Becky’s latest robot was nicknamed the Bub, a fifty-pound, three cubic-foot probe designed to sample the icy surface of Europa, Jupiter’s second-closest moon and the most likely prospect for other life in the solar system. The latest $150 million prototype included a small nuclear power plant (Jupiter is too far from the sun to permit significant power generation by solar cells) housed in a small, derrick like device that was unfolded on the frozen surface. From there, a fiberoptic umbilical spooled down to the “cryobot” the main unit which could tunnel nearly five miles straight down through the ice pack, melting any frozen obstructions to its progress using an extremely high temperature plasma heater.
Entering the liquid cells within the ice, the Bub then dispatched its own satellite, a “hydrobot,” to sample the water and analyze its chemical and biological properties. The main problem with the latest design was that, while the device could tunnel marvelously, the rapidly boiled meltwater often cooked the microbes the probe was seeking to collect and made temperature measurements unreliable.
The eventual, mission-approved REMUS would have to be small enough to be packed into the payload bay of a mother probe, strong enough to burrow through miles of solid ice, and sensitive enough to report on the microorganisms it might find at the end of its truly remarkable journey. It also needed to work within the temperature extremes of the Jovian system, which ranged from minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface of the farthest moons to 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the core of Jupiter itself. Working remotely over a distance from earth more than three times that of the Mars Pathfinder, controlling the REMUS in real time would not be possible, so the device would have to operate almost independently of its human controllers requirements not unlike the administrative protocols in Antarctica, as Becky had come to discover.
Winter is not a desirable time to live in Antarctica. Darkness and wind are constant. The temperature typically ranges between minus twenty and minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Between April and September, even the dedicated research population on the continent diminishes to about two dozen from a summertime maximum of about twenty-five hundred.
The bite of the weather keeps research ambitions modest, so the potential for large-scale foul-ups is diminished.
Survival and pacing are the mantras to follow and work plods along with studious clarity.
Becky liked the isolation of Antarctica. In places where most humans would never go, she thrived. In places where humans could never go, her REMUS kicked ass.
Becky’s current proving ground was Lake Amery, a landlocked water deposit discovered beneath two miles of polar ice. In typical geological underestimation, “water deposit” hardly did the formation justice; with a surface area of 7,400 square miles, Lake Amery was only slightly smaller than Lake Ontario. It was estimated that the water in Lake Amery was between five hundred thousand and one million years old; the water in its basin had not touched the atmosphere in all of human history.
For most of the previous month the Bub had been swimming on the end of its tether, registering the chemical composition of the water and collecting biological samples for laboratory analysis. Twice each day, the hydrobot returned from its journey to inner space and delivered its real treasure: one-hundred-milliliter aliquots of ice containing a dizzying menagerie of microscopic life never before seen. Life from the center of the earth. Most surprising to the geologist and engineer in Becky, she now found her time looking at microbes to be the most rewarding aspect of the entire project.
Jonas, Becky’s husband and her senior technician, was in charge of processing the samples. He carefully removed each sample from the hydrobot, decanted it onto a set of microscope slides, then set to work staining and identifying the organic material it contained. Lately it seemed as though the list of previously undescribed organisms siphoned by the Bub was increasing with every trial. Most “new” species they found were only in one or two samples, and then only in trace amounts. The specimens were tagged and preserved or kept frozen for later identification by those more expert and passionate about such things. It was Jonas who first made the discovery in the hours after midnight and long after everyone else had gone to bed, as was usually the case for the best discoveries. His last aliquot for the night contained a culture material that stained like a bacterium but looked unlike anything he had ever seen. The appearance of the cells was unremarkable, but their abundance could not be ignored. Jonas prepared a dozen slides, each amply coated by the same homogenous culture. He eventually retired to his cot at 4:00 A.M.” leaving one of the slides under the fluorescent microscope along with a Post-it Note for Becky, asking, semi-rhetorically, What’s this? Knowing his wife’s sardonic sense of humor, he half expected her to replace it with a note of her own, answering, It’s a fluorescent microscope, silly.
Later that morning, Becky examined the mysterious culture while the coffeemaker percolated through its first pot of the day. Inclement weather had them shed bound for most of the day, so as Jonas slept late, she tried to identify the organism using one of the few but comprehensive reference materials she had on hand. When that proved fruitless, she sent out a dozen e-mails to colleagues from New Zealand to Denmark, briefly describing the find. Those messages were duly forwarded to a dozen more phycologists and microbiologists around the world, several of whom asked her to send the digitized photos of the specimens.
Becky responded with a half-dozen high-resolution images of the cells from the microscope’s stage camera.
A week later, a phycologist by the name of Roland Alvarez at Dalhousie University sent her a reply, asking if sending him a culture was an option. Alternatively, could Becky send any more pictures? She did.
Two days later, Alvarez responded again, undaunted and with uncharacteristic bravado for a botanist working without a specimen. The species was most likely Thiobacillus univerra ferrooxidans or “Thio-um,” a bacterium only known to exist in certain extreme habitats.
In a lengthy e-mail, Alvarez prattled on about the marvels of this organism, written up by a student of his and recently discovered again in the Arctic Circle.
Alvarez also seemed concerned about exactly where the samples were collected, mentioning somewhat cryptically that it could be “a matter of some significance,” though he would not elaborate. He again asked for a sample of the organism, which Becky reiterated she would address as soon as possible. That would be spring, when the weather finally released its grip on mundane human activities like delivering packages.
Until then, survival superseded everything, even scientific curiosity.
First Becky and Jonas had to repair one of the radio transmitters and a section of the snow shed that had inconveniently collapsed during the previous night’s gale.
Then Becky’s professional interest would lead her to locate the source of such isotopes, which were confounding the Bub’s servo motors and, at the moment, seemed more curious to her than any radiation-gulping organism. Only then would she have time to give Alvarez the information he needed about this Thio-um, and by then it probably would be spring and Alvarez could see the specimens himself.
Biologists could be so impatient — they weren’t used to experiments that ran over millions or billions of years, and most curatorial scientists like Alvarez had forgotten the day-to-day distractions of fieldwork, if they ever knew them at all. Still, Alvarez’s enthusiasm for the find was enough to bring a wry smile to Becky’s lips. Imagine getting so excited about a simple bacterium. And imagine the bacterium itself — an organism that lived beneath two miles of solid ice, subsisting on a diet of concentrated isotopes. And from its abundance in her samples, the little beast must have found a lot to feed on down there.