A Space Oddessey 2061 Book 3 Chapter 25: The Shrouded World PART III: EUROPAN ROULETTE

A Space Oddessey 2061 Book 3 Chapter 25: The Shrouded World PART III: EUROPAN ROULETTE

During the decade after the ignition of Jupiter, and the spreading of the Great Thaw across its satellite system, Europa had been left strictly alone. Then the Chinese had made a swift flyby, probing the clouds with radar in an attempt to locate the wreck of the Tsien. They had been unsuccessful, but their maps of dayside were the first to show the new continents now emerging as the ice-cover melted. They had also discovered a perfectly straight two-kilometre-long feature which looked so artificial that it was christened the Great Wall. Because of its shape and size it was assumed to be the Monolith -or a monolith, since millions had been replicated in the hours before the creation of Lucifer. However, there had been no reaction, or any hint of an intelligent signal, from below the steadily thickening clouds. So a few years later, survey satellites were placed in permanent orbit, and highaltitude balloons were dropped into the atmosphere to study its wind patterns. Terrestrial meteorologists f…