FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

27 December 2082

It was Ken’s time to shine. The wolf lifted his suit up as he slid his tail into it’s sleeve. He pushed his arms into their sleeves as he shook the suit into a comfortable position. He sealed up the front flap and started to adjust the straps on his waist and then clicked the buckle into place, ran the zipper seal closed, and worked his way up over the five other buckles. He bounced up and down to make sure he was secure. Everyone’s suits are a bright orange with each section bordered with fluorescent yellow reflectors.

“Looking good,” said Magnus in his own suit as he passed Ken his helmet.

“You too,” Ken smiled.

“You sure you’re up for this?” Diego asked Magnus.

“If anything goes wrong with the Spider, I want to be there,” said Magnus, “This is his first official journey. I want to make sure he makes it.”

Diego wanted six man teams for the trips down. Ken wasn’t sure who to pick. Harvey told Ken he was going to indulge in the peace and quiet if he took Marc. Errol and Hyperion played rock, paper, scissors to find out which one of them would get to fly. Hyperion slumped away back to the bridge. Their last member was Rasul. The wolverine had mapped them out several locations to land.

Diego tightened his helmet, “Alright. Once the Spider detaches from the Nova, we’ll have zero G’s. Stay buckled up until we reach the surface.”

Magnus helped them climb up into the Spider. The raccoon secured the hatch and buckled in at his station. Diego was sitting at the station behind Errol. The weasel powered up the Spider and went through the procedures for separation. Diego turned pale when he heard Kuga’s voice.

“You’re all set for departure!” he announced.

“Rasul…” Diego shot a look over at him.

“He’s the second most qualified person on board to track us,” said Rasul, “I’m only one navigator. And don’t worry. I went over the whole procedure with him. He’s like a sponge.”

Errol pulled up from the Nova with ease. They felt themselves get lighter as the gravity disappeared. The weasel turned on the thrusters. The Spider descended upon Europa. Rasul relayed the locations to Errol as he swooped in over the terrain. The weasel locked in one location and took them down.

“Magnus, activate the legs,” Errol called back.

“Spider’s legs activating,” Magnus said.

There was some clicking as the legs activated. The sound of the hydraulics rang through the ship. Errol eased up on the thrusters and turned them downward. The Spider slowly landed on the icy landscape. As the legs impacted the ground, the hydraulics adjusted for any height differences. Errol put them in park and the ship lowered itself down to make getting in and out of the hatch easier.

“Ok,” Diego unstrapped and stood up, “Now, remember, at least one person needs to stay on the ship in case we have to take off in an emergency. Especially since it takes thirty seconds to get through the decontamination chamber. Any samples we pull must be secured in the freezers. Once we get back to the ship, you guys can bring them to the lab to study in the gloveboxes.”

“Ay, ay, cap’n,” Marc saluted him.

Magnus opened the hatch on the rear of the ship. It slowly lowered to the ground. Errol waved them off as he turned the cameras on to watch the outside of the ship in his own way. The five of them went through decontamination and stepped down onto the ramp. Diego stopped them and motioned Ken forth.

“You have the honors,” the bat told him.

Ken was shaking from head to toe. He didn’t even have any kind of speech prepared. He walked down the ramp and stared at the icy ground. He stepped onto the ice and planted both feet down. The view was breathtaking. The wolf turned around.

“We fuckin’ made it,” Ken laughed.

“Probably the most famous first words on a new world,” Diego laughed and stepped off the ramp.

The group of them went to the side of the Spider and pulled a compartment open. Inside was an automated ice auger. Their first trip involved them collecting ice cores to bring back to the ship for study. Diego and Rasul carried the auger for them and Ken carried core tube replacements with him. Marc was leaning back and shaking his hips back and forth when Ken tried to pass him a few.

“What are you doing?” the wolf chuckled.

“Takin’ da first piss on Europa!” the kangaroo grinned.

“Your proudest moment in your career,” Ken shook his head and shoved the tubes into the kangaroo’s hands.

“This a good spot?” Diego asked.

They were about fifty feet away from the ship. Ken agreed with the spot and started to set up the auger. Marc skipped away from the three of them. He was enjoying the low gravity as he scanned the ground. He wasn’t quite sure he’d find anything.

He made his way up a small incline and came to a stop. He found what he considered a jackpot. He pulled his pickaxe off of his belt and jumped off the incline to the long stone he found. He started to hack around the rock, sending chunks of ice flying in all directions. He kept up at this for what felt like an hour. He couldn’t even find out how deep the rock went.

He heard his name over the communicator, “Marc, where the hell are you?”

“I’m jes over the hill cap’n,” he said.

“Take one of us with you next time,” Diego ordered.

“Ay, ay,” Marc started to hack away at the rock.

He wasn’t getting much give. He was persistent though. He pulled his chisel out and settled into hammering that into the rock. The chunk finally broke loose. Marc gasped as he picked up the rock. He stared in dumbstruck awe.

“Mates,” Marc said, “I jes found some cobalt.”

“What does that mean?” Diego responded back.

“In dis state, it can be used as food fer microorganisms,” said Marc, “An’ wit’ the size o’ this stone I found, they may be present.”

“Don’t be too hopeful,” Ken replied, “Scrape some samples and record your location though. If we find anything, we can revisit the location later.”

“I’m on it mate,” Marc set the location in his gps.

Kuga came in on the communications, “I saved your location Stompy!”

“Good man Kuga,” Marc chuckled, “Hope yer enjoyin’ the job and doin’ et jes fine.”

“He’s already fully mapped out your area based on new information,” replied Harvey, “I’ve been helping him with elevation based on the information from your headcams.”

“That’s rather smart,” said Rasul, “I hadn’t thought about doing that.”

“Sometimes having a different perspective can bring things together,” said Harvey.

“I’ve uploaded the data to the satellites to send back to Earth,” said Kuga.

“Good job, Kuga,” said Diego.

The bat shouldn’t have doubted Kuga’s capabilities. He was helping Ken move the auger to their tenth and final location. Ken pushed the start button and stood back. After a few minutes the auger vibrated and retracted it’s drill. Ken slid the auger from it’s position and looked down the hole it had started. There was solid rock about half a foot down.

“Didn’t you scan this area Rasul?” Ken asked.

“Of course,” said the wolverine as he looked down the hole as well, “There was nothing but ice.”

Ken dragged the auger about another twenty feet and turned it back on. Again, the same thing happened.

“What the hell?” Rasul was baffled, “Kuga, send me a map of our location that I took this morning.”

“Sending to your suit now!”

Rasul opened the console on his wrist and showed Ken the map, “This is still that same location. There’s nothing here. Kuga, send me a fresh scan of the area now.”

Kuga sent down the information.

“What the fuck?” Rasul was even more baffled.

Ken and Diego gathered around him. He switched between the two photos. They were drastically different. Rasul had Kuga send him more scans from the last six hours. It was almost as if something had pushed the giant stone across the moon.

“Do you think this is caused by Jupiter's gravity?” Diego asked.

“This would be more Harvey’s area,” said Ken.

“I’m looking at it now,” Harvey replied, “And really, I don’t have an answer at the moment. I’ll check the satellite readings and go over our scans from the last twenty four hours. When you get back, I’ll retreat with Kuga to figure this out.”

“Even still,” said Rasul, “How the hell would anything move this rock within a matter of hours and not even break up the ice?”

Ken exchanged looks with Diego. That was a daunting question. Marc came over to join them. He had a box full of samples from the rock he hammered. He was curious about the rock they hit with the auger. He stared down the holes from where they had drilled.

“Thet’s the same kinda stone I pounded on,” said Marc, “I wonder if the’r the same unit.”

“I think it is,” said Ken.

“Alright, enough spooky shit,” said Diego, “Get your samples back on the Spider and let's get back up to the Nova.”

Magnus helped them get loaded back into the ship. They got decontaminated and dropped their samples off in the freezer. Errol fired up when the hatch closed. The weasel pulled them up from the surface and Magnus retracted the legs. The weasel pulled them up to the docking bay. Then the Spider reattached to the station, they felt the gravity weigh back in.

Ken and Marc unloaded their samples and brought them into the research lab. Rasul went and relieved Kuga. Harvey took the otter and they went to work on their mystery. Diego flopped down into his chair and stretched his wings out.

“Rrghhh,” he sighed as he rotated his wings, “They need to design the suits better for my wings.”

Rasul started to massage them, “Hehe, keep dreaming.”

Diego relaxed under his touch, “You have any theories about the rock?”

“Not a clue,” the wolverine frowned as he worked the length of the wings, “We’ll have to see if Harvey and Kuga come up with anything.”

Harvey and Kuga had the maps pulled up on a screen. They were both going over every single one. Harvey overlaid all of them. Kuga put them into timelapse motion. Both of them exchanged looks.

Kuga bounced his way into the bridge, “Papa Grande! We figured it out!”

“That was fast,” Diego sat up in his chair.

Harvey held up his tablet and showed the area in a broader picture, “When I overlaid the pictures I noticed that the area was not geographically the same. And when Kuga put all the scans in motion, he noticed the whole ground was shifting to the northeast and rotating.”

“Like a glacier?” Rasul asked.

“Precisely,” said Harvey, “A hunk of ice roughly fifteen square miles spinning round and round. It moved about a mile from its original position this morning, and it rotated thirty three degrees.”

“There’s most likely some water far beneath the surface, and this is just a massive ice cube bouncing around a bowl,” said Kuga.

“Is there a way for us to work around this Rasul?” Diego asked.

“How many probes do we have left?” the wolverine asked.

“At least fifty,” said the bat.

“They’ll have to play the part of gps markers,” Rasul suggested, “If the ground can shift like that, we’d be better off having a rough idea of areas we’ve been in the vicinity of. And since we know the ground moves more than we thought, we might be better off with doing scans right before take off and landing in the area that looks good in the moment.”

“Make it so,” Diego agreed, “Good work you two.”

“Of course, Captain,” Harvey smiled.

He wandered back to the research lab where Ken and Marc were busy unloading their samples in the gloveboxes. Julio was on standby to help identify anything they weren’t familiar with.

Marc looked up, “Oi ‘Arvey, figure oot the mystery?”

“You were basically on a giant glacier,” said the dingo.

“No shit?” Marc was surprised, “Din’t think that’d be possible.”

Harvey leaned in to check out their samples, “Nice cobalt.”

“Ai, idn’t et?” Marc agreed, “I was hopin’ te find something on em, but no luck for bacteria. Jes dead.”

“It’s a shame, really,” said Julio, “I’m hopeful about the ice samples though. Ken is finding lots of dirt and substance. Once he finds a wiggle, he’s out of here.”

Ken smirked. The wolf was writing down all the elements he was finding in his samples. He was finding mostly iron and aluminum. He also found some trace amounts of chromium. Ken wasn’t finding much else. Harvey leaned over and looked at the ice sample. The dingo squinted his eyes.

“What’s that white stone there?” he pointed at a round chunk of a white stone visible in the ice.

“Ay, I saw thet too,” said Marc, “Et’s most likely calcite. Pretty common.”

“Shame we can’t have souvenirs,” said Harvey, “It looks really nice.”

“I’ll give ye some when we get back te E’rth,” said Marc, “I’ll even cut it inta any pretty shape ye want.”

Harvey smiled. The dingo left them to their work. He was starting to wonder if he was useful or not. He sat down and stared out the window at Europa. He hoped they would call on his expertise a bit more. Otherwise, this was going to be a very boring trip for him. That was about to change for him.

Rasul approached him with a tablet, “Here you go Harvey. All the data the rovers have been sending back to us. The captain would like for you to start cataloguing their findings and send off daily reports back to mission control.”

“Oh?” Harvey took the tablet, “Thank you.”

“You ok?” Rasul asked.

“I am,” said Harvey, “I was just sitting here wondering why I was brought along on this trip.”

“Your expertise is planets and their satellites,” said Rasul, “No one could do a better job at confirming our findings and research. This is your time to shine.”

Rasul clapped him on the shoulder and returned to the bridge. Harvey stared down at the tablet in his hand. His tail wagged as he retreated towards his room to work. Hugo was coming through from engineering with a bag of tools.

“Heads up there Fresco,” the tiger turned sideways to squeeze by.

Harvey blushed as he got a chest full of fur in his face. The tiger smelled of grease, sweat, and something sweet. Harvey watched the tiger go. Him, Bruno, and Magnus ran around the ship a lot with their uniforms tied off at their waists. It was always quite the sight. Although, Magnus had taken up to just wearing his jock when he was in engineering.

Harvey shook his thoughts and went into his room. Hugo reached his destination and climbed his way up into the Spider. Magnus was there, pulling switchboards from the Spiders legs console.

“I’m back boss,” the tiger lowered himself to the floor, “Are you sure you want to be doing this?”

Magnus gave him his grumpy look, “I heard clicking when I expanded the legs earlier. I need to find out which part it was. If it’s none of the panels, that means it’s the hydraulics and we’ll have to go on a spacewalk to check the parts.”

The raccoon started to pull and push panels back into their spots. Hugo held a flashlight for him as he ran through the first section. Magnus sat up and felt something dribbling down his ear. He ran his hand across it. Blood. He wiped his hand off and slid over into the next section.

“Boss,” Hugo pulled the raccoon out, “Stop.”

Magnus frowned, “I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t,” Hugo stood up, “Let’s go. You need your ointment stuff.”

Magnus huffed in protest but got up. Hugo pointed his finger. He knew if he went first that Magnus would lock him out. The raccoon had done that too many times. Magnus made his way down the ladder.

“I see you’ve finally learned,” the raccoon teased him.

“You know it,” said Hugo as he pulled the hatch shut and twisted the wheel closed as tight as he could make it, “I’ve learned that too, and I can only hope your arms are too sore.”

“Jerk,” Magnus led the way back to engineering and picked up the bottle of cream.

Hugo took it from him, “Here, let me. I’ll be gentle.”

Magnus lowered his head, “I’m starting to feel like how I treat you guys.”

“It’s fine,” said Hugo, “We know you’re the big bad raccoon. Can do everything on his own. Well, you got hurt. Now it’s our turn to take care of you.”

“Remind me to be nicer,” Magnus jokes.

“Oh, we wouldn’t want that,” Hugo teased him as he started to rub the cream on.

Magnus let out a deep breath, “I just serve tough love.”

“If we didn’t like it,” said Hugo, massaging the raccoon's ears gently, “We would have left long ago. Me and Bruno look up to you. We’ve been doing our best to keep up, but you truly are an amazing engineer. And we stick around because we think your grumpiness is cute.”

“Cute?” Magnus laughed.

“Cute,” Hugo booped his nose.

Magnus arched an eyebrow.

“Sorry…” said the tiger with lowered ears, “I do that to Bruno all the time.”

Magnus booped the tiger’s nose back, “I’ll let it slide. Can we get back to work now?”

“Nope,” said Hugo as he handed Magnus the bottle, “I can hear Allen telling you to go relax.”

Magnus pinched the bridge of his nose, “That damn badger. What does he have against hard work?”

“Relaxing is your pay for hard work,” said Hugo, “Go do stretches or something. You always go work out when you get too bored. Cause I know you’re certainly not going to relax.”

Magnus sighed, “You’re right. I’m going to storage to stretch.”

Hugo shook his head as Magnus left, “Oh, Zeigelhaus.”

28 December 2082

“... and tell Harvey good job on the report,” said Allen, the badger had sent them a long video message, “We have a team analyzing the information and insight he shared about the moons. He got that done really fast!”

“If possible,” Bruce leaned into the video, “If you happen to find that same location on Europa again, we would like a full study on how it worked.”

Allen grinned, “We’re really proud of all the work you’ve accomplished so far. We’ll send more data back for review.”

Bruce leaned back in, “Oh, and tell Ken we’ll be using his next line after his first line as the first words on Europa…”

“It was a very Scottish response!” Allen jested, “That’s all for now boys! Have fun! And give my best to Magnus! Make sure he gets time to relax, the poor guy.”

“You heard the man Magnus,” Diego smirked at him.

Magnus rolled his eyes, “Ja, ja. Let’s load up and head down. I’m eager to test the drill.”

Hyperion strapped himself into the pilot seat of the Spider and ran the system check. Magnus and Hugo took up the other stations. Harvey and Kuga had their seats in the back with Diego. Kuga was bouncing in his seat.

“This is so exciting!” Kuga was eager to get down there, “I hope we find something interesting!”

“More ice and particles,” said Harvey, “And if we’re really lucky, a little bit of life. I am curious what kind of samples we’ll get from drilling down.”

“I’m curious if we’ll hit water,” said Diego, “Rasul has been looking for hotspots under the ice.”

“Please, you’ll get me excited,” said Harvey.

Diego chuckled. Harvey was an enigma to him. The bat was never sure if he was enjoying himself or not. Hyperion pulled them away from the Nova and zoomed down to the surface. He was going back and forth with Rasul. The wolverine sent them a location with a high heat signature that he scanned within the last ten minutes. Hugo helped the fennec coordinate the location and they went in for touchdown.

Hyperion stretched out in his chair, “Don’t have too much fun without me!”

Hugo and Magnus were on the outside of the ship. The tiger opened a hatch and pulled the drill controls down to the ground. Magnus started to run the system check and lowered the drill.

Kuga was hopping his way across the field of ice they landed in, “This is incredible!”

“Kuga, be careful,” Harvey went after him, “I know low gravity is fun, but you never know what to expect with ice.”

Kuga lifted up a foot, “Hey! Spiky boots keep me in place!”

“Spiky boots also catch and you can trip,” Harvey tapped the otters helmet, “Also, I’m not so sure about the stability of the ground here.”

“Why’s that?” Kuga asked.

Harvey pointed at the ground. Under the ice were several water bubbles sliding along. Harvey brushed away at the surface with little effect. Kuga leaned down next to him.

“Air pockets!” Kuga was fascinated as he followed one of them.

“Interesting,” Harvey followed after him, “They’re trapped between two layers of ice and they’re following a flow.” Harvey pulled out a scanner and used the movement of the otter out of the corner of his eye to follow along, “Several layers. And the bubbles are all moving in one direction. Jupiter's gravity is certainly the cause and effect of this phenomena.”

Harvey and Kuga worked on getting measurements from their scanners. The otter helped the dingo study while Diego watched from afar. Magnus had the drill behind him going through the ice. The bottom of the ship was covered in ice shavings. The heat in the pipes of the drill was sending wafts of steam up.

Hugo was leaned over the edge of the hole. The raccoon was going for one hundred feet. The drill suddenly shot straight down and Magnus slammed on the brakes. He started to pull the drill back up. Him and Hugo stood over the hole as the raccoon attached an underwater drone to a winch line.

“The drill dropped at around eighty three feet,” said Magnus.

Diego came over to join them, “Water or nothing?”

“We’ll find out in a few minutes,” said Magnus.

The raccoon had the drone linked up to his arm screen. Foot after foot showed them the grooved walls of ice the drill went through. The light on the camera glistened against the walls. Hugo kept feeding the line as the drone slid lower. The camera sent back a view of the light refracting.

“We have water,” said Magnus.

Hugo and Diego watched the raccoons screen as Hugo lowered the drone into the water. The tiger let go of the line. The drone sank into the water and Magnus turned on the propellers. They had a view of a large empty cavern beneath the ice filled with water.

“Wow…” Hugo looked on with awe.

Magnus drove the drone around. Kuga and Harvey came over to watch. There were large columns of ice running the length of the cavern. Magnus saw a wide hole that descended further down. The raccoon went for it. The screen started to flicker but he kept pushing his way down.

“Careful, don’t lose the connection,” said Diego.

“It shouldn’t be cutting out this soon,” said Magnus, the tunnel kept going in deeper.

The screen cut out.

“Reverse if you haven’t lost connection,”said Diego.

The raccoon threw on the reverse thrusters and the screen flickered back on, “There must be something interfering.”

“Pull it back up,” Diego told Hugo.

The tiger started to reel the line back in as Magnus made his way back to the entrance. They slid the drone back out of the hole. Harvey stepped in, grabbing the same line they used for the drone, and lowered a crate of glass vials through the hole. Hugo counted the feet for him until they hit the water. Harvey pulled against the line to make sure the vials were full and Hugo helped him pull them back up.

The dingo fumbled the lids for the vials and a few of them dropped on the ground, “Fine. Bye.”

Kuga rounded them up for him, “Here you go Harvey!”

“Thanks Stumbles,” the dingo closed each vial off, and he stepped up to the hole, “Captain… Can I go down there?”

“Absolutely not,” Diego chuckled, “If anything goes wrong, you’re lost.”

“Seems like such a waste,” said Harvey.

They packed themselves up. Magnus and Hugo secured the drill and set up one of the probes to mark the location. The other three went into decontamination to secure their samples in the freezer. Harvey helped Kuga get strapped into his seat before strapping himself in.

Hyperion spun around in his seat to face Diego, “Captain… May I ask a question?”

“You just did,” Diego teased him as he sat down at the navigation console.

“It’s understandable that you want the pilots to remain onboard the Spider,” he said, “But, me and Errol were wondering, will we get a chance to wander around Europa?”

“I don’t see why we couldn’t arrange something,” said Diego, “Me or Rasul can stay behind to mind the ship while you two come down with the crew. You guys can tag eachother out.”

Hyperion smiled, “Thank you captain.”

Once Magnus and Hugo boarded, Hyperion brought them back up to the ship. Harvey took the samples they retrieved into the lab. They didn’t find much on the surface, and the dingo was hoping they’d strike gold with their water sample. He was still disappointed he didn’t get to go down the hole himself though.

The dingo put the samples into the glove box and got work. He popped one of the vials open. He took an eyedropper full and dropped it onto a slide. He slid the slide into the microscope’s stage clips. He grabbed his tablet and stylus. Prepared to take notes, the dingo dropped his stylus with an audible gasp as he looked into the eyepiece.

“Whoa shit,” the dingo stared in disbelief at his discovery, he turned the adjustment knobs to get a better view, “Definitely bacteria…” The dingo slid his chair over to the door, “Smiley, get in here.”

The hyena was studying in the medical room. He raised an eyebrow in curiosity and joined Harvey in the lab. The dingo grinned and pointed at the microscope. Julio squinted at him with distrust but quickly went in to have a look.

Julio let out a noise Harvey didn’t think was possible, “Fucking hell Harvey! We have bacteria!”

“That we do,” Harvey laughed.

Julio ran his hands over his face and stuffed himself into the microscope again. After a few moments he stole Harvey’s tablet. Him and the dingo went back and forth as they worked to identify it. They both made their way to the bridge.

“Planococcus halocryophilus!” Julio announced proudly.

Everyone stared at him in confusion.

“We found bacteria,” Harvey translated.

“Harvey found bacteria,” Julio corrected him, “I just helped identify it.”

“This is good news, and we just got here!” Diego stood up and shook Harvey’s hand, “Good job Fresco. This is gonna tickle mission control.”

“Couldn’t have done it without all of you,” said Harvey.

“Get the rest of your team and get a report going,” said Diego, “What are you going to name it?”

“I mean, it’s a known species,” said Harvey.

“But it’s on Europa,” said Julio, “And we’re not fully done studying it.”

“The Fresco Caballero,” Rasul jokes.

Harvey chuckled, “I like it.”