Jupiter Project (2 page)

“You don’t think they’d believe me?”

“Some might wonder…” He casually flicked his racket through the air in a forehand shot, watching it carefully. “But I do not think you are so unwise.” He swung again, making a thin whipping sound.

I set my jaw, gripped my own racket…and then felt sort of stupid. He was right. I couldn’t prove anything, and getting into a brawl on the court wouldn’t help.

“Forget it. You have to beat Ishi to win the tournament, and I don’t think he’ll make the mistakes I did.” (I knew he wouldn’t. I was going to warn him.)

“Very good.” Yuri paused. “I think I shall stay and practice for a bit,” he said pointedly.

“Okay, I’m leaving anyway. I’m due on watch in Monitoring.”

So I left, feeling depressed. I opened a curved panel in the court wall and wriggled into the one-man transfer pipe beyond. I coasted along it, using every other handhold, and came to another hatch. I went through it into a slightly larger tube big enough for two-way traffic, but I didn’t meet anybody in the two hundred yards to the “top” of the center axis.

The squash court, you see, is on the axis of my home. The Jovian Astronautical-Biological Orbital Laboratory, JABOL. Quite a mouthful. We don’t call it that, of course—usually it’s just the Can.

That’s pretty much what it looks like—a big tin can, spinning slowly in the utter black night of deep space. The lid of the Can is a pancake of water, held in shape by a flexible plastic sack. It’s a radiation shield, actually. It floats 50 meters above the spinning metal cylinder of the Can. The bottom lid is the same, so you can’t look into the Can from outside easily. If you could, you’d see that it isn’t solid. There’s a big hollow cylinder in the middle, open to space. That’s where we store our ships and shuttlecraft. There’s room enough, because the hollow center is 200 meters across. And smack in the middle is a long pipe, the central axis, connected by spokes to the main body of the Can. I was in that pipe.

The axis doesn’t spin with the rest of the Can; it’s suspended on gimbals. That means it doesn’t have any centrifugal “gravity”—it’s in free fall conditions. Ideal for adapting an Earthside game, like squash, to zero-g.

Don’t get the idea that JABOL set the central axis just so for the benefit of squash players—it’s all rigged for the Far Eye, our observatory. Over a hundred Can staffers wanted to play the game, and we all had to scrounge the tubing for our court and wangle permission to build it by ourselves, on our own time. It’s ours. (Legally, of course, some bureaucrat in the Association for the Advancement of Science back on Earth has supervision—but let him try and use it.)

I reached the end of the central axis. I was still fuming, not thinking about what I was doing, and I almost closed the pressure lock on my thumb. Grimacing, I slipped into one of the personnel transfer tubes. These are the spokes that connect the axis to the Can. I coasted quickly along, ruminating on the game, and feeling the increasing faint tug of centrifugal gravity as I moved outward, radially, toward the rim decks of the Can.

First deck inside the Can is the locker room, complete with ’fresher. I stripped off my shorts and T-shirt, glad there wasn’t anybody around to ask me how the game had gone. Under the ’fresher’s alternating, stinging showers of ionized water I finally perked up.

Yuri had foxed me neatly, cheating just enough to get away with it. So what? Maybe he’d have beaten me anyway. There wasn’t much I could do about it, anyway, right? In future I’d avoid Yuri and that would be the end of it.

Right? Right.

So I thought.

Ten minutes later, all brushed and scrubbed, I stepped out of a drop tube elevator unto A deck, near Monitoring. As soon as the elevator stopped I’d felt a giant’s hand on me, the full press of one
g,
because A deck is the furthest one out from the Can’s axis.

I turned left and walked uphill. That’s right, uphill. The decks of the Can are cylinders with a common axis, each cylinder fitted inside the next, layered like the skin of an onion. As I strolled along, hands in pockets, five meters below my feet was the outer skin of the Can—and beyond that, the high vacuum of space. I was facing along the rim of the A-deck cylinder, so the floor curved up in front of me, eventually bending out of sight. It always looks like you’re walking uphill. You’re not, of course, because gravity—the centrifugal force, I call it, though a physicist would shake his head and remind me that it’s really “centripetal,” according to connoisseurs of mechanics—is perpendicular to the floor everywhere. It never
feels
like you’re walking uphill, but it looks that way, both in front and behind you. On the other hand, to right and left the floor stays flat. If the view wasn’t blocked by partitions you could see all the way to the “top” and “bottom” of the Can.

The curving hallway outside Monitoring Division is a swirl of yellows and greens that spiral around the doors and splash out onto the deck. All this gives the impression of depth and variety; halls look longer and it’s easier for the human eye to locate things, from the contrast. The ship’s psychologist says it’s good for us—who wants to look at gray prefab paneling all day?—just like the Ganymede vacations.

In the corridor I saw two women techs pulling some wiring slabs out of a circuitry conduit. Spot-checking a fault, probably. One of them was bent over and, well, let’s say my young man’s fancy was turned to matters other than electronics. She glanced up and saw me looking. And smiled. I could feel my face reddening. Well, they can’t blame you for looking.

I slid aside the door and stepped into the small alcove that led to Monitoring. For some reason my father was standing there, waiting.

“Ah, Matt. Mr. Tsulamba is pulling extra duty today, so you’ll go on an hour late.” He said this in a straight, informal way, but there was a note of strain in his voice.

“Oh, okay,” I said. “I’ll have lunch first.”

“Got a minute?” he said quickly. He waved toward his office. I nodded and followed him into the cramped little room. Somehow Dad always looks bigger in his office, even though he’s only a few centimeters taller than me. The medical people say I’ll probably dwarf him in a few more years, since the low-g environment will make all us kids taller. But Dad’s over two meters now, without an ounce of fat, and he looks like he wrestles bears for a living. He sat down and put his feet up on his desk—no small trick, in that room—and I folded a straight seat out from the wall to perch on.

“I wanted to talk before you go rushing off to Ganymede. You leave in a day or two, isn’t that right?” He frowned, as though thinking to himself.

“Yes, but I’ll only be gone a week.”

“There are a few things you ought to know before then, and I think you’d better hear them without your mother around.” He gave me a wry grin. “Sometimes she takes the edge off what I want to say.”

“Uh huh.”

He tugged at his long sideburns. “I’ve been hearing some pretty high quality scuttlebutt. Talk about cutting corners on Lab operations, minimizing expenses—but serious, this time, dead serious. I think there’s something behind it. Things are brewing back Earthside. I suspect a few insiders guessed early, several months back. That would explain some of the maneuvering going on in the higher echelons of the Lab.” He stared off into space. “In particular, the adroit sidestepping by a certain figure in Bio-Tech…”

“You’re leaving me behind. Dad. What’s happening?”

“Sorry. Let’s see—in, ummm, about six months you’ll turn eighteen. I suppose you have considered what that means?”

“Sure. I’ll be voting age. Only there’s nobody to vote for, out here.”

He smiled wryly and then frowned. “There’s more than that, I’m afraid. Below eighteen, a boy dips into the knowledge and history the human race has accumulated, even though mankind’s history is mostly a series of regrettable errors. After eighteen, you’ve earned the right to make your own mistakes.”

“Fine. I’m ready.”

“Well…” Dad looked uncomfortable. “I have been wondering if you might make your first big mistake if you elect to remain here at the Laboratory.”

“Huh? You don’t mean I should go
back?
”

“A solid grounding at Caltech will stand you better in the long run than what you can pick up casually here.”

“I don’t
want
that. For Chrissake—”

“Calm down. Sit.” I noticed that I had gotten to my feet without being aware of it. I sat.

“I am only making a few observations,” Dad said mildly. “What you do is your business—or will be, six months from now. You are officially a minor until age eighteen. That means you are a member of our family and a student. After that, where you live and what you do is strictly between you and the Laboratory administration.”

“Yes.” I said. I value my independence as highly as anybody, but it sounded as though Dad was practically throwing me out.

“But you’ll always be my son.” He smiled. “You know you’re welcome in our home. I’m just telling you, now, that it’s time to start thinking about the future.

“I
have
thought about it. I’m going to stay here,” I said, setting my shoulders.

“Now, don’t go all stiff-necked on me.” He grimaced and scratched his bald spot. “Have you figured out which job slot you’re going to apply for?”

“Oh, well, probably for watch officer in Monitoring.”

Dad smiled faintly. “I am sure your mother would be happy to know you freely elect to continue working in dear-old-Dad’s section. What do you
really
want to do?”

“Uh, something outside, probably. Low-g work.”

“Not a bad choice. Just let me give you a little advice. Whatever you want, use the remaining six months to improve your qualifications for the job. I don’t believe staying on at the Laboratory is going to be a simple matter for you kids.”

“Why?”

“The Project can’t support a Laboratory staff that continues to grow. The Earthside administrators agreed to send complete families out here only because they are socially more stable than groups of singles. There were a lot of other arguments—and good ones—against shipping an eight-year-old kid like you off to Jupiter.”

“I pulled my weight!” I said indignantly.

“I agree. But some children have to be sent back when they come of age, or the Can will pop its seams in a few more years. And remember, appropriations for space research have leveled off. Commander Aarons is looking for ways to trim our costs.”

“
Some
body will get to stay.”

“Certainly. I am merely pointing out that it might not be you.”

That worried me. Dad always says that worry is just wasted energy. It wasn’t like him to cry wolf.

I glanced at him. He was gazing distantly at a big display screen on the office wall. It showed the placement of all tugs, shuttles and general traffic around the Lab, color-coded in orange and blue according to priority.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I guess you’re trying to tell me it’s not obvious that I’m supervaluable to the Lab.”

“Something like that.”

“There are a lot of smart kids about my age. I guess I’d better shift into high gear,” I said slowly.

Dad sat upright and looked at me steadily. “The competition is not going to be easy, and you’re all trying for the same brass ring,?” he said seriously.

“Great. I’ll give Commander Aarons a demonstration of what I can do,” I said grimly. “But what were those rumors you mentioned?”

“Forget them for now. Maybe I can tell you more later. Right now you’d better grab lunch.”

“Okay,” I said reluctantly.

Dad stood up and handed me a thick pamphlet. “When you have the time, read this.”

I looked at the cover. It showed two guys talking earnestly under a tan palm tree. It was a catalog for Caltech.

And
that
unnerved me more than anything he’d said.

The foldout tables in the rec room were mostly filled, but I saw Jenny Fleming and Zak Palonski at a large table in the corner.

“Can I join the great debate?” I asked Jenny. She smiled and moved over to give me room, straightening the collar on her orange blouse and fiddling with her braids. Yes, braids—pretty unfashionable, back Earthside. Makes her look younger than she is, when everybody knows a mature, mysterious look goes over better Earthside this season. But braids also keep your hair from straying inside a spacesuit helmet.

“My, you do look a little peaked, Matt.” Zak said. “I trust you trounced Yuri?” Zak has unruly black hair and is a touch fat. He was rapidly finishing off a plate of goulash.

“‘The vanquished have no tongues,’ my son,” I said, quoting a line of his own poetry at him.

“Then I must play Yuri for the championship?” I hadn’t noticed Ishi Moto was in the cafeteria line behind me; he had come over to the table just in time to hear the news.

“Right. Watch out for—” Then I stopped. Better to tell him later, in private. “—his dink shot. It’s subtle. Our last game was a breathtakingly narrow twenty-one to thirteen.”

“I shall prepare,” Ishi said in a way that implied a lot. Ishi is always calm and it’s hard to read that politely expectant look he has. You have the feeling he’s sitting back, watching the circus around him with a slightly amused interest, unhurried, enjoying it all. He chuckles at things a lot and there’s a bemused twinkle in his eye when he talks.

“Why didn’t you challenge me?” Jenny said brightly to me. “I’m out of practice.”

“Why?” Zak said. “Working too hard?”

“My shuttle needs some repair.” Jenny said. “I’ve been overhauling it with the help of some people in maintenance.”

“Why should that take all your time?” I said.

“It is a long task,” Ishi said, “and it must be done as quickly as possible. There are only two shuttles assigned to satellite maintenance. That is the minimum number possible under the safety regulations, since there must always be a backup shuttle in case the first fails while on a mission.”

“Yours is still operating, Ishi?” Zak said.

“Yes. I have not been out, though. There have been no malfunctions among the data satellites while Jenny has had the
Ballerina
in the shop.”