Angel of Europa by Allen Steele Read Free Book Online Page B

and why she’s here, too.”
    “Yeah … right.” Jose raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I’m sure she’s eager for you to unearth all the facts.”
    “In fact, she is. She requested to join me when I came here … and she’s also asked to do something else.” Danzig looked at Yvonne again. “We’d like to take down DSV-2.”
    Her eyes widened in disbelief. “You what? ”
    “We want to go for another dive. Evangeline will be the pilot, and I’ll be the passenger.” He smiled slightly. “As I said … this is her idea, not mine.”
    “She … what …?” Yvonne shook her head as if to clear it. “Why does she want to …?”
    “She continues to insist that there’s a large creature down there, and she wants another crack at confirming its existence.” Danzig paused. “Given the accusations made against her, I think she deserves that chance. So I’m going with her as an impartial witness.”
    Yvonne stared at him; for the first time since they’d sat down at the conference table, she was utterly speechless. Jose nodded in agreement, albeit reluctantly. “I think she’s right,” Walter said at last. “If there’s any way she can prove her story, she should be given the opportunity to do so.” He turned to Yvonne. “Can you prep DSV-2 for another dive in—” he glanced at his watch “—four hours? Five?”
    Danzig was startled by the immediacy of Walter’s request. Then he remembered that Europa’s day was almost 43 hours long. It was still morning in the Conamara Chaos; sunset wouldn’t come for many hours yet. There was no point in waiting longer than they needed to send down DSV-2. Yvonne reluctantly nodded, and Walter pushed back his chair.
    “Very well, then,” he said as he stood up. “Jose, would you be so kind as to help Otto prepare for his mission? I’ll inform Evangeline that her request is being granted.”
    Without waiting for an answer, Walter left the conference room. Yvonne waited until he was gone, then she looked at Danzig. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, her voice very quiet. “You may not be safe.”
    “Yes, I am. After all, you yourself said that the DSV is reliable.”
    “The sub is, yes. It’s the pilot I don’t trust.”

VII
    D OWN, DOWN, DOWN …
    The cable creaked from the frost that sheathed it, sang with the chill wind funneling through the narrow chasm. The bathyscaphe swayed back and forth as it descended from the surface far above. Silver-blue walls of ice as old as recorded time, tinted with thin red streaks of sulfur, towered to either side of the submersible, becoming darker with each passing meter. Down, down, down …
    Danzig saw little of this through the DSV’s small portholes, and the flatscreen in the center of the wraparound control console didn’t reveal much more, until Evangeline switched on the forward searchlights. Lying face-down upon a padded cushion, he watched the lidar readout only a few centimeters from his face. The bathyscaphe was more than a half-kilometer deep within the crevasse, but it still had another 400 meters to go until it reached the hole that the drill had bored through the ice pack.
    “You okay there?” Evangeline asked. “Not nervous, are you?”
    She lay prone beside him within the tiny cabin, propping herself on her elbows. Although DSV-2 was superficially similar to DSV-1, it was smaller, designed to carry two people instead of three. Nor did it have a separate observation blister; the cabin was the bathyscaphe’s only interior compartment. The face-down arrangement of the couches, albeit uncomfortable, was meant not only to conserve space, but also to give the pilot and passenger the best possible view through the three saucer-sized portholes arranged left, right, and center of the console.
    “No,” he said, “I’m fine.” Which was a lie. The swaying of the bathyscaphe upon its cable, the high-pitched whine of the wind, made him all too aware of the danger they faced. If the cable