Jupiter (15 page)

'Hairless? Why?'

'For the immersion,' Lane said. 'Once we're in the ship.'

'What ship?'

'The submersible that's being repaired for the deep mission.'

Grant felt an electric jolt of alarm flash through him. Then he asked, very deliberately, 'What in the name of the Living God are you talking about?'

O'Hara took a deep breath. 'It's just not fair to keep you totally in the dark. Now that you're a scooter, you'd think Dr Wo would tell you about it.'

'Why don't you tell me?'

'I will. I am. But don't let anyone know I told you. Not a word to anyone! Promise?'

Grant nodded. 'I promise.'

She drew in another breath. Then, in a hushed, faint whisper, as if she were afraid of being overheard, she began, 'There was a mission below the clouds, into the ocean, but we had an accident. A scooter was killed. Poor Dr Wo and his second-in-command were both terribly injured.'

'You too? And Zeb?'

'All of us were battered. We asked Selene for medical help - nanomachines to inject into the injured bodies and repair the damage.'

'But what about tissue regeneration? You don't need nano—'

'The damage was too severe.'

'Too severe even for stem cell regeneration?'

She nodded in the dim light of the stars. 'As I said, a man was killed. They had to put poor Dr Wo's legs in frozen stasis until the experts from Selene arrived. By the time they came, most of his injuries were beyond repair. The spinal cord neurons had degenerated too far even for the nanomachines to rebuild them properly.'

Grant sank back into the couch's cushiony softness. 'So that's why he's in a powerchair.'

'Yes. And they had to send Dr Krebs back to Selene for microsurgery.'

'Who's Dr Krebs?'

'She was second-in-command of the mission.'

'And this all happened more than a year ago?' Grant asked.

'It did.'

Grant thought a moment, then asked, 'So what's that got to do with that saucer thing stuck on the far side of the station?'

'That's the ship they were in.'

'Oh, for the love of God.'

'They had entered Jupiter's ocean. That's when the accident happened.'

'In the Jovian ocean,' Grant muttered. 'And Wo wants to go back.'

'They're rebuilding the submersible.'

'But Wo's in no physical condition to go.'

He heard the clink of her spoon on the dish she was holding. 'It's melting,' she said.

'Wo can't go on the next mission into the ocean. Zeb told me it's supposed to be a deep probe.'

'He told you that?'

'Yes.'

'You're right, I suppose. Although I don't really know. Wo is a very determined man. He's taking all kinds of nanotherapies and stem cell injections. He still thinks he can rebuild his body, regenerate the spinal cord neurons or replace them with biochip circuitry.'

'He's crazy!'

'Of course,' she said calmly. 'Aren't we all? But he's in charge here, and he's determined to find out what those things in the ocean are.'

Grant's head was starting to spin. He dipped his spoon into the ice cream. It was soupy.

'Zeb and I are going to start training for the next mission,' O'Hara said. 'That's why Zeb needs you to take over some of his load in the fluid dynamics program.'

'You're going?'

'Oh, yes,' she said, in a flat, resigned tone. 'All the survivors of the first mission have been assigned to the new one.'

'Is that why you wear those leggings?'

'That's for the implants. They wired our legs with biochips. It's the first step in the mission adaptation.'

'Wired…?'

With a struggle, O'Hara pushed herself up from the couch. Grant heard her spoon clatter to the floor.

'Oh dear. I've spilled the ice cream.'

Grant said, 'I'll help you clean it up.' But it wasn't easy to get out of the couch. He put his plate on the floor, yet it still took two tries before he could stand up.

'I'm afraid some of it got onto your slacks,' she said, heading for the kitchenette.

'That's all right. It'll wash out.'

'Here's a washcloth,' she said, coming back toward him and handing him the damp cloth.

Grant couldn't see very well in the starlight. The glow from the floor simply threw most of his slacks into a soft shadow. He dabbed at the slacks.

'I'm terribly sorry to be so clumsy,' O'Hara said, sounding genuinely upset about it.

'It's all right. Accidents ha…' He didn't finish the thought, remembering what she'd just told him about Wo's disastrous mission into the Jovian ocean.

'It's my legs, you see,' she went on. 'I haven't been able to work them right since they implanted the biochips. They tell us not to worry, that legs are pretty useless anyway when you're floating around in the ship, but that doesn't make it any easier here and now, not at all.'

'Don't worry about it.' Grant thought it sounded inane, but he didn't know what else to say.

They were standing together in the starlit dimness, so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek. Grant wanted to hold her, clasp her close and kiss her and lift her off her feet and carry her back to the couch. He could feel the electricity crackling between them.

Lane stood before him, silent now, unmoving, as if waiting for him to do something, make a move, speak a word.

'I'd better be going now,' he heard himself say, his voice shaky.

'I suppose so,' she responded.

'Thanks for telling me,' he said. Then, trying to lighten the moment, he added, 'And for the ice cream.'

She smiled sadly. 'You're wearing it on your slacks, I'm afraid.'

He made a shrug. 'Not a problem.'

They walked to the door together and she slid it open. On impulse, he kissed her swiftly, lightly on the lips.

She rested one hand on his shoulder, but whispered, 'It doesn't work that way, Grant. Not any more. It's the biochips, you see… it's like being neutered.'

Grant stumbled back from her, shocked.

'Maybe after the mission,' O'Hara said, sounding bleak and hopeless as an orphaned child. 'Maybe then, when they remove the biochips

Not knowing what to say, not knowing if there was anything he could say, Grant stepped out into the corridor and strode quickly away.

Neutered! The word echoed in his mind. Wo did this to her. To Zeb and everyone else who's assigned to the mission.

No wonder she got so boiled at Egon; he knows damned well she wouldn't… she can't…

His mind spun. But then, as he walked aimlessly past his own door and continued blindly along the corridor, he realized that Lane had said she'd be interested in him after the mission, after the neurosurgeons had restored her to normal.

She knows I'm married, Grant said to himself. And I kissed her. I wanted her! I would've broken my marriage vows. He knew he should feel ashamed, desolated. Infidelity in the mind was almost as bad as actual adultery, he knew.

Yet, instead, he felt strangely excited, almost pleased with himself. That's wrong, he raged silently. You're committing a sin.

Three uniformed guards were walking up the corridor toward him, two women and the guard captain, a tall, burly Albanian with a large patrician nose and a graying buzz cut. He had the physique of a weight lifter: muscles bulged beneath his skin-tight shirt.

'Working late, are you?' asked the captain in an easy, friendly tone. Still, Grant felt a slight hint of menace beneath the words.

'I'm just heading for my quarters,' Grant said.

The three of them glanced at the wet stain on Grant's slacks. Both women grinned.

Grant felt his cheeks burn. It must look like I've wet myself. Or - he reddened even more. My god, what am I going to do? How can I survive here?

Grant buried himself in his new job in Muzorawa's lab. To his happy surprise he found himself becoming truly fascinated by the fluid dynamics of Jupiter's ocean.

Muzorawa had constructed a computer model of the planet-girdling ocean, based on data from the probes they had sent below the clouds. It was, at best, a set of rough approximations. Grant was determined to refine them and generate a true picture of how that vast ammonia-laced sea actually behaved.

They worked together in the fluid dynamics lab. Grant thought it was slightly ridiculous to call the cramped little compartment a laboratory. There was no real experimental work going on. The only equipment in the lab was a desktop-sized hypersonic wind tunnel, a small shock tube — which looked like nothing more than a narrow length of stainless steel pipe — and a two-meter-tall transparent tank which served as a cloud simulator. There was nothing in the lab that could simulate the pressures and temperatures of the Jovian ocean. Actually, there was no laboratory apparatus in the Solar System that could come close to simulating Jovian conditions. So they worked with computer simulations, instead: electronic approximations to reality, programs that accepted what little they knew and played it back to them.

GIGO, Grant thought. Garbage in, garbage out. Equations were no substitute for real data.

'This research would make a good doctoral thesis,' Muzorawa told him one day as they sat side by side at the computer desk.

'Doctoral thesis?' Grant echoed.

The Sudanese cocked his head slightly, as if thinking about the matter. At last he replied, 'Yes, if you don't mind switching your subject to planetary astrophysics instead of stellar.'

Grant mulled the idea. I could put my time here to good use, he thought. Instead of wasting the four years I could come out of this with a doctorate… and then go on to what I want to do after I get a university post.

'You would have to do all the course work, naturally,' Muzorawa went on in his deliberate, considered manner. 'We can get the necessary materials sent from my department at Cairo. I can provide the supervision for it and—'

Grant's eyes widened. 'You're on the faculty at Cairo?'

'In the physics department,' Muzorawa answered matter-of-factly. 'Professor of fluid dynamics.'

'That's the oldest university in the world,' Grant marvelled.

Muzorawa smiled slowly. 'Yes, true. Al-Azhar was founded in the tenth century by the Ismali Fatimids. It was co-opted into the University of Cairo somewhat later.' His smile broadened. 'The physics department is a comparatively new addition.'

'But what are you doing here if you've got a full professorship at Cairo?'

Muzorawa seemed almost surprised by Grant's question. 'I am here to study Jupiter's interior. It's the greatest problem in fluid dynamics that is accessible to direct observation.'

'You're here voluntarily?'

The black man nodded gravely. 'I intend to remain here as long as I can. Jupiter's ocean is the kind of problem that can take a lifetime and more.'

Grant could only shake his head in awe. This is my mentor, he thought with pride. He's going to be my thesis advisor. It didn't occur to Grant to wonder about the sanity of a man who willingly chose to live in an orbiting station that never got closer to Earth than six hundred million kilometers.

That night, for the first time in months, Grant sent genuinely happy messages to Marjorie and his parents. He hadn't heard from his wife in more than a week, but he knew she was busy. She'd looked tired in her last message, weary and apprehensive. Is she ill? he wondered. Is she hiding something from me? Does she still love me?

He wondered about that. How can you stay in love with someone when you're separated for four years, millions of kilometers apart. He was struggling to keep thoughts of Lane O'Hara out of his conscious mind, out of his dreams, even. Marjorie was surrounded by handsome young military officers and university graduates on their Public Service tours of duty: dozens of them, hundreds of them.

Still, he had good news to tell her for the first time since he'd shipped off Earth, and he kept smiling all through his message to her. It wasn't until the computer was off for the night and all the lights in his room were turned down and he was alone in bed in the darkness that his fears about Marjorie warped his face into a pained mask of misery. He tried to pray, but the words felt empty, useless.

As the weeks passed, Muzorawa spent more and more of his time training for the coming crewed mission, less and less on the fluid dynamics problem.

'I'm afraid it's going to be mostly on your shoulders,' Muzorawa told Grant.

'I can handle it.'

'I'm sorry to lay all this work on you,' Muzorawa went on, staring at the graph Grant had put on the wall screen.

'You can't be in two places at one time,' Grant said.

'Still… I wanted to get this work in better shape before handing it off to you.'

'You've done the lion's share,' Grant assured him. 'Setting up the basic equations and all.'

Muzorawa nodded, but his face showed that he was not satisfied with the situation.

Grant was. For the first time since leaving Earth he had some real work to do. A challenge. It wasn't stellar astrophysics, but it was almost as good. Nobody understood how Jupiter's interior worked. Nobody! It was unexplored territory and Grant had the opportunity to blaze a trail through the unknown. He intended to make the best of it.

He'd been surprised, at first, when he found that Muzorawa's fluid dynamics 'group' consisted of the Sudanese alone.

'I thought Tamiko worked with you,' Grant had said.

'She did, studying the clouds, mainly,' Muzorawa replied. 'But she was reassigned to the problem of Europa's ocean.'

There had been two other fluid dynamicists, Muzorawa told him.

'Lucy Denova was a fine scientist,' he recalled, 'with a first-rate mind. But the instant her tour of duty here ended she fled back to Selene. She's teaching at the university there now. She still checks in with me now and then.' He chuckled wryly. 'But she wants no part of this station. Not at all. She prefers her home on the Moon.'

Grant couldn't blame her, especially if she had a position on a tenure track at Lunar U.

'And who was your other assistant?' he asked.

'Not an assistant, my friend. He was Dr Wo, himself

'He's a fluid dynamicist?'