by Allen Steele
After I dressed, I went to the passenger deck’s head to brush my teeth and splash some cold water in my face. Showers were only allowed once every three days in order to conserve water, and my last bath was only two days ago, when Yoshio had sponged me down shortly after I had been resuscitated from the zombie tank. Karl Hess, the ship’s only other revived passenger, was already in the passenger head; unlike myself, he was due for his shower, and I caught him while he was toweling off in the stall. Despite his self-imposed exile, Hess was aware of the emergency on Amalthea, having monitored ship transmissions through his cabin comlink.
“I hope they manage to get those people off that rock,” he said with, yet when I asked him if he wanted to accompany me to the bridge, he declined the invitation: “The Smiths would probably not appreciate my company.” He made no mention of the overtures he had made toward Leslie Smith-Tanaka, nor did I press the issue.
On my way up the access shaft, I noticed that the hatch to Deck 1-C was ajar. I stopped on the ladder and peered inside; Wendy and Kaneko were seated on the carpeted floor, absorbed in a game of scissors-cuts-paper. It looked like Wendy was winning. They didn’t notice my spying, so I moved on up the ladder, heading for the bridge.
I paused in the foyer to study the holo displays. The ship’s position was marked by a blue oval, gliding through the dense silver strands of Jupiter’s radiation fields; other screens depicted the orbits of Elara, Lysithea, Himalia and Leda. While I slept, the Medici Explorer had passed through the second belt of moons; dead ahead were the orbits of the Galilean satellites. Callisto itself was a tiny, slate-grey orb, less than a million nautical miles from our present heading, and Ganymede was magnified on one screen as a tiny, brightly spotted replica of Mercury.
Jupiter dominated every real-time camera image. One screen displayed a telescopic view of the planet, and I found myself transfixed by the rotating milky-white and reddish-orange bands of its cloud patterns, each describing their own clockwise movement through the upper stratosphere. As I watched, the Red Spot slowly moved into view from Jupiter’s farside, a vast scarlet wound in the southern hemisphere where a hurricane large enough to engulf five Earths has raged as long as recorded human history, perhaps far longer.
Magnificent swirl and ebb, flux and flow. The bridge was much quieter now. Young Bill was absent, having finally been relieved from duty, but Betsy was still holding her post at the navigation board. Wendy was cleaning up trays and sandwich wrappers left over from lunch, the second consecutive meal to have been eaten in the command center. I noticed that William Smith-Tate isn’t around; when I asked Saul why, he informed me that Old Bill was checking out the ship’s boat for the rescue mission.
As it turned out, the chief engineer would be flying the Marius down to Amalthea to pick up the crash survivors. And, unless Yoshio Smith-Tanaka managed to win the argument between the two men, he would be doing it alone.
The captain typed a command into his keyboard, bringing up a schematic diagram of the operation on a flatscreen at his station. Although the three cargo freighters would continue on their prearranged trajectory to Callisto, Medici Explorer had already broken away from the convoy and had diverted its heading to fly closer to Jupiter. In fact, two of its four main-engine retrofires had already been cancelled, in order to cut down the number of hours until periapsis, the ship’s closest approach to Jupiter.
The flight profile called for Medici Explorer to make a polar flyby of Jupiter. In order to avoid the equatorial plasma torus which lies between Io and Jupiter, the vessel would fly beneath the torus, heading towards the planet’s south pole. Although the Explorer would never get closer than Io’s orbit, it would launch the Marius once we had passed under the torus.
“Once we get here,” Montrose said as he rotated the image to display the far side of Jupiter, “we’ll fire main engines again to put us in a slingshot trajectory up and over Jupe’s north pole. That should get us above the plasma torus, and Bill can fly up to meet us there. It’ll be tricky, but we’ve run it through the computers a few times and they say we can do it.”
What’s tricky about it? “First, Bill’s going to be cutting it close,” Saul explained. “From beginning to end, he’s got about six hours to find the crash site, land safely, transfer the survivors over to his ship, and launch again. Remember now, everyone’s going to be wearing exos, so it’ll slow them down a bit on the surface.”
The captain tapped a couple of more commands into the computer. The simulation shifted to Jupiter’s north pole; a long, orange-tinted fantail appears on the screen, sweeping outward from the planet. “Then we’ve got to deal with the leeside of the magnetosphere,” he continued. “The solar wind blows all that radiation outward from the planet, so there’s a bit of turbulence over there we can’t avoid. Solar-side, the magnetosphere extends only about five million miles from Jupiter. We can handle that without much problem…but on the leeside, it reaches almost out to Saturn. This ship can take it okay, but Bill’s going to have fight his way through it. That, plus having to contend with the gravity well…”
He shrugged. “Well, he can do it, and he wants to do it, so there you go.”
“And he’s flying down there by himself?”
The skipper’s lips pursed together thoughtfully. “He says that’s the only way he’ll do it,” he said. “The Marius can accommodate up to six people, but each person you put aboard adds to the payload. The trick isn’t so much getting to Amalthea as it is leaving again. He says to need those few extra kilos of fuel to bring the poor bastards home.”
“But you don’t agree.”
“Yoshio doesn’t. He thinks he needs to go down there to help the wounded man once they’ve got him off the shuttle, but Bill doesn’t want to risk someone else on this mission.” The skipper pointed at another screen on his board; a TV image showed a large, silver-gold spider crawling across the fuselage of the Marius. “That’s Tiger, one of the ’bots. You haven’t met him because he stays outside the ship. Right now he’s removing every piece of excess mass from the boat, trying to strip it down to its bare essentials…right now, see, it’s removing a cargo truss.”
Montrose indicated the vertical bar of numbers next to Tiger’s image. “That’s Tiger talking to me. When he says that he’s shaved Marius down to nothing it can’t use, I’ll add up the lost kilos and make the final call. If we lose enough mass for Yoshio to tag along for the ride and still give them a good chance, then I’ll override Bill and send the doctor down with him.”
“Have you consulted with the company on this?”
Montrose gave me a dour look. “We can’t communicate with ConSpace. Our current position puts us out of direct radio contact with Earth for another two months. However, I checked it out with the expert-system and it told me the mission isn’t out of line with company policy. Everything’s been duly entered in the logbook.” He smiled briefly. “Believe me, I wouldn’t do anything drastic without first consulting the company, even if it’s only by surrogate. If I didn’t, Lloyd’s would shit a brick.”
“And the family? How do they feel about this?”
The captain’s smile disappeared. He didn’t say anything for a few moments, staring instead at his console screens. I noticed that a chill silence had descended upon the bridge. Although no one was looking at us, the carefully averted eyes of Betsy, Jeff, Leslie, and Yoshio told me that they had been listening to the entire conversation. Only Wendy, seated in the rest alcove with her hands properly folded together in her lap, was watching us, her gaze discomfortingly direct.
“It isn’t my place to speak for the Smiths,” Montrose said at last, his tone of voice suddenly cool and formal. “If you wish to interview one of them, may I suggest that you speak to his first-wife. Lynn’s currently on duty in the hydroponics bay, Arm Two.”
Somehow, I had overstepped the boundaries. No one offered to show me the way down to the bay. I murmured an apology, which no one cared to acknowledge, and dismissed myself from the bridge.
Medici Explorer’s hydroponics bay takes up three decks of Arm Two, just above the hibernation area where I spent the last nine months of the voyage. It’s a miniature greenhouse in space, humid and smelling of green, growing things far away from all but the most simple lichen. Patrolling the top deck was another ’bot, Knucklehead, which greeted me less cordially than its brother, Ditz: “Shut the hatch! Wipe your shoes! Don’t touch anything!”
Knucklehead’s disposition mirrored that of its mistress. I found Lynn Tate-Smith on the second level, carefully pruning the tomato vines growing from one of the long tanks which are crowded together in the compartment. She barely looked up at me as I climbed down the ladder.
“I thought you might be coming to see me sooner or later,” she said. She hesitated, then added, “It’s about my first-husband, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I sat down on a stool next to the ladder, placing my notebook on my knees. “If I could only have a few minutes of your time…”
“To ask some personal questions so you can fill some more pages of your book.” Her clippers made quick, methodical snips as they moved through the vines, trimming away smaller leaves which she dropped into the pocket of her canvas apron. “Would you like to know how many interviews I’ve turned down, Mr. Cole? How many other writers like you have intruded upon my privacy?”
“Your son doesn’t have any problems about talking to me,” I said. The clippers paused for a half-second, then continued their work. “Bill doesn’t think I’m an intrusion.”
“My son…” She took a deep breath and carefully placed the clippers down on a table before she turned around. “My son, if you must know, would rather not be on the ship. In fact, he’s all but announced to the family that he wants to leave after this voyage. Of course he’s willing to talk to you…he doesn’t think he has anything to lose by being your subject.”
A quick, cynical smile. “Everything to gain, most likely. He’s probably hoping it’ll make him a big man at whatever college accepts him on Earth.”
It was the first time I had encountered Lynn Smith-Tate since our brief introduction nine months earlier. She was a tough-looking, no-nonsense woman, whose muscular arms and lean face hinted at a rural heritage. I later learned that her ancestors had been Mormon farmers in Missouri, scrabbling together a livelihood while friends and relatives were being torched out of their cabins or hanged by lynch mobs. Like her first-husband, there was very little which seemed loveable, or loving, about her, yet there must have been something hidden beneath her hard-bitten exterior which lent itself to intermarriage.
I told her that I don’t think Young Bill’s being opportunistic; he was simply being friendly toward an author whose books he had read and openly admired. That seemed to reach her; her expression softened a bit as she pulled off her gloves and dropped them on top of the clippers.
“So long as it’s short,” she says, “and it isn’t about sex.”
The last thing I wanted to know about this woman was her sexual appetites. “When I asked your son about his dad flying the rescue mission, he said that he wouldn’t ‘have it any other way.’ He also said he’s done this sort of thing before. What did he mean by that?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because I’m asking you.”
Lynn gazed down at her shoes for a few seconds, then pushed her hair back from her face and looked straight at me. “You know about the Tycho Brahe, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Bill was the second mate on that mission,” she said. “He was one of the survivors.”
It had been William Tate, she went on to tell me, who had managed to get the Tycho Brahe back to Mars, thereby saving the lives of the two other men who had survived the asteroid collision. Because he had done so, he had also been able to rescue his own career from ruin. The ISC board of inquiry had ruled him inculpable for the disaster, and ConSpace had later selected him for the Medici Explorer on the basis of that experience.
“It’s haunted him, Mr. Cole,” she said. “No matter what the board ruled, he still believes that he’s partially at fault for the Brahe disaster…even though he wasn’t,” she quickly added.
“So that makes him feel responsible for the people down on Amalthea,” I said.
Lynn quickly shook her head. “No, no, he doesn’t think that. He just doesn’t want to see anyone else die if he can possibly help it. Since he’s the only person who’s qualified to fly the Marius in a situation like this…” Her thin lips became a narrow line. “But it’s why he’s hard on everyone, even the kids. He’s seen what happens when things get loose, and he doesn’t want to go through another Tycho Brahe.”
“So you’re not worried about the rescue attempt?”
Again, the faint smile. “Mr. Cole, as far as Bill is concerned, there’s no such word as ‘attempt.’ You do it once, you do it right, or you don’t do it at all. When our son was very young, my husband would spank him if he used an excuse like, ‘But I tried, Daddy.’ Maybe that’s perfectionism and maybe you’re right, but there’s too many people who use such phrases as convenient cop-outs. Bill won’t abide that sort of thinking, and neither will I.”
She shook her head again. “No, I’m not worried about my first-husband. He’ll pull off this mission, and he’ll come back with the survivors. And that’s all there is to it.”
Lynn Smith-Tate picked up her gloves and shoved her calloused hands into them, then took up the clippers again. “Thanks for not asking me about sex. That was very considerate of you.”
Then she turned back to the tomato vines and recommenced her meticulous pruning of unwanted leaves. Our conversation was over.
Although there are three decks to the ship’s hydroponics bay, one can enter the section only through the hatch at the top level; the idea is to contain the humid environment of Hydroponics as much as possible. When I climbed up the ladder to 2-C, I discovered that my interview with Lynn Smith-Tate had not been done in privacy.
William Smith-Tate sat on a stool by the access hatch. Arms resting on his thighs, broad shoulders hunched forward, large hands clasped together between his knees, he resembled a Spanish bull awaiting the arrival of the matador. I didn’t ask him if he had been eavesdropping, and he didn’t ask me what I had said to his first-wife: the answers to both questions were self-evident, yet he still wanted to know something.
“Are you trying to mess with me?” he said.
I stood next to the ladder, realizing that the confrontation had been inevitable, yet nonetheless wishing I could disappear in a cloud of vapor. Smith-Tate glowered at me, patiently awaiting my reply, while I wondered whether Yoshio’s surgical skills extended as far as being able to reattach my head to the neck.
“No,” I said. “I’m not trying to mess with you, Bill.”
He stared unblinkingly at me, his hostile gaze never wavering. “First, you spend a lot of time talking to my boy, wanting to know everything you can about him. That I can maybe understand…Bill’s an interesting kid. But then you start asking the skipper about me, and when he won’t tell you whatever you’re trying to find out, you go and talk to my wife. The last person you try to talk to, though, is me. I don’t like it when somebody tries to play games behind my back, Mr. Cole.”
“I’m not playing…”
“I didn’t ask you.” His voice never changed from a dead monotone, yet his anger was all too apparent. He paused for a moment, as if to collect his thoughts again, then he went on. “Like I said, I don’t play games. I’m an honest man, and in return I expect others to be honest with me. I don’t like it when I catch people sneaking around behind my back, and that’s what you’ve been doing, Mr. Cole.”
“I’m not…”
“I’m not finished yet.” Again he paused, this time for a little longer, before he continued again. “So if there’s something you want to know about me for your book, then ask me straight. Don’t go scurrying around like a stowaway rat with your notebook and recorder, trying to stea
l little crumbs here and there. Have you got that, Mr. Cole?”
There was no point in arguing that he had made himself unapproachable from the moment I had crawled through the airlock; the man saw things in only black and white, with no neutral shades of grey. I wondered if he himself was self-aware of just how daunting he was to normal conversation, let alone journalistic inquiry. In fact, I suspected that he disregarded my role as a journalist. Like his first-wife, he saw me as an intruder, and he was the sort of man who didn’t tolerate intrusion.
I slowly nodded.
“All right, then,” he said. “Then here’s all you need to know.” He flicked a hand toward my notebook. “Go ahead. Take notes if you want.”
I opened my notebook and switched on the recorder as he held up a forefinger. “One, I’m going down there to rescue a couple of people who need help. It has nothing to do with the Brahe…that happened many years ago, and I don’t have anything to apologize for on that score. There’s two people on Amalthea who have to be rescued, and I’m the best person for the job. Period.”
He raised a second finger. “Two, I’d do it alone if the skipper would let me. I’m not trying to impress anyone or hog the glory…I’d just rather not risk the lives of anyone else in the family except my own. Unfortunately, that’s not the situation now. We managed to strip enough junk off Marius to allow for another hundred and forty kilos of payload-mass, and that’s just enough to put both Yoshio and one of the ’bots aboard. I have no problems with taking Tiger with me, but I don’t want Yoshio aboard. However, that isn’t my call anymore, so be it.”
“Why are you bringing Tiger?”
“We may need him to cut through the Barnard’s hull. Geoff thinks the airlock hatch may be damaged or buried under rubble, because the girl down there doesn’t see a green light on her status board. Tiger’s laser can do the job quicker than I can, so that’s why we’re bringing him.”