Jupiter Project

by Gregory Benford

  “Did you recharge yours when you came back in?”

  “Ah…no.”

  “I didn’t either.” Another screw-up.

  I checked them anyway. Not much help, but some. I juggled figures around on the clipboard, but you can’t sidestep simple arithmetic. We were in deep trouble.

  Yuri stepped up the Cat’s pace. It clanked and bounced over slabs of jutting purple ice. “I conclude,” he said, “that we should call the base and ask for assistance.”

  I frowned. “I don’t like to do it.”

  “Why? We must.”

  “Somebody will have to fly out here and drop air packs. There’s always some risk, because even Ganymede’s thin air has winds in it. We don’t understand those winds yet.”

  “I see.” Yuri gave me a guarded look. “An extra mission. It would not sit well with Commander Aarons, would it?”

  “Probably not.” I could tell Yuri was thinking that when the report came to be written, he’d get the blame. “But look, the real point is that somebody back at base would have to risk his neck, and all because of a dumb mistake.”

  Yuri was silent. The Walker rocked on over the broken ground. A thin pink ammonia stream flowed in the distance.

  “You may not like it,” he said, “but I do not intend to die out here.” He reached for the radio, turned it on, and picked up the microphone.

  “Wait,” I said. “I may…”

  “Yah?”

  “Let’s see that map.” I studied it for several minutes. I pointed out a spot to Yuri and said, “There, see that gully that runs off this valley?”

  “Yes. So what?”

  I drew a straight line from the gully through the hills to the next broad plain. The line ran through a red dot on the other side of the hills. “That’s a way station, that dot. I’ve been there before. We’re slated to check it in two days, on our way back. But I can reach it by foot from that gully, by hiking over the hills. It’s only seven kilometers.”

  “You couldn’t make it.”

  I worried over the map some more. A few minutes later I said, “I can do it. There’s a series of streambeds I can follow most of the distance; that’ll cut out a lot of climbing.” I worked the calculator. “Even allowing for the extra exertion, our oxy will last.”

  Yuri shrugged. “Okay, boy scout. Just so you leave me enough to cover the time you’re gone, plus some extra so a rocket from the base can reach me if you crap out.”

  “Why don’t you walk yourself?”

  “I’m in favor of calling the base right now. But I’ll wait out your scheme if you want, right here, without budging an inch. I don’t like risks.”

  “There’s a chance that rocket plane might foul up and crash, too. At least my way we can do something to help ourselves and not sit around on our hands waiting for assistance.”

  “Those are my terms, Bohles. If you go, you go alone.”

  I grimaced. It was a lousy, stinking mess with no good solutions. “Look, Yuri…” I began.

  “Stuff it, Bohles. I will not try a crazy scheme for the sake of your pride.”

  “Pride?” I said between clenched teeth.

  Yuri leaned back casually in the pilot’s chair. “You have absolutely got to be in first place. You’re Matt Bohles, mama’s little boy. Always have to win. Hell, look what you do on vacation—run around doing the dog work for the base.”

  “I do it because I like it.”

  “Then you’re dumber than you look, goody-boy.”

  “You stupid son of a bitch—”

  “No melodramatics, kid.” He looked at me carefully, calculating, but I was too angry to think what that meant. “Come on, we’re wasting oxygen. What is going to win: common sense or pride?”

  “You frapping bastard—”

  “Eh, goody-goody?”

  I was boiling. I should’ve smacked him, but when I raised my hand something inside me cringed. I saw that dazzling noon sunshine, the dry schoolyard, that gang beating me—

  I stopped. I’ve got to get away, I thought. I didn’t stop to think that Yuri was herding me just the way he wanted to.

  I turned and yanked my suit off the cabin wall. I didn’t think. I acted.

  The cold seeped into my legs. Pink slabs of ice, gray rock, black sky—and always the thin rasp of my breath, throat raw from coughing. My helmet air was thick and foul. I stumbled along sluggishly.

  Pride. The anger boiled up in me again and I quickened my pace. Pride. I’d fix that bastard. I’d show him I was braver than he was, and smarter, not afraid of anything. I’d—

  The gravel slipped under my boot and I nearly lost my balance. A small landslide eroded away the footing I had. I couldn’t stop to rest—I had to keep moving up the slope, even though my breath was ragged and I was sweating.

  Seven klicks, yeah. A short hop. I felt like it had been seven years since I left the Cat, and still I hadn’t started down the incline onto the plain.

  I struggled up the side of what seemed to be a sand dune, my breath tearing at my throat. The streambed shown on my map had vanished and I was pushing on over broken, hilly terrain. Every fifteen minutes I checked in with Yuri, but I was damned if I was going to ask him for help. Pride goeth before a fall, ha ha. And my throat hurt, my nose dribbled, my eyes stung. Everything tasted oily—air, rations, water.

  The stones and sand gritted against my boots, slipping away, robbing me of balance and speed. I toiled up the incline, angling across. A few boulders buried in the silt helped. I could pull myself up with them for support. The gray line that was the top drew gradually nearer as I lurched along, cursing my own stupidity. It promised nothing—a few random rocks were perched there, sheltering patches of snow.

  Then I reached it.

  And looked beyond, down the face of the hill. The blue way station beckoned serenely in the distance. It was two kilometers away down a broad swath of bare rock. I could reach it in half an hour.

  I’d won.

  Won what? I thought. For who? Why did I do this?

  Chapter 8

  So I got extra oxy from the way station, rested, ate, and hiked back. It was an anticlimactic return—Yuri hardly said anything. I told myself he felt embarrassed.

  I didn’t feel particularly comfortable with him, to say the least. I did a lot of hiking out to visit sensor packages, glad to be on my own.

  By sundown Wednesday we were heading south and angling back toward the base. There’s no true night on Ganymede because Jove hangs there, beaming down a hundred times brighter than Earth’s full moon. After all, it fills 250 times as much of the sky as Luna does from Earth. So night is really a sort of yellowish twilight; the jagged valleys turn beautiful and spooky all at once. All they need is a moaning wind and an abandoned castle or two, to complete the eerie picture.

  We shambled into the base late Thursday night, a little behind schedule and tired. Zak was standing outside waiting for us, along with the mechanic who would check out the Cat to be sure we hadn’t hot rodded her to death. Mechanics are like mother hens, clucking over their machines. This one poked around for half an hour before he gave us an okay. Neither Yuri nor I mentioned the problem with the air tanks; someone would wonder why we hadn’t reported it earlier. I had already had enough red tape for one day.

  I told Zak about it, though, over supper.

  “It saddens me, Matt boy, to see you picking up bad habits. The rule book plainly says that such little dramas should be reported.” He gave me an appraising look. “On the other hand, creative rule-bending is an art form we must all learn, sooner or later.”

  “Looking back on it,” I said, “I’m not so sure I did the right thing.”

  “Look upon it as a valuable learning experience,” Zak said grandly.

  “My conscience bothers me.”

  “Oh? What’s it feel like? I had mine taken out, along with my appendix.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “I think I can lay your pangs to rest, Matt. Yuri reporte
d the whole thing, after the fact.”

  “Huh?”

  “I was on radio watch, remember? Let me consult the Encyclopedia of All Knowledge—” he picked up the binder lying on the bench next to him—“and all will be clear.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My diary. You can’t read upside-down writing. I take it? Good, my secrets are safe.” He opened the binder and ran a finger along to the right entry. “Ah, yes. You called me, said nothing worth immortalizing with a note. Um. Then Yuri called—said you were outside, visiting a sensor package—and asked to speak to Captain Vandez. On a private line.” He raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

  “So Yuri reported it anyway. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “Nor I. Maybe he’s not such a rat after all.”

  “Um. No comment.”

  “Cynic.”

  “Um.”

  I managed to get in a morning’s skiing before the Sagan lifted off. It was fun to feel a chill wind whipping by my ears, lean into a turn and slash a trail across a hillside. Everybody was out in the dome for a last bit of exercise and we all got into an immense snowball fight an hour before liftoff. After I caught two in a row down the back of my collar I surrendered and went back to pack.

  Liftoff was uneventful. By the time Captain Vandez let us out of our seats Ganymede was shrinking rapidly and neither Zak nor I could make out much surface detail. Far away we could see some of the other moons. Io is an orange pizza, volcano-pocked. Europa has a planet-sized glacier and crinkly ridges as tangled as spaghetti. Callisto is a shotgun pattern of overlapping craters. There are thirty-nine Jovian moons in all bigger than ten kilometers across, and lots smaller than that. By the time early expeditions reached J-8 they were tired of the whole business and nobody has even landed on the last four relatively large ones. No reason to—anybody who cares can see them close up if he can get time on the Lab’s big telescope, the Far Eye.

  I woke up just before the Sagan docked at the Lab. Zak had fallen asleep in the middle of composing a poem and gave every appearance of being no longer in the land of the living. He had sprawled out over two seats and was teetering on the edge, about to fall into the aisle. I elbowed him awake and we queued up at the air lock.

  The Sagan was moored above the top of the Can. When I came out of the lock I was looking down the bore of an enormous gun—or at least, that’s the way it seemed. I was faced down, looking through the hollow center section of the Can—the ship bay. I could see red and white stars out the other end, and the dark outlines of shuttles and skimmers floating around the axial cylinder, being serviced.

  I hooked on to a throw line and scooted across to the personnel lock, the same one we’d come out nine days before. The week on Ganymede had given me a touch of groundhog legs—a sense that there really ought to be an up and down, so that I kept looking around for a reference. Going through the personnel lock fouled me up even further, because for a moment I was convinced that I was falling down it. Don’t ask me to explain why; it’s just a reflex, like sneezing. Zak felt it. too; he started spinning his arms for balance the second he came through the lock, which just made him tumble until he stopped it.

  We followed the line through a series of tubes and ended up in a big room so long the curvature hid the heads of people standing against the far wall.

  “Ah, gentlemen. ‘And the hunter, home from the hill.’ Welcome back.”

  I turned and found Ishi smiling at me.

  “The first thing he does is quote a rival poet to me.” Zak said, and pumped Ishi’s hand when I was finished with it.

  “You look thinner,” I said. “Working too hard?”

  “What’s new?” Zak said.

  “Not much. We lost another bathyscaphe-type probe in Jupiter’s atmosphere, but it found nothing new before it failed. And no, Matt, there has been little work for me. I do have to go out tonight to correct a drifting setting in a satellite, however.”

  “Tonight? But that’s the amateur hour,” I said.

  “Correct. I understand you will play guitar. I regret missing it.”

  “Don’t,” Zak said. “I’ve heard him practice.”

  “Oh, a music critic, too?”

  “Come along, Ishi, such louts don’t recognize a renaissance man when they see one.”

  “Wait, we have to get our luggage.”

  The panel behind me slid aside and two men struggled in with a net of baggage. They unslipped a knot and the cases tumbled slowly out; in a one-tenth-g field nothing could be damaged. I located our bags near the top of the stack and started to reach for them.

  “You boys are standing directly in front of my suitcases,” a familiar voice said.

  “These are ours, lady,” Zak said.

  “Don’t you think I know my own—Captain! Captain Vandez!”

  “The Captain is not here, ma’m,” a man said.

  “I demand—”

  “Here’s your case, Zak,” I said. “Ishi—catch!” I threw him one of mine and snatched up Zak’s other bag.

  “Don’t let them get away. They have one of my—”

  I showed the man the names stenciled on the cases. He nodded.

  “I know your names, boys! Don’t think you can—”

  We circled around the pile and I scooped up my second case. The man was talking to her as we went out the door.

  “Good grief,” Zak said, “who is that woman?”

  “Mrs. Schloffski,” Ishi said. “It is rumored that her husband was appointed to the Laboratory through political influence.”

  “The ISA has a lot to answer for,” I said.

  “Matt!” My father had just come out of a side corridor. Jenny wan with him. We all shook hands and I kissed Jenny. She held the kiss a little longer than I expected. It was top quality goods.

  “I’ve got to go pamper a shuttle right now,” Jenny said, an arm around me, “but when I come off my shift…”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll even give you preference over my guitar. I still have some practicing to do before tonight.”

  “Well,” Jenny said, wrinkling her nose, “I suppose I will have to take what I can get.” She gave me a peck on the check and walked away.

  “What next?” Zak said. “Now that Matt here has beaten off the hordes of panting women that follow him everywhere, what say we snag a milkshake and discuss the adventures of our brave heroes amid the terrible snows of Ganymede?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Dad said. “Matt has to go home.”

  “Oh,” Ishi and Zak said together.

  “Well, next time,” Zak finished lamely.

  “See you tonight,” I said. “Ishi, put our names in for time in the squash court. I’m going to beat you yet.”

  Ishi smiled and waved good-bye. Dad and I made our way home through the tubes, talking about minor events that had happened in Monitoring while I was away. They were registering more and more of the unusual debris from outside Jupiter’s moon system. The chunks of rock usually spiraled in and entered Jupiter’s atmosphere near the poles.

  “Could it be a meteor shower from the asteroid belt?” I said.

  “That is one theory.” Dad said. He seemed distracted and didn’t add anything more.

  Mom wasn’t there when we got home; Dad said she was in Hydroponics, working late. I unpacked, crammed my gear into the cubbyholes the Lab calls closets, and came back out to the living room. Dad was sitting at the dining table; his hands were clasped together.

  “Sit down.”

  I did.

  “I talked to Commander Aarons about you yesterday. Captain Vandez mentioned you in his weekly report from Ganymede.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I must admit it surprised me. I did not think you would make such an error.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m talking about the trouble you and Yuri had.”

  “What trouble?”

  Dad grimaced. “The air hose. Captain Vandez reported that you failed to attach it proper
ly, did not notice the mistake, and almost killed both yourself and Yuri. And that you would not report the incident yourself—Yuri had to do it.”

  “What!”

  “It was a good thing Yuri managed to get to that way station. I realize the basic idea was yours, and Yuri reported that, which was a good thing. It made you look better in Captain Vandez’s eyes, so that he did not reprimand you in person. If Yuri had not gotten to that station in time, the Captain would have had to send a ship out to save you. Then it would have gone very badly for you. As things stand—”

  “Dad!”

  “What?”

  “That’s a bunch of lies!”

  “I am simply repeating what Commander—”

  “I know, But it’s all wrong. I didn’t foul up the air hose. Yuri did it.”

  “That isn’t the way it was reported.”

  “But that’s the way it was. That goon didn’t—”

  “Hummm. Wait a moment. Can you prove any of this?”

  “Prove—? Well, no, I—”

  “Yuri radioed in the report. You—according to Captain Vandez—never mentioned the subject afterward, when you were on the air. He thought you were simply too embarrassed to own up. Captain Vandez said he thought Yuri had been quite fair to you, considering, and he did not regard the matter as too serious.”

  “Well, I do,” I said sharply. “Yuri turned in a false report.”

  “What really happened?”

  I told him. He wondered whether Zak could give any testimony that would back me up. I decided not; I had never said anything over the air that would prove my version of events.

  “I hate to say this.” Dad said, “but it appears Yuri has the edge on you. He reported the incident. You did not. Silence on your part is hard to explain.”

  “I know. That’s what I get for cutting corners on the regulations.”

  “You should have reported in sick in the first place.”

  “And I should have blown the whistle on Yuri when he gummed things up. I thought the job was more important than a bunch of rules.”

  “The rules are there to insure your safety. All of us are living in a hostile environment. It pays to be careful.”

  “I know, I know.” I sighed and leaned on the dining table, my face in my hands.