by Ben Bova
Tray saw that they were all staring at him. Even Sheshardi stood up and peered over the back of his command chair.
Closing his eyes to concentrate, Tray heard music in his mind: a powerful, throbbing beat that represented the powerful, surging Leviathans to him. Quickly, he sketched the score onto the communicator’s miniature screen.
“Can you send this?” he asked Sheshardi.
The Aboriginal puzzled over the notation for a moment, then disappeared behind his seat back. Tray heard him muttering, “I’m sure we have a program for musical notation somewhere. Ah! Yes! Here it is. Under Miscellaneous Entertainment Programs.”
“Do you think the beasts will respond to music?” Bricknell asked, his voice filled with incredulity.
Kell replied, “I don’t think anyone’s ever tried sound-wave communication with the Leviathans. Since they project pictures on their flanks, all our efforts at communicating with them have been visual.”
“How are you doing, Mr. Sheshardi?” Loris called.
“I am translating Mr. Williamson’s notation to the ultralow frequencies that the Leviathans use.”
“Basso profundissimo,” Bricknell punned.
“There!” came Sheshardi’s voice from behind his chair back. “We can transmit the music. I will air it here inside the ship at frequencies that we humans can hear.”
Tray held his breath.
The music began. From the ship’s built-in speakers came the slow, sonorous, majestic music. Tray closed his eyes and saw the majestic Leviathans swimming through their ocean in time to his music.
He forced his eyes open and looked at the viewscreens that wrapped around Sheshardi’s command chair. The Leviathans continued their ponderous rhythmic swimming, their flanks dark, pictureless.
“Do they hear it?” Loris asked.
“They must,” Sheshardi replied.
“But they’re not doing anything.”
“They’re listening,” said Tray, hoping that he was right.
Suddenly the formation of Leviathans began to change. From their customary globular assemblage the gigantic whale-like creatures rearranged themselves into a long, stately line and began to circle Athena.
“They are sending out signals!” Sheshardi called out, his voice quivering with emotion. “Our receiving equipment can barely pick it out, it’s so low in frequency.”
“Can we hear it?” Tray asked.
Almost breathless, Sheshardi panted, “I’m trying … most of it is too low…”
A deep, rumbling note filled Athena’s crew module. Tray felt his brow furrow as he listened. It sounded nothing like the music he had jotted down; it was little more than a low, moaning whisper. Basso profundissimo indeed, Tray thought.
Their entire compartment began to quiver from the Leviathans’ vibrations. Tray’s nerves began to jangle. Glassware in the food locker popped like balloons. Tray clapped his hands over his ears, as did the others. But it did no good: the deep, resonant vibrations shook his very soul.
Just when he thought the Leviathans’ call would tear his brain apart, it stopped. Silence. The gigantic beasts broke their circle around Athena.
Tray’s ears rang. His heart was thumping heavily. He looked around and saw that the others were equally shaken, gasping, disturbed.
For long moments no one spoke. The only sounds in the compartment were the muted whispers of the air blowers and the distant echo of the Leviathans’ majestic song.
Then Kell’s voice sliced through Tray’s disappointment. “Did you record that, Gyele?”
“Yes,” answered the Aborigine, shakily. “All on automatic.”
Slowly, as the wide-eyed humans stared at their viewscreens, the Leviathans reformed their original globular configuration.
“They’re waiting for more from us,” Kell conjectured.
“They reacted to the music,” said Loris, her voice brimming with wonder.
Para repeated the one word, “Music.”
Kell turned to Tray, smiling brightly. “Congratulations, son! You’ve opened up a new communication channel with the Leviathans.”
“I have?”
Para spoke up, “The scientific teams studying the Leviathans have paid practically no attention to their ultralow sonic frequencies. They have concentrated on their visual displays, believing those to be the creatures’ main means of communication.”
“A prime example of anthropomorphization,” Bricknell added. “The visual displays are so obvious—”
“Obvious to us,” Kell interjected.
“And the ultralow frequency sonic range is so far below our range of communication,” Bricknell went on, “that our scientists ignored it.”
“Not entirely,” Para said. “But very little attention has been paid to it.”
“Until now,” Kell said, beaming at Tray.
“Music,” Loris said. “They communicate through music.”
“Through ultralow frequency sounds,” Kell corrected. “I doubt that the beasts think of the sounds in the same way that we do.”
“But it’s a communications channel that we haven’t looked into before,” Bricknell said.
Tray realized that they were all staring at him. Even Para. Sheshardi was peering around the edge of his chair’s high back. But it was Loris that he found himself focusing on. Sapphire-eyed Loris, staring at him with newfound admiration.
Tray stared back at her.
MALFUNCTION
“Why don’t you try sending out more music?” Loris asked.
It took a conscious effort for Tray to tear his gaze away from her beautiful face and turn questioningly to Kell.
“Do you think I should?” he asked.
Kell nodded slowly. “I don’t think it would hurt anything if you did.”
“Okay,” said Tray. “Let’s try…” He ran swiftly through several possibilities. Not his own music, he swiftly decided: I haven’t written enough to have much of a variety; it’s all pretty much the same. Let’s see how they react to the works that other human minds have considered to be great.
For the next several hours Tray broadcast all sorts of music toward the Leviathans. Beethoven, Bach, jazz, blues, the newer interplanetary syntheses, symphonies, choral works. The Leviathans plowed peacefully through the water, occasionally playing back ultralow frequency booms and what sounded to the humans like moans of damned souls.
At last Kell muttered, “I wonder what they’re trying to say to us?”
“Maybe it’s Stop that infernal racket,” Bricknell joked.
Kell shook his head. “No, I think they’re trying to answer us, to communicate.”
Tray felt exhausted. The exhilaration he had experienced earlier had evolved into frustrated disappointment.
“Well,” Kell said, with a jaunty grin, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.”
“You have made a breakthrough in interspecies communication,” said Para.
Shaking his head, Tray countered, “Hardly that.”
“No,” Kell disagreed, “I think that Para is right. You’ve opened up a new channel of communications with the Leviathans. One the scientific community had overlooked.”
“Until now,” said Loris.
“Good work, my boy,” Kell said.
But Tray’s eyes were focused on Loris.
Sheshardi’s voice rose from his command chair. “We are approaching the limit of our planned excursion. It is time to prepare for leaving the ocean.”
Tray felt weary, drained. Yet he wanted to stay among the Leviathans, wanted to learn more about them, wanted to show them how human beings lived.
“Sleep time,” Kell said.
“And after our nap,” Sheshardi added, “we begin the ascent back to Jove’s Messenger.”
Tray knew he was too excited to sleep. But once he closed his eyes his body took command and he sank into slumber within a few minutes.
* * *
Tray’s eyes snapped open. He saw that the protective plastic cover had sli
d down over him while he slept. The ship fills the space inside the cover with a soporific gas, he remembered, to make certain that we sleep. No wonder I dozed off so quickly.
As the cover raised silently and disappeared into its slot on the bulkhead behind him, Tray looked at the clock clicking away on the control panel’s upper-right-hand screen. I’ve been asleep for a couple of hours, he realized.
Then he saw that the other screens showed nothing but empty ocean.
“The Leviathans have gone!” he snapped.
Sheshardi’s voice came from the command chair, “They departed some thirty minutes ago. They made an abrupt turn and sped off. Since we are about to leave the ocean I thought it would be useless to try to follow them.”
Tray realized the Abo was right, but he felt disappointed nonetheless. The ocean seemed empty, abandoned, lonely.
Then he saw that Loris was just waking up, knuckling the sleep out of her eyes. So were the others. Para sat inertly on Kell’s other side. Sheshardi was hidden, as usual, behind the command chair’s back.
Bricknell stretched languidly, then said at the top of his voice, “Good morning, everybody!”
Para leaned forward slightly in its chair and asked Tray, “Did you have a good sleep?”
Before Tray could reply, Bricknell answered, “Excellent sleep. The best that modern medical chemistry can produce.”
Kell smiled, a little wearily, Tray thought. Loris stretched like a panther.
Sheshardi’s voice came from behind his seat back, “We will have our last meal, and then we begin our ascent to rendezvous with Jove’s Messenger.”
“Home sweet home,” Bricknell wisecracked.
“Breakfast,” said Kell. “Good. I’m famished.”
Tray couldn’t help feeling that Sheshardi’s term, “last meal,” had an unconsciously ominous sound to it.
One by one they all, except for Para, went to the serving console and picked up trays of faux eggs and a vegetable medley. Tray noticed that the broken pieces of the glasses that had been shattered by the Leviathans’ voices had all been gathered up and disposed of by the ship’s automated housekeeping system.
Sheshardi got out of his command chair and joined the others. As he filled his breakfast tray, Para stepped next to him and suggested, “I can monitor the console if you wish to take a nap.”
Blinking his red-rimmed eyes, the Aboriginal said, “That’s an excellent idea. I could use an hour of sleep.”
“Very well,” said Para. The android headed for the command chair as Sheshardi, carrying his breakfast tray, made himself comfortable in what had originally been designated as Harold Balsam’s chair.
* * *
Precisely one hour later, Sheshardi snapped awake and returned to the command chair. Para got up and strode to the chair where he had formerly been sitting.
Does Para resent being sent back to that seat? Tray asked himself silently. Would he prefer to be in command?
Then Tray remembered that Para was an “it,” not a “he.”
For nearly an hour the vessel cruised along placidly. Sheshardi busily worked the controls set into his seat’s armrests. The empty ocean stretched all around them. Tray knew the water teemed with microscopic creatures, but as far as he could see it was a vast blank desolation. He began to long for the familiar contours of human habitation.
Then he realized that Loris was standing beside him, also peering at the vacant screens.
“It’s like we’re all alone, isn’t it?” she murmured.
Tray nodded as he looked past her shoulder and saw that Bricknell was apparently engaged in a deep conversation with Para.
Is Para running interference for me, so I can talk with Loris? Tray asked himself. It’s a machine. It doesn’t have human emotions. But does that mean that the android doesn’t understand human emotions?
One way or the other, Tray was standing close to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Loris seemed perfectly content to be so close to him.
Say something to her! Tray commanded himself.
“It’s been an interesting trip,” he muttered.
“Yes, hasn’t it,” Loris agreed. “And your idea of using music to communicate with the Leviathans … that was the best part of it.”
“Just a lucky guess.”
“Luck favors the prepared mind,” Loris quoted. “Louis Pasteur said that.”
Tray grinned self-consciously. “Did he?”
Loris’s eyes flicked to Bricknell and Para, still in deep conversation.
“Did you tell your android to occupy Mance for a while?”
“No!”
“You mean it was all the machine’s idea?”
“I … I guess it was.”
“Smart machine.”
“Para’s not just a machine. He’s almost human. Sometimes I think he’s more than human.”
Before Loris could reply, Sheshardi popped up from his command chair, shaking his head.
“We have a problem,” the Abo said, dolefully.
“A problem?” asked Tray.
“The controls … they appear to be locked.”
Jordan Kell stepped up to Sheshardi. “Locked?”
“I’ve been working on them for nearly an hour,” Sheshardi said, his expression puzzled, baffled.
“And?” Kell prompted.
“We are unable to rise to the surface.”
Bricknell turned away from Para to stare at the Aboriginal. “Unable…?”
“I’ve tried everything,” Sheshardi said, waving his hands vaguely. “We appear to be trapped here in the ocean. In fact, we are slowly sinking.”
SINKING
“Sinking!” Loris gasped.
“Yes,” said Sheshardi. “At the rate we are descending, the ship’s outermost hull will begin to crack within the next hour.”
“You’ve got to pull us up!” Bricknell screeched. “You’ve got to do something!”
Shaking his head dolefully, Sheshardi said, “Yes, I know. But what? I’ve tried everything…”
Kell stepped to the Aborigine’s side. “Send out a message capsule. Ask Tsavo for help.”
Sheshardi looked up into Kell’s calm face. Kell didn’t seem frightened; he looked serious, intent, as if he were inwardly running through a thousand ideas, possibilities, hopes.
“By the time a capsule gets to Captain Tsavo,” Sheshardi said mournfully, “we will have sunk too deep for any rescue.”
“We’re going to die?” Loris asked, her blue eyes wide with sudden fright.
“There are the emergency escape suits,” Sheshardi said.
“Escape suits?”
Tray remembered reading about them in the ship’s manual of equipment details. Individual suits, built to withstand the tremendous pressures of the Jovian ocean and allow a person to rise to the surface.
And what then? Tray asked himself. We could float inside those suits and starve to death before Jove’s Messenger finds us.
But it was better than staying with their sinking vessel.
Kell was apparently thinking the same thoughts. “We’d best get to the emergency suits.”
“This is certainly an emergency,” Bricknell said, his voice high and thin.
“The suits are stored in the locker next to the main port,” said Sheshardi.
“Aren’t you going with us?” Kell asked.
“I will stay here and try to sort out the problem with the controls,” the Abo said. “Call me when you are all suited up.”
Kell stared at him. “Gyele, the days when the captain went down with his ship are far behind us.”
Sheshardi looked up at Kell and grinned weakly. “I have no intention of going down with my ship,” he said. “You call me when you are all safely inside your suits and I will join you.”
Kell looked unconvinced, but he said tightly, “Very well.”
“Meanwhile I will try to correct the problem with the controls.”
“Very well,” Kell repeated.
&nbs
p; Turning from Sheshardi, in the command chair, Jordan Kell started for the hatch that led to the emergency escape suit locker. “This way,” he said over his shoulder.
Tray watched Loris and Bricknell follow him to the hatch. Para came up beside Tray and half-whispered, “I will not need a suit. I am built to withstand the water pressure for several hours.”
Nodding, Tray muttered, “Good.” And he fell in line behind Bricknell, with Para behind him.
* * *
Kell was sliding back the hatch to the escape suit locker. Tray saw that the suits were huge, much bigger than he had imagined them from the pictures in the vessel’s emergency procedures directions.
“It’s like those giant statues of Ramses, in Egypt,” Bricknell gasped.
“No time for gawking,” Kell snapped. “Get into the suits.”
Tray saw that each suit was labeled with their names. He quickly found his own, and saw that Loris’s was next to his.
Taking her by the wrist, he led Loris between their two suits and showed her the entry hatch built into the suit’s back. Bricknell was already clambering into his suit, on the other side of hers.
Tray grasped Loris by the waist and raised her high enough so she could lift her feet over the rim of the suit’s hatch. Then she grasped the upper rim and pulled herself completely inside. Turning suddenly, she leaned out of the hatch and kissed Tray on the cheek.
“Thanks for the help,” she said.
Tray nodded wordlessly.
“Now get into your own suit, hero,” Loris directed.
Tray grinned at her. “Aye, aye.”
Turning, he pulled himself into the suit with his name stenciled on its chest. Just as he slid inside, he noted Kell half-sitting on the edge of his suit’s hatch, calling out at the top of his voice, “Gyele, come on. We’re ready to button up.”
“One more minute,” Sheshardi’s voice came through the overhead speakers.
Kell shook his head and slid all the way inside his suit. Tray did the same.
The suit’s interior lit up automatically as Tray swung the hatch shut and sealed it. Looking around, he saw that he had very little room to move about. It was like being inside a coffin. Pleasant thought, he said to himself. Rising to a standing position, he lifted his head into the suit’s helmet. There was no window to see the outside, but a set of smallish viewscreens was arrayed along the helmet’s interior.