Leviathans of Jupiter (15 page)

“Some of our researchers are studying the smaller moons of Jupiter, as well,” Archer explained. “They've identified seventy-three of them so far. Most of them are asteroids or cometary bodies that have fallen into Jupiter's huge gravity well and been pulled into orbits around the planet.”

The scene shifted to show Jupiter's colorful, churning cloud tops again.

“Occasionally an asteroidal or cometary body is pulled into Jupiter itself,” Archer narrated. Westfall saw an oblong chunk of what looked like dirty ice tumbling through space, heading smack into the clouds, a trail of vapor boiling off it as it fell. “Less than two months ago Comet McDaniel-Lloyd was pulled into the planet.”

The comet disappeared into the bright-colored clouds. Then the region brightened briefly with what might have been an explosion below the top of the cloud deck.

“The comet exploded with the force of thousands of megatons,” Archer was saying, still as calm as a grandfather reading children's stories. “We are, of course, studying the effects the explosion has had on the local ecology.”

Once more she saw the three-wheeled station. “The station's orbit is close enough to Jupiter so that we're below the most intense radiation of the Van Allen belts. Our second wheel is taken up by the commercial gas scooping operations that extract fusion fuels such as helium-three out of the upper layers of Jupiter's atmosphere and sell them to fusion power companies on Earth, the Moon, and elsewhere in the solar system. For more than twenty years, Jupiter has been the main energy source for the human race's fusion power systems.”

Westfall saw a sleek, bullet-shaped vessel detach itself from the station's middle wheel and hurtle downward toward the colorful cloud tops of the giant planet.

“The scoopships are remotely controlled, of course, by personnel in the station.” The view changed to show a team of men and women in sky blue coveralls sitting at a row of consoles.

“The fusion operation consists of remote operators, maintenance and service personnel, and the usual corps of administrators and directors,” Archer was saying, as if reading from a prepared script. “Without these scooping operations, fusion powerplants throughout the solar system would be deprived of the fuels they need to provide the human race's main source of clean, efficient energy.”

The market for fusion fuels has leveled off, Westfall knew. The scientists don't want to face the fact that their budgets will have to level off, as well.

Now the scene before her eyes was from a camera mounted on one of the scoopships. She watched, suddenly fascinated, as the ship plunged toward those roiling, racing cloud tops.

“Wind speeds at the uppermost levels of the clouds routinely exceed five hundred kilometers per hour,” Archer was saying, without a trace of emotion. “The clouds are composed mainly of diatomic hydrogen molecules and helium atoms: The fusionable isotopes such as helium-three comprise only a small fraction of the total.”

The ship plunged into the clouds. Katherine watched, wide-eyed, as her view was enveloped in swirling multicolored mists.

“The colors, of course, are from minor constituents in the clouds: sulfur, oxygen, carbon, and such. The ships separate out those impurities in flight and carry back only the fusionable isotopes that are needed.”

Abruptly, they broke out of the clouds. Katherine could again see the research station rotating slowly, almost majestically, as the scoopship returned with its cargo of fusion fuels.

She thought that her tour was finished, but instead the scene shifted to show the insides of a laboratory with serious-looking men and women working at some elaborate network of glass tubing while Archer's voice cheerfully began to explain what they were doing.

It seemed like hours, but at last the tour ended and Archer helped her remove the mask and earbud.

“That's about it,” he said, smiling as he helped her to her feet. “You've seen just about our entire operation, in less than two hours.”

Katherine Westfall nodded as she stood up. She felt tired, almost exhausted, her legs stiff. But then she realized that Archer's tour did not mention the studies of Jupiter itself, of the airborne life-forms in the giant planet's atmosphere, nor the creatures living in the huge globe-encompassing ocean. He didn't show me the station's third wheel at all, she said to herself. What's going on there? she wondered. What's he trying to hide from me?

INTELLECTUAL COUSINS

As they left the virtual reality chamber, Katherine Westfall told Grant Archer, “It's not necessary for you to escort me to my quarters.”

“It's my pleasure,” he said, smiling gently at her. “It's not every day that we have such a distinguished visitor.”

She realized with some surprise that Archer was nearly a dozen centimeters taller than she. He doesn't look that big, she thought. He's built very compactly.

“I hope you'll have dinner this evening with my wife and me,” Archer was saying as they walked along the passageway. “She's very anxious to meet you.”

“Of course,” said Westfall. Then, choosing her words with special care, she added, “And when do you show me the station's third wheel?”

His smile actually brightened. “Ah! That's where the team studying Jupiter itself is housed. Along with the dolphins and the engineering crew.”

“Dolphins?”

“It's a holdover from Dr. Wo's original work,” Archer said. “He had the idea that we could use dolphins to learn how to communicate with an alien species. He called them our intellectual cousins.”

“But dolphins are from Earth.”

“Yes, but they're quite a bit different from us. Intelligent, no doubt, but they live in such a different environment that they might as well be from a different world.”

“Dolphins,” Westfall repeated.

Chuckling, Archer told her, “At one point, Dr. Wo had a gorilla here. Enhanced her intelligence with a brain implant. It used to be a regular hazing ritual for new scooters to be introduced to her.”

“Scoopers? The people who run the scoopships?”

“Scooters,” Archer replied, pronouncing the word with deliberate precision. “It's a slang term for scientists.”

“You actually keep a gorilla here?” Westfall could see the points she could score with the IAA council when she told them Archer was spending money on a gorilla in the Jupiter station.

“Oh, Sheena's long gone,” he said. “She lived happily in a preserve back in Africa. Died several years ago, of natural causes.”

Westfall felt disappointed. “But you still keep dolphins.”

Nodding, “A new batch came in on the torch ship with you. We've been making some progress in translating their language. We can talk back and forth with them, to some extent.”

“Can you?”

“It's slow, but we're making progress. The work goes back more than twenty years. Elaine O'Hara was one of the earliest researchers in that area.”

Elaine O'Hara! Westfall could feel her eyes flare at the mention of her sister's name. She immediately clamped down on her emotions and said merely, “How interesting.”

*   *   *

Deirdre slid back the door to her new quarters. Corvus, Dorn, and Yeager stood behind her, peeping through the doorway.

She stepped in and looked around. “Very nice,” she murmured.

The compartment was adequately furnished with a comfortable-looking bed, a small couch and two smaller reclinable chairs, a desk with a spindly typist's chair, bureaus on either side of the bed, doors that Deirdre figured opened onto closets, and a lavatory. A built-in bar separated the minuscule kitchenette from the rest of the room. Deirdre's one travel bag rested on the bench at the foot of the bed.

“Not bad,” Yeager said, striding past her to stand in the middle of the room. He turned a full circle, then grinned at Deirdre. “Much nicer than the cubbyhole they stuck me in.”

Dorn said, “All our quarters are quite similar, almost identical. This is a standard accommodation, according to the indoctrination video.”

“You really watch that kind of stuff?” Yeager scoffed.

“Our rooms are further along this passageway,” Corvus said. “We'll be neighbors.”

Yeager went over to the bed and sat on it, bounced up and down a few times. “This is going to be fun.”

Deirdre decided he'd gone far enough. “Off my bed, please, Max. Go find your own. I've got to unpack.”

“I could help you.” Yeager leered.

Dorn took a menacing step toward the engineer.

Corvus said, “I think we ought to get back to our own rooms and let Deirdre unpack.” He waggled a finger at Yeager. “C'mon, Max. Let's go.”

Yeager grumbled, “Spoilsports. You guys act like a couple of chaperones. I don't need a chaperone.”

“No,” said Dorn gravely. “You need a keeper.”

They all laughed, Yeager the loudest, and filed out of the room, leaving Deirdre alone. For a long moment she smiled at the closed door, then remembered that she still carried the rabies virus inside her.

The medical staff here will take care of it, she told herself, wishing she really believed that.

As she began to unpack, a chime sounded. Looking up from her travel bag she saw that a yellow light was blinking beneath the smart screen on the wall above the desk.

A message, she thought. Maybe from Dad?

Still standing at the foot of the bed, she called out, “Computer. Display incoming message.”

A man's face appeared on the wall screen. He looked fairly young, except for his skullcap of silver hair and trim little beard.

“Ms. Ambrose,” he said, “I'm Grant Archer, director of this station. I'd like you to meet me in my office at sixteen hundred hours. You can find the way with your pocketphone. If you have any problems, please call me.”

His image winked out, immediately replaced by the figure of a woman's face, sculpted, taut-skinned, her hair a perfect golden honey shade clipped like a helmet framing her countenance.

“Deirdre Ambrose, this is Katherine Westfall. Please come to my quarters. At once.”

KATHERINE WESTFALL'S QUARTERS

Deirdre knew who Katherine Westfall was, and she saw that it was only 1410 hours: plenty of time to call on Mrs. Westfall and still make her appointment at Dr. Archer's office.

Why does she want to see me? she wondered as she swiftly changed into one of the few dresses she had brought with her, a short-sleeved flowered frock that her father had bought for her on her last birthday.

Mrs. Westfall sounded very imperative, Deirdre thought. She said please, but she also said
at once
. With a shrug of acceptance, Deirdre said to herself, Well, I suppose a woman in her position is used to having people jump when she snaps her fingers.

Using the map display of her pocketphone, Deirdre hurried along the station's main passageway. She knew it ran along the circumference of the station's wheel, but the structure was so large that the passageway seemed almost perfectly flat. It was only when she looked far ahead that she saw the deck curved upward and disappeared.

She was grateful that the station was at lunar gravity, like
Chrysalis II,
one-sixth of Earth's. After two weeks of a full
g,
it felt good to be back to normal again. Still, she appreciated the chance to exercise her body after lying asleep for more than a week.

At last she found the door modestly marked
K. WESTFALL
and tapped on it.

A lean, almost cadaverous young man in a dark tunic and slacks slid the door back. His head was shaved bald, his cheeks were hollow, gaunt.

“Ms. Ambrose,” he said in a ghostly whisper, before Deirdre could speak a word.

“That's right.”

The young man stepped aside to allow Deirdre to enter. The compartment looked more like an anteroom than living quarters. A desk, several sculpted plastic chairs, a display screen showing an image of a painting of a mother and child that Deirdre recognized from her art classes: a Renaissance master, she thought, Michelangelo or Titian or one of those. Then she remembered clearly: Raphael, the
Madonna del Granduca.
It had been in the Pitti Palace in Florence until the greenhouse floods.

“Mrs. Westfall will be with you momentarily,” the young man whispered. Gesturing to the chairs, he added, “Please make yourself comfortable.”

Deirdre sat, wondering why Mrs. Westfall had told her to come at once if she was going to have to wait. The young man sat behind the desk and stared into his computer screen, ignoring Deirdre entirely. There was an inner door beside his desk, tightly closed.

“Mrs. Westfall asked me to come right away,” she said to him.

Hardly glancing up from his screen, the young man said, “Mrs. Westfall is a very busy woman. I'm sure that she's made a special disruption in her schedule to see you.”

“But I—”

The computer chimed. The young man pointed to the inner door and said, “Mrs. Westfall will see you now.” Without a smile, without a hint of warmth.

Deirdre rose and went to the door. “Thank you,” she said to the man. Silently she added, You flunky.

The door opened onto a compartment not much bigger than Deirdre's own quarters. But this was obviously merely the sitting room of a much larger suite. Comfortable couches, deep upholstered armchairs, an oval glass coffee table set with a tray that bore a beaded stainless steel pitcher and several metal cups. But no Katherine Westfall.

Deirdre felt her brow knitting into a frown. Where could she be? Why did she—

Katherine Westfall swept into the room from the door in the far wall, looking resplendent in a sheathed lounging suite of carnation red. She's tiny, Deirdre realized. Petite. But she seemed to radiate self-confidence, poise, power. She was smiling graciously, but there seemed no warmth to it. Deirdre couldn't help thinking that asps are tiny, too, but deadly.