Adil and Khalid Hussein, two brothers, fishermen by
trade, sat in their small boat, gently bobbing on the
regular swells, as they pulled their nets for the third
time that day. They were pleased, as the catch had been
good. Soon they would be headed for home, families and a
nice hot supper, which was located only a few miles down
the coast.
Lifelong residents of the small Indonesian island of
Tengah, which was located in the Timur sea, albeit not to
prominently. Due to the time zone differences, they were
fishing from their boat off the coast of the island that
was their home, when the wave washed over them. Their
wives continued to work in the gardens, and their
numerous children chased among the inevitable pigs, dogs,
and vociferous chickens. If anything changed, it was not
noticeable. Perhaps they would begin to wonder why no jet
contrails were to be seen in the sky, and the monthly
supply ships failed to arrive, They had an old
trans-oceanic radio, but most of the time the old
batteries were shot, which was their present condition.
It would take quite some time before they became
concerned. One thing was certain. It might cool down a
couple of degrees in the future, but they wouldn’t
need parkas like their northern cousins.
Maintenance worker, Tim Greebe held the, “door
open”, button for custodial technician Barb Lopez at
the forty-seventh floor of building "One" of the "New WTC
Complex." They had both just put in a long midnight
shift, each doing their respective duties, and now it was
nearly time to clock out and head for home.
She hurriedly pushed her cart of cleaning supplies
onboard and smiled at him. “Forty-three,
please.”
Tim grinned back. “Forty-three, it is. Are you about
done for the shift?”
Not really friends, they occasionally crossed paths in
the course of their regular duties. They were destined to
become a lot closer, very soon...
“One more bathroom, and I’m outa here.”
Halfway between the forty-seventh and the forty-sixth
floors, their world came to a sudden stop.
The intense burst of EMP had annihilated the chips that
controlled everything from the switches and breakers, to
the actual operating instructions, of the various types
of generating stations around the world. In a few
nano-seconds, electricity was a thing of the past for
most of mankind. A few of the diesel powered generators
at the hospitals and emergency departments did kick in,
but even the bulk of them relied on chip technology to
detect a problem and start themselves. Consequently,
they never got the signal, and so remained silent to
man’s needs.
Hundreds of thousands of people were stranded around the
world, in one kind of impromptu prison or another. Many
would die of thirst, hunger, or heart failure as they
realized that no help would be forthcoming.
Unfortunately, Tim and Barb would eventually add
themselves to the list of casualties that would number in
the uncountable millions. Crop failures, riots, extreme
weather, and a myriad of diseases that mankind thought of
as, ”under control”, swept through the
population like a farmer’s scythe in a field of
timothy hay. Within six months, the world’s
population would fall by forty percent, and Gaia would
breathe a sigh of relief, as the infection known as
mankind, finally began to subside. At the end of the
first year, sixty percent of all humans would vanish, and
yet, some of it’s inhabitants would not even be
aware that a major change had taken place!
Ken and Carolee Amboy were on their way from Ely, Nevada
to his mom’s place near Tonapah. Their three kids,
Mary, Lois, and Ken Jr. were fast asleep in the camper on
the back of the truck. Carolee was just turning around to
see if they were still tucked in their sleeping bags, and
OK in general, when the wave hit. It was still dark, and
when the lights and engine failed at the same time, Ken
was hard pressed to keep his truck on the road, as he
fought to stop it without power brakes or steering. He
wasn’t worried about hitting oncoming traffic, or
getting hit from the rear either, for that matter. They
were on Nevada’s infamous route six. A television
documentary had once named it, “the loneliest
highway in America.” It wasn’t a lie. There was
over a hundred and fifty miles between the two towns, and
little else. They were about two miles short of the
intersection of the highway that had been named for the
alien rumors that were prevalent down near the small town
of Rachel, sixty miles to the south. It’s proximity
to the government’s, “non-existent base”,
known as area-51, had saved the town, as UFO buffs, and a
few other assorted weirdoes came to the town and spent
enough hard cash at the motel, bar, and café combo, to
keep a few residents hanging on.
“What’s wrong with the truck Honey?”
“I don’t have a clue yet. It just quit. Not a
miss or anything else in the way of a hint before it
died. It was purring like a kitten one second, and it was
kaput the next. Why the lights didn’t keep working
off the battery isn’t normal either. I’m going
to take look under the hood and check it out. Hand me the
flashlight out of the glove box, will you please?”
Without the necessity of a chip to route the power to the
bulb, the light worked fine, but its illumination
didn’t cast any light on the problem with the truck
it-self.
The rising sun took the chill out of the air, and the
family had dug into their emergency ration box to make a
pot of coffee on the little fire that Ken had built from
some dead sagebrush. An old coffee can, sitting in the
flames, held the water to be boiled, and when it finally
did, he threw in a couple of handfuls of coffee. Within
minutes, Ken and Carolee were drinking their coffee, and
the kids each had a small glass of juice from the large
can that Ken had opened with his jackknife. Donuts for
the whole group completed the impromptu breakfast. When
you traveled over these lonely roads it was definitely a
good idea to keep food, water, medical kit, and for Ken
at least, a small can of coffee in a box in the back of
the truck, or trunk of the car, whatever the case might
be. He was a confirmed coffee-o-holic, and freely
admitted it. In the very near future, he was going to
wish he had packed a bigger can of fresh roasted coffee
in the truck’s grub box, much bigger, if the truth
be known.
At noon, Ken decided to walk down to the intersection
where the two highways met. There was an old abandoned
gas station and cafe there, as well as the warm springs
that had given the place its name. Not one car had come
by since their truck died, and he hoped he could find
someone that could either give them some help, or direct
them to a place where they could get some.
He left the hood of the truck up, and told his wife,
“Carolee, you’ve got to keep the fort here
while I go to get some help. My pistol is in the door
caddie. Don’t get overly friendly with anyone that
shows up, but make sure they don’t just leave the
bunch of you just sitting here, OK?”
“Don’t worry Ken, I sure ain’t going to
run off any salvation about now.”
It took just over a half an hour for him to cover the two
miles or so to the group of buildings that had been
visible as black spots down at the base of the tall,
striated basalt and sedimentary prominence at the north
side of the seemingly endless valley, ever since he left
the truck and his family behind. The buildings stood in
an unearthly silence that had been ongoing for many years
now. The only exceptions
had been the sounds of the occasional passing vehicle,
military jet, or even the stray human that would scale
the chain link fence to take a dip in the old hand dug
swimming pool. The warm mineral waters were reputed to be
nearly identical in composition to the famous springs in
Arkansas, and some folks believed it made their aches and
pains leave them, so they came to the waters, fence or no
fence.
That night they huddled in the camper for warmth. The
high desert is susceptible to extreme weather changes,
and extreme just wasn’t an apt description of what
was upon them. The morning came with a sky that looked as
if it was painted with some shade of cotton candy pink in
the east, and then seemed to work through every shade of
red, until the western sky was just an extremely dirty
looking burnt umber.
“Ken, what’s wrong with the sky?”
“I don’t know, but I sure don’t like the
looks of it. Do you think there’s been a war or
nuclear accident or something like that? I’ve read
that the electromagnetic pulse from a large nuclear
weapon will fry computer chips for thousands of miles
away from the detonation. It would sure fit what has
seems to have happened to the truck, huh?
Mary and Lois overheard the conversation, and soon were
sobbing inconsolably at the disturbing words.
“Don’t worry you two, it’s probably
nothing at all. Let’s see how far we can get the
truck to coast towards the old warm springs station. I
think if we all push really hard and coast over that
small rise down there, we’ll be able to ride almost
all of the way, if not right up to the old station pumps.
Do you guys want to give it a try?”
The sky was just an indication of the hurricane force
winds that were lifting millions of tons of dirt from the
floor of the Mojave desert, throwing it skyward for tens
of thousands of feet, and miles to the east, the vicious
weather began to make it’s appearance to all. The
party had begun, and Sol just wasn’t up to
penetrating that much murk.
“One, two, three, push! push! Push harder!”
Soon the truck was picking up enough speed and he yelled
for them to jump in. He didn’t want to leave anyone
standing in the road wishing they were riding. Jumping in
behind the steering wheel, he yelled, “Is everybody
on?”
“We all made it dad, don’t slow down.”
They coasted over the rise at less than three miles per
hour, but the next down-hill grade was sufficient to let
them coast all of the way up to the old gas pumps. It
wasn’t much, but they thought of it as a poor
man’s Shangri-La at that point.
Digging under the spare tire, Ken produced the tire iron
and turned to his wife. “You troopers stay here and
guard the truck, I’ll go see if I can find a way
in.”
He ended up prying the hasp from a side door, and letting
himself in. This door was to the kitchen area, and the
first thing that he laid his eyes on was the old, box
type, wood heater in the back of the room. Pack rats,
deer mice, and their contemporaries, had made their homes
here for a long time, but they were about to have guests.
The writing was on the wall.
A local rancher fed them from his herd all winter, even
if he wasn’t aware of it, and they all made it
through the seemingly endless misery. All except for
young Ken Jr., that is. He caught pneumonia in late
February, and died six days before his seventh birthday
on March the eighth in the year 2013. His family buried
him on the bank of the small hot creek, not too far from
where it made its exit from the large pool. It was the
only piece of ground for miles around that wasn’t
frozen solid. Fashioning a sledge from a couple of four
by fours, and a piece of sheet metal, Ken plunged through
the deep snow a few days later to the base of the cliffs
that over-shadowed the valley. It took him over two hours
to find just the right stone for his son’s monument,
and two more to drag it down the slope through the
clutter of talus that had fallen from the tall ramparts
over the ages. Totally exhausted, he sat down heavily
next to the small heater, and grate-fully drank the cup
of hot Mormon tea that Carol had made for him. The native
plant was a far cry from his beloved coffee, but it was
warm and comforting. The following morning, he went to
the toolbox in the back of the truck, and got out his
four-pound single-jack hammer, and a good chisel. His son
would not be left in an unmarked grave if he could do
some-thing to prevent it. He cut the inscription as
deeply as he could into the hard, black volcanic basalt,
and knew that from what he’d seen of the prehistoric
Amerind art on the same type of stones, that the marker
would be legible for hundreds, if not thousands, of years
into the future.
The only good thing that came from their isolation was
the fact that they didn’t come into contact with the
deadly plagues that were sweeping the land. On July
fourth of that same year, they were rescued, after a
fashion. An old man, who had wintered over in a ranch
high up in the mountains, decided to come down to
civilization to find out why he couldn’t get
anything on his radio, and to find out why his summer
relief was over a month late. It was a good winter job
for an old man. In return for watching over the ranch
house, and as much as he could see from the house and
barn, he ate fairly well, and received a lump sum payment
from the absentee land owner when he came down from the
mountain every spring. He fed the one horse in the
stable, and gave what scraps he had from the table to the
barn cat that stayed warm under the hay in the loft. This
was his twelfth year at the place, and it had never been
so bad in those heights. He had to shovel the roof off at
least twice a week for most of the winter, and they had a
heavy snowfall on June seventeenth that was nearly two
feet itself. By July the second, he put the chains on his
ancient jeep station wagon, and threw food, water, fuel,
and some warm clothing, as well as his arctic style
bedroll into the back, and proceeded to abandon his
position without even bothering to look back.
Pulling into the parking lot by the old cafe, he noticed
the Amber’s truck parked by the pumps which was not
unusual by any means in the pre-wave world, and he knew
of no other at that point. He needed a good hot bath, and
nothing or no one was going to stop him and his big bar
of soap from doing just that.
Ken awoke to Mary’s shrill voice, “Dad! Dad!
Someone is in the pool. Come here quick.”
Jumping out of the sleeping bag, Ken ran outside and saw
the jeep and his heart literally leaped for joy in his
chest. “Mary, Tell your mom and Lois to stay in the
building while I see who it is. You stay there too. Wait
‘til I tell you it’s OK before you come over
there.”
Ken approached the fenced pool with caution, and caught a
glimpse of the old fellow rinsing his hair under the
little falls where the hot water entered the enclosure.
“Hello.”
Sputtering loudly as he unexpectedly inhaled a little
water at the sound of Ken’s voice, he finally
managed to reply, “Hello yourself. You startled the
devil out of me young fellow.”
“Sorry ‘bout that, but you’re the first
person that we’ve seen since everything quit, back
around Christmas, and you sure are a sight for sore
eyes.”
Laughing outright at that remark, he replied,
“You’re the first one to use those words when
referring to these old bones in a long time. I guess that
anybody that is that happy to see me, can call me Buck.
Buck Thornton’s the name, and I’m glad to see
you too.”
I’m Ken Amboy, and I’m here with my wife and
children. We’ve been here for months. We’ll
tell you all about it later. When you get finished with
your bath, come on down to the old cafe, and I’ll
introduce you to the wife and kids.
We’d be glad to have you stay for supper, such as it
is.”
Buck’s stash of coffee was nearly as welcome as he
was. They sat around the small table relating what they
knew, or suspected, had gone wrong with their world,
sipping the delicious brew that Ken had figured he’d
never taste again. In addition to the coffee, Buck had
given the girls each a small piece of candy, and had put
a slightly withered potato for each of them into a pot to
boil. He didn’t comment on the large steak that
Carolee had fried for each of them. His job in the
pre-wave world had been protecting ranch property, but
that was then and this was a new set of circumstances,
where the old rules just didn’t apply, and he knew
it.
“You folks must be getting tired of that meat diet
by now.”
Carolee laughed a little shrilly, “Ken killed a
jackrabbit with a rock, and it was so tough that you
couldn’t have chewed that thing with a blender. We
didn’t want to shoot those cattle, but we’d all
be dead by now if we didn’t. His uncle is a rancher
over by Ely, so we do know better than to do such things
under normal circumstances.”
“Don’t worry folks, I would have done the same
thing in your situation.”
They all talked far into the night, and the next morning
decided it was time to leave their refuge.
Walking to the lonely gravesite the next morning, where
they said a prayer, and what they instinctively knew
would be their final good-byes to Ken Jr. The days were
still on the chilly side of comfortable, and the nights
were just plain cold. The consensus was to head south
into the lower elevations. They would take Nevada route
375, formally designated the, “Extraterrestrial
Highway”, by the Nevada legislature in the late
nineties, southward past the now abandoned town of
Rachel, where they found two cans of pork and beans and a
bottle of instant orange drink in the old store. Ken and
Buck broke the lock off the underground fuel tank at the
diminutive gas station, and by using a three foot piece
of two inch pipe with a cap on one end, and a hank of
rope tied to the other, managed to pull twenty gallons of
gas out in just a couple of hours. They would have tried
for more, but the rope slipped off the pipe and the sound
of it hitting the bottom of the tank was enough to
convince them to head south once again.
Most of Nevada had often been described as a five
thousand foot tall tabletop, with the tablecloth pushed
together from side to side. The resulting wrinkles that
would occur were the representations of the roughly
parallel, mountain chains that traversed the state from
northwest to southeast. These ranges were often quite
high, and the snow that clung to the heights of the three
high passes that the group was forced to traverse, made
their travel difficult, to say the least. The third and
tallest of these obstacles was drifted to a depth of ten
feet in places, and Ken and Buck worked for hours to
clear enough of it to allow the jeep to finally break
through, and descend the southern slopes, to the valley
below.
At the intersection of route 375 and route 93, which was
about fifty miles south of Rachel, they found a couple of
nearly starved teenagers living by the small springs near
there, and they too were soon assimilated into the group.
That afternoon, they headed down into the warmer lowlands
near Las Vegas. The name was spanish for, ”The
Meadows”, but the springs and the verdant green
pasture land that gave the place it’s name were
ancient history long before the wave made known its
existence. The water supply from the plentiful springs
had been developed to the point that the artesian effects
they had shown for millennia were totally destroyed.
Traveling down Fremont Street, Carolee commented,
”You would need a good imagination to call this
place Glitter Gulch now.” For the first time in
several weeks, Ken laughed out loud. Why don’t you
lend me a couple of dollars, maybe I can hit it big on
that gigantic slot machine over there at the Four Queens.
I always wanted to do that.”
The small group consisted of a few of the lucky ones that
survived the winter in that very harsh land. Most
didn’t fare quite so well by any means.
Their odyssey ended on the shores of Lake Mead, when they
joined the group that had survived by growing vegetables
in gardens that were watered by hand labor, and eating
fish that were caught with hand-woven nets from the lake
to help all of them get by. Everything was done as
communal labor, and all were entitled to an equal share.
It wouldn’t have been an acceptable lifestyle for
the majority of them last year, but by this year, they
had definitely changed their outlooks as to what was
acceptable. They would survive, and that’s what
really counted.
Hoover dam’s huge turbines still spun endlessly, and
power was still being generated, but the distribution
system was in a shambles. There were rumors that some
parts of the network were once again viable. Older type
switches were being installed as fast they could be
converted to manual operation, replacing the large
numbers of chip actuated units that had been cooked into
oblivion when everything failed, including the ones that
had literally exploded on that fateful day. At least the
source of their power was still functional, which was far
more than the folks that depended on the nuclear
generators could say.
John Travis, U.S. Navy Seabee, was just finishing his
breakfast in the enlisted men’s mess hall when the
wave washed over the summer support crew at McMurdo base,
Antarctica. Many things ground to a halt very shortly
thereafter, but thank-fully, the old generators kept
running and the boilers life giving heat continued
without interruption through the well insulated lines.
After twenty-two days without a single supply plane
coming in, and only scraps of three garbled ham radio
messages making it through from the outside world, as
those in the frozen wasteland often called it. The
captain of the base decided to evacuate all personnel due
to the rapidly deteriorating weather conditions. No one
expected it to be Miami Beach, but December was supposed
to be the milder of the seasons down at the bottom of the
world. The last three days had each provided a new all
time cold temperature for the base, and they knew in
their hearts that if they didn’t leave soon, they
probably never would.
One icebreaker and two medium sized freighters were going
too have to take them all off, there weren’t any
other options. They spent a large number of man-hours in
just a short amount of time ferrying everything that they
could take in the way of supplies to the ships, and in
readying the ships to make the journey northward. All
able bodied hands turned to, and they didn’t have to
be told it would be for the best if they didn’t
waste any time playing silly games. No one knew how the
other scientists and their support crews were fairing,
except for a Russian contingent that had already
evacuated the day before, according to a fourth ham
message that had been received just minutes before their
departure.
Looking back as they headed out, John could see the once
rotten ice that was the front edge of the soon to be
stable, Ross ice shelf. It had been disintegrating more
and more with each passing year, and everyone on board
knew that this weather that was so foul to them was a
breath of fresh air to the ancient ice. If these
con-ditions persisted for very long, the base itself
would soon be trapped in the ice forever, like a huge fly
that has been entombed in a piece of pure white amber.
Approaching the tip of South America, they opted for the
Atlantic side of the continent, figuring that the warmer
waters of the Caribbean and the equatorial waters off the
coast, for much of the journey, would be preferable to
the frigid waters of the eastern pacific.
Trinidad and Tobago both were known for their petroleum
exports, as well as their fame as winter vacation spots.
The, now desperate, fleet pulled in for the fuel that
would be necessary to complete their journey to the gulf
coast of the United States. Very little contact had been
made with anyone on the long trip north, but enough had
been learned of the situation to convince many of the
personnel to jump ship and stay in the inviting climate
where they would have a chance to survive without
starving or freezing to death. Most of these were
unattached, college aged, students that didn’t have
a wife and kids back home.
“John, what are you going to do? Stay with the ship,
or stay here with Tom and I?”
Turning to Perry, John asked him, “Why aren’t
you two going with the ship?”
“Are you kidding, there’s not much left up
there for us, or anyone else, for that matter.”
“What about getting court-martialed for jumping
ship? These scientists don’t have to contend with
the universal code of military justice like we do.”
Perry and Tom both snorted their derision at that
statement. Perry said, “Who are you kidding.
There’s nothing but total anarchy now. It’s
just every man for himself, and this man is staying right
here!”
It took him two more days to make up his mind about it,
but in the end, all three sat in a secluded location and
watched when the rest of the group left them and many
others behind.
In the end, the convoy traded the now extra third ship,
for enough fuel to get them to Galveston harbor. The
ancient diesel powered pumps took three days to fill the
big fuel tanks onboard the ships from the huge shore
tanks.
Pulling into their destination several days later, the
occupants of the mini convoy soon discovered that their
shipmates that had stayed behind in the tropical islands
had made a good choice. Cholera, diphtheria, and plague
were sweeping the gulf coast with a vengeance, and before
very long, many found out that they had also made
potentially fatal life decisions. Garbage and sewage lay
in heaps, and the pestilence it fostered, spread from it like a cancer.
Colonel Randolph Wilson’s lifeless body lay in the
perpetual shadow of the crater rim at the south pole of
earth’s moon. The multi-million dollar suit that he
had used to protect himself from the extreme elements
found there, had died not very long before the colonel
himself had fallen into the thick dust that covered the
crater floor, and the water ice that his crew was, or
actually had been, processing for it’s water
content. Several of the crew had survived the initial
burst as they had not been in one of the suits, but
rather had been in the living module that had been set up
to allow them to sleep, eat, and work on anything that
needed to be constructed or repaired on site.
Unfortunately, their deaths were as certain as their
contemporaries, they just took a little bit longer to
arrive.
The project planned to use solar power to break the water
down into hydrogen for rocket fuel, and oxygen that would
be used primarily to establish some viable lunar
habitats. The plan was very ambitious, and without the
EMP burst to upset their meticulous plans, they would
undoubtedly have succeeded in getting the first
extraterrestrial colony off the ground, no pun intended.
It would be a very long time before these intrepid
explorers were given proper burials, and mankind once
again reached for the stars that he had come so close to
acquiring.
On Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, another ambitious
project had succumbed to the energy burst, several hours
before it hit the lunar pioneers.
The probe had taken many long months to reach the
enigmatic, icy moon. Its ice borer was actually more of
an ice melting device, as the nuclear heating probe
allowed it to melt it’s way though the thick ice
sheet, while laying a thin wire behind it from the large
spool it carried onboard. Breaking through the ice and
into the dark ocean beneath, the probe’s lamps came
on, and the television camera began to transmit the first
pictures of extraterrestrial life. The place literally
teemed with, plankton sized, entities that seemed to have
bioluminescent capabilities. Suddenly, a huge creature
passed in front of the lens. It’s gaping mouth was
meters across, and it seemed to be feeding on the
plankton soup in much the same manner that the monstrous
whale shark, in the earth’s oceans, fed on what
appeared to be the same type of cuisine. The wire fed the astounding pictures to
the probe that sat on the ice far above it, and when a
sufficient amount of data had arrived, it was supposed to
relay it to the vehicle that had carried it to the moon.
The transmission couldn’t take place until the
mother ship came over the horizon, and while the probe
was patiently waiting for the signal to begin
transmitting, the wave wiped the infor-mation, and the
messengers from existence. You could have still seen them
if you were in the area, but they were now deaf, dumb,
and blind. Dead, if you will.
Far below, the probe trailed the useless wire, as it
plunged towards the bottom of the stygian ocean far
below. It really was a shame that it couldn’t record
the numerous strange life forms that flashed by its dead
optics. When it finally slammed into the bottom far
below, it happened to hit near one of the hydro-thermal
vents that gave life to many creatures that were
amazingly similar to what was found near the, “black
smokers”, in the oceans of terra herself. Tube
worms, and giant clams were everywhere. Tiny shrimp
fluttered daringly close to the poisonous, hydrogen
sulfide laced, six hundred degree water. Without eyes,
they depended on infrared vision to stay out of the
super-heated water, in the inky blackness. The only thing
that kept it from boiling away into clouds of super
heated steam was the incredible pressure from the miles
of water overhead. When the metallic salts that had
dissolved into the hot water cooled, they condensed and
fell to the bottom, like a black snow. They would soon
cover any evidence that man had ever stopped in for a
visit.
If the video feed had survived the hours long plunge to
the bottom, earthbound scientists would have probably
thought the pictures were being hoaxed. Much of the
prolific life was so like Terra’s that they would
have not thought it was possible to be real. Actually,
some of the views would have been similar to viewing a
living fossil bed. Europa had undergone far fewer
cataclysmic events in it’s past, than terra had been
subjected to. Consequently the mass extinctions that, on
occasion, wiped entire lines from the gene pool here,
never occurred. Comets and asteroids had impacted the
moon many times in the past, but in the watery
environment, the effect wasn’t global, and enough of
each type of life survived to start anew after each
event. Natural evolution was allowed to progress
unimpeded, over the eons, and the biodiversity was quite
amazing.
Some scientists had proposed that the basic blueprints
for life had been seeded over the entire solar system by
the action of the comets slamming into the planets,
leaving water and the basic building blocks of life in
their wake. On some of them, like Venus, it boiled away
in the intense greenhouse heat. Others simply dried out,
and froze into oblivion, and Mars was the best example of
that scenario. Geo-thermal action from the intense
gravitational forces exerted by Jupiter on its moons was the giver of life, and the
various organic compounds from the hearts of the comets
went to work in the not quite frozen sea.
As in the cases of the lunar exploration, and the SETI
project, it would be a long time before mankind returned
to the moons of Jupiter.
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