Leviathans of Jupiter gt-18

by Ben Bova

  “But I—”

  “I want to show off!” Yeager’s voice sounded eager, excited. “You’re the prettiest lady on this merry-go-round so I thought it’d be fun to show off to you. Okay?”

  Grinning at his explanation, Deirdre said, “Okay. I’ll meet you in the galley in half an hour.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Yeager said.

  “Thirty,” said Deirdre firmly. “It takes time to look beautiful.”

  * * *

  “Why did you name it Faraday?” Deirdre asked as she and Yeager rode the elevator down the station’s central shaft toward the third wheel.

  For a moment Yeager didn’t reply. Deirdre thought he looked almost embarrassed. The only sound in the slightly swaying elevator cab was the swish of its rush down the tube.

  At last Yeager explained, “Well, he’s always been a kind of hero of mine. Michael Faraday. Son of a cobbler, back early in the nineteenth century. Made himself into one of the great scientists. An experimenter. A hands-on guy.”

  Deirdre nodded, beginning to understand.

  “He invented the electric power generator. Called it the dynamo. Edison and the whole electric utility industry was based on his little contraption. Even the earliest nuclear power plants still used the kind of generator he invented.”

  “I can see why you admire him,” Deirdre said.

  Yeager broke into a grin. “There’s a story about Faraday. He gave a big public lecture in London about his little dynamo and after it was over a lady from the audience came up and asked him…” Yeager broke into a wavering falsetto, “ ‘Mr. Faraday, your invention seems very interesting, but tell me, of what use is it?’ Faraday answered her, ‘Madam, of what use is a newborn baby?’ ”

  Deirdre said, “I’ve heard that story. In school, one of the professors told that story as an example of what scientific research is all about.”

  “You betcha,” Yeager said. “But there’s a different version of the story, one that I like better.”

  The elevator stopped with a ping! and its doors slid open. They stepped out into a passageway much like the main passageway up in the top wheel. But this one looked new, raw, almost unused to Deirdre’s eyes. Its deck was uncarpeted and it smelled of fresh paint.

  Yeager fished his pocketphone from his tunic, then pointed toward their right. “This way,” he said.

  “What’s the other version of the story?” Deirdre asked as they started along the sloping passageway. The doors along the corridor were unmarked, and Deirdre got the impression that the rooms behind them were empty.

  “Oh, the other version,” Yeager said. “Well, it’s the same setup: Faraday gives his lecture to the public, but afterward it’s a member of Parliament who comes up and asks him what good his little dynamo might be. And Faraday tells him, ‘I don’t know, sir. But someday you will put a tax upon it.’ ”

  Yeager laughed loudly. Deirdre smiled at him.

  He stopped at a double door that was marked CONTROL CENTER—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  “Are we authorized personnel?” Deirdre asked.

  As he tapped on the door’s security pad Yeager said, “We are if I know the lock’s combination.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “You’re with me, kiddo.”

  The door slid open and they stepped into what looked to Deirdre like a mission control chamber. A horseshoe of consoles ran around a central chair whose padded arms were studded with colored buttons. The walls were smart screens from floor to ceiling, all of them blank. Deirdre counted an even dozen consoles, their cushioned chairs all empty, their screens and dials all dead.

  Without an instant’s hesitation, Yeager went to the central chair and settled himself in it. His fingers began playing along the buttons in the chair’s arms and, one by one, the consoles hummed to life. Deirdre stood to one side, half leaning against the chair’s padded back.

  “Okay,” Yeager said, nodding as if satisfied with what he saw, “now watch the middle screen, right in front of us.”

  The screen ran the entire length of the chamber’s front wall. It began to glow and then sharpened to show a curving metal surface with an airlock hatch in it. Closed.

  “That’s Faraday,” Yeager said. “A slice of it, at least.”

  “That’s the vessel that’s going to take people into the ocean?”

  “Yep. That’s her. Him. Whatever.” Yeager was still pecking at the buttons on the control pads. The consoles’ screens were displaying graphs and images, the gauges were all alight.

  “Ships are referred to as ‘she,’ ” Deirdre said, “no matter who they’re named after.”

  “Because it costs so much to keep ’em in paint and powder,” Yeager wisecracked.

  “That’s an old sexist cliché,” Deirdre said, with a disapproving click of her tongue.

  But Yeager’s attention was totally focused on the vessel. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? This is the first time I’ve seen her. After all the drawings and plans and simulations, there she is. She’s gorgeous!”

  “It looks big.”

  Yeager grunted. “As big as this whole station, almost. So big we can’t attach it to the station, it’d throw the center of mass entirely out of whack and we’d start wobbling like a drunken sailor.”

  “It’s not connected?”

  “Co-orbits with the station. To get to it you have to get into a spacesuit and go EVA.”

  “Goodness.”

  Grinning tightly, Yeager said, “Goodness has nothing to do with it.” Looking up into her face, the engineer asked, “Want to go aboard her?”

  RESEARCH VESSEL FARADAY

  “Aboard your Faraday?” Deirdre asked. “I’ve never been in a spacesuit. I don’t know—”

  “Not in actuality,” Yeager said, almost impatiently. “VR.”

  “Virtual reality.”

  “Yeah.” Pointing, “Take that console, the one on the end. You’ll find goggles and ear plugs in the top drawer. Should be feelie gloves in there, too.”

  Deirdre sat at the humming console, wormed a plug into her ear, pulled on the fuzzy-looking tactile gloves, then slid the goggles over her eyes. The goggles made everything look slightly greenish.

  “Okay,” Yeager’s voice muttered in her ear. “Just a minute now while I power up the system…”

  The world went blank for a moment; Deirdre could see nothing. Abruptly she was hanging in space between the station and the gigantic sphere of Faraday. She gasped with surprise.

  “It’s huge! Almost as big as the station!”

  She heard Yeager chuckle. “Yep.”

  “What are all those fins sticking out from it?”

  “Steering vanes,” Yeager answered. “For maneuvering, either in Jupiter’s atmosphere or its ocean.”

  Deirdre nodded silently.

  “Now we activate your propulsion unit,” Yeager said.

  Although she felt no force upon her, Deirdre saw that she was moving through empty space toward the airlock hatch on Faraday’s curving surface. She saw a nine-unit keyboard on the hull next to the airlock.

  “Combination’s one-two-three,” Yeager told her. “I like to keep things simple.”

  Reaching out with her gloved hand, Deirdre tapped out the combination. She could feel the solidity of the keys against her fingertip. The hatch slid open silently.

  “Go right in, kiddo.”

  Somewhat hesitantly, Deirdre stepped into the airlock. She waited while the outer hatch closed, the chamber filled with air, and finally the inner door opened. She saw a long tunnel made of gleaming metal, a tube, with a six-seated cart waiting empty.

  “Sit down and strap in,” Yeager instructed her. “This buggy goes fast.”

  It felt odd: Deirdre knew she was still sitting at the console in the control center, but like a dreamer she climbed into the cart’s front seat and clicked the safety belt across her lap. Without warning the cart shot down the tunnel like a bullet. The curving walls blurred, but Deirdre felt no sense
of motion at all.

  “You’re diving through an even dozen layers of reinforced compression shells,” Yeager explained as she whizzed through the tunnel, “down to the crew station at the vessel’s center.”

  The cart slowed, then stopped at another hatch. Following Yeager’s instructions, Deirdre got out of the cart, opened the hatch, and stepped into a small, cramped chamber, packed tight with consoles and sensor screens.

  “This is it?” she asked, feeling disappointed. The place was so small. Barely room for five people, cheek by jowl. I’ve seen bathrooms bigger than this, she thought. People are supposed to live and work in here?

  “That’s it,” Yeager’s voice told her. “That’s the bridge. The crew will work there for two weeks—if everything goes according to plan. Which it won’t.”

  “Where do they sleep? Eat?”

  Yeager guided her past a tall, square unit that he identified as the galley; it looked like an oversized snack dispenser to Deirdre. Then she went through another hatch into the sleeping quarters, even smaller and more compact than the bridge. The individual bunks were mere drawers set in a metal bulkhead. It reminded Deirdre of videos she had seen of morgues, on Earth.

  “You’d better test your crew for claustrophobia before you let them in here,” she said.

  She could sense Yeager nodding. “Yeah, it’s kinda tight, isn’t it?”

  “Not much privacy.”

  She heard Yeager grunt. Then he said, “Okay. Seen enough?”

  Deirdre nodded. Abruptly her vision went black, but before she could utter a sound she saw the control center aboard the station again, still tinted slightly green.

  She pulled the goggles off her head, brushed a hand through her hair. “The vessel’s so big and the crew area is so small.”

  “Gotta be that way,” Yeager said, still sitting in the command chair. “Pressure. The ship’s got to be able to take enormous pressure.”

  “The crew, too,” Deirdre said.

  “Guess so,” said Yeager.

  It was nearly 1000 hours, Deirdre saw.

  “I’ve got to get back,” she said to Yeager. “My appointment at the clinic.”

  Sitting in the command chair, the engineer nodded without looking up from the buttons he was pecking at. “Okay. You can find your way, can’t you? I’ve gotta double-check all these systems before Archer brings Westfall down here.”

  Deirdre said, “I’ll be fine.” She started for the hatch, then turned back to Yeager and said, “Thanks for the tour.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said absently, still fiddling with his controls.

  Deirdre saw that his attention was on his work. He had shown off to her and now he was all business. With an understanding shrug she left the control center and headed for the elevators. Max is in his element, she told herself. He wanted to impress me, but he wants to play with his gadgets even more.

  The elevator doors slid open even before she reached for the call button, and Dr. Archer stepped out, with Mrs. Westfall a step behind him. Deirdre marveled again at how diminutive Westfall was. Small physically, she thought, but that little body of hers carries enormous power.

  “Hello!” Archer said, surprised. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Dr. Yeager asked me here to see the vessel he’s designed. He’s inside, checking out its systems.”

  Westfall said nothing, but she gave Deirdre the slightest of nods as she brushed past. As if she approves of my looking things over down here, Deirdre thought. As if she thinks I’m spying for her.

  * * *

  Deirdre felt nervous as she entered the clinic. It was much larger than the infirmary on Australia. Even the anteroom was bigger than Dr. Pohan’s cubbyhole of an office. A white-smocked receptionist sat at a desk that curved around her chair like the pseudopods of an amoeba reaching for its prey.The receptionist was a smiling, slightly overweight gray-haired woman. She glanced at her desktop screen and then looked up at Deirdre.

  “Deirdre Ambrose. You’re scheduled to see Dr. Mandrill. Right on time. That’s good.”

  Dr. Mandrill turned out to be a puffy-faced, laconic Kenyan. His office walls were covered with old-fashioned photographs of himself with adults and children whom Deirdre assumed were his family, back Earthside. His voice was a deep, rich baritone.

  “Your condition is very serious,” he said, almost accusingly. Then he broke into a dazzling smile. “But we’ll take care of you, never fear.”

  Deirdre expected to be put through more examinations and scans, but Dr. Mandrill apparently was satisfied with the file from Australia. He nodded and muttered to himself as he read Dr. Pohan’s report, then finally looked up at Deirdre.

  “As long as your friend keeps volunteering his blood, you’ll be fine.”

  “Dorn,” Deirdre breathed.

  “Yes. He’s a cyborg, I understand. Interesting case.” Tapping his computer screen, the doctor added, “We’re running a series of experiments on him, I see.”

  ULTRAHYPERBARIC CHAMBER

  The pain was bearable. So far.

  Dorn sat alone in the bare, metal-walled chamber. Benches ran along its curved walls, enough room to seat six people. But Dorn was in the chamber alone.

  “How do you feel?” The technician’s voice coming through the speaker grill in the overhead sounded strangely deep, distorted. It must be the pressure, Dorn told himself.

  Aloud, he reported, “Some discomfort in my chest and abdomen.”

  His head and body were plastered with sensors, both his metal half and his flesh. Outside the chamber the technicians were monitoring his physical condition: heart rate, breathing, brain wave patterns, electrical conductivity of his wiring, lubrication levels of his servomotors, activity of the digital processors in his prosthetics.

  “Can you stand up and walk a few paces, please?”

  Dorn got stiffly to his feet and stepped along the narrow aisle between the benches, surprised at how much effort it took. His leg ached; even the prosthetic leg seemed stiff, arthritic.

  “Very good. We’re going to notch up the pressure slowly. You tell us when you want us to stop.”

  Dorn sat down again and gripped the edge of the bench with both his hands. His head began to thrum. It became difficult to draw a breath. The pain ramped upward, slowly but steadily, always worse. Closing his human eye, Dorn sat quietly and took it without complaint.

  Suddenly the bench splintered beneath him with an oddly deep crunching noise. Dorn looked down and saw that his prosthetic hand had crushed the plastic.

  “That’s enough!” the technician’s slurred voice bawled. “Take him down.”

  They did it slowly, very slowly, but at last the pain eased away entirely. After nearly another hour of sitting alone in the bare, claustrophobic chamber, the hatch creaked open and the chief technician stuck his head in.

  “You can come out now, Mr. Dorn. Test’s over.”

  Dorn got slowly to his feet. He felt a little unsteady. His human leg tingled as if pins and needles were being jabbed into the flesh. Even the prosthetic leg felt balky, stiff, as if somehow its bearings had become infiltrated by grit.

  He ducked through the hatch and stepped out onto the laboratory floor. Four technicians were bent over their console screens. Their chief, a round, ruddy-faced man with closely cropped blond hair, gazed at Dorn with unalloyed admiration.

  “You took six times normal atmospheric pressure without a peep,” he said, smiling toothily.

  “Is that good?” asked Dorn.

  “Damned good. Damned good. And that’s in air, not the gunk.”

  Dorn started to ask what “the gunk” might be, but the tech chief didn’t give him time to frame his question.

  “Perfluorocarbon,” he explained, still smiling. “They immerse you in the stuff. You breathe it instead of air. Allows you to work in much higher pressures. Much higher.”

  Dorn bit back a sardonic reply. Then he remembered that he was expected at the clinic to donate more blood to
Deirdre.

  * * *

  Andy Corvus, meanwhile, was swimming lazily in the dolphin pool. Fish glided by him, all the colors of the rainbow, swishing their tails mindlessly. Turning his head slightly, Andy saw through his breathing mask two of the dolphins, big as moving vans, sleek and gray, their mouths curved in perpetual grins. Andy waved to them and they chattered and whistled as they effortlessly swooped past him.

  Where’s Baby? he wondered. Baby and her parents had been transferred from Australia to this tank in the station. It was much bigger than the tank aboard the torch ship: It took Andy nearly a quarter of an hour to swim its full length.

  At last he spotted Baby, down near the bottom, nosing among the artificial coral formations there. Got to think in three dimensions, he told himself. The world of humans is a flatland; dolphins live in three dimensions.

  “Hello, Baby,” he said inside his mask. The chip-sized computer built into the mask translated his words into a series of high-pitched chirps.

  Baby zoomed up toward him, then swam a circle around Corvus, chattering back at him.

  “Hello, Andy,” the computer translated. “Good fishing?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Corvus said.

  “I am.” And Baby flashed away with a flick of her powerful flukes.

  Corvus looked around for Baby’s parents. The youngster’s moving around without them now, he realized. She’s growing up. I wonder if dolphins have a teenaged phase, when they rebel against their parents. Or try to. He remembered his own teen years, how ancient and conservative his parents had seemed.

  His wristwatch buzzed. The vibration told Corvus that he’d been in the water with the dolphins for three full hours. He sighed inwardly. Time to get out. Time to return to the dry world of his fellow humans.

  Reluctantly he swam to the surface. Suddenly Baby was beside him, smoothly spouting and then sucking in a gulp of air. She chattered briefly.

  “More fish?” the computer translated.

  Corvus smiled inside his face mask. Yep, he replied silently, I’m going to get me some lunch. Maybe the cooks have made some pseudofish today, instead of the usual soyburgers.