Jupiter (17 page)

Looking up from the graphs displayed on his screen, Grant muttered, 'The work doesn't do itself, Egon.'

'It's a shame you're not into biology, then,' Karlstad said easily. 'Like, right now I'm helping the bio team from Callisto to culture some of their sub-zero foraminiferans.'

'Are you?' Grant turned back to his screen.

'Damned right,' said Karlstad, leaning back in the chair and clasping his hands behind his head. 'Helpful little creatures. The forams are multiplying all by themselves in the rig I built for them. It simulates the ice-covered sea on Callisto very nicely. The forams do all the work and I roam around the station—'

'Interrupting people who're trying to get their work done,' Grant finished for him.

Karlstad pretended to be wounded. 'Is that any way to treat a fellow scooter?' .. Grant admitted, 'No, I suppose it wasn't polite.'

'I'm not here to interrupt you. I'm here to offer you a learning experience.'

'What?'

Karlstad leaned closer. 'Zeb and Laynie are going into the tank together.'

Grant felt his jaw drop open. 'What do you mean?'

Laughing, Karlstad said, 'Relax. Put your eyes back in your head.'

His face reddening, Grant tried to erase his mental image of O'Hara and Muzorawa together in the dolphin tank. They can't do anything! he told himself. They're both implanted with biochips. Still, he saw her sleek and naked, gliding through the water.

'They're going into the simulation tank,' Karlstad said, obviously enjoying Grant's unmistakable consternation.

Before Grant could reply, he added, 'And Old Woeful is going to join them.'

'The simulation tank,' Grant said dully.

Nodding, Karlstad said, 'The test is supposed to be strictly off-limits to everybody except the technicians running the sim.'

The way he said that convinced Grant that Karlstad had an ace up his sleeve. Sure enough, Karlstad went on, 'But I have a direct pipeline to the cameras recording the test.'

'You do? How?'

Raising one hand in a gesture of patience, the biophysicist said, 'I cannot reveal my sources. But if you'll allow me…'

He turned to the computer console next to Grant's and pulled out the keyboard. Blowing dust from the keys, he booted up the machine manually and then tapped in a long, complex string of alphanumerics. Grant watched, fascinated despite himself, as the desktop display screen flickered and glowed.

And there was O'Hara standing in the narrow corridor outside one of the dolphin tanks in a sleek white skin-tight suit that glistened as if it were already wet. They seemed to be looking down at her from above. Grant realized they were watching the view from a camera set into the ceiling panels in the corridor.

'Shall we put it on the wallscreen?' Karlstad asked.

'What if someone walks in?'

He shrugged. 'I'll wipe the screen before they have a chance to figure out what we're watching.'

'All right,' Grant said, nodding.

The wallscreen image was life-sized, but a little grainy. He must be using a microcamera, Grant thought, with a fiber-optic link. O'Hara's slick white wetsuit clung to her like her own skin. She doesn't have that much of a figure, Grant told himself. Slim, almost boyish. Almost.

Muzorawa stepped into view. His suit was bright green, but left his powerful-looking legs bare. They were studded with implants, his skin thick with them, like a leper's sores. No wonder they wear long trousers all the time, Grant thought, recoiling inwardly at the ugliness of it.

Half a dozen technicians in gray coveralls milled around. Karlstad clicked at the keyboard and the view abruptly shifted. Now they were looking into the dolphin tank, over Muzorawa's shoulder. But there were no dolphins in sight. Instead, the tank contained what looked like a mockup of a control panel, a broad curving expanse of display screens and rows of lights and buttons.

Grant said, 'I hope Sheena doesn't burst in on them.'

'No, no,' Karlstad assured him. 'Little Sheena's safe in her pen, sedated up to her bony brow ridges. She's sleeping like a three-hundred-kilo baby.'

Two technicians in dark gray wetsuits clambered up the ladder built into the partition between tanks and cannonballed into the water with huge splashes, one after the other.

Grant watched them settle down to the bottom of the tank, trailing bubbles from their face masks.

'Can't you fugheads get into the tank without sloshing half the water outta it?' groused a scornful nasal voice, caustically. The test controller, Grant thought, monitoring everything from some central location.

The pair of techs waved cheerfully as they sat on the bottom of the tank.

'Okay,' came the voice of the controller, slightly scratchy from static. 'Let's get this sim percolating.'

O'Hara nodded and pulled the hood of her suit over her bald scalp, then slipped on a transparent visor that covered her entire face. Two of the technicians helped her work her arms through the shoulder straps of what appeared to be an air tank, then connected a slim hose from the top of the tank to her face mask. They slid a belt of weights around her slender hips. O'Hara clicked its clasp shut.

Two other techs were doing the same for Muzorawa. Finally they checked that the air was getting through properly.

'I'm okay,' O'Hara said, her voice muffled by the mask.

Muzorawa asked for a slightly stronger air flow, and a tech adjusted a knob on the back of his tank. Then he nodded and made a circle with his right thumb and forefinger.

O'Hara turned and scampered lithely up the ladder to the top of tank. Grant saw that her feet were bare.

'Radio check,' said a disembodied voice.

'O'Hara on freak one,' she said. It sounded somewhat fuzzy to Grant. He realized there must be a small radio built into the full-face mask.

But the controller's voice said, 'In the green. Go ahead and dunk.'

O'Hara swung her long legs over the edge of the tank and slipped into the water with hardly a ripple.

'Now that's the way you get into the pool,' said the controller's admiring voice.

The two techs already in the tank made exaggerated motions of applause.

Muzorawa climbed the ladder, considerably slower and more ponderous than O'Hara. It seemed to Grant that Zeb had some trouble getting his legs to work right. But he made it to the top, swinging both legs together almost as if they were inert lengths of lumber, and dropped gracelessly into the water.

'Now comes the boring part,' Karlstad murmured.

'What's that?'

With a smirk, Karlstad answered, 'The work, of course.'

O'Hara and Muzorawa, with the two technicians hovering behind them, glided to the control panel and slid their bare feet into loops set into the floor.

'Sim one-a,' the controller's voice announced. 'Separation and systems checkout. Manual procedure.'

The panel was chest high, Grant realized. The two scooters stood at it, anchored by the floor loops, and began working their way through a long countdown, punctuated by the controller's checkoff of each action they took. It was boring, Grant agreed. Repetitious and dull.

'You said Dr Wo was going to be part of this,' Grant said to Karlstad.

'He'll show up.'

'When?'

'When the dull routine stuff is finished Old Woeful will make his dramatic entrance, never fear.'

I ought to be working, Grant thought. I ought to be inserting the data points from last month's probes into the equations to see how they affect the flow maps. But instead he watched O'Hara and Muzorawa as they patiently, methodically, went through the simulation.

'This is the separation procedure,' Karlstad said. 'This is what they'll have to do to disconnect the saucer from the station.' 'It takes so long?' Grant wondered aloud. Karlstad grunted. 'You don't want to fire your jets and find that, there's still an umbilical linking you to the station proper. Could ruin your whole afternoon.'

'But still, can't these procedures be automated? I mean, launch crews have automated—'

'Hold it!' Karlstad snapped. 'Here he comes.' All that Grant could see was the technicians outside the tank turning to look down the corridor at something beyond the camera's view. He heard Karlstad clicking on the computer keys again, and the view shifted to show Dr Wo rolling toward the test tank in his powered chair. He was wearing a bright red wetsuit, with shining metal braces over the lower half of his pitifully thin, weak legs.

Wo rolled up to the tank and the technicians made a reverential half-circle around his chair.

'Dr Wo,' said the controller's disembodied voice. 'We've completed the separation procedure. Ready to start ignition and entry simulation.'

'Good,' said Wo. 'I will join the crew now.' No one said a word. No one moved. Wo pushed himself to his feet and stood unsteadily on his steel-braced legs for a long, breathless moment. Then he took a step toward the ladder. Another step. My god, Grant thought, he's clunking along like Frankenstein's monster. He'll never make it up that ladder without their help.

As if he could read Grant's thoughts, Karlstad said, The deal our woeful master made with the test controller is that if he could get up the ladder unassisted, he could go into the tank and participate in the sim. Otherwise, no.'

'As if the simulation controller could say no to him,' Grant sneered.

'During the sim, the controller is God Almighty. If he says no, it's no. Doesn't matter who he's talking to. He's the absolute boss during the simulation.' 'And afterward?' Karlstad shrugged.

Wo stood uncertainly at the base of the ladder and took a deep breath. Grant felt almost sorry for the man. It had taken all his energy to make the few steps from his chair to the ladder. Surely he won't be able—

Wo suddenly seized the rungs of the ladder and pulled himself up, hand over hand, his legs dangling uselessly. Grant could see sweat break out on the man's face, see his snarling, teeth-gritted determination. He made it to the top of the ladder and swung his legs over the edge, letting his feet dangle in the water.

Two of the technicians swarmed up the ladder behind him, carrying his face mask, air tank and weights. In minutes they had Wo properly rigged. He pushed himself off the edge of the tank and splashed awkwardly into the water. One of the technicians started to applaud, but when he saw he was alone he froze in mid-clap, a mortified look on his face.

Wo sank to the bottom of the pool and swam easily to the control panel, taking his station between O'Hara and Muzorawa.

'You've got to admit that he's got guts,' Karlstad said reluctantly.

Grant agreed with a nod.

'You'll never see me getting into that fish tank,' Karlstad went on.

'But aren't you part of the mission?'

'Me? Don't be ridiculous!'

'But I thought…'

'Wo put me on the team, yes,' Karlstad admitted. 'I'll be one of the monitors in the control center when they go. But that's all! They couldn't get me into that death trap unless they put a gun to my head. Maybe not even then.'

It was boring and fascinating at the same time, watching the three of them going through the simulation. Grant kept telling himself that he should get back to his work, he shouldn't be wasting his time this way, but he could not take his eyes from the wallscreen.

Wo was clearly in charge, and enjoying it. Instead of remaining anchored at the instrument panel as O'Hara and Muzorawa did, he pulled his feet free of the floor loops and floated easily, almost lazily in the big tank. Hovering over the other two, drifting slightly from one side to the other, Wo gave orders and did all the talking with the test controller.

'He's enjoying himself, isn't he?' Grant asked rhetorically.

Karlstad humphed. 'First time he's been able to get around without his chair since the accident.'

'No wonder he likes it.'

'He also likes the feeling of power, don't forget that.'

'He gets that all the time,' Grant countered. 'He's got more power around here than God… just about.'

'There are different kinds of power, Grant. Right now, in that tank, he feels
physically
strong. I'll bet he's thinking in the back of his mind that he could grab Laynie and pop her and she'd welcome the thrill.'

Grant felt his face flush again and Karlstad snickered at him. 'Hit a nerve, did I?'

'You can be pretty crude, sometimes.'

With a tilt of his head, Karlstad replied, 'Why not? Sticks and stones, you know. Words can't hurt you.'

'I thought the biochips short-circuited the sex drive,' Grant said.

'Who told you that?'

'Lane.'

Karlstad's knowing grin turned into a smirk. 'The chips don't do anything about the drive: that's in the head, in the brain.'

'But—'

'They apparently shut down all the sensory nerves in the groin, though,' Karlstad went on. 'That must've been Wo's brilliant idea.'

'Why would he do that?' Grant wondered.

'The crew on the deep mission -will be cooped up in that saucer for weeks. Wo doesn't want any of them distracted by human frailties.'

Grant nodded, thinking, He's taken away the sensations but left the desire. That must be as close to hell as a man can get.

'I've got to get back to my work,' Grant said, surprised to hear his own words.

'You don't want to watch the rest of this?'

'It's not all that interesting.'

'Watching luscious Laynie in that skin-tight suit? That's not interesting?'

Grant turned back to his desktop and commanded the computer to bring up its active screen again. The screen-saver's fractal pattern disappeared, replaced by the same graph Grant had been working on when Karlstad interrupted him.

'Or maybe,' Karlstad said, with a wolfish grin, 'watching Laynie is
too
interesting for you. Is that it?'

Grant snapped, 'I have too much work to do to sit around watching—'

'Hold one!' the simulation controller's voice called out. 'Medical hold.'

The three people in the tank looked up reflexively, bubbles rising from their masks.

'Dr Wo,' said the controller, 'we're getting a sharp rise in your blood pressure readings. Your pulse is starting to spike, as well.'