Chapter 21. Conflict

The Proxima B returned to an orbit around Earth which allowed for topping off the ship's water supply and for the crew to get a break from being concerned about the dangers of space travel. The only thing that was on everyone's mind is the fact that recent tests indicated that there was some unknown reason for their physical durability, a phenomenon that was welcome but disturbing.

As usual, the men congregated on the engineering deck to discuss the problem.

"Is there some way we could analyze our skin to find out why it's almost indestructible?" Dave asked.

"That's a good question," Charles said. "Our devices are designed for analyzing power sources and machines, not living tissue."

"How about the medical station," Carl asked. "Doesn't it have some way to analyze our bodies?"

"Yes, but it's designed for finding illnesses or injuries, not for repairing keratins, which make up most of our skin."

"There must be some reference to this in the commander's data file. Maybe we should go over it again."

"I did, but I didn't find anything that mentioned this issue."

"Could it be that since we're no longer human, we've been morphed into something that looks human but isn't."

"Maybe it's a fast-heeling phenomena."

"That's possible, but I don't think tissue damage could be repaired almost instantly."

"Yeah, you're right. That's too farfetched.

Charles sighed. "We keep ending up with circuitous reasoning."

"Maybe we should ask that robot if he knows what's going on," Robert proposed, pointing to a humanoid robot.

"I doubt it. They're just machines that have no idea what living creatures are made of." He paused. "Look, I'll get with Alice and see if she wants to pursue the science connected to this phenomenon."

"What about us deliberately damaging our skin and see how fast it's repaired?" Dave asked.

"Yeah, that might be an interesting test, but I don't think I would want to damage flesh that the women could see. It would have to be some place hidden from view, at least while we're not naked like now."

"We could try a metal spatula that we use to stick a probe onto a heat pipe," Carl proposed.

"Yeah," Charles replied. "Then you could apply it to my butt."

Carl gave him a confused look. "Are you volunteering?"

"Sure, why not."

Carl stared at him for a moment before getting up and going to a cabinet that stored tools. He selected a spatula and went to a pipe that runs from the power source to a cool down unit. The pipe is usually very hot. He held the spatula against it until the temperature was near a hundred degrees C. Charles stood up and bent over so that Carl could apply the hot spatula to his buttocks.

Charles braced for the pain, which was intense, but he didn't yell. He gritted his teeth instead. "Ow! That really hurts."

"It left a nice red mark that swelled your skin, but the tissue is rapidly shrinking, and the redness is fading."

Charles straightened up. "The pain has already subsided."

"It's almost gone. Amazing."

"So, this indicates that our flesh can suffer damage, but that our body is capable of repairing the damage quickly," Dave said.

"Yes, but we still have to determine how it does that," Charles replied.

"Obviously, our bodies have been altered to do it," Carl suggested. "This has to be something that the senior engineers were aware of."

"Let's see what it does when it's applied to my back where the underlying tissues are not as thick."

Carl looked at him for a moment to make sure he wasn't kidding before he heated the spatula up again and then applied it to his lower back. This time, Charles yelled, but he quickly gained control.

"Same thing is happening," Carl said. "That caused a big blister but it's fading, but not quite as fast at the other test."

"I'll have to get with Alice and discuss the results of this. We need the women's brain power to figure this out."

"Do you really believe that they're that more intelligent than we are?" Dave asked.

Charles shrugged. "I'm not sure, but they're definitely good at math, which I'm sure as hell not."

"Math isn't going to solve this enigma," Carl said.

No one disputed that statement.

Later that evening, when Charles was sitting in his living area going over records that were listed as being associated with the original commander, Alice and Vicky trotted in and sat down in a couch opposite his easy chair.

"I heard that you were the test subject for an attempt to determine the effect of applying heat to flesh," Alice said, her expression projecting concern.

"Yes," he admitted. "The damage was mostly blistering and welts, but they vanished much faster than I would have thought."

"Would you mind it if we looked at the areas that were damaged?" Vicky asked him.

Charles hesitated a moment before he replied. "I'll have to strip. One of the heat applications was to my buttocks."

Alice smiled. "We would really appreciate you showing us the areas that were tested."

Charles stripped and then bent over to exhibit his buttocks. "It was to the right one," he told them.

He felt a hand feeling his flesh.

"There's no sign of anything," Vicky said. "Where else were you burned?"

"In the lower left side of my back."

Again, he felt a hand exploring his skin.

"I don't see anything," Vicky said. "If this happened in the universe we came from, there would still be signs of a bad burn."

Charles straightened up. "What do you think is happening here?"

Vicky glanced at Alice before turning back to him. "Well, my guess is that it's some form of an intensified immune system reaction, maybe more active T-cells or maybe even something in the blood that's stimulating rapid repair of cellular damage." Her expression softened and then exhibited amusement as she ran her hand over his abdomen. "Do you work out a lot? You have marvelous abs."

"Yes. I do work out but not as much as it would take to get this result," he said while looking at his abdomen.

Vicky looked at Alice whose eyes were thoroughly examining Charles. "Ok, our theory that the bio radiation is boosting our T-cell systems as well as our cells' ability to reproduce rapidly is the reason we're so fit and impervious to physical damage."

"That makes sense," Alice replied without looking at her. "Judging by the marvelous shape he's in, we should live forever."

"That's assuming we don't get in the middle of a war between robotic aliens," Charles reminded them. "Have you seen any evidence of them near our solar system?"

"Nope," Alice replied. "Maybe we should move to a more remote hidden location."

"I'm sure they have ways of locating us no matter what," Charles said.

"That's possible, but I'm sure if we hid away from Earth, it would be much more difficult for them to find us."

He smiled. "Well, you're the astronomy expert. You should be able to find such a location."

"How about we hide around a gas giant like Saturn, which has a boat load of moons that could make it hard to spot us," Vicky suggested.

"Yeah," Alice replied while still ogling Charles. "That sounds like a good idea."

Vicky put her hand on Alice's back. "Let's get you out of here before you have an accident."

She giggled. "I hear you."

Charles watched them walk out of his quarters before he shook his head and sighed. He was relieved that the entire female compliment didn't come with them.

The next day, Charles, Dave, Beverly and Mary came to the command deck to check on Alice's progress to take the ship to Saturn.

"How long till we get there?" Charles asked.

Alice scanned her eyes over all four of them before she replied. "We're about a day away. I didn't want to attract any attention from the robot aliens."

Charles looked over at Judy seated at the astronomy station. "Any signs of them?"

"No, and I hope it stays that way."

Charles paused when he turned back to Alice. "I was thinking."

She giggled. "That's not good."

He briefly chuckled. "I would like to orbit Titan."

"Why the moon?"

"It's further away from Saturn and isn't dragging ice crystals in Saturn's E- ring."

"Ok, I'll make that the destination," Alice said.

Charles turned to Dave. "I think it would be a good idea to have you go down on Enceladus to see if you can find life forms in the ocean that's under the surface of ice."

"Yeah," Dave reacted. "That's what our mission was . . . before the blackout happened."

"I'll pilot the shuttle to wherever you think is the best location to find life."

Dave rubbed his jaw. "Well, the southern polar region is where jets of water are streaming out into space because of tidal heating. The problem is that we have no easy way to observe what's under those waterspouts."

"We do," Charles told him. "We have small submarine probes that we can insert in the blow holes. They can send visual and radiometric data back to us."

Dave smiled. "That's great!"

When the Proxima B was in orbit around Titan, Charles, Dave, Beverly and Mary went to the hanger deck to board a shuttle for a trip to Enceladus. Titan orbits Saturn at around 1.25 million kilometers while Enceladus orbits at 238,000 kilometers in Saturn's E ring. Charles waited until the distance was the shortest before traveling there. His most difficult task was putting the shuttle down on the south pole of the ice crusted moon. Fortunately, the surface was relatively flat and smooth due to the regular deposit of snow from geysers that literally explode from Enceladus' surface, shooting salty water high above the moon. The good news was that there are lots of smooth surface to land on, but Charles had to avoid landing on a possible geyser eruption.

They exited the shuttle in tightfitting spacesuits with helmets that allowed a good view. They used oxygen but at a low volume. Charles and Dave pushed a sled-like carrier with a small sub that was powered by a battery powered engine. It had several sensors including three cameras that were capable of recording at extremely low light levels. It was equivalent to recording things at midnight in a coal yard.

"Here's a recent geyser hole," Dave announced. "I think it's fresh, so we might get a lot of time before it blows again."

Dave and Charles got the sub probe into the hole while Beverly worked the controls to get it moving down into the ocean that lies below the ice shelf. Mary monitored the sub's video recording system while Beverly guided the sub.

Charles and Dave looked over Mary's shoulders at the video display.

At first it appeared that there was not much happening down there, but after several minutes, something flashed by the sub.

"What was that?" Dave asked, his eyes wide with excitement.

"It looked like something flashed by the camera," Charles said. "I didn't have a chance to see it well enough to know what it could be."

"I'll slow the recording," Mary said.

What they saw next made their heart rates increase.

"Holy crap!" Dave excitedly exclaimed. "That looks like a manta ray!"

"It was almost transparent," Charles said. "Whatever it was, it's alive."

Dave pointed at the screen. "That looks like some sort of worm. It's at least two meters long!"

"Looks like there's life down in the ocean," Charles said, smiling.

"This is amazing!" Dave declared. "It's proof that life evolved on another world."

"I think that it was inevitable that we would determine that." Charles said.

The women didn't make any comments. They were too busy working the sub.

Charles turned to look at Saturn. "What a view! This would make a million-dollar photo."

"It sure as hell would. Too bad money doesn't exist."

Charles chuckled. "Yeah, we live in a world where money doesn't mean shit."

"That's a good thing. We don't have to worry about budgets. The bad news is that we can't go anywhere to buy something we might need."

"We're engineers. We can make anything."

Dave laughed. "Or so we'll tell whoever asks us that we can."

Beverly turned to look at them. "Hey you guys, we're down to the bottom of the ocean. What do you want us to do?"

"Anything down there?" Charles asked.

"Nope. It's just a bunch of rocks."

"Ok, bring it back up, but slowly."

"We should go to Europa," Dave said. "It's supposed to have an ocean like this moon does."

"We'll probably get to do that, especially if we actually do live long."

"I can't even imagine that. It seems totally freaky."

Charles chuckled, "That's how this entire adventure seems."

Dave laughed.

Just then he got a signal from the ship. It was Alice. "Hey! You guys had better get your butts back here. We've spotted the robot alien ship on long range."

"We're just finishing up here," Charles told her. "We'll be back shortly."

"Good," she replied before dropping the signal.

"Step it up," Charles told the women. "We must get back to the ship pronto."

"The sub's almost to the surface," Beverly replied. "Here it comes."

Charles and Dave got the sub on the sled and began to push it to the shuttle. The women helped guide them to pick up the speed. After they got it squared away in the shuttle's equipment compartment, they boarded the shuttle and Charles fired it up for the trip back to the ship.

"I wonder why the robot aliens are searching for us," Beverly said. "We're no threat to them."

"Who knows how robots think," Dave said. "Maybe they were programmed to not trust anyone."

Once Charles got the shuttle back in the hanger deck, he started the pressurization process, which takes five minutes to compete.

Everyone was on edge when they barged onto the command deck.

Alice turned to him. "The alien is on its way here from Jupiter, estimated time twenty minutes."

"Ok, Let's move the ship into a close orbit of Saturn," Charles told her. "That'll make it much more difficult to detect us."

She programed the course into the pilot's system. "That'll take about fifteen minutes."

The fifteen minutes of safety had all of them intently watching the main screen for any signs of the alien robot ship.

What happened next changed everything,