by Ben Bova
“Welcome to Australia,” he said. Gesturing to the gracefully curved chair of leather and chrome in front of the desk, he invited, “Please, Ms. Ambrose, be seated and allow me to introduce myself: I am Dr. Lin Pohan, ship’s medical officer.”
Dr. Pohan was as small as the surly officer who had ushered Deirdre aboard the Australia. He was almost totally bald, except for a fringe of dull gray hair, but a luxuriant mustache of silver gray curled across his face. His skin was spiderwebbed with creases, and as he smiled at Deirdre his eyes crinkled with good humor. He looked like a wrinkled old gnome to Deirdre. She realized this man had never taken rejuvenation treatments. She had learned in her history classes that some people on Earth shunned rejuv on religious grounds. Could he be one of them?
“I’m pleased to meet you,” she said, a little hesitantly.
Dr. Pohan bobbed his head up and down, then replied, “We must go through the formalities of checking your boarding file and medical record.”
“That should all be in your computer,” Deirdre said.
“Yes, of course. But then I’m afraid I must subject you to a complete physical examination.”
“But my medical records—”
“Not good enough,” said Dr. Pohan, almost jovially. “You see, we have had a death aboard ship on our way out here from Earth. It is my duty to make certain we don’t have any others.”
“A death? Someone died?”
“One of the passengers. Most unusual. And most puzzling. If I can’t track down the reason for it, we will not be allowed to disembark our passengers. We will have made the long voyage to Jupiter for nothing.”
CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS
Australia was a passenger vessel, designed to carry paying customers swiftly from the Earth/Moon system out to the rock rats’ habitat in orbit around the asteroid Ceres. It was built like a slim tower, with a dozen decks between the bridge in the ship’s nose and the fusion propulsion plant at its tail. Unlike the cumbersome ore ships that plodded across the inner solar system, Australia drove through space under constant acceleration, usually at one Earth-normal gravity or close to it, accelerating half the distance, then flipping over and decelerating the rest of the way. Except for the brief periods of docking or turn-around, the passengers would feel a comfortable one g environment for the entire voyage. Comfortable, that is, for those who were accustomed to Earth-normal gravity.
This trip was special, though. Instead of terminating at Ceres and then heading back Earthward, Australia was going on to the research station in orbit around the giant planet Jupiter, a journey that would take an additional two weeks from Ceres.
Captain Tomas Guerra’s quarters were up at the top of the stack, within a few steps of the bridge. The rooms were comfortable without being overly sumptuous. Guerra did not believe in showy displays of privilege: He kept the décor of his quarters quite simple, almost minimalist. Bulkheads covered in brushed aluminum. A few silk screen paintings of misty mountains and terraced rice paddies on the display screens. Spare, graceful Scandinavian furniture. His one obvious display of luxury was his set of solid gold cups in which he served sherry to special guests.
Katherine Westfall was indeed a very special guest. Reputedly the wealthiest woman in the solar system, she was a member of the powerful governing council of the International Astronautical Authority, the agency that controlled all spaceflight and much of the scientific research done off-Earth. Rumor had it that she was being considered for the chairmanship of the council.
“It’s very good of you to invite me to dinner,” said Katherine Westfall, in a hushed, little-girl voice.
Captain Guerra dipped his gray-bearded chin once. “It is very good of you to take the time to join me.”
Katherine Westfall was as slender and petite as a ballerina, and like a dancer she calculated virtually every move she made far in advance—as well as every word she spoke. She should have been at ease in the comfortably upholstered recliner in the captain’s sitting room, but as she smiled demurely at the man he got the impression from her steel gray eyes that she was wary, on guard.
“I hope you weren’t inconvenienced by the lower gravity while we were docked with Chrysalis,” the captain said politely. “The rock rats keep their habitat at lunar g.”
Katherine Westfall thought a moment, then replied, “It was rather exhilarating, actually.”
“Low g can be stimulating, can’t it?” the captain said. “But we make better time under a full gravity. Once I had to make an emergency high-thrust run to the research station in Venus orbit: two g.” He shook his head. “Not comfortable at all. Good thing it was only for a few days.”
Captain Guerra had lived on his ship since receiving his commission from the IAA many years earlier. The ship was home, his life, his reason for existence. Rarely did he go down dirtside at the Moon or Earth. He had never deigned to set foot on the Chrysalis II habitat orbiting Ceres in the Asteroid Belt or the Thomas Gold research station at Jupiter. Nor the scientific bases on Mars, or orbiting Venus. To say nothing of the massive habitat in orbit around Saturn, which he regarded as little more than a penal colony. Mercury he had visited once, briefly, because he had to oversee the unloading of a cargo of construction materials there. But most of his time he spent aboard his ship, his mistress, the love of his life.
Of course, he did not lead a completely celibate life. Sometimes very attractive women booked passage on Australia, and rank has its privileges. He wondered if Katherine Westfall would succumb to the romance of interplanetary flight. She hadn’t given a hint of such interest over the weeks since they’d left the Earth/Moon system, but still it was a pleasant possibility.
He had once been lean and sinewy, but the years of easy living as he ran Australia across the solar system had plumped his wiry frame. Now, as he sat facing the IAA councilwoman, he looked as well padded as the seat he reclined in.
Guerra poured two heavy gold cups of sherry, handed one to Mrs. Westfall, then touched the rim of his cup to hers.
“To a pleasant journey,” he said.
“It’s been quite pleasant so far,” Katherine Westfall said, with a smile. She sipped delicately.
“I am curious,” said the captain, “as to the reason for your traveling all the way out to Jupiter.”
For a moment she did not reply, simply gazed at the captain with her gray eyes half closed, obviously thinking about what her answer should be. Her face was long and narrow, with a pointed chin and nose so perfect it could only be the product of cosmetic surgery. Her hair was the color of golden brown honey, stylishly cut to frame her face like a tawny helmet. She wore a pale blue business suit, simple and unadorned, except for an egg-sized sapphire brooch on its lapel.
“As a member of the International Astronautical Authority governing council,” she said at last, so softly that the captain had to lean toward her to hear her words, “I feel it’s my duty to personally review each major research facility the IAA is supporting throughout the solar system.”
Captain Guerra nodded. “Starting with Jupiter?”
“Starting with the Gold station,” Katherine Westfall concurred. Then a slightly impish smile curved her lips. “I feel one should always go for the gold.”
She had been born Kate Solo, named thus by the mother who’d been abandoned by the man she had thought loved her. Growing up in the underground warrens of Coober Pedy, in the heart of Australia’s forbidding outback, little Kate swiftly learned that determination and courage could make up for lack of money and social position. While her mother slaved away in restaurant kitchens, Kate strove to be the best student in the region’s far-flung electronic school system, consistently at the head of her digital classes, even if she had to cheat a bit now and then. She won a university scholarship by the time she was fifteen and moved to Sydney. With her mother.
It was at a party on campus that she met Farrell Westfall, twenty-seven years her senior, quite wealthy from old family money. He was a university regent, she an ec
onomics major in her second year of study. “Go for the gold,” her mother advised her.
Kate married Westfall before she graduated, and lived in a fine house hanging over the rocks on a rugged beach north of Sydney. With her mother.
Kate Solo became Mrs. Katherine Westfall. He was more interested in polo than the business world; she was determined to make certain that the family fortune she had married into was not dissipated in the ups and downs of the global economy—or by the importunings of her husband’s lazy and whining relatives. She guided her feckless husband through the booms and busts of the next quarter century, and by the time he died of an unexpected massive coronary she was one of the wealthiest women in Australia. By the time her mother died, a decade later, Katherine Westfall was one of the wealthiest women on Earth.
She shared her wealth ostentatiously and was ultimately rewarded with a membership on the International Astronautical Authority’s governing council. The directors of the IAA expected their new member to be flattered and malleable. They planned to use her as a public relations figurehead: a handsome, philanthropic woman who could speak the usual platitudes about the importance of scientific research before government councils and influential donors.
They did not realize that Katherine Westfall had her own agenda in mind. “Get to the top,” her mother had often told her. “Whatever you do, get to the top. You’re not safe until you’re on top.”
So Katherine Westfall initiated a subtle yet relentless campaign to be elected chairman of the IAA’s governing council. From that position no one could challenge her, she would never have to worry about falling back into obscurity.
There were others who coveted the chairmanship, of course, but Katherine realized that her most dangerous rival was a man who claimed he had no interest in the position whatsoever: Grant Archer, director of the research station out at Jupiter. Archer was a danger to her, Katherine knew, despite his protestations of modest disinterest. He had to be stopped.
Halfway through dinner in the captain’s quarters, Guerra asked her, “But why Jupiter, if I may ask? Why don’t you start with the research bases on Mars? After all, that’s where the most interesting work—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish. “The leviathans,” she said, her voice still muted but quite firm. “The leviathans are on Jupiter. Nothing else in the entire solar system is so interesting, so … challenging.”
Captain Guerra’s shaggy brows knit. “Those big whales? What makes them so interesting to you?”
Katherine Westfall smiled sweetly, thinking that if Archer could prove that those Jovian creatures were intelligent, the IAA would offer him their chairmanship on a silver platter.
To Guerra, however, she said merely, “The scientists want an enormous increase in their budget so they can study those creatures. I’ve got to pay them the courtesy of visiting their facility in person to see what they’re doing.”
To herself she added, I’ve got to stop them. Cut them off. Bring Archer down. Otherwise I won’t be safe.
LEVIATHAN
Leviathan glided among the Kin along the warm upwelling current that carried them almost effortlessly through the endless sea. But the food that had always sifted down from the cold abyss above was nowhere in sight. All through Leviathan’s existence, the food had been present in abundance. But now it was gone. The Elders flashed fears that the Symmetry had been disrupted.
At least there was no sign of darters, Leviathan’s sensor parts reported. They watched faithfully for the predators. As a younger member of the Kin, Leviathan was placed on the outer perimeter of the vast school of the creatures, constantly alert for the faintest trace of the dangerous killers.
Even so, a deeper part of its brain puzzled over the strangeness. Could the Symmetry truly be broken?
More than that, something new and different was imposing on the Kin. Something alien. Strange, cold, insensitive creatures had appeared in the world. Tiny and solitary, they came from the cold abyss above, cruised off at a distance from the Kin, then disappeared up into the cold again. Uncommunicative creatures, smaller than one of Leviathan’s flagella members. When Leviathan and others of the Kin had flashed a welcome to them, the aliens blinked in gibberish and then fled.
Troubling. It disturbed the Symmetry, even though the Elders maintained that such pitifully small creatures could pose no danger to the Kin. They do not eat of our food, the Elders pictured, and they do not attack us. They can be safely ignored.
But then the flow of food from the cold abyss above had faltered and finally stopped. Leviathan wondered. Could the aliens be the cause of the break in the Symmetry?
Leviathan remembered back to the time when one of those aliens had seemingly helped Leviathan itself when it had wandered far from the Kin and was attacked by a pack of darters. The predators were tearing at Leviathan when this tiny, dark, hard-shelled alien had come to its aid. By the time the Kin reached Leviathan and drove off the darters, the alien was dying, sinking toward the hot abyss below.
Leviathan had tried to communicate with the alien, to thank it, but all the pictures Leviathan displayed on its flank went unanswered. Fearing that the alien would dissociate itself as it sank into the hot depths, Leviathan nosed beneath the pathetically tiny creature and lifted it on its back toward the cold abyss from which it had come.
Leviathan’s reward for this kindness was a spray of painful heat as the alien apparently gathered its last strength and flew upward, never to be seen again.
That was more than two buddings ago, Leviathan remembered. In that time, other aliens had invaded the Symmetry. Invaded. That was how Leviathan thought of them. Strange, cold, hard-shelled creatures that flashed colored images that made no sense at all. They came down from the cold abyss, loitered near the Kin for brief periods, then returned whence they came.
Aliens, Leviathan thought. Not darters or the filmy tentacled creatures that dwelled on the edges of the cold abyss. Creatures the like of which none of the Kin had ever seen before. Not even the hoariest of the Elders had any idea of what they might be.
Aliens. The thought troubled Leviathan. Perhaps the Elders were correct and these aliens could be safely ignored. But why were they here, disrupting the Symmetry? What did they want of Leviathan and its Kin?
Were they responsible for the interruption of the food flow, for the disruption to the Symmetry?
INFIRMARY
As Deirdre slowly undressed in the tiny privacy cubicle of the ship’s infirmary she heard her father’s warning in her mind. The gnomish little ship’s doctor certainly didn’t look like a smooth-talking bloke, but Deirdre wondered if this medical examination was nothing more than an excuse to see her naked. Peering at the cubicle’s overhead panel of lights, she could not see any obvious signs of a camera. But still …
She piled her clothes and underwear neatly on the little stool beside her and slipped into the shapeless green medical gown that was hanging from a peg on the bulkhead. It barely reached down to her thighs. Then she hesitated. If he’s watching me, she thought, he’ll know that I’m finished undressing.
Nothing. Not a sound from beyond the flimsy partition. Deirdre stood there for as long as she could stand it, then cautiously slid the partition aside and stepped back into Dr. Pohan’s office.
He wasn’t even there. Surprised, she didn’t know what to do. She felt slightly ridiculous in the flimsy medical gown. It was a dull olive green, not good for her complexion, she thought.
“DEPARTURE IN FIVE MINUTES,” announced the speaker set into the overhead.
The corridor door slid back and Dr. Pohan came in again, his wrinkled bald face quite serious.“The scanner was off-line,” he said, apologetically. “I had to get a technician to reboot it.”
Deirdre nodded and unconsciously tugged at the hem of her absurdly short garment.
The doctor led her down the corridor past three closed and unmarked doors, then pulled open a fourth. It was another small compartment with a glass booth standing in
its middle. White medical cabinets lined the walls.
Dr. Pohan gestured to the booth. “Kindly step inside. This will only take a moment.”
Wordlessly, Deirdre entered the booth. The doctor shut its transparent door, then went to one of the cabinets. When he opened it, Deirdre saw that a control panel was inside, rows of switches and dials surmounted by a circular display screen.
“Please stand still and hold your breath,” the doctor called, his back to Deirdre.
She heard a faint buzzing, then a single pinging note.
“Very good,” said Dr. Pohan, turning back to her. “You can come out now.”
“That’s it?” she asked as she stepped out of the booth. “That’s the test?”
“Complete three-dimensional body scan,” the doctor said, bobbing his head. “Now all we need is a blood sample.”
He went to another cabinet, rummaged in a drawer, and pulled out a medical syringe. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he said.
Deirdre thought otherwise, but she held out her bare arm for him to puncture.
“DEPARTURE IN SIXTY SECONDS,” said the overhead speaker.
* * *
“MAIN DRIVE IGNITION.”
Australia’s departure from Ceres was barely noticeable. Fully dressed once again, Deirdre felt a slight jar, nothing more. But then she realized that she was beginning to feel heavy, almost sluggish. The ship’s building up to one g, she told herself as she followed Dr. Pohan back to his office. It’s going to be like this all the way out to Jupiter.
Deirdre sank gratefully into the chair in front of the doctor’s desk. Dr. Pohan was smiling pleasantly at her as he tilted slightly back in his chair. The tips of his curling mustache almost reached the crinkled corners of his eyes, she saw.
“You have been a good patient, Ms. Ambrose.”
“What happens now?” she asked.