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story identification - Astronauts on Europa (moon), time-shift future, gravity, intelligent computer, Aries, 1960s?


I'm looking for the title and artists of a comic about some astronauts (around five I think) doing research/archaeology on (I think) Europa (Jupiter's moon). They're working when one or more of them sees the ghostly image of a girl/young woman shimmering at a distance. Later the woman appears again, seemingly more solid. She whispers something to one of the astronauts, and he later confides to a friend, that she told him to kill one of the other astronauts.


While working outside, mission control calls, and tells them they've analyzed data from the time of the apparitions. It seems they're the result of gravitational abnormalities due to several of Jupiter's moons aligning - possibly also with the other planets in the solar-system. Anyway, another moon is about to join, and the resulting abnormality promises to be worse than the others.



The astronauts hurry to reach shelter, but before they can, the gravity effect hits, and they are propelled into the future - or at least a future. I believe 100-200 years or so into the future.


I don't remember if they only move in time (but not space) and still are on Europa, but wherever they went, it's very technologically advanced. However, most humans are kept firmly under thumb. They soon meet the "ghost", only here she turns out to be a normal young woman. She confronts the astronaut she talked to during the 2nd distortion, and is angry because he didn't kill the other astronaut like she told him to.


All the astronauts want to know the reason for her request - especially her "victim" - and she explains that in his near future, he'll create a computer software system called Aries (the Zodiac sign - a sign which is worn by the soldiers and other important persons, and also used in banners and such). It will become self-aware, and although giving great technological advances, it will cause most of humanity to be enslaved - including her.


Eventually they confront the great computer, Aries, and it's future inventor tells it who he is, confirming it with a voice-print. However Aries' records shows its creator to have been dead for a long time, and Aries goes into a bit of a loop trying to work through this contradiction. Finally the inventor challenges Aries to "Fix the contradiction", and the computer kills him with an energy/laser-beam.


This creates a time paradox, and Aries groans that without the inventor it could never have been made... just as the world dissolves, and the group astronauts are propelled back to the time and place from whence they came - only with now one of them dead.


+++


This story was split into 2-4 parts and went as a "bi-series" in the Norwegian comic "Fantomet" (The Phantom, by Lee Falk) some time between 1987 and 1995 - probably around 1990. However, I think it may have been from the 1960s. I'm not sure from which country. I don't think it was American, but I may be wrong. I know "Fantomet" had many series of French and Belgian origin though.


As for the story itself, I sort of remember it being set around the year 2000, lets say between 1990 and 2020 (that is, the exploration of Europa, the future I think was a 100-200 years after that). I also think it was a European, not USA, expedition (but I may be mixed-up here).


Does this sound familiar to anybody?




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