by Ben Bova
“Prometheus is erupting,” she said.
It was the first time in the whole long trip that she’d spoken to Grant in anything less than a snarl. He was too surprised to answer. He sat at the wardroom table, frozen into immobility.
With an annoyed scowl, the captain came to the table, leaned over Grant’s shoulder, and snapped commands into his palmcomp. The bulkhead screen blinked and then showed the mottled orange-red globe of Io, the innermost of the four big Galilean moons.
“The pizza-pie world,” she muttered.
Grant saw that Io indeed looked like a pizza, covered with hot sulfur, though, not cheese; splotched and spotted with craters and volcanoes instead of mushrooms or sausage slices.
The captain gave another command, and the view zoomed in on one section of Io’s limb so fast that Grant almost felt dizzy. The curve of the moon’s limb showed bright sulfurous orange against the black of space, and Grant could see a dirty yellowish plume spurting up into the darkness.
“Prometheus is jacking off again,” the captain said, chuckling.
Ignoring her crudity, Grant found his voice at last. “Thank you.”
“Wait,” she said. “Don’t be in such a hurry to run away.” She gave the computer another command, leaning so close to Grant that he could smell her faintly sweaty, acrid odor, feel the heat of her body.
“Be patient,” she said, straightening up as the view of Io zoomed out again.
Grant kept his eyes on the screen. “What should I be looking for?”
“You’ll see.”
The splotchy red-yellow disk of Io suddenly winked out. It took half a heartbeat for Grant to realize it had entered Jupiter’s broad, deep shadow.
“Give it a moment,” the captain whispered from behind him.
Grant saw a faint greenish glow appear, a ghostly pale luminescence, sickly, like the dying light from some weird deep-sea creature. He was too surprised to speak.
“Energetic particles from Jupiter’s magnetosphere make Io’s atmosphere glow. Too faint to see unless Io is in shadow.”
Right, Grant thought. He remembered reading about it somewhere. Oxygen and sulfur atoms excited by collisions with magnetosphere particles. Like the auroras on Earth, same physical mechanism. But seeing it was still a surprise, a gift of wonder.
“Thank you,” he said again, turning from the screen to look up at her.
The captain shrugged her hefty shoulders. “I wanted to be a scientist when I was your age. Explore the solar system. Seek out new life, make new discoveries.” She sighed heavily. “Instead I pilot this bucket.”
“It’s an important job,” Grant said.
“Oh, yes, certainly important.” She spoke with an accent Grant could not quite place. Russian? Polish? “So important that the computer runs the ship most of the time and I have nothing to do but make certain the crew doesn’t muck things up.”
Grant didn’t know how to answer that.
“Well, at least I get to carry handsome young brightboys now and then,” said the captain, breaking into an unexpected smile.
Suddenly Grant felt trapped in the wardroom, alone with her.
“I, uh …” He started to push himself up from his chair. “I still have a lot of studying to do. And I need to send a videogram to my wife. I send her a ’gram every day, and—”
The captain burst into a peal of hearty laughter. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I understand, handsome young bright-boy. Not to worry.”
She laughed and headed for the coffeemaker. “As long as the VR system works, you are perfectly safe, pretty one.”
Grant sank back into his chair as she filled her mug, still laughing, and went back to the hatch.
Then she stopped and turned back toward him. “By the way, there’s an observation blister just off the bridge. If you want to see Jupiter with your naked eyes, you have my permission to use it.”
Grant blinked with surprise. “Um … thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much. I’m sorry if I—”
But the captain had already turned and started down the passageway toward the bridge, still chuckling to herself.
For long moments Grant sat there alone, wondering if he’d misunderstood the captain and made a fool of himself. But she’d mentioned a virtual reality system. Grant had heard about using VR simulations for sex. That’s what she’d meant, he was certain.
He shook his head, trying to dismiss the encounter from his mind. Me, with her? He shuddered at the thought. But immediately he started composing another video message for Marjorie, mentioning nothing about the captain, of course. And, despite himself, wondering what VR sex might be like.
ARRIVAL
Peering through the transparent glassteel of the observation bubble, Grant could see that Jupiter was not merely immense, it was alive.
They were in orbit around the planet now, and its giant curving bulk loomed so huge that he could see nothing else, nothing but the bands and swirls of clouds that raced fiercely across Jupiter’s face. The clouds shifted and flowed before his eyes, spun into eddies the size of Asia, moved and throbbed and pulsed like living creatures. Lightning flashed down there, sudden explosions of light that flickered back and forth across the clouds, like signaling lamps.
There was life beneath those clouds, Grant knew. Huge balloonlike creatures called Clarke’s Medusas that drifted in the hurricane-force winds surging across the planet. Birds that have never seen land, living out their entire lives aloft. Gossamer spider-kites that trapped microscopic spores. Particles of long-chain carbon molecules that form in the clouds and sift downward, toward the global ocean below.
Unbidden, the words of a psalm sang in his mind:
The heavens proclaim the glory of God;
And the firmament declareth the work of his hands…
And there was the Red Spot, a gigantic swirling storm that had been raging for more than four hundred years, bigger than the whole planet Earth. Lightning rippled endlessly around its perimeter; to Grant it looked like the thrashing cilia of some titanic bacterium, flailing its way across the face of the giant planet.
Somewhere in a closer equatorial orbit around the planet was Research Station Gold, Grant’s destination, the largest man-made object in the solar system outside of the space cities orbiting between Earth and its Moon. But Gold was an invisible speck against the enormous, overwhelming expanse of Jupiter.
It’s like watching an abstract painting, Grant thought as he stared at the hurtling clouds of delicate pale yellow, russet brown, white and pink and powder blue. But it’s a dynamic painting, moving, shifting, flecked with lightning—alive.
Mars was a dead world, cold and silent despite its lichen and ancient cliffside ruins. Venus was an oven: sluggish, suffocating, useless. Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede, nearby moons of Jupiter almost the size of the planet Mercury, bore fragile ecologies of microscopic creatures beneath their perpetual mantles of ice.
But to Grant’s awestruck eyes, Jupiter looked vibrant, powerful, teeming with energy.
For the past four days the captain had been gradually increasing the ship’s spin, so that now it was revolving around its empty cargo bay fast enough to produce almost a full terrestrial gravity force in the habitation module. After almost a year at one-half g, the increased sense of weight made Grant feel tired, aching, dispirited.
Except when he was in the observation bubble. Sitting there in its lone padded chair, staring out at the immensity of Jupiter, Grant’s mind raced as fast as the swirling multihued clouds. He had no idea of what his assignment would be once they made rendezvous with Gold Certainly the International Astronautical Authority had not paid for his transportation all the way out to Jupiter to have Grant study pulsars and black holes, as he would have preferred to do.
No, he thought, still staring in fascination at Jupiter, the IAA’s main thrust out here in the Jovian system was with the microscopic life-forms on frozen Europa and Callisto and the creatures living in Jupiter’s atmosphere. They sho
uld be bringing biologists and geologists for that kind of work, not a frustrated astrophysicist.
Yet the New Morality claimed that the scientists had sent a manned craft into Jupiter’s swirling clouds. In secret. Was it true? What did they find? Why would they keep such work a secret? Scientists don’t behave that way, Grant told himself. Somebody in the New Morality is paranoid, and I’ve got to spend four years of my life paying for his stupid suspicions.
With growing despair, he realized that the scientists would probably put him to work running an ice-drilling rig on the surface of a Jovian moon. Or worse, he’d be sent down under the ice into the frigid ocean below. That thought frightened him: sent under the ice, into an alien ocean, a world of darkness with no air to breathe except what the tanks on his back carried. Scary. Terrifying.
“Rendezvous maneuver begins in three minutes,” the captain’s voice said from the speaker grille set into the bulkhead, sounding slightly scratchy and flat. “All nonessential personnel will confine themselves to their quarters or the galley.”
“Nonessential personnel,” Grant muttered, hauling himself up from the padded chair. “That means me.” And Tavalera, he added silently. His body felt heavy, sluggish, in the full Earthly gravity.
For a long moment he stood in the cramped little blister of the observation bubble, ignoring the ache in his legs, still staring at Jupiter. It was hard to pull his eyes away from its splendor. The research station was still nowhere in sight; or, if it was, it was too small against Jupiter’s massive bulk for Grant to notice it. With enormous reluctance, he turned and ducked through the low hatch and stepped out into the passageway that led to the galley.
Tavalera was in the galley, sure enough, sitting at the table with a steaming mug in front of him and an embarrassed expression on his horsy face. He was wiping his chin with a recyclable napkin. Grant saw that the front of his coveralls was stained and wet.
“Be careful drinking,” Tavalera warned. “Liquid pours a lot faster now we’re in a full gee.”
Grant thought he didn’t need the warning. His aching legs told him all he needed to know about the gravity. He thumped heavily into a chair on the opposite side of the table from Tavalera.
“Guess this is our last day together,” the young engineer said.
Grant nodded silently.
“Got my assignment this morning,” Tavalera said, looking somewhere between worried and hopeful. “It’s a scoopship, all right: the Glen P. Wilson.”
Grant still said nothing. There had been no assignment for him in the morning’s communications bulletin. As far as he knew, he was to report aboard the research station and get his assignment there.
“She’s an old ship, cranky and creaky, from what I hear. But a good ship. Reliable. High performance rating.”
He sounded to Grant as if he were trying to convince himself of something he didn’t actually believe.
“Two years,” Tavalera went on, “and then I go home, free and clear.”
“That’s good.”
“You’ll be out here four years, won’tcha?”
“That’s right.”
Tavalera shook his head like a man possessed of superior wisdom. “They really suckered you in, didn’t they? Four years.”
“I won’t have to do another two when I’m fifty,” Grant pointed out. Then he added, with just a little malice, “But you will.”
If Tavalera caught Grant’s irritation, he gave no notice of it. He merely waggled one long-fingered hand in the air and said, “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. By the time I’m fifty, I could be too flickin’ important for the New Morality to screw with me.”
Again Grant found himself wondering if Tavalera was probing his loyalty. Is this conversation being monitored? he asked himself.
Raising his voice a notch, he replied, “I’ve always felt that Public Service is something you should be glad to do. Give something back to the community. It’s important, don’t you think?”
Tavalera leaned back in his chair and gave Grant a crafty look. “Yeah, sure. But there’s important and really important. Know what I mean?”
The ship quivered. Just a slight tremor, but it was so out of place that both Grant and Tavalera immediately looked up. Grant felt a sharp pang in his gut. Tavalera’s eyes flicked wide for an instant.
“Rendezvous maneuver,” Tavalera said, after a moment’s startled silence.
“Yes, of course,” said Grant, trying to make it sound nonchalant.
Pushing himself up from his chair, Tavalera suggested, “Come on, let’s go down to the observation bubble and watch.”
“But the captain said—”
Laughing, Tavalera headed for the hatch. “C’mon, you don’t have to stay in your cage every second of every day. What’s she gonna do if she catches us, throw us off the ship?”
The communications chime on the bulkhead screen sounded. “Incoming message for Grant Archer,” announced the comm system’s synthesized voice.
Grateful for the interruption, Grant said, “Put it onscreen, please.”
The screen remained blank. “This is a private communication,” the computer warned.
A message from Marjorie, Grant thought. Tavalera will leave me to see it alone; if he doesn’t, I can ask him to leave.
“On-screen, please,” he repeated.
To his surprise, the screen showed the twin seals of the International Astronautical Authority and the New Morality Censorship Board. Before Grant could react, it flicked off, to be replaced by a lengthy document headed with the Words secrecy agreement.
Grant saw that Tavalera’s eyes were bulging.
“I’d better go to my bunk and read this on my personal handheld,” Grant said.
“I guess you better,” Tavalera said in a small voice.
As Grant brushed past him to step out into the passageway, Tavalera said, “I never figured you for an NM agent.”
“I’m not,” Grant blurted, wishing it were true.
“Yeah. Sure.”
Grant headed for the claustrophobic compartment he shared with Tavalera, while the young engineer went the other way, toward the observation blister. Once alone in his cramped bunk, Grant read the secrecy agreement very carefully. Twice. Three times. He was being ordered to sign it. The document did not leave him any choice. If he failed to sign, the New Morality could cancel his Public Service contract and have him returned to Earth “at the convenience of the IAA personnel on-station.” That meant all the time in transit to Jupiter would have been totally wasted. And all the time spent waiting for transport back to Earth, and the transit time itself, would also be wasted.
Worse yet, Grant got the distinct feeling that once back home he would be assigned the lowliest, meanest, dirtiest Public Service job that the authorities could find for him. They dealt harshly with dissenters and objectors.
So he signed the secrecy agreement. In essence, it was a simple document. It stated that any and all information, data, knowledge, and facts that he acquired while serving his Public Service obligation were classified Secret and were not to be divulged to any person, agency, or computer network. Under punishment of law.
Grant felt whipsawed. The New Morality wanted him to report on what the scientists were doing; the IAA wanted to swear him to secrecy. Then a new understanding dawned within him: They don’t trust each other! The IAA and the New Morality may share the responsibility for running station Gold, but they don’t trust each other. They don’t even like each other. And they’ve put me in the middle. Whatever I do, I’m going to be in trouble, he realized.
Wishing both sides would just leave him alone, wondering exactly what was going on among the researchers at Gold that had to be kept so secret, Grant signed the document and—as directed by the automated legal program—held his palm-size computer to first his right eye and then his left, so that whoever was registering his agreement recorded both his retinal prints.
All these precautions left Grant feeling baffled, worried, and
more than a little angry. They had one good effect, however. Once Roberts established its coorbital rendezvous with the space station and Grant toted his one travelbag down to the airlock hatch, Tavalera said goodbye to him with newfound respect in his eyes.
It’s almost funny, Grant thought. For most of the trip out here I was halfway convinced that Raoul was a New Morality informer. Now he’s certain that I’m one.
He almost laughed as he shook Tavalera’s hand in a final good-bye.
Almost. Then he realized that he actually was a New Morality informer. At least, that’s what the NM expected him to be.
“WELCOME TO THE GULAG”
Grant at last got a look at the orbiting research station, a glimpse, nothing more, as he ducked through the transfer tube that had been set up to connect the station’s docking hub with Roberts’s airlock.
That brief glimpse disturbed him even more.
He was silently offering a prayer of thanksgiving at his safe arrival and a supplication to “make me worthy, O Lord, of the task You have given me.”
As he looked up through the transfer tube’s overhead window, the curving surface of the station looked huge, mammoth, a gigantic looming structure that filled the observation port like a colossal arch of gray metal, dulled and pitted from long years of exposure to radiation and in-falling cosmic dust.
A childhood memory flashed through Grant’s mind: the time his parents had taken him to San Francisco and they had somehow gotten themselves lost in a seedy, dangerous part of the city near the enormous dirt-encrusted supporting buttresses of the Bay Bridge. Grant’s breath had caught in his throat; for a moment he had imagined the entire weight of that immense bridge crashing down on him, crushing him and his parents in their flimsy open-topped automobile in a thundering tangle of steel girders and ponderous blocks of stone.