We crash-landed. Me! The Countess of Freyen-Noyen – at least until the divorce came through – fighting for survival in the icy wastes! How the girls at Maxine’s Cocktail Bar and Grill would kill for a dramatic tale like that!
The pilot stomped back through the airlock, a blast of cold air close on his heels. He shook great icy tentacles from his great coat, and gasped for breath.
“Sabotage!” He cried, and slumped dejectedly to the floor.
“Sabotage? Really?” A delicious thrill ran through my body, this was getting better and better!
He gingerly removed his gloves and kneaded colour back into alabaster fingers. “Definitely. The drive unit is shot, but so are the comms and the transponder.”
“Which means?” I asked, excitedly. He gave me a dark look. A dark, smouldering look.
“Which means, we’re down and nobody knows we are down. We’ve plunged into an ice cavern, so we’re not visible from above, and thanks to your little detour, we’re nowhere near our registered flight path.”
I started guiltily. It was true, I’d encouraged the pilot to swoop through ice canyons and circle an ancient frozen waterfall that glittered in the brilliant sun of Europa’s rarefied atmosphere. I’d done it partly because it was all so mind-boggling beautiful, partly because the pilot was a hunk and wasn’t unresponsive to my suggestions, but mainly because it simply wouldn’t do to arrive too early at Margaret D’Lancy’s Christmas Ball.
“What about my ring phone?” I asked, eager to make amends.
He shook his head. “Try it, by all means, but it won’t work. They’re passive – they need to be near a receiver. And the one in the shuttle doesn’t work, because the drive unit is shot.”
I tapped the little gemstone ring and held it to my ear. Nothing. Not even a no-signal buzz. This was not good! Having a great excuse for being fashionably late was one thing, missing the Ball entirely was another. I’d already imagined my grand entrance - sweeping through the double-height doors, slinking out of my Ancurian Winterfox coat to reveal a shimmering, bespoke Ferni dress, and of course, the Freyen-Noyen Star, that exquisite 18 carat brilliant-cut teardrop-shaped flawless diamond that I would miss most of all when the good times came to an end. Damn that Pre-Nup!
I came out of my daydream to see the pilot pulling things from the scant few storage lockers on the little runabout. He’d regained his composure after his moment of weakness. I forgave him though; it must have been hell out there, 30 below and barely enough oxygen to strike a match.
“What are you doing?” I asked, as I admired the curves of his shapely behind while he yanked stiff steel cables from a grey box. They kind of looked important.
“Building a lantern,” he replied, his voice muffled.
“A lantern?” The pilot, for all his brawn and bluff charm, must be a bit soft in the head. “What good will a lantern do?”
“Europa is totally dark at night.” He explained. “Any light – especially irregular flashes, especially Morse Code – might get picked up by a satellite, or a tourist jaunt on Jupiter.”
“Wow. So we just turn the ships lights on?” I hoped the lights would still work, despite all those missing cables.
He sighed. “The drive unit is shot. So like the Morse Code, we’re going to be doing this the old fashioned way. We’ll be burning these.” He emptied his coat pocket and scattered a handful of frosted, translucent chunks across the metal floor.
Yep. Definitely doolally. I gave him a pitying look. “You can’t burn ice.”
He grinned. “This ice you can. They’re diamonds. The cavern sits on top of an ancient volcano, and chunks of diamond are just lying around out there waiting to be picked up.”
“You can’t burn diamonds either!” I exclaimed, horrified.
“Oh yes you can. They’re just a pretty arrangement of carbon atoms. They’ll burn as long as we use the ship’s oxygen supply to feed the convector chamber. Now, please shut up, I need to finish the lantern before sunset. I don’t think we’ll survive the four hour wait until the next one.”
I’d forgotten that Europa had such a short day. Plenty of time yet to get rescued and still make a dramatic entrance at Margo’s, preferably with sirens blaring and lights flashing. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Keeping out of my way would be a start.” He replied sourly.
Since the pilot’s bluff charm appeared to be exhausted, I took his seat up in the cockpit. The ship was wedged in the ice at an angle, pointing up towards the roof of the cavern, but it was hard to make out exactly what I was looking at. Shards of ice sparkled and the reflections moved slowly across the jagged floor like some giant kaleidoscope as the sun passed overhead. I wondered how much of the sparkle was ice, and how much was diamond. I wondered what this little cavern was worth.
Then I started to wonder just how much the pilot was about to set fire to, and I got a queasy sensation in the pit of my stomach.
“Isn’t there anything else we can burn?” I asked. “The ship’s fuel?”
He laughed. “The ship’s fuel is nuclear. Burn that, and I guarantee someone will come and investigate. But there wouldn’t be anything left of us or the ship. Otherwise, no; it has to be something that burns bright and long, and in case you haven’t noticed we’re not exactly over-equipped.”
'He emptied his coat pocket and scattered a handful of frosted, translucent chunks across the metal floor.'
continues overleaf...
19