Jupiter

GRANT ARMSTRONG ARCHER III

Despite being born into one of the oldest families in Oregon, Grant Archer grew up in an environment that was far from affluent. His earliest memories were of watching his mother rummaging through piles of hand-me-down clothes at the Goodwill shop, looking for sweaters and gym shoes that weren’t too shabby to wear to school.

His father was a Methodist minister in the little suburb of Salem where Grant grew up, respected as a man of the cloth but not taken too seriously in the community because he was, in the words of one of the golf club widows, “churchmouse poor.”

Poor as far as money was concerned, but Grant’s mother always told him that he was rich in the gift of intelligence. It was his mother, who worked in one of the multifarious offices of the New Morality in the state capital, who encouraged Grant’s interest in science.

Most of the New Morality officials were suspicious of science and scientists, deeply worried about these “humanists” who so often contradicted the clear word of Scripture. Even Grant’s father urged his son to steer clear of biology and any other scientific specialty that would bring the frowning scrutiny of New Morality investigators upon them.

For Grant there was no problem. Since he’d been old enough to look into the night sky with awe and wonder he’d wanted to be an astronomer. In high school, where he was by far the brightest student in his class, he narrowed his interest to the astrophysics of black holes. Although Grant thrilled to the discoveries on Mars and out among the distant moons of Jupiter, it was the death throes of giant stars that truly fascinated him. If he could learn how collapsed stars warped spacetime, he might one day discover a way for humans to use such warps for interstellar journeys.

He longed to work at the Farside Observatory on the Moon, studying collapsed stars far out in the cold and dark of deep interstellar space. Yet Grant had been warned that even at Farside there were tensions and outright dangers. Despite all the strictures of the New Morality and the stern rules laid down by the observatory’s directors, some astronomers still tried to sneak time on the big telescopes to search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. When such prohibited activities were discovered, those responsible were inevitably sent back to Earth in disgrace, their careers blighted.

That did not bother Grant, however. He intended to keep his nose clean, to avoid antagonizing the everpresent agents of the New Morality, and to study the enigmatic and entirely safe black holes. He was careful never to use the dreaded word “evolution” when speaking about the life cycles of stars and their final collapse into black holes. “Evolution” was a dangerous word among the New Morality eavesdroppers.

By the time he was finishing high school, he had grown into a quiet, square-shouldered young man with a thick thatch of sandy-blond hair that often tumbled over his light-brown eyes. He was good-natured and polite; the high school girls considered him a “delta” in their merciless rating system: okay as a friend, especially when it came to help with schoolwork, but too dull to date except in an emergency. A shade under six feet tall and whipcord lean, Grant played on the school’s baseball and track teams, no outstanding star but the kind of reliable performer who made his coaches sleep better at night.

As his senior year approached, Grant was offered a full scholarship in return for a four-year commitment to Public Service. The service was inescapable: Every high school graduate was required to do at least two years and then another two at age fifty. The New Morality advisor in his high school told Grant that by accepting a four-year term now, he could get a full scholarship to the university of his choice, with the understanding that his Public Service would be in the field for which he was trained: astrophysics.

Grant accepted the scholarship and the commitment, his eyes still on Farside. He went to Harvard and, much to his delighted surprise, fell in love with a raven-haired biochemist named Marjorie Gold. She made him feel important, for the first time in his life. When he was with her, the quiet, steady, sandy-haired young astronomy student felt he could conquer the universe.

They married during their senior year even though he knew he’d be off to the Farside Observatory for four years while Marjorie would be doing her Public Service with the International Peacekeeping Force, tracking down clandestine biological warfare factories in the jungles of southeast Asia and Latin America.

But they were young and their love could not wait. So they married, despite their parents’ misgivings.

“I’ll come down from Farside at least every few months,” Grant told her as they lay together in bed, contemplating the next four years.

“I’ll get leave when you’re here,” Marjorie agreed.

“By the time I’m finished my four years I’ll have my doctorate,” he said.

“Then you can get on a tenure track at any university you like.”

“And after the four years is over we can apply to have a child,” Grant said.

“A boy,” said Marjorie.

“Don’t you want a daughter?”

“Afterward. After I learn how to be a mother. Then we can have a daughter.”

He smiled in the darkness of their bedroom and kissed her and they made love. It was a safe time of Marjorie’s cycle.

They both graduated with high honors; Grant was actually first in his class. Marjorie received her Public Service commission with the Peacekeepers, as expected. Grant, though, was shocked when his orders sent him not to the Farside Observatory on the Moon but to Research Station Thomas Gold, in orbit around Jupiter, more than seven hundred million kilometers from Marjorie at its closest approach to Earth.

“…WHICH SIDE YOU’RE ON”

Grant’s father counseled patience.

“If that’s where they want to send you, they must have their reasons. You’ll simply have to accept it, son.”

Grant found that he could not accept it. There was no patience in him, despite earnest prayers. His father had been a meek and accepting man all his life, and what had it gotten him? Obscurity, genteel poverty, and condescending smiles behind his back. That’s not for me, Grant told himself.

Despite his father’s conciliatory advice, Grant fought his assignment all the way up to the regional director of the New Morality’s Northeast office.

“I can’t spend four years at Jupiter,” he insisted. “I’m a married man! I can’t be that far away for four years! Besides, I’m an astrophysicist, and there’s no need for my specialty at Jupiter. I’ll be wasting four years! How can I work on my doctorate when there’s no astrophysics being done there?”

The regional director sat behind a massive oak desk strewn with papers, tensely upright in his high-backed chair, his lean, long-fingered hands steepled before him as Grant babbled on. His name was Ellis Beech. He was a serious-looking African American with dark skin the color of sooty smoke. His face was thin, long with a pointed chin; his eyes were tawny, somber, focused intently on Grant without wavering all through his urgent, pleading tirade.

At last Grant ran out of words. He didn’t know what more he could say. He had tried to control his anger, but he was certain he’d raised his voice unconscionably and betrayed the resentment and aggravation he felt. Never show anger, his father had counseled him. Be calm, be reasonable. Anger begets anger; you want to sway him to your point of view, not antagonize him.

Grant slumped back in his chair, waiting for some reaction from the regional director. The man didn’t look antagonized. To Grant’s eyes, he looked as if he hadn’t heard half of what Grant had said. Beech’s desk was cluttered with paper, from flimsy single sheets to thick volumes bound in red covers; his computer screen flickered annoyingly; he was obviously a very important and very busy person, yet his phone had not beeped once since Grant had been ushered into the warmly paneled, carpeted office.

“I was supposed to go to Farside,” Grant muttered, trying to get some response out of the brooding man behind the desk.

“I’m fully aware of that,” Beech said at last. Then he added, “But unfortunately you are needed at Jupiter.”

“How could I be needed—”

“Let me explain the situation to you, young man.”

Grant nodded.

“The scientists have had their research station in Jupiter orbit for nearly twenty years,” Beech said, stressing the word “scientists” ever so slightly. “They have been poking around with the life-forms that exist on two of the planet’s moons.”

“Three,” Grant corrected without thinking. “Plus they’ve found life-forms in Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well.”

Beech continued, unfazed. “The work these scientists do is enormously expensive. They are spending money that could be much better used to help the poor and disadvantaged here on Earth.”

Before Grant could respond, Beech raised a silencing hand. “Yet we of the New Morality do not object to their work. Even though many of those scientists are doing everything they can to try to disprove the truth of Scripture, we allow them to continue their godless pursuits.”

Grant didn’t think that studying the highly adapted algae and microbes living in the ice-covered seas of the Jovian moons was a godless pursuit. How could any attempt to understand the fullness of God’s creation be considered godless?

“Why do we not object to this enormously expensive waste of funds and effort?” Beech asked rhetorically. “Because we of the New Morality and similar Godfearing organizations in other nations have seen fit to establish a compromise with the International Astronautical Authority—and the global financial power structure, as well, I might add.”

“Compromise?” Grant wondered aloud.

“Fusion,” said Beech. “Thermonuclear fusion. The world’s economic well-being depends on fusion power plants. Without the energy from fusion, our world would sink back into the poverty and chaos and corruption that spawned wars and terrorism in earlier years. With fusion, we are lifting the standards of living for even the poorest of the poor, bringing hope and salvation to the darkest corners of the Earth.”

Grant thought he understood. “And the fuels for fusion—the isotopes of hydrogen and helium—they come from Jupiter.”

“That is correct,” Beech said, nodding gravely. “The first fusion power plants ran on isotopes dug up on the Moon, but that was too expensive. Jupiter’s atmosphere is thick with fusion fuels. Automated scoopships bring us these isotopes by the ton.”

Grant asked, “But what’s that got to do with the scientific research being done at Jupiter?”

Beech spread his hands in a don’t-blame-me gesture. “When we of the New Morality pointed out that the money spent on those scientists could be better spent here on Earth, the humanists of the IAA and the major money brokers of our global economy demanded that the research be allowed to continue. They absolutely refused to shut down their research activities.”

Good, thought Grant.

“So the compromise was struck: The scientists could continue their work, as long as it was paid for out of the profits from the scoopship operations.”

“The fusion fuels pay for the research operations,” Grant said.

“Yes, that’s the way it’s been for the past ten years.”

“But what does all this have to do with me? Why are you sending me to Jupiter?”

“We know what the scientists are doing on the moons of Jupiter. But last year they sent a probe into the planet itself.”

“They send lots of probes to Jupiter,” Grant pointed out.

“This one was manned,” said Beech.

Grant gasped with surprise. “A manned probe? Are you certain? I never heard anything about that.”

“Neither did we. They did it in secret.”

“No! How could—”

“That is why you are being sent to Jupiter. To find out what those godless humanists are trying to achieve,” Beech said flatly.

“Me? You want me to spy on them?”

“We need to know what they are doing—and why they are not reporting their activities, not even to the IAA.”

“But I’m no spy. I’m a scientist myself!”

Beech’s solemn expression deepened into a scowl. “Mr. Archer, I’m sure that you assume that you can be a scientist and a Believer, both at the same time.”

“Yes! There’s no fundamental conflict between science and faith.”

“Perhaps. But out there at the research station in Jupiter orbit, scientists are doing something that they don’t want us to know about. And we must find out what they’re up to! ”

“But… why me?”

“God works in mysterious ways, my boy. You have been chosen. Accept that fact.”

“It’s going to ruin my life,” Grant argued. “Four years away from my wife, four years wasted out there doing God knows what. I’ll never get my doctorate!”

Beech nodded again. “It’s a sacrifice, I realize that. But it’s a sacrifice you should be glad to offer up to heaven.”

“That’s easy for you to say. I’m the one whose life is being turned upside-down.”

“Let me explain something to you,” Beech said, tapping the paper-strewn desk with a fingertip. “Do you have any idea of what the world was like before the New Morality and similar organizations gained political power across most of the world?”

Grant squirmed slightly in his chair. “There were lots of problems…”

Beech spat out a single, sharp “Hah!” His eyes were the color of a lion’s, Grant realized. He was staring at Grant the way a lion watches a gazelle.

“I mean, economically, socially—”

“The world was a cesspool!” Beech snapped. “Corruption everywhere. No moral leadership at all. The politicians gave in to every whim that any pressure group expressed. They took polls and strove for popularity, while the people’s real problems festered.”

“The gap between the rich and poor got wider,” Grant recited, recalling his high school lessons.

“And that led to terrorism, wars, crime,” Beech agreed, his voice rising slightly. “Civil wars all over the world. Terrorists with biological weapons.”

“The Calcutta Disaster,” said Grant.

“Three million people killed.”

“And São Paolo.”

“Another two million.”

Grant had seen the videos in school: piles of dead bodies in the streets, emergency workers in space suits to protect them from the lethal biological agents in the air.

“Governments were paralyzed, unable to act,” Beech said firmly. “Until the spirit of God was returned to the corridors of power.”

“It was something of a miracle, wasn’t it?” Grant muttered.

Beech shook his head. “No miracle. Hard work by honest, God-fearing people. We took control of governments all around the world, the New Morality, the Light of Allah, the Holy Disciples in Europe.”

“The New Dao movement in Asia,” Grant added.

“Yes, yes,” said Beech. “And why were we successful in bringing moral strength and wisdom into the political arena? Because religion is a digital system.”

“Digital?”

“Digital. Religious precepts are based on moral principles. There is right and there is wrong. Nothing in between. Nothing! No wiggle room for the politicians to sneak through. Right or wrong, black or white, on or off. Digital.”

“That’s why the New Morality succeeded where other reform movements failed,” Grant said, with new understanding.

“Exactly. That’s why we were able to clean up the crime-ridden streets of our cities. That’s why we were able to put an end to all these self-styled civil rights groups that actually wanted nothing less than a license to commit any sinful acts they wanted to. That’s why we could bring order and stability to the nation—and to the whole world.”

Grant had to admit that from what he’d learned of history, the world was far better off with God-fearing, morally straight governments in power than it had been in the old, corrupt, licentious days.

“We are doing God’s work,” Beech went on, sitting even straighter than before, his hands splayed on the desktop, his eyes burning. “We are feeding the poor, bringing education and enlightenment to all, even in the worst parts of Asia and Africa and South America. We have stabilized world population growth without murdering the unborn. We are raising the standard of living for the poorest of the poor.”

His mind spinning, Grant heard himself ask, “But what does this have to do with Jupiter… and me?”

Beech eyed him sternly. “Young man, there comes a point in everyone’s life when he must make the choice between good and evil. You’ve got to decide which side you’re on: God or Mammon.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The scientists out at Jupiter are up to something, something that they want to keep secret. We must find out what they are doing and why they are trying to hide their actions from us.”

“Shouldn’t that be a task for the IAA?” Grant asked. “I mean, they’re the organization that directs the scientific research.”

“We have representatives on the International Astronomical Authority.”

“Then shouldn’t you leave it to the IAA?”

With an almost pitying expression, Beech said, “The price of great power is great responsibility. In order to maintain stability, to make certain that no one—no scientist or revolutionary or terrorist madman—can threaten all that we’ve worked so hard to achieve, we must control everyone, everywhere.”

“Control everyone?”

“Yes. Those scientists at Jupiter think they are beyond our control. We must teach them otherwise. You are our chosen agent to begin this process. You will help us to learn what they are doing and why they are doing it.”

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.”

THE ENDLESS SEA

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 multihued 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?

FREIGHTER ORAL ROBERTS

“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 workstations. 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 was 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 traveled 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 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 back 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 time lag that defeated any attempt at true conversation. She sent messages back to him, not as often as he did, 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 little wardroom, nothing more really 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 in the dingy wardroom, leaving the claustrophobic sleeping compartment to Tavalera except when he became too stupefyingly 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 “bright-boys.” 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? Was the discussion about Jews a test of some sort? The New Morality had 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.

APPROACH

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 satellites danced around their master. He felt like old Galileo himself, seeing this quartet of new worlds orbiting the massive colorfully 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 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 approached too close and were ground into dust by Jupiter’s enormous gravitational power.

There were some disappointments. The bands of clouds were not as brilliant and gaudy as he had expected. Their hues were muted, softer than the garish tones he had seen earlier. Grant realized that the videos he had been studying were false-color images, where the tints of the clouds had been enhanced to show their swirls and eddies more clearly. Nor could Grant see the slim dark rings that encircled Jupiter’s middle, no matter how hard he strove to find them. The ship’s cameras just did not have the power to resolve them.

“Take a look at Io, brightboy.”

Startled, Grant looked up to see the captain standing in the open hatchway of the wardroom. She was a blocky, dour-faced woman with graying blond hair she wore in a no-nonsense military buzz cut that accentuated her chunky, dough-skinned face. Her faded olive-green coveralls looked rumpled, frayed, shapeless. She clutched an empty plastic cup in one thick-fingered hand.

“Prometheus is erupting,” she said.

It was the first time in the whole long trip that she’d spoken to Grant in anything less than a snarl. He was too surprised to answer. He sat at the wardroom table, frozen into immobility.

With an annoyed scowl, the captain came to the table, leaned over Grant’s shoulder, and snapped commands into his palmcomp. The bulkhead screen blinked and then showed the mottled orange-red globe of Io, the innermost of the four big Galilean moons.

“The pizza-pie world,” she muttered.

Grant saw that Io indeed looked like a pizza, covered with hot sulfur, though, not cheese; splotched and spotted with craters and volcanoes instead of mushrooms or sausage slices.

The captain gave another command, and the view zoomed in on one section of Io’s limb so fast that Grant almost felt dizzy. The curve of the moon’s limb showed bright sulfurous orange against the black of space, and Grant could see a dirty yellowish plume spurting up into the darkness.

“Prometheus is jacking off again,” the captain said, chuckling.

Ignoring her crudity, Grant found his voice at last. “Thank you.”

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t be in such a hurry to run away.” She gave the computer another command, leaning so close to Grant that he could smell her faintly sweaty, acrid odor, feel the heat of her body.

“Be patient,” she said, straightening up as the view of Io zoomed out again.

Grant kept his eyes on the screen. “What should I be looking for?”

“You’ll see.”

The splotchy red-yellow disk of Io suddenly winked out. It took half a heartbeat for Grant to realize it had entered Jupiter’s broad, deep shadow.

“Give it a moment,” the captain whispered from behind him.

Grant saw a faint greenish glow appear, a ghostly pale luminescence, sickly, like the dying light from some weird deep-sea creature. He was too surprised to speak.

“Energetic particles from Jupiter’s magnetosphere make Io’s atmosphere glow. Too faint to see unless Io is in shadow.”

Right, Grant thought. He remembered reading about it somewhere. Oxygen and sulfur atoms excited by collisions with magnetosphere particles. Like the auroras on Earth, same physical mechanism. But seeing it was still a surprise, a gift of wonder.

“Thank you,” he said again, turning from the screen to look up at her.

The captain shrugged her hefty shoulders. “I wanted to be a scientist when I was your age. Explore the solar system. Seek out new life, make new discoveries.” She sighed heavily. “Instead I pilot this bucket.”

“It’s an important job,” Grant said.

“Oh, yes, certainly important.” She spoke with an accent Grant could not quite place. Russian? Polish? “So important that the computer runs the ship most of the time and I have nothing to do but make certain the crew doesn’t muck things up.”

Grant didn’t know how to answer that.

“Well, at least I get to carry handsome young brightboys now and then,” said the captain, breaking into an unexpected smile.

Suddenly Grant felt trapped in the wardroom, alone with her.

“I, uh …” He started to push himself up from his chair. “I still have a lot of studying to do. And I need to send a videogram to my wife. I send her a ’gram every day, and—”

The captain burst into a peal of hearty laughter. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I understand, handsome young bright-boy. Not to worry.”

She laughed and headed for the coffeemaker. “As long as the VR system works, you are perfectly safe, pretty one.”

Grant sank back into his chair as she filled her mug, still laughing, and went back to the hatch.

Then she stopped and turned back toward him. “By the way, there’s an observation blister just off the bridge. If you want to see Jupiter with your naked eyes, you have my permission to use it.”

Grant blinked with surprise. “Um … thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much. I’m sorry if I—”

But the captain had already turned and started down the passageway toward the bridge, still chuckling to herself.

For long moments Grant sat there alone, wondering if he’d misunderstood the captain and made a fool of himself. But she’d mentioned a virtual reality system. Grant had heard about using VR simulations for sex. That’s what she’d meant, he was certain.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss the encounter from his mind. Me, with her? He shuddered at the thought. But immediately he started composing another video message for Marjorie, mentioning nothing about the captain, of course. And, despite himself, wondering what VR sex might be like.

ARRIVAL

Peering through the transparent glassteel of the observation bubble, Grant could see that Jupiter was not merely immense, it was alive.

They were in orbit around the planet now, and its giant curving bulk loomed so huge that he could see nothing else, nothing but the bands and swirls of clouds that raced fiercely across Jupiter’s face. The clouds shifted and flowed before his eyes, spun into eddies the size of Asia, moved and throbbed and pulsed like living creatures. Lightning flashed down there, sudden explosions of light that flickered back and forth across the clouds, like signaling lamps.

There was life beneath those clouds, Grant knew. Huge balloonlike creatures called Clarke’s Medusas that drifted in the hurricane-force winds surging across the planet. Birds that have never seen land, living out their entire lives aloft. Gossamer spider-kites that trapped microscopic spores. Particles of long-chain carbon molecules that form in the clouds and sift downward, toward the global ocean below.

Unbidden, the words of a psalm sang in his mind:

And there was the Red Spot, a gigantic swirling storm that had been raging for more than four hundred years, bigger than the whole planet Earth. Lightning rippled endlessly around its perimeter; to Grant it looked like the thrashing cilia of some titanic bacterium, flailing its way across the face of the giant planet.

Somewhere in a closer equatorial orbit around the planet was Research Station Gold, Grant’s destination, the largest man-made object in the solar system outside of the space cities orbiting between Earth and its Moon. But Gold was an invisible speck against the enormous, overwhelming expanse of Jupiter.

It’s like watching an abstract painting, Grant thought as he stared at the hurtling clouds of delicate pale yellow, russet brown, white and pink and powder blue. But it’s a dynamic painting, moving, shifting, flecked with lightning—alive.

Mars was a dead world, cold and silent despite its lichen and ancient cliffside ruins. Venus was an oven: sluggish, suffocating, useless. Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede, nearby moons of Jupiter almost the size of the planet Mercury, bore fragile ecologies of microscopic creatures beneath their perpetual mantles of ice.

But to Grant’s awestruck eyes, Jupiter looked vibrant, powerful, teeming with energy.

For the past four days the captain had been gradually increasing the ship’s spin, so that now it was revolving around its empty cargo bay fast enough to produce almost a full terrestrial gravity force in the habitation module. After almost a year at one-half g, the increased sense of weight made Grant feel tired, aching, dispirited.

Except when he was in the observation bubble. Sitting there in its lone padded chair, staring out at the immensity of Jupiter, Grant’s mind raced as fast as the swirling multihued clouds. He had no idea of what his assignment would be once they made rendezvous with Gold Certainly the International Astronautical Authority had not paid for his transportation all the way out to Jupiter to have Grant study pulsars and black holes, as he would have preferred to do.

No, he thought, still staring in fascination at Jupiter, the IAA’s main thrust out here in the Jovian system was with the microscopic life-forms on frozen Europa and Callisto and the creatures living in Jupiter’s atmosphere. They should be bringing biologists and geologists for that kind of work, not a frustrated astrophysicist.

Yet the New Morality claimed that the scientists had sent a manned craft into Jupiter’s swirling clouds. In secret. Was it true? What did they find? Why would they keep such work a secret? Scientists don’t behave that way, Grant told himself. Somebody in the New Morality is paranoid, and I’ve got to spend four years of my life paying for his stupid suspicions.

With growing despair, he realized that the scientists would probably put him to work running an ice-drilling rig on the surface of a Jovian moon. Or worse, he’d be sent down under the ice into the frigid ocean below. That thought frightened him: sent under the ice, into an alien ocean, a world of darkness with no air to breathe except what the tanks on his back carried. Scary. Terrifying.

“Rendezvous maneuver begins in three minutes,” the captain’s voice said from the speaker grille set into the bulkhead, sounding slightly scratchy and flat. “All nonessential personnel will confine themselves to their quarters or the galley.”

“Nonessential personnel,” Grant muttered, hauling himself up from the padded chair. “That means me.” And Tavalera, he added silently. His body felt heavy, sluggish, in the full Earthly gravity.

For a long moment he stood in the cramped little blister of the observation bubble, ignoring the ache in his legs, still staring at Jupiter. It was hard to pull his eyes away from its splendor. The research station was still nowhere in sight; or, if it was, it was too small against Jupiter’s massive bulk for Grant to notice it. With enormous reluctance, he turned and ducked through the low hatch and stepped out into the passageway that led to the galley.

Tavalera was in the galley, sure enough, sitting at the table with a steaming mug in front of him and an embarrassed expression on his horsy face. He was wiping his chin with a recyclable napkin. Grant saw that the front of his coveralls was stained and wet.

“Be careful drinking,” Tavalera warned. “Liquid pours a lot faster now we’re in a full gee.”

Grant thought he didn’t need the warning. His aching legs told him all he needed to know about the gravity. He thumped heavily into a chair on the opposite side of the table from Tavalera.

“Guess this is our last day together,” the young engineer said.

Grant nodded silently.

“Got my assignment this morning,” Tavalera said, looking somewhere between worried and hopeful. “It’s a scoopship, all right: the Glen P. Wilson.”

Grant still said nothing. There had been no assignment for him in the morning’s communications bulletin. As far as he knew, he was to report aboard the research station and get his assignment there.

“She’s an old ship, cranky and creaky, from what I hear. But a good ship. Reliable. High performance rating.”

He sounded to Grant as if he were trying to convince himself of something he didn’t actually believe.

“Two years,” Tavalera went on, “and then I go home, free and clear.”

“That’s good.”

“You’ll be out here four years, won’tcha?”

“That’s right.”

Tavalera shook his head like a man possessed of superior wisdom. “They really suckered you in, didn’t they? Four years.”

“I won’t have to do another two when I’m fifty,” Grant pointed out. Then he added, with just a little malice, “But you will.”

If Tavalera caught Grant’s irritation, he gave no notice of it. He merely waggled one long-fingered hand in the air and said, “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t. By the time I’m fifty, I could be too flickin’ important for the New Morality to screw with me.”

Again Grant found himself wondering if Tavalera was probing his loyalty. Is this conversation being monitored? he asked himself.

Raising his voice a notch, he replied, “I’ve always felt that Public Service is something you should be glad to do. Give something back to the community. It’s important, don’t you think?”

Tavalera leaned back in his chair and gave Grant a crafty look. “Yeah, sure. But there’s important and really important. Know what I mean?”

The ship quivered. Just a slight tremor, but it was so out of place that both Grant and Tavalera immediately looked up. Grant felt a sharp pang in his gut. Tavalera’s eyes flicked wide for an instant.

“Rendezvous maneuver,” Tavalera said, after a moment’s startled silence.

“Yes, of course,” said Grant, trying to make it sound nonchalant.

Pushing himself up from his chair, Tavalera suggested, “Come on, let’s go down to the observation bubble and watch.”

“But the captain said—”

Laughing, Tavalera headed for the hatch. “C’mon, you don’t have to stay in your cage every second of every day. What’s she gonna do if she catches us, throw us off the ship?”

The communications chime on the bulkhead screen sounded. “Incoming message for Grant Archer,” announced the comm system’s synthesized voice.

Grateful for the interruption, Grant said, “Put it onscreen, please.”

The screen remained blank. “This is a private communication,” the computer warned.

A message from Marjorie, Grant thought. Tavalera will leave me to see it alone; if he doesn’t, I can ask him to leave.

“On-screen, please,” he repeated.

To his surprise, the screen showed the twin seals of the International Astronautical Authority and the New Morality Censorship Board. Before Grant could react, it flicked off, to be replaced by a lengthy document headed with the Words secrecy agreement.

Grant saw that Tavalera’s eyes were bulging.

“I’d better go to my bunk and read this on my personal handheld,” Grant said.

“I guess you better,” Tavalera said in a small voice.

As Grant brushed past him to step out into the passageway, Tavalera said, “I never figured you for an NM agent.”

“I’m not,” Grant blurted, wishing it were true.

“Yeah. Sure.”

Grant headed for the claustrophobic compartment he shared with Tavalera, while the young engineer went the other way, toward the observation blister. Once alone in his cramped bunk, Grant read the secrecy agreement very carefully. Twice. Three times. He was being ordered to sign it. The document did not leave him any choice. If he failed to sign, the New Morality could cancel his Public Service contract and have him returned to Earth “at the convenience of the IAA personnel on-station.” That meant all the time in transit to Jupiter would have been totally wasted. And all the time spent waiting for transport back to Earth, and the transit time itself, would also be wasted.

Worse yet, Grant got the distinct feeling that once back home he would be assigned the lowliest, meanest, dirtiest Public Service job that the authorities could find for him. They dealt harshly with dissenters and objectors.

So he signed the secrecy agreement. In essence, it was a simple document. It stated that any and all information, data, knowledge, and facts that he acquired while serving his Public Service obligation were classified Secret and were not to be divulged to any person, agency, or computer network. Under punishment of law.

Grant felt whipsawed. The New Morality wanted him to report on what the scientists were doing; the IAA wanted to swear him to secrecy. Then a new understanding dawned within him: They don’t trust each other! The IAA and the New Morality may share the responsibility for running station Gold, but they don’t trust each other. They don’t even like each other. And they’ve put me in the middle. Whatever I do, I’m going to be in trouble, he realized.

Wishing both sides would just leave him alone, wondering exactly what was going on among the researchers at Gold that had to be kept so secret, Grant signed the document and—as directed by the automated legal program—held his palm-size computer to first his right eye and then his left, so that whoever was registering his agreement recorded both his retinal prints.

All these precautions left Grant feeling baffled, worried, and more than a little angry. They had one good effect, however. Once Roberts established its coorbital rendezvous with the space station and Grant toted his one travelbag down to the airlock hatch, Tavalera said goodbye to him with newfound respect in his eyes.

It’s almost funny, Grant thought. For most of the trip out here I was halfway convinced that Raoul was a New Morality informer. Now he’s certain that I’m one.

He almost laughed as he shook Tavalera’s hand in a final good-bye.

Almost. Then he realized that he actually was a New Morality informer. At least, that’s what the NM expected him to be.

“WELCOME TO THE GULAG”

Grant at last got a look at the orbiting research station, a glimpse, nothing more, as he ducked through the transfer tube that had been set up to connect the station’s docking hub with Roberts’s airlock.

That brief glimpse disturbed him even more.

He was silently offering a prayer of thanksgiving at his safe arrival and a supplication to “make me worthy, O Lord, of the task You have given me.”

As he looked up through the transfer tube’s overhead window, the curving surface of the station looked huge, mammoth, a gigantic looming structure that filled the observation port like a colossal arch of gray metal, dulled and pitted from long years of exposure to radiation and in-falling cosmic dust.

A childhood memory flashed through Grant’s mind: the time his parents had taken him to San Francisco and they had somehow gotten themselves lost in a seedy, dangerous part of the city near the enormous dirt-encrusted supporting buttresses of the Bay Bridge. Grant’s breath had caught in his throat; for a moment he had imagined the entire weight of that immense bridge crashing down on him, crushing him and his parents in their flimsy open-topped automobile in a thundering tangle of steel girders and ponderous blocks of stone.

As he made his solitary way through the slightly flexible transfer tube, he got that same sudden feeling: This enormous thick wheel of a station was going to come crashing down upon him any moment now. Again his breath caught and for just a heartbeat of an instant he felt very small, very vulnerable, very close to death.

The instant passed. Grant finished his prayer as he strode on alone through the tube; he was the only person transferring from the freighter to the research station. The flooring felt soft and spongy beneath his boots, especially after so many months of the freighter’s steel decks. Everything’s fine, he told himself. He remembered that the instant he stepped through the hatch at the far end of the tube he was officially engaged in his Public Service duty; every second would count toward his four-year commitment. Every second would bring him closer to Marjorie, to home, to the life he wanted.

But he had seen something in that brief glimpse of the station, something that should not have been. Grant had memorized the station’s layout after months of studying it during the long trip out to Jupiter. Research Station Gold was a massive fat doughnut of a structure, more than five kilometers in diameter. It rotated once every two minutes to give its interior a spin-induced artificial gravity of almost exactly one g, so that its inhabitants would feel a comfortable Earthly gravity inside the station.

Grant had seen an additional structure sticking out from the doughnut shape, a metallic lenticular section, round and flattened like a discus, connected to the station by a single slender tube, literally poking out from the main body like a sore thumb. It should not have been there. Grant knew the schematics of Station Gold by heart; he had pored over its design details and operations manuals for months. There was no extra section hanging out on one side of the doughnut. There couldn’t be. It would unbalance the station’s spin and inevitably destabilize it so badly that it would shake the structure apart.

It could not be there, Grant knew. Yet he had seen it. He was certain of that.

He felt puzzled, almost worried, as he took the few steps that brought him to the end of the transfer tunnel. Grant had to duck slightly to get through the hatch that connected with the station itself. As he stepped through, he found himself in a small bare chamber. Its metal walls were scuffed, dull; its flooring was metal gridwork. Once it had been painted, Grant saw, but there was nothing left of the paint except a few grayish chips clinging here and there.

A tall, slim man in light-gray casual slacks and soft blue velour shirt was standing there, waiting for him with a listless, bored expression on his angular, ascetic face. Grant had never seen such a pallid complexion; the man looked almost ghostly. His hair was very light, almost white, thin and straight and hanging down to his shoulders. Despite the silvery hair, Grant guessed that the man was only slightly older than himself.

“Grant Archer?” the man asked needlessly, extending his right hand.

Grant nodded as he shifted his travelbag and took the offered hand.

“I’m Egon Karlstad,” the man said. His grip seemed measured: not too strong, not too soft.

“Good to meet you,” said Grant. He heard the hatch behind him slide shut, then a quick series of clicks and thumps as the transfer tube disconnected.

Karlstad grinned sardonically. “Welcome to Research Station Gold,” he said. “Welcome to the gulag.”

Puzzled, Grant asked, “What’s a gulag?”

“You’ll find out,” Karlstad said resignedly as he turned to lead Grant through a second hatch and into a long, wide passageway.

Gold seemed even bigger inside than it had looked from the outside. The passageway that they trudged along was spacious and even carpeted, although the carpeting seemed threadbare, badly worn. Still, after all those months of tatty old Roberts, Grant reveled in the feeling of openness and freedom. Men and women passed them, nodding their greetings or saying hello to Karlstad. He did not introduce any of them, but kept up a constant chatter about what was behind each of the doors set into either side of the corridor: fluid dynamics lab, cryogenic facility, electronics maintenance shop, other titles Grant did not understand.

Grant thought of it as a corridor, not a passageway. He was not on a ship any longer. This was a research station. Even though he knew he was walking inside a big wheel-shaped hoop, it looked and felt to Grant as if the corridor were perfectly flat and straight, that’s how big the station was. It was only off in the far distance that the corridor appeared to slope upward.

Well, he thought, at least I’ll be in reasonably comfortable surroundings. And working with real scientists.

After what seemed like a half hour, Karlstad stopped at an unmarked doorway. “This is your compartment, Mr. Archer.”

“Grant,” said Grant. “Please call me Grant.”

Karlstad made a polite little bow. “Good. And I’m Egon. My quarters are just down the passageway, two doors.” He pointed.

Grant nodded as Karlstad tapped the security pad built into the doorjamb. “You can set your own code, of course,” he said. “Just let the security office know what it is.”

The door slid open. Grant’s compartment was roomy, with a real bed instead of a bunk, a desk, table, chairs, shelves, even a compact kitchenette with its own sink and microwave unit. It was all strictly utilitarian, like a college dormitory room, not fancy or luxurious in the least. Certainly nothing in the compartment looked new or bright. Everything smelled faintly of disinfectant, even the thin gray carpeting.

“Two of the walls are smartscreens, of course,” Karlstad was saying. “That door on the right is your lavatory, the other one’s a closet.”

Grant stepped in and tossed his travelbag onto the bed. This is fine, he told himself. This is perfectly fine. I can be comfortable here.

Karlstad shut the door and left him alone in his new quarters before Grant could ask him about the strange structure jutting out from the station’s perimeter. But as he bounced on the bed to test its springiness, Grant told himself to forget about it. The people running this station wouldn’t build anything that would jeopardize their own safety, he thought. That would be crazy.

It didn’t take long for Grant to unpack his meager belongings. His clothes hardly filled a tenth of the ample closet space and bureau drawers. He sat at the desk and linked his palmcomp with the wall screen. The first thing he did was to compose a long, upbeat message to Marjorie, telling her that he had arrived safely at the station and showing her—by swiveling in his desk chair while holding the palm-size computer with its built-in video camera in his hand—how spacious and comfortable his new quarters were. Then he sent an almost duplicate message to his parents, back in Oregon.

But even as he did so, the memory of that odd appendage sticking out from the station’s rim kept nagging at him. A flattened circular shape, like a fat discus. It was big, too: several hundred meters in diameter, at least. It bothered him. After sending off the message to his parents, Grant called up the station’s schematics, as he had done countless times on the long journey to Jupiter. Nothing. No reference to such a structure anywhere in his palmcomp’s files.

“Did I imagine seeing it?” Grant whispered to himself. Then he shook his head. He had seen it, he was certain of that.

He jacked into the station’s own files and pulled up the schematics. Nothing there, either. Frowning with puzzled frustration, he scrolled through the station’s files. Many of them were marked ACCESS LIMITED TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. At last he found what he wanted: realtime views of the station from other satellites in orbit around Jupiter.

At first he was mesmerized by the satellite views of Jupiter itself, the ever-changing kaleidoscope of swirling, racing colors, endlessly fascinating. It took a real effort of will to concentrate on finding views of the station.

And there it was, the thick torus of dulled, pitted metal, looking small and fragile against the overwhelming background of Jupiter’s gaudy, hurtling clouds. And there was that saucer-shaped thing hanging out from one side of the station’s wheel, connected only by an impossibly slim tube.

Grant froze the image and framed the extension on the wallscreen, then asked, “Computer, pull up the schematic for the indicated image.”

No response from the computer. His palmcomp merely hummed to itself; the picture on the screen did not change. Feeling nettled, Grant pulled out the keyboard that was built into the desk and connected it to his palmcomp, then typed out his command.

The screen went blank for a moment and Grant started to smile with a sense of victory. But then ACCESS DENIED appeared briefly and the screen went dead.

“Damn!” Grant snapped, immediately regretting his lack of self-control.

Grant rebooted his palmcomp and tried again. He lost track of time, but he was determined to get the better of the stupid computer system. No matter how he tried, though, every attempt ended in the same ACCESS DENIED message and automatic shutoff.

A knocking on his door finally pulled his attention away from his quest. With a disgusted grunt, Grant got up from his desk chair. He was surprised at how stiff he felt; he must have been hunched over the computer for hours.

Egon Karlstad stood at Grant’s door, a quizzical little hint of a smile on his pale face.

“You must be somebody special,” Karlstad said, standing out in the corridor. “Dr. Wo wants to see you.”

“Dr. Wo?” Grant asked.

“As in woe unto thee, rash mortal,” said Karlstad. “He’s the director of the station. El supremo.”

“He wants to see me? Why?”

Karlstad brushed a hand through his silvery hair. “Beats me. He doesn’t take me into his confidences very often. But when he rings the bell, you’d better salivate.”

Grant stepped out into the corridor and closed his door behind him. “Salivate?”

“Pavlov’s dogs,” said Karlstad, starting down the hallway. “Conditioned reflex and all that.”

“Oh, I remember … in biology class, back in high school.”

“I’m a biophysicist, you know.”

“Really? What’re you doing here? Aren’t all the biology people at the Galilean moons?”

Karlstad waved hello to a couple of women coming toward them before he replied, “All the work on the moons is headquartered here. People can’t stay out there for more than a few weeks at a time: radiation buildup, you know.”

“We’re shielded here?” Grant asked.

“Hell, yes. Superconducting magnets, just like the storm cellars aboard spacecraft, only bigger. And we’re orbiting close enough to Jupiter so that we’re inside the van Allen belts, below the heaviest radiation fields.”

“That’s good.”

“Understatement of the year!”

They walked along the corridor for what seemed like kilometers. Karlstad appeared almost to glide along, pale and slim and seemingly weightless, just about. Like a ghost, Grant thought. A pallid, insubstantial phantom. Most of the doors they passed were closed, although they went through an open area that was obviously a galley or cafeteria. People were lining up and getting trays, piling food on them, moving to tables and sitting down. Hearty aromas of hot food and spices wafted through the area, making Grant truly salivate.

“Is it lunchtime?” Grant asked.

“Dinner,” Karlstad answered. “Your clock is off by seven or eight hours.”

Grant hadn’t realized that the old Roberts ran on a different clock. He had assumed that all space vehicles kept the same time.

They passed through more open areas, workshops and exercise gyms, then a long span with doors spaced close together. The carpeting here seemed newer, thicker, even though it was the same bland gray as elsewhere. “Executive territory,” Karlstad murmured. Each door bore a name-plate.

At last they stopped at a door that said:

“Here you are,” said Karlstad.

“You’re not going in with me?” Grant asked.

Karlstad raised his hands in mock horror. “He wants to see you, not me. I’m just the delivery boy. Besides”— he hesitated a heartbeat—“the less I see of the Old Man, the better.”

LI ZHANG WO

Karlstad walked away, leaving Grant standing alone before the closed door of the director’s office. Feeling a little nervous, Grant balled his fist to knock on the door, then hesitated.

There’s nothing to be afraid of, he told himself. You haven’t done anything wrong. Besides, this is a chance to talk to the top man; you can tell him you’re an astrophysicist and bringing you here was a mistake, maybe get him to send you back to Earth or at least to the Moon.

Summoning up his courage, he tapped lightly on the door.

No response.

He glanced up and down the corridor. No one in sight. Karlstad had melted away. It was as if no one wanted to be anywhere near here.

Taking a deep breath, Grant rapped on the door again, harder.

Again no response. He wondered what to do. Then a muffled voice from inside the office said, “Enter.”

Grant slid the door open and stepped in. The room was overly warm, sticky with humidity, like a hothouse. Grant felt perspiration break out on his upper lip, yet the director wore a high-collared tunic buttoned all the way up to the throat as he sat behind his desk.

Director Wo’s office was austere rather than imposing. The room was about the same size as his own quarters, Grant guessed, furnished with a large curved desk of gleaming metal, its surface completely clear except for a small computer screen and an incongruous vase of delicate red and white chrysanthemums. There was a chair of tubular stainless steel padded with fawn-colored cushions in front of the desk and a small oval conference table with four stiff plastic chairs in the far corner. The wallscreen behind the desk showed a stark desert: empty sand stretching to the horizon beneath a blazing sun. It made Grant feel even more uncomfortably hot. The other walls were utterly bare; the only decoration in the room was that paradoxical vase of flowers on the director’s desk.

They can’t be real, Grant thought. Nobody would waste the time and resources to grow flowers on this station. Yet they looked real enough. And the vase was a graceful Oriental work of art, like something from a museum.

Without looking up from his desktop screen, Dr. Wo gestured bruskly to the padded chair in front of his desk. Grant obediently sat in it, thinking that the director was playing an old power-trip game: pretending to be so busy that he can’t even say hello. Grant had run into this type before, at school and among the bureaucrats of the New Morality.

All right, he thought. As soon as he does look up I’ll tell him that I’m an astrophysicist and I should be at Farside. Enough of this spying and secrecy agreements.

Feeling sweat dampening his scalp, Grant studied Dr. Wo’s face as he sat waiting for the director to take notice of him. It was a fleshy, broad-cheeked face, solid and heavy-featured, with small coal-black eyes set deeply beneath brows so slight that they were practically nonexistent. Skin the color of old parchment. The man had a small mustache, little more than wisps on his upper lip. His hair was cropped so close to his scalp that it was difficult to tell its true color: light gray, Grant thought. His hairline was receding noticeably. His head looked big, blocky, too heavy even for the powerful shoulders that strained the fabric of his tunic.

At last Director Wo looked up from the screen and fixed his eyes on Grant. They glowered like the embers of a smoldering fire.

“I heard you knock the first time,” he said. His voice was hoarse, strained, as if he were suffering from a throat infection.

Grant blinked with surprise. “When no one answered I thought—”

“You are an impatient man,” Wo accused. “That is not good for someone who wants to become a scientist.”

“I … I didn’t think you’d heard me,” Grant stammered.

“You are also too curious for your own good.” Wo jabbed a finger at the desktop screen, like a prosecuting attorney making a point. “The extension to this station is off-limits to unauthorized personnel, yet the first thing you do when you arrive here is poke your brightboy nose into it. Why?”

“Uh, well … it seemed odd to me, sir, having an extension hanging on one side of the wheel and nothing to balance it.”

“Oh, so you are a design engineer, are you?” The man’s voice made Grant want to wince. It seemed so harsh that it had to be painful to speak that way.

“Nosir, but it does make me wonder.”

Wo huffed impatiently. “Better men than you have designed that extension, brightboy. And when you get an access-denied message on your screen you should take your curiosity elsewhere. Understand me?”

“Yessir. If I may, though, I want to—”

“You set off all kinds of alarms, trying to pry into sensitive information.”

“I didn’t realize there was anything that sensitive being done here,” Grant said. Even as he said it, Grant realized it was a lie. He’d been sent here because of the scientists’ secrecy.

“You didn’t realize …? Didn’t you sign a secrecy agreement?”

“Yes, but I thought—”

“You thought it was just a bit of paperwork, did you?” Wo hunched forward, both hands balled into fists atop the desk. His hands looked powerful, thick wrists and heavy forearms that bulged in his tunic sleeves. “Another pointless piece of red tape from the bureaucrats running this station.”

“Nosir. But about my assignment here—”

“You have been assigned to this station. Under my direction. You will follow the terms of the secrecy agreement you signed. That is mandatory. No exceptions.”

“I …” Grant swallowed hard. “I didn’t associate the secrecy agreement with the access-denied message on my screen. As you said, sir, my curiosity got the better of me.”

Wo stared coldly at Grant for several long moments. At last he said, “Very well. I will take you at your word. But my security people are buzzed up about you.”

Grant knew when to behave meekly. “I’m sorry if I’ve caused any trouble, but, you see, I’m actually an astrophysicist and I don’t understand why I’m here.”

“The trouble is on your shoulders, brightboy. Report to the security chief immediately for an extended briefing on proper handling of sensitive materials.”

“But I—”

“Immediately, I said! Don’t just sit there! Get to the security chiefs office. Understand me?”

Grant scrambled to his feet and headed for the door.

“You’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Archer,” the director called from his desk.

Turning, Grant saw that he had swung his chair away from the desk slightly. It was a powered wheelchair. Beneath his full-length tunic the director was wearing ridiculous-looking green plaid shorts, and Grant could see that Wo’s legs were pitifully thin, emaciated, scarred and twisted, dangling uselessly from his chair. He looked like a gnome or a troll from childhood tales.

If Dr. Wo was bothered by Grant’s shocked stare, he gave no hint of it.

“Get on the right track and stay on it,” he snapped. “Or else.”

“Yessir,” Grant said. “I will, sir.”

Once outside in the blessed cool of the corridor again, Grant realized that Wo gave him no chance to ask for a reassignment to Farside. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Feeling wretched, he wondered where the cursed security office might be. He knew it had to be along the corridor somewhere, there was only this one main passageway that went through the entire wheelshaped station, if he remembered the schematics correctly. But the station was so big, Grant realized he could be walking for an hour or more.

The corridor was still empty and silent; no one in sight to ask for directions. Then he spotted a videophone on the wall up ahead. He used it to pull up the station layout and found the office of the security chief, someone named Lane O’Hara.

The office was actually only a few dozen meters up the corridor. Grant hustled to it and rapped on the door, which bore O’Hara’s name.

“Come in.”

It was a much smaller room than the director’s. Grant saw that it must be an anteroom; nothing but a small desk and a single straightbacked chair in front of it. A pert young woman sat at the desk. An assistant, no doubt. There was an unmarked door on the far wall. That must be O’Hara’s office, he said to himself.

“I’m Grant Archer. The director sent me here to see Mr. O’Hara.”

“Miss O’Hara,” she corrected. “That’s me.” Rising from her chair, she extended her hand over the desk. She was at least two centimeters taller than Grant.

Surprised, Grant shook her hand as he blurted, “You’re the security chief?”

“Lane O’Hara … Elaine, if you look up my baptismal record.”

“Oh,” said Grant.

Lane O’Hara was no more than Grant’s own age, slim as a willow, her boyish figure clad in a loose slate-gray turtle-neck pullover and odd-looking shiny black leather leggings lined with rows of dull gray metal studs along the outside seams. Her face was elfin, with high cheekbones, a tilted nose, a slightly sharpish chin, and delicate lips that were curved into a pleasant smile. Her eyes were bright green, and they were smiling, too. She wore her chestnut hair tied into a tight bun at the back of her head.

“What were you expecting?” she asked. “Some great brute of a policeman, maybe?” There was a lilt in her voice that Grant had never heard before: charming, musical.

“I guess I was,” he said, smiling back at her as he followed her gesture and took the chair in front of her desk.

“Oh, we have them, too,” she said as she sat back in her little swivel chair. “On a station this size you need a few thumpers here and there, now and then.”

Grant pictured some of the stern-faced beefy security guards he d seen at school.

“Now then,” O’Hara said lightly, “the director’s all fussed about your prying into the station schematics, looking to find out what he’s got in the annex.”

“I was curious…”

“Of course you were. Everybody is. But the director is just a wee bit paranoid about the annex. It’s his special project, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Grant said.

“How could you, seeing that you just arrived an hour or so ago?” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “Well, I’m required to put you through the standard security briefing and there’s nothing to it. I’ll try to run through it quickly enough so we can get finished with it before the cafeteria closes for the night.”

Grant asked, “What time is it here?”

O’Hara shook her head sorrowfully. “They didn’t even give you a chance to adjust your clock, did they?”

Grant realized he liked this security chief. In fact, he thought he was going to enjoy the briefing.

“OUR INTELLECTUAL COUSINS”

He didn’t. Once she got started on the station’s security regulations, O’Hara became strictly business. She called up on her wallscreen a bewildering set of rules and restrictions, then quizzed Grant about them mercilessly for what seemed like hours.

At last, with a reluctant, “I suppose that will have to do.” She dismissed Grant—but only after telling him that the cafeteria would stop serving dinner in fifteen minutes.

“I don’t know where the cafeteria is,” Grant bleated.

“Turn right outside my door and follow your nose,” O’Hara said.

Grant got up from the chair, aching slightly from having sat in it for so long.

“Better dash,” O’Hara said.

“What about you? Aren’t you going to eat?”

She sighed heavily. “I hope so. But I’ve got a bit of work to finish first. Scamper, now!”

Grant headed straight for the cafeteria, stopping only to use one of the wall phones to find its exact location.

He could have followed his ears, he realized as he approached the busy, crowded, clanging, clattering noisy cafeteria. For the first time since he’d left Earth, Grant found himself in a familiar environment. The odors of food, real cooked food instead of the microwaved packaged meals he’d had aboard Roberts, almost brought tears of joy to his eyes.

The cafeteria was a wide, busy open area on both sides of the station’s main corridor. Against the curving bulkheads on either side stood steam tables and automated dispensing machines, apparently the same on both sides. A few other latecomers were lined up there with trays in their hands, making their dinner selections. Tables were scattered across the carpeted floor, except for the cleared area of the corridor. People walked back and forth, picking tables, finding friends.

Grant realized that he didn’t know anyone in this crowd. Even though half the tables were empty, there must have been more than a hundred men and women there, chatting, eating, laughing noisily—and all of them were strangers to him.

Then he spotted Egon Karlstad sitting at a table with two women and a muscular-looking black man. But there were no empty chairs at that table. So Grant went through the line glumly, expecting to eat alone, or with strangers. His mood quickly changed, though, once he saw the quality and variety of the food available. The meats were undoubtedly soy derivatives or other synthetics, but the vegetables looked crisp and fresh, and the fruits seemed straight out of the Garden of Eden: luscious and tempting.

Those flowers on Wo’s desk are real, Grant told himself. They must have tremendous hydroponics farms here.

He loaded his tray, even taking the largest-sized cup of soymilk the machines offered, then wandered through the maze of tables, looking for a place to sit.

“Archer!” someone shouted. “Grant! Over here.”

He turned to see Karlstad standing and waving at him. Feeling immensely grateful, Grant headed toward his table.

“I don’t want to interrupt …” he said lamely as he reached the table. All four seats were still occupied.

“Nonsense,” Karlstad snapped as he pulled a chair from the next table, startling the couple who were hunched toward each other deep in intense conversation.

Grant carefully laid his tray on the table and sank into the proffered seat. “Thank you,” he said.

He took his plates and cup off the tray, then—as he had seen others do—slid the tray under his chair. He started to say a swift, silent grace over his food, but Karlstad interrupted.

“Ursula van Neumann,” Karlstad said, pointing to the petulant-looking blond Valkyrie sitting on Grant’s left. She smiled as if it hurt her face. “Ursa’s one of our best computer docs. You have a problem with a simulation or an analysis, go see Ursula.”

She nodded somberly. “He tells that to so many that I am always swamped with work.”

Before Grant could reply, Karlstad turned to the other woman, a petite Oriental with a face as round and flat as a saucepan. “Tamiko Hideshi, physical chemist.”

“You come to see me,” Hideshi said, with a sparkle in her dark eyes, “if you have a problem understanding the chemistry going on in Europa’s ocean.”

Everyone at the table laughed, except Grant.

“I’m afraid I don’t get the joke,” he admitted.

Hideshi touched Grant’s arm gently. “The joke is that no one understands the chemistry going on under that damned ice. They’ve been splashing around in it for more than ten years now, with thirty years of automated probes before that, and the complexity is still beyond us.”

“Oh,” said Grant. “I see.”

“I wish I did,” Hideshi answered ruefully.

“This big bruiser here,” Karlstad said, jabbing a thumb toward the black man, “is Zareb Muzorawa. Fluid dynamics.”

“My friends call me Zeb,” said Muzorawa, in a slow, deliberate tone.

From the looks of him—muscular build, shaved scalp, a trim beard tracing his jawline, red-rimmed eyes of deepest brown—Grant expected his voice to be a powerful leonine rumble. Instead it came out soft, almost amiable, despite his grave attitude. Then he smiled and all the fierceness of his bearded face vanished in a warm friendliness.

Muzorawa was wearing a comfortably soft turtleneck pullover. Grant could see that his trousers were black, metal-studded leggings, the same as Lane O’Hara had worn. Van Neumann wore a sleeveless chemise, cut low enough to show how amply she was built. Hideshi was in frayed olive-drab coveralls.

Grant said, “I’m very happy to meet all of you.” He started to put his fork into the salad he’d selected, but Hideshi interrupted with:

“What’s your discipline?”

“I’m an astrophysicist.”

“Astrophysicist?”

With a nod, Grant added, “My special field of study is stellar collapse. You know, supernovas, pulsars, black holes … stuff like that.”

“What in the name of sanity are you doing here?”

van Neumann asked.

“Why did Dr. Wo pick you?” Karlstad added.

Grant could only shrug. “I’m doing my Public Service duty. I don’t think Dr. Wo asked for me in particular; I’m just the brightboy that the personnel board sent here.”

Karlstad nodded knowingly. “Just a warm body to fill an open slot.”

But Muzorawa countered, “I’m not so sure of that. The director is always very careful about his personnel selections. Very exact. No one comes to this station unless he wants that precise individual.”

Grant knew that was wrong. He’d been sent to this station to spy on Dr. Wo and the other scientists. Maybe Wo knows that, he thought suddenly. That’s why he’s so ticked at me.

Van Neumann’s brows knit into a worried frown. “Well, there’s no astrophysics work for you to do here, that’s for certain.”

Grant looked at each of his four companions: biophysics, computer engineering, physical chemistry, and fluid dynamics. What did it add up to? he wondered.

Aloud, he asked, “Just what is the work you’re doing here?”

Hideshi quickly answered, “Ursula and I are supporting the teams investigating the Galilean moons.”

Turning to Muzorawa, “And you?”

Muzorawa glanced at the ceiling, then replied guardedly, “I’m part of a different team, studying Jupiter.”

“The planet itself, not its moons?”

“That’s right.”

“Fluid dynamics,” Grant mused aloud. “Then you must be studying Jupiter’s atmosphere. The clouds—”

“And the life-forms,” Karlstad interrupted.

“Those big floating balloons,” said Grant. “Why are they called Clarke’s Medusas? They don’t look anything like medusas on Earth.”

“They’re about a thousand times larger,” van Neumann said.

“And they drift through the Jovian atmosphere,” added Hideshi. “Not the ocean.”

Muzorawa said, “There’s a fascinating ecology in the atmosphere. Soarbirds that nest on the Medusa balloons, for example. They live their entire life cycles aloft, never touching the surface of the ocean.”

“It’s a mutilated ecology,” Karlstad said. “It’s just starting to come back from the disaster of Shoemaker-Levy.”

Grant felt briefly confused, then remembered from high school that the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had struck Jupiter with the force of thousands of hydrogen bombs.

“That was almost a century ago,” he said. “Its effects are still being felt?”

Karlstad nodded, tight-lipped. “It must have wiped out god only knows how many species.”

“But it didn’t affect the manna,” said Hideshi.

“Manna?”

“The organic compounds that form in the clouds,”

Karlstad explained. “Carbon-chain molecules that drift down into the sea below.”

“Have you found any life-forms in the ocean?” Grant asked.

The four of them looked at one another. Then Karlstad answered, “Officially—no.”

Grant forgot his untouched dinner sitting in front of him. “But unofficially?” he asked.

Before he could answer, a short, bustling, red-haired man with a thick brick-red mustache stepped up to the table and grabbed Karlstad roughly by the shoulder. “How’s it goin’, mate? This th’ new bloke, is it?”

Karlstad grinned and nodded. “Grant Archer,” he said. “Grant, this is one of the most important men in the station: Rodney Devlin.”

“Better known as the Red Devil,” van Neumann added dryly.

“Pleased to meetcha, Grant,” said Devlin, sticking out his hand. “Just call me Red.”

From the food-stained white jacket Devlin was wearing, Grant guessed that he was a cook or some sort of cafeteria employee. He had one of those perpetually youthful faces, lean and lantern-jawed, with a big toothy grin beneath the bushy mustache.

“Red is the chef here,” Karlstad explained.

“An exaggerated job description, if I ever heard one,” jabbed Hideshi.

“More than that,” Karlstad went on, unperturbed, “Red is the man to see if you want anything—from toilet paper to sex VRs. Red actually runs this station, in reality.”

Muzorawa smiled pleasantly. “Dr. Wo doesn’t know that, of course.”

“Don’t be too sure o’ that, Zeb,” Devlin said jovially. “Grant, old sock, anything you need, you come see me. I’ll take good care o’ you. Right?”

The others all nodded or murmured agreement. Devlin banged Grant on the back, then made his way to the next table.

Grant turned back to his tablemates. “Is he really that important around here?”

Van Neumann muttered, “You’d better believe it.”

“He runs every thing!”

“Unofficially,” Muzorawa said. “Red is a kind of expeditor.”

“A facilitator,” Karlstad added.

“Every organization has one,” Muzorawa went on.

“Every organization needs one: a person who can get around the red tape, operate in between the formal lines of the organization chart.”

“A procurer,” van Neumann said flatly.

“Facilitator,” Karlstad insisted. “That’s a better word.”

Van Neumann shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her. She plainly did not like Devlin, Grant could see.

Then he remembered their interrupted conversation. “Let’s get back to where we were … you said there’s life in Jupiter’s ocean?”

“Not so loud, please!” Muzorawa hissed.

Karlstad leaned across the table toward Grant. “The only thing we can tell you is that some of the deep probes have recorded things moving around down there,” he whispered.

“Things? Living things?”

“We don’t know,” said Muzorawa, his voice also low. With a glance at Karlstad he added, “And we are not permitted to talk about it unless you’ve been specially cleared for sensitive information.”

Grant slumped back in his chair. “All right,” he said. “I understand. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.”

“Or yourself,” said van Neumann.

“Hey, that’s right,” Karlstad said, brightening. “How’d your session with the Woeful Wo turn out?”

Grant jabbed at his salad. “He wasn’t very happy with me.”

“Why not?” Hideshi asked.

The others had all finished their dinners. Grant tried to eat as he talked.

“I was curious about that extension hanging off to one side of the station. Tried to look up its schematic in the computer system.”

“Uh-oh,” said van Neumann.

“You tripped an alarm,” Muzorawa said.

Grant nodded as he swallowed a mouthful of greens.

“So what did Old Woeful say?” Karlstad asked, grinning.

Before Grant could answer, Muzorawa nudged Karlstad in the ribs. “You should be more careful about the way you talk,” he said in a near whisper.

Karlstad’s grin faded. “He can’t have the whole cafeteria bugged.”

“You hope,” said the black man.

Turning back to Grant, Karlstad asked in a quieter, more guarded tone, “So what did the director say to you?”

“He told me to keep my nose out of sensitive areas and sent me to see the security chief.”

“No flogging?” van Neumann joked.

“Who’s on the security desk this week?” Hideshi wondered.

“O’Hara,” said Muzorawa.

“So you saw our little Lainie,” Karlstad said.

“She’s not so little,” Grant replied. “I mean, she’s taller than I am, a bit.”

His grin widening, Karlstad asked, “Was she cruel to you?”

Grant was startled by his question. Before he could think of what to answer, Hideshi piped up: “Egon has an illicit sweat over Lainie. Fantasizes about her.”

“It’s more than a fantasy,” Karlstad said, his grin getting toothy.

“In your dreams,” van Neumann retorted.

“Wait,” said Grant. “You said she’s on the security desk this week? Does that mean that she’s not always the security officer?”

Muzorawa nodded soberly. “All the scooters take turns at it.”

“Scooters?”

“Scientists,” Hideshi explained. “Anyone on the scientific staff is called a scooter.”

Grant wondered where the term came from, but before he could ask, Karlstad chimed in. “Old Woeful doesn’t trust any one of us enough to appoint a permanent security chief, so he rotates the assignment among us.”

“Why does he need a security chief at all?” Grant asked. “What’s going on here that’s so sensitive?”

Again they hesitated, glancing at one another.

“Why should possible life-forms in Jupiter’s ocean be regarded as sensitive information?” Grant persisted.

At last Muzorawa said quietly, “That’s Dr. Wo’s decision. You’ll have to ask him about it.”

With a glum shake of his head, Grant said, “No thanks.”

“So you met Lainie, eh?” Karlstad asked, grinning again as he deftly returned to his subject.

Grant nodded as he dug into his dinner.

“She’s a marine biologist, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Makes me wish I was a marine,” Karlstad said with a leer.

The others laughed. Then van Neumann said, “Why don’t you take Grant down to the fish tanks?”

“Yeah,” Hideshi added, teasing. “You might bump into Lainie there, Egon.”

“Not a bad idea,” said Karlstad.

While Grant mopped up his dessert of fresh melon and soymilk ice cream, a mountain-sized young man in coveralls that seemed about to burst grabbed an empty chair, flipped it around in one hand, and swung a heavy leg over it, resting his beefy arms on the chair back. His dark, drooping mustache made him look like a bandit in Grant’s eyes.

Karlstad said, “Grant Archer, this is Ignacio Quintero.”

“Nacho,” said the newcomer, in a surprisingly sweet tenor voice.

“Macho Nacho, he’s known as,” Karlstad said.

Quintero looked like a football lineman: big in every direction. He was smiling pleasantly, though, and his brown eyes looked friendly.

He stuck out a big hand. “Good to meet you, amigo. Bienvenido and all that.”

Grant shook hands with Quintero.

“Nacho works with us,” Karlstad explained. “He’s a structural engineer, but his main talent is entertainment.”

“Entertainment?” Grant asked.

Quintero shrugged massively. “I try to keep people amused. It gets too dull around here. Too solemn.”

“Once he sprinkled black pepper in the air circulation system, and when people started sneezing their heads off he spread a rumor about a mysterious virus causing a plague.”

Quintero made a hushing gesture with both hands. “Hey, not so loud, amigo. The medics still don’t know it was me who did it.”

“And then there was the incident of the pornographic data dump …”

“You can’t blame me for that one,” Quintero said, shaking a finger at Karlstad. “I had plenty of help.”

“Sure you did.”

“So what do you do, Grant?”

Grant explained that he was an astrophysicist and hadn’t yet received his work assignment.

“Astrophysicist?” Quintero scratched his head. Grant noticed that his dark hair was tightly curled, almost kinky. “You’re in the wrong part of the universe for that.”

Before Grant could reply, Karlstad said, “I’m taking Grant down to the aquarium. Want to come?”

Something flashed across Quintero’s face, an expression that came and went so quickly Grant could not tell what it was.

“No can do, amigo. Got too much work to catch up with. Wo’s got us on double shifts now.”

“Double shifts?” Grant asked. “What are you working on?”

Quintero glanced at Karlstad, then hauled himself to his feet. “Got to run. Nice to meet you, Grant. Adios, muchachos! ”

He practically ran out of the cafeteria.

Once Grant finished his dessert, Karlstad led him out into the corridor.

“We could do this tomorrow,” Grant said. “I mean, if it’s your time to retire for the night—”

“No, no,” Karlstad said quickly. “Sometimes I stay up even past ten o’clock.”

Grant didn’t know if that was supposed to be a joke or not, so he stayed silent. Karlstad seemed impatient to get to the fish tanks, whatever they were. Grant couldn’t believe the station had an aquarium built into it, but then why was there a marine biologist on the staff?

Karlstad set a brisk pace as they walked through the corridor. He glided along, wraithlike, but the expression on his wan face seemed eager. The corridor was deserted, empty of people, all the doors closed for the night.

Up ahead, though, the corridor seemed to end in a metal wall with a single small door set into it. No, not a door, Grant saw as they got nearer. It was a pressure hatch, much like the kind of hatch he’d seen on airlocks, with a security keypad set into the bulkhead alongside it.

Letters in fading, flaking red paint above the hatch proclaimed authorized personnel only. Someone had scrawled beneath it No fishing allowed. The metal of the bulkhead seemed to be covered with freshly scrubbed areas and patches of new-looking paint. Apparently other graffiti had been written or scratched into the bulkhead and then erased or painted over.

“Wo tries to stay ahead of the graffiti artists,” Karlstad explained. “If he catches you at it, you spend the next week of your off-duty time with Sheena, scrubbing and painting.

Pointing to the official notice above the hatch, Grant asked, “Are we authorized personnel?”

Karlstad shrugged his slim shoulders. “We are if we know the entry code.”

He tapped on the keypad with quick, nervous fingers. The red light atop the keys turned green and the hatch popped open with a thin puff of chill, dank air from the other side of the bulkhead.

Karlstad pulled the hatch open, grunting. “Lainie gave me the combination,” he said. “She likes to play in here. She likes an audience.”

Completely puzzled, Grant stepped over the coaming of the hatch. This section of the station felt cooler, chilly, and clammy with humidity. The corridor was much narrower here, and dimly lit, but Grant could see a glow along the wall.

Then his breath caught in his throat. It was an aquarium! The glow was from a thick, long window. On its other side swam a dizzying assortment of fish, big ones, little ones, some nuzzling the gravelly bottom, others weaving through swaying fronds of plants. They were every color of the rainbow: bright stripes, bold patterns of spots, gleaming silvery squid slithered through the water, tentacles waving.

“Aquaculture,” said Karlstad. “That’s how it started. The first settlers on the Moon found that they could grow more protein in less space from fish farming than from meat animals.”

With a pang, Grant remembered that he should be at Farside, on the Moon, or at least in Selene or one of the other lunar communities. Instead …

“Come on,” Karlstad beckoned, heading along the narrow passageway. “You’ve got to see this.”

They passed more tanks filled with fish. The pale glow from the underwater lights made Karlstad look more ghostly than ever, with his silvery hair and pallid complexion.

He stopped and jabbed a thumb at the next window. “This is where Lainie likes to do it,” he said with a malicious grin.

Grant stared into the tank. A pair of dolphins were swimming there, sleek and huge, bigger than horses, gliding effortlessly, playfully, through the water.

“Their tank is almost a kilometer long,” Karlstad said. “At feeding time it’s opened to the other tanks.”

Grant gaped, slack-jawed. He heard himself ask, in an awed, faint voice, “Why in the world did you bring dolphins all the way from Earth?”

Karlstad made a derisive grunt. “It’s Wo’s idea. Our ‘intellectual cousins,’ he calls them. Old Woeful thinks the dolphins can help us to explore Jupiter’s ocean.”

“Our intellectual cousins,” Grant repeated slowly, still staring at the graceful dolphins. They seemed to be smiling at him as they swam past, then turned to stare back at him.

“There’s something else you should see,” Karlstad said, motioning Grant farther along the passageway.

“What is it?” Grant asked, following the biophysicist as they walked past the end of the dolphins’ tank. The lighting was dimmer here, the walls on both sides of the narrow corridor blank metal.

“Quiet now,” Karlstad whispered, a finger to his lips.

Slowly, softly the two men walked down the dimly lit way. Karlstad stopped and motioned Grant to move ahead of him. “It’s on the right,” he whispered.

Grant tiptoed through the shadows until he saw an opening in the wall on his right. He glanced back at Karlstad, who motioned him to go through it.

Puzzled, Grant stepped into the wide entryway and found himself in some sort of darkened chamber. There was something in the far corner, a large heap of—

A full-grown gorilla opened its eyes not more than three meters in front of Grant. He realized it had been slumped down on its haunches, asleep. There were no bars between Grant and the gorilla, no partition at all.

Before Grant could move or think or even yowl with terror the gorilla shambled to its feet, huge, fierce, leaning on its knuckles, fangs bared. Grant could feel the heat of the animal’s body, smell its breath and its hideous, hairy stench.

He stood there petrified as the gorilla raised a powerful, hairy arm, thick as Grant’s torso, its massive paw nearly brushing his face.

“No!” it said in a rasping voice. Its open hand was bigger than Grant’s head. “You go! Now!”

SHEENA

Grant stood transfixed, too frightened to move, unable to breathe, almost, as the angry gorilla took a shambling step toward him, fangs bared, eyes glaring.

And she talked! “Go!” she repeated. “You go!”

He heard Karlstad making a strange, strangled noise behind him. Turning his head ever so slightly, Grant saw the biophysicist nearly choking with barely suppressed laughter. The gorilla blinked, put down her raised arm.

Karlstad stepped up beside Grant and said lightly, “Now, Sheena, it’s all right. You know me.” He was grinning broadly, barely able to contain his merriment.

The gorilla hunkered down on her knuckles. Grant saw her red-rimmed eyes shift from Karlstad’s face to his own and then back again.

“Ee-ghon,” the gorilla said. Her voice was a raspy, painful whisper. It reminded Grant of Director Wo’s hoarse, strained voice.

“Good girl, Sheena!” Karlstad said brightly, as if speaking to a two-year-old. “You’re right, I’m Egon. And this is Grant,” he added, pointing.

He’s talking to a three-hundred-kilo gorilla, Grant said to himself. And the gorilla’s talking back!

“Grant is a friend,” Karlstad said amiably.

“Grant,” the gorilla whispered.

“That’s right.” Turning slightly toward him, Karlstad said, “Grant, this is Sheena. She works with us.”

It took Grant two hard swallows to find his voice. “H-hello, Sheena.”

Sheena blinked at him, then slowly, solemnly, extended her massive right hand toward Grant.

“Just put your hand on her palm,” Karlstad told him, sotto voce. “Gently.”

His heart thumping wildly, Grant stretched out his right arm and let his fingertips touch Sheena’s leathery palm. His hand looked minuscule in the gorilla’s huge paw; Grant got a vision of her closing her fist and crushing his hand to a bloody pulp. But the gorilla merely let it rest on her palm for a few moments. She stared at Grant, then at his hand. Slowly she bent her head forward slightly and sniffed noisily at Grant’s hand.

Then she said, “Grant,” as if to fix his name in her memory.

She pulled her hand away, and Grant let his arm drop to his side with a gusting sigh of relief.

“We’re going now, Sheena,” Karlstad said, still in the tone that a man would use with a small child.

Sheena thought that over for a few seconds. “Yes,” she said at last. “You go.”

“Say good night to her,” Karlstad told Grant.

“Uh … good night, Sheena.”

“Grant,” the gorilla answered. “Grant.”

Karlstad turned slowly and walked out of the gorilla’s compartment, with Grant so close behind him they might have been Siamese twins. They headed back along the glowing fish tanks toward the hatch where they had entered the aquarium. Grant could hear the gorilla’s heavy breathing and knew the beast was shuffling along behind them, not more than a step or two away. The dolphins seemed to be grinning at them, as if they were enjoying the show.

“This is the tricky part,” Karlstad said softly as they walked slowly away from the gorilla. “Females don’t usually attack, but when they do it’s when your back is to them.”

Grant felt his knees go rubbery.

“Don’t look back!” Karlstad cautioned. “If she decides to rush us there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.”

His voice shaky, Grant heard himself ask, “Has she ever attacked anyone before?”

Karlstad did not answer for several heartbeats. Then: “Not really attack. But she’s so pissing strong she’s broken people’s ribs by accident.”

“What… how is she able to talk?”

“That’s Wo’s brilliant idea. Built a voicebox for her. Injected her brain with neuronal stem cells to see how much he could boost her intelligence.”

“Our intellectual cousins,” Grant remembered.

They had reached the hatch. Karlstad pushed it open and they stepped through. Grant helped to push it closed. He saw Sheena standing on all fours, so big that her shoulders brushed either wall of the narrow corridor. He felt a lot safer once the hatch clicked shut.

“Sheena’s a long way from being an intellectual cousin,” Karlstad said, his voice louder now, firmer, as they started walking briskly back toward their quarters.

“But she talks,” Grant said. “She can obviously think.”

“To a degree. Like a two-year-old, that’s all. There isn’t enough room in her cranium to grow a human-equivalent brain.”

“I see.”

Karlstad laughed grimly. “Wo wanted to open up her skull, enlarge it so there’d be more room for cerebral growth.”

“What happened?”

“Sheena was smart enough to recognize what was going on. As soon as she entered the surgical theater she tore loose and ran away. That’s when she broke ribs. Arms, too.”

“She understood what was going to happen?”

“You bet! She ran back to her own quarters and no one could coax her out. Wo wanted to sedate her and go ahead with the surgery but the medical staff was so banged up that it was impossible.”

“And he didn’t try again?”

“Not yet,” said Karlstad. “But he will. Wily Old Woeful doesn’t give up. Not him.”

The corridor was down to its nighttime lighting, Grant realized. Most of the research station’s personnel were in their quarters or already asleep. No one in sight, except a middle-aged couple strolling hand in hand through the twilight dimness toward them.

“So we have a gorilla roaming around loose back there?” Grant asked.

Karlstad did not reply until the approaching couple passed them. Then, his voice lowered, he answered, “Sheena works as a guard for the aquarium.”

“Why does the aquarium need a guard?”

“It doesn’t. It’s all Wo’s brilliant idea,” Karlstad said, still in a near whisper. “He carted the animal all the way out here when she was an infant, so he’s got to show some practical reason for the expense.”

Grant shook his head in wonder.

“At least there’s one advantage to Sheena’s limited brainpower.”

“What’s that?”

“She can clean out her own cage,” Karlstad said. “And she’s toilet trained.” He laughed. “You should’ve seen the mess she made the first time she squatted on a regular toilet. We had to build a specially reinforced bowl for her.”

“I guess so,” Grant said, not wanting to visualize the scene.

When he got to his own room and slid the door shut, Grant considered sending a message back to Ellis Beech’s office on Earth. Dolphins and gorillas. Our intellectual cousins. Then he thought that the New Morality must know about that already. Wo couldn’t smuggle a gorilla into the station in total secrecy, even a baby gorilla. And dolphins!

Besides, he thought tiredly, what does it all add up to? Why did Dr. Wo bring these animals here? What’s he up to? That’s what I’ve got to find out. That’s my ticket out of here, my ticket back to Marjorie and Farside.

It wasn’t until he was in bed and drifting toward sleep that he realized Karlstad had tricked him. Meeting Sheena must be one of the initiation rites around here, he thought. I wonder how many guys have fainted from sheer fright. Or wet themselves.

Thinking about it, Grant thought he’d acquitted himself pretty well. Not much for Karlstad to tell the others about, he thought. There’s an advantage in being so scared you can’t move, he realized.

When Grant finally dozed off, his first night on Research Station Gold, he slept fitfully, dreaming of gorillas chasing him while Dr. Wo growled and glared angrily. Marjorie appeared in his dreams briefly, but somehow she changed into tall, slim Lainie smiling at him beckoningly. He tried to move away from her, but Sheena blocked his path. Grant felt trapped and alone, beyond help.

A buzzing noise blurred his dreams, insistent, demanding. He pried his gummy eyelids open and for a moment had no idea of where he was. Then it came into focus: his quarters on Gold. His bedsheets were tangled and soaked with his perspiration. With a lurch in the pit of his stomach, Grant realized he had made a nocturnal emission.

It’s all right, he told himself, while that stubborn buzzing noise kept rasping in his ears. Wet dreams are natural, beyond your conscious control. There’s nothing sinful about them as long as you don’t take pleasure from the memory.

The buzzing would not stop. Grant slowly realized it was the phone. He could see its yellow light on the bedside console blinking at him in rhythm with the angry buzzing.

“Phone,” he called out, “audio response only.”

The screen on the opposite wall lit up to show Zareb Muzorawa’s dark, somber face.

“Have I awakened you?” Muzorawa asked.

“Uh, yes,” Grant replied. “I guess I’ve overslept.”

“That’s natural, your first morning here. Ask the pharmacy for the timelag hormone mix. It will set your internal clock for you.”

“Oh … really? Okay, I will.”

“I’ve been assigned to your orientation,” Muzorawa said, his voice more businesslike. “How quickly can you get to conference room C as in Charlie?”

Still blinking sleep from his eyes, Grant said, “Fifteen minutes?”

Muzorawa smiled, showing gleaming white teeth. “I will give you half an hour. Get to the pharmacy first, then meet me there.”

“Yessir,” said Grant.

Grant spent the entire morning in a small conference room with Muzorawa, his head spinning with details. The day was a blur of orientation videos, schematics of the station’s layout, organization charts of the staff personnel, lists of duties that the various departments were responsible for. Grant had thought he’d known the station’s layout and organization from his months of study on the trip out, but apparently most of his information had been terribly out of date.

“Let’s break for lunch,” Muzorawa said, pushing his chair back from the small oval conference table. The wallscreen went blank and the stuffy little room’s overhead lights came on.

“Fine,” said Grant, getting to his feet.

As they headed for the cafeteria, Grant noticed that Muzorawa seemed to be lurching as he walked; not staggering, exactly, but the man walked with a hesitant, slightly uncertain gait, as if afraid that he were about to bump into some unseen obstacle or stumble drunkenly into a wall. He was clad in another turtleneck pullover shirt that hung loosely over the same bulky-looking black leather leggings, with metal studs running down their outer seams. His feet were shod in what appeared to be soft moccasins.

Most of the station’s other scientific personnel wore casual shirts and slacks, as Grant himself did. The engineers and technicians usually wore coveralls that were color-coded to denote the wearer’s specialty.

Once they had filled their trays and found a table, Grant asked, “I’m still not clear about what you actually do here.”

Moving his lunch dishes from his tray to the table, Muzorawa asked, “Do you mean me personally, or the station in general?”

“Both, I guess,” said Grant, sliding his emptied tray under his chair.

“This station is the headquarters for the ongoing studies of Jupiter’s moons,” Muzorawa said, as if reciting from a manual. “Almost everyone here on the station is support staff for those studies.”

Grant shook his head, unsatisfied. “Okay, I know there are teams studying the life-forms under the ice on Europa and Callisto—”

“And the volcanoes on Io.”

“And the dynamics of the ring system.”

“And Ganymede and the smaller moons, too.”

“But you’re not involved in any of that, are you?”

Muzorawa hesitated a moment, then replied, “No. Not me.

“Neither are Egon or Lainie.”

“She prefers to be called Lane.”

“But none of you is studying the moons, right?”

Reluctantly, Grant thought, Muzorawa replied, “No, we are part of a small group that is studying the planet itself, not the moons or the ring system.”

“And Dr. Wo?”

An even longer hesitation, then, “Dr. Wo’s official title is station director. He runs the entire operation here. He reports directly to the IAA, back on Earth.”

Grant saw that Muzorawa looked distinctly uneasy when Wo’s name was mentioned. And no wonder. The director must have the power of life and death over all of us, just about, Grant reasoned.

Lowering his voice to a near whisper, Muzorawa said, “Wo is more interested in Jupiter itself than its moons. That’s why he’s split us away from the rest of the staff and set us up to study the Jovian atmosphere.”

“And the ocean,” Grant prompted.

Again Muzorawa hesitated. Grant got the impression that the man was arguing with himself, debating inwardly about how much he should tell this curious newcomer.

“Wo has assigned a small team to study the ocean,” he said at last “There are only ten of us—plus Dr. Wo himself. And the medical and technical support staffs, of course.”

“Why do you need a medical support staff?” Grant wondered.

“The ocean is Wo’s obsession,” Muzorawa added, actually whispering now. “He is determined to find out what’s going on down there.”

“So what do you actually work on?”

“Me? The fluid dynamics of the Jovian atmosphere and ocean.”

Grant said nothing, waiting for more.

“The atmosphere/ocean system is like nothing we’ve seen before,” Muzorawa said, his tone at last brightening, losing its guarded edge, taking on some enthusiasm. “For one thing, there’s no clear demarkation between the gas phase and the liquid, no sharp boundary where the atmosphere ends and the ocean begins.”

“There’s no real surface to the ocean,” Grant said, wanting to show the older man that he wasn’t totally ignorant.

“No, not like on Earth. Jupiter’s atmosphere gradually thickens, gets denser and denser, until it’s not a gas anymore but a liquid. It’s … well, it’s something else, let me tell you.”

Before Grant could respond, Muzorawa hunched closer in his chair and went on, “It’s heated from below, you see. The planet’s internal heat is stronger than the solar influx on the tops of the clouds. The pressure gradient is really steep: Jupiter’s gravity field is the strongest in the solar system.”

“Two point five four gees,” Grant recited.

“That’s merely at the top of the cloud deck,” Muzorawa said, waggling one hand in the air. “It gets stronger as you go down into the atmosphere. Do you have any idea of what the pressures are down there?”

Grant shrugged. “Thousands of times normal atmospheric pressure.”

“Thousands of times the pressure at the bottom of the deepest ocean on Earth,” Muzorawa corrected. A smile was growing on his face, the happy, contented smile of a scientist talking about his special field of study.

“So the pressure squeezes the atmosphere and turns the gases into liquids.”

“Certainly! There’s an ocean down there, an ocean ten times bigger than the whole Earth. Liquid water, at least five thousand kilometers deep, perhaps more; we haven’t been able to probe that far down yet.”

“And things swimming in the water?” Grant guessed.

Muzorawa’s smile vanished. He glanced over his shoulder. Then, leaning closer to Grant, he lowered his voice to answer, “The unofficial word is, the deepest probes have detected indications of objects moving in the Jovian ocean.”

“Objects?”

“Objects.”

“Are they living creatures?”

Muzorawa looked up toward the ceiling, then hunched still closer to Grant, close enough so that Grant could smell a trace of clove or something pungent and exotic on his breath.

“We don’t know. Not yet. But Wo intends to find out.”

Grant felt a stir of excitement. “How? When?”

Actually whispering again, Muzorawa said, “A deep mission. Really deep. And crewed.”

“Crude?”

“Crewed. Not robotic. A team of six people.”

Grant’s jaw fell open. “Down into the ocean?”

Muzorawa made a hushing motion with both his hands and turned to glance guiltily over his shoulder. “Not so loud!” he whispered. “This is all supposed to be top secret.”

“But why? Why should it be secret? Who’s he keeping it a secret from?”

Muzorawa drew back from Grant. With a shake of his head he said only, “You’ll find out. Perhaps.”

LEVIATHAN

Leviathan followed an upwelling current through the endless sea, smoothly grazing on the food that spiraled down from the abyss above. Far from the Kin now, away from the others of its own kind, Leviathan reveled in its freedom from the herd and their plodding cycle of feeding, dismemberment, and rejoining.

To human senses the boundless ocean would be impenetrably dark, devastatingly hot, crushingly dense. Yet Leviathan moved through the surging deeps with ease, the flagella members of its assemblage stroking steadily as its mouth parts slowly opened and closed, opened and closed, in the ancient rhythm of ingestion.

To human senses Leviathan would be staggeringly huge, dwarfing all the whales of Earth, larger than whole pods of whales, larger even than a good-size city. Yet in the vast depths of the Jovian sea Leviathan was merely one of many, slightly larger than some, considerably smaller than the eldest of its kind.

There were dangers in that dark, hot, deep sea. Glide too high on the soaring currents, toward the source of the bountiful food, and the waters grew too thin and cold; Leviathan’s members would involuntarily disassemble, shed their cohesion, never to reunite again. Get trapped in a treacherous downsurge and the heat welling up from the abyss below would kill the members before they could break away and scatter.

Best to cruise here in the abundant world provided by the Symmetry, between the abyss above and the abyss below, where the food drifted down constantly from the cold wilderness on high and the warmth from the depths below made life tolerable.

Predators swarmed through Leviathan’s ocean: swift voracious Darters that struck at Leviathan’s kind and devoured their outer members. There were even cases where the predators had penetrated to the core of their prey, rupturing the central organs and forever destroying the poor creature’s unity. The Elders had warned Leviathan that the Darters attacked solitary members of the Kin when they had broken away from their group for budding in solitude. Still Leviathan swam on alone, intent on exploring new areas of the measureless sea.

Leviathan remembered when the abyss above had erupted in giant flares of killing heat. Many of Leviathan’s kind had disassembled in the sudden violence of those concussions. Even the everlasting rain of food had been disrupted, and Leviathan had known hunger for the first time in its existence. But the explosions dissipated swiftly and life eventually returned to normal again.

Leviathan had been warned of another kind of creature in the sea: a phantasm, a strange picture drawn by others of the Kin, like nothing Leviathan had ever sensed for itself, small and sluggish and cold, lacking flagella members or any trace of community. It was pictured to have appeared once in the sea and once only, then vanished upward into the abyss above.

None of the others had paid much attention to it. It was so tiny that it could barely be sensed it at all, yet for some reason the vision of its singular presence in the eternal ocean sent a chilling note of uneasiness through Leviathan’s entire assemblage. It was an unnatural thing, alien, troubling.

SLAVE LABOR

Grant finished his lunch with Muzorawa in guarded silence, his mind spinning with the idea of sending a crewed mission into the vast ocean beneath Jupiter’s hurtling clouds.

And it’s not the first one, Grant told himself. Beech knew there’d already been at least one human mission to the planet.

Once they left the cafeteria, Muzorawa said brightly, “Very well, newcomer, you have received the official orientation.”

“And then some,” said Grant.

Muzorawa shook his head. “None of that, now! What I told you was strictly in confidence, between the two of us. Besides, most of it was conjecture.”

Grant nodded, but his mind was still racing. What’s he afraid of? Why all this secrecy? If there are life-forms in the Jovian ocean, why doesn’t Wo announce it like any other scientific discovery? And why is the New Morality so torqued up over this?

He thought he knew the answer to that last question. Finding any kind of alien life was seen as a threat to belief in God. Every time scientists discovered a new life-form anywhere, some people gave up their faith. Atheists crowed that the Bible was nonsense, a pack of scribbling by ancient narrow-minded men steeped in superstition and primitive ignorance.

Even when biblical scholars and scientists who were also true Believers pointed out that no scientific discovery could disprove the existence of God, the fanatical atheists howled with glee with each new discovery, especially when the cliffside ruins on Mars showed that an intelligent race had lived there millions of years ago.

He hardly heard Muzorawa telling him, “Now you are to go to the personnel office, where you will receive your work assignment.”

“What assignment could they possibly have for an astrophysicist?” Grant complained.

Muzorawa grinned at him. “I’m sure Dr. Wo has something in mind for you.”

That sounded ominous to Grant.

The personnel office was little more than a closetsized compartment in the station’s executive area. It was only a few doors from the director’s more spacious and imposing office.

To his surprise, when he slid open the door marked personnel, Egon Karlstad was sitting behind the tiny metal desk.

“You’re the personnel officer?” Grant blurted.

“This week,” Karlstad replied smoothly. “I told you that Wo likes to rotate us through the administrative jobs.”

“No, you said—”

“It lets him keep the beancounters down to a minimum, so he can bring more scooters out here,” Karlstad continued. “Of course, that means we scooters have to pull double duty all the time, but that doesn’t bother our peerless leader. Not at all.”

Karlstad seemed too large for the desk. His knees poked up and it looked as if he could touch the opposite walls of the compartment merely by stretching out his arms. The desk itself was scuffed and battered from long use; someone had even kicked a dent into its side.

“Have a seat,” Karlstad said.

Grant took the only other chair: It was molded plastic, solid yet comfortably yielding.

“Okay,” Karlstad said, turning to the screen built into the desktop. “Archer, Grant A.”

Grant could see the glow from the screen reflected on Karlstad’s pale features. It made him look even more ethereal than usual.

Without looking up from the screen, Karlstad said, “Grant Armstrong Archer the Third, eh? Illustrious family, I imagine.”

“Hardly,” Grant replied, feeling a bit annoyed.

“First in your class at Harvard?” Karlstad whistled. “No wonder Wo wanted you here.”

“I don’t think he picked me personally,” Grant said.

“Don’t be so sure, Grant A. the Third. Zeb might be right; our wily Dr. Wo can stretch out his tentacles and —Hey! You’re married?”

He’s got my complete file there, Grant realized. My whole life is on that screen.

Karlstad turned his pallid, watery eyes to Grant. “Did you think being married would get you out of Public Service?”

“Of course not!” Grant snapped. “I love my wife!”

“Really?”

“Besides, Public Service isn’t something to be avoided. It’s a responsibility. A privilege that goes with adulthood and citizenship, like voting.”

“Really?” Karlstad repeated, dripping acid.

“Aren’t you doing your Public Service?” Grant demanded.

Karlstad made a derisive snort. “I’m serving out a prison sentence,” he said.

“I mean really—”

“It’s the truth,” Karlstad insisted. “Ask anybody. I’m serving my time here instead of languishing in jail. The Powers That Be decided they’d spent too much money on my education to have me rot in prison for five years.”

“Five years!” Grant was shocked. “What did you do?”

“I helped a young married couple to obtain fertility treatments. They had been denied treatment by the government. Population restrictions, you know. I was in the biology department at the University of Copenhagen and I knew a lot of the physicians at the research hospital. So they came to me and begged me to help them.”

“But it was illegal?”

“According to the laws of the European Union, which take precedence over the laws of Denmark.”

“And the authorities found out about it?”

Karlstad’s face twitched into a bitter scowl. “The two little bastards worked for the Holy Disciples—our version of your New Morality.”

“It was a sting,” Grant realized.

“I was stung, all right. Sentenced to five years. When they offered me a post here, doing research instead of jail, I leaped at it.”

“I guess so.”

Karlstad huffed. “One should always look before one leaps.”

Grant nodded sympathetically. “Even so … this is better than jail, isn’t it?”

“Marginally,” Karlstad conceded.

“I never realized …” Grant let the idea go unexpressed.

“Realized what?”

“Oh … that the New Morality, or whatever you call it in Europe, I never realized they would entrap people and sentence them to jail.”

“They don’t like scientists,” Karlstad said, his voice going sharp as steel. “They’re afraid of new ideas, new discoveries.”

“They’re trying to maintain social balance,” Grant argued. “There’s more than ten billion people on Earth now. We’ve got to have stability! We’ve got to control population growth. Otherwise we won’t be able to feed all those people, or educate them.”

“Educate them?” Karlstad’s thin eyebrows rose. “They’re not being educated. They’re being trained to obey.”

“I—” Grant saw the pain in the man’s pale eyes and clamped his mouth shut. No sense arguing with him about this. One of the first lessons his father had taught him was never to argue over religion. Or politics. And this was both.

Karlstad apparently felt the same way. He forced a smile and said, “So now you know my life story and I know yours.”

Grant conceded the point with a nod.

“Let’s get on with it.”

“Okay.”

Turning back to the desktop screen, Karlstad called out, “Computer, display work assignment for Archer, Grant A.”

Immediately the synthesized voice responded, “Grant A. Archer is assigned as assistant laboratory technician for the biology department.”

Grant jumped out of his chair. “Biology department? That can’t be right! I’m not a biologist!”

Karlstad waved him gently back into his seat “The details are on my screen, Grant. The assignment is correct.”

“But I’m not a biologist,” Grant repeated.

“I’m afraid that’s got nothing to do with it. The operative term is ‘assistant laboratory technician.’ It doesn’t matter which lab you’re assigned to; they just “Okay.”

Turning back to the desktop screen, Karlstad called out, “Computer, display work assignment for Archer, Grant A.”

Immediately the synthesized voice responded, “Grant A. Archer is assigned as assistant laboratory technician for the biology department.”

Grant jumped out of his chair. “Biology department? That can’t be right! I’m not a biologist!”

Karlstad waved him gently back into his seat “The details are on my screen, Grant. The assignment is correct.”

“But I’m not a biologist,” Grant repeated.

“I’m afraid that’s got nothing to do with it. The operative term is ‘assistant laboratory technician.’ It doesn’t matter which lab you’re assigned to; they just need a warm body to do the scutwork.”

“But—”

“You’re a grad student, brightboy. Slave labor. Cheaper than a robot and a lot easier to train.”

“But I don’t know anything about biology.”

“You don’t have to. You can push a broom and clean a fish tank; that’s what you’re needed for.”

“I’m an astrophysicist!”

Karlstad shook his head sadly. “Look, Grant, maybe someday you’ll be an astrophysicist. But right now you’re just a graduate student. Slave labor, just like the rest of us.”

“But how can I work toward my degree cleaning fish tanks?”

With a wry grin, Karlstad replied, “Why do you think nobody’s developed real robots? You know, a real mechanical man with a computer for a brain?”

“Too expensive?”

“That’s right. Too expensive—when compared to human labor. Grad students are cheap labor, Grant. I’ve always thought that if anybody does invent a practical robot, it’ll be a grad student who does it. They’re the only ones with the real motivation for it.”

“The biology department.” Grant groaned.

“Cheer up,” said Karlstad. “Biology department includes the aquarium. You’ll get to work with Lainie. Maybe she’ll show you how to do it like dolphins.”

SOLACE

Grant stumbled back to his quarters, stunned and hurt and angry. Assistant lab technician, he grumbled to himself. Slave labor. I might as well be in jail. This is ruining my life.

He tried praying in the privacy of his quarters, but it was like speaking to a statue, cold, unhealing, unmoved. He remembered that when he’d been a child, back home, he could always bring his tearful problems to his father. It wasn’t so much that Dad was a minister of the Lord; he was a wise and gentle father who loved his son and always tried to make things right for him. Later, in school, Grant found that even the most pious spiritual advisors didn’t have the warmth and understanding of his father. How could they?

Yet, alone and miserable on this research station half a billion kilometers from home—so distant that he couldn’t really talk with his father or wife or anyone else who loved him—Grant sought counsel.

Research Station Gold had a chapel, Grant knew from his studies of the station’s schematics. A chapel meant there must be a chaplain. Sure enough, Grant found half a dozen names in the phone computer’s listing for chaplains. To his surprise, Zareb Muzorawa was one of them, listed under Islam.

There were three Protestant ministers listed: a Baptist, a Presbyterian, and a Methodist. He tried the Methodist first, but was told that the Reverend Stanton was on a tour of duty on Europa.

In Grant’s phone screen the Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Arnold Caldwell, looked like a jolly, redcheeked character from a Dickens novel. Grant’s heart sank; Caldwell did not appear to be the kind of strong spiritual guide he needed. But he was available.

“I’ll be finished my shift here in the life-support center in less than thirty minutes,” he said cheerfully. “Why don’t you meet me in the chapel a few minutes after the hour.”

Grant agreed, fidgeted in his room for half an hour, then walked briskly to the chapel.

It was an austere compartment, about the size of three living quarters put together. A bare altar stood on a two-step-high platform. There were no decorations of any kind on the walls, not even a crucifix. Two files of empty benches could hold perhaps fifty people, at most, Grant thought.

“Ah, there you are.”

Grant turned to see the Reverend Caldwell striding up the central aisle toward him. Round in face and portly in stature, his shoulder-length hair was graying, but his eyes were bright sapphire blue and his ruddy lips were curled into a smile. He looked like a cleanshaven Santa Claus, wearing a technician’s olive-green coveralls.

“Reverend Caldwell?” Grant asked, knowing it was an inane question.

“Yes,” said Caldwell. “And you must be the young man who phoned me a bit ago.”

“Grant Archer.”

As they shook hands, Grant said, “You’re on the technical staff?”

Caldwell bobbed his head up and down enthusiastically. “Yes indeed. Station policy. There’s no room here for full-time clergy, so we all have to work at some secular job and do our ministering on our own time.”

“I see,” said Grant, thinking that explained Zeb’s listing as the Moslem minister.

“I’m with the life-support group, actually. Rather a neat combination, don’t you think? By day I worry about people’s bodies, by night I care for their souls.”

He laughed at his own joke. Grant forced a smile.

Still chuckling, Caldwell murmured, “It seems rather cold in here, doesn’t it.” Before Grant could answer, Caldwell skipped up the dais to the altar and clicked open a small door built into its side.

The chapel suddenly bloomed into a minicathedral, with stained glass windows lining the walls, a crucifixion scene from the high Renaissance behind the altar, and rows of candles burning. Grant even thought he smelled incense.

“Oh dear, wrong key,” Caldwell muttered. “That’s the Catholic scheme.”

He tried again and the elaborate decorations faded, replaced by slim windows along the side walls streaming sunlight and a gorgeous rosette of deep blues and reds on the rear wall above the entry.

“Ah, that’s better.”

“Holograms,” Grant realized. “They’re holograms.”

“Yes, of course,” said Caldwell. “Many faiths share this chamber, and no two of them agree on the proper kind of interior decoration. The Moslems allow no icons whatsoever, while the Buddhists want to see their revered one. And so on.”

Grant nodded his understanding. Caldwell gestured to the first row of benches and they sat side by side.

Fearing that a worshipper might come in and interrupt him, Grant spilled out his story as quickly as he could, leaving out only the fact that the New Morality wanted him to spy on Dr. Wo. The Reverend Caldwell listened sympathetically, nodding, his trace of a smile ebbing slowly.

At last Grant finished with, “They’re taking four years of my life. Four years away from home, away from my wife. At least I thought I could accomplish something, earn my doctorate, but now …” He ran out of words.

“I see,” said Caldwell. “I understand.”

“What can I do?” Grant asked.

Caldwell was silent for several moments. He seemed lost in thought. His smile had faded away completely.

He heaved a mighty sigh, then said, “My son, the Lord chooses our paths for us. He has obviously sent you here for a reason.”

“But—”

“Neither you nor I can see the Lord’s purpose in all of this, but I assure you He has a design for you.”

“To be an assistant lab technician?”

“Whatever it is, you must accept it with all humility. We are all in God’s hands.”

“But my life is being ruined!”

“It may seem that way to you, but who can fathom the purposes of the Lord?”

“You’re telling me I should accept this assignment and let it go at that? I should be content to be a virtual slave?”

“You should pray for guidance, my son. And accept what cannot be altered.”

Grant shot to his feet. “That’s no help at all, Reverend.”

“I’m sorry, my son,” Caldwell said, pushing his rotund bulk up from the bench. “It’s the best advice I can offer you.”

It took an effort to bite back the angry reply that Grant wanted to make. He held his breath for a moment, then said between gritted teeth, “Well … thanks for your time, Reverend.”

Caldwell nodded, and his little smile returned. “Come to services Sunday. We have the ten o’clock hour. You’ll meet others of the faithful.”

“Yes,” Grant temporized. “Of course.”

“Perhaps if you meet others of your own age it will help you to adjust to your new life.”

“Perhaps,” Grant said.

He shook hands with the minister and turned to walk up the aisle and out of the chapel, thinking, The Lord helps those who help themselves. But what can I do to help myself? What can I do when Dr. Wo is against me?

EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS

For weeks Grant toiled away in menial drudgery, cleaning glassware in the bio labs, looking up references for the biologists, running their tedious and often incomprehensible reports through computer spellcheck and editing programs, and even scrubbing out the fish tanks in the station’s extensive aquarium.

He quickly found that his major function was repairing old and faulty equipment. From laboratory centrifuges to a wallscreen that had developed a maddening flicker, Grant’s most intellectual pursuit was reading instruction manuals and trying to make sense of them. One whole afternoon he spent trying to free up a stubbornly stuck drawer in a biochemistry department file cabinet. He finally got the drawer open, but his fingers were battered and the knuckles of both his hands were raw and bleeding.

It was mindless work, sheer dumb labor that a trained chimpanzee could have done. Grant realized that much of the station’s equipment was outmoded and long due for replacement. Like the furniture in the living quarters, like the cafeteria and the threadbare carpeting along the main corridor, the laboratory equipment was shabby.

His schedule seemed to be at odds with those of the few friends he had made. Only rarely did he see Karlstad or Muzorawa or any of the others he knew, and when they did manage to sit together in the cafeteria, they discussed their work, the scientific problems they were struggling with. All Grant could talk about was his hours of sweatshop labor.

Muzorawa introduced him to two more members of the small team focused on Jupiter itself: Patricia Buono was a medical doctor, short, plump, with curly honey-blond hair so thick and heavy that Grant wondered how she could keep her head up under the load. Kayla Ukara was from Tanzania, her skin even darker than Zeb’s, her eyes seething with a fierce emotion that Grant could not fathom; she seemed perpetually on guard, always ready to snap or snarl.

Karlstad grinned when Grant told him he had met the two women.

“Patti and Kayla,” he said, with a knowing air. “The butterball and the panther.”

“Panther,” Grant mused. Yes, it suited Ukara, he thought. A prowling black cat, sleek and powerful and dangerous.

“Know what Patti’s name translates to?” Karlstad asked, still grinning.

“What?”

“Patti Buono … it means ‘pat well.’”

Grant shook his head. Dr. Buono seemed more motherly than sexy. “She’s not my type,” he said.

“Mine, neither. I like ’em long and lean, like Lainie.”

Grant attended chapel services most Sundays, but the people he met there seemed totally indifferent to him. A newcomer, he was not part of their social life. And he didn’t know how to break into their cliques and make friends with them.

Then, one Sunday, he saw Tamiko Hideshi at the worship service. Delighted to see a familiar, friendly face, Grant slipped out of his pew to sit next to her.

“I didn’t know you were a Presbyterian,” Grant said as they left the chapel together.

“I’m not,” she said with a toothy grin. “But they don’t have any Shinto services, so I rotate among the services that are available. Today is my Presbyter Sunday.”

“You go to all the services?”

“Only one per week,” she said. “It’s like being a spy, sort of: checking on the competition.”

Grant’s breath caught when she said spy, but Tami’s cheerful expression showed she had no inkling of his own situation.

He bumped into Lane O’Hara now and then, mostly in the aquarium, but she was strictly business, a staff scooter telling a grad student which chore had to be done next. Now and then he saw her swimming in the tank with the dolphins, a sleek white wetsuit covering her completely yet revealing every curve of her lean, lithe body. She swam among them happily, playfully, as if she were at home with the dolphins, glad to be with them in their element, much friendlier to them than she was to Grant.

Every night Grant prayed for release from his slavery. How am I going to get a doctorate when I’m stuck washing glassware and fixing broken-down equipment?

He felt so depressed, so ashamed of how low he had fallen, that he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it in his messages to Marjorie. Guardedly, he told his parents about the situation. His mother was nearly in tears when she replied; his father counseled patience.

“They’re just testing you, I’m certain. Do your best and soon enough they’ll see that you’re too talented to remain a lab helper. This is a test, you’ll see.”

Grant hoped his father was right but didn’t believe a word of it. He begged his parents not to reveal his problem to Marjorie.

He tried to be upbeat and smiling when he spoke to his wife, avoiding any mention of the work he was doing. Worst of all, he realized he was not accomplishing one iota of progress toward his doctorate in astrophysics. There wasn’t even another astrophysicist in the station to serve as his mentor-assuming he had time to continue his studies.

Marjorie’s messages to him became rarer, as well. She was obviously busy and immersed in her work. She still seemed cheerful and energetic, smiling into the camera for him even when she looked tired and sheened with perspiration. Often she appeared to be in a tent or in some clearing in a tropical forest. Once he saw a raging fire behind her, hot flames licking angrily through the trees and thick oily black smoke billowing skyward, while heavily armed troops in the sky-blue helmets of the International Peacekeeping Force prowled past. Yet she always seemed chipper, enthusiastic, telling Grant excitedly of their success in tracking down hidden drug factories or caches of biological weapons.

Yet Grant saw something in Marjorie’s bright, joyful face that puzzled him. For weeks he tried to determine what it was. And then it hit him. She was pleased with herself! She was delighted with the work she was doing, excited to be helping to make the world better, safer— while all Grant was doing was janitorial work in a remote station hundreds of millions of kilometers from home.

And he realized one other thing, as well. Marjorie no longer ended her messages with a count of the hours until they would be reunited.

I’ve lost her, Grant told himself. By the time I get back to Earth we’ll be strangers to each other.

Still he could not bring himself to mention his fears to Marjorie. He could not tell her of his loneliness, his weariness, his growing desperation. He tried to be cheerful and smiling when he spoke to her, knowing that she was doing the same in her messages to him. Is she trying to keep my spirits up? Grant asked himself. Or is she just being kind to me? Does she still love me?

Then he wondered if he still loved her, and was shocked to realize that he did not know whether he did or not.

He saw Sheena often enough, shambling through the narrow corridor of the aquarium or sitting quietly in her glassteel pen, munching on mountains of celery and melons. The gorilla was like a two-year-old child: Her repertoire of behaviors was quickly exhausted and her conversation was limited to a dozen simple declarations. In the back of his mind Grant marveled at the fact that he could accept a talking gorilla as commonplace.

On the other hand, Sheena was so massive and strong that she frightened Grant, even though she showed no indication of violence. But every time he looked into the gorilla’s deep brown eyes he saw something there, some spark of intelligence that was chained inside her hugely powerful body. Grant had nightmares of Sheena suddenly turning into a roaring, smashing, murderous beast who grabbed him in her enormous hands and began to tear him apart.

The only touch of gratification in Grant’s life was the dolphins. Sleekly streamlined, they glided effortlessly through the big aquarium tanks, permanent grins on their faces, clicking and squeaking to one another like a group of chattering schoolkids.

There were six of them, plus a nursing pup that grew noticeably larger every day. They seemed to watch Grant as he stood outside their tanks and looked at them. He thought he could see their eyes focus on him. Grant would wave to them and get a burst of clicking from them.

“They’re saying hello to you.”

Startled, Grant whirled around to see Lane O’Hara standing a few paces away. Her turtleneck shirt was a warm sunshine yellow, a good complement to her light-brown hair.

“Wave to them again,” she said.

Grant did, and got another burst of chatter from the dolphins.

“Did you hear? The same response, don’t you know.”

“All I heard was a bunch of clicks,” Grant said.

“Aye, but it was the same bunch of clicks. They have their own language, you know.”

“I know they seem to communicate with each other.”

“And we’re trying to communicate with them.”

Grant said, “I’ve read about attempts to speak with dolphins. They go back more than a hundred years.”

“They do,” she said.

“With no success,” Grant added.

“No success, d’you say? Are you certain about that?”

Thrown on the defensive, Grant replied, “I haven’t heard of any.”

“Well, then, listen to this.” Lane walked to a phone built into a metal partition between transparent glassteel sections of the tanks.

With a knowing look toward Grant, she pressed the phone’s ON button and said into its speaker, “Top o’ the morning, Lancelot. And to you, Guinevere.”

Two of the dolphins swam toward O’Hara, bobbing up and down in the water as they emitted a series of rapid clicks and a squealing whistle.

“And how is little Galahad this morning?”

More chatter from the dolphins. The pup came up toward the window, followed by another adult. Grant stood and watched, trying to suppress a growing feeling of annoyance. Either she’s joking with me or she’s fooling herself, he thought.

O’Hara said, “I’ve got to be going now. And it’ll be your feeding time in a few minutes. I’ll be seeing you all again later.”

She jabbed the phone’s off key and turned away from the window. The dolphins chatted for a few moments, then swam away.

O’Hara was smiling impishly, as if she’d won a major debate. “You see?” she said.

Grant tried to be noncommittal. “Well, you spoke and they chattered, but I don’t think you can call that communication. ”

“Can’t you now? Then come with me to the lab.”

She started off down the corridor. There was barely room for the two of them to walk side by side in the narrow corridor of the aquarium. As Grant followed her, he noticed that she was limping slightly.

“Did you hurt your leg?” he asked, coming up beside her.

“Hurt it, yes,” O’Hara replied. “You might say that.”

“How?” he asked. “When?”

“It’s not important.”

That shut off the conversation. Grant trudged along beside her, noticing that she was still wearing the studded black leggings that Muzorawa and a few others always seemed to wear. He wanted to ask about it, but O’Hara’s abrupt cutoff of his questions kept him from speaking.

They ducked through the hatch at the end of the aquarium section and went down the broader main corridor of the station, right past all the biology labs. Grant began to wonder where she was leading him when she stopped and slid open a door marked COMMUNICATIONS LAB AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Grant followed her into a compartment that looked like the back room of an electronics shop. Computers lined the walls, most of them blank and unattended, but a few technicians were sitting at desks, earphones clamped over their heads and pin microphones almost touching their lips.

O’Hara directed Grant to an unoccupied computer and told him to sit down and boot it up. Once he’d done that, she leaned over his shoulder and picked up the headset resting on the desktop. She was wearing some kind of scent, Grant realized: something herbal that smelled of flowers from a faraway world.

“Well, put it on,” she said, thrusting the headset into his hands.

Grant slipped the set on; the padded earphones blotted out the hum of the machines and the drone of the other subdued voices. As he swung the pin mike close to his mouth, O’Hara doggedly pecked at the keyboard with one extended finger. Her nails were polished a delicate rose pink, he saw.

Then she lifted one of his earphones slightly and said, “There’s no visual. You’ll just be getting the audio recording.”

Grant nodded as she let the earphone snap itself back in place. The computer screen showed the day’s date and a time; Grant realized it was just a few minutes ago. This must be a recording of her talking to the dolphins, he thought.

Sure enough, he heard O’Hara’s voice: “Top o’ the morning, Lancelot. And to you, Guinevere.”

Then he heard the clicks and whistles of the dolphins. The computer screen printed: GREETINGS O’HARA.

“And how is little Galahad this morning?”

BABY IS GROWING.

O’Hara said, “I’ve got to be going now. And it’ll be your feeding time in a few minutes. I’ll be seeing you all again later.”

GOOD-BYE O’HARA. GOOD FEEDING.

The screen went blank.

Grant pulled off the headset and looked up at O’Hara. She had an expectant grin on her face. He noticed for the first time that her mouth had just a trace of an overbite; it looked strangely sensuous.

“Well now,” O’Hara said. “What do you think of that?”

Grant knew he should be diplomatic, but he heard himself say, “I think the computer could have printed out those responses no matter what kinds of noises the dolphins made.”

Her eyes flashed for a moment, but then she nodded thoughtfully. “All right, then. You’ll make a fine scientist someday. Skeptical. That’s good.”

“I mean—”

“Oh, I know what you mean, Mr. Archer. And you’d be right, except for the fact that the computer has stored thousands of the dolphins’ responses and categorized them and cross-indexed them very thoroughly.”

“That still doesn’t mean it’s translating what those noises actually mean to the dolphins.”

“Doesn’t it now? Then how do you explain the fact that every time I say ‘good morning’ to them they respond with exactly the same expression?”

“How do you know their expression means that they understood what you said and returned your greeting?”

“The phone translates my words into their language, of course.”

“Still…”

She seemed delighted with Grant’s disbelief. Eagerly O’Hara snatched a headset from the computer next to the one Grant was using, slipped it over her chestnut hair, and said into the microphone, “Language demonstration one seventeen, please”

Grant didn’t realize he was staring at her until she unceremoniously took him by the chin and pointed his face back to the display screen.

A QUESTION OF INTELLIGENCE

It wasn’t a demonstration so much as a tutorial. By Dr. Wo, no less.

Grant sat and watched and listened. And learned. Building on nearly a century of researchers’ attempts to communicate meaningfully with dolphins, Wo and a handful of the station’s biologists—including Lane O’Hara—had created a dictionary of dolphin phrases.

“If the same phrase is used in the same situation every time,” Wo’s voice was saying over a video scene of three dolphins swimming in lazy circles, “then one may conclude that the phrase represents an actual word, constructed from actual phonemes—deliberate sounds intended to convey a meaning.”

As Grant watched, two human figures clad in black wet-suits entered the tank, trailing sets of bubbles from the transparent helmets that encased their heads. Grant could not make out their faces, but one of them had the supple, slim figure of O’Hara.

The human swimmers bore oblong boxes of metal or plastic strapped to their chests. Dolphinlike clicks and whistles came from them, and the dolphins responded with chatter of their own.

“One may conclude,” said Wo’s off-camera voice, “that the dolphins have developed a true language. We have been able to transliterate a few of their phrases into human speech sounds, and vice versa.”

There was something strange about Wo’s voice, Grant thought. It seemed richer, deeper than he remembered it from his one stressful meeting with the director. Then Wo’s voice had seemed harsh, strained, labored. Listening to the director on this video presentation, though, his voice came through relaxed and smooth. Maybe it’s just me, Grant thought. Maybe he sounded worse to me than he actually was. Still, the difference nagged at him.

“… conclusive evidence that the dolphins truly use language can be seen in this demonstration,” Wo was saying.

Another human voice—O’Hara’s, it sounded like-asked, “Can you blow a ring for me?”

One of the dolphins swam toward her and expelled a set of bubbles from its blowhole that formed a wobbly but recognizable ring. As the circle of bubbles expanded and drifted toward the tank’s surface, the dolphin nosed upward and swam through it, squeaking and clicking rapidly.

“Observe,” said Wo’s voice, “that no reward has been offered for this performance. The only exchange between the human experimenter and the dolphin subject was an audible communication.”

At the end of the video Wo appeared in his office, sitting at his desk, peering intently into the camera.

“While much of the dolphins’ language remains beyond our grasp, for reasons that are undoubtedly due to the wide gap in environment and socialization between our two species, we have succeeded in creating a primitive dictionary of dolphin speech. That is, we can accurately and repeatedly transliterate human speech sounds into dolphin phonemes, and vice versa. While this is limited to a dozen or so phrases, the work continues and the dictionary will grow.”

Wo got up to his feet and walked slowly around his desk. “Our aim, as stated at the outset of this demonstration, is to understand the intellectual workings of an alien intelligence. Thank you for your attention.”

The screen went dark, but Grant continued staring at it for several moments more. In the video, Dr. Wo could stand and walk. Yet when Grant had seen him, his legs had been terribly wasted, useless; the man had to stay in a powered wheelchair. But in this video his legs were strong, normal.

As Grant pulled the headset off, O’Hara asked smilingly, “Well, are you convinced now, Mr. Skeptic?”

“What happened to Dr. Wo?”

Her smile winked off. “Ah, yes. That video was made before the accident.”

“What accident?”

Her lips tightened, almost as if she were biting them. With a shake of her head, O’Hara replied, “That’s best left unsaid, Mr. Archer. Sensitive information, don’t you know.”

Grant leaned back in the wheeled typist’s chair to look up into her brilliant green eyes. “What can be so all-hallowed sensitive? Who am I going to tell? I’m locked up in this station, the only people I see already know all about all this dratted sensitive stuff!”

O’Hara started to reply, then apparently thought better of it. She took a breath, then said, “Those are Dr. Wo’s orders. Information is sensitive if he says it is. He’s the director and we do what he tells us … or else.”

“Or else what?” Grant snapped, feeling more irked by the second. “What can he do to us? We’re stuck out here already. What’s he going to do, send us home with a bad report card?”

She gave him a pitying look. “You don’t really want to know what he can do to you, believe me, Mr. Archer.”

“Grant,” he said automatically. It came out surly, almost a growl.

“Grant,” she agreed. “And my friends call me Lane.” He knew she was trying to mollify him, trying to get his mind off the issue of sensitive information and Dr. Wo’s powers as director of the station.

But there’s something going on here that Wo is keeping secret. He’s not even letting the IAA know what he’s doing. Is that because the New Morality has its own representatives on the IAA’s council?

With a glance at her wrist, O’Hara said, “It’s almost past time for lunch. Come on, let’s get to the cafeteria before they close it.”

Grant followed her through the humming, quietly intense communications laboratory and out into the main corridor. It was bustling with people going back and forth.

Walking alongside Lane, Grant again noticed her limp. But if I ask her about it she’ll tell me to mind my own business, he thought. Maybe that’s sensitive information, too.

Instead he asked, “You said your friends call you Lane?”

“That’s right.” She nodded.

“I heard someone refer to you as Lainie.”

Her eyes flicked toward him for just an instant. “And who might that be?” she asked coolly.

Grant hesitated a moment, thinking. “Egon, if I remember correctly.”

“Dear old Egon,” she murmured.

“Is Lainie a special name? I mean, well…”

“It’s not a name I prefer. Call me Lane, if you please.”

Grant nodded as they continued walking toward the cafeteria. They seemed to be swimming upstream; a tide of people were heading in the opposite direction, coming out of the cafeteria.

“What else did Egon say about me?” O’Hara asked.

An image of her swimming naked with Karlstad amid the dolphins flashed through Grant’s mind. But he said, “Um, nothing much.”

“Egon has a way of talking about his fantasies as if they were real, don’t you know.”

“Oh, sure.”

She stopped and pulled Grant over to one side of the corridor, practically pinning him against the wall. He felt the strength of her grip against his biceps, the intensity of the glare in her eyes.

“He’s said things about me before, you know. Things that are utterly untrue.”

Grant looked up into those green eyes and saw smoldering anger.

“What did he tell you?” she demanded.

Shaking his head, Grant said, “I … uh, I don’t really remember. It was my first day here. Maybe it wasn’t him who said it, there were several others around the table.”

“And he mouthed off to all of them.”

“I don’t recall,” Grant lied.

“As bad as that, is it?”

Grant had no idea of what to say. He certainly had no intention of repeating what Karlstad had said— boasted about, now that he thought of it.

O’Hara stomped off toward the cafeteria, hurrying through the crowd despite her limp. Grant headed after her.

Sure enough, Karlstad was sitting at a big table, with Patti Buono, Nacho, and several others. Quintero was regaling them with some story that had them all laughing hard. O’Hara seemed to ignore them; she went to the steam table and began filling her tray with a bowl of soup, a sandwich, fruit cup, and soda.

Feeling somewhat relieved but still cautious, Grant slid his tray toward her, grabbing a sandwich and a salad. As he was filling a mug with fruit juice, O’Hara carried her tray toward Karlstad’s table.

Grant followed her as O’Hara headed to their table. Karlstad and the others looked up as she approached. Their laughter died away. Grant thought they looked kind of guilty, although that might have been just his overworked imagination.

Karlstad smiled up at O’Hara as she put her tray on the table next to him. Then she picked up her bowl of soup and emptied it onto his head.

Everything stopped. The cafeteria went completely silent, except for Karlstad’s shocked sputtering. He sat there with soup dripping from his ears, his nose, his chin; soggy noodles festooned his thin silver hair.

O’Hara said absolutely nothing. She merely smiled, nodded as if she were satisfied with her work, then picked up her tray and limped off to a different table.

Quintero burst into roaring laughter. Karlstad scowled at him, but the others started to laugh, too.

Grant left his tray and headed out of the cafeteria. He had no desire to be caught in any crossfire.

SUMMONED

For several days Grant steered clear of both Karlstad and O’Hara. He became something of a recluse, avoiding everyone, taking his meals in his quarters, coming out only for his hours of work. But it was impossible to escape the gossip flickering all through the station.

It was a lovers’ spat, some said. Other maintained that O’Hara had somehow been wronged by Karlstad and the soup dumping had been her revenge. No, still others insisted: He had rejected her, and she’d humiliated him because he had humiliated her.

He saw O’Hara now and then, despite his best efforts not to. She was constantly working with the dolphins, swimming with them, talking with them. Grant tried to head the other way whenever he saw her, but there was no way to avoid all contact. She seemed cheerful and friendly, though, as if nothing had happened. For that matter, so did Karlstad, when Grant saw him—usually at a distance, in the cafeteria or in passing along the main corridor.

One night, when he couldn’t sleep despite watching Marjorie’s two latest messages and reading from the Book of Job for what seemed like hours, Grant pulled on a pair of slacks, stuffed a shirt into its waistband, and padded barefoot out to the empty, darkened cafeteria.

He punched the automated dispenser for a cup of hot cocoa. The machine seemed to take longer now to make the brew than it did during the busy hours of the day.

“Can’t sleep, hey?”

Startled, Grant spun around to see Red Devlin standing beside him. The Red Devil’s bristling hair and mustache stood out even in the shadows of the dimly lit cafeteria. His white jacket was limp, sweaty, unbuttoned all the way down, revealing Devlin’s olive-drab undershirt.

“You’re up pretty late yourself,” Grant replied.

“It’s a lot o’ work, runnin’ this joint.”

“I guess it is.” The dispenser beeped at last. Grant slid up the plastic guard and reached for his steaming cup of cocoa.

“Need somethin’ to put in it?” Devlin asked.

Grant shook his head. “It’s got enough sugar already, I’m sure.”

“I meant somethin’ stronger.”

Grant blinked at him.

“I know you’re a straight arrow an’ all that,” Devlin said, “but a man can’t go without some stimulation now an’ then, can he?”

“I don’t drink,” Grant said.

“I know.” Devlin patted Grant’s shoulder. “An’ you don’t even take sleepin’ pills, do ya?”

“I’ve never needed them.”

“Until now, huh?”

“I don’t want any. Thanks.”

“Maybe some entertainment?”

“Entertainment?”

“VR, y’know. I could fix you up with some very good stuff. Just like the real thing. Make a new man o’ you.”

“No thanks!”

“Now wait, don’t get all huffy on me. You’re a married man, aren’t you?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I can work up a VR sim for you, special. Just gimme some videos of your wife and I’ll put together a sim that’ll be just like she was with you, just about.”

Grant’s jaw dropped open.

“Sure, I can do it!” Devlin encouraged, mistaking Grant’s shocked silence. “I did it for ’Gon, y’know. Fixed him up with Lainie … in virtual reality.”

My God in heaven, Grant thought. So Egon’s fantasies about Lane aren’t just wet dreams, after all. He’s got a VR session with her in it. Maybe more than one.

“How about it, Grant?” Devlin urged.

But Grant was thinking, If Lane knew about this she’d kill the two of them.

“Well?”

“No thanks,” Grant said firmly. “Not for me.”

He turned and strode away, splashing hot cocoa from the mug onto his hand, thinking that he’d never let that filthy devil get his paws on videos of Marjorie. Never.

Days later, Grant was in the biochemistry lab, checking the delicate glassware he was taking out of the dishwasher, to make certain nothing had been broken or chipped. The glass tubes and retorts were still warm in his hands. He’d been thinking that it would be much more efficient if they made the lab apparatus out of lunar glassteel, which was unbreakable, but then figured it would cost too much. Cheaper to gather up the broken bits and recast them. Just as graduate students were an economic advantage over robots, old-fashioned chippable lab glassware was used instead of glassteel.

“I haven’t seen you for a while.”

The voice startled Grant so badly he nearly dropped the hand-blown tubing he was holding.

Looking up, he saw it was Zareb Muzorawa.

“Oh … I’ve been around,” said Grant. “I’ve … uh, been pretty busy, you know.”

Muzorawa hiked one leg on a lab stool and perched casually on it. Still in those metal-studded leggings, Grant saw.

Very seriously he said, “What happened between Lane and Egon was not your fault, my friend”

“Yeah, sure. I know that” Grant turned back to emptying the dishwasher.

“Lane told me about your conversation with her.”

Grant said nothing, kept busy unloading the glassware.

“You can’t hide all the time, Grant,” Muzorawa said. “The station isn’t that big.”

Straightening and facing the man, Grant said, “I guess I’m embarrassed, pretty much. I feel really rotten about it.”

“It was not your fault. No one is angry at you. Lane and Egon aren’t even angry at each other, not anymore.”

“I don’t see how that could be.”

Muzorawa laughed gently. “They had a peace conference. He agreed to stop telling tales about her and she agreed not to decorate him with food anymore.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Grant felt better than he had in days. “And they’re not boiled at me?”

“Why should they be?”

Before Grant could think of a reply, Muzorawa abruptly changed the subject. “Are you enjoying your work?”

Grant’s heart sank again. “That’s not a joking matter.”

“I was not joking.”

Unloading the dishwasher and putting the gleaming glassware in their proper cabinets as he spoke, Grant confessed, “I don’t mind the labor; it’s the time I’m losing that hurts.”

“Ah, yes,” said Muzorawa, shifting slightly on the stool, stretching his legs as if they pained him.

“I’m supposed to be working toward my doctorate in astrophysics,” Grant went on, growing angrier with each word. “How in the name of the Living God can I do that when there isn’t even another blast-dratted astrophysicist on the station?”

Muzorawa nodded solemnly. “Yes, I see. I understand.”

“I could spend my entire four years here without making a nanometer of progress toward my doctorate.”

“That would be a shame.”

“A shame? It’s a tragedy! This is wrecking my whole life!”

“I put in many hours of dog work,” Muzorawa said, “back when I was a grad student in Cairo.”

“You’re Egyptian?” Grant assumed Egyptians were tobacco-hued Arabs, not deeply black Africans.

Muzorawa shook his head. “I am Sudanese. Sudan is south of Egypt, the land that was called Nubia in ancient times.”

“Oh.”

“I received my degrees at the University of Cairo.”

“I see.”

“It’s easier for a black man there than at most European universities.”

“We have laws against racial prejudice in the States.”

Muzorawa grunted. “Yes, I know of your laws. And the realities behind them.”

“The New Morality sees to it that there’s no racial bias in the schools,” Grant said.

“I’m sure.”

“They do!”

With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Muzorawa asked, “Tell me, did you take any undergraduate courses in fluid dynamics?”

Caught off-guard again by another sudden change of subject, Grant answered hesitantly, “Uh, one. You need to know some fluid dynamics to understand how stellar interiors work.”

“Condensed matter.”

Grant nodded. “And degenerate matter.”

Muzorawa nodded back and the two of them quickly slipped into a discussion of fluid dynamics, safe and clean, a subject where mathematics reigned instead of messy, painful human relationships.

Within a few minutes Muzorawa was using one of the chem lab’s computers to show Grant the problems of the planet-girdling Jovian ocean he was working on. Grant understood the basics, and listened avidly as the Sudanese fluid dynamicist explained the details. In the back of his mind he felt warmly grateful that Muzorawa was taking the time to bring some spark of interesting ideas into his dull routine of drudgery.

It ended all too soon. Glancing at the clock display in the lower corner of the computer’s screen, Muzorawa said, “I’m afraid I must go. Wo has called a big meeting with the department heads. Budget proposals.”

Nodding, Grant said, “Thanks for dropping in.”

Muzorawa flashed a dazzling smile. “It was nothing. And stop being a hermit! Join us at dinner.”

“Us?”

“Egon, Tamiko, Ursula…”

“Lane?”

He cocked his head slightly to one side. “Yes, maybe even her. But we’ll keep her on the opposite side of the table from Egon!”

Grant laughed.

“We’ll sit her next to you.”

He was as good as his word.

Apprehensive, uncertain, Grant entered the cafeteria with the first surge of people coming in for dinner. As he slowly made his way along the serving line, pushing his tray and making his selections absentmindedly, he looked around for Muzorawa or Karlstad or any of the others. None of them in sight.

Then he saw O’Hara getting into the line, with Muzorawa’s bearded face a few heads behind her. By the time he had finished loading his tray, Karlstad, Kayla Ukara, and Tamiko Hideshi were also in line.

Feeling awkward, Grant hesitated a moment, then decided that it was foolish to just stand there dithering. Most of the tables were unoccupied as yet, so he picked an empty one big enough for six and sat down facing the line.

Sure enough, O’Hara came straight to him, still limping slightly. Then Muzorawa and the others. They all sat at Grant’s table and said hello as if nothing had happened. Finally Karlstad picked his way deftly through the line and joined them. Muzorawa had saved a seat for him on the opposite side of the table from O’Hara, who had placed herself next to Grant.

Just as Karlstad sat down, the light panels in the ceiling flickered once, twice. They all looked up.

“Uh-oh,” said Hideshi.

“Wait,” Muzorawa replied softly. “I think it’s stabilized…”

The lights suddenly went out altogether, plunging the crowded cafeteria into complete darkness. Grant heard the throng of diners moan, an instinctive collective sob of fear and tension that quickly dissolved into grumbling and muttering. He felt his heart thumping beneath his ribs.

“It’s stabilized, all right.” Karlstad sneered.

“What is it?” Grant asked, breatheless with anxiety. “What’s going on?”

Dim emergency lighting winked on, throwing the cafeteria into pools of faint light and deep shadow.

“Power outage,” Ukara said, almost hissing the words.

“It happens every now and then,” Muzorawa said, calm and reassuring.

We need electrical power to keep the air pumps going, Grant realized, sitting wire-tense in his chair.

“It might be Io’s flux tube expanding,” Karlstad suggested.

“More likely a plasma circuit between Io and the planet,” said Ukara.

“Yes,” Muzorawa agreed. “We probably passed through a plasma cloud and it overloaded our generators.”

“I don’t like this,” Hideshi admitted, her voice trembling.

Grant asked, “Plasma clouds jump from the cloud tops to Io?” His own voice sounded high and shaky.

“Not often,” Muzorawa replied. “But it has been observed from time to time.”

Karlstad muttered, “And we’re just lucky enough to be in the middle of it.”

“How long—”

The lights came back on. Everyone sighed gratefully. The cafeteria echoed with a hundred chattered, relieved conversations.

It took a while for Grant to feel at ease again. Losing electrical power could be fatal. There are backup generators, he reassured himself. And superconducting batteries that can run the life-support systems for days on end. Still, he treasured the bright, glareless light from the ceiling panels.

Everyone seemed to relax.

“Hell, I was looking forward to a candlelight dinner,” someone shouted. People laughed: too loudly, Grant thought.

They’re forcing themselves to forget the blackout, he realized. To bury it, pretend it never happened, or at least pretend it’ll never happen again.

Karlstad started making cynical jokes about someone in the biology department whom Grant actually knew, a fussy little neurophysiologist who was counting the days until his time was up and he could head back to Earth. O’Hara added to the moment with a story of how she had slipped data from the neurophysiologist’s own brain scan into the file for Sheena.

“That was after the gorilla’s brain-boost?” Hideshi asked.

“It was,” said O’Hara, grinning broadly. “Just a few days after he’d injected Sheena with the neuronal growth hormones.”

“But he was looking at data from his own brain?” asked Karlstad.

“That he was. He took one look at the neuronal activity and thought he was going to get the Nobel Prize!”

They all roared with laughter.

“Didn’t Sheena break his arm later on?”

“No, that was Ferguson.”

“Oh, right. The surgeon.”

Abruptly the overhead speakers blared, “GRANT ARCHER, REPORT TO THE DIRECTORS OFFICE.”

Suddenly fearful, Grant look up toward the ceiling. “What does he want me for?”

“It won’t be good news,” Karlstad muttered. “It never is when he calls you to his office.”

“You’d better get going,” Muzorawa said.

“Now? In the middle of dinner?”

Karlstad pointed a finger at him. “When our peerless leader calls, you answer. Without hesitation.”

“And without dessert,” O’Hara added.

Grant pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Doesn’t he care at all about us?”

Karlstad shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think he cares about anything anymore. Since the accident he’s been—”

Muzorawa laid a heavy hand on his wrist and Karlstad snapped his mouth shut with an audible click of his teeth.

“You’d better get to the director’s office,” the fluid dynamicist said softly. “Dr. Wo doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Grant nodded and headed out of the cafeteria.

There was a dinner tray on Dr. Wo’s desk, but Grant saw that the director had hardly picked at his food. The office was uncomfortably warm, as before. Is it part of his dominance technique? Grant wondered. Does he enjoy watching me sweat?

Finally he looked up at Grant, scowling. “You have been in this station long enough to know your way from the Cafeteria to this office,” Wo rasped as Grant sat before his desk.

“Yessir, I do.”

“Then why did it take you so long to get here?” Wo demanded in his grating voice. “Did you go the long way around?”

Grant felt like getting up and storming out of the office, but he held his temper and said nothing.

After a long, silent moment, the director announced grudgingly, “Your duties as a lab assistant are finished. You will report to Dr. Muzorawa tomorrow morning to begin training with the fluid dynamics group.”

Grant felt an electric current of surprise race through him.

“That is all. You may go.”

“I’ll be working with Dr. Muzorawa?” he heard himself say, his voice high with wonder and disbelief.

“That is what I told you, isn’t it? Now stop wasting my time. The working day begins at eight hundred hours. Sharp! Understand me?”

“Yessir,” Grant said, scrambling to his feet, trying to keep his face impassive and hide the ecstatic grin that wanted to break out. “Thank you, sir.”

Wo waved one hand as if brushing away an annoyance.

Grant stepped out into the corridor, slid Dr. Wo’s door shut, and leaned against it, his legs rubbery. I’ll be doing real work! he rejoiced. Not astrophysics, but real, actual scientific research!

Then his surge of joy drained out of him. I’ll be learning more about what they’re doing, he thought. I’ll be finding out things I should report to the New Morality.