almost a square mile, sometimes as much as thirty stories high. The predominant color is Navy red, but there are splashes of brighter paint here and there. It looks a little like a derelict oil refinery, preserved as a bit of cultural heritage, that I saw from a train going through Long Beach in California, a little like a junkyard, and a wee bit like a train wreck.
The ship landed lightly on a big transporter and was trundled to the arrivals area, where a rocketway attached itself to us like a lamprey, sealed tightly, and we passengers waited with our luggage while safety checks were made. Then we walked the fifty feet from ship to port, and I could feel the cold trying to suck the life out of me when I came within a foot of the wall.
Maybe it was my imagination. Surface temperature on arrival was -320. The very thin oxygen atmosphere out there would be faintly visible as a liquid dew that would boil off when the sun came up. It was still twenty-nine hours to sunrise. Europa’s day is a bit over eighty-five hours, three and a half days, and it’s tidally locked to Jupiter, so wherever the Big Guy is in the sky when you land at a base, that’s where it’s going to stay.
Clarke Centre was located near Pwyll Crater. And why so many features on Europa should be in Welsh is a question no one seems to have the answer to. It’s pronounced “pool,” or “poil,” or “pwill,” depending on who you ask, though all are acceptable because no one wants to go out on a limb and correct you, and because as far as anyone can tell, no actual Welsh speaker has ever been to Pwyll … and, frankly, because you seldom hear the word at all. People speak of Clarke Centre and avoid the issue entirely. I doubt you’ll see me use the word again.
Clarke is at about 260 degrees of longitude, which puts it just into the Jupiter side of the moon. Jupiter is at the horizon, about 90 percent of it visible, and there it stays, going through phases like Earth’s moon as Europa orbits around it, and is eclipsed by it. Clarke Centre and all the other bases get their coldest during eclipses.
There was none of the customs hassle you encounter practically everywhere else in the solar system when you arrive at a Navy base in a Navy ship. Even civilians don’t come in for much attention, as they’ve already been thoroughly vetted and searched and sniffed before they ever got aboard. There was an orientation area where we checked in, were given room assignments, and were handed a few items like an events calendar, a list of base regulations and practices and customs— and every base is different that way—and even a few gifts. The base commander sent a box of chocolates. A small box, but hey!
I got a luggage dolly because I had a lot of stuff: one suitcase full of uniforms and two full of a lot of civvies—because let’s face it, as a Madam nobody expected me to perform in uniform—and a bunch of my favorite musical instruments. All of it together didn’t weigh more than forty pounds on Europa, but it was too bulky to carry. I quickly learned the low-gee shuffle needed to avoid banging one’s head on the ceilings.
Okay, so I did hit my head a few times in the first hour. Everybody does.
Then I promptly got lost. Clarke Centre would baffle a gerbil in a habitrail. It’s full of long corridors connecting different modules, and a surprising number of dead ends, both the physical type, as in a blank wall, and the other, as in a guard telling you this is a restricted area and you aren’t rated for entry. You go up. You go down. You go over stuff and around stuff. And there you are … in a big shopping mall.
Okay, start over.
In the end I had to ask for directions from a passing ensign. He didn’t even bother trying to spell it out but took me by the hand like a lost child and led me to my dorm—which the ensign informed me were always called “barracks” here at Clarke Centre.
The barracks contained two hundred units and a small
The ship landed lightly on a big transporter and was trundled to the arrivals area, where a rocketway attached itself to us like a lamprey, sealed tightly, and we passengers waited with our luggage while safety checks were made. Then we walked the fifty feet from ship to port, and I could feel the cold trying to suck the life out of me when I came within a foot of the wall.
Maybe it was my imagination. Surface temperature on arrival was -320. The very thin oxygen atmosphere out there would be faintly visible as a liquid dew that would boil off when the sun came up. It was still twenty-nine hours to sunrise. Europa’s day is a bit over eighty-five hours, three and a half days, and it’s tidally locked to Jupiter, so wherever the Big Guy is in the sky when you land at a base, that’s where it’s going to stay.
Clarke Centre was located near Pwyll Crater. And why so many features on Europa should be in Welsh is a question no one seems to have the answer to. It’s pronounced “pool,” or “poil,” or “pwill,” depending on who you ask, though all are acceptable because no one wants to go out on a limb and correct you, and because as far as anyone can tell, no actual Welsh speaker has ever been to Pwyll … and, frankly, because you seldom hear the word at all. People speak of Clarke Centre and avoid the issue entirely. I doubt you’ll see me use the word again.
Clarke is at about 260 degrees of longitude, which puts it just into the Jupiter side of the moon. Jupiter is at the horizon, about 90 percent of it visible, and there it stays, going through phases like Earth’s moon as Europa orbits around it, and is eclipsed by it. Clarke Centre and all the other bases get their coldest during eclipses.
There was none of the customs hassle you encounter practically everywhere else in the solar system when you arrive at a Navy base in a Navy ship. Even civilians don’t come in for much attention, as they’ve already been thoroughly vetted and searched and sniffed before they ever got aboard. There was an orientation area where we checked in, were given room assignments, and were handed a few items like an events calendar, a list of base regulations and practices and customs— and every base is different that way—and even a few gifts. The base commander sent a box of chocolates. A small box, but hey!
I got a luggage dolly because I had a lot of stuff: one suitcase full of uniforms and two full of a lot of civvies—because let’s face it, as a Madam nobody expected me to perform in uniform—and a bunch of my favorite musical instruments. All of it together didn’t weigh more than forty pounds on Europa, but it was too bulky to carry. I quickly learned the low-gee shuffle needed to avoid banging one’s head on the ceilings.
Okay, so I did hit my head a few times in the first hour. Everybody does.
Then I promptly got lost. Clarke Centre would baffle a gerbil in a habitrail. It’s full of long corridors connecting different modules, and a surprising number of dead ends, both the physical type, as in a blank wall, and the other, as in a guard telling you this is a restricted area and you aren’t rated for entry. You go up. You go down. You go over stuff and around stuff. And there you are … in a big shopping mall.
Okay, start over.
In the end I had to ask for directions from a passing ensign. He didn’t even bother trying to spell it out but took me by the hand like a lost child and led me to my dorm—which the ensign informed me were always called “barracks” here at Clarke Centre.
The barracks contained two hundred units and a small
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