ten year sentence part 8

ten year sentence part 8

fiction
edward w pritchard

There is no water on Europa as far as I can see. Still we toil on digging the tunnels to divert water from the source to the base camp, should water ever be found. Money is flowing in from the earth because of the IPO's. Over 15 trillion dollars have been raised. We dig and plan for the water to support the large colonies and the investors bid up and up the IPO's based on water that may not exist. The work is excruciating and very dangerous. Europa is unstable geologically and there have been several deaths.

It was a minor quake that killed my three friends of the crew of the India team. All were killed a few weeks ago when a shaft collapsed. I was on the surface driving a debris removal vehicle and was injured but after twenty five stitches I am fine. My friends are gone however and now I am stuck alone on Europa and have been reassigned to the Italian crew.

I have started to write and sing the blues again in my bunk on my day off. I think Europa is worse than Io, if that's possible. Sometimes I remember how Lalia looked in that leotard. Shuim and Poj are gone too of course. An interesting phenomena about Europa is that my harmonica has a very soulful echo when I play the blues here. It's probably because of the winds caused by the gravitational irregularities because of proximity to Jupiter.