Leviathans of Jupiter (38 page)

Dorn, back at his control post, said into the built-in microphone, “Atmospheric entry retroburn in one minute.”

The blond woman's image in his display screen nodded. “Retroburn in sixty seconds, on my mark.… Mark!”

Deirdre slid her feet into a pair of restraining loops set into the deck. We're going into the clouds, she said to herself. We're going into Jupiter.

LEVIATHAN

Leviathan signaled to the nearest member that it must soon leave the Kin for budding. The message flashed inward, toward the Elders, glimmers of blue and green flickering through the vast formation.

Once again Leviathan pondered why the Elders insisted that members go off alone to bud. That makes us vulnerable to the darters, Leviathan reasoned. It would be better to stay within the formation, protected against their slashing insatiable teeth.

Many members of the Kin never returned from their buddings, Leviathan knew. Why do the Elders insist on risking our members so? They say the Symmetry demands it. They say that it has always been so, thus it must always remain so.

Leviathan wondered why. Could it be that those members who budded successfully, who fought off the darters and returned to the Kin, made the Kin stronger? The weak fed the darters, the strong returned to the Kin.

But of what good is that? Leviathan asked itself. Once a member returns to the Kin it is safe from the darters. The predators never attack the Kin in all its strength. They would be destroyed if they tried.

The Symmetry. Everything we do is intended to maintain the Symmetry. That must mean that the darters are part of the Symmetry. A new realization shocked Leviathan's consciousness. Does the Symmetry require that we offer ourselves to feed the darters? Does the Symmetry demand that we sacrifice members of the Kin to keep the darters among us?

How could this be? Leviathan wondered. Why don't we protect our own members against the darters? Why do we allow them to kill our own kind?

Is it to make the Kin stronger? To get rid of the weak ones? Sacrifice individuals for the good of the group?

Leviathan considered that possibility with loathing. Why don't we attack the darters? Why do we allow them to feed on us? We could kill them all and then the world would be safe for the Kin. We could bud in peace and safety, once the darters are eliminated.

That would alter the Symmetry, it is true. But what's wrong with that? We could make the Symmetry better, safer, stronger.

Leviathan wished it were close enough to the Elders to show them this idea. At its present station, out on the periphery of the Kin's formation, messages had to be relayed inward from one member to another before they reached the Elders. And then the Elders' answer had to be relayed back.

If we could show them my thoughts directly, display my ideas to their eyes without others in between, perhaps we could convince them. Perhaps we could make them see the rightness of our concept. A world without darters! A world without fear, where we could bud in safety and grow in numbers without limit.

Leviathan wanted to break free of its station on the Kin's periphery and swim deep into the formation and confront the Elders directly. But such insolence was unthinkable. The Elders would have nothing to do with such an upstart.

And besides, the urge to bud was building within Leviathan's member parts. Soon it would be irresistible, a blind unreasoning urge that would blot out all other thoughts, all other needs. Instead of swimming inward toward the Elders, Leviathan knew that very soon it would have to leave the Kin and face the ravening darters. Alone.

KATHERINE WESTFALL'S QUARTERS

Rodney Devlin looked properly humble as he was ushered into Westfall's sitting room by the cadaverous, dark-suited aide who served as her personal secretary. His shaved scalp gleamed as if it were polished with oil, while Devlin's lean, lantern-jawed face seemed somehow to be almost mocking behind his red mustache, despite his lowered eyes.

Westfall nodded to the aide and he silently left the sitting room, sliding the door shut without a sound. She was wearing simple lounging pajamas as she sat on the room's comfortably upholstered sofa. Devlin was in his usual white working clothes, rumpled and stained, looking altogether scruffy.

“They're off on their journey into the ocean,” she said as the erstwhile cook crossed the carpeted floor toward her.

“You fed her the nanos?” he asked, his voice low and respectful, his chef's floppy hat clutched in his hands.

“At the party, when you gave them to me,” Westfall said. “They should start to work on her within a few hours, from what you told me.”

Devlin nodded mutely.

“And then they'll go to work on the others,” Westfall added. “Which will be the end of their mission and the destruction of Dr. Grant Archer and his scientific minions.”

A puzzled expression on his mustachioed face, Devlin asked, “Why're you doin' this? What've you got against Archer and those people in the submersible?”

“That's my business,” Westfall said coldly. “You can be glad that you're not going to jail. That's enough for you to know.”

“Yes'm.”

For several heartbeats the room was silent, Westfall eyeing Devlin like a cat watching a mouse, Devlin standing there waiting for her next words.

At last she said, “Tell me about this man Muzorewa.”

“Zeb?” Devlin's face showed surprise. “He useta be director of this station.”

“I know that. He's been something of a mentor to Archer, over the years, hasn't he?”

Shrugging, Devlin replied, “I s'pose so. Kinda like a father figure to him, almost. Grant was just a young pup when he first came here, y'know. Zeb took him under 'is wing, so to speak.”

“If Archer is relieved of his position as director of this station, would Muzorewa take the job again?”

Devlin puzzled over that question for a moment. Tricky one, that, he said to himself. Why's she asking? What's she after?

“Well?” Westfall demanded.

“I don't think so,” Devlin answered. “Zeb's got an endowed chair at the university in Cairo. And he's a high mucky-muck at Selene University. I don't see him comin' back here.”

Westfall nodded, satisfied. Devlin got the feeling he had just saved Zeb Muzorewa's career. Or maybe his life.

*   *   *

Linda Vishnevskaya checked the mission profile displayed on the leftmost screen of her console against the actual performance of
Faraday
. The two curves overlapped almost perfectly.

To the image of Dorn in her central screen she said, “You should be breaking through the clouds in six minutes.”

The cyborg nodded solemnly. “Six minutes,” he repeated. “All systems are performing within nominal limits.”

Vishnevskaya glanced at the color-coded lights running along the right side of her console. All green.

“The ship is running smoothly,” she agreed. “Please congratulate Dr. Yeager for me.”

Dorn asked, “Would you like to speak with him?”

Fighting down the impulse to smile happily, Vishnevskaya said tautly, “Yes. For a moment.”

Dorn turned away from the screen and called to Yeager, who slid into view on the display.

“Everything is going well, little father,” she said, dimpling into a smile despite herself.

Yeager looked slightly embarrassed. “So far, so good,” he muttered.

“How do you feel?” she asked, quickly adding, “The medical team is monitoring your physical conditions, of course.”

“I feel okay,” Yeager said. “Kind of chilly in this soup, but I guess we'll get warmer as we dive deeper into the ocean.”

“Yes.” Vishnevskaya studied Yeager's face. He seemed normal, despite the perfluorocarbon he was immersed in. Perhaps his face was a little puffy, but the medics claimed that was to be expected.

“Well,” she said, “I just wanted to wish you good luck before communications cut off.”

He nodded. A little warily, she thought. As if he were afraid of saying something he didn't want the others to hear.

“Thanks. We'll be okay.”

“Of course. You designed the vessel well.”

“See you when we get back.”

“Of course,” she repeated.

“So long, kid.”

“Good luck,” she said again, feeling inane, frustrated.

Yeager slid out of the display screen's field of view and Dorn came back. “We're on trajectory,” he said. “Time line is on the tick.”

Vishnevskaya nodded at the cyborg. But she was thinking, Max, don't get hurt. Make your ship perform as it should and come back safe. Come back to me.

*   *   *

Grant Archer sat alone in the gallery that circled the mission control center. As he looked down at the handful of men and women working the consoles he thought, I should have gone on this mission. I should have gone with them.

A cold, almost sneering voice in his head ridiculed the thought. Gone with them? At your age? What would you do down there in that cold blackness? You'd be useless.

Archer nodded to himself, his eyes fastened on the big wall screens that displayed data from
Faraday
's systems.

I'd be a burden to them, he admitted silently. But I'd be with them. I'd be facing the same risks that I've asked them to face. I'd share their fate.

Totally alone in his melancholy, Archer bowed his head and prayed silently, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …

To his alarm, he found that he could not speak the next line, not even to himself. He did fear evil. He feared for the people he had sent into Jupiter's dark, alien sea.

He feared the malice of Katherine Westfall.

THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE

“We'll break through the clouds in two minutes,” Dorn said, his eyes focused on the mission profile curve.

Yeager was standing behind him, his feet anchored in floor loops as he swayed slightly in their liquid world. Deirdre thought of the undersea plants she had seen in vids of Earth.

“Shouldn't you power up the sensor screens?” Corvus asked. He was at his station, to the left of Dorn in the cramped compartment.

The cyborg nodded toward Deirdre. “Powering the sensor screens,” he said as he touched an icon on the control panel's master screen.

All the screens on Deirdre's console lit up, but Deirdre saw nothing except swirling waves of color racing past.

“Wow!” Corvus blurted. “We're really moving!”

“Diving like a falcon,” Yeager agreed.

“It doesn't feel as if we're diving,” Deirdre said.

“That's because we're inside,” Yeager explained. “We share the same relative motion as the ship.”

Dorn intoned, “Breakout in one minute.”

“The flight engineers call this a hypersonic descent,” Yeager went on, perfectly serious. “We're gliding through the atmosphere at Mach 12.”

“Gliding?” Deirdre asked. “At Mach 12?”

Yeager nodded tightly. “Gliding. Saves on the propellants we'll need to launch ourselves back out of here when the mission's finished.”

“That's why we have those aerodynamic fins attached to the ship's exterior,” Dorn said.

“Right,” Yeager agreed. “And once we're in the ocean they'll serve as steering vanes.”

The ship was definitely shaking now, buffeting seriously.

“And the atmosphere's ten thousand kilometers deep?” Deirdre asked, remembering the figure from their briefings.

Without turning from his control panel displays, Dorn nodded. “Ten thousand kilometers, roughly. Just about as deep as the Earth's diameter. It's—”

“Look!” Deirdre shouted.

The display screens suddenly cleared and showed a vast panorama of steel gray ocean stretching far below them. The horizon was far, far away, much more distant than the horizon on Earth. Enormous, Deirdre realized. This is an enormous world. The sky was blanketed with soft pastel clouds, bulbous and billowing as far as the eye could see.

“We're below the clouds,” Deirdre breathed. It sounded silly, even to herself. The buffeting was getting worse, but no one seemed to take any notice of it. Am I the only one who's frightened? she asked herself.

“Look over there,” Corvus said, pointing.

Little puffs of greenish clouds floated low across the ocean's rippled surface, and other, darker smudges dotted the view.

“I'll focus the telescopes on them,” Deirdre said, glad to have something to occupy her hands. The smudges grew into an armada of iridescent balloons sailing majestically across the boundless ocean, glittering in the pale light that filtered through the clouds.

“Look at them,” Deirdre gasped, pointing. “They're beautiful!”

“Clarke's Medusas,” Corvus murmured. “Completely adapted to living airborne. They never land anywhere.”

“There isn't any land to land on,” Yeager said. “Nothing down there but a seven-thousand-klick-deep ocean.”

“They spend their whole lives aloft,” Deirdre said.

“They're just sailing along,” Yeager said, a hint of awe creeping into his voice, “on winds that must be at least four hundred knots.”

“It's home to them,” Corvus said.

Deirdre watched the medusas, fascinated. Long tendrils trailed from their colorful main bodies. Sensors, she recalled from her briefings.

“What's that?” Yeager asked, pointing a trembling finger at a thin, flat ghostly figure that glided past the medusas.

“Spider-kite,” said Corvus. “They eat the organic particles raining out of the clouds.”

“So do the medusas,” said Deirdre. “No predators have been found among the organisms living in the atmosphere,” she quoted from memory. “They all feed on the particles coming down from the clouds. Like manna from heaven.”

“That doesn't mean there aren't any predators,” Corvus said.

Yeager countered, “Been popping probes into this atmosphere for almost half a century. No predators have been identified.”