"Now let's start with making a decision about the animals," says Kosmo. "We can all agree it's been put off long enough."
Immediately the room bursts into a chatter of competing positions.
"We should have rats at the very least, for experiments!" says Professor Li, a geneticist at the Zoaco Corporation's Canadian university, U.o.Z. A very small, wrinkled woman, she takes up twice the space with her bombastic manner.
"No. No rats," interjects Marcel Temaru. He's the oceanographer for the mission, a big broad-shouldered man of Polynesian heritage. "We'll be compromising any native life forms enough just by being there."
"Come on," Kosmo replies. "Kelp might be fine for Libers but the rest of us don't want to live on just vegetables! Let's bring some fish."
"Hmm, with fish we could have aquaponics which would help immensely with growing plants," muses Temaru before frowning. "But no! Fish would be even worse. Imagine if they got out into Europa's ocean?"
"Freshwater fish wouldn't last five minutes…" says Kosmo.
"True," says Temaru, "but this is our opportunity to break away from Earth's culture of dominating other creatures. No experiments and no meat eating."
"We can just eat vat meat, it's not that complicated," says Professor Li, waving her hand dismissively.
Temaru frowns. "That's not quite—"
"—if we're not bringing fish or rats," interrupts Virginia Rein, "we should at least bring a companion animal. Someone to share the stars with us. We should bring cats!"
"Dogs wouldn't like being stuck inside, but cats are a real possibility," Kosmo muses. "No chance of them escaping to the ocean either. That said, rats make fine companion pets too…." He starts scrolling through his tablet, sketching out a feasibility plan.
"But cats need to eat meat!" says Temaru.
"Vat meat!" says Professor Li, gesticulating pointedly.
"So as we discussed before, we've only got space and resources for one kind of animal and even then we'd be sacrificing some of the fabricators," Kosmo says, looking up from his tablet. "What do you reckon, President? What kind of ark is this?"