Jupiter (3 page)

Grant was too confused to reply. He realized that the decision had already been made. He was going to Jupiter. They expected him to find out what the scientists were doing there. He could not avoid this duty.

He sat before Beech's desk, his mind awhirl, torn between the duty that he knew he could not avoid and resentment at having absolutely no voice in the decision that would determine the next four years of his life.

Like it or not, he was going to Jupiter.

Then Beech added, with a slow, unexpected smile, 'Of course, if you find out what they're up to quickly enough, perhaps we can arrange to transfer you to another research facility - such as the Farside Observatory.'

'Farside?' Grant clutched at the straw.

Nodding solemnly, Beech said, 'It might be arranged, in return for satisfactory performance.'

Grant's sudden burst of hope faded. Carrot and stick, he realized. Farside is the carrot that's supposed to encourage me to do what they want.

'You will act alone at the Jupiter station, of course,' Beech went on. 'No one will know your true reason for being there, and you will tell no one about this.'

Grant said nothing.

'But you will not
be
alone, Mr Archer. You will be watched constantly.'

'Watched?'

Smiling thinly, Beech said, 'God sees you, Mr Archer. God will be watching your every move, every breath you take, every thought that crosses your mind.'

It is a boundless ocean, more than ten times wider than the entire planet Earth. Beneath the swirling clouds that cover Jupiter from pole to pole, the ocean has never seen sunlight, nor has it ever felt the rough, confining contours of land. Its waves have never crashed against a craggy shore, never thundered upon a sloping beach, for there is no land anywhere across Jupiter's enormous girth, not even an island or a reef. The ocean's billows sweep across the deeps without hindrance, eternally.

Heated from below by the planet's seething core, swirled into a frenzy by Jupiter's hyperkinetic spin rate, ferocious currents race through this endless sea, jet streams howling madly, long powerful waves surging uninterrupted all the way around the world, circling the globe over and again. Gigantic storms rack the ocean, too, typhoons bigger than whole planets, hurricanes that have roared their fury for century after century. It is the widest, deepest, most powerful, most dynamic and fearsome ocean in the entire Solar System.

Jupiter is the largest of all the Solar System's planets, more than ten times bigger and three hundred times as massive as Earth. Jupiter is so immense it could swallow all the other planets easily. Its Great Red Spot, a storm that has raged for centuries, is itself wider than Earth. And the Spot is merely one feature visible among the innumerable vortexes and streams of Jupiter's frenetically racing cloud tops.

Yet Jupiter is composed mainly of the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, more like a star than a planet. All that size and mass, yet Jupiter spins on its axis in less than ten hours, so fast that the planet is clearly not spherical. Its poles are noticeably flattened. Jupiter looks like a big colorfully-striped beach ball that's squashed down as if some invisible child were sitting on it.

Spinning that fast, Jupiter's deep, deep atmosphere is swirled into bands and ribbons of multi-hued clouds: pale yellow, saffron orange, white, tawny yellow-brown, dark brown, bluish, pink and red. Titanic winds push the clouds across the face of Jupiter at hundreds of kilometers per hour. What gives those clouds their colors? What lies beneath them? For more than a century astronomers had cautiously sent probes into the Jovian atmosphere. They barely penetrated the cloud tops before being crushed by overwhelming pressure.

But the inquisitive scientists from Earth persisted, and gradually learned that some fifty thousand kilometers - nearly four times Earth's diameter - beneath those clouds lies that boundless ocean of water, an ocean almost eleven times wider than the entire Earth and some five thousand kilometers deep. Heavily laced with ammonia and sulfur compounds, highly acidic, it is still an ocean of water, and everywhere else in the Solar System where there is water, life exists.

Is there life in Jupiter's vast, deep ocean?

'You mean your wife's maiden name is Gold, too?' asked Raoul Tavalera.

Grant nodded. 'That's right.'

'Same as the research station?'

Tavalera had a long, horsy face with teeth that seemed a couple of sizes too big and watery eyes that bulged slightly beneath heavy, black brows. It all combined to give him a sorrowful, morose look. His thick curly hair was pulled back into a long ponytail, at the unbending insistence of the freighter's dour captain.

'It's just a coincidence,' Grant said. 'There's no relation. The station is named after Thomas Gold; he was a twentieth-century astronomer. British, I think.'

'Prob'ly a Jew,' said Tavalera.

Grant felt his brows hike up.

'They always change their names, y'know, so nobody can catch they're Jews. He was prob'ly Goldberg or Goldstein, something like that.'

Grant started to reply, but held back. He and Tavalera were sitting at the only table in the dingy, cramped galley of the freighter. Tavalera was a newly-graduated student, too, an engineer who was going to work out his two-year Public Service commitment with the scoopship operations at Jupiter. Except for the two of them the galley was empty; the crew were all at their work stations. The food and drink dispensers were cold and empty at this hour; the metal bulkheads and flooring all looked scuffed, worn, old and hard-used.

Grant had gone to the galley to take a brief break from his ongoing studies of the giant planet. He spent most of his time on the tedious journey out to Research Station
Gold
learning about Jupiter and its retinue of moons, catching up on what the researchers out there -were discovering.

Tavalera had wandered into the galley a few moments after Grant came in, apparently with nothing better to do than strike up a conversation.

Is he implying that Marjorie is Jewish? Grant asked himself. Grant had thought it a pleasant coincidence that the research station they were heading for bore the same name as his wife. He knew there was no relation, yet he thought the coincidence was a good omen, nevertheless. Not that he believed in omens. That would be superstition, practically sinful. But he needed something to buoy him up during this long, slow, utterly boring journey out to the Jupiter system.

Grant had thought that he'd be whisked to Jupiter aboard one of the new fusion torch ships, accelerating most of the way so that the journey took only a few weeks. Not so. Grad students travelled by the cheapest means available, which meant that he and Tavalera were stuck in this clunker of a freighter for the better part of a year. What had really stunned Grant was the realization that the transit time did not count toward his Public Service.

'Public Service,' said the peevish, pinch-faced New Morality clerk when he registered for the journey, 'means just what the words say: service to the public. Riding in a spacecraft is not service time, it's leisure time.'

Grant argued the point all the way up to the national office, and all he got for his efforts was a reputation as a sorehead. Not even prayer helped. Travel was leisure time, according to the regulations.

Some leisure, Grant thought.
Roberts
was old and slow, dreary and dismal. Its habitation unit rotated on a long tether around its massive cargo module, so that the crew and passengers had a simulated gravity about half that of Earth's. Grant's and Tavalera's quarters consisted of a single spare compartment the dimensions of a coffin, with their two bunks shoehorned in, one atop the other, with barely ten centimeters between Grant's nose and Tavalera's sagging mattress.

The depressing, decrepit ore boat didn't even have a niche anywhere aboard it to serve as a chapel. Grant had to do his sabbath worship in the scuffed, cheerless galley, using videos of his father's services and hoping that neither Tavalera nor any of the crew would break in on his observances.

The grumpy, gray-haired captain snapped at Grant whenever they met. 'Just keep out of the way, brightboy!' were the kindest words Grant had heard out of her. The rest of the crew - three men and three women - ignored their passengers entirely. All of them used language that would have brought them up before the local decency committee, back home.

So Grant composed long, lonely video messages to Marjorie, wherever she was in Uganda or Brazil or the ruins of Cambodia. Real-time videophoning was impossible: the distance between them as
Roberts
cruised out toward Jupiter created an ever-lengthening lag in communication that defeated any attempt at true conversation. She sent messages back to him, not as often as he sent them to her, but of course she was much busier. She always appeared cheerful, hopeful. She ended each message by mentioning the number of hours until Grant would return to Earth.

'It's thirty-two thousand, one hundred and seventeen hours until we're together again, darling,' she would say. 'And every second brings you closer to me.'

Every time he thought about the number, Grant wanted to break down and cry.

He plunged into his studies of Jupiter, sitting for hours on end in the freighter's cramped, dingy little wardroom, really nothing more than a metal-walled compartment barely big enough to accommodate a bolted-down table and four of the most uncomfortable plastic chairs in the Solar System. With his handheld computer linked to the display screen on the metal bulkhead, Grant spent most of his time there, leaving the claustrophobic sleeping compartment to Tavalera except when he became too stupifyingly exhausted to keep his eyes open.

Crew members would come in from time to time, but for the most part they left Grant to his studies without a word. Only the captain interrupted him, now and then, grumbling about being forced to carry freeloading student 'brightboys.' To her, Grant was excess baggage, using up ship's air and food for no good purpose. She tolerated Tavalera better; at least he was an engineer, he was going to do something worthwhile out in the Jupiter system. As far as she was concerned, Grant was nothing more than a would-be scientist, a brightboy who was going to play around in a research station instead of doing real work.

Grant ignored the captain's hostility as much as he could and pushed doggedly ahead with his studies. He wanted to know all there was to know about Jupiter by the time he arrived at Station
Gold
. If he had to spend four years there, he intended to make them a productive four years, and not merely as a New Morality snoop, either.

Tavalera had a quizzical expression on his usually gloomy face; his lips were pulled back in a rare, toothy grin.

'Glom to it, man, you married a Jew.'

Grant suppressed a flare of annoyance. 'She's not Jewish, and even if she were, what difference would that make?'

Leaning across the narrow galley table so close that Grant could smell his noxious breath, Tavalera answered in a half whisper, 'Th' scoop is, they don't believe in sex after marriage.'

He lifted his head and broke into a loud, barking laugh. Grant stared at him. Is that what this conversation was all about? Grant asked himself. He simply wanted to set me up for a creaky old joke?

Still laughing, Tavalera pointed at Grant. 'You oughtta see the expression on your face, brightboy! Priceless!'

Grant made himself smile. 'I guess I walked into that one, didn't I?'

'You sure did.'

They talked for a few minutes more, but as soon as he decently could, Grant excused himself and headed back to the wardroom and his studies. As he walked along the short passageway that ran through the heart of the habitation module, he wondered about Tavalera. Is there more to the engineer than just crude jokes? Is the discussion about Jews a test of some sort? The New Morality has agents everywhere, constantly on the alert for seditious ideas and troublemakers. Are they watching me, wondering if I'll be a reliable spy for them? Beech said they'd be watching me. Is Tavalera reporting to some NM supervisor?

Most likely he was no more than he appeared to be, a newly-graduated engineer with a sophomoric sense of humor. But Grant thought that Tavalera was the kind who would report deviant behavior to the nearest NM agent. It would look good on his dossier.

For more than a week Grant spent hours each day watching the flattened globe of Jupiter wax bigger and fatter as tired old
Roberts
slowly approached the giant planet.

Grant had missed seeing Mars close up; the red planet was on the other side of the Sun when they'd crossed its orbit.
Roberts
had sailed through the Asteroid Belt as if it weren't there, nothing but a vast silent emptiness, not a rock, not a pebble in sight. The ship's radar had picked up a few distant blips, but nothing big enough even to reflect a glint of sunlight.

Jupiter was something else, though. King of the Solar System's planets, big enough to swallow more than a thousand Earths, Jupiter presented a spectacular display to Grant's eager eyes. Like a true king, Jupiter was accompanied by a retinue. Grant watched, day by day, as the four largest Jovian sateEites danced around their master. He felt like old Galileo himself, seeing this quartet of new worlds orbiting the massive striped globe of Jupiter.

Without realizing it, Grant made a ritual of his daily observations. He went to the ship's wardroom immediately after breakfast in the galley, always alone. He had no desire for company, especially not Tavalera's. Once in the wardroom, he would boot up his palmcomp and access the ship's cameras. He began each day by putting a real-time view of Jupiter on the bulkhead screen, unmagnified. He wanted to see the approaching planet just as he would if he were outside looking at it with his unaided eyes. Only afterward would he call up the magnification program and begin to inspect the planet more closely.

Each day Jupiter grew larger. Grant began to see some of the other, smaller moons as they hurtled around the planet's massive bulk. Tiny specks, even in the cameras' best magnification. Captured asteroids, undoubtedly; minor worldlets that had been seized by the king and forced to circle his majesty until one day they would approach too close and be ground into dust by Jupiter's enormous gravitational power.