Cristóbal shivered within the cramped cabin of the descent pod and, through the wisps of his breath, studied the video monitor. The monitor showed the view from the remote submersible’s infrared camera: absolutely nothing, with little bits of other nothings to indicate salinity differences or shards of thin frazil ice drifting in the currents of Europa’s ocean. The labcoats would love it.
As if to prove the point, Terry, the scientist in charge of the mission, studied the numbers scrolling past his screen with a grin large enough to burn a day’s worth of calories.
Cris laughed. “When are you proposing?”
“Hm?” Terry’s forehead creased, but he didn’t look up.
“You look like a teenager in love.”
“This is better.” Terry rubbed the gloves of his pressure suit together. “Th—"
“Oh, yes, please lecture me, Doctor Smith.”
Terry grinned. “Okay, Master Sergeant Saldivar. Th—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Terry’s mouth formed an ‘o’, and he glanced at Cris for the first time in over an hour. “Sorry, I—”
“It’s fine. Just don’t.” Cris forced a smile. He knew he shouldn’t get upset with Terry. Terry was the only one at Base who didn’t judge him because of his name. “So what has you so excited?”
“We’re here. We’re really here. At the bottom of a thirty-kilometer drill hole. Sitting in a metal can on top of a layer of ice so thin we could punch through it with a shovel. Watching the emvee on its first test, and it’s sending us firsthand data about Europa’s ocean. This...I...I have no words.”
“I wish you had no words. You’ll be babbling about this all the way to topside.” Cris elbowed him and returned to staring at his own monitor.
An odd pattern on the screen caught Cris’ attention. An image from the infrared camera aboard the Europa Marine Vehicle. He leaned closer.
Terry straightened. “What is it?”
Among the translucent red marking the knobby underside of Europa’s sea ice, patches of fuller red were arranged in fractal patterns, organic, like...Cris grinned. “Algae.”
“Algae? You know, Cris, there’s this thing caled ‘photosynthesis’ that requires sunl—”
“I know. Just because I didn’t spend a decade rim-jobbing professors, it doesn’t mean I didn’t learn stuff. But it’s like algae. An extremophile.” Cris’ voice cracked on the last word. “We found life on Europa.”
Terry’s mouth worked for a moment without saying anything. Cris understood. The scientist had spent years developing the emvee and studying underseas environments. Like Cris, he must have daydreamed about discovering an extraterrestrial lifeform on this expedition. But to actually be experiencing it, that was something else completely. This moment would be mentioned in every history textbook from now until the collapse of civilization.
Maybe Cris would finally stop wanting to rip the name badge from his suit.
“Well.” Terry’s eyes focused on the distance, or maybe the pod wall less than a meter from his face. “We need a little more evidence before declaring that. So...we should collect a sample. We can use the emvee. Those sealable sample tubes on its chassis, I can put an algae sample in them with the manipulator hands.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Terry. It’s the checkout mission, and we’re already weeks behind schedule getting that thing running. You really think it’s going to work the first time?”
It didn’t. After Terry piloted the emvee through the water to a position within centimeters from the underside of Europa’s sea ice, the manipulator hands closed around the ice surface and pulverized the sample it attempted to collect. Subsequent attempts also failed.
Which was perfect. “I could go on a dive. Grab the sample myself.”
Terry rolled his eyes. “This argument again?”
“You want to go back without a sample?”
Terry had the expression of someone whose ass had swallowed a cactus. “Fine. But we need to check with the general.” 
Cris accepted that as a victory.
General Nguyen and Dr. Torres weren’t as excited about the lifeform as Cris had expected. Maybe it didn’t surprise them, or maybe they were annoyed with the complications it added to a simple checkout mission.
“And you want to dive for a sample?” Nguyen asked over the radio. Her voice remained neutral, but Cris could hear the skepticism.
Terry gestured to Cris. “Sergeant Saldivar has a list of reasons.”
Cris winced at his name. “Yes, sir. We’re already here, so we should take the opportunity. We never know when another icequake might close the drill hole. And we don’t have any better sample-collection equipment at the base than we do here.”
“Good points,” said Nguyen. “Now tell me the real reason.”
Cris liked the general. “Yes, sir. People keep talking about how we have problems on Earth we need to fix, like all the GeneMod Wars, and they don’t pay much attention to what we’re doing in space. But if we’re diving a new ocean for the first time in recorded history, and if we find a new lifeform, maybe it’ll get people excited about exploration again.”
“Hm,” said Dr. Torres. “And you think it’s safe? Those pressure suits weren’t designed for diving. You’d sink like a rock.”
Torres was being melodramatic, but Cris couldn’t say that. “We tried swimming in them during training. If we just keep paddling, we should be fine. We also have the emvee’s backup tether. I can tie that to the pod so Terry can pull me out if I have any problems.”
“And the suits will maintain integrity down there?”
Any leaks, and the suit would lose pressure upon emerging from the water. Cris would suffocate or freeze. He wasn’t sure which would happen first. “They should be fine. And we have jars in here for collecting samples from the drill hole walls. We can use those to get the algae.”
“I’ve done more sample-collection dives,” Terry said, “and I’ve trained for the ocean mission more extensively than Saldivar has. Besides, Saldivar is military and I’m a scientist. If we’re considering public relations, a scientist will be perceived as having purer motives for exploration.”
“I’ve been cryo-diving for ten years.” Cris’ face tightened. “Besides, that PR angle is b—”
“We agree,” said Dr. Torres. “With Terry.”
“Yes.” General Nguyen sounded...relieved? “Terry is the principal investigator for the emvee project. Do your best, but don’t take unnecessary risks. We’re all a long way from home out here, and you two are even farther away. Keep us apprised of the situation.”
Cris liked the general. “Yes, sir. People keep talking about how we have problems on Earth we need to fix, like all the GeneMod Wars, and they don’t pay much attention to what we’re doing in space. But if we’re diving a new ocean for the first time in recorded history, and if we find a new lifeform, maybe it’ll get people excited about exploration again.”
“Will do.” Terry switched off the channel.
Cris slammed his helmet into his lap. “Not exactly Orville and Wilbur flipping a coin.” Dr. Torres had only agreed with Terry because the two had worked together before the expedition. And General Nguyen must have wanted to avoid the publicity the name Saldivar would command. The name had almost kept Cris from the expedition and, other than Terry on occasion, no one at Base shared meals with him.
Terry fetched his gloves and helmet from under his seat. “I understand you’re upset, but—”
“You don’t understand a damned thing.”
“Okay. But this is still the best choice.” Terry clicked his gloves into place. “Especially because of that incident with your bro—”
“This isn’t about Estiven!”
“It’s relevant. He abandoned those p—”
“I know what he did!”
“Okay.” Terry shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t appreciate you trying to steal the dive. I thought we were friends. This is my mission. You’re only here to make sure the equipment works. I’m the cryo—”
“You want to talk about stealing? You—”
“No. I don’t. I need to get ready.” Terry pulled one of the sample collection jars from the locker next to his head and placed it in his suit’s chest pocket. Then he produced the supply kit from under the seat and removed the spare tether. “You going to help me, or just stare? I can’t decon myself.”
Cris snatched the decontamination fluid from the locker. Removing his own gloves, he applied the fluid to Terry’s helmet, straps, gloves, boots, and every accessible bit of the suit so that no Earth bacteria would be introduced to the Europan ocean.
As he stowed the fluid, he noticed brighter colors from the infrared camera. “Heat’s rising down there.”
“Hm.” Terry glanced at the monitor. “Maybe a thermal vent on the ocean floor? Maybe that’s why we’re seeing a potential lifeform here. The lifeform might need the heat, or maybe there are nutrients in that stream. Monitor that.”
Cris put on his helmet and gloves and started the pod’s depressurization. As the gas tanks recaptured the last traces of the pod’s atmosphere and the ambient noise disappeared, Cris said, “When we get back to Base, you and I are going to have some words. Maybe more than words.”
“Okay. Here are some words. The Arctic explorers stole credit, the early astronauts played politics. Nothing’s changed since Slayton and Abbey played favorites with the astronauts. You took your best shot at stealing my moment from me. I’m a little pissed, but I understand.” Terry swung the hatch’s handle downward, pushed the hatch open, and stepped into the near-vacuum of Europa.
Cris turned away.
Terry would be using the portable driller now to dig through the ice beside their pod. He would then lower himself into the water and into history. Cris would be forgotten except as a footnote, like the guy who sat inside the capsule while Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk.
The video screen, receiving the signal from the emvee’s infrared camera, showed the dark background exploding into blue bubbles surrounded by greens and dark reds. Terry had jumped into the water.
The radio crackled. “The quest for knowledge will surmount all obstacles.”
Yeah, like the obstacle of friendship. Like the obstacle of being a decent person.
Cris rotated the emvee to follow Terry’s progress along the underside of the ice. Terry had never let him touch the controls, but he wouldn’t mind under the circumstances. The monitor showed rising temperatures, but at this rate, they wouldn’t reach dangerous levels for hours or days.
“A significant amount of frazil ice here.” Terry’s rainbow figure moved toward the top of the screen. When he arrived, he wedged his feet into place so that his body lay flush with the underside of the ice. “I’m going to collect the sample now.”
Terry extracted the jar from his suit pocket and scraped it along the ice to collect a mélange of Europan water, ice, and algae. Then he sealed the jar and returned it to his pocket.
The pod heaved to the side.
Cris grabbed the control panel. The whole pod shook as though it were flying through a storm cloud. The open supply kit showered its contents onto the floor, the video screen showed chunks of falling ice before going dark, Terry shouted over the radio. Then the shaking subsided, and the sound of Cris’ breathing filled his helmet.
No cabin alarms. The drill hole hadn’t collapsed, or at least not so completely as to crush the pod. Something must have hit the emvee, though, and possibly destroyed it. And Terry...
“Terry! You okay?”
A pained voice spoke over the radio. “No. I’m stuck. My foot...it got caught.”
“Can you move it?”
“No.”
Cris’ palms dampened. That could have been him, trapped. He opened the channel to Base. “Base, we’ve experienced...an icequake, I guess. Terry’s stuck.”
No response. Cris tried twice more, with the same result. Falling ice must have struck the long-range antenna on the pod’s roof.
“It’s just us, Terry. Our antenna’s out.”
No communications, and no way the base could have helped, anyway. If Terry couldn’t pull himself free...Cris slathered his suit with decon solution as best as he could in two minutes, then exited through the hatch and lowered himself to the crunchy ice surface.
His headlamp illuminated the sheer walls of the drill hole, close enough that he couldn’t fully extend his arms. Lighting on Europa’s surface resembled that of an overcast afternoon on Earth, but Cris stood thirty kilometers below the surface and had only the light from his suit.
“Cris?”
“Haven’t forgotten you.”
Two tethers led from the pod to the water below, red for Terry and blue for the emvee. Already, a thin layer of ice had formed around them. Cris selected Terry’s. This idea wouldn’t work on Earth: pulling a grown man in a pressure suit would be beyond most humans, even those in Cris’ peak physical condition. But Europa’s gravity was one-sixth of Earth’s, about the same as the Moon’s. He had a chance. He pulled, softly at first, then harder.
“Cris? What are you doing?”
“Trying to pull you out.”
“You’re going to break my foot. And you’re just shaking up the ice more.”
“It’s our best chance.” Cris heaved, but the tether’s resistance didn’t lessen.
“Shit! Stop! Something hit my faceplate!”
Cris dropped the tether as if scalded.
“I think it’s cracked. Don’t pull anymore.”
A cracked faceplate. Cris imagined freezing water trickling into Terry’s helmet, filling the suit until reaching his mouth and nose.
“Cris, you have to come get me.”
Cris took a breath. “Can’t. The other tether is attached to the submersible, and it takes two people to pull the sub out of the water.”
“I know.”
Without tethering himself to the descent pod, Cris would have to constantly paddle or he would sink to the bottom of an ocean as deep as the distance from Earth’s surface to the edge of space. Without its guidance, he could lose his direction and swim to either side of his destination, or even toward the ocean floor, and run out of oxygen in a hopeless search for the surface.
Had his brother felt like this? Estiven’s van had overturned after hitting a thin crevasse hidden by slushy seasonal ice in Antarctica. He had panicked, he said later, grabbing emergency supplies and fleeing the vehicle for the treacherous return to base. He hadn’t checked on his comrades. They were unconscious, bleeding, with broken bones. Days later, their bodies were recovered. Some had managed to crawl from the vehicle, but they hadn’t made it far. If Estiven had tried to save them, he might have frozen to death with his comrades. Maybe.
But this situation was different. Terry had betrayed Cris.
“I know what I’m asking,” said Terry. “But it’s the only way. For getting the sample, for being able to continue the ocean mission at all. The only other option is to leave me here. But you can’t pull the emvee out by yourself, so you’d have to leave it behind, too. The only way for this trip to not be a complete loss is you coming in. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
Maybe it would be worth taking that risk, just so Cris could have that conversation with Terry about the stolen dive. But if he made the attempt and failed, which he likely would, two crewmembers would be lost. The submersible would be lost. Not only would the ocean portion of the expedition have failed, the entire Europa operation might be ordered home.
None of that mattered.
“Fine.”
“Thanks,” said Terry. “I owe you.”
“Ohhh, yes.” Cris ran through a mental checklist to determine if they had any useful equipment aboard the descent pod. Nothing that could extricate Terry. 
He lowered himself to the edge of the hole where Terry had entered the water. Cris kicked the thin ice layer, rising into the air due to the light gravity. The ice cracked into bobbing fragments.
He’d expected it to feel colder, but he didn’t know why. Even with the salt, the water couldn’t remain unfrozen much below zero Celsius, and the suit had sufficient thermal protection to only leave a slight chill. Then there was the heat plume. “You think the thermal vent had anything to do with it? Maybe melted the ice, lubricated it so one section slid against another?”
Gripping the hole’s edges, he dropped into the water.
He’d expected it to feel colder, but he didn’t know why. Even with the salt, the water couldn’t remain unfrozen much below zero Celsius, and the suit had sufficient thermal protection to only leave a slight chill. Then there was the heat plume. “You think the thermal vent had anything to do with it? Maybe melted the ice, lubricated it so one section slid against another?”
“I don’t care right now. Just get me out of here.”
Cris began paddling. The diffuse beam from his headlamp illuminated the water in front of him, but he could barely see past his arms.
To find Terry, he would have to follow the tether. He placed a hand on it, making certain he’d found the right one, and kicked in the direction it led. He tried to ignore the fact that he was swimming away from the descent pod, which was a thirty-kilometer ascent to the Europa base, which itself was over 628 million kilometers from Earth. Worse, Europa's ocean had twice the volume of Earth's, and he could see less than two meters ahead.
Tiny pieces of drifting ice clinked against his faceplate. A moment later, something scraped the top of his helmet and rattled his head. Cris reached above and confirmed he had contacted the sea ice underside. An uneven surface, alternately brittle or hard. Holding the cable with one hand, he pulled himself along the ice with the other.
Terry came into view. He was pulled taut by the tether, his body pressed against the underside of the ice. 
“Never knew how much you loved the ice. Looks like you’re trying a kama sutra position.”
“Cris? You here?”
“Yep.” Cris ran his free hand along the ice until he felt a sturdy knob with enough indentations for a good grip. He wedged his hand into place, kicked forward, and clamped his other hand on the knob.
No more cable to guide him. This was like free-climbing a mountain, but with worse lighting. If Cris lost his grip and drifted more than a body’s length from the ice, he wouldn't even know which way was up. He forced himself to breathe, taking slower and slower breaths, and studied the area surrounding Terry’s foot.
The foot was lodged between two heavy wedges of ice that jutted downward from the ceiling. They must have shifted during the shaking, trapping the foot at an awkward angle. Pulling might break the foot without dislodging it.
There was space between the two ice wedges, though, above the foot. Wide enough for a hand, barely. At the top of that space, an arm’s length back, was a chunk of loose ice that prevented one of the wedges from dropping down. If Cris removed the loose ice, the wedge should fall and Terry could pull his foot free. Unfortunately, the tight space was lined with sharp edges where the ice must have sheared during the quake.
Cris tapped a tentative finger along one of the edges. Threads came loose from his glove.
He felt himself sinking, though his hand still clutched the ice. He had stopped kicking. He resumed.
To save Terry, Cris would have to allow his glove to be sliced open. Water would leak into his suit. Frostbite would afflict the exposed areas during his return to the descent pod. Ebullism, due to the loss of pressure, would damage his skin and organs and possibly kill him. Best-case scenario, if he could quickly seal the glove’s leaks, he would only lose his hand.
Yes, the Space Defense Force would give him a prosthetic hand, stronger and more durable than his flesh hand. But it wouldn’t have the same sensations. He wouldn’t be able to wipe his ass without clawing a new hole.
Of course, he could abandon Terry, could say there was no possibility of rescue. Without communications, no one could contradict him.
But Cris wasn’t Estiven.
“Okay,” said Cris. “Your foot should be looser in a few seconds. Try pulling it out and let me know if it works.”
He squeezed his arm into the space between the ice wedges, feeling the tug of tearing cloth. Trickles of cold water ran along the top of his hand, first from one cut, then from others. The trickles spread into the fingers of his glove and down his arm. Chilling, biting. He pushed the pain from conscious thought and pulled the loose ice chunk. Once, twice, three times. Nothing.
Numbness crept along the back of his hand toward his knuckles. “I’ve got some leaks in my glove.”
“Shit. Can you stick your hand in your pocket or something?”
“Not if I’m going to get you out. Get ready.” Cris rotated himself and reached farther inside the space. Another pull, and the ice wedge shifted. He jerked his hand free while the wedge continued its slow drop, buoyed by the water.
“It worked!” said Terry. A rush of bubbles enveloped Cris as Terry pushed away from the ice. “Hurry! We need to get you into the pod so we can take care of that hand!”
The numbness had now reached his elbow, and trickles of water ran along his shoulder. These were the last few moments he could use his hand, and he couldn’t feel a thing.
Cris pulled himself along the ice without knowing where the exit was. The tether guide was gone.
In the distance, he saw a faint light. Terry’s headlamp, just above the surface of the ice by the entrance hole. Cris kicked toward it. It seemed like minutes before he reached it, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
With his good hand, he grabbed the hole’s edge. He tried to pull himself out, but only sank back into the water.
Terry crouched and reached for him. Cris grunted, clenched his teeth, and held out the numb hand.
The sudden loss of pressure in his suit sent his air whistling through the holes in his glove and into the near-vacuum of Europa’s atmosphere. Cold shrieked along his arm, and he gasped for air that wasn’t there.
Terry’s hand closed over the glove as he pulled Cris from the water. Cris flopped onto his back, gasping without noise, and Terry wrapped the tether around Cris’ wrist. A tourniquet, to seal the suit. The oxygen generator on Cris’ back churned madly.
His vision went dark. When he opened his eyes again, he stared into the dark sky of the drill hole while Terry leaned over him. He could taste air.
“You’re awake!” said Terry. “That’s great! I’m so sorry.”
Cris’ entire arm was a log of pain. Frostbite and ebullism must have wreaked havoc with it. His hand had swelled, pressing against the fabric of his glove. It felt as though it would pop.
But he was alive. He had rescued Terry. He had dived Europa’s ocean.
“Cris? You still with me? How do you feel?”
Cris coughed through ragged lungs and winced at the bloated dead weight of his hand. “Like a fucking hero.” 
That night, the entire base gathered in the cafeteria to watch Cris receive an official commendation for rescuing Terry and recovering the lifeform sample. Cris felt awkward saluting with his stump, and he knew it was only the painkillers preventing tears with each movement.
General Nguyen pinned a makeshift medal to his chest, below his name badge. For a moment, Cris wanted to rip the name badge from his suit. 
The moment passed.