Tales of the Grand Tour

by Ben Bova

  Yet Jupiter is composed mainly of the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, more like a star than a planet. All that size and mass, yet Jupiter spins on its axis in less than ten hours, so fast that the planet is clearly not spherical: Its poles are noticeably flattened. Jupiter looks like a big colorfully striped beach ball that’s squashed down as if some invisible child were sitting on it.

  Spinning that fast, Jupiter’s deep, deep atmosphere is swirled into bands and ribbons of multihued clouds: pale yellow, saffron orange, white, tawny yellow-brown, dark brown, bluish, pink, and red. Titanic winds push the clouds across the face of Jupiter at hundreds of kilometers per hour. What gives those clouds their colors?

  What lies beneath them?

  The indications are that some fifty thousand kilometers—nearly four times Earth’s diameter—beneath those clouds lies a boundless ocean of water, an ocean almost eleven times wider than the entire Earth and some five thousand kilometers deep. Heavily laced with ammonia and sulfur compounds, highly acidic, it is still an ocean of water, and everywhere else in the solar system where there is water, life exists.

  Is there life in Jupiter’s vast, deep ocean?

  In my novel Jupiter I postulated that there is not merely life in the giant planet’s vast ocean, but gigantic creatures of a high order of intelligence. It was a challenge to depict truly alien life forms, extraterrestrials that are more than actors in funny makeup. Leviathan is a creature of its environment, an otherworldly giant that consists of a huge colony of many different semi-independent components, a creature that communicates with others of its kind mainly through light, by flashing pictures on its luminescent flanks. Alien.

  The following excerpt from the novel Jupiter is told from the viewpoint of Leviathan, down in that dark and turbulent Jovian ocean; it deals—in part—with Leviathan’s first fleeting encounter with the puny, strange, alien explorers from another world: Earth.

  LEVIATHAN

  It is a boundless ocean, more than ten times wider than the entire planet Earth. Beneath the swirling clouds that cover Jupiter from pole to pole, the ocean has never seen sunlight, nor has it ever felt the rough confining contours of land. Its waves have never crashed against a craggy shore, never thundered upon a sloping beach, for there is no land anywhere across Jupiter’s enormous girth: Not even an island or a reef. The ocean’s billows sweep across the deeps without hinderance, eternally.

  Heated from below by the planet’s seething core, swirled into a frenzy by Jupiter’s hyperkinetic spin rate, ferocious currents race through this endless sea, jet streams howling madly, long powerful waves surging uninterrupted all the way around the world, circling the globe over and again. Gigantic storms wrack the ocean, too, typhoons bigger than whole planets, hurricanes that have roared their fury for century after century. It is the widest, deepest, most powerful, most dynamic and fearsome ocean in the entire solar system.

  Leviathan followed an upwelling current through the endless sea, smoothly grazing on the food that spiraled down from the abyss above. Far from the Kin now, away from the others of its own kind, Leviathan reveled in its freedom from the herd and their plodding cycle of feeding, dismemberment, and rejoining.

  To human senses the boundless ocean would be impenetrably dark, devastatingly hot, crushingly dense. Yet Leviathan moved through the surging deeps with ease, the flagella members of its assemblage stroking steadily as its mouth parts slowly opened and closed, opened and closed, in the ancient rhythm of ingestion.

  To human senses Leviathan would be staggeringly huge, dwarfing all the whales of Earth, larger than whole pods of whales, larger even than a good-sized city. Yet in the vast depths of the Jovian sea Leviathan was merely one of many, slightly larger than some, considerably smaller than the eldest of its kind.

  There were dangers in that dark, hot, deep sea. Glide too high on the soaring currents, toward the source of the bountiful food, and the waters grew too thin and cold; Leviathan’s members would involuntarily disassemble, shed their cohesion, never to reunite again. Get trapped in a treacherous downsurge and the heat welling up from the abyss below would kill the members before they could break away and scatter.

  Best to cruise here in the abundant world provided by the Symmetry, between the abyss above and the abyss below, where the food drifted down constantly from the cold wilderness on high, and the warmth from the depths below made life tolerable.

  Predators swarmed through Leviathan’s ocean: Swift voracious Darters that struck at Leviathan’s kind and devoured their outer members. There were even cases where the predators had penetrated to the core of their prey, rupturing the central organs and forever destroying the poor creature’s unity. The Elders had warned Leviathan that the Darters attacked solitary members of the Kin when they had broken away from their group for budding in solitude. Still Leviathan swam on alone, intent on exploring new areas of the measureless sea.

  Leviathan remembered when the abyss above had erupted in giant flares of killing heat. Many of Leviathan’s kind had disassembled in the sudden violence of those concussions. Even the everlasting rain of food had been disrupted and Leviathan had known hunger for the first time in its existence. But the explosions dissipated swiftly and life eventually returned to normal again.

  Leviathan had been warned of another kind of creature in the sea: A phantasm, a strange picture drawn by others of the Kin, like nothing Leviathan had ever sensed for itself: small and sluggish and cold, lacking flagella members or any trace of community. It was pictured to have appeared once in the sea and once only, then vanished upward into the abyss above.

  None of the others had paid much attention to it. It was so tiny that it could barely be sensed at all, yet for some reason the vision of its singular presence in the eternal ocean sent a chilling note of uneasiness through Leviathan’s entire assemblage. It was an unnatural thing, alien, troubling.

  Cruising through the eternal sea, Leviathan’s sensory members warned of the storm ahead. Leviathan’s eye parts could not see the storm, it was much too far away for visual contact, but the pressure-sensing members along Leviathan’s immense bulk felt the tug of currents that wanted to draw the whole world ocean into the storm’s voracious maw.

  It was a huge vortex, its powerful spiral generating currents that grew stronger and stronger until even creatures as powerful as Leviathan and its kind could no longer resist and would be sucked into a whirling, shattering dismemberment.

  Leviathan felt no anxiety about the distant storm, no dread of its insatiable lure. At this distance the storm was too weak to be dangerous, and Leviathan had no intention of approaching any closer. Yet it felt a tendril of curiosity. No member of the Kin had ever gone close enough to the storm to actually see it. What would that experience be like?

  The food that sifted down from the cold abyss above seemed to be concentrated more thickly the closer Leviathan cruised to the storm’s vicinity. The inward-pulling currents generated by the storm’s powerful spinning vortex were sucking in the drifting particles until they became veritable streams, thick torrents of food flooding into the storm’s maelstrom, impossible to ignore and difficult to resist. The Elders should be shown this, Leviathan thought.

  Far, far off on the horizon Leviathan’s eye parts detected a faint flickering, nothing more than the slightest rippling of light, barely discernible. Yet it alerted Leviathan to the fact that it was getting close enough to the storm to actually see it. Leviathan felt a strange thrill, a mixture of excitement and apprehension.

  Darters! the sensory members warned.

  Leviathan’s eye parts focused on them, the Darters were that close. Swift, streamlined shapes, lean and efficient, heading straight toward Leviathan. There were dozens of them, spreading out in a globe to surround Leviathan, intent on pressing their attack home. They would not be content with a quick nip at Leviathan’s outer hide; an armada of this size meant to kill and feast on all of Leviathan’s members.

  Escape lay in retreat, but retreat
was in the direction of the storm. The Darters had hatched a clever hunting strategy, knowing that if they pursued Leviathan close enough to the swirling storm front, Leviathan’s members would instinctively disassemble and become easy prey for the voracious hunters.

  Leviathan estimated the distance to the storm’s towering ringwall of turbulence, tested the pull of the currents plunging into the storm, and planned a strategy of its own. It commanded its flagella members to row as fast as they could toward the ceaseless streaks of lightning that showed where the storm raged. No questions, no doubts came back from the flagella; they were blindly obedient, always.

  Now it was a race, and a test of strength. The Darters chased after the fleeing Leviathan, eager to chew through its thick outer armor and puncture the vital organ-members deep within. Leviathan felt the storm’s currents tugging, pulling it closer and closer to the cloud wall. Lightning stroked the clouds and Leviathan’s sensor members cringed at the storm’s mindless, endless roar. Members sent signals of alarm to Leviathan’s central brain: Soon they would automatically begin to disintegrate; they had no control over their hard-wired instincts.

  Darters were close enough now to nip at the thickened dead tissue of Leviathan’s outer hide. Leviathan swatted at them, turning the faithful mindless flagella into brutal clubs that could rupture flesh, crush bone.

  Driven to frenzy by the scent of torn flesh, the Darters redoubled their attack. Leviathan felt their teeth tearing into its hide, all its members flashed signals of pain and fear as the ever-growing pull of the storm’s mighty currents dragged Leviathan closer to involuntary dissociation.

  Now! Leviathan suddenly shifted course, moving to parallel the spinning currents of the storm, battering its way through the net of Darters surrounding it. The Darters were too close to the lightning-wracked storm to be able to resist the inward-pulling currents. Like helpless specks of food they were sucked into the storm, one after another, struggling futilely against the storm’s overwhelming power, shrieking their death howls as they spun into the raging clouds.

  Leviathan struggled, too, straining mightily to slide around the face of the lightning-streaked cloud wall, gradually spiraling away from the storm.

  When at last it was free of danger, Leviathan felt drained, exhausted—and hungry. But there was no food here; on this side of the storm the sea was empty, barren. Only gradually did it realize that it had been swept far from its usual haunts, into a region of the all-encompassing ocean that it had never seen before.

  Leviathan flashed out a call to the others of its kind. There was no response. Alone, weak, and bleeding, Leviathan began to search for food, desperately hoping to build enough strength to swim far from the storm, wondering how it could find its way back to the familiar haunts of the Kin.

  Weakened by its battle against the Darters, slowly starving in this barren region of the sea, Leviathan allowed the powerful currents surging out of the eternal storm to drive it farther from the towering, roaring wall of seething water and its menacing bolts of lightning.

  Its wounded members flared with pain signals. Leviathan needed food, and plenty of it, to heal the flesh torn and shredded by the Darters’ teeth. Yet there was no food to be found.

  At least there were no Darters in this empty part of the ocean. Leviathan doubted its members would have the strength to fight them.

  Food. Leviathan had to find food. Which meant it had to circle the immense storm, and return to the side where the currents flowed into it and the food streamed thickly.

  Riding the circling currents, drifting rather than propelling itself through the ocean, Leviathan wondered if there might be some food—any food—up higher. It was dangerous to rise too high into the cold abyss above, but Leviathan knew it would be death to remain at this depth, where no food at all was available.

  Slowly, cautiously, Leviathan made its flotation members expand. The immense creature drifted higher, nearing exhaustion, nearing the moment when its members would instinctively disintegrate and begin their individual buddings, in the last desperate hope of survival by spawning offspring.

  The old instincts would be of no avail now, Leviathan knew. The members could separate and reproduce themselves in the hope of uniting into renewed assemblies, but what good would that do where there was not enough food even for one? Even if a few individual members survived temporarily, how could they live without the unity of all the others? Apart they were helpless. What could flagella members do without a brain to guide them? How could a brain member exist without sensor members and digestive members and—

  Leviathan halted its pointless musing. There was food drifting in the currents above. The sensor members felt its faint echo vibrating through the water. The storm’s merciless flow swept the particles into its own mindless vortex before they could sift down to the comfortable level where Leviathan swam.

  It would be cold up there, numbingly cold. Leviathan’s kind traced tales of foolish youngsters who rose too high in their haughty search to outdo their elders and never returned, disintegrated by the cold and their members devoured by Darters or the eerie creatures that haunted the abyss above.

  But remaining at this level meant starvation. Leviathan needed enough food to allow it to circle around the great storm and return to the familiar region where the food rained down without fail.

  Upward Leviathan rose, straining against the growing cold, heading toward the meager trickle of food that its sensor members had detected.

  It was not food, Leviathan realized. Despite the numbing cold and the continuing pain signals from its wounded members, Leviathan’s eye parts showed that the echoes the sensors detected came not from a thin stream of food particles but from one single particle, much larger than any food Leviathan had ever known, yet puny compared to Leviathan or even to the Darters.

  It was that alien thing that had been seen before. Far, far off in the distance, up so high that Leviathan dared not even try to approach it, a strange circular object was struggling through the abyss above, sending out eerie signals that made no sense whatsoever.

  Is this real? Leviathan wondered. Or are we so close to disintegration that our brain is beginning to fail?

  The alien continued to flash signals mindlessly into the empty ocean, totally oblivious to Leviathan drifting in the cold empty sea, far out of range of its sensing systems.

  Starving, dying, Leviathan drifted in the cold empty abyss high above its usual level in the ocean. It took an effort of will to hold its parts together, to prevent them from spontaneously disintegrating.

  We must stay together, Leviathan kept repeating. If we break apart each component of us will die, whether we bud or not. We will become food for the scavengers who wait below in the hot darkness of the depths. Together we might survive. If we can stay together long enough we might find food.

  But the ocean was cold and barren at this level. Legends pictured monsters up in this frigid emptiness, slithering beasts that preyed on each other and any of Leviathan’s kind foolish enough to drift this high.

  Leviathan thought that the legends were mere tales, stories flashed by elders to frighten young ones away from climbing too far from the safe levels of the sea.

  It is time for us to return to the warmer region, Leviathan knew. But it could not force its flotation members to contract. They no longer had the strength to expel the gas that filled them. It took energy to make their muscles contract, and starving members had no energy to work with.

  Cold. Cold and empty. Leviathan could sense its control of its outer members begin to fade. A unit of armored hide peeled away spontaneously. Instead of the promised joy of budding, Leviathan felt a wave of uncontrollable grief wash through its mind. We are disintegrating. We will all die here, alone, never to bud, never to generate new life.

  Unbidden, three of the flagella members broke loose, fluttering mindlessly in the frigid current. Leviathan realized that the end was near. Once the vital organ members dissociated, Leviathan’s existence would
be finished, without even the knowledge that its parts would generate new buds, create new members that would associate into offspring.

  The Symmetry would be disrupted. The eternal cycle of life budding new life would end. It was not meant to be so, Leviathan knew. It had failed to maintain the Symmetry.

  A sense organ shuddered, then began to quiver violently, the first step in its dissociation. There was nothing Leviathan could do to prevent it. Not now.

  And yet . . .

  The sense organ suddenly stopped fluttering and became still. It flashed a picture to Leviathan’s brain. A monster. A long, flat, many-armed creature was quietly slithering toward Leviathan, grasping its dissociated members in its wriggling tentacles and pushing them into a circular, snapping mouth ringed with sharp teeth.

  For a flash of a second Leviathan thought its sensor member was hallucinating, hysterical on the edge of starvation and dissociation. But no, other sense members flashed the same picture. The creature was huge, almost as large as Leviathan itself, and it was nearly transparent, difficult to see until it was very close. It glided through the sea with hardly a ripple, making it impossible to detect at long range.

  It was one of the mindless beasts that the old legends warned of. It was trailing Leviathan, gobbling up its members as they dissociated and drifted helplessly in the cold abyss.

  It was heading for Leviathan itself, tentacles weaving, round tooth-ringed mouth snapping open and shut, open and shut.

  Leviathan’s first instinct was to flee. But in its weakened condition, could it outrun this scavenger? The monster slowed as it approached Leviathan, stretched out two of its longest tentacles and barely touched Leviathan’s hide.

  Pain! Leviathan had never felt an electric shock before, but the jangling, burning pain of the monster’s touch made Leviathan recoil instinctively. The monster pursued leisurely, in no hurry to do battle with Leviathan. It seemed content to wait until more of Leviathan’s members dissociated. It was more of a scavenger than a predator, Leviathan thought.