Jupiter (43 page)

Still Leviathan fought. There was nothing else to do.

The sharks on one side suddenly scattered away from Leviathan, swooping off in rapid retreat. Leviathan wondered why, even as it fought with all its waning strength against the others. The stranger! That alien creature from the cold abyss had charged in alongside Leviathan, spraying painfully hot steam into the midst of the attacking darters.

But it was not enough. There were too many of the darters, and more were coming. All the stranger had accomplished was to make certain it would be killed alongside Leviathan.

Then the water quivered with a new vibration: a chorus of undulating notes that rose and fell in perfect unison.

The Kin.

Grant watched, awed, fascinated, rapt so completely that he forgot the pain that racked his body, forgot even the pains that the ship suffered. That enormous, magnificent creature was battling the sharks, fighting them in a struggle that shook tiny little
Zheng He
like a dead leaf in a hurricane.

The sub rattled and tossed in the wild waves thrashing through the ocean. Grant saw that the sharks were tearing at the big whale, ripping away acres of flesh with teeth the size of buzz saws. The whale was fighting back, but it seemed a hopeless, one-sided battle. Here and there a shark drifted aimlessly, broken, oozing its internal fluids. But the others kept on attacking, their frenzy growing by the minute.

Get away! Grant told himself. While they're busy killing each other, get the hell away from here!

But he couldn't. No matter how his rational mind insisted that these creatures fought each other all the time, that this was
their
world and he had no place in it, that there was nothing he could do to help — still Grant lingered off to one side of the titanic struggle.

Maybe there
is
something I can do, Grant said as he powered up the thrusters and moved toward the flank of the enormous creature. It was like driving along a mountain range, or coming toward a big city whose towers loomed before you tall and powerful. Feeling like an insect approaching an elephant, Grant drove
Zheng He
into the battle, hoping that the thrusters' exhaust would boil some of the sharks or at least frighten them away.

It worked - but it wasn't enough. The sharks didn't like the superheated steam, they raced away from the sub's exhaust plume, but Grant saw that they merely jetted farther up along the great whale's flank and resumed their attack there.

The whale's oar-like flippers were just about the size of
Zheng He
itself. Rows and rows of them, by the hundreds. And eyes just above them. It was eerie, uncanny, to see hundreds of eyes, all turned toward him, watching him, staring at him.

Grant was accomplishing almost nothing. The sharks simply avoided the sub. The whale was so big that there were plenty of other places for the sharks to attack. It would have taken a fleet of submersibles to protect this one creature. An armada.

Get away, Grant told himself again. There's nothing you can do to help here. Get away while you can.

The sub suddenly began to reverberate with an eerie, undulating sound. Up and down, it rose and fell like a police siren, only deeper, lower, so profound that it sounded almost like the bottom bass note on the most tremendous church organ in the universe. God's own chorus, a call to arms that might have been trumpeted by Gabriel himself. It grew swiftly louder, painfully louder, rattling the bridge, thundering in Grant's ears, cracking his eardrums with its tremendous, frightening, awesome overpowering resonance.

The sharks stopped their attack. Every one of them pulled away from the whale and seemed to freeze in place, some of them with gobbets of the whale's flesh clenched in their teeth. The sound was painful. Grant felt as if hot needles were being jabbed in his ears. Louder and louder it rose, until he could hear nothing at all. The excruciating pain lanced through him as if a drill was driving through his skull. Touchscreens on the consoles began to shatter, bursting into showers of plastic shards and electrical sparks. The bridge vibrated as if some immense beast was shaking it in its jaws the way a terrier shakes a rat to death.

Grant hung on, vision clouding as one by one the ship's sensors went out. The main wallscreen shattered, blowing sparks and broken pieces across the bridge. Grant ducked and cringed as plastic shards sliced through the fluid past him, tumbling slowly in the thick perfluorocarbon liquid. He could feel the sub's multiple hulls quivering, reverberating like bells struck by a giant iron fist.

Like a school of minnows suddenly darting in unison, the sharks turned as one and fled away. One instant they were hovering everywhere, all pointed toward the source of the sound, the next they were gone, leaving nothing but bubbles in their wake.

The sudden turbulence of their swift departure tossed
Zheng He
fitfully, flipped the submersible upside down. Grant held on to his console with one hand, teeth gritting in pain. He couldn't tell whether the agonies were his own body's or the ship's. What does it matter? What does anything matter now?

The sub was beyond his control. The turbulence left by the sharks had overpowered Grant's ability to keep the vessel on an even keel. The thrusters were actually powering the ship downward now, spinning in a lazy uncontrollable spiral like a plane heading for a crash in slow motion. The thought flashed through Grant's mind that the nearest solid ground must be tens of thousands of kilometers down, deep in Jupiter's hot, dense core. We'll be crushed and boiled long before we hit anything solid, he told himself.

With growing terror he tried to work the controls, running his hands madly across the touchscreens. Not even the thrusters responded to his commands. Everything must be so badly damaged, Grant said to himself. We're going to die. We're going to die. If only Krebs were conscious, he thought, she might be able to handle the controls and get us out of this. Or even Zeb.

I don't know what to do! I can't get her straightened out.

Zheng He
plunged deeper.

Grant was totally deaf now, as if his ears were wrapped in thick towels or layers of insulation. Dimly, through the few sensors still working, he saw a sight that shook him to his soul. Dozens of the immense Jovians, scores of them, maybe a hundred or more were speeding through the water toward their wounded, exhausted comrade.

My God, Grant thought as the gigantic creatures neared, we had only glimpsed a small portion of the herd. There's so many of them! And they're so huge!

Many of them dwarfed the one that had fought the sharks. All of them were flashing lights, signaling each other in hues of brilliant red, flashing yellow, and that bright piercing green. The water was alight with their signals.

But
Zheng He
was sinking away from them, spinning slowly, revolving over and over again despite Grant's frantic efforts to regain control.

A tap on his shoulder made Grant jump. Whirling, he saw it was Karlstad, wide-eyed, frightened. The man's mouth moved, but Grant could hear nothing. When Grant tried to speak, he couldn't hear his own voice.

Karlstad frantically jabbed both forefingers toward his ears. He's been deafened, too, Grant understood.

The bridge was a mess. Most of the screens had blown out. Splinters of plastic and optical fibers from the unoccupied consoles floated uselessly in the dim emergency lighting.

His eyes showing sheer terror, Karlstad pushed himself over to the console on Grant's left and tapped on its keyboard. Its one intact screen wrote in glowing orange letters: GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE. Grant shrugged helplessly. GET US UP!!! Karlstad typed.

Grant ran his fingers along the touchscreens. The thrusters were running at a fraction of their full power, but, with the sub out of control, Grant was afraid to run them up higher, afraid that they would simply drive the vessel deeper into the dark hot sea. What should I do? What can I do? In desperation, he shut down the thrusters completely.

TOO MCH PRESSURE! Karlstad typed. Suddenly Grant understood what he must do. Get all this information back to the station. We're not going to make it, Grant thought, but this information has got to get to Dr Wo and the others.

Reaching for the keyboard on his console, Grant wrote, DATA CAPSULE.

Karlstad's fingers flew across his keyboard. NOT NOW. GET US CLOSER TO SURFACE.

NOW, Grant insisted. SEND TWO.

Karlstad stared at Grant, finally understanding what he was trying to say. We're as good as dead; there's nothing left for us to do except this gesture of sending data back to the station.

Grant grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard, banging on his keyboard with his other hand. DO IT. TWO.

Karlstad blinked, then nodded his agreement. Bending over his console, he replied, TWO NOT NECESSARY. DATA COMPRESSION.

Grant tapped him on the arm. SEND TWO, he repeated.' REDUNDANCY.

Even though one capsule could hold all the data they had recorded, Grant wanted to take no chances of that lone capsule failing. Briefly he thought about sending all four of the remaining capsules, but he decided two would be sufficient. Keep recording data with the few sensors still working. Send the final two when the last moment comes.

Turning his attention back to the sensors, Grant saw that the whales were some distance above them now. The Jovians were hovering around their wounded comrade, flashing lights back and forth with blinding speed. Grant got the impression they were jabbering to each other.

Two of them glided downward, lights flashing along their mountainous flanks.

Are they trying to communicate with us? The thought startled Grant.

Zheng He
was still sinking slowly into the depths, despite Grant's feeble efforts to get the submersible under control once again. The ship's systems were not responding to Grant's commands. No matter how he worked the touchscreens, the submersible continued to spiral slowly deeper. Backups, Grant thought. There are supposed to be backups for each of the main systems. But most of them were out of action, too, he saw.

Several more Jovians coasted down toward the sub, Grant saw, swimming in gigantic circles around the wounded little submersible, flashing their lights in endless complex patterns.

Are they trying to communicate with us? Grant asked himself again. Almost without thinking consciously about it, he turned on the sub's outside lights. Only two of them still worked, and one of them flickered dimly.

And the whales matched its flicker rate exactly, in less than a heartbeat. Grant gasped with awe. The pictures running along the whales' immense flanks 'were far too complex for Grant to understand, but they were flashing on and off at the same rate as the damaged lamp's flicker.

Mimicry or intelligence? Grant asked himself.

Karlstad's nudge against his shoulder startled Grant.

GET US UP!!! Egon had typed on his console screen.

I can't, Grant confessed silently. I can't. But his fingers typed, TRYING.

Grant ran a quick diagnostic. His heart sank as the results flashed across his closed eyelids. The thrusters were close to catastrophic failure. The crack in the outer hull was spreading, branching like a crack in an ice-covered pond. The inner hulls were still intact, but the pressure was building. It was only a matter of minutes before they started to break up. Worst of all, the sub was still spiraling downward, its steering vanes useless, its control jets too weak to stop its sinking spin.

'We're finished,' Grant said. He couldn't hear the words. Neither could Karlstad, a meter away, who launched both the data capsules at that precise moment.

The stranger was trying to talk to them, Leviathan saw. Its language was odd: one steady light and one flashing on and off in an irregular rhythm. What could it mean?

Leviathan nosed deeper, watching as the stranger slowly spiraled down toward the hot abyss. Several of the Kin circled near it, watching, calling to it, trying to imitate its enigmatic signals.

It is hurt, Leviathan flashed to the Kin.

Yes, it seems so, one of the Elders agreed. It no longer boils the water.

Still they did nothing but watch. Sinking into the hot abyss will kill it, Leviathan thought. It came from the cold above, it must be so hurt that it cannot control itself.

It will die, he said to the Elders.

Swimming patiently around the wounded Leviathan, the Elders replied in unison, Perhaps it will begin to bud.

It is too small to bud, Leviathan said.

How can you know that? This strange creature had its own ways, undoubtedly.

We cannot allow it to die without trying to help it, Leviathan insisted.

Help it? How?

Help it to go up toward the abyss above, where it came from.

What good would that do?

That is its home. Even if it must die, we can help it to die in the realm of its origin.

The Elders turned dark, thinking. New ideas were difficult for them to accept.

Leviathan decided not to wait for them to make up their minds.

Grant felt as if his entire body were in a vise that was slowly crushing him. Dimly he remembered that the Puritans in Massachusetts had crushed a man with heavy stones during the Salem witchcraft hysteria.

He started to pray, but the thought that flooded his mind was, I don't want to die. Oh God, God, don't make me die. Don't kill me here, in this dark and distant sea. Help me. Help me.

Karlstad hovered beside him, eyes blank and staring at whatever inner universe that filled his soul, his body curled into a weightless fetal posture. He's given up, Grant thought. He knows we're going to die.

Still, Grant's fingers raced across the touchscreens, seeking some measure of control over the sinking submersible, picking out links to the backup systems, trying to bring the auxiliaries on-line.

Help me, God, he pleaded. Don't tell me this ocean is beyond Your realm. God of the universe,
help me
!

The ship shuddered.