Dark as Day (31 page)

Jack nodded again. “Yep. Just one. The big one.”

“Do you want to send the announcement, if this holds up?”

“It will. Let’s send this one together. It’s the third one that I’m going to send solo.”

“Let’s just say that one of us will be sending it solo. Race you to the corner, eh, brother?” Philip flipped a switch, and the virtual of Jack vanished. “Some things change, but I guess that some things never do. For twelve years, Jack has been telling anyone who would listen that the idea of a big SETI project was his and his alone. It wasn’t, but I’ve given up arguing. Jack seems determined to spend his life trying to prove he’s better than I am.”

Milly said, “Maybe he is.”

“And maybe he just has you wrapped around his little finger. When you see through him, or when things at Argus Station start to go bad, you give me a call.” The wide, innocent blue eyes fixed on Milly. “I will still be here. And maybe you’ll give me a chance to prove I’m not the bastard that Jack makes me out to be.”

* * *

Verification
. Milly had assumed after the first meeting with Philip Beston’s staff that the whole job was as good as over. She should have known better.

Three more days of hard-slog checking were needed, of everything from measures of proper motion of the source to an attempted interferometric analysis of its spatial extent, before both brothers agreed: the parallax as observed from Jovian L-4 and Jovian L-5 was real. The origin was so far away that it acted as a point source. The signal came from somewhere well outside the solar system.

In those three days, Philip Beston said nothing to follow up on his suggestion that Milly ought to change sides and work on Odin Station. Only at the final farewell did he hold her hand for a moment longer than necessary, and say softly, “When you decide you’d like to be on the winning side, you know who to call.”

Jack Beston could not possibly have heard, but he was in a foul mood as
The Witch of Agnesi
pulled away from Odin Station for the return trip. Milly couldn’t see why. They had confirmation of a signal, and a significant time advantage over Philip Beston when it came to interpretation.

But when she said that to Jack, he merely gave her a slit-eyed green glare. “He knows we have a lead, and he knows that we found the signal and he didn’t. Given all that, he’s far too cheerful.”

“Maybe he’s putting on a show for the staff of Odin Station. They must be feeling pretty crushed.”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “You didn’t grow up with the Bastard, the way I did. He doesn’t put on shows. He’s got something up his sleeve. Something to do with signal interpretation.”

“Do you have any idea what it might be?”

“Not a clue.” Jack stared intently out of the forward port, as though willing the ship to fly faster to Argus Station. “We’ll find out when he hits us with it.”

21

JUPITER SWINGBY

The outer regions of the solar system are remarkably empty. It is certainly possible to run into another object, particularly when flying through the Asteroid belt, but you have to be freakishly unlucky to do so. And if that other object happens to be a ship, with its own navigational control system, then the chance of collision contains such a string of zeroes after the decimal point that no rational person should worry about it.

Humans are not, of course, particularly rational. Milly’s question of the Level Four Fax aboard
The Witch of Agnesi
was asked a thousand times an hour, somewhere in the system; but in fact there had never been a collision of two ships whose navigation systems were in working order. The OSL
Achilles
, outward bound for the Jovian system and Ganymede, crossed the trajectory of
The Witch of Agnesi
as the latter sped between the Jovian L-4 and L-5 points, and in celestial terms they made a “close approach” of less than two million kilometers. No human on either ship was aware of that fact.

The passengers of the
Achilles
were increasingly unaware of anything. Janeed had heard that in pre-war times a certain form of group mania infected the passengers of ocean liners. After the first few days nothing in the world existed beyond the ship, while what happened before and after the cruise became utterly irrelevant. A wild series of random courtships and short-lived affairs was the result.

Jan had hardly believed those reports, but now she saw evidence of their truth at first-hand. Colonists were pairing off, and as the ship drove outward toward its rendezvous with Jupiter an air of continuous festivity took over.

Not only the passengers were affected. The ship’s trajectory was computer-controlled, as were most of its on-board systems. The crew had time to relax. Paul Marr was able to devote a more-than-generous amount of time to Janeed. That certainly suited Jan. Within the first two days she had decided that everything she had been told about sex was right, or possibly understated. The more you did it, the more you liked it. The real danger was that you might become an addict. Jan suspected that she might be well on the way.

Occasionally, she would worry about Sebastian. She was seeing less and less of him as the days went by. On the other hand, Valnia Bloom seemed to be with him almost constantly. They spent most of the time hidden away in her private cabin. Jan didn’t think they were engaged in a sexual relationship, but even if they were, so what? Sebastian was a strongly-built and physically mature man in the prime of life. He and Valnia Bloom were as entitled to as good a time as Paul and Jan.

When she had boarded the
Achilles,
two weeks going on forever ago, Jan had expected to be impatient until the moment she set foot on Ganymede. Now, as that time of arrival came closer, she was loath to leave the ship. She and Paul had vowed that this would not be the end, that they would see each other again. But in reality, how many shipboard romances survived the day of disembarkation?

One major party still lay ahead. Jan had never heard of it before, but Paul explained as they lounged naked one evening in his cabin. The ship was in drive mode, and the two of them were reclining in sybaritic luxury on the most comfortable bed Jan had ever encountered. At the flip of a switch the floor had become soft and yielding, cushioned on the reservoir that contained the
Achilles’
ample supplies of water.

She lay on her side, head turned to look across the flat plain of his chest and watch its steady rise and fall as he breathed. He had painted her nude, and when the picture was finished one thing had inevitably led to another.

“Of course the party isn’t
necessary
,” he said. “It represents a tradition from the earliest days of planetary exploration. The ships at that time all used chemical rockets—”

“Not nuclear?” Jan asked. “They had nuclear energy, you know, even back then.”

“They did, but they’d had bad experiences with it and a lot of people were still scared. So they used chemical rockets.”

“But the effects of chemical rockets on the atmosphere and ionosphere are a lot worse than nuclear. Didn’t they know—”

Paul had his arm around her and he gave her left breast a gentle squeeze. “Are you going to let me tell you about this, or do you want me to roll over and go to sleep?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Go on, I’m listening.”

“The ships used chemical rockets. That’s not totally true, because there were already a few ion drives; but they provided such low accelerations that they were useless for passenger shipping. You can guess what it was like. Everybody was short of delta-vee for everything. They would scrounge, beg, or borrow as much momentum transfer as they could lay their hands on, but space travel was still marginal, all touch-and-go. The first ships to reach Jupiter didn’t have enough fuel to slow into orbit around the planet. If they didn’t do something different, they would arrive, swing past, and shoot away in some other direction. The answer—the only possible answer at the time—was to skim through Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and use air-braking for velocity-shedding.

“The theory was simple and fully understood for more than a century. Doing it, and getting it exactly right, was another matter. The
Ashkenazy
went in too deep and never came out. The
Celandine
erred in the other direction. It skipped in, skipped out, and left the Jovian system completely.”

His voice had gradually slowed and deepened. Jan squeezed the little roll of fat at his waist. “You’re supposed to be telling me about some big party we’ll be having, not zoning out on me. Are you drifting off?”

“I am not. I’m thinking how much easier we have it than the original explorers. The
Celandine
crew members were tough, and braver than you can believe. I’ve heard their recordings. They sent back data on the Jupiter magnetosphere until they were on the last drips of oxygen, then they all signed off as casually as if they were going out together for an early dinner. A dip into the Jovian atmosphere used to be a life-or-death proposition. Now it’s just a game. Jupiter’s atmospheric depth profile is mapped to six figures. The atmospheric swingby is a tradition and a good excuse for a party, but it is absolutely and totally unnecessary.”

“Like crossing the line.” She saw Paul’s forehead wrinkle. After sex he always seemed a little bit brain-dead. “In the old days of Earth-sailing ships, crossing the equator was a bit dodgy. The region around the equator was called the Doldrums, where the winds would fall away to nothing for days or weeks at a time. The ship would sit becalmed, in extreme heat, with no one aboard knowing if they would live long enough to catch a saving wind. Then steamships came along, and crossing the equator offered no special danger. But a ceremony called ‘Crossing the Line’ lived on. There were high jinks on board the cruise ships; parties and ritual shaving—not just of people’s heads, either—and silly ceremonies involving King Neptune.”

“It’s King Jove on the Jupiter flyby, but the rest of it sounds much the same.” Paul turned to look at Jan. “Look, I know it sounds stupid and it really is stupid, but as first officer I’m stuck with it. You don’t have to go along.”

“Are you kidding? Paul, there’s no way I’d miss this. If I had been there in the old days crossing the equator, I’d have been whooping it up like nobody’s business. My question is, can you as first officer take part in all the fun, or is it considered too undignified?”

“Define ‘too undignified.’ I suppose there are limits, but they’re pretty broad. On the last Jupiter atmospheric flyby, two months ago, the chief engineer dressed himself in a baboon suit. He had cut a piece out of the back. His ass was bare, and painted blue, and he said he was selling kisses. But I didn’t hear of any takers.”

“Captain Kondo permitted this?” Jan had trouble imagining the captain, short, stocky, and immensely dignified, participating in the brawl that Paul was describing—or even allowing it.

“Captain Kondo remained in his quarters throughout the party. He does that on every Jupiter swingby. His view is that what he does not see, he is not obliged to report.”

“And you? What did you do?”

“Last time? I was lucky enough to be on duty, running the ship—someone has to. Officers on duty are not permitted to join in the general wildness. This time, no such luck. I’ll be assigned to passenger service. My official responsibility—as stated in ships’ orders—is ‘to offer and provide to passengers any form of legal pleasure that they desire.’ You have no idea what some people ask for.”

“I’ll tell you what they’d better not ask for. When does this party start?”

“Not for awhile.”

“But when?”

“We’re lying here nice and cozy, and you want to worry about time? Ten hours from now, give or take. Is that close enough?”

Jan snuggled closer and blew across his chest. She liked to watch the fair hair stir and his nipples tighten. “It will do. Ten hours should be more than enough to think of something to do. Something legal. Something you’re not allowed to refuse….”

* * *

As the time drew nearer, Jan wasn’t so sure. She knew what she wanted, but Paul had a certain native prudishness and delicacy. He liked to wash at once after lovemaking, while Jan preferred, as she had told him to his mild disgust, “to wallow and steep in it for hours and hours.” Afterplay, with the smell and feel of male sexuality, had not lost its novelty and appeal, and Jan was not sure that it ever would.

Would Paul cooperate? He would certainly have no chance to wash for awhile if he did. On the other hand, Jan was hearing more and more talk of previous swingby parties and they sounded like a case of anything goes. Paul might have trouble holding onto his dignity, even if Jan were not around.

Meanwhile, preparations for the party were in full swing. The point of closest approach to Jupiter, when the
Achilles
would make its deepest penetration into the Jovian atmosphere before racing out again for its rendezvous with Ganymede, would take place in a little more than three hours. Before that, an early dinner must be served and done with, so that the big dining room could be emptied and decorated for the party. So far as Jan could tell, the dining room would merely serve as a focal point for festivities—passengers and crew would be living it up in every part of the ship, except for the prohibited area aft that contained the crew quarters and the drives.

The little service robots had been allowed to make a jump-start on their duties. When the gong for dinner sounded over the ship’s general communications system, Jan went along to the dining room and found it already half full and the tables decorated. Fresh flowers, somehow preserved since the
Achilles
left Earth orbit, perfumed each table, and each place-setting contained some special item chosen to match the background of whoever sat there. Jan looked for her own place, and found on the table a small replica of the Global Minerals’ platform on which she had worked for more than ten years.

She went quickly around the room, searching for Sebastian’s name card, and found a similar replica on the table in front of his seat. He also had something extra. At the place where he would be sitting Jan saw a small globe on a support stand. It was maybe five centimeters across, and when Jan looked closely she realized that it was not, as she had assumed, an Earth globe. The little sphere was Saturn, and as she watched the cloud patterns moved across the planet’s face. This, for a guess, was a special present to Sebastian from Valnia Bloom.