by Ben Bova
“All right,” he said, his nervousness gone now that he knew what had to be done. “We send the vessel into the ocean on an automated mission. No crew. We put her through the exact conditions she’ll have to face with a crew aboard. If she gets through that without a problem, then we’ll be ready for a human mission. Right?”
Archer turned from Yeager toward Johansen and Lowenstien. Each of them nodded agreement. Johansen seemed reasonably compliant about the idea, Yeager thought; Lowenstien wary, almost suspicious.
KATHERINE WESTFALL’S QUARTERS
“So they’re going to send the submersible down there unmanned?” Katherine Westfall asked.
Deirdre nodded. “That’s the plan.”
Westfall had draped herself across the sitting room’s chaise longue, clad in a skintight pair of glittering gold toreador pants topped by an emerald green silk jacket. Her sandals were crusted with gems: Deirdre wondered if they were real jewels. As usual, Westfall looked as if she had arranged herself to have her portrait snapped.
Sitting in an armchair facing her, Deirdre felt almost scruffy in her dark gray pullover blouse and lighter slacks. The coffee table between them was bare. Westfall had offered no refreshments of any kind for this midnight meeting.
“You’re certain of this?” Westfall asked, almost accusingly. “This information is reliable?”
“I got it from Dr. Yeager, the man who designed the vessel. He’ll be in charge of the mission.”
“I see,” said Westfall. A hint of a smile curled the corners of her mouth. “I presume you have Yeager suitably enamored of your charms.”
Deirdre almost laughed in her face, remembering how easy it had been to get information out of Max.
Dorn had told her about the meeting in Archer’s office when he’d met Deirdre in the clinic for her immunization therapy. The cyborg didn’t have to be there, the clinic had a sufficient sample of his blood on hand, but somehow he seemed to show up whenever Deirdre had to get her shots.
“I appreciate your moral support,” she’d said to him as they left the clinic.
“That seems to be my main function these days,” said Dorn. He told her about Max’s need for support in the meeting with Dr. Archer.
Once she was alone in her quarters Deirdre phoned Max.
“I hear you had a big meeting,” she said to the engineer’s image in her phone screen. “I hope it went well.”
Yeager put on a toothy smile. “I’ll tell you all about it over dinner.”
“Fine,” said Deirdre.
Yeager looked surprised, but he broke into his usual leering grin and replied happily, “I’ll pick you up at eighteen hundred hours. Okay?”
“Fine,” Deirdre repeated.
The station’s galley was hardly a romantic trysting place, but Yeager found a table for two and spent most of dinner talking about the meeting and the decision to send Faraday into the Jovian ocean without a crew aboard.
“Can you do that?” Deirdre asked. “I mean, can the ship function without a crew?”
Yeager popped a forkful of apple tart into his mouth and nodded wordlessly as he chewed it quickly and then swallowed it down.
“She’ll run fully automated,” he said at last. But his expression was far from happy.
“Is there something wrong with that?”
He looked down at his plate. Nothing there but crumbs. Without looking up at Deirdre he muttered, “I don’t like it.”
“Your dessert?” She giggled. “You didn’t leave much of it.”
“Not the dessert,” he said, meeting her eyes at last. “I don’t like sending her down there alone. Without a crew.”
“Why not?”
He hesitated a couple of heartbeats, then explained, “She’ll have to go down so deep we’ll lose contact with her. We won’t be able to run her remotely, from here in the station. She’ll have to run fully automated, completely on her own. She’ll be all alone down there!”
“But you said the ship’s designed to operate that way, if it has to.”
Shaking his head, Yeager said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Hell, I designed her! I know what she can do! I even set up a human analog file into her main program; silly thing to do, but I did it anyway.”
“A human analog program?”
“Yeah.” Yeager looked almost ashamed of himself. “Aphorism, adages … that sort of thing. So she wouldn’t feel all alone down there.”
Deirdre smiled at him. “Max, you’re just a big softie. That program isn’t going to make the computer feel better. Computers don’t have emotions.”
“I know. But I do.”
“The ship will do fine, Max.”
“I know. I know.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I just don’t like it. I worry about her. I’d feel a lot better if I was there with her.”
“Golly, Max, you sound as if you’re talking about a child of yours.”
“I am,” he said. “She’s my baby, Dee. I’m scared for her.”
Once they’d left the galley and walked along the passageway toward their living quarters, Yeager fell silent. Deirdre thought that all his bluster and loud confidence in his design was really a front. He was worried that his vessel might fail, that it might never return from its uncrewed mission into the Jovian ocean.
Are his insinuations about me nothing more than bravado, too? she wondered. She realized that she was going to find out.
“Well,” she said, once they’d reached her door, “thanks for an interesting dinner, Max.”
His familiar lecherous smirk returned. “The night is young, fair one.”
Deirdre decided to follow her hunch. “That’s true, it is.”
Yeager was a big, burly man, she realized. But his eyes were a meltingly soft brown. He stood before Deirdre, suddenly tongue-tied.
“Would you like to come in?” she asked, in a breathy whisper.
“I … uh…”
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything to drink.”
“Yeah, well…”
“We could just sit and talk for a while. Or watch videos.”
Yeager licked his lips, shifting slightly from one foot to the other, like a little boy.
Deirdre stepped so close to him that her body touched his. “Or whatever,” she whispered.
“Uh … Dee…” Something close to panic flashed in Yeager’s eyes. “I’m old enough to be your father, you know.”
“Do you want me to call you Daddy?”
He gulped hard. “I … I’ve got two kids your age … older,” he stuttered. “My ex-wife has custody of them. Back in Arizona.”
“That’s a long way from here,” Deirdre murmured.
“I gotta go!” Yeager said. “I gotta review the simulation data and get ready for a meeting tomorrow with the launch crew.”
“Do you have to?” Deirdre importuned.
“See you!” said Yeager. He turned and hurried down the passageway. Deirdre smiled knowingly as she watched him, a big hulking figure shambling along, running away from her. The more they talk, she knew, the less they act.
Katherine Westfall misunderstood her smile.
“You enjoyed your time with Dr. Yeager, it seems,” Westfall said.
Deirdre sighed. “He’s a dear man. A very dear man.”
Westfall eyed her carefully for several silent moments. Then, “How’s your therapy going?”
Startled by the sudden change of subject, Deirdre said, “Dr. Mandrill says my condition is under control.”
“That’s good. And as long as you continue to keep me informed about your colleagues’ progress, we’ll be able to keep your condition under control.”
Deirdre saw perfectly well what she really meant. She’ll be able to keep me under control.
LAUNCH
“You’re the launch director?” Max Yeager asked, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“I am,” said Linda Vishnevskaya, standing before Yeager and looking up at him with unflappable ten
acity. She was a tiny woman, barely as tall as Yeager’s shoulder and elfin slim. Her curly golden hair was like a sunburst in the drab control center, her violet eyes calm and steady.
Almost truculently, Yeager asked, “How many launches have you directed?”
“Every one of them, since I first came to the station four years ago.”
Yeager blinked at her. This little pixie of a girl is the launch director? It was hard for him to accept.
“My team has a perfect record,” she said. “We haven’t lost a single craft. Not on launch. Several have disappeared down in the ocean, of course, but that was after they were out of contact with us, beyond our control.”
Nodding, Yeager admitted, “That’s what I’m worried about.”
Vishnevskaya’s steely expression warmed slightly. “Not to worry, Dr. Yeager. We will treat your vessel with great tenderness. We won’t hurt her, I promise you.”
Yeager almost smiled. “She’s a very valuable piece of equipment, you know. I’ve spent a lot of years working on her.”
“I know,” said the launch director. She reached for Yeager’s hand. “You care very much for your baby. But now it’s time for her to leave you and go out into the great big world.”
Tugging at Yeager’s arm like a toy doll pulling a big stuffed teddy bear, Vishnevskaya said gently, “Come, let me introduce you to my team.”
Yeager followed her dumbly.
* * *
Grant Archer escorted Katherine Westfall through the double doors and into the control center’s upper level. He showed her to one of the chairs built into the circular wall, several steps above the consoles arrayed along the center’s deck.
“Isn’t this rushing things?” Westfall asked once they were seated side by side. “Launching that enormous vessel on such short notice?”
Archer shook his head. “No, Mrs. Westfall. We’re not rushing anything. In fact, we’re slowing down from the plan I originally had in mind.”
“Really?”
“I had wanted to send a human crew as soon as we could.”
“Before I could get the IAA to stop you,” Westfall said.
Archer conceded the point with a dip of his bearded chin. “There is that. But our technical people insisted that we test the vehicle with an uncrewed mission.”
“Even so,” Westfall said, “it’s only been two days since you made that decision. And now you’re actually going to launch it? Into the ocean?”
Pointing to the petite golden-haired woman sitting at the central console, Archer said, “This isn’t like the old days, when it took weeks or even months to get a major launch under way. Our equipment is highly automated. And we have the best team in the solar system, if you ask me.”
Westfall said nothing, but the cynical expression on her sculpted face showed that she was unconvinced.
“Besides,” Archer went on, “we have the benefit of the scoopship operations. They launch vehicles into Jupiter’s atmosphere every week, just about. They’ve got launch procedures down to a routine.”
“The scoopships don’t go into the ocean,” Westfall pointed out.
“But the launch operations are pretty much the same,” Archer countered.
Westfall decided to let the matter rest there, thinking, Archer’s doing his damnedest to get his people down there with the leviathans before I can prevent him from doing it. The IAA governing council is taking its usual time about making a decision to prohibit a human mission. Two dozen windbags: It’s a miracle that they make any decisions about anything at all.
But if this test mission goes well, Archer will have the ammunition to make the council back his play. He doesn’t need the council’s permission for his human mission. All he needs is for the council not to prohibit it. Unless I can get the council to act, and act soon, he’ll send a human crew down there. And if the mission is successful, Archer will be handed the chairmanship of the governing council. I can’t let that happen! His mission has to be a failure. A terrible, tragic failure.
* * *
Yeager was sitting alone in the control center’s upper level across the circular chamber from Archer and Westfall. He barely noticed their presence. His attention was totally focused on the launch team as they began the countdown.
That little Russian kid seems to know what she’s doing, Yeager told himself. The rest of the team is experienced, too. Some of ’em do double duty with the scoopship operations. They know what they’re doing. They won’t screw it up.
Still, his stomach was in knots as the countdown proceeded. At first everything seemed to rush by at hyperkinetic speed: One instant they were an hour from launch and a breath later they were on the final ten seconds.
Time stretched like warm taffy now. Ten seconds. Nine. Yeager knew exactly what was going on in Faraday: internal power on; communications on; propulsion system activated.
Eight seconds. Seven. Six.
At five seconds Faraday became fully autonomous: The ship no longer needed directions from the launch team’s computers.
Four seconds. Three. Two.
Yeager unconsciously rose to his feet, his eyes fixed on the big screen that showed his vehicle, his baby, the pride of his career, hanging in the empty black of space.
One second. Launch.
For an instant nothing happened. Faraday just hung there, unmoving. Something’s gone wrong! Yeager screamed silently.
Then the gigantic sphere rotated half a turn and began to move away from the station. It pushed off slowly for the first few seconds, then flashed away like a child’s kite ripped into the blue by a sudden gust of wind.
She’s gone, Yeager said, standing there on trembling legs. I might never see her again.
PERFLUOROCARBON
“It’s not like the old days,” the technician was telling Dorn. “Back then they took off all your body hair and implanted electrodes in you surgically and whatnot. It was a real mess.”
The cyborg listened without comment, thinking, I have no body hair to remove. He had been instructed to wear nothing but swim trunks, but had found an emerald green hooded robe in the station’s quartermaster supplies and covered himself with it.
They were down in the third wheel. The technician was leading Dorn down a blank-walled corridor, toward a door marked IMMERSION CENTER. He looked like a teenager, almost Dorn’s own height but gawky, awkward, as if his body hadn’t yet become accustomed to his long limbs. His hair was sandy brown, his eyes sea green, his long face marked by prominent teeth in a narrow jaw.
“I mean,” he went on, “now all they have to do is dunk you in the gunk and let your body adjust to breathing it. Simple.”
“Have you tried it?” Dorn asked calmly.
The kid’s eyes flashed wide. “Me? Uh, no, they don’t need to dunk me.”
“I see.”
They pushed through the door and into the immersion center. It was a circular room with what looked like a large sunken bathtub in its center. Two more technicians were waiting by the railing that went around the tub’s perimeter. One was a dark-skinned, round-faced man with frown lines etching his forehead. He was short and stocky; his skin seemed to glow, as if sheened with perspiration. His partner was a rather good-looking brunette woman, her complexion the golden brown of Polynesia. Both wore tan coveralls.
The frowning man looked up from his palmcomp. “I’m Dr. Vavuniva, the chief technician here. You are Mr. Dorn?”
“Just Dorn.”
“Dorn,” the chief technician said. “No first name?”
“Not anymore.”
The tech’s brows shot up and he cast a questioning glance at the woman. She said, “It’s all right. We have his dossier. All the data we need is on file.”
Turning to Dorn, she said, “You’ve been briefed, I presume.”
“Fully,” he said. She was on the tall side, he noted, barely a couple of centimeters shorter than he. Oval face, with a discreet tattoo of a flower on her left cheekbone.
“Is that a dahli
a?” Dorn asked her.
She smiled. “Yes. My given name is Dahlia.”
“I have no given name,” he said.
“So I see from your dossier.”
The chief tech said, “Well, let’s get on with it.” He turned to the younger technician. “You wait here. We might need you to help bring him back.”
The kid nodded. He looked nervous, Dorn thought.
The woman said, “You understand that you’re going to be immersed in liquid perfluorocarbon. You’ll be able to breathe it just as you breathe air.”
Dorn stepped to the railing at the edge of the tub. “I’ll be immersed in there? Fully immersed?”
Dahlia smiled at him. “It’s quite deep.”
The chief tech said, “The tank goes down twelve meters. You’ll be in over your head, don’t worry.”
Following their instructions, Dorn took off his robe while the youngster opened the gate in the railing. Dorn saw the three of them gazing at his body. They’re trying not to stare, he realized. But his half-metal body seemed to hold their eyes like a magnet holds iron filings.
The young tech wondered, “How will the gunk react with … uh, with his…”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Dr. Vavuniva said. “The perfluorocarbon won’t react with his metals, we checked that several times.”
Dahlia picked up a belt of weights from the deck and offered it to Dorn. “You’ll need this,” she said.
“You’ve got to go down to the bottom,” the chief tech explained, “and stay there for at least fifteen minutes.”
Dorn nodded and accepted the belt from Dahlia, with a murmured, “Thank you.” He fastened it around his waist.
“The belt has a built-in phone. Once you’re fully immersed you’ll be able to speak almost normally. And with the phone you can talk to us while you’re down there.”
Dorn thought, Call for help, she means. But she’s too kind to say it.