Leviathans of Jupiter

by Ben Bova

  “Okay,” Yeager said crisply. “Faraday popped a data capsule earlier today. Those shark-things attacked her, banged into her repeatedly.”

  “Any damage?”

  “Nothing that her internal repair systems couldn’t handle.”

  Vishnevskaya added, “The sharks positioned themselves between the vessel and the stream of organics that we believe would have led us to a herd of leviathans.”

  Archer stared at her. “You’re sure of that?”

  “You can review the data transmissions and see for yourself,” Vishnevskaya replied.

  “We’ve never seen that kind of behavior before.”

  Yeager suggested, “Maybe it’s because Faraday’s so much bigger than any other probe you’ve sent into the ocean. Maybe the earlier probes were too small for them to worry about.”

  Nodding, Archer murmured, “That’s something to consider.”

  “Unfortunately,” Vishnevskaya said, “Faraday has not found any leviathans yet. The creatures are not in their usual feeding territory.”

  “Scared off by the sharks, do you think?” Archer mused.

  Yeager shrugged. “Ask your behavioral specialists. We’re just engineers.”

  “We don’t have any behavioral specialists,” Archer confessed. “Until now neither the leviathans nor the sharks have shown enough different kinds of behavior to call for specialists.”

  Andy Corvus gave a humphing little grunt and said, “Exopsychologists. A new field of study.”

  His brows rising, Archer said, “You might be right, Dr. Corvus.”

  “Andy,” he said automatically.

  Archer replied, “Well, if you expect me to call you Andy, I suppose you’ll have to call me Grant.”

  “Deal,” said Corvus. “Grant.”

  “I wonder who we could get to work as an exopsychologist?”

  Corvus lifted his arm and jabbed a forefinger down at the crown of Deirdre’s auburn hair. “Here she is.”

  “Me?” Deirdre blurted.

  Archer asked, “What do you mean, Andy?”

  Leaning forward slightly, his lopsided face totally serious, Corvus said, “Deirdre’s made really meaningful contact with the dolphins. She’s a natural. She’s found out more about them in a couple of swims than I’ve been able to get in weeks and weeks. I think, if anybody would be able to make contact with the leviathans, Deirdre’s the one who can do it.”

  For a long silent moment they all looked at Deirdre, who was too surprised to say anything. She remembered that Dr. Archer had asked her to study the images that the leviathans displayed on their flanks and she hadn’t even started looking at them yet. She saw the unspoken question in Archer’s eyes and had to look away from him, feeling guilty about not doing what he’d asked.

  It’s too much, Deirdre said to herself, apologizing silently to the station director. There’s just been too much happening all at once. I’m sorry …

  Finally Archer turned toward Corvus and asked, “Andy, do you truly believe that any human being can make meaningful mental contact with the leviathans?”

  “To be completely honest,” Corvus said, “I don’t know. There’s a lot of unknowns involved in this. But if I can get a probe into one of them, I think Deirdre’s more likely to establish contact with them than anyone else.”

  “Ms. Ambrose, that means that you’ll have to go down into the ocean when we send Faraday out with a crew,” Archer said, staring into Deirdre’s troubled eyes. “Are you willing to do that?”

  “I…” Deirdre hesitated, glanced at Corvus, then looked back at Archer. “I don’t know. This is all … kind of a surprise to me.”

  “To us all,” Archer said. “But if Andy is right, you hold the key to making contact with an intelligent alien species.”

  FLUID DYNAMICS LABORATORY

  Katherine Westfall felt certain that they were trying to hypnotize her. She sat in a comfortably padded chair, her entire field of vision filled by wall screens that displayed swirling, shifting patterns of soft colors. Dr. Johansen’s calm, flat, slightly nasal voice droned:

  “These are the currents flowing through the Jovian ocean. As you can see, the organic particles produced in the clouds above drift down into the sea and ride along on the currents, which are generated by Jupiter’s very high rate of spin. Coriolis forces predominate in this mechanism, especially since gravitational effects from Jupiter’s moons are almost completely negligible. The ocean is heated from below, of course, by the gravitational energy released by the planet’s ongoing contraction.”

  Katherine watched the drifting, eddying patterns, thinking how pleasant it would be to close her eyes and sink off to sleep.

  Johansen continued, “The currents are quite regular, considering all the possibilities for anomalies that arise in turbulent flow. In fact, the only major aberrations we’ve observed in the patterns of the organics’ flow have occurred when a sizeable impactor hits the Jovian atmosphere, such as the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, almost exactly a century ago. A major cometary impact occurred just a few weeks ago, in the northern hemisphere, and this has disrupted some of the currents of the infalling organics.”

  It’s like being in church when I was a kid, Katherine was thinking. You have to sit there and listen and not squirm and try to stay awake.

  “In actuality,” Johansen’s voice droned on, “we use the organic particles as handy markers to map out the currents, and the disturbances in them. Unless disturbed by a major impact, they generally tend to drift downward until thermal currents rising from deep below…”

  Go to sleep, Katherine said to herself. Just close your eyes and take a little nap. But then a knife-sharp voice in her mind rang out, That’s just what they want! They want to bore you to sleep! They’re doing this to you on purpose, to get you out of the way while they’re busy doing god knows what behind your back!

  Snapping her cold gray eyes wide open, she said brusquely, “Thank you very much, Dr. Johnson.”

  Johansen flinched with surprise. “Er, it’s Johansen, Mrs. Westfall. My name is Johansen.”

  “Of course it is.” Westfall got up from the chair. The screens still swirled their softly colored displays. “Excuse my error.”

  “We’re not finished with the presentation, Mrs. Westfall. The work we’re showing you here represents two generations of observations and detailed fluid mechanics calculations. It goes all the way back to—”

  “I’m certain it’s very important,” Westfall said, putting on a placating smile. “But the time is rushing by and I have so much to do. I’m sure you understand.” She made a show of checking her wristwatch.

  “Of course,” Johansen said, looking defeated. He glanced at his wrist, too. “You’re a very busy woman.”

  Westfall caught the hint of sullen resentment in his tone. And ignored it.

  Johansen clicked the remote controller in his bony hand and the screens went dead gray. Westfall blinked as the overhead lights glowed to life.

  “I appreciate your taking the time to show me all this work your people have been doing,” Westfall said as Johansen slid back the partition that had screened this corner of the fluid dynamics laboratory from the rest of the lab. He was so tall that she had to crane her neck when he was standing beside her.

  “I hope it’s been helpful to you,” he said, pouting like a little boy who was disappointed with his birthday present.

  Westfall allowed the scientist to lead her through the laboratory, past workbenches where younger men and women stood bent over their instruments, past apparatuses that were entirely meaningless to her, and out into the wheel’s circumferential passageway, where two of her aides were waiting for her.

  “No need to escort me,” she said to Johansen. “I know you’re very busy and I can find my way. Thank you very much for such an interesting presentation.”

  “You’re entirely welcome,” Johansen said, weakly.

  With her two dark-suited young men dutifully trailing after her, Westfall headed b
riskly for the elevator that would take her back to the first wheel, where Archer’s offices were housed. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Johansen ducking back inside the laboratory.

  He’s going to call Archer, she thought, and warn him that I’m on the loose.

  * * *

  In the conference room, Archer’s pocketphone buzzed softly. Deirdre was glad of the interruption. They want me to go down into the ocean, she was thinking. They want me to ride in Max’s vehicle, to live in that high-pressure liquid for days on end.

  Looking across the table to the weary-eyed, unshaven Yeager, Deirdre asked, “Max, if you can’t find the leviathans, do you still intend to send a human crew down into the ocean?”

  Yeager shrugged his husky shoulders. “That’s up to him,” he said, tilting his shaggy head toward Archer. “I’m just the guy who designed the ship.”

  Archer snapped his phone shut and tucked it back into his tunic pocket. “Mrs. Westfall’s left the third wheel. She’ll probably burst in here in a few minutes.”

  “Goodie,” said Andy, mirthlessly.

  “All right,” Archer said, “we’d better wrap this up. What are our conclusions?”

  “The whales have moved away from their usual feeding grounds,” Yeager said.

  “And the sharks have gotten together in a bigger gang than we’ve ever seen before,” Vishnevskaya added.

  “Could those two things be related?” Deirdre asked.

  “Got to be,” Corvus said.

  “There’s something else,” said Archer. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but two and a half weeks ago a sizeable comet smacked into Jupiter.”

  “In the leviathans’ feeding grounds?” Corvus asked.

  Shaking his head, Archer replied, “No, it was several thousand kilometers north of that area. And it never reached the ocean, it exploded in the clouds.”

  “So?” Yeager asked.

  “It disrupted the flow of organic particles out of the clouds at that latitude,” Archer said. “We sent a pair of small probes to map the changes in the flow pattern, but they didn’t get very much data before they were crushed by the pressure.”

  Deirdre saw where he was heading. “You think that the flow of organics was disturbed so much that it forced the leviathans to leave their normal feeding grounds?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Archer said.

  “Then where the hell are they?” Yeager demanded.

  Archer merely shook his head.

  “How do we find them again?” Corvus wondered.

  “Follow the sharks,” said Deirdre. “Let the sharks find them for us.”

  Yeager shot a disapproving frown across the table. “The sharks don’t like having Faraday around them. They butted her until she left their area, remember?”

  “Trail them at a distance,” Corvus said. “Keep Faraday as far away from the sharks as her sensors will allow.”

  “Will that be far enough away so that the sharks won’t turn back and attack her?” Vishnevskaya asked.

  Archer puffed out a sigh. “We’ll have to try it and see.”

  Yeager’s chin sank down into his chest. He obviously did not like the idea of risking his vessel against the Jovian sharks.

  At that moment the conference room door slid open and Katherine Westfall stepped in, smiling sweetly.

  “Ah, this is where you are, Dr. Archer,” she said. “None of your aides seemed to know your whereabouts. You really should be more careful about keeping them informed.”

  Archer shot to his feet. “Mrs. Westfall! Finished with your tour of the fluid dynamics lab already?”

  She stood by the doorway, eying the four others seated around the conference table.

  “Yes. It was very interesting, but much more than I could digest in one sitting.”

  Archer walked around the table toward her. “Sensory overload. I’m afraid Dr. Johansen sometimes pours it on too heavily.”

  “Indeed,” Westfall agreed thinly.

  Extending his arm to her, Archer said, “We’ve just finished up here. Let me take you up to my office and we can discuss what you’d like to see next.”

  Westfall took his offered arm. As she turned to allow Archer to lead her out of the conference room she said sweetly to Deirdre, “Oh, Ms. Ambrose. I’m looking forward to seeing you later this afternoon. Why don’t you pop over to my suite and have tea with me. Around fourish?”

  Deirdre nodded dumbly, knowing it was not an invitation but a command.

  IMMERSION CENTER

  Dorn, meanwhile, was sitting on the bottom of the immersion center’s tank, breathing high-pressure perfluorocarbon liquid while he attempted to pilot a simulated spacecraft. The technicians had set up a simplified control console for him to operate. It was more like playing a child’s game than a really demanding simulation, Dorn thought, but he went through the motions without complaint.

  “Rendezvous and docking maneuver,” the console’s speaker called out, its synthesized voice ominously deep in the thick liquid environment.

  “Rendezvous and docking,” Dorn acknowledged.

  A different voice said, “Notching up the pressure ten percent.”

  “Ten percent,” Dorn said. Not that there’s anything I can do about it, he thought. Unless I want to stop this exercise altogether.

  The pressure was bearable, so far. And Dorn was pleased that his skills as a spacecraft pilot returned to the forefront of his mind so easily.

  “You’re doing fine, Dorn.” That was Dahlia’s voice. Even through the distortion caused by the high-pressure liquid Dorn recognized her easily. “All your readouts are well within normal range: respiration, heart rate, everything.”

  All to the good, he thought. I’m showing them that I can pilot Max’s submersible when they’re ready to send in a crewed mission.

  “Upping the pressure another five percent,” said the technician’s distorted voice.

  “Five percent,” Dorn acknowledged, wondering how far they would go—how far he could take it.

  * * *

  Sitting in a comfortably upholstered chair in Archer’s office, Katherine Westfall watched the wall screen display with sheer fascination written clearly on her modeled features. The cyborg was sitting at some sort of console, manipulating keypads with his human hand and his artificial one. He appeared to be in a swimming tank of some sort: The watery light glimmered off the metal side of his face.

  “He’s actually breathing that liquid?” she asked, in a voice filled with wonder.

  “He is indeed,” said Archer, sitting next to her. “The liquid is loaded with oxygen, and he can breathe it just as normally as we breathe air … almost.”

  Westfall shuddered inwardly at the thought of it. But she kept her voice even as she asked, “And all the crew members will have to breathe it?”

  Archer nodded. “It’s because of the pressure down at the depths where the submersible will be operating. Immersing the crew in the perfluorocarbon allows them to withstand much greater pressures than if they were in air, even pressurized air. With the perfluorocarbon every cell in their bodies becomes pressurized. In air, their body cells would be crushed.”

  With an effort, Westfall took her eyes from the screen and turned to Archer. “That’s rather inhuman, don’t you think?”

  The scientist spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s the only way we can get people down that deep. Lord knows we’ve searched for other possibilities. Prayed for them, even.”

  Arching a pencil-thin brow, Westfall said, “The Lord hasn’t seen fit to answer your prayers.”

  “He works in mysterious ways,” Archer replied softly.

  “And you’re determined to send people down there again, after all these years.”

  “We’ve learned as much as we can with robotic probes. If we’re going to make meaningful contact with the leviathans—”

  “Why is that so important?” she demanded.

  Archer clearly looked surprised. “Why? B
ecause they’re an intelligent species.”

  “You can’t honestly believe that those beasts are intelligent.”

  “Why not? Do you think God isn’t big enough to create more than one intelligent species?”

  “But … you don’t know it for certain. You’re assuming it. There’s no real evidence that they’re intelligent.”

  A slow smile spread across Archer’s bearded face. “You’re perfectly right, Mrs. Westfall. I’m following a hunch. I have some reasons for my hunch, but they’re mostly subjective.”

  “So?”

  Still smiling, Archer said, “Mrs. Westfall, most people think that science is a strictly rational, unemotional business. All data and numbers, no human feelings at all. Well, that’s dead wrong. Do you want to know how science really works?”

  Westfall smiled back at him, thinly. “Do tell.”

  “A scientist gets a hunch. An insight. An idea that he knows how something works. He might spend the rest of his life trying to prove that he’s right. His best friends might spend the rest of their lives trying to prove that he’s wrong! It doesn’t matter, in the long run. In the long run, what they uncover—the guy with the hunch and the others who disbelieve him—what they uncover is new facts, new observations, new measurements. Everybody learns. In the long run it doesn’t matter if the fellow’s hunch was right or wrong. What matters is trying to prove it, or disprove it. That’s where the new understandings come from.”

  Westfall stared at him for a long, silent moment, then said in a voice as sharp-edged as a stiletto, “And it doesn’t matter how many people you kill along the way.”

  * * *

  “It is uncomfortable at first,” Dorn admitted. “But you adapt to it quickly enough.”

  Deirdre shook her head. She had met Dorn for dinner, after spending more than an hour in Westfall’s suite, telling her everything that had transpired in their meeting with Dr. Archer, answering her pointed questions as well as she could.