Jupiter (31 page)

Still Krebs made them go through it again. It was the only part of the mission that could be simulated. No one knew what to expect once they dived through the clouds and entered the vast, turbulent ocean.

Dr Wo changed the ship's internal pressure time and again, increasing the pressure to its highest design value and then dropping it back again. Grant never thought that his ears could pop underwater, but they did, more than once.

'He's trying to see if the pressure changes bother us,' Karlstad told Grant.

'They bother me,' Grant admitted. 'Changing the pressure back and forth is damned uncomfortable.'

The two of them had been given a brief meal break by Krebs. Meals on
Zheng He
consisted of coasting over to the dispenser at the back of the bridge and plugging one of its plastic tubes into one of the intravenous ports in your neck. It made Grant shudder to do it, but it didn't hurt at all, and it had the advantage of pumping a full meal's worth of nutrition into your system in only a few minutes. No chewing, no digestive action; the food was already liquified and ready to be dispersed through the body by the bloodstream.

'The Woeful One must be trying to see if the pressure changes had anything to do with Irene's heart attack,' Karlstad said.

'I thought the amphetamines did it.'

'Under normal conditions the dose she took wouldn't have killed her.'

'I thought it was a very high dose,' Grant said.

'Not that high… it wouldn't have been fatal, normally.'

'It would have disoriented her, wouldn't it? Made her unfit for duty?'

Karlstad started to answer, hesitated, then asked, 'Do you think she was trying to get out of—'

The dispenser's signal bell chimed — clunked, really, in the high-pressure fluid they were breathing — and its light turned red.

'Your dinner's finished,' Karlstad said needlessly. 'Want some dessert?'

Wincing, Grant pulled the slim plastic tube from the socket in his neck. 'Dessert's included,' he said, trying to sound breezy. 'No extra charge.'

'Stop your jabbering and get back to your stations,' Krebs snarled at them.

When the long, grueling simulation was at last finished, Krebs relieved only O'Hara and Karlstad. Grant and Muzorawa stayed at their posts on the bridge while the other two went to their berths. Krebs herself remained on the bridge.

Doesn't she ever sleep? Grant asked himself.

Soon he began to wonder if Krebs was ever going to allow him to sleep. The simulations were finished, as far as he could see. They were pretending to be descending through the thickening layers of Jupiter's atmosphere, sinking lower and lower until the atmospheric gases were compressed by the planet's titanic gravity into the liquid state. Since they knew so little about the environment below the clouds, there was very little for them to simulate — unless Wo threw some malfunctions at them.

Instead, the hours passed by so uneventfully that Grant had to fight against boredom. Strangely, he felt no urge to yawn, as he normally would. Maybe breathing this gunk suppresses the yawn reflex, he thought.

At last Karlstad and O'Hara returned to the bridge.

'Muzorawa and Archer to your berths,' Krebs ordered needlessly. Grant was already floating toward the hatch that led to the closet-sized sleeping area. Karlstad referred to it as the catacombs.'

Then Krebs added, 'When you two return, we will all link with the ship's systems.'

Grant was too tired to care. All he wanted was his four hours of sleep. But then he caught the look on Lane's face: she was glowing with anticipation.

Sleep did not come easily. As soon as he closed his eyes it hit Grant all over again that he was immersed in this cold thick fluid, breathing it into his lungs, wallowing in a completely unnatural world, as out of place as a fish on a mountaintop. The fear that had been submerged while he was on the bridge among the others rose to the surface of his mind now, his chest heaved, his aching legs twitched with the barely-suppressed urge to run, to get away, to find someplace safe, some refuge where he could hide and breathe real air and feel the warmth of the sun on his face.

He opened his eyes and even in the darkness of his screened-off berth he saw that he was in a metal womb, a man-made cave that was pressing in on him, closing down on all sides. And outside this crypt, beyond its metal shell, unbearable pressures were squeezing, pressing, inexorably working to crush the ship, to crush
him
into a bloody pulp.

Grant could feel his heart pounding frantically in his chest, could sense every nerve in his body telling him to get away, to escape, to get out of this deathtrap.

He tried to pray. He tried to conjure up a mental picture of Marjorie, of their times together, of those brief moments when they shared the warmth of their bodies pressing close, on a world where the sky was blue and there were trees and grass and birds singing.

Nothing worked. He was imprisoned inside this metal tomb, breathing a horrible alien slime, a billion kilometers from home, from Marjorie, from his parents, from safety. Even God had forgotten him. He was alone and forsaken.

Yet he must have drifted into sleep, because he found himself surrounded by monsters, vague dark shapes that growled and snarled and shambled after him in a world of shadows and menace. One of the shapes looked like a gorilla, only much bigger, looming over him like a mountain. Another pursued him in a powerchair, growling at him.

Grant's eyes popped open. The growling sound was the clock, its normal alarm buzzer sounding strange, alien in the liquid. Sleep shift was over. Time to return to the bridge.

Grant slid out of the bunk; there was no room to stand except outside in the narrow common area. He bobbed gently off the deck, decided there was no point to changing the leotard he'd been wearing. No point to trying to go to the toilet; the predigested pond scum they pumped into his veins produced almost no waste matter at all.

Feeling like one of the damned souls in Dante's Hell, Grant swam through the hatch back onto the bridge.

Krebs was still there, hovering over Karlstad and O'Hara, who were at their consoles, their backs turned to him. The captain glared at Grant as if he'd somehow done something wrong. Then he realized she was looking past him. Turning slightly, he saw Zeb coming through the hatch.

Krebs stared at the two of them as if she didn't recognize them. Her eyes flicked back and forth from Muzorawa's face to his own.

'Returning for duty,' said Muzorawa gently.

'Ah. Dr Muzorawa,' Krebs replied, as if seeing him for the first time. 'And Mr Archer.'

'Yes, ma'am,' Grant said.

Krebs drifted back away from them as Grant took his station between Lane and Zeb. Then she said in a commanding tone, 'Now we will all connect with the ship's systems.'

O'Hara turned from her console and nodded, smiling. Karlstad looked — Grant couldn't decipher the expression on Egon's face. He seemed to be trying to keep his features frozen, impassive, like a little boy pretending that he doesn't know he's about to be showered with Christmas presents.

Muzorawa said, 'Ready to link, Captain.'

'Proceed,' she said.

Grant did what he saw the other three do: he flicked open the slim panel set into his console's front. A set of hair-thin fiber-optic wires snaked out of the narrow compartment, floating lazily in the perfluorocarbon liquid like the coiling hair of a murderous Medusa. The end of each fiber was color-coded to match the anodized color spots on the electrodes in Grant's legs.

Grant watched the others out of the corner of his eye as he fumbled with the devilishly thin fibers. His fingers seemed too fat and clumsy to handle them. The others were finished before he had done even one of his legs. Thankfully, the fiber ends were electrically charged to mate with specific electrodes; they would not connect with the wrong electrode; instead Grant felt a slight but very real repulsive force, like trying to put two north poles of a magnet together.

'We are waiting, Mr Archer,' Krebs said as he finished one leg at last and started on the other.

Finally he got it done. He straightened up, feeling a little like a puppet with his legs connected to the wires. He saw that the fibers on Krebs' stubby legs connected to a panel set into the overhead. If she's not careful, Grant thought, she'll get herself tangled in those wires. The thought of the captain wrapping herself in her own set of wires, struggling to get herself loose like some fat fly in a spider's web, almost made him laugh out loud.

'You are amused, Mr Archer?'

Grant realized he was smiling. Startled, he didn't know what to do, how to respond to the captain's accusative glare.

'We are all pleased that we are about to link with the ship, Captain,' said Muzorawa, beside him.

'We're looking forward to the experience,' O'Hara chimed in.

'Indeed.' Krebs' angry glare shifted back and forth. 'And what have you to say?' she demanded, pointing at Karlstad.

'Not a word, ma'am," Egon replied. 'I'm waiting for your next order.'

Krebs mumbled something too low for Grant to make out, then said grudgingly, 'Very well. Activate the linkage.'

Each of them reached to the console, lifted the plastic cover plate from the switch that triggered the linkage, then clicked the switch on.

Grant expected some surge of power, a jolt of electrical energy, perhaps a thrill of euphoria or at least pleasure. Better than sex, they had told him. Instead, he felt nothing. A slight tingling in his legs, as if they were going asleep. But that passed even before he recognized the sensation and he was left with — almost nothing.

Almost.

Grant stood there, ignoring his crew mates standing alongside him, and felt an odd tremor begin to pulse through his legs. Unlike anything he'd ever sensed before. No, not just along his legs. His entire body seemed to be vibrating, humming inside like a plucked string of a bass viol. He stared down at his hands. They looked steady, not shaking at all, yet inside he felt as if he was quivering like a man hit by a seizure.

He closed his eyes and realized that it wasn't him who was vibrating, it was the fusion generator, deep in the core of the ship, reverberating with the power of transforming matter into energy, fusing atomic nuclei together to extract their hidden might, converting the blinding radiation into electrical power that raced along the ship's wiring like blood pulsing through arteries and veins. Grant could feel the throbbing, relentless force of this man-made star buried behind layers of dense shielding as it powered the universe that was their ship. He wanted to reach out his hand and let his fingers touch that glowing hot plasma, he could virtually hear the thunder of its endless blaze.

It was like music, like a symphonic orchestra playing in his mind, in his body, along every nerve, every blood vessel. The electrical currents racing through the ship tingled like a thrillingly beautiful cadenza, endless, eternal, glorious.

The propulsion system was shut down, more's the pity. Grant wanted to sense it, to connect with it, to feel the drive and force of raw energy hurtling out of the ship's thruster vents, pushing them forward, onward.

Dimly, he heard a voice. He ignored it. This was too much pleasure to allow anything to distract him from it. The whole ship's electrical systems were part of him. I am the ship! Grant thought. We are one. It's pure delight. Ecstacy! It's like being a god.

'Are you all right?'

He forced himself to open his eyes, saw Zeb peering at him worriedly.

'I'm fine,' Grant said. And he meant it. He'd never felt so… so
alive
in all his life.

'It can be a powerful feeling,' O'Hara said. Grant turned his head and saw that she too looked concerned. 'Don't let it sweep you away, now.'

He nodded. Yes, I've got to be careful. It is powerful. Overwhelming. Better than sex. Better than drugs. They were right. It's enough to sell your soul for.

'Are we ready to return to work?' Krebs' sour voice cut through Grant's excitement.

'Yes, Captain,' he said sharply.

'Very well. Now we will go through the separation and ignition simulation once again.'

But this time, Grant realized, this time we'll be connected to the ship. I'll feel the electrical currents. I'll power up the thrusters. I'll move the ship with my own will.

I am the ship.

Grant had never felt so powerful and excited in his entire life. When Krebs called a halt to their simulation exercise, he didn't want to stop, didn't want to disconnect from the ship. Let's go on, he urged silently. Let's power it up for real and get going. Let me feel what it's like to dive through those clouds and into the Jovian sea.

'I said disconnect, Mr Archer! Now!'

Krebs' hard, demanding voice cut into him like a whip. With enormous reluctance, Grant did what the others had already done: reached to the console and clicked off his linkage to the ship's electrical and propulsion systems.

It felt like a lobotomy. One moment he had all the power of a miniature star pulsing through him, part of him, as intimately interwoven into his consciousness as his awareness of his own identity. Then with the click of a switch it was all gone, he was a solitary, weak, hairless ape again, alone, isolated from the rest of the universe.

He had to blink several times before he realized that the others were unplugging the fiber-optic leads from the electrodes in their legs. Feeling a sullen resentment rising within him, Grant yanked the fibers from his legs, one by one. The loose ends floated lightly, bobbing gently in the perfluorocarbon as if beckoning to him. When he was finished he activated the spring that pulled the fibers back into their slim storage rack and snapped shut the door that covered them.

The simulation is completed,' Krebs said. 'Now we all sleep. When we return to duty, no more simulations. The mission begins in five hours and fourteen minutes.'

The four crew members drifted back toward the catacombs and their coffin-sized berths. Krebs remained on the bridge, floating up near the overhead, fitting a communications headset over her bald skull.