“I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.” — Stephen Hawking

The video started with splashing the EDA logo on the screen. It played the music from the game Armada. Then EDA Latin Logo flashed, Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum. The book never said what it meant. So I googled it, “If you want peace, prepare for war”. Which was interesting because it contradicts what Ray said.

The narrator was Carl Sagan. I didn’t know who he was, so I googled it. He was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. He has been dead since the 90s, so it was sock to everyone in the room.

When the satellite orbited Europa, a Jupiter Moon, it was covered in a giant swastika. Sagan then explains that the symbol of the swastika was used as peace and good luck charm before Hitler. They figure that the aliens somehow found the broadcast of Hitler from the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Nasa used it as evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

It gave Zach a déjà vu since it was known that Europa had a vast ocean of water beneath its surface. So it was a popular setting for science fiction writers.

So Nasa chose to send a secret spacecraft called the Envoy I. It drills a hole in the swastika to learn more about the ice. They also attached a golden disc with information of humanity like the Voyager spacecraft. After a few seconds of drilling, Nasa lost contact with the spacecraft. They had another probe that was going near, so they used to take pictures. The Envoy I and the swastika were gone.

Forty-two hours later, they received a message on the top-secret frequency. It was in plain English with the voice of a human girl:

“You have desecrated our most sacred temple, for this there can be no forgiveness. We are coming to kill you all.”

It was later determined that the voice came from the gold record from the lander. Nasa has not been able to determine their motivations, but it appears that it was an act of war. They try to make contact again they crafts just get lost. So they send cameras on other Jupiter’s moon to learn what they are doing. After years of studying, they found drones building other drones and drilling other asteroids for materials. So Nasa doesn’t even know what they look like. However, they refer to them as Europans since.

They kept this secret to the public because they fought if they knew then the world would go into chaos. In the 80s, they have been able to catch some of their scout drones. They were able to reverse engineer their technology. Since then, the earth has been building a drone and preparing for war.

Zach is pretty sure that they are hiding more information than what they were telling him. A lot more. The chapter ends with, “When the lights came up a few seconds later, they hit us with the really bad news.”