Chapter No.10.

The meeting with George took place at precisely ten in the Mission Meeting room. Several other mission experts, all males, were in attendance. This caused an underlying tension among the women because it exacerbated their perception of gender bias.

"We're ready to send you to Enceladus," George said. "We've updated the ship with the more powerful Xenon Ion engines, which will make your trip a lot quicker than before."

"How can we survive the high G's?" Janet asked.

"We've installed updated G-seats. They have more fluid padding to help with bodily compression.

"I thought that we would be immersed in a liquid."

"That technology is not mature enough. You'll be breathing through a mask that will help keep your lungs from being compressed."

Janet wanted to barf, but she bit her tongue instead.

"What are we expecting to find on Enceladus?" Carl asked.

George gestured to one of his engineers. "Display the images."

A large screen lit up with before and after images of Enceladus. The before image displayed an ice-covered bright moon with no discernable atmosphere. The after image showed a dark moon with a thin blue atmosphere.

"How is that possible?" Carl asked.

"That's what we would like to know. We can't see any obvious explanation from our best telescopes. As you can see, the mostly nitrogen atmosphere is dense, which is not even theoretically possible."

Carl smelled a scam. This was either an ill-conceived terraforming idea gone bad or some crazy alien intervention. He placed his bet on the former. Unfortunately, he was not going to abort the mission without discussing it with his crew.

"When are we going?" he asked.

"Everything will be ready by next Wednesday."

With that, the meeting was over. Carl drove back to his house without any conversation with his crew. They seemed to be in a catatonic state. They went straight to their rooms while he sat in the living room in his easy chair and stared out the patio doors at a nice summer day.

It wasn't until supper that the discussion began. He had prepared a hardy meal of filet mignon with Pinot noir as a relaxer. They appeared in more formal clothing as if they were going out to an evening date.

"Well," Alice said. "Is this our last meal before we are sent to our punishment for being female?"

"I understand how you feel, but we're committed to being the guardians of the galaxy."

That elicited mocking laughter.

"Look," he said. "I understand how you feel. I don't like it either, but we have no choice. If this is some ridiculous attempt to terraform Enceladus, we should be aware of it."

"Why?" Janet asked. "What could we do about it?"

"We should alert the world that they could be plunged into a different timeline by these reckless attempts to alter nature."

"Why don't we just resign?" Alice said. "We're risking our lives for a crime that we can't prevent."

"Maybe we can't," he said. "But the least we could do is alert everyone that they are in danger."

"He's right," Margaret said. "We have to find out what's going on there before we go rogue."

"Yeah," Janice said. "We have to be certain about what we say to the public."

"She's right," Janet said. "We would be castigated if we reported something we couldn't prove."

Everyone appeared to be onboard at that point.

The women ended up lounging in the living area, which had space for all of them and then some. Talking it out was their way of calming their fears.

Carl realized that they were not happy about the situation, but he was powerless to do anything about it. What they were about to do was both risky and taxing, but it was necessary for determining the truth.

But they weren't going anywhere until NASA finished updating the Explorer spaceship and its shuttle. This gave Carl time to assuage their anxiety by allowing them to vent their fears and misgivings about the mission. It was the least he could do, but he had to be careful. They depended upon his fortitude for working out of dangerous situations and acting brave in the face of danger.

He also had to allow them to tease him without showing any disdain for their outrageous lack of decorum that would normally be the characteristic of women of their stature. Maybe it was the fact that they were young in heart, or it could be the result of timeline changes. That might be the problem all along.

Their trip up to the Explorer spaceship in orbit didn't occur until three days later. During the journey, the fearless crew members remained tightlipped. Carl maneuvered the shuttle into the hanger deck and then activated the compression protocol, which took fifteen minutes. When they were able to open the shuttle's main door, the crew members floated out in zero gravity and proceeded to the tube that led to the quarters deck, which was not spinning.

The lights came on as soon as Carl's head popped out of the tube. He floated on down and worked his way to the command center. The women came to the command deck and sat in chairs.

"Everything looks normal," Carl said. "We have to get in the G-chairs before I take us out of orbit and fire the main engines."

That resulted in a few groans, but the women made their way to the aft wall of the quarters deck and activated the G-chairs, which popped out of the wall and assumed the engine burn configuration.

The new G-chairs were much larger than the original version. They were heavily padded, especially the back and headrest. They felt like air cushions. Strapping in took time because the straps had to have cushioned segments under where they went against the body.

Once they were safely strapped in, Carl began the process of moving the ship out of orbit and away from Earth before he lit up the main engines. That took a half hour. All that they could do was patiently wait until the burn started, but when it did, it was like being tortured by a having an elephant sit on you, and this suffering went on and on for an hour before it finally stopped, plunging them back into zero gravity.

"I feel like I swallowed a grapefruit," Margaret complained.

"Tell me about it!" Janet said. "God, that hurt!"

"Let's get out of these seats and to the command center," Carl said. "I need to check if there was any damage before we get too far away from Earth."

He hustled, but they took their time. When he arrived at the command center, he activated the main computer system and began a complete analysis of the ship's systems. Unfortunately, this took some time to complete. The women decided to go to their bunks to relax while he was checking out the ship. They had had enough physical abuse for one day.

The system reported that everything was copasetic. He entered the command to start up the deck wheels. After a loud warning, he felt the quarters deck begin to spin to create artificial gravity. What surprised him was the fact that the spin had been enhanced to simulate ninety percent of Earth's gravity instead of the original eighty percent.

The next thing that he had to do was to check the status of the agricultural deck. He went to the embedded ladder on the aft wall and climbed up to the portal to the tube that led to the agricultural deck. When he arrived down there, he made his way to the repair pad. Surprisingly, all of the robots had waddled off, saving him the task of repairing them. However, what he did find was a barrel of beer. He stared at it as if he found a large hunk of gold. However, getting it up to the quarters deck wasn't going to be easy, but he decided that it was a necessary sacrifice.

What surprised him was that two robots showed up and used a wagon to move the barrel over to the embedded ladder. They attached a rope to the barrel so that Carl could climb up the ladder and then pull the barrel up. Once he was at the quarters deck portal. He was able to lower it, using the rope, to the floor. He rolled it to a cooler in the kitchen station where he opened the bung and attached it to a delivery tap.

He sat down at the kitchen station with a glass of fresh beer. The women showed up and were surprised to see him there drinking.

"What the hell!" Janet said. "How'd you get that?"

Carl turned to point to the tap. "From there."

All four of the women filled glasses with beer and sat down near him.

"I thought that the beer was down in the agricultural deck," Margaret said.

"It was, but I brought a barrel up here . . . with the robots' help."

"They sure know how to brew good beer," Alice said. "This tastes like a nice ale."

"Bless them," Janice said after taking a good swig.

"I assume that everything is okay," Alice said.

"Yes," Carl replied. "We're over five hundred thousand miles per hour, which should get us there in a little over two months."

"I'm not looking forward to the deceleration engine burn," Margaret said. "Hopefully, this mission will justify the suffering we must endure."

"At least we won't be out here for several months," Alice said. "Now that we can speed this big bucket up."

Carl agreed with that, but he realized that the unknown can often end up being a major problem that he would have to solve if it involved any of the ship's systems.