Jupiter Project (22 page)

Dead. The engine gurgled to a stop.

The pancake was turning, sliding away. But I was catching up with it. And suddenly I saw that the physics wasn’t as simple as I thought. Once I hit the organiform, what would keep me there? There was no gravity. I would rebound from the pancake and go tumbling off into—

But I could use the friction of the grainy organiform. And maybe grab a handhold. Maybe—

My adhesive patch. It would help hold me to the rough surface. I reached up toward my neck and yanked down. Then I slapped my knee with the tab and—

We hit.

The forward strut caught the pancake skin. It dug in.

I ducked my head and wrapped my arms over my neck. Standard position. A shock ran through
Roadhog.
I felt a grinding tremor—

A pipe smacked me in the ribs. I slammed into something that gave slightly. All around me bright, glittering debris was tumbling, like a luminous shower. Sparkling bits of
Roadhog
plunged by me. Soundless. Soundless, and tumbling.

I rolled over and over, along the face of the pancake. My adhesive patch caught, gave way, caught, gave way, making a small ripping sound inside my suit. It kept me on the pancake, reduced the recoil momentum, but it wasn’t slowing me down much.

I snatched at a handhold. Caught it. Lost the grip. The organiform is rough but flexible. I rolled, arms curled over my head, legs out straight. A waterfall of junk was tumbling with me. My right side and arm hurt, but there was no jabbing pain. Maybe the organiform had cushioned me enough; maybe nothing was broken.

The adhesive patch was snatching at the organiform, holding me to it. But I wasn’t stopping. I was rolling in a soundless shower. Outside my helmet was a blur of gray organiform, then a blur of black sweeping by, then organiform again. If it went on I would roll off the top of the pancake and out into space.

I brought my arms down, dug in with my elbows. At once I got a jarring and my arm twisted painfully. I tried again. Another wrenching jolt, a flash of pain in my shoulder.

If I wasn’t careful, I’d push too much against the pancake and knock myself off entirely, out into space. I fought against the sickening revolution and tried to scan the pancake skin ahead. I was near the edge. Friction with the pancake was trying to swing me around, give me some angular deflection. But ahead of me I could see pieces of
Roadhog
flying off into the blackness.

Ahead, something—A blur. No, a bump. A set of handholds in the plastiform.

It came looming up. I thrashed toward it. The white bumps shot toward me. I kicked in their direction without thinking. I began to rise off the pancake. I was rebounding off. I snatched—Missed. Another handhold came gliding by below. I windmilled my arms, bringing my head toward the pancake. I snatched downward. Grabbed it. Held on for the jolt—

When my arms felt like a bundle of knots, I knew I had it. I flailed wildly and got my other hand onto it. My arm was numb. I dumbly watched pieces of
Roadhog
disappear over the side, spinning away into the darkness.

“Matt! You okay?”

“I… I think so.”

“Don’t waste time! Get over to the lock!”

“Yeah…sure… Maybe the team can…”

“It’s faster if you follow the emergency line to the ten-A lock.”

“Oh…okay.”

I started hand over fist along the skin of the pancake, working my way toward the bright blue emergency line twenty meters away.

Inside Lock ten-A I sagged against the bulkhead and listened to the hiss of air flooding in around me. I looked down. My adhesive patch looked like somebody had been trying to snatch it bald. There were cuts and nicks all over my suit. I still had the goddam Faraday cup sealed in the carry-bag on my left leg. My leg ached there; it must have banged against me. But through the clear plastic the cup didn’t look damaged. I thought.
Well, that’s what this was about, right?
It looked like pretty small stuff.

I waited for the lock to cycle. I was wrung out, depressed. I half expected to be met by the ship’s officer who would put me in handcuffs.

But then the lock swung open. The tube outside looked like a subway car. People were jammed in. They waved and beamed as I stepped forward. I popped my helmet and a warm rush of noise poured in.

“Matt!” My mother wrapped her arms around me and cried.

Dad was there, smiling and frowning at the same time, shaking hands with me.

People were swarming around, touching me, helping me off with my suit.

Mr. Jablons appeared at my elbow, “Welcome back.” He took the Faraday cup in its wrapper. “Good luck with the boss, too.” His eyes twinkled and he gestured with his head at Commander Aarons, who was talking to an officer down the corridor.

“How do you feel, Matt?” I turned the other way and saw Jenny.

“Great.”

“I hope you—”

“Forget it. I’m immortal,” I said gruffly. I didn’t mention that for some reason my knees felt weak. And nobody commented on what a dumb fool stunt I’d pulled.

Commander Aarons scowled over at me. “No,” I heard him say. “I will talk to him later. Let the doctors have a look first.”

A hand took my elbow roughly and guided me through the crowd. I winked at Jenny, hoping I looked self-confident.

There were two medical attendants with me. They hustled me into an elevator and we zipped inward five levels. I was in a daze. A doctor in a white coat poked at me, took a blood sample, urinanalysis, skin sections—and then ordered me into a ’fresher.

I got a new set of standard ship work clothes when I came out, and a light supper. My time sense was all fouled up; it was early morning, ship’s time, but my stomach thought it was lunch. And I felt like I was a million years old.

After that they left me alone.

Finally someone stuck his head in a door and motioned me into the next room. The doctor was in there, reading a chart.

“Young man,” he said slowly, “you have given me and your parents and a lot of other people a great deal of trouble. That was an extremely foolish gesture to make. These past few days have been hard on all of us, but such heroics are not to be excused.”

He looked at me sternly. “I imagine the Commander will have more to say to you. I hope he disciplines you well. By freak chance, you seem to have avoided getting a serious dosage of radiation. Your blood count is nearly normal. I expect it will reach equilibrium again within a few hours.”

“I’m okay?”

“That is what I said. Your—”

There was a knock at the door. It opened and a bridge officer looked in. “Finished. Doctor?”

“Nearly.” He turned to me. “I want you to know that you came very close to killing yourself, young man. The background level out there is rising rapidly; it very nearly boiled you alive. Commander Aarons will make an example of you—”

“No doubt.” I got up. The Doctor pressed his lips together into a thin line, then nodded reluctantly to the officer. We left.

“What now?” I said in the tube outside. “The Commander’s office?”

“Nope. Mr. Jablons’.”

“Why?”

They don’t let me in on their secrets. The Commander is there now. He sent me for you. If it was up to me I’d have you thrashed, kid.”

I didn’t say anything more until we reached the electronics lab. There weren’t any more convenient excuses. No dodges, no explanations. I had pulled off a dumb stunt and saved my neck only by smashing up
Roadhog.

I slumped as I walked beside the bridge officer, my shoulders sagging forward. My conversation with Zak drifted through my head.
Self-knowledge is usually bad news.
Yeah. I thought back over what had been happening to me, the way one moment I’d act reasonably mature, and then the next minute I’d come on like some twelve-year-old. I hadn’t dealt with Yuri. I hadn’t straightened out my feelings about women, I hadn’t even been able to take looking like a failure in Mr. Jablons’ eyes…

Fuzzy thoughts floated by. The corridor seemed to ripple as I followed the bridge officer. I felt like some Earthside dope-o on mindwipe.

I took a deep breath and my head cleared a little. The bridge officer scowled at me. I tried to give him a smile with some bravado in it. It didn’t work. We reached the electronics lab.

The Commander himself opened the door and waved the bridge officer away. He didn’t look angry. In fact, he hardly saw me as I came in and closed the door. He was gazing off into space, thinking.

Dad and Mr. Jablons were sitting at one of the work benches. Dr. Kadin was working at a high-vacuum tank in the middle of the room. His hands were inserted in the waldoes and he was moving something inside the tank.

Dad looked up when I came in. “Ah, there you are, Mr. Lucky.”

“Huh?”

“Look in the tank.”

I walked over and looked through the glass. The Faraday cup was inside. Some of the sticky dust had been taken out with the waldo arms and scattered over a series of pyrex plates. The plates were spotted with green and blue chemicals and one of the plates was fixed under a viewing microscope.

“That contaminant you found inside the cup wasn’t dust, Matt,” my father said. “It is a colony of—well, something like spores. They are still active, as far as we can tell.”

Dr. Kadin turned and looked at me. “Quite so. It would seem, young Mr. Bohles, that you have discovered life on Jupiter.”

Suddenly everybody in the room was smiling: Mr. Jablons laughed. “When they write this up in the history books, they’ll have to record that blank look of yours, Matt.”

I realized that my jaw was hanging open and quickly shut it. “Wha—How?”

“How did it get there?” Dr. Kadin. said. “That is a puzzle. I imagine these spores—if that is indeed what they are—somehow traveled up through the Jovian atmosphere by riding along—‘piggyback’ I believe you say—on the electric fields produced by the turbulent storms.”

Mr. Jablons slapped his knee. “I knew it would happen! Half an hour ago we didn’t know if that dust was alive, and already a theory has raised its head.”

Dr. Kadin ignored him. “You might have a look at them through the microscope,” he said. “There are very interesting aspects.”

I bent my head over the eyepiece of the microscope. Against a yellow smear I could see three brownish lumps. They looked like barbells with a maze of squiggly blue lines inside them. They weren’t moving; the smear had killed them.

“Note the elongated structure,” Dr. Kadin said at my ear. “Most unusual for such a small cell. Of course, these do not appear to be at all similar to Earthly cells in other particulars, so perhaps such a difference is not surprising.”

“I don’t get you,” Dad said.

“I believe these organisms may use that shape to cause a separation of electrical charge in their bodies. Somehow, deep in the atmosphere, they shed charge. Then, when a storm blows them to the top of the cloud layer, they become attached to the complicated electrical field lines near the north pole.”

“That’s what brought them out to Satellite Fourteen?” I asked.

“I think so. It is the only mechanism I can imagine that would work.”

“Why did the Faraday cup malfunction?” Commander Aarons asked. It was the first thing be had said since I arrived.

“Well, consider. When an electron strikes the cup it passes through the positive grid and strikes the negative plate. From there it passes down a wire and charges a capacitor. These spores—or whatever—are also charged; they will be trapped in the same manner. But they do not pass down the wire; only between grid and plate, eventually filling it up. They still retained some of their charge, though, and when they piled up high enough to connect the grid and the plate they shorted out the circuit.” Dr. Kadin looked around, as if for approval.

“That could be why the Faraday cup failed, all right,” Mr. Jablons said.

“I couldn’t tell much from the microscope,” I said. “Dr. Kadin, what are those cells like?”

“They
seem
to be carbon-based. They are not carbon dioxide absorbers, however, like terrestrial plants; perhaps they breathe methane. They have a thick cell wall and some structures I could not identify. Calling them spores is only a guess, really.”

Commander Aarons shook his head. “You are certain these things couldn’t have been left there by accident—just be something from the Can that was on the Bohles boy’s gloves when he took it out?”

“No. They are like nothing I have ever seen.”

“But what are they doing out there?” Dad said. “Why should organisms evolve that can be thrown clear above the atmosphere? If that bunch hadn’t been trapped in Satellite Fourteen they could have gone all the way to the south pole, riding along on the magnetic fields.”

“That may possibly be the point,” Dr. Kadin said. “Perhaps these are spores and they were migrating.”

“Migrating?” Dad said. “What for?”

“We know there are fewer storms near the poles. A point at the pole does not rotate like the rest of the planet; the atmosphere above it is relatively still. It could be that only under those conditions can life survive in the Jovian atmosphere.”

“I see,” I murmured. “They were migrating to the other livable zone of the planet—the south pole.”

“Perhaps, perhaps.” Dr. Kadin waved his hands. “This is all quite preliminary. I am only advancing speculations, you understand.”

“We can deal with theories later,” Commander Aarons said. He smacked his fist into his palm. “The point is that we’ve found life—the real McCoy! If this doesn’t make ISA sit up and take notice, nothing will.”

“You think we might get to stay?” I said excitedly.

“We’re back in the running, anyway. I am going to get Earthside on the line at once: this will make headlines on every continent, if I am any judge.” He plucked at his moustache, smiling to himself. “Just wait until—”

“If you don’t mind, gentlemen, before you leave I have a piece of data you might find interesting,” Dad said. He got slowly to his feet, pausing for dramatic effect. I grinned. Dad could really play to the house, when he wanted to.

“I couldn’t sleep while Matt was out making an unintentional hero of himself; neither could his mother.” I suddenly noticed bags under his eyes; he was tired. “I spent the time following up a project I’ve been meaning to get to for several weeks.”