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some measures, and it was at least to a great extent their own fault.
    But the idea of this conference wasn’t to cause trouble, so he went on with a sudden broadening of his smile. “And the first thing I want to tell you…should be said by someone else.”
    On cue the display behind Nicholas lit up with Madeline Fathom’s face; behind her could be seen a number of other people from both the Ares and the E.U. expedition. Madeline smiled and repeated the line she’d said first to him some days before. “A warm hello to all of you from all of us, here on sunny Europa.”
    It was amazing how a mere ten people then managed to sound like three times that many, and it took a few moments for him to get them to quiet down. “Please, everyone, I’ll answer questions in a little bit, but let me get through my announcement; I’ll undoubtedly be covering many of your questions as I do so.
    “As you can see, by both tremendous luck and some absolutely heroic and inventive actions on the part of the crews of both Nebula Storm and Odin , there are some survivors of this double tragedy, and they are—at the moment—healthy and safe. They made a spectacular landing on the sixth moon of Jupiter, Europa; for those interested, the Institute will be releasing the footage of that landing as taken by the survivors themselves.” As if anyone in this group wouldn’t be interested. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if that video clip becomes the most-viewed in the history of mankind.
    “Unfortunately, while—at the moment—all of the Nebula Storm ’s six crew have survived, there are only six survivors of the Odin . In addition, these twelve people are currently marooned on a moon whose environment makes Mars look like an Earthly island paradise.”
    He paused for a moment, taking a sip of water from the glass on the lectern. The ten faces in front of him, five men and five women, waited tensely. “I know all of you want to know what happened—how we came to this point. The preliminary events are already known and I think we all want to put those behind us.” He was referring, of course, to the fact that the E.U. had taken the information on Enceladus’ possible Bemmie base and run with it, while concealing that information from the Ares-IRI consortium on Ceres. No point rehashing it, either. “I’m sorry to say that at this point we still only have partial information as to what happened in those crucial hours as both Odin and Nebula Storm prepared for their final maneuvers in preparation for heading to the Saturnian system, but I will tell you what we know at this point.
    “As both vessels prepared for what is called an ‘Oberth maneuver,’ a method of using a combination of the interaction of the gravity well of a large planet with a ship’s reaction drive to greatly change the speed and direction of your vessel, something went wrong with the automatic systems of Odin . Instead of firing her systems to accelerate out of the Jovian system, the ship swung effectively opposite the intended vector and fired to slow down the vessel. Subsequently there was a large explosion on Odin .” So far, I’m telling the truth—just leaving out a few details and confusing the timeline a bit. Now I have to add some bald-faced lies, however. “Upon detecting this event, Nebula Storm changed her own maneuver to try to match up with Odin . This attempt was not entirely successful but did at least allow the two vessels to remain near each other.”
    He could see that Mr. Maes wasn’t sure whether he should relax or not. Don’t worry. We’ve reached an agreement on how to handle this, and you’ll be able to relax soon enough. “We still have no evidence as to what caused this explosion.” Strictly speaking one might be able to argue that this was true; he had some hearsay about what happened but no direct testimony by Odin ’s personnel—yet—and he hadn’t gotten copies of the sensor records from A.J. which would undoubtedly