Jupiter Project (8 page)

There was a sudden tug as Captain Vandez gunned her, a faint dropping sensation, and then a solid bump. I started unstrapping.

Zak snapped shut his book of poems—brushing up on the competition, he called it—and patted around for his glasses. With them on he looks like the kid computer ace he is; when he’s in his literary lion phase he pretends he doesn’t need them.

“Collect youah baggage on the ground,” came a shout over my suit radio. I motioned to Zak and we were the first ones into the air lock. It cycled and the hatch popped open.

I stared out at a range of steep hills, covered in white water frost. About five hundred meters away I could see the slight gray tinge that was the life dome, against a sky of black.

“Move it!” someone called over radio. I looked down and saw a man waving at the drop rope that hung by the air lock.

“Over you go. kid.” I heard Yuri’s voice behind me and somebody kicked me out into space. I grabbed for the rope, caught it with one hand. In Ganymede’s one-third
g
you don’t fall fast but I was still recovering when I hit the ground with a solid thump.

I took a few steps away from the rope and then turned back. Yuri was just finishing a smooth slide down.

“You’re still clubfooted, junior,” he said and I took a swipe at him. He dodged and it landed on his shoulder.

“Come on,” I said, setting my feet.

“Mad about a little roughhousing, smartass?” he said with mock surprise.

Somebody shoved me aside. I turned threateningly and saw it was the man who had secured the drop rope. “Break it up!” he snarled at me. “Get out of the way of the rope. You kids can play big men somewhere else.”

Yuri walked away. I tried to cool off and waited until Zak came down.

“He’s still riding you. huh?” he said.

“Looks like it.”

“Yuri hates you being brighter and quicker than he is. So he uses muscle instead. Don’t let him provoke you.”

I balled up a fist, “I’d like to—”

“Yeah, I know. But that’s playing his game.”

“So what? I can’t—”

“Listen, he’s got you going both ways. That guy didn’t see Yuri boot you out, he just heard you try to pick a fight. So Yuri got all the points in that scramble. Listen, next time just treat him okay. Maybe after this he’ll feel square with you.”

“Well…maybe.”

A winch was already lowering nets of baggage from the cargo lock. We walked over and helped two men unroll the net. Our cases were in it. We scooped them up and started toward the base buildings. They housed some of the fifty permanent staff members; the rest lived under the life dome, further away.

The
Sagan
’s jet splash had melted the ground and made a brown spot in the ghostly white. We trotted along, my suit chuffing away to fight off the cold. When the first expedition landed here the surface was at 150 degrees Centigrade below zero. The reclamation project has warmed things up, but not much.

We reached the administration building and banged on the lock. In a moment the green light winked on and we cycled through. We came out in a suiting-up room. I popped my helmet pressure and found the air was sweeter than I’d expected; they’re making improvements in the base all the time. We lugged our bags into the next room and found a man behind a counter with a clipboard.

“Your name—oh, Palonski and Bohles. Welcome back. Gluttons for punishment, aren’t you? I see you asked for a Walker again.”

“Better than refueling duty,” I said and he chuckled. Pumping water and ammonia into the
Sagan
’s tanks is the most boring job imaginable; you watch dials for two hours, spend five minutes switching hoses, and then sit two hours again.

He assigned us bunk numbers and let us go; the families with children would get a complete lecture on safety and a long list of things they couldn’t do. I’d heard the lecture ten times before and could probably give it about as well as he could.

We found our bunks and stowed our gear without wasting any time. We didn’t want the mob to catch up with us. As soon as things were squared away Zak and I beat it across the base and trotted over to the dome lock.

The dome is the whole point of Ganymede, for me. I was out of my suit and putting on tennis shoes almost before the air lock had stopped wheezing. I had to gulp a few times to adjust my inner ear to the dome’s pressure, but that was automatic. Anybody who has been in space learns to do that without thinking—or ends up with lancing ear pains when he forgets. Zak was just as fast, and we went through the door together.

To anybody living on Earth I guess the dome wouldn’t be a big deal. But to me—I came out the door and just stood there, sopping it up. Overhead the dome arches away, supported by the air I was breathing. It rises to 500 meters in height and is five kilometers in diameter; a giant, life-filled blister on Ganymede. Inside the blister is the only spot where a man can walk without a suit.

Zak and I trotted the klick to the ski shed. There is a funny nose-shaped hill under the dome, with one steep face and one shallow. We carried our skis up the difficult side and strapped them on. I stood looking out, surveying the land under the dome. Hills sloped into each other, making stream beds and narrow valleys. A late morning water fog rose from a marshland. Up near the top of the dome, so thin you had to have faith to see it, was a wisp of pearly cloud. Back at the edge, the way we had come, a few people were spreading out from the lock.

“Come on!” I said, and pushed off. We started slowly and then began to weave, making long undulating patterns down the hill face. You don’t get as much speed in a lighter gravity, but you can make incredible turns and prolong the ride.

We skied most of the afternoon, until there were too many on the slope. Then we took a hike around the dome to see what was new. The experimental farm had grown and most of the crops—adapted corn, root vegetables, apples—were doing well. The farm is the seed of what Ganymede will become, once the atmosphere project gets going, melting dirty ice to make air.

With the greenhouse effect warming things up and microorganisms giving off oxygen, eventually a soybean will grow somewhere and then—well, then colonists will be panting down our necks, wanting to get in. By then it will be time to push on…before they build a Hilton.

That is, assuming ISA didn’t send me back on the
Argosy,
I reminded myself.

That thought wasn’t so easy to brush aside. I tried pretty hard, though, the next two days. I climbed hills, skied and played soccer until my legs threatened to stop holding me up. When we got up in the morning Zak would just lie in bed groaning about his past sins, and wish for a chocolate sundae to tide him over until breakfast.

The third day we were skiing sort of halfheartedly, waiting for enough people to show up to make a soccer team, when I lost sight of Zak on the slope.

I turned uphill, came to a halt and looked around. There was nobody very near. I poled my clumsy way uphill and looked again. There was a small mound nearby I skirted around it to get a better view.

“Hey!” Zak said. He was lying in a small depression behind the mound. His skis were off and there was a brown gouge in the snow.

“Why didn’t you yell before?” I said, clomping over to him.

“I was embarrassed. It’s kind of dumb to take a fall on an easy grade like this.” He grinned sheepishly.

“Hurt anything?” I put out a hand to help him up.

“I don’t think—
ow
!”

“Sit back down. Let’s see.” I unwrapped his left ankle.

“How is it?” He blinked owlishly at his leg.

“Sprained ankle.” I started unclipping my skis.

“Will I be able to play the piano again, doctor?”

“Sure, with your feet, just like before. Come on.” I got him up and leaning on me. “Think you can walk?”

“Certain—
ow
!”

He did make it, though, to the bottom of the hill. From there I hiked back to the dome lock and got a small wagon usually used to haul things to the experimental farm. The base doctor walked back with me and bandaged up Zak’s ankle, making the same diagnosis I had, only using longer words.

I got him settled into his bunk. The doctor delegated me to bring him his meals and the first thing Zak asked for was a milkshake. I shrugged and went over to the cafeteria to weasel one out of the cook—no mean feat.

I asked the man tending counter and he told me it would be a few minutes—several people had lunch coming up. I stood aside to wait. The woman from the
Sagan
was next in line behind me. She asked for a cup of coffee and a vegetable roll and got it immediately. Then she leaned over to the counterman and said loudly, “These youngsters all want special favors, don’t they?”

I stood there trying to think of something to say until she flounced out. If it had been Zak, he would have come up with something cutting and brilliant, but I acted as though I had a mouth full or marbles, and my face burned with embarrassment.

“You’re the younger Bohles, aren’t you?” a deep voice said.

I looked up. It was Captain Vandez; he looked tired.

“Yes sir.”

“I heard about the Palonski boy just now. Unfortunate.”

“It isn’t anything major,” I said, “Zak will be walking by the time we ship home.”

“Good.” He nodded abruptly. “The base commander has you two slated to take the Walker out on a routine inspection tour starting tomorrow. I was afraid this accident might scrub it.”

“It will.”

“Not necessarily. Another boy volunteered for the job two days ago. I told him both places were filled, but now there is a spot vacant. You see, Bohles, base personnel are all assigned to other jobs now and we are a bit squeezed. If you don’t mind going out with another boy…”

“Who is he?”

Captain Vandez sighed and looked at a paper in his hand. “Sagdaeff. Yuri Sagdaeff.”

“Oh.” I gulped. “Could I let you know in a few minutes?”

“Of course. Take your time.”

I got the milkshake and put it in a sealed carrying box. I was still in my suit, so I put on my helmet and cycled through the cafeteria lock as fast as I could. Then I double-timed it through a low-lying pink haze back to our dorm.

When I told him Zak stopped slurping and made a raucous noise.

“That sneak!”

“Huh?”

“Remember when we told him about the Walker? I know just how his mind works. Sagdaeff thinks we’re making points by, doing the inspection tour. He wants his share.”

“What for?”

“Yuri wants to rack up points with Captain Vandez and hope the word gets back to Commander Aarons about what a sharp guy our Yuri is. He’s not dumb.”

“Aren’t you being a little cynical?”

“Every realist is at first called a cynic.” he pontificated.

“You don’t think I should go?”

“You’re just giving him a break. After all, you and I have been out in the Walker before, doing odd jobs. The guys here at the base
know
you’re not a Johnny-come-lately.”

“The work has to be done.” I said firmly. “The project is more important—”

“Okay, okay,” Zak said, rolling his eyes. “Go ahead. Tramp the icy wastes with Yuri for the glory of the ISA. I’ll stay here and write terrible things about you in my diary and starve to death.”

I gritted my teeth, thinking. I was nervous and jittery. A small voice was nagging me in the back of my mind.
Don’t be a sucker,
it said. It had some good arguments, too.

But I knew, finally, what was right. So I went back to Vandez and volunteered again.

“Look, we can’t
all
be like you,” I said to Zak, later.

“Uh huh.”

Zak wanted me to go out and see if any girls were around the base, just in case we’d missed any. To amuse him while I was gone, he said. “Didn’t you bring your tapes?” I asked him. “Just conjure up ol’ Rebecca. She’ll keep you delighted.”

“Don’t knock her, kid,” he said, smiling cynically. “She’ll make me a buck yet.”

“Uh huh,” I said, and went to sleep.

I woke up that night, sweating.

The dream had come back again. I’d thought it was gone for good, but no—my pajamas were soaked, my heart pounding. I was breathing in short, desperate gasps.

And I was in that sun-bleached Costa Mesa schoolyard again. The two Chicano kids had backed me up against a wall. They were elaborately casual, chewing gum, sneaking amused looks at each other.

“Smart kid. aren’t ya?” the biggest one said. He put his hand on my chest and gave me a light shove. I stepped back to keep my balance.

My lip trembled. “I’m not slow, if that’s what you mean.”

The big one looked over at his friend. “They always got somethin’ ta say. Little smartasses.”

The second kid punched me in the shoulder. I moved back and felt the rough brick wall behind me. There were more Chicano kids behind these two now; a crowd was gathering.

“He’s gonna fly off into space, too,” the big one said to the crowd. “Too good for us
compres
down here in the mud.”

“I don’t see any mud here.” I said, my voice sounded weak and distant. “Just dust.”

The big one whirled around, fists clenched, face reddening. “You’re always right, ain’t cha, kid? Mebbe you oughtta
taste
dust.”

He hit me in the face. I felt something break in my nose. Somebody punched me in the side. Suddenly everybody was shouting. I tried to take a swing at someone, anyone. The big kid cuffed my fist aside and slapped me again, laughing. There was a buzzing in my ears.

I tried to run. Something struck me in the stomach and I stumbled, reaching out. The crowd was all around me. They were thick and close and everywhere I turned arms pushed me away. They spun me around in a circle, taunting me, calling names.

I struck out blindly. I was crying, begging them, throwing punches in a red mist that smothered me. I heard them jeering. Something smashed me hard in the stomach. I went down.

The noise washed over me. Somebody kicked me and I felt a sudden stab of pain in my ribs. The dust clogged my nose. I choked.

The world seemed to blur and drift away. I grunted, clawing at the dirt, and rolled over. The jeering was a hollow echo, an animal chorus.