around a corner. Paul struggled to his feet and carefully maneuvered himself to 
the corner. He peered around to see what his next steps must be. 
The corner was the edge of a large crack that ran from the top of the cliff to 
somewhere far below. The depths of the crack were so dark that he could not tell 
if the shelf continued further back or not. Certainly it looked as if the crack 
was getting narrower toward the back, near where it disappeared into the dark. 
Paul worked his way around the corner, turning once again to face the cliff so 
that his pack wouldn't get in the way. He proceeded cautiously, feeling blindly 
with his foot as he moved forward.
Paul was already throwing his weight forward when he stepped onto empty space 
where he'd expected solid footing. The shelf had stopped abruptly. He reached 
out desperately, seeking a handhold even as he felt himself falling, falling, 
falling into the dark.
* * *
There was a beeping in his ear when he came to. It was the power supply's 
warning signal. It must have been damaged in the fall. He couldn't feel his feet 
and his fingers felt as if they were made of pure ice. He realized that he was 
lying on his side. He rolled over so that the pack provided a back rest. He 
willed his left leg to move as he stared at his boot. It didn't move. Nor did 
his right one. He couldn't even feel the pressure on the backs of his legs. 
Strange.
Paul looked around. Behind him was the dark crack in the cliff's face. On either 
side was a steep slope of icy regolith, a shelf formed from the material that 
must have fallen from the cliff when it cracked. A few meters below his boots 
was the edge of yet another cliff. Had he slid another few meters he would have 
plunged over the edge to his death. He'd been pretty lucky, he thought and 
laughed for having such a foolish thought.
Lucky! His legs were useless. His power unit was shutting down, judging from the 
shrill warning beeping that still sounded in his ear. Once that went he would 
succumb to the cold, or lack of oxygen, or simply sheer exhaustion. The sharp 
drop-off would have been a merciful end instead of this slow creeping death.
Paul slumped, defeated despite all he had done. He had let his mother and the 
others down after all. He would die alone, here on this ridge and they would die 
waiting for him as their emergency systems ran down and finally failed. No doubt 
Dolores would curse herself for encouraging his foolish attempt at rescue. She 
would die cursing him for being so immature. She would curse him for failing 
her. 
One twist and you can end it all, the green dragon whispered temptingly. Paul 
reached up to touch the fastenings on his helmet. He would die in seconds when 
the air rushed from his lungs and his skin froze. He gripped the helmet's 
fastener between thumb and finger and took a deep breath. 
Go ahead, what are you waiting for? the green prompted. But Paul's hand would 
not move. He didn't have the guts to end it all. He didn't have the courage to 
admit defeat.
If you do this, the blue dragon asked, will your mother cry over you? Will she 
know how very much you love her?
How could she ever know? Paul cried. You were always the one she loved. You were 
the one who stood between us. You were the one who kept me in the role of a 
child who could never measure up!
Before the blue could respond to his accusations a strobe of blue-green shot 
from the station toward the cliff away off on his right. Of course, Paul 
realized as he recognized the Wholephore link's signature, he must have come far 
to the left of the tower. He'd drifted more and more off course as he came 
along. He'd probably been heading toward the wrong one of Jupiter's bands all 
along. Well, that wasn't surprising, considering the other ways he had screwed 
up on this trip.
He wished there was some way he could let Marcus know of their problems, of 
their desperate need for rescue. He wished that he had a laser to flash at them, 
a signal to let them know his location. If he could just do that . . .
But there was no way that he could hope for people from Marcus to reach him in 
time. The beeping had stopped, meaning that he had only ten minutes or so 
remaining before the heaters failed and the cold would begin to penetrate his 
suit and turn him into a frozen corpse. It mattered not that he still had enough 
oxygen to sustain him for an hour, the cold would kill him before then.
Oxygen? Yes, you have more oxygen than you need, so why not use it for some 
useful purpose? the blue dragon suggested.
Paul thought furiously, his mind clearer than ever before as the chill began to 
reach inward. After only a moment's thought he came up with a solution. He could 
survive for about five minutes on the suit's air and that was long enough to do 
what he wanted.
First, he carefully wrote out a message for those who would find him, telling 
them of his mother's desperate plight at Greeley. When that was done he began 
his final preparations.
With calm assurance he detached his pack and pulled it around into his lap. It 
was a matter of seconds to remove the recycler and set it on the ice beside the 
pack. He used his gloved fist to smash a hole in one end and expose the charcoal 
mixture inside. He next disconnected the twin hoses of the oxygen supply and 
switched them so that the flow was reversed. This way the unit would send the 
oxygen back into the recycler and across the charcoal mix. 
Paul pulled the battery leads out and positioned them above the hole in the 
canister, said a brief prayer, opened the feed valve on the oxygen supply, and 
touched the wires together.
A bright spark jumped across the gap, but nothing else happened. Paul wondered 
if he had miscalculated. Had he misunderstood the chemistry involved? He touched 
the wires once again. And a third time.
There was a sudden gout of flame that shot ten meters up into the darkness, a 
brilliant blue flame that threw the entire area into stark relief. Why blue, 
Paul wondered, and then realized that the tiny amounts of methane in the 
atmosphere must be burning as well.
Paul laid back on the ice as the blue flame danced above him. In the flickering 
shadows he could see all of the dragons dancing, only this time they were 
dancing in celebration at his joining them.
They were all there, Paul imagined as the cold penetrated his suit and began to 
creep up his limbs. But the cold was his friend, he realized. The cold would 
turn him into an ice dragon so that he could join the others who dwelt in the 
depths of Europa. Yes, he could see the dragons clearly now. He could hear their 
sweet voices as they sang of Europa's promise and the terrible price she 
extracted from those who tested the ice.
The blue dragon and the green danced around him, drawing closer and closer. For 
the first time he could see them clearly. Both had his father's face.
Paul could clearly hear the dragons' voices over Europa's sweet song now. 
You have done your best, the blue said. You have conquered the ice, far beyond 
my-our-expectations. The blue did a dance to display its pride at this son who 
had braved the icy wastes to the end of his resources and never gave up in 
defeat.
Paul noticed that he could no longer feel his arms. Was this a step in the 
process of being converted to an ice dragon, he wondered? He marvelled at the 
ease of this transformation as the air grew close and his breath faltered. His 
heart swelled with joy at the blue dragon's final acceptance of him and he rose 
to join the dance. 
And, as he did so, he began to cry for his poor, dead father.
The rose dragon slid gracefully into the dance. Her delicate movements were full 
of forbidden promise and loving comfort. She drew closer and closer, singing her 
lovely, enticing song as she wrapped her sensual coils around Paul, squeezing 
him in her warm embrace, encompassing his body, and giving him the release and 
rest that he needed so desperately. As the blue light faded and the darkness 
rushed in, Paul could finally look directly at the rose dragon.
She had his mother's face.
* * *
"Are you awake, Paul?" she said.
Paul jerked. The voice was so different, so harsh compared to her earlier song. 
What had happened? It felt as if his skin was on fire, as if a thousand 
pin-pricks were spotting his body. "Wha . . ." he said in confusion.
"Take it easy. It was touch and go there for while but you made it."
"Father?" Paul asked as he tried to force his eyes open and see the dragon's 
lair. Surely the rose dragon had brought him to her den to live with her forever 
and ever. But, why did he feel his arms? Dragons didn't have arms!
A sharp smell of disinfectant and medication assailed his nostrils. In the 
background he could hear other conversations and the clink and rustle of many 
people. Then he felt the bandages across his face and the wrappings that covered 
his hands. 
He still couldn't feel his legs.
"They found you from the flare you set," his mother's voice continued. "That was 
very clever, using your pack as a flare to let them know where you were."
"They rescued you?" Paul mumbled. For some reason he still couldn't seem to open 
his eyes. His message had worked! His sacrifice hadn't been in vain!
"Oh yes, the rescue party arrived about twenty hours after the quake," his 
mother continued. "They would have gotten there sooner but there were a half 
dozen other habs that were affected. We weren't the last, nor the first. They 
sent out people to find you right away."
"Dolores?" Paul said. "Is she all right?"
"Yes, and her boyfriend says he really wants to thank you for the help you gave 
her. She is so proud of you-wants to make you her honorary little brother, she 
says."
"Wonderful," Paul grumbled, starting to feel more like himself. Little brother 
indeed. What did she know anyhow? He didn't need her anymore. He didn't need 
anybody anymore.
"It's such a pity," his mother said, shaking her head sadly as she stroked his 
cheek. "Such a shame that you had to go through all of that for nothing."
Nothing? How could she say that, Paul wondered? His trek hadn't been in vain. He 
had won against the worst that Europa had thrown at him! He had defeated the ice 
and the dark! He had conquered his inner fears!
He had danced with dragons.