Jupiter's Reef (44 page)

“We have to get a map of this area,” said Alex. “We need to find an updraft.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard,” said Tony. “The place is littered with up and downdraft channels. Right?”

Mary looked over at Tony.

“You saw the tapes of our trip,” she said. “We found a channel right away.”

“That was then,” said Alex.

The Professor suggested a bit of music instead of that eerie whistle they’d been listening to.

Mary emphatically agreed. “Some Somtow?”

Johnny chose Brahms. The famous ‘Lullaby’ began as the ship abandoned the mountain and headed off into the darkness, on a course parallel to the surface of the planet.

By the time the ship’s music was playing Mary’s favorite, SP Somtow’s ‘The Dust’, Johnny had diverted enough of the ship’s energy to allow a large scale radar sweep of the area. The map he created was projected three dimensionally above and around Alex and Mary.

“There you have it, Captain Rose,” said Johnny. “A tactical display.” He went on to add that the image was filled in by the computer to appear smooth.

“Meaning it’s bullshit,” said Alex.

“It’s all we’ve got,” said Johnny. His voice sounded far away in his bubble covered chair. “It will get better, in time.”

“Will it show downdrafts? And updrafts?” asked Tony. He rose from his seat and ambled to the window with his hands in the pockets of his flightsuit. He stared out at the black emptiness for a moment before moving to the food panel. A minute later the cabin smelled of popcorn.

The odor was contagious. Soon everyone craved a ration.

“The Gannys put the popcorn packs in our stores,” said Tony, as he happily tossed a fluffy kernel into the air. He missed catching it in his mouth and it fell in slow motion to the floor in the low gee. “Matt got them for me.”

Mary’s cat pounced on the piece of popcorn as if it were a mouse.

As far as Johnny could figure, the ship was still positioned relatively near the center of the Great Red Spot. He calculated that they would complete the rotation in five and a half Earth days.

“So, centered as we are, we are pretty easy to locate?” asked Tony. “I mean, from space?”

“Add the planet’s rotation, once every nine and a half hours,” replied Johnny.

The ship suddenly moved sideways and upward as if a wind had hit it. Alex switched on all of
Diver
’s external lights.

There was nothing near them as far as Johnny could see.

“Why waste the power to the lights?” he protested. “The radar would show anything solid out there.”

Alex groaned and reached forward to switch off the lights when movement in one of the monitors caught his eye.

“What’s that below us?” Alex pointed to a monitor on the dash.

Something was there but it didn’t show as a discrete shape. What they saw was a sheen off the surface of something big or a soft shaft of light. The manifestation moved across the center of the screen and then faded, moving slowly up toward the top of the screen until it blended with the pitch blackness outside the ship.

Alex switched off all the exterior lights, except those facing front. He also shut off all the cabin lights. Everything looked radically different. The blue tracings of the radar mapping of the reef hung over them and in front of them; speckles in the light could be seen through the cabin windows. Every so often a speck of something would catch the floodlights and fall out of sight. Soon the illusion of being underneath a vast ocean of material became reinforced as never before.

Alex eyes surveyed the holographic environment. Then his eyes returned to the windows.

“Something swam past us, I think,” said Alex. “I think we saw, just a bit of its hide.”

“A breeze,” said Johnny. “Nothing on the radar.”

“You said that the radar keys off objects with a density greater than ...”

“Water vapor,” said Professor Baltadonis, finishing Alex’s statement.

“Can you adjust it to see things that are less dense than water?”

“Sorry, Alex. The radar’s not going to see rising or falling air currents,” said Johnny.

“There may be things here that are lighter than water,” said Alex. “The lighter the better on Jupiter. Right, Professor?”

Grumbling a bit, Johnny reset the radar. The universe of air that surrounded them suddenly lit up with traces of moving things.

Johnny cried out in astonishment.

“Just a hunch,” said Alex, winking at Mary.

Indeed the view was remarkable. Out in the darkness were creatures with masses similar to the air in which they were flying. and the doppler radar saw them as well as the motions of the surrounding gasses. The visual effect was astonishing but very subtle, and reminded Alex of microscopic animals swimming in a drop of water. The animals swam in slow motion as if the medium they swam in was a thick viscous liquid.

Everywhere they looked there were creatures, large and small, moving along or feeding on the gaseous effluvia around them.

“I’m ashamed of us,” said the Professor. “It was under our noses all along.”

“We might never have gotten this far,” said Tony. “Too much to see. Too many distractions.”

Johnny fell silent as he watched the holographic images from inside his research bubble. Every so often he would comment aloud on what he was seeing.

All the while Alex kept
Diver
on a horizontal heading. He was seeing the same radar image as the Professor but his eyes were on the air itself, not the animals. He was looking for an updraft.

But as minutes became hours and no updrafts were found, Alex grew weary of the search and put the ship on autopilot. Then he stood up, stretched, and walked toward the head.

Mary was asleep in her chair with her kitten curled up in her lap. Tony had dozed off too, but Professor Baltadonis was awake and totally absorbed in his studies.

“We could do this faster, Johnny,” said Alex, pausing next to Johnny’s bubble. “If we really want out of here, we can always let the computer task it out.”

“That would be cheating, wouldn’t it?” answered Johnny.

Alex stood for a moment next to the Professor’s chair. When Johnny’s head didn’t appear from under the black plastic bubble above his chair, he continued toward the bathroom.

While Alex showered
Diver
swam smoothly below the great reef, like a tiny tadpole beneath a great lily pad. For some reason the radio in the head was still tuned to the reef and, though it was not being heard elsewhere, the sounds of the reef were coming through the ceiling speakers, providing a surreal background to Alex’s shower.

Hot needles of recycled water peppered Alex’s face as he pondered their position. He pulled his face out of the spray and gasped. His back thumped hard against the perforated metal wall of the stall. “Dingers,” he whispered, as a feeling of claustrophobia overwhelmed him.

He had been staring at the great darkness for hours. So why was the enormity of it confronting him now? Alex leaned against the back of the shower stall and switched off the water flow. He took several deep breaths and, as the steam cleared away, found himself staring at the ceiling speaker. The reef sounds were clear, and dominating them was the whistling sound he’d noticed before.

Alex dressed quickly and returned to his seat. The sound of him snapping into his seat belt woke Mary. She blinked and smiled at him.

“I guess I don’t like being a passenger,” he said, shaking his head.

Mary raised an eyebrow. She had to read his thoughts to figure out what he’d meant. She checked to see if the Professor and Tony were listening then she turned back to him and whispered: “What took you so long to be afraid?”

Alex began to sweat. “I’m not sure. Maybe with the reef underneath us I had a false sense of confidence. If we lost power we would be caught by the reef.”

“But you know that’s not true,” she said. “We’d probably fall right through.”

Alex closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “Thanks for pointing that out.”

9
Alex was able to rid himself of the claustrophobia by focusing on the reef or watching the animals that swam in the ghostly virtual world that surrounded him.

While Johnny continued to make recordings of the ecology beneath the reef, and Tony snored in his sleep, Mary busied herself at the food panel. At first she seemed to be happily at work, but soon she became frustrated.

“Shit!” she said finally.

“What’s the problem, my love?” asked Alex, whispering so as not to wake Tony.

“I had an idea,” she said. “A surprise.”

It took a bit of coaxing but Mary eventually admitted that she wanted to bake a cake.

“You want to bake a cake?” said Alex. “Why would you want to do that? You can formulate a piece any time, as long as the raw material holds out.”

“I wanted to celebrate,” said Mary. “Tomorrow we’ll have been on Jupiter a week.”

Johnny had been listening. “Six days,” he said. “That’s not a week.”

“So what,” said Mary. “I want to do it anyway. Think of how it would make the ship smell.”

“An odd consideration,” said the Professor. “Do you bake at home?”

“When and where I can,” said Mary.

Alex sat up stiffly in his seat and stared at the panel in front of him.

“Johnny,” he said. “Check your instruments. I think we’re rising.”

Johnny was silent for a moment, then he chuckled and said, “So we are, Alex. But only slightly. I assume you suspect it’s an updraft channel?”

“Maybe,” said Alex. The Professor’s tone was beginning to anger him. It was obvious that Johnny wanted to stay in the reef as long as possible, but from Alex’s viewpoint they had stayed too long. During the last hour Alex had exercised a respectable level of control over his newfound phobia, but, phobia or not, he was ready to leave and was about to say so when the Professor addressed the subject first.

He stuck his head out from under his bubble and looked at Alex and Mary. “Perhaps I haven’t been all that democratic about this mission, Alex. I know you want to leave. Is that right?”

Alex and Mary nodded in unison.

Johnny got out of his seat and looked at Tony, who was still sleeping.

“Well,” said Johnny. “When Tony gets up we’ll take a vote. What do you say?”

“I say ... yo ... wake up, Tony!” shouted Alex.

Tony snorted and sat bolt upright.

“Jeez,” he said, as he scrambled for his glasses. “What’s going on?” He put them on and looked around the cabin. The first thing he noticed was the holographic projection of the reef. “What’s all that stuff? Where’d those critters come from?”

Tony was asleep when Johnny had fine-tuned the radar. The Professor was about to explain when Alex spoke up.

“We’re taking a vote,” he said. “All those in favor of leaving the reef raise their hands.” Alex raised his arm stiffly into the air. His knuckles smacked the cabin ceiling.

Mary’s hand went up, too, but the Professor’s remained at his sides.

“I’m feeling a bit railroaded here, Sciarra,” said Johnny. “Sure we can leave, but look at those creatures. We’ve just now discovered that much of the life here is nearly invisible. Is that the time to pack it in?”

Tony yawned and raised his arm. Then his face assumed a contented smile.

“There’ll be future missions, Professor. You can become the foremost expert on the new reef.”

“I’m sorry, Tony,” said Johnny, “But you all seem to have forgotten that this is a military mission. That means it’s not a democracy. It also means that for the duration ... well, to put it simply, I’m in charge.”

Alex switched on the ceiling speakers. In full stereo the sounds of the reef loomed over them and still, there was the steady whistle that provided a background to it all.

“Listen to that, Johnny,” said Alex. “What is causing that whistle?”

To Alex’s surprise, Johnny had an answer.

“Jupiter, I think.” he said.

“Jupiter?”

“We heard it before but it was always buried under all the other sounds,” explained the Professor. “Here it’s unavoidable. That’s the radio signature of the Great Red Spot. Thousands of miles beneath your feet is a dynamo, a vortex caused by the condensation of the planet.”

Alex stared at Johnny wordlessly. Then he hung his head and shut his eyes.

“Dingers,” he said softly.

“There is a superconducting fluid down there and it’s swirling, giving up heat. It’s super compressed, super heated stuff they call hydrogen metal; an electrical dynamo that is Jupiter’s chimney, letting off some of that heat. That’s what’s whistling to you, Alex.”

Alex looked at his feet. Only a few inches of deck plating prevented a freefall straight into the crushing interior of the planet.

He felt nauseous.

“Thanks for sharing that, Johnny,” he said. “I’m aware of what’s under our feet. My problem is that I think that if we stay much longer we’re doomed. We have to start finding a way out with some urgency. Dingers, Johnny. I’m not even sure if we’ll find a way out.”

“Why?” asked Mary, seemingly surprised at Alex’s outburst.

“The reef is thicker here in the middle,” said Johnny, ducking his head back inside his bubble. “It may be that there are no channels here.”

Tony cleared his throat.

“Johnny is right,” he said gravely. “Been looking into it; wondering what holds the reef up. Has to be fairly solid somewhere.”

Tony took off his glasses and cleaned them with a small cloth he kept in the breast pocket of his flight suit. “We’ve been thinking the reef is shaped like a flower,” he continued. “But my computer models show a spongy pinwheel with a huge center. It looks like we will have to look long and hard to find a channel out of here.”

“Well,” said Alex, looking more depressed. “I’m really glad I woke you up.”

“Sorry,” said Sciarra with a shrug.

“How long have you known this?” asked Mary.

“We weren’t in a hurry,” said Tony. “It wasn’t important. I mean I figured we’d find a channel out by the time we, I mean, the Professor, was ready to leave.”

Johnny took a deep breath. He sat a moment looking at scrolling numbers on a small monitor inside his bubble.

“Log entry,” he said finally. “Day six; 0800 hours or so. We’re beating our buns out of the reef. I am now turning over the log and the helm to our pilot Alex Rose.”