Jupiter

INTO THE CLOUDS

“Disconnect,” Krebs ordered.

Grant hovered uncertainly in the viscous perfluorocarbon atmosphere of the bridge, his feet anchored in the floor straps, his arms floating chest high, his mind battling against the seductions of power.

“Disconnect!” Krebs insisted. “Now!”

The flight plan was for them to orbit Jupiter at least twice, long enough to make certain that all the ship’s systems were indeed functioning properly. Only then would Krebs give the order to descend into the clouds.

Grant turned off the linkage with all the reluctance of an addict withdrawing from his drugs. He was alone again, separate, nothing more than a blob of protoplasm inside a shell of flesh.

“How do you feel?” Muzorawa asked as he slipped his feet free of the floor loops and bobbed gently in the viscous liquid.

“A little shaky,” Grant admitted.

Karlstad floated up to them. “I don’t see why we have to orbit around the damned planet like this. Why don’t we stay linked and get on with the job?”

“You must rest,” Krebs answered from over their shoulders. “Eat. Take a nap. Staying linked with the ship for too long is not good.”

O’Hara, still at her comm console, said, “Captain, Dr. Wo wants to speak to you on the private channel.”

Krebs nodded and slipped a headset over her bald pate.

“When does she sleep?” Karlstad whispered.

Muzorawa nodded. “I don’t think she’s disconnected herself since we first linked up.”

Grant shrugged and headed for the food dispensers. He felt jumpy inside, weary yet keyed up. Maybe a nap is what I need.

It still made him squeamish to plug the feeding tube into the socket in his neck, but Grant did it. When the counter on the dispenser’s metal face clunked and the flow of liquid shut off, he pulled the tube free with a shuddering grimace.

“What’s the matter, doesn’t it taste delicious?” Karlstad jibed.

Grant headed for his berth without answering, leaving the three others huddled at the dispenser.

Knowing that he’d have to be awake and alert in a few hours, Grant could not sleep. He kept thinking about the thrill of power he’d felt when linked to the ship. Will it get easier as we go on, he wondered, or will it become more seductive, more corrupting? God, help us! he prayed. Give us the strength to resist temptation.

He thought about composing a message for Marjorie, even though he wouldn’t be able to send it until they returned from this mission. If we return, he found himself thinking. Then he heard the other three come into the catacombs, talking quietly, grumbling really, and finally slipping into their own berths.

Grant gave them enough time to fall asleep, then crawled out of his bunk as quietly as he could and swiftly stripped off his tights and pulled a fresh pair from the storage bin in the common area. Wide awake, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to sleep, he slid the screen open and floated into the bridge.

Krebs was sleeping, bobbing gently up near the overhead, eyes closed, a soft burbling noise that might have been a snore in normal air emanating from her half-open mouth. And she was still connected to the ship. Grant saw that the wires from the overhead compartment were still firmly linked to the electrodes in her chunky, hairless legs.

She sleeps connected, Grant said to himself, wondering what that must be like. Then he wondered if that was a good thing. Is she addicted to it? He asked himself. Is that the joy she gets out of life?

One by one Muzorawa, Karlstad, and O’Hara returned to the bridge, almost like sleepwalkers, and took their stations at their consoles. Krebs still snored gently, bobbing up near the overhead. Grant slipped his feet into the floor loops and saw that his console was showing all systems normal. Nothing but green lights. He ran a finger across the console’s central touchscreen to check the subsystems. He frowned, slightly nettled at the cumbersomeness of the manual procedure. If we were linked I could feel all the systems, I’d know how they’re doing with my eyes closed.

But they would not engage the linkage unless Krebs gave the command, and she was still asleep, floating behind the four of them.

“Well, at least we knows she sleeps,” Karlstad stagewhispered.

“That’s good,” O’Hara whispered back. “Everyone needs to sleep sometime.”

“You are eager to work.” Krebs’s cold, hard voice slashed at them. “Good.”

Karlstad rolled his eyes toward heaven.

“Connect your linkages,” Krebs commanded.

Grant linked up smoothly this time, actually finishing before Karlstad. He felt a glow of anticipation warming him, saw that O’Hara looked the same way.

“Engage linkage,” said Krebs.

Again Grant felt the power of the fusion generator surging through him, felt the music of electrical currents racing through every section of the ship. The thrusters, he begged silently. Ignite the thrusters.

Instead, Krebs patiently checked through the navigation system, waiting to reach the precise point in their orbit around Jupiter’s massive bulk where they were to insert the ship into its deorbit burn and plunge toward the hurtling, multihued Jovian clouds.

“Approaching the keyhole,” Muzorawa called out.

Without asking permission, Grant closed his eyes and linked momentarily to Zeb’s sensors and saw what they were showing: the racing multihued clouds of Jupiter, streaming madly as the planet’s tremendous spin whirled them into long ribbons of ocher, pale blue, and russet brown. Lightning flickered through the clouds, crackles of vast electrical energy. He felt the heat radiating up from those clouds, he heard the eternal wailing of winds that dwarfed the wildest hurricanes of Earth.

And he realized that there was a storm, a vast swirling whirlpool of dazzling white clouds, screaming its fury in the area where they had expected to make their entry into the cloud deck.

“The entry area’s covered with a cyclonic system,” Muzorawa said tightly.

Grant opened his eyes. Zeb’s face was set in an expressionless mask. Turning, he saw that O’Hara and Karlstad both looked concerned.

Krebs made a sound that might have been a grunt. Or a suppressed growl. “Very well. We’ll go on to the alternate injection point.”

Grant glanced up at the main wallscreen display. It showed their orbital path against the swirling clouds. The alternate entry position was a quarter-orbit away. Closer to the Red Spot, Grant saw. Not close enough to be dangerous, he knew. Still, getting closer to that titanic storm was unsettling.

No one spoke for the forty-nine minutes it took to reach the alternate insertion point. Grant occupied himself by concentrating on the fusion generator; it was like standing by a warming, crackling fireplace on a cold winter’s day. Soon we’ll be in the clouds, he told himself. And then the ocean. That’s when we’ll see how accurate my mapping of the currents has been.

“Automated countdown,” Krebs called out at last.

Grant unconsciously licked his lips as the countdown timer began clicking off the seconds. For the first time since their immersion, Grant consciously thought about the taste in his mouth. It was odd, not unpleasant, but the perfluorocarbon liquid was unlike anything his taste buds had encountered in the past. He had no memory references for it, down at the cellular level where instinct lived.

“Retro burn in ten seconds,” the computer’s synthesized voice called out. Despite himself, Grant trembled inwardly with the anticipation of the thrusters’ power.

The thrusters blazed to life. Grant felt their strength surging through him like a tidal wave smashing down seawalls, trees, buildings, leveling hills, tearing away everything in its path. He gritted his teeth, fighting with every atom of his willpower against giving way to it. He was strong! So powerful that he could tear the ship apart with his bare hands. Eyes squeezed shut, he could see the blazing plasma hurtling from the thrusters, feel the energy streaming from the fusion generator as if it were his own arms, his own muscles driving the ship deep into the clouds of Jupiter, down into the unknown, beyond the reach of help or the understanding of the pitiful frail twolegged apes clinging to their cockleshell station in orbit around Jupiter.

Outside, wind began to howl and shriek, as if protesting their entry into the atmosphere. Grant laughed inwardly. Come on, do your damnedest! he challenged Jupiter. The power of the ship’s thrusters was his own might, his own body standing against the fury of this alien world’s resistance. The ship staggered and bucked but it kept on its course, driving steadily deeper into the wild tangle of clouds. Grant felt like a pitiless conqueror forcing himself into a violently struggling woman. He was raping Jupiter, and no matter how the planet resisted he was too powerful, too ruthless, too driven to show mercy or restraint.

Abruptly the thrusters shut off. Grant felt it like a blow to his groin. He gasped, almost retched. For an endless moment he stood swaying in his foot straps, arms floating before him, hands clenched into fists. He was aghast at his own thoughts, his own emotions. Guilt, shame, terror at the primitive savagery buried within him racked his soul. He could hear the wind shrieking louder as the ship’s furious, howling plunge through the deep Jovian atmosphere continued. He could feel the ship’s outer skin glowing with the white heat of friction.

They were falling through the deep atmosphere now, dragged down by Jupiter’s powerful gravity, no longer conquerors but humble servants obedient to the planet’s massive pull.

Forcing his eyes open, Grant looked across at the screens of Muzorawa’s sensor console and saw that they were plunging through a maelstrom of swirling clouds. Zeb himself stood transfixed before the screens, eyes staring, fists clenched at his sides, body rigid.

Tentatively, furtively, without orders, he again linked with Zeb’s sensors and suddenly felt the blazing heat of their hypersonic entry into those thick, turbulent clouds. The ship was shuddering now, bucking like a pumpkinseed in a hurricane as it plunged deeper into the Jovian atmosphere, turning the tortured clouds around it into white-hot plasma, a howling, shrieking sheath of burning gases surrounding them, trailing back in their wake like the long glowing tail of a falling star.

Grant wanted to shout defiance at the burning gases that sheathed the ship. You can’t hurt us! he snarled silently. You can’t do anything except what we want you to do, he told the giant planet. We’re using you, using your thick blanket of atmosphere to slow us down enough to enter your sea and learn your secrets.

Jupiter thought otherwise. The ship lurched, plunged, slewed sidewise as a tremendous jet stream buffeted it. Grant swayed, tottered, his stomach going hollow within him. He would have sailed across the bridge if he hadn’t been anchored by the floor loops. As it was, he had to brace his hands against the console to prevent himself from being slammed into it.

The ship slowed. Grant recovered his balance, glanced around, and saw that no one had noticed his near frenzy. Or if they had, they paid no attention to it. Zeb, Lane, Egon—all locked in their own private universes, all feeling, hearing, seeing, even tasting the sensations from the ship’s sensors and systems. Grant had tasted raw, primal power, and now he felt empty in its absence, deprived, sullenly angry. And afraid.

“Approaching the bottom of the cloud deck.” Krebs’s voice sounded alien, distant, a disturbance in Grant’s universe of power and strength, like an alarm clock’s buzzing interference in a warm, exciting dream.

The thrill of the thrusters’ surge was gone, but the fusion generator still sang its beguiling song of power, whispering to Grant of universes beyond the beyond, worlds to discover and conquer.

“Look at that!”

Grant could not tell who said it, but the words stirred him out of his nearly hypnotic trance.

“Put it on the main screen.” That was Krebs’s voice, definitely. Even in the eerie distortions of this liquid gunk in which they lived, her thick harsh tone was unmistakable.

The wallscreen above their consoles showed a wild cloudscape, as far as the scanners could see, a vast panorama of billowing clouds scudding along on powerful streams of wind that tattered and shredded them even as the alien invaders from Earth watched, wide-eyed. Clouds boiled up from far below, only to have their tops sheared off by the furious wind. High above it all, the sky was covered with its eternal cloak of colorful clouds, stretched across the world like a blanket, the colors of its underside strangely muted, pastel.

The hydrogen-helium atmosphere was as transparent as … Grant almost giggled as he realized it was as transparent as air. It was thickly dotted with those fat billowing clouds scudding madly along, almost like fluffy cumulus of a tropical sky on Earth.

Far below was nothing but haze. Grant remembered that Jupiter’s atmosphere gradually thickened until it became liquid, with no clear demarkation between air and sea. Somewhere down there the inexorable pressure thickened the atmosphere until it liquefied into a world-girdling ocean, its water corrosively acidic, heavily laced with ammonia and exotic compounds.

Not like Earth, Grant said to himself. Not at all like Earth, where the oceans fill basins in the rocky crust and the gravity’s too light to squeeze the air into liquid. Not like Mars or Venus or even the Galilean moons, not like any of those balls of rock or ice. This is an alien world, different, totally different from anything we’ve ever seen before.

Zheng He was shuddering now, bucking in the jetstream winds. Grant pictured the ship as a tiny sliver of a discus being tossed and tumbled by the ferocious currents of wind streaking across the face of Jupiter’s all-encompassing ocean.

“Long-range sensors,” Krebs ordered.

The wallscreen view abruptly shifted. Far off on the distant horizon Grant saw a dark, ominous tower of clouds flickering with lightning bolts, climbing like a wrathful giant out of the ocean and rising to the cloud deck high above.

“That’s the Great Red Spot,” said Karlstad, his voice hollow with awe.

Krebs ordered, “Thrusters on. Minimum cruise power.”

The ship had been coasting since they had entered the clouds, using Jupiter’s thick atmosphere to slow them from orbital speed, turning velocity into heat as they rode through the thick cloud deck and down into the clear hydrogen-helium atmosphere, gliding across the skies of Jupiter.

“Thrusters on, I said!” Krebs growled.

Grant blinked and activated the thrusters with a thought. For good measure he pressed a fingertip against the touchpad on his console.

This is dangerous, he realized, an awful lot of temptation to put into the hands of mortals. Feeling the surge of power building within his own senses, Grant told himself, I can control the engines with a thought. I can destroy us all with a foolish impulse.

DEFIANCE

Deeper and deeper into the Jovian atmosphere they plunged, farther into the all-encompassing haze that gradually thickened into the global sea.

Still feeling the thrumming power of the ship’s generator, the muted thunder of the thrusters, Grant strained his eyes to pierce through the darkening haze that the wallscreen showed. There was nothing to see; not even the infrared sensors detected anything in the fog, yet still Grant stared hard at the screen. Partly he focused his attention there because it helped to keep him from falling completely under the hypnotic spell of the enhanced sensory systems in his implanted biochips. Like his father’s advice about impure thoughts, when he’d been a preteen first awakening to the seductions of the body: “Think about something else, son. Don’t dwell on the temptation.”

Grant stared into the emptiness and tried to ignore the deep, unbidden, relentless urge to power up the thrusters and dive the ship straight down into the ocean that waited for them deep below.

Where are the Jovian life-forms? he asked himself. Where are the medusas and those soarbirds that the probes found? And the algal colonies that float in the clouds? The sky here looks empty, barren.

He realized that none of the others had spoken more than a few words since they’d linked with the ship’s systems. It’s working on them, too, Grant told himself. They’re just as absorbed by this electronic seduction as I am. Just because they’ve had more experience with it doesn’t mean it’s any easier for them to handle it.

“I thought we’d see airborne organisms,” he said aloud.

Karlstad seemed to twitch, as if suddenly awakened from a trance. “They’re out there,” he said.

Muzorawa countered, “The sensors haven’t detected any.”

“Not even on the microscopic scale?”

“Ah, well … microorganisms are present everywhere,” Muzorawa agreed.

“But what about the big life-forms?” Grant asked.

“They’re pretty thinly scattered,” Karlstad replied. “They need a lot of territory to support themselves.”

“Maybe they’re afraid of us,” O’Hara suggested in a subdued voice.

“Afraid?”

“After all, we did come crashing down here like a great blazing meteor, didn’t we?”

Karlstad hesitated a moment, then conceded, “Yes, there is that.”

O’Hara started to add something, but bit the thought off and said instead, “Message from the director coming in, Captain.”

The wallscreen view of the unbroken haze was instantly replaced by a grainy, static-streaked image of Dr. Wo. He looked grimly angry.

“The IAA inspection team is making their final burn to rendezvous with the station,” he said without preamble. “I have been ordered to recall your mission. You are supposed to return to Station Gold immediately.”

Everyone on the bridge froze. Grant turned slightly and saw Krebs floating up near the overhead, one thickfingered hand pressed against the metal paneling to hold herself in place. She was staring at the screen, the stony expression on her face unreadable.

“You are to acknowledge receipt of this message,” Wo said, drawing out each word as if to emphasize them.

The silence on the bridge was palpable. Grant felt shocked, bitter disappointment that the mission was being aborted, anger at the IAA for cutting it short. He wanted to go on, to stay linked with the ship, to probe deeper into that alien sea.

O’Hara reached for the keyboard of her console.

“What are you doing?” Krebs snapped.

“The director said we should acknowledge receiving his message.”

“I will decide when to acknowledge it,” said Krebs.

“But—”

Krebs hovered up by the overhead for several more silent moments. Then she pointed toward Grant and commanded, “Increase thrust twenty percent.”

Grant reacted automatically, and instantly felt the surge in power, like flexing a well-lubricated muscle. It felt good, strong, right. From beyond where O’Hara stood with a frown of uncertainty on her face, Karlstad glanced toward Grant with a puzzled, troubled look.

The bridge seemed to tilt noticeably. Muzorawa called out, “Flight angle steepening past twenty degrees … twenty-five…”

“No need to call out the flight angle,” Krebs snapped. “We are going into the ocean at maximum rate of descent.”

Muzorawa hesitated a heartbeat, then said slowly, “Captain, the director has ordered us to abort the mission.”

“I am aware of that,” Krebs answered sharply. “I have decided to enter the ocean sooner than planned.”

“Shouldn’t we answer Dr. Wo?” O’Hara asked.

“How can we?” Krebs said. “We are beyond direct communications contact.”

“But we’re not—”

“We are beyond direct communications contact,” Krebs repeated with iron in her voice. “We never received the abort command, so we cannot acknowledge it.”

She’s going in! Grant marveled. Despite the IAA’s order, she’s going ahead with the mission. Zeb looked concerned but kept silent. No use arguing with a decision she’s already made, Grant told himself.

Krebs said to O’Hara, “Your communications duties are finished. Maintain an open comm channel for monitoring incoming messages only. We will not respond to any messages from the station.”

Lane looked as conflicted as Grant felt: worried about disobeying Dr. Wo, yet eager to go on with the mission.

“You will pilot the ship from now on, O’Hara. Under my direct command, of course.”

“Yes, Captain,” Lane said, almost in a whisper.

“Maintain dive angle of thirty degrees.”

“Yes, Captain,” Lane repeated as her hands busily rearranged the controls on her console touchscreens.

Grant looked to Muzorawa; Zeb seemed concerned, worried. Turning to look past O’Hara, Grant saw Karlstad looked positively shocked. Worse, he looked frightened.

But no one said a further word. Grant found that he was glad for Krebs’s decision to defy orders. Joyous. It was obvious that Dr. Wo had been forced to send the recall command. But we’re here, below the clouds, heading into the ocean. We’re going to do what we came here to do, and not Wo or the IAA or the New Morality can stop us. Grant grinned inwardly as he felt the ship’s thrusters purring smoothly, propelling them through the thickening Jovian atmosphere, down toward the world ocean.

O’Hara finished resetting her console. “Ready to take the conn, Captain,” she reported softly.

Krebs pushed down from her usual spot to stand beside O’Hara, hooking one foot into a floor loop.

Pointing to the small screen in the upper left corner of O’Hara’s console, Krebs said, “Keep that one open for incoming communications. There is to be no outgoing message unless I specifically order it. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Turning to Muzorawa, she said, “Prepare a data capsule for launch.”

“Yes, Captain,” Zeb replied.

Krebs leaned past O’Hara and touched the communications screen, then said in a flat, calm voice, “Data capsule number one. We have penetrated the clouds and are descending into the ocean. All systems functioning normally except communications, which are totally blocked by unexpected electrical interference in the Jovian atmosphere. Since we are unable to receive or transmit messages, we will continue on our mission plan and report through data capsules as necessary.”

Then she turned to O’Hara and asked, “Did you get that recorded?”

“Recorded,” Lane answered.

“The capsule is ready to be launched,” Muzorawa announced.

“Good. Launch it.”

Nothing happened. Grant suddenly realized it was his job to launch the capsule. Too late. Krebs pulled her foot free of the floor loop and whirled halfway about, staring wildly.

“Archer!” she bellowed. “Archer, where are you?”

Blinking with surprise, Grant said, “I’m right here, Captain.”

Krebs advanced on him like a barbarian army. “Why are you just standing there! Launch the capsule! Launch it!”

“Y-yessir,” Grant stuttered, desperately trying to remember the launch command sequence. The capsules had to be launched manually, he recalled that much; they were not included in the biochip linkage.

With fumbling hands, he tapped his central touchscreen and called up the launching program. It was simple enough, he saw, but with Krebs hovering over him like a smoldering volcano, it took Grant two tries before he got the commands in the right order.

He felt the capsule’s launch like a tingle of excitement shimmering through him. It reminded Grant of the thrill he’d felt the first time he’d skied down an expert slope in the snowy Wasach Mountains. Breathless. Exhilarating.

Until Krebs growled, “Wipe that stupid smile off your face, Archer, and get back to reality.”

It took an effort of will, but Grant did it.

Hours passed. The ship still dove toward the sea. Krebs put different camera views from the sensors onto the big wallscreen, but they showed nothing but blank, featureless mist, all gray, colorless. To Grant it looked empty and dead.

Until Muzorawa shouted, “Look at that!”

“What?”

“Let me increase the magnification,” Zeb mumbled, his fingers working the console. “There. See?”

“Snow!” Grant said. Soft white flakes were sifting through the haze. It looked beautiful. Something like Earth, like home, on this distant alien world.

“Not snow,” Karlstad said. “Organics. They form in the clouds and precipitate out.”

“Manna from heaven,” said O’Hara.

“Food,” Karlstad corrected.

Muzorawa chuckled. “It is only food, my friend, if there are creatures in the sea to eat it. Otherwise it is merely organic snow.”

Grant thought of the distant, shadowy shapes that Dr. Wo had shown him from the record of the first mission. Life-forms? As big as whole cities? Dozens of kilometers across? It seemed impossible.

“Karlstad and Archer, rest period,” said Krebs. “Disconnect, take a meal, and sleep for four hours.”

Grant had to consciously force his hand to switch off the linkage. Suddenly he was no longer connected to the ship, he was alone again inside his own flesh.

Feeling naked, vulnerable, he pulled the optical fibers from the chips in his legs and stowed them away, then floated off toward the nutrient dispenser.

Egon was already plugging the dispenser tube into the port in his neck. “The soup line,” he said as he turned on the dispenser’s pump.

Grant hooked up, too. There was no satisfaction in eating this way. He never seemed to feel hungry, probably because the perfluorocarbon liquid kept his stomach filled. But there was no pleasure in eating, either. No taste, no aroma.

Karlstad broke into his thoughts. Leaning his head so close it almost touched Grant’s, he whispered, “Did you notice the way she couldn’t find you?”

“What?”

“When you were supposed to launch the data capsule. You were right in front of her, no more than three meters away, and she couldn’t see you.”

Remembering, Grant said, “Yeah, that was spooky.”

“She damned near panicked.”

Glancing over his shoulder to make certain Krebs wasn’t watching them, Grant whispered, “She has a funny way of looking at me.”

“At all of us.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Temporary spells of blindness, maybe.”

“She’s blind?”

“Maybe. In flashes. Her vision blanks out for a moment or two.”

“Is that possible?”

Karlstad made a barely discernible shrug. “I don’t know. I’ll see if I can find anything in the ship’s medical library.”

“Could the implants be affecting her vision?”

“Could be. What’s worse, though, is her defying Old Woeful’s abort order.”

The dispenser bell clunked. Karlstad yanked the feeding tube from his neck like a man pulling a leech off him.

Grant said, “I’m with her on that. We shouldn’t scrap this mission just because some IAA committee says so.”

Karlstad’s brows rose. “You? The True Believer? Now you’re ready to commit heresy?”

“It’s got nothing to do with religion!”

“The hell it doesn’t. Those IAA inspectors are probably all your New Morality people, or the equivalent.”

“No matter what they want, I want to go on with the mission,” Grant insisted. “Don’t you?”

“Certainly. But what happens when we get back to the station? How do you think those inspectors are going to treat us? Refusal to obey orders is called mutiny, you know.”

Grant’s jaw dropped open. Mutiny?

The timer bell went off.

“Stop your muttering,” Krebs called to them. “Get to sleep, both of you.”

Grant disconnected the feeder tube, his mind churning. Mutiny? Are we going to be treated as mutineers when we get back?

STORM TOSSED

Grant slept fitfully, dreaming that some giant hand was shaking him, pummeling him mercilessly. He snapped awake and found that it was no dream. The ship was shuddering, lurching, as if caught in the jaws of some vicious terrier and being shaken to death.

He banged his shoulder as he slid out of the berth, barked his shin when he got to his feet. There shouldn’t be this much turbulence so deep in the atmosphere, he told himself. Maybe we’re in the ocean now! This could be turbulent currents of liquid water. He wished that he’d been allowed to carry out his fluid dynamic mapping more completely. The truth was that neither he nor anyone else in the solar system had any except the vaguest of ideas of how Jupiter behaved at this depth, where the atmosphere imperceptibly merged into the ocean.

Grant staggered through the hatch that connected to the bridge. He knew that Zheng He was constructed of a series of shells, the innermost module being the one that the crew inhabited. Between each oblate shell was a buffering pressurized liquid that helped to cushion the rigid metal walls from the Jovian pressure outside the hull, and also damped down any vibrations caused by turbulence.

If we’re banging around this hard here inside the core of the ship, Grant thought as he staggered to his console, we must be caught in the mother of all storms outside.

The Great Red Spot! Lord have mercy, Grant thought, are we tangling the Great Red Spot? He got a vision of the ship being sucked into the maw of the overpowering superstorm, pulled in and crushed like a tiny fragile leaf.

“What are you doing?” Krebs snapped at him as Grant started to connect with the ship.

“Linking up, Captain,” he replied.

“Mr. Archer, did I order you to cut your rest period short?”

“No, ma’am, but with the storm—”

“You are supposed to be resting.”

“But I thought—”

“Follow orders, Mr. Archer. I am quite capable of handling the ship without your help.”

Grant hovered before his console, three optical fibers connected to his implants, the other threads bobbing in the liquid. Muzorawa and O’Hara were at their stations, fully linked. Zeb glanced down at him and smiled gently. Lane was concentrating on her console, fingers playing rapidly, smoothly across the keyboard.

“Return to your berth, Archer,” Krebs commanded. “When I need your help I will call you.”

Shamefaced, Grant disconnected and swam the few meters to the hatch. The ship lurched violently again and he had to grab the hatch to keep from rolling into Krebs, who was floating in the middle of the bridge. He looked over his shoulder at the captain and saw that she was smiling. Smiling! She was enjoying the turbulence. Fully linked to all the ship’s systems, she was riding out this storm with something approaching joy.

He recalled how he had felt when they’d entered the cloud deck, the thrill of power, the sexual excitement of feeling the ship’s generator and thrusters overcoming the turbulent winds and storms of Jupiter. How must it feel, Grant wondered, to be connected to the whole ship while it’s fighting its way through a storm? The surges of thruster power, the flashes of electrical energy, the superhuman views through the sensors. She must feel each tremor of the ship as a shudder of her own body. It must feel like she’s being stroked, caressed. He studied her face: eyes half closed, that strange little smile on her doughy face. My God, she looks as if she’s engaged in foreplay.

Grant dived through the hatch and slid into his bunk. He squeezed his eyes tight and tried to force the image of Krebs out of his mind. The ship lurched and staggered, tossing him from one side of his narrow berth to the other. Sleep was impossible.

“Grant … are you awake?” It was Karlstad’s whispering voice.

Sliding feet-first out of the coffin-shaped cubicle, Grant saw that Karlstad was sitting on the end of his bunk, feet hooked on its stumpy metal legs, hunched over a palmcomp he held in one hand. Its screen threw a ghostly greenish light on his face that wavered in the ripples of their liquid milieu.

“Are we near the Red Spot?” Grant asked.

Karlstad looked up at him. “Huh? The Spot? No, nowhere close. We’re on the other side of the planet.”

“Oh. Good.”

The ship lurched heavily, almost throwing Grant off his bunk.

“This is bad enough, don’t you think?” Karlstad asked, looking up toward the overhead with wide, frightened eyes. “Don’t even mention the Spot.”

“I just thought…”

“She’s deliberately pushing us through this storm,” Karlstad said grimly.

“Why would she do that?” Grant questioned.

“She’s taking us back to our primary entry position,” Karlstad said. “She’s following the mission plan as blindly as a lemming marching off a cliff.”

“Right back into the storm we avoided? That’s crazy!”

Karlstad held his palmcomp to his mouth and began speaking commands to it. Grant moved across and sat beside him on the end of his bunk. The ship plunged briefly, then surged upward. Grant’s stomach heaved.

“Here, take a look.” Karlstad held the computer so Grant could see its glowing screen. His hands were shaking so much that Grant put his own hands over Egon’s to steady them.

“Wind speed’s dying down, at least. It’s just a tad under fifty-five hundred centimeters per second,” Karlstad muttered, tapping the screen with his forefinger. “That’s less than two hundred kilometers per hour. We’re coming out of it.”

“I imagine she didn’t expect the storm to be whipping up so much turbulence down at this low altitude,” Grant muttered.

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Karlstad grumbled. Then he said to the computer, “Display exterior pressure gradients.”

The screen went blank for a moment.

“You’re linked to the ship’s computer?” Grant asked.

“What else?”

The screen showed a wildly undulating curve with a huge dip at its center.

“See?” Karlstad pointed at the graph. “It’s a small, compact storm. There’s the eye. We’re skirting through this region, here.”

“Why didn’t Krebs avoid the storm altogether?” Grant wondered. “We didn’t have to go through any part of it.”

With a bitter smile, Karlstad answered, “Like I told you, she’s following the mission plan. We’re supposed to be at this location, so we go to this location, no matter what the conditions outside.”

Grant shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you’re a pathological anal retentive, the way she is.”

“Maybe she just wants to get data on the storm,” Grant suggested. “She’s a scientist, after all. Nobody’s gotten data from inside a Jovian cyclonic system. This is an opportunity.”

“The true scooter,” Karlstad sneered. “Out to get the data even if it gets us all killed.”

“The ship’s not in trouble,” Grant said. “Not really. We can ride through a storm like this.” But in his mind’s eye he still saw Krebs’s enraptured expression as the ship shuddered through the storm’s fury. And remembered his own passion.

Karlstad’s expression soured. “I’ve gone through the ship’s medical files.”

“Is there anything about her?”

“The personal files are all locked,” Karlstad said. “Nothing in the open files much more than first-aid instructions and directions for cryogenic freezing in case of a major accident.”

“It was no help, then?”

“I think I can set a broken bone now, but no, there’s nothing here that helps us determine what’s ailing our squint-eyed captain.”

“It’s just as well, I suppose,” said Grant. “What would we do with the information if we had it?”

Karlstad pursed his lips briefly, then said, “I’m not finished. The next time she takes a nap I’m going to access the station’s medical files.”

“But she’s cut off all communications with the station!”

With a careless shrug, Karlstad said, “All I need is a quick squirt of data. A few picoseconds should be enough. She’ll never know.”

“But they’ll know on the station,” Grant said. “They’ll know that we’re not out of communication contact. They’ll know that the message she sent in the data capsule is a bare-faced lie!”

Karlstad actually laughed. “So what? Don’t be such a straight-arrow, Grant. Besides, nobody’s going to notice a picosecond burst from the ship. No human being will even be involved. They don’t have people monitoring the medical files twenty-four hours a day. It’s just a medical query from our ship’s computer to the station’s medical computer, zap! That’s all. They’ll never even notice it.”

“You hope,” Grant said.

“Listen to me. Would you rather risk bending the captain’s order against communicating with the station or risk riding down into that ocean with a crazy woman running the ship?”

The ship shuddered again. Grant thought he heard a hollow booming noise, like distant thunder.

“You can’t say that she’s crazy.”

“Can’t I? You think a sane person would deliberately drive us through a storm like this?”

By the time Grant reported for duty on the bridge, the storm was mostly behind them.

The ship still trembled from occasional gusts, but the big heart-stopping plunges and yaws had stopped.

Grant hooked up and linked with the generator and thrusters once more. Remembering what it was like to be connected while driving through the clouds, his cheeks reddened with shame. He glanced at Krebs, floating sternface behind him. She knows what it’s like. She’s connected with every system in the ship, not an electron vibrates in this vessel without her knowing it, feeling it. No wonder she doesn’t want to disconnect. No wonder she avoids sleep.

Muzorawa and O’Hara unlinked and went to the food dispenser. Grant looked across at Karlstad, weaving slightly as he stood before his console, feet anchored in the floor loops.

“Dr. Karlstad?” Krebs called. Grant felt an eerie tingle along his spine. Egon’s right, he thought. It’s as if she can’t see us.

“Captain?” Egon replied.

Krebs focused her eyes on him. “You will pilot the ship during this watch, in addition to monitoring the life-support systems.”

“I’m honored, Captain.”

If Krebs caught the sarcasm in Karlstad’s voice, she gave no sign of it. “Mr. Archer?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“You will monitor the sensors, in addition to the power and propulsion systems.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Grant began adjusting his console, using the touchscreens to tap into the sensor network. The data flowed through his implanted biochips, through his nervous system, and directly into his brain. His heart fluttered beneath his ribs. Once again he could see the world outside the ship, hear the sighing wind whistling past, feel its fluttering flow along the ship’s metal hull, touch the ocean waves as they undulated past far below, taste the flavor of an alien breeze, rich with salts and compounds no human tongue had ever sampled. Lightning flared off on the horizon; Grant felt it as a tingle along his nerves. He did not need display screens or graphs or dials; Grant was not examining data, he was experiencing it, directly in the sense receptors in his brain, completely enveloped in the richness of this vast, unexplored world.

From deep inside his subconscious a voice spoke out: Be careful. Don’t let all this overwhelm you. You’ve got to maintain control, stay in charge of yourself. Don’t get lost in the sensations.

How does Zeb handle all this? Grant wondered. How can he stand at his console hour after hour and not completely immerse himself in this experience? How can he stay rational and calm when he can be a Jovian, breathing their air, seeing through their eyes?

Teach my Thy ways, O Lord, Grant prayed, and I will walk in Your truth.

“She’s asleep.”

Karlstad’s whisper cut through Grant’s inner turmoil. He blinked, turned to look at Egon, two consoles away.

It took a few heartbeats for Grant to remember where he was, who he was. With a shudder that was part lost joy, part desperate resolution, he forced the ship’s sensations to a back corner of his mind.

“She’s sleeping,” Karlstad repeated, hiking a thumb past his shoulder.

Grant saw that Krebs’s eyes were closed. She was bobbing gently up by the overhead, still linked but apparently sound asleep. What dreams must she have, connected to the complete ship the way she is? Grant asked himself.

“Now’s the time,” Karlstad whispered, tapping at his console screens.

“Don’t do it!” Grant hissed.

Karlstad shot him a pitying look, his fingers still playing on the touchscreens.

LEVIATHAN

Starving, dying, Leviathan drifted in the cold empty abyss high above its usual level in the ocean. It took an effort of will to hold its parts together, to prevent them from spontaneously disintegrating.

We must stay together, Leviathan kept repeating. If we break apart each component of us will die, whether we bud or not. We will become food for the scavengers who wait below in the hot darkness of the depths. Together we might survive. If we can stay together long enough we might find food.

But the ocean was cold and barren at this level. Legends pictured monsters up in this frigid emptiness, slithering beasts that preyed on each other and any of Leviathan’s kind foolish enough to drift this high.

Leviathan thought that the legends were mere tales, stories flashed by elders to frighten young ones away from climbing too far from the safe levels of the sea.

It is time for us to return to the warmer region, Leviathan knew. But it could not force its flotation members to contract. They no longer had the strength to expel the gas that filled them. It took energy to make their muscles contract, and starving members had no energy to work with.

Cold. Cold and empty. Leviathan could sense its control of its outer members begin to fade. A unit of armored hide peeled away spontaneously. Instead of the promised joy of budding, Leviathan felt a wave of uncontrollable grief wash through its mind. We are disintegrating. We will all die here, alone, never to bud, never to generate new life.

Unbidden, three of the flagella members broke loose, fluttering mindlessly in the frigid current. Leviathan realized that the end was near. Once the vital organ members dissociated, Leviathan’s existence would be finished, without even the knowledge that its parts would generate new buds, create new members that would associate into offspring.

The Symmetry would be disrupted. The eternal cycle of life budding new life would end. It was not meant to be so, Leviathan knew. It had failed to maintain the Symmetry.

A sense organ shuddered, then began to quiver violently, the first step in its dissociation. There was nothing Leviathan could do to prevent it. Not now.

And yet…

The sense organ suddenly stopped fluttering and became still. It flashed a picture to Leviathan’s brain. A monster. A long, flat, many-armed creature was quietly slithering toward Leviathan, grasping its dissociated members in its wriggling tentacles and pushing them into a circular, snapping mouth ringed with sharp teeth.

For a flash of a second Leviathan thought its sensormember was hallucinating, hysterical on the edge of starvation and dissociation. But no, other sensors-members flashed the same picture. The creature was huge, almost as large as Leviathan itself, and it was nearly transparent, difficult to see until it was very close. It glided through the sea with hardly a ripple, making it impossible to detect at long range.

It was one of the mindless beasts that the old legends warned of. It was trailing Leviathan, gobbling up its members as they dissociated and drifted helplessly in the cold abyss.

It was heading for Leviathan itself, tentacles weaving, round tooth-ringed mouth snapping open and shut, open and shut.

Leviathan’s first instinct was to flee. But in its weakened condition, could it outrun this scavenger? The monster slowed as it approached Leviathan, stretched out two of its longest tentacles and barely touched Leviathan’s hide.

Pain! Leviathan had never felt an electric shock before, but the jangling, burning pain of the monster’s touch made Leviathan recoil instinctively. The monster pursued leisurely, in no hurry to do battle with Leviathan. It seemed content to wait until more of Leviathan’s members dissociated. It was more of a scavenger than a predator, Leviathan thought.

Weak, almost helpless, Leviathan studied the monster. Its main body was a broad flat sheet, undulating like jelly. That gaping mouth was on the underside; its top was studded with domelike projections that must be sensory organs. Dozens of tentacles weaved and snaked all around the central body’s periphery. Two of them were much longer than the others, and ended in rounded knobs.

Can all the tentacles cause pain when they touch? Leviathan wondered. Cautiously it backed away from the creature. The monster followed at the same pace, keeping its distance, waiting patiently.

A new thought arose in Leviathan’s mind. This monster could be food. The old legends pictured these beasts eating one another when they had no other food available. It wants to eat my members. Perhaps we could eat it.

But first, Leviathan knew, it would have to kill the monster. And to do that, it would have to avoid those painful tentacles.

If Leviathan had not been weakened and starving, there would be no contest. Its speed and strength would have made short work of this gossamer creature. Except for those pain-dealing tentacles. We must avoid them.

Leviathan conceived a plan. It was part desperation, part cunning. It called for a sacrifice.

Deliberately, Leviathan willed three more of its flagella members to dissociate. Faithful, mindless, they peeled away from Leviathan’s body and began propelling themselves down toward the warmer depths.

The monster immediately dived after them, so fast that Leviathan realized its plan could not possibly work. But there was nothing else to do. It dived after the beast.

The monster’s two longer tentacles touched the first of the flagella, instantly paralyzing it. They passed the immobilized member to the shorter tentacles so quickly that their motions seemed a blur to Leviathan. The tentacles, in turn, relayed the inert flagellum to that snapping, hideous mouth.

The two other flagella were instinctively fleeing, diving blindly toward the warmth of the lower levels of the sea. The monster pursued them single-mindedly. Which gave Leviathan its opportunity.

With its last reserves of strength, Leviathan dove after the beast and rammed into it. Waves of concussion rippled through the jellylike body of the monster; its tentacles writhed in pain.

Quickly Leviathan fastened as many of its mouth parts as possible onto that broad, flat body. The monster’s longer tentacles snaked back and stung Leviathan again and again, searching blindly for the parts where the armored hide members had dissociated and the more vulnerable inner organs were exposed.

Despite the pain that flared through it, Leviathan tore through the monster’s body, its mouth parts crushing the flimsy beast. The monster’s tentacles went limp at last and Leviathan fed on its dead body. It tasted awful, but it was food.

Feeling stronger despite the strangely acid sensation simmering through its digestive organs, Leviathan resumed its course around the great storm, heading for the deeper waters where—it hoped—it would find plentiful food and others of its own kind.

Leviathan had a tale to portray to them.

INTO THE SEA

Karlstad nodded as if satisfied, then cast a quick glance over his shoulder. Krebs still appeared to be sleeping, floating in an almost fetal position up by the overhead. Grant dared not ask the question, but Karlstad grinned at him and made a circle of his thumb and forefinger. He’s gotten into the station’s medical files, Grant understood. Despite his better judgment, he wondered what Krebs’s file said about her.

With a blink of his eyes, Grant returned his attention to the sensors and concentrated his attention on them. The generator and thrusters were performing so close to their design optima that Grant could almost forget about them, relegate them to a corner of his mind, a background hum of power buzzing along his nervous system. The sensors were something else, though: He could see through the murky alien atmosphere as if it were a cloudy, hazy day on Earth.

Off in the distance Grant saw a swirling snowstorm, a blizzard of white particles falling thickly into the sea. They’re not really white, he reminded himself. You’re seeing them in false color. Actually they’re dark, sooty with carbon compounds; the manna that makes Dr. Wo think there must be living creatures in the sea feeding off this bountiful abundance of organic particles. Wo’s reasoning is more wishful thinking than logic, Grant told himself. Just because there are organic particles raining—or, rather, snowing—into the ocean doesn’t mean there have to be creatures in the sea to eat them. That’s a classic fallacy.

They were getting closer to the blizzard. Hardly thinking consciously about it, Grant imaged the ship’s planned course as a slim bright yellow line against the view of the blizzard. We’ll pass by it, miss it by more than four hundred kilometers. He felt glad of that; he had no desire to ride through another storm. Yet, at a deeper level, he felt disappointment.

And curiosity. Why are the particles concentrated so thickly there, and not any of them falling anywhere else in sight? If the organics form in the clouds, why isn’t there a steady drizzle of them everywhere? It must be that they form only in special places up in the clouds, the processes that create the organics aren’t spread evenly throughout the entire cloud deck. I’ll have to ask Egon about that. If there are creatures in the ocean that eat those organics, we’re most likely to find them under the storms that produce their food.

The pressure outside was rising steadily as the atmosphere thickened into liquid. Grant could feel long, billowing surges of waves now, ripples and cross currents racing through the ammonia-laced water. Riding through this ocean won’t be easy, he realized. There’s a tremendous amount of power in these waves.

By the time Lane and Zeb returned to the bridge, Krebs was fully awake and snapping commands. Sonar pings were bouncing back to the receivers, reflecting off layers of true liquid now. Grant handed over the sensors to Muzorawa reluctantly. Zeb’s going to be connected to them when we actually get into the ocean, he told himself, feeling jealous.

O’Hara started to call out altitude numbers. “Ten thousand meters to the reflecting layer. Sink rate nominal.”

“Be quiet!” Krebs said. “I can see the data perfectly well.”

She sounded testier than usual to Grant. She’s just as clanked up about entering the ocean as I am, Grant thought.

“Thrusters to one-third power,” Krebs ordered.

Grant cut back thruster power. He had to look up at the main screen to see outside now. There were waves out there, restless, ceaseless swells, almost close enough to touch. They were reaching for the ship, heaving angrily, surging higher and higher.

Grant wormed his feet deeper into the floor loops and grasped the hand grips on the front of his console. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Krebs was holding onto a handgrip set into the overhead with one hand, dangling like a thickset monkey.

Lower they sank, deeper into those long, powerful swells. Grant could hear his pulse thudding in his ears. Muzorawa looked tense, his hands squeezing on the console grips, making the muscles in his forearms ripple.

Grant turned toward O’Hara, but Krebs shouted, “Left five degrees!”

Looking up at the wallscreen, Grant saw a raging current surging straight for them, bloodred in the sonar system’s false-color imagery, filling the screen.

“Full power on the thrusters!” Krebs snapped.

Impact! The ship slammed into the current as if hitting a mountainside. One of Grant’s floor loops tore free and for a moment he lost contact with the thrusters. He stared down at his console, but the ship was shaking so badly the screens were little more than a blur. Then he felt the thrusters again, surging powerfully, singing their mighty song. Grant smiled inwardly as the thrusters drove the ship below the current’s powerful stream, down deep beneath its shearing force.

The shaking eased. The shaking dwindled away. They were truly in the ocean now, safely beneath the turbulence, down where the currents flowed swiftly and smoothly—most of the time.

“Thrusters to half power,” Krebs said, almost gently.

“We’re in the ocean,” said Karlstad, as if he couldn’t believe it.

“Obvious but true,” O’Hara replied.

“Stop the chatter,” Krebs growled. “Check all systems.”

Grant found that the generator was performing perfectly well, and so were the thrusters. The only damage he could find was the foot restraint that had torn loose.

“The forward infrared camera is not functioning,” Muzorawa reported. “It must have been damaged on impact.”

“Repair or replace,” Krebs said flatly.

Muzorawa nodded. “I’m running a diagnostic now, Captain. If the damage is too severe to be repaired, I’ll go to the backup.”

O’Hara reported no major problems with the ship’s maneuvering systems, although one of the steering vanes had unfolded only partway. The ship had six steering vanes and two backups. Krebs ordered O’Hara to deploy one of the backups and fold the stubborn vane back into the hull.

“Life support?” Krebs asked.

Karlstad said loftily, “All my systems are functioning nominally, Captain. No problems.”

Before Krebs could comment on that, Lane said worriedly, “Captain, I can’t get the vane back. It’s stuck in the half-open position.”

Krebs scowled at her. “Fold the vane on the opposite side of the ship to the same angle and freeze it there. Deploy both backups for maneuvering.”

O’Hara nodded.

“Anything else?” the captain asked.

None of the crew had any other problems to report.

“Very well,” Krebs said. “Take a half-hour break. But no sleeping! I want you awake and alert in case I need you.”

They all disconnected and drifted back toward the food dispenser. Karlstad got there first and grabbed one of the feeding tubes. Grant let O’Hara go ahead of him.

“Going to be a gentleman, are you?” she teased.

Grant muttered, “Uh, yes, I guess so.”

“Thank you, then,” Lane said, taking the other tube.

It still bothered Grant to see her plug the tube into the socket in her neck. He felt a slight ache in his shoulders. Tension, he guessed.

Turning to Muzorawa, bobbing gently beside him, Grant said, “So we’re in the ocean.” It was idle chatter and he knew it.

“The captain handled the entry very well,” Zeb said, his voice low. “When we hit the jet stream on the first mission, half the ship’s power went out.”

“How could that be?” Grant blurted. “It’s all solid state.”

“The generator isn’t solid state,” Muzorawa countered. “One of the deuterium feed lines was knocked loose. We had a devil of a time repairing it.”

Grant was suddenly aghast. “The radiation …”

Muzorawa smiled gently. “The best thing about fusion generators, my friend, is that the radiation is all contained inside the reaction chamber. The deuterium and helium-three that feed into the chamber are not radioactive.”

“Oh,” Grant said, stretching his arms as far as he could in the cramped corner by the dispenser.

“Are you hurt?” O’Hara asked.

“No, just a pain across my shoulders. It’ll go away.”

“I’ve got a headache,” she said, “if that makes you feel any better.”

“Me, too,” said Karlstad. Turning to Muzorawa: “What about you, Zeb? Any complaints?”

The Sudanese said nothing for a moment. Then: “We will all have aches and pains, and they will grow worse as the mission continues.”

“That’s comforting.” Karlstad huffed.

“I believe part of it comes from being linked. We feel the ship’s systems as our own bodily sensations.”

Grant nodded.

“And as the systems wear down,” Muzorawa went on, “we will feel their pain.”

“Yes, I remember,” O’Hara said, nodding.

“So we’ve got more and more pain to look forward to,” Karlstad grumbled.

“Yes.”

“It’s not that bad,” said O’Hara. “It can be handled, really.”

Muzorawa smiled knowingly. “The ship’s machinery may break down, but we will not. Machines have no spirit, no courage, no drive to succeed no matter what the cost.”

“Maybe you feel that way,” said Karlstad. “I certainly don’t.”

“Yes you do, Egon,” O’Hara contradicted. “You just don’t want to admit it. Not even to yourself.”

Karlstad looked uncomfortable for a few seconds. Then he turned to Grant. “Which reminds me,” he whispered. “After this delicious repast, we should take a peek at the medical report.”

Grant couldn’t help turning to look at Krebs, floating in the middle of the bridge, linked to the entire ship. He couldn’t see her face, but her limbs looked relaxed, as if she were floating in the sun-warmed waters off some tranquil tropical beach.

Muzorawa looked puzzled. Grant explained, “Egon queried the station’s medical computer about the captain.”

Muzorawa’s expression flashed to disapproval, almost anger. “That was not wise, my friend.”

Pulling the tube from his neck, Karlstad replied, “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

He ducked through the hatch to their sleeping quarters, with Muzorawa close behind him.

“Wait for me,” O’Hara hissed.

Grant said, “Finish your meal, Lane. You won’t miss anything.”

Zeb and Egon were sitting together on the end of Karlstad’s berth, hunched over his palmcomp. Grant floated up to the overhead and held himself there with a hand against the metal ceiling.

“You actually hacked into Dr. Krebs’s personal medical file?” Muzorawa whispered.

Karlstad nodded. “I’m the life-support specialist on this mission, remember. Rank hath its privileges.”

They dared not put the file on the wallscreen of their common area; Krebs could tap into that through the ship’s main computer. So Grant squinted at the tiny, green-glowing display of Karlstad’s palmcomp, hardly aware that O’Hara floated in and joined him up by the ceiling without saying a word.

“I don’t see anything unusual here,” Muzorawa muttered.

O’Hara whispered, “This is prying into her personal affairs. It’s an invasion of her privacy, Egon.”

His head still bent over the palmcomp, Karlstad answered, “She could get us all killed, Lainie. That supersedes her right to privacy, as far as I’m concerned.”

“But her medical report is fine,” Muzorawa said. “She’s fully recovered from her injuries from the first mission. ‘Fit for duty.’ It says so right there.” He pointed to the glowing green screen.

“Wait,” Karlstad whispered impatiently. “Here’s the psychology material.”

“It’s normal.”

“Boringly normal,” Karlstad agreed, sounding disappointed. “It’s almost as if—hold it! What’s this?”

Grant saw the words buried in a paragraph so filled with jargon it was barely understandable: as a result of these physical trauma, the subject is afflicted with moderate visual agnosia.

“Visual agnosia?” Grant asked aloud. “What’s that?”

“Keep your voice down!” Karlstad snapped.

“But what is it?” O’Hara echoed.

“I think I know. I’ll have to look it up to be certain.”

Muzorawa said, “You can’t access the ship’s references without the risk of the captain finding out what you’re doing.”

“And you can’t query the station’s computer again,” Grant added.

“Why not?” Karlstad demanded.

“Because you’ll get caught!”

Karlstad shut down his palmcomp. Grant pushed down from the overhead and settled on the deck, followed by O’Hara.

“Listen to me,” Karlstad whispered urgently. “We may have a crazy woman running this ship. We ought to know what this condition of hers is all about. We have that right!”

Muzorawa said, “It doesn’t matter. Now that we are in the ocean we are truly out of contact with the station.”

“Unless we trail out the antenna,” said O’Hara. “It’s five kilometers long. At our present cruising depth we could use it to contact the station.”

“Krebs would find out,” Grant warned.

“Not if we do it when she’s asleep,” countered Karlstad.

“If she goes to sleep before we start descending deeper,” O’Hara said.

“Lane, do you agree with Egon?” Muzorawa asked.

She frowned, trying to put her emotions into words. “I’m not certain. She does behave peculiarly, don’t you think?”

Grant wanted to argue against it, but instead he asked Muzorawa, “Zeb, what do you think? Should we take the chance and query the station’s medical computer again?”

For a long moment Muzorawa remained silent, obviously weighing the pros and cons of the matter. At last he said gravely, “Yes, I’m afraid we must take the risk. The psychologists may have reported her fit for duty, but the stresses of the mission might aggravate her condition—whatever it is.”

“We have a right to know,” Karlstad repeated.

“Yes,” Muzorawa agreed. “Probably it’s nothing and we are being foolish. But we should know, even if for no other reason than our own peace of mind.”

Grant suddenly got a different idea. “We could ask her,” he blurted.

“What?”

“Ask her about her condition,” Grant said.

Karlstad groaned at the thought. Muzorawa shook his head. O’Hara said, “I don’t think that would be the thing to do, not at all.”

COMMUNICATIONS

Back on duty, Grant kept one eye on O’Hara’s navigation plot. Zheng He was cruising fifteen hundred meters beneath the point where the atmospheric density equaled the density of water on Earth’s surface. The communications antenna was more than three times longer. As long as Krebs didn’t order them to go deeper, they could unspool the fiber-optic cable and contact the station.

When Krebs slept. She showed no indication of doing so. They cruised through the ocean, checking all the ship’s systems, Muzorawa standing glassy-eyed at his console while the sensors poured an unending stream of data into the computers—and sights, sounds, all sorts of sensory impressions directly into his nervous system.

The power and propulsion systems were working so smoothly that Grant almost felt bored, standing at his console. His legs ached now, and a vague, dull pain nagged at him, behind his eyes, barely on the threshold of consciousness, just enough to be bothersome. He tapped into Zeb’s sensor data, intending to peek at the incoming data for only a few moments.

Instantly he was awed by the flow of sensations that enveloped him. He could see through the water clearly, see the swirl of manna trickling from above, and—far in the distance—thicker streams of the organic particles sifting downward into the darker depths. The water flowed past him smoothly, as if he were gliding through the ocean like a fish. And the ocean was warm; Grant felt a steady glow of heat rising from the bottomless depths.

There were no creatures in this sea, he realized. No fish, no fronds of plants. We’ve got to go deeper for that. Dr. Wo said they detected the moving objects more than ten kilometers below the surface, and even then they were so far away—

“She’s asleep.”

Grant snapped his attention back to the bridge. He had to blink several times, get his perspective adjusted. I’m in this ship, he told himself, consciously disconnecting from the sensors’ data stream.

Turning, Grant saw that Krebs had actually left the bridge. The optic fibers that linked her to the ship’s systems were tucked back in their storage locker in the overhead.

“She finally left the bridge,” Karlstad said softly, furtively, “after almost fifty hours straight on duty.”

“She took a couple of naps,” O’Hara said.

“Run out the antenna,” Karlstad told her. “Quick, while we’ve got the chance.”

Muzorawa said, “Grant, it might be wise if you go to the hatch and keep an eye on her. Warn us if she gets out of her bunk.”

“I’ll have to disconnect,” Grant complained.

“I’ll monitor your systems,” Muzorawa said.

With even more reluctance than usual, Grant disconnected while O’Hara spooled out the antenna and powered up the microwave transceiver.

“Oooh, there’s a great lot of incoming messages waiting for us,” she said. Then, her expression turning puzzled: “No, wait. It’s only one message, but they’ve been repeating it over and over again.”

“Never mind the incoming crap,” Karlstad snapped. “Link me to the medical computer.”

Grant hovered by the hatch, one eye on Krebs’s berth, the other on the wallscreen that began showing blocks of medical jargon. Krebs’s bunk was shuttered off by its privacy screen. The captain was resting, alone, disconnected from the ship for the first time since they’d left the station.

He wondered about Krebs, what drove her. Nearly killed in the first deep mission, here she was back in the Jovian ocean, staying linked to the ship far longer than she had to, longer than she ought to. Is she surrendering to the emotional power of the linkage? Grant asked himself. But if she did, how could she disconnect herself voluntarily after so many hours of being linked? She must be tough, he thought; a lot stronger than I am.

“So that’s it!”

Karlstad’s exclamation made Grant turn to the bridge. The three of them were still at their consoles, and the wallscreen was covered with medical terms.

“Visual agnosia,” said Karlstad, “means she doesn’t recognize things visually. Her visual sense is impaired.”

“You mean she can’t recognize faces?” O’Hara asked.

Nodding vigorously, Karlstad said, “That’s why she looks so funny at you. She can’t tell who she’s looking at until you say something to her. Then she recognizes your voice.”

“That’s strange,” Muzorawa said.

Scrolling through the medical dictionary display, Karlstad said, “It’s rare, but there’s a considerable history on it.”

“What causes it?”

“Often it’s physical trauma to the brain, the visual cortex. A cerebral hemorrhage, for instance.”

“A stroke?”

“Or a physical blow to the head,” Karlstad added.

“But she’s had neither,” Muzorawa pointed out.

Karlstad said, “True, but she was badly injured in the first mission.”

“No head injuries, if I recall rightly,” said O’Hara.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Karlstad sounded disappointed.

Grant spoke up. “What about living in this high-pressure environment? Could that cause injury to the brain?”

“The earliest experiments did cause some nerve damage,” Karlstad said. “That’s why we raise the pressure slowly, give the body time to adjust.”

“Do you think that’s what’s happened to Dr. Krebs?” O’Hara asked.

“Obviously,” said Karlstad.

“Then what do we do about it, do you think?” she wondered aloud.

“Nothing,” Muzorawa said, “Nothing at all?”

“Krebs has adjusted to her problem. It hasn’t interfered with her work, has it?”

“No,” O’Hara said slowly, “I suppose it hasn’t.”

“Not yet,” Karlstad said.

“The medical board approved her for this mission,” Muzorawa pointed out. “The psychologists did not object.”

Karlstad looked unconvinced. “She’s a walking time bomb,” he muttered.

“I disagree,” Muzorawa said.

“She could get us all killed.”

Muzorawa’s expression was utterly serious. “Egon-all of you—I think our best course of action is to watch Dr. Krebs carefully. If she shows signs of disability, if she begins to behave erratically, then we will have to decide what should be done. At present, she’s performing quite normally.”

“Staying linked to the ship for nearly fifty hours is normal?” Karlstad challenged.

“Did she perform her duties well?” Muzorawa shot back. “Have we accomplished our mission goals so far?”

The two men were glaring at each other, Grant saw: Karlstad with his usual haughty, almost sneering expression; Muzorawa stolid and determined.

O’Hara broke the deadlock. “I’d better take a peek at this message the station’s been beaming to us all this time.”

Muzorawa said, “Good idea.” Karlstad nodded.

The medical dictionary’s text vanished from the wallscreen. In its place the blue-and-white symbol of the International Astronautical Authority appeared, quickly replaced by the scowling face of a man in a gray tunic, sitting at what appeared to be a workstation aboard a spacecraft.

Grant twitched with surprise. He knew that face. It was Ellis Beech, the New Morality official who had recruited him to spy on Dr. Wo.

Beech’s dark eyes were steady and calm, his long narrow face looked composed, almost indifferent. Yet to Grant there seemed to be something seething beneath that impassive cool exterior, something unrelenting, implacable.

“Dr. Krebs, I am the chairman of the IAA inspection team approaching the station. You have previously been ordered by Dr. Wo to abort your mission and return to Station Gold. He gave that order at my insistence. Now I personally order you to return to the station. In the name of the IAA, I order you to abort your mission and return at once! We know that the message you sent with the data capsule is a deliberate falsehood. You are still able to maintain communications contact with the station. Return at once or you will be stripped of your position at Station Gold and your professorship in Heidelberg will be forfeited. Abort your mission and return immediately!”

Grant stared at Beech’s icy image on the wallscreen. How could he be chairman of the IAA team? he wondered, his mind spinning. The New Morality must have taken control of the inspection team. Maybe they’ve taken over the entire IAA!

Karlstad also stared at the wallscreen, mouth hanging open in shock.

“They found out about your tapping the medical computer,” Muzorawa said softly. It wasn’t an accusation, merely a statement of lamentable fact.

“That they did,” O’Hara agreed sadly.

Karlstad closed his mouth, shrugged, then said, “Okay, so they found out. What do we do about it?”

“I don’t know,” said Muzorawa. “This is an awful situation.”

“For Krebs,” Karlstad said.

“For all of us,” Muzorawa corrected.

“Maybe not,” Karlstad said. “She’s in command, after all. We’re just following her orders. She’s the one who told us not to acknowledge Wo’s order to return to the station.”

“Dr. Wo gave that order under duress,” Grant said heatedly. “It’s obvious they were forcing him to make that call.”

“That still doesn’t help us to decide what we should do about this,” O’Hara said. “Should we—” She stopped, her eyes going wide.

From behind him, Grant heard Krebs’s harsh voice. “So you’ve put me into the meatgrinder, eh?”

Grant whirled around. How long had she been standing there at the hatch? How much had she heard?

“Let me assure you, all of you,” Krebs snarled, “that if I go down, the four of you go down with me.”

DETERMINATION

“We are here to explore the ocean,” Krebs said firmly. “We are not turning back because some bureaucrat in the IAA has allowed the politicians to overrule his own sense of responsibility.”

“But, Captain—” Karlstad began.

“Silence! Men and women have died in this effort. Do you think that I’m going to spit on their graves by turning back? Not before we’ve done our damnedest to find out if there’s life down here.”

“Yes, Captain,” Karlstad said, as if he’d never considered any other course of action.

“I agree completely,” said Muzorawa.

“It doesn’t matter whether you agree or not,” Krebs spat. “We are going deeper. Now.” She leveled a finger at O’Hara. “And no communication with the station! Nothing! For no reason. Even if we are dying in this coffin we make no attempt to contact the station unless I tell you to. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear,” Lane answered.

“Good. Now take your stations. We are going down to ten kilometers.”

Wordlessly the four of them began to link up to the ship’s systems. Krebs did also. Grant felt almost relieved. At least she knows it all now. We’re not sneaking around her back anymore. The visual amnesia or whatever her condition is doesn’t affect her ability to run this ship.

“Ready for linkage,” he reported. Before the others, he noticed.

“Very good, Mr. Archer. You may link.”

As Grant reached for the console switch that would unite him again with the power and propulsion systems, he realized that Krebs couldn’t possibly be a Zealot terrorist. She doesn’t want to destroy this mission, she wants to carry it through, no matter what the consequences afterward.

He felt better about her. And about the mission. He tried not to think about what would happen to them after the mission, when they returned to the station and the waiting Ellis Beech.

Once the others were linked, Krebs gave the order to dive to ten kilometers. After several hours, the headache behind his eyes was throbbing through Grant’s skull. The pressure’s building up, he realized. As we dive deeper the pressure outside the hull goes higher, which means the pressure here on the bridge goes up to compensate.

How deep can we go? he asked himself. He knew the submersible’s specifications, but those were merely numbers. How much pressure can we stand? Zeb was wrong: This vessel can take a lot more pressure than we can. We’ll crack long before the hull does.

He glanced at Karlstad, tending the life-support console. Egon looked tense, his lips a thin tight line, his face even paler than usual. If we weren’t immersed in this fluid he’d be sweating, Grant thought. Egon can feel the pressure squeezing on the hull; it must seem like a giant vise trying to crush his body.

“Ten kilometers,” Lane sang out.

“Maintain descent angle,” said Krebs. “We’re going deeper.”

Grant heard a groan. It didn’t come from anyone on the bridge. It was a metallic, grinding complaint.

“Pay no attention to that noise,” Krebs told them. “It’s not important.”

As if in obedience to her, the grinding noise stopped.

“Support cylinder nine needs lubrication,” Krebs said, trying to reassure them. “Nothing to worry about.”

The nested shells that comprised the Zheng He were connected by buttressing cylinders that contained hydraulic pistons within them. They compressed slightly as the pressure outside the hull squeezed on the ship. Grant began to wonder how well the cylinders would support the shells if one of them was already showing signs of strain.

Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong, he realized. Maybe the ship will fail before our pain becomes unbearable.

After a tense four hours of steady descent, Krebs told Muzorawa and Karlstad to take a rest period.

“One hour, then report back here to relieve O’Hara and Grant,” she commanded.

Grant took over Karlstad’s life-support systems. True to his expectations, he could feel the pressure inside each level of the ship building, mounting, pressing in on him, slowly crushing him to death like a giant boa constrictor wrapping its coils around him. It was getting difficult to breathe; it took a conscious effort to lift his chest to inhale.

Stop it! he chided himself. It’s 90 percent imagination. Ninety-nine percent! Look at the pressure graph; it’s only gone up a couple of percentage points since we entered the ocean. You’re letting your emotions overpower your brain.

Still he felt as if he were being smothered. His headache pounded. He glanced at O’Hara. She seemed normal enough, intently piloting the ship deeper into the sea, watching with glowing eyes the sensors that Zeb normally monitored. Grant fought an urge to tap into the sensor net and see what she was looking at. No, he told himself, you’ve got enough to do. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted.

Then he wondered what the increasing pressure was doing to Krebs. Her condition was due to pressure-induced trauma to her brain. It would be worse as they descended deeper. Did she feel pain? Confusion? He shot a glance over his shoulder at her. Krebs seemed perfectly normal, floating in her usual spot up by the overhead, scowling at him.

“She’s following the currents of organic particles,” O’Hara said to Grant once they were back to the sleeping area.

“You can see them that clearly?”

With a smile Lane said, “In the sonar they show up like a whirlwind, except that they appear white as snow.”

Gesturing to the wallscreen of their common area, Grant asked, “Can you show me?”

O’Hara nodded and spoke into the screen’s microphone. “Display sonar imagery.”

The screen brightened to life, showing a stream of bright white swirling through the dark ocean. It’s just as Lane described it, Grant thought: a whirlwind of snow. He knew the white color of the imagery was an artifact created by the computer program. It made the organic particles easier to discern against the ocean background, easier to track. Lord, Grant thought, if I’d known about this I could’ve used the particles to map out the ocean currents.

With sudden enthusiasm, he stepped to the microphone and said, “Correlate sonar returns with mapping imagery.”

“Please provide more specific input,” the computer’s synthesized voice replied.

Grant ducked into his cubicle and stretched the length of his bunk to pull his palmcomp from its resting place on the shelf above his pillow.

“I’ll be at this awhile,” he said to O’Hara as he sat on the end of his bunk.

She shrugged and crawled into her own cubicle.

After a few minutes, Krebs appeared at the hatch, trailing her optical fibers from her legs, “You are supposed to be resting, Mr. Archer, not writing your thesis.”

“This isn’t my thesis, ma’am,” he said, totally missing her irony. “I’m setting up my fluid dynamics program to use the particle streams as tracers—you know, the way aerodynamicists use smoke particles in their wind tunnel tests.”

“You need your rest.”

“Yes’m. In a few minutes, please.”

Krebs watched him in silence for several seconds, then turned and floated back into the bridge. Grant was still working on the palmcomp when Muzorawa and Karlstad came in for their rest period.

“She wants you on duty,” Muzorawa said.

“In a minute,” Grant said. “I’m almost finished here.”

“Can I help?” Zeb asked, settling on the end of the bunk beside Grant.

“It would take longer to bring you up to speed than it will for me to finish this.”

Muzorawa laughed softly. “The cruel honesty of youth.”

Grant didn’t reply. He barely heard the older man. He hardly noticed when Muzorawa got up and went back to the bridge.

When at last he was finished and the program was running properly, Grant pushed himself up from the bunk and swam through the hatch. Muzorawa was at his console, fully linked up, with O’Hara beside him.

“Are you finished, Mr. Archer?” Krebs asked, dripping acid.

“Yes, ma’am. The program’s working fine now. Thank you for being so patient.”

“Thank Dr. Muzorawa; he is doing your work instead of enjoying his rest period.”

Grant fumbled with his optical fibers in his hurry to get linked. Zeb shot him an understanding smile.

“You have thoroughly messed up the work schedule, Archer,” growled Krebs. “I hope your inspiration improves the fluid dynamics program enough to compensate.”

Grant nodded, thinking, It does. It certainly does. But he knew enough to keep his mouth shut.

They passed seventy kilometers’ depth, following the spiraling flow of the organic particles, still diving deeper. Karlstad complained of a constant headache, O’Hara said she was starting to feel nagging pains in her arms and back, even Muzorawa said he was having some difficulty breathing. Grant’s own headache was still there, not much worse than earlier but certainly no better. Krebs said nothing, neither complaining about her own condition nor making the slightest comment on their gripes. She seemed utterly disdainful of their frailties; whenever she barked a command at him, Grant thought she was looking through him, not at him.

The ship creaked and groaned constantly now, making Grant wonder how deep they could safely go. He recalled that the ship’s design limit was ninety kilometers.

Ninety? Grant marveled. We’ve all got physical problems now, at seventy; how will we be when we’re twenty klicks deeper?

Still Krebs kept the ship descending.

“Do you realize where we’re heading?” O’Hara asked Grant during one of their reliefs.

He felt bone-tired; his throbbing headache was sapping his energy. Lane looked weary, too. She floated a few centimeters from the deck of their common area.

arms half bent before her.

“What do you mean?” he asked. What he really wanted was to crawl back into his berth and sleep for the four hours that were due him.

“The Spot,” Lane said.

That made Grant’s eyes snap wide. “The Great Red Spot?” His voice squeaked, even in the tone-deepening perfluorocarbon.

She nodded as she hooked a heel against the end of her bunk and forced herself down to a sitting position.

“We can’t be going into the Great Red Spot,” Grant said.

“That’s where the currents lead,” O’Hara said, “and we’re following the currents.”

“But she’ll turn off sooner or later.”

“She’s convinced that if there are creatures that eat those organics, they must follow the thickest streams of them. So we’re following the thickest stream and it flows into the Spot.”

“But she’ll veer off,” Grant repeated. “Before we get too close.”

O’Hara closed her eyes. “I suppose so. At the moment I don’t really care. All I want is a good sleep— and to wake up without this backache.”

Grant slid into his berth and fastened the mesh webbing that kept him from floating off the mattress while he was sleeping. It was like nestling into a cocoon, one of the few comforts on this mission. He fell asleep almost instantly.

And dreamed of being dragged into a never-ending whirlpool, crushed and drowned, his screams unheard, his pain unending.

TENACITY

“Approaching ninety kilometers,” said O’Hara, her voice edgy, tinged with strain.

Maximum design depth, Grant knew. He and Lane were on duty, Karlstad and Muzorawa in their berths. O’Hara looked tense, tired. She’s in pain, just like me, Grant thought. Like all of us. We’re all suffering. The pressure’s getting to us, physically and mentally.

“Level off at ninety,” said Krebs, “and maintain course.”

Continue following the stream of organics, Grant interpreted the order. Continue heading toward the Great Red Spot. At least we won’t go any deeper, he thought. We can’t. The ship can’t take it; neither can we.

There was still no sign of any Jovian creatures, great or small. The organic particles swirled and flowed through the great surging ocean, but there was no sign of creatures that fed on them. They had even driven all the way across the turbulent stream, the ship bucking and heaving as their instruments sucked in some of the particles for analysis.

“Jovian carbohydrates,” Karlstad announced, after testing the samples. “Good enough to eat—almost.”

But if the first mission had actually detected giant beasts deep down in the ocean, they certainly had not shown up here. Dr. Wo’s hypothesis that where there was food there must be eaters was proving to be nothing more than wishful thinking. Grant said to himself, Propter hoc ergo post hoc is just as fallacious as the other way around.

Although the fusion generator was performing well, as reliable as a tiny little star, the thrusters were showing signs of wear. Grant felt the erosion of their metal chambers as fatigue, a painful weariness in his bones atop the real pain and weariness of his true body. There was nothing he could do about it. All the diagnostics showed the metal was well within tolerable limits, it just felt so tiring to be linked with it, like being chained to an oar in an ancient galley. Grant thought about disconnecting from the thrusters and relying on the ordinary display screens of his console, but he hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask Krebs for permission to do so.

He was also monitoring the sensors on this shift, striving consciously to avoid being hypnotized by the constant swirling stream of the organics flowing through the ocean. It was fascinating, soothing, lulling him into forgetting about the thrusters and the headache that throbbed behind his eyes and—

What was that?

A flashing glint of something. At first Grant thought he had imagined it, but then he saw it again through the sensors’ multispectral cameras. Something glittering in the stream of organic particles, smaller than the organics, reflecting the light from the ship’s forward spotlights.

Without saying a word, Grant opened the ports for the samplers to suck in some of the particles. Most of them were the organics that they’d been following all this time, but these new things … he wondered what they could be.

The samplers scooped in a batch of particles and automatically fed them to the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer for analysis. The data flashed into his mind almost instantly. He saw graphs, diagrams, photomicrographs.

Carbon. Nothing but plain old carbon. Crystallized by the pressure, he saw. Then it hit him.

“Diamonds!” he blurted aloud.

O’Hara, standing beside him, turned toward him. “What did you say?”

“Those smaller particles … they’re tiny diamonds!”

“No!”

“Yes, really,” Grant said. “Tap into the analysis. They’re pure crystallized carbon. Diamonds.”

“Glory be,” said O’Hara.

Krebs, monitoring the analysis equipment along with everything else, said, “Congratulations, Mr. Archer, you have discovered a diamond mine.”

“We can bring some back with us,” Grant said, grinning for the first time in days.

“Ah, but they’re too small for jewelry,” said O’Hara sadly. “Microscopic, don’t you see.”

Krebs grunted behind them. “Considering the cost of this mission, they will be the most expensive diamonds ever found.”

That dampened Grant’s mood almost completely. He returned to monitoring the sensors. Still, he thought, rivers of diamonds flowing in the Jovian ocean. A snowfall of diamonds. I wonder if the Jovians appreciate what God’s giving them?

For nearly thirty-six hours they cruised at the ninety-kilometer level, the ship groaning and creaking, the crew in greater and greater discomfort. Karlstad grumbled constantly; even Muzorawa was clearly having a difficult time of it, despite his stoic refusal to complain. No sign of Jovians, nothing seemed to be moving in the ocean except the streams of particles constantly flowing past.

All that time Krebs remained on the bridge, fully linked to every one of the ship’s systems. Grant and the others took their rest periods, tried to get a couple of hours of sleep, injected analgesics into their neck ports to ease the constant pain and pressure. Yet Krebs remained awake and on duty.

“Captain,” said Karlstad at last, “as life-support specialist and the closest thing we have to a medical doctor, I must remind you that you’ve been on duty without relief for more than two days straight now.”

“Thank you, Dr. Karlstad,” Krebs replied, her voice heavy with irony. “You have reminded me. Now take your station and do your duty.”

“It’s my duty to remind you that you must rest,” Karlstad said, looking worried.

“I am not ready for a rest period,” Krebs said firmly. “I do not need it.”

Grant and O’Hara were still linked to their consoles, ready to come off duty. Muzorawa was hovering by the hatch that led back to the berths.

Swimming over to the life-support console, Karlstad pointed at one of its display screens. “Captain, it’s not me. It’s the mission regulations. The medical monitors show a dangerous level of fatigue poisons in your blood. Your reflexes have slowed. Your pulse and respiration rates are approaching the redline.”

Krebs said nothing. She merely floated in the middle of the cramped bridge, glowering at Karlstad.

Muzorawa said reasonably, “Captain, if you don’t rest, your performance will deteriorate even more. The mission regulations require you to relinquish command when your physical parameters—”

“I know the regulations!” Krebs snapped.

“You must rest, Captain,” Muzorawa said, even more gently. “Even if it’s only for an hour.”

Grant thought, She doesn’t want to disconnect from the ship. She’s hooked on being connected, like an addict.

To Grant’s surprise, though, Krebs’s baleful frown dissolved into a dejected mask of defeat. “Very well, if you insist.”

“It’s for the better, Captain,” said Muzorawa.

“Yes, I understand.” Krebs began disconnecting, slowly, begrudging every move, as far as Grant could see.

The bridge fell absolutely silent as she disconnected.

When at last she was free of the fiber-optic lines, she said sourly, “Very well. Dr. Muzorawa, I place you in charge. Dr. Karlstad, wake me in one hour.”

“In one hour,” said Karlstad. “Right.”

She pushed off the overhead with one hand and swam toward the hatch. Muzorawa was still hovering there, looking surprised as Krebs headed straight for him.

She banged into Muzorawa and bounced off, with a gasp of surprise, her eyes going wide.

“Pardon me, Captain,” Muzorawa said, also looking shocked.

“I-I didn’t notice you there,” Krebs stuttered. She reached gropingly for the edge of the hatch, gripped it in one chunky hand, pulled herself through and slid the hatch shut behind her with a bang.

For a long moment no one on the bridge said a word.

Then Karlstad whispered, “Jesus Christ, she’s blind!”

“No,” said O’Hara. “That can’t be.”

“You saw her,” Karlstad insisted. “She ran smack into Zeb. She didn’t see him! She said so herself.”

“That’s why she wants to remain linked with the ship,” Muzorawa said slowly. “She can see through the ship’s systems.”

Karlstad nodded grimly. “But when she disconnects she’s blind as a bat.”

CONFUSION

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” O’Hara asked.

“We can’t have a blind woman running the mission,” said Karlstad.

Muzorawa, connecting the optical fibers from his console, pointed out, “But she’s not blind when she’s connected.”

Karlstad began to link up, too. “Whatever damage was done to her visual cortex, it’s gotten worse.”

“’Tis the pressure we’re under,” said O’Hara.

“Right. It’s damaging her brain even more,” Karlstad agreed.

“It only seems to affect her visual cortex,” Muzorawa said.

“So far,” said Karlstad. “How long will it be before other parts of her brain start to cave in?”

His eyes riveted on the closed hatch, Grant heard himself say, “She’s sailing us toward the Red Spot.”

“She’ll turn off long before we’re in any danger,” Muzorawa said.

“Will she?” Karlstad asked.

“Of course she will.”

“I think she’s going crazy,” Karlstad said. “She was always a tyrant. Now she’s getting fanatical, ignoring a direct order from the IAA.”

“We all agreed that we want to continue the mission,” Muzorawa said.

“Did we?” Karlstad shot back. “Nobody asked me.”

“Are you afraid, ’Gon?” O’Hara challenged him.

“Afraid? Me? Ninety kilometers down with a crazy blind woman in command who’s telling the IAA to stick it in their lower intestine? What’s there to be afraid of?”

Muzorawa finished connecting his optical fiber links. “I think a certain amount of fear is a healthy sign. But we mustn’t let it overwhelm us. We must not panic or take rash actions.”

“What do you mean by rash?” O’Hara asked. “Relieving Krebs of command,” Karlstad replied instantly.

“We can’t do that,” Grant said.

“Not even if she’s going to get us all killed?”

“There is no evidence of that,” said Muzorawa. Then he added, “As yet.”

O’Hara looked toward the closed hatch. “She must be in terrible pain.”

“She doesn’t act it,” said Karlstad.

“Not physical pain, perhaps, but… imagine being blind. Unable to see.”

“Unless she’s connected to the ship.”

“Yes,” said O’Hara, in a whisper. “There is that.”

“So what are we going to do?” Karlstad demanded.

No one had an answer.

Krebs returned to the bridge exactly one hour after she left, without the need for Karlstad to rouse her.

Watching her link up, it now seemed obvious to Grant that she couldn’t see. She fingered each of the optical fibers, her eyes unfocused, and ran its end across the electrodes in her legs until its minuscule electrical field clicked into place with the proper implant. She can’t see the color codes on the fibers, Grant realized. She can’t see anything at all.

Until she was completely wired and activated her linkage. Then she straightened up and took command.

“Mr. Grant, what are you gawking at?” she demanded.

Grant snapped his head around and stared at his console. “Nothing, Captain.”

“You tend to your duties, Mr. Grant, and I will tend to mine.”

“Yes’m.”

“Dr. Krebs,” said Muzorawa. “We must discuss your condition.”

“There is nothing to discuss.”

“I’m afraid there is.”

“I am fully capable of executing my responsibilities,” Krebs said. Grant thought he heard the slightest of tremors in her voice.

“Dr. Krebs, the trauma to your visual cortex is worsening.”

Krebs glared at him but said nothing.

“It is possible that it will continue to worsen,” Muzorawa went on calmly, reasonably. “It could lead to a cerebral hemorrhage.”

“I know that,” said Krebs, her voice several notches lower than usual. “I accept that risk.”

“We should abort the mission and return to the station,” Muzorawa said. Grant marveled at how impersonally he managed to put it. No blame. No shame.

Krebs hovered in the middle of the bridge, breathing hard enough for Grant to see her chest rising and falling. The ship was running smoothly enough; he still felt the steady thrum of the generator and the energy of the thrusters, but that was all background now, like the constant aching pressure behind his eyes, like the growing dull pain in his back, pushed to one side as he focused consciously on the interplay between Muzorawa and Krebs.

At last she said, “If we return to the station with nothing to show for our efforts, they will never permit another mission. They have already ordered us to abandon our work. I will not do that. Not under any circumstances. Is that clear?”

“But your health is in danger. Your life—”

“What good is my life if I can’t pursue the search to which I’ve devoted it?” Krebs’s voice rose powerfully. “What use would my life be if I am not permitted to do the work which I love? I have already sacrificed everything else in my life—family, friends, even lovers— to be here, in this damned ocean, seeking the answer to the greatest question of them all: Is there intelligent life here? Will we find a companion species, another life-form with which we can converse? Will the human race’s loneliness end here, in the hot sea of Jupiter?”

None of the crew could say a word. They all stared at her.

Krebs broke into a bitter smile. “I see the disbelief on your face, Dr. Karlstad. You find it difficult to believe that I had lovers?”

“Uh, n-no, not at all,” Karlstad stammered.

“We go on,” Krebs said. “I don’t care if I die here. Better here than in some dusty classroom where I wouldn’t even be allowed to teach about extraterrestrial life.”

Muzorawa replied meekly, “Yes, Captain.”

Krebs nodded as if satisfied, then turned her baleful look toward O’Hara. “Dr. O’Hara, dive angle of five degrees. Now.”

Lane glanced at the others, then asked, “We’re going deeper?”

“Deeper,” said Krebs.

Grant’s head throbbed with pain. Each beat of his pulse was like a hammer banging inside his sinuses. His back hurt as if it were slowly petrifying. They had passed the hundred-kilometer depth and were still pushing deeper, in a shallow dive that ran parallel to a bright swirling stream of organic particles.

Somewhere out in that dark sea waited the Great Red Spot, Grant knew. He could not see it, not even when tapping into the ship’s long-range sensors. But it was there, that enormous vortex, that eternal storm that was bigger than the entire Earth, sucking currents into its voracious maw. It was waiting for them, drawing them to it like a magnet pulls on a tiny filing of iron.

They were riding one of those inflowing currents now, buffeting noticeably whenever they drifted toward its turbulent outer edge. As long as they remained well within the current, though, the ship rode easily, smoothly. Grant was able to cut down on the thrusters’ power. The Red Spot was doing their work for them, but Grant feared that the work would lead to their destruction.

On a rest break with Muzorawa, Grant pleaded, “Zeb, you can’t let her drag us into the Red Spot.”

“She’ll turn off long before we get into danger,” Muzorawa said. But his red-rimmed eyes would not maintain contact with Grant’s.

Pulling himself down wearily to sit on the end of his bunk, Grant pointed out, “The current’s getting stronger. I don’t know how far we can go before it’ll be too strong for the thrusters to break us free.”

Muzorawa considered that for a long, silent moment, then looked directly at Grant. “What does your fluid dynamics program tell you?”

“I’d have to make a calculation …”

“Do that,” Muzorawa said wearily. “Then show it to me. It might be the point that forces a decision.”

“A decision?”

“About her,” said Muzorawa, gesturing toward the bridge.

Still they descended. A hundred kilometers, a hundred ten, a hundred fifteen. The ship creaked and groaned, metal screeching with strain. She sounds as if she’s in agony, Grant thought. Just like the rest of us.

O’Hara came back onto the bridge after a rest period with a smile on her lips. It surprised Grant; he hadn’t seen any of them smile in days.

“You must have had a good dream,” he said as she hooked up.

“No dream,” O’Hara replied. “I didn’t sleep at all.”

Grant closed his eyes. The headache seemed to abate a little when his eyes were closed, and he saw the glowing star at the heart of the fusion generator, felt its warmth, thrilled at the harmonies of electricity coursing through the ship’s wiring.

“Look at this.” O’Hara nudged him. “I took them from the sampling system.”

She held a dozen or so tiny pebbles in the palm of her hand. No, not pebbles, Grant thought. They were so minute they looked almost like dust motes, except that they were a glassy light gray rather than sooty black.

“Your diamonds,” O’Hara said, her voice lilting with delight.

“Is that what they are?”

“They’re truly diamonds, they are. Not gemstone quality, I’m afraid, and very small. But how many women can say they’ve held a fistful of diamonds in the palm of their hand?”

“Hey, let me see,” Karlstad said, from his console.

Krebs’s sour voice broke in, “You are supposed to be on duty, Dr. O’Hara.”

“I was showing Mr. Archer the diamonds that the sampler’s scooped in,” Lane replied somewhat defensively.

“You should have spent your rest period resting Krebs growled. “You know that—”

“Something’s moving down there,” Muzorawa said.

“What?” Krebs shot over toward him like a stumpy torpedo.

“Very long range,” said Muzorawa. “Sonar return. But definitely a moving object.”

“Distance? Speed?” Krebs demanded. “We need numbers!”

“There’s more than one!” Muzorawa’s voice was shaking now.

Grant tapped into the sensor net and saw three, no four, fuzzy things moving slowly in the same direction as the ship. Another slid into view, then two more.

“They’re seventy-eight point six kilometers, slant range,” Muzorawa called out.

“How deep are they?”

“Fourteen kilometers deeper than we are.”

“O’Hara, give me a two-degree angle of descent.”

“We can’t go deeper!” Karlstad cried out. “We’re far beyond our design limit now!”

“Silence!” Krebs roared. “Deeper!”

LEVIATHAN

Leviathan cruised slowly through the stream of food, eating constantly to regain its strength. The flagella were already in bud, to replace the members that had been lost, and that took even more energy. Leviathan ate greedily but swam steadily around the great storm, heading back for the haunts of its Kin.

Several of the skin members were budding, too, but it would be a long time before their offspring could be thickened and hardened to replace the armor Leviathan had lost when it was up along the edges of the cold abyss.

Leviathan was impatient to find its Kin, eager to replay to them the tale of its battles with the Darters and the eerie, tentacled monster up in the cold distance. Yet it knew that the Elders would display their displeasure. Many times they had warned Leviathan against moving away from the Kin. Youngsters often wanted to strike out on their own, they had pictured to Leviathan time and again, their imagery flashing deep red to show their seriousness. But youngsters usually disregarded the wisdom of their elders. Many never returned to the Kin.

Leviathan would return, it told itself, and return in triumph. It had gone to regions of the all-encompassing sea that no one of its kind had ever seen before. It had traveled up toward the cold abyss and survived. The Elders treasured knowledge, or so they imaged. Yet how could new knowledge be gained if no one moved off into the unexplored parts of the world?

Leviathan envisioned itself swimming with the Picturers, drawing the scenes of its epic journey so that they could add the depiction of its tale to the Kin’s history of images. No matter how many times its members dissociated and recombined, this adventure would remain in the minds of all who could see. It would never be forgotten.

But first Leviathan had to get back to the Kin. It followed the food stream, heading toward home. It would be good to return, even if the Elders flashed pictures of discontent over its adventure. They will be jealous, Leviathan thought. While they remained in the same old feeding grounds, I explored new regions. I will add to the store of knowledge, and that is a positive thing.

Leviathan realized that some time in the future it would become an Elder. The thought startled Leviathan. But it resolved never to cease exploring, even when it was an elder. And it would never discourage a youngster from exploring, either. Leviathan was certain of that.

Then a cluster of its sensor members felt a distant tremor in the darkness of the ocean.

Darters! they warned. Following us and coming up fast.

CONTACT

“Number-four cylinder’s failed!” Karlstad yelped.

“I see it,” said Krebs, her voice tight. “The piston has jammed. Structural integrity is not threatened.”

“It can’t take any more pressure,” Karlstad insisted.

“We are deep enough,” Krebs said. “Almost.”

Grant had tapped into Zeb’s sensor returns. He saw a herd of enormous things out there in the ocean, objects the size of mountains, of islands, so huge that size began to lose all meaning.

“Distance?” Krebs demanded.

“Fifty-two point four kilometers,” answered Muzorawa.

It made no sense to narrow the distance to them, Grant thought. They were so immense that getting closer would mean the sensors could focus only on one of them. On just a part of one of them, at that.

“Hold here,” Krebs commanded. “Conform to their course and speed.”

Grant felt the thrusters straining to match the speed of the Jovians. They were Jovians, he was certain. No doubt about that at all. Mind-boggling in size, they were gliding through the ocean, propelled by rows of flippers five times bigger than Zheng He. They seemed to be cruising leisurely through the stream of organics, sucking the particles up into many openings that lined their undersides.

They’re alive, Grant told himself. But could they be intelligent? They’re grazing like cows.

A light flashed on one of them, a sudden yellow glow that flared for a moment and then winked out.

“Did you see that?”

“A light of some kind.”

“Natural bioluminescence, do you think?”

“Look! They’re flickering back and forth!”

“Like signals!”

“Be quiet!” Krebs snapped. “Attend to your duties. Make certain that everything is being recorded.”

Grant’s heart was racing with excitement. He could see the giant creatures flicking lights along their massive flanks, red, yellow, a piercingly intense green. What does it mean? Are they intelligent signals? Can we make any sense of them?

“Maintain this distance from them,” Krebs repeated. “Conform to their course and speed.”

Grant had never felt so small, so dwarfed. From a distance of fifty-some kilometers the Jovians reminded him of a stately herd of elephants, but they were so blessedly big. Bigger than any creature that had ever lived on Earth. Bigger than a city. We’re just puny little insects compared to them. Ants. Microbes.

“They’re following the flow of organics,” O’Hara said.

“Cruising in the current,” Karlstad agreed.

“I can see that,” snapped Krebs. “Stop this chattering! Check all systems. Now.”

Grant felt resentful as he disengaged from the sensor data. Why can’t we all watch them? he grumbled to himself. We don’t need to check the damned systems. If there’s something wrong we’ll know it right away.

He realized that his headache was still pulsing away; he had ignored it during the excitement of seeing the Jovians. But the pain in his back was nagging at him, too, no longer merely stiffness but an ache that he couldn’t quite pin down, like an itch that moved when you tried to scratch it.

Then he saw it in razor-sharp clarity. The number-two thruster was sputtering, its plasma flow no longer smoothly laminar. The hot ionized gas was crinkling, twisting in the thruster tube. The magnetic fields that should be guiding and accelerating the plasma were pulsating fitfully.

Grant felt the thruster’s imminent failure as an increasingly sharp pain. His first instinct was to shut down the thruster and allow the automated repair program time to reline the tube with heat-shielding ceramic spray and replenish the liquid nitrogen coolant for the magnets.

To do that, though, he needed the captain’s approval. The thruster could not be shut down unless Krebs physically relinquished her control of the propulsion system.

“Captain, thruster number two—”

“I see it,” Krebs said.

“We should take it off-line for repair,” Grant told her.

“Not now.”

“But it’s headed for catastrophic failure.”

“Not for another twenty hours.”

Grant saw the diagnostic and double-checked it with a glance at his console screens. “But, Captain, that’s only an estimate. It could fail much sooner.”

Her voice heavy with disdain, Krebs said, “If we shut down the thruster we will slow down. The beasts out there will move away from us. We must keep pace with them.”

“Even if we lose the thruster altogether and can’t get ourselves out of the ocean?” Grant demanded.

“We are here to get data. We can always fire off a data capsule.”

“But we’ll die!”

“The data comes first. That is what is important.”

She doesn’t care if we live or die, Grant said to himself. Our lives, even her own life, isn’t as important to her as observing these creatures.

“The thruster can be repaired without taking it offline,” Krebs said calmly.

Grant checked into the maintenance program and found that she was right, up to a point. “It would only be a temporary patch,” he said. “The program recommends complete shutdown for necessary repairs.”

“Do what you can, Mr. Archer,” Krebs said. “The rest of us have observations to make.”

Fuming at the idea that he was forced to do a grease monkey’s work while the others were acting as scientists, Grant rechecked the maintenance program, then activated the automated sequence that started the repair work without shutting down the thruster.

The problem was a vicious circle, a closed negative feedback loop. The ceramic lining that shielded the thruster tube from the star-hot plasma flowing through it had eroded away in spots, allowing too much heat to soak through the metal walls of the tube and boil away some of the liquid nitrogen that kept the thruster’s superconducting magnet properly cooled. The magnetic field was wavering, kinking in spots, which became hotter than normal, thereby eroding away more of the ceramic heat-shield material.

Grant saw the problem as a visual image against his closed eyelids, felt it as a twitching pain that was spreading across his back. I’ve got to get the magnetic coil cooled down properly, he knew. If it heats up past its critical temperature, the whole magnetic field will collapse and release enough energy to explode like a bomb.

But pumping more liquid nitrogen to the magnetic coils was like sticking a finger in a dike that was crumbling. Nothing more than a stopgap. I’ve got to resurface the tube with ceramic. But how can I do that while the plasma’s still flowing through the goddamned tube?

The maintenance program showed him how. He saw the recommended emergency procedure: Pump the liquefied ceramic into the plasma stream while alternating the magnetic field so that it made the electrically conducting plasma swirl in a helical motion as it moved down the tube. The ceramic will be forced to the outer edge of the swirling helix, plastered against the wall of the tube. Some of the ceramic will stick to the wall and begin to solidify.

Fine, Grant thought as the images flashed through his brain. But most of the ceramic will flow right down the tube and out the thruster nozzle.

It’s a brute-force fix, he realized, but the only one that could be done as long as Krebs refused to shut down the thruster for proper repairs.

Swallowing hard, Grant spoke the sequence of alphanumerics that triggered the repair system. He watched the ceramic being injected into the plasma as the magnets began pulsing according to the preset program. His back throbbed and twitched, his head felt slightly giddy. This isn’t going to work, he told himself. All I’m doing is pumping the ceramic out of the ship.

But slowly the temperature along the thruster tube wall began to creep down. A single sharp ping rang in his ears and the program automatically increased the flow of liquid nitrogen to the superconducting coils. Grant saw the magnetic field stabilize, the plasma’s swirling smoothed to a clean laminar flow.

It’s done, he saw. The heat transfer across the tube wall is back to within tolerable levels. The pain in his back had eased away.

But it was only temporary, Grant realized. A stopgap repair, a thin patch on a gushing wound. The problem would recur. Checking the system reserves, Grant saw that he had used more than half of the available ceramic. If—no, when the thruster got into trouble again, it would take all the ceramic that was left to fix it. If that would be enough.

“Karlstad, prepare a data capsule,” Krebs ordered. “I want everything we have recorded to go into it. Every bit of data.”

“Captain, that’s the communications specialist’s job,” Karlstad replied.

“You do it,” Krebs snapped. “Dr. O’Hara must devote her full attention to piloting.”

Zheng He was still cruising some fifty kilometers from the herd of Jovians. The creatures were still grazing placidly along the stream of organic particles. Grant was still worried about the plasma thruster. It was performing well enough, but the thrusters were running at almost full capacity as the ship struggled to keep pace with the Jovians.

They’re gliding along easily, Grant thought, almost lolling in the water. Even so they’re going so fast that we’re barely able to stay with them. What do we do if they get frightened and run away?

But the idea of anything frightening such massive beasts almost made Grant laugh. What could possibly bother them? They are the lords of this creation, stately and immense, unperturbed in their power.

He had lost track of time. They had all been on the bridge continuously since they’d first detected the Jovians, taking only quick breaks to plug in a squirt of food when the life-support program called out their scheduled mealtimes.

The lights that the Jovians flashed back and forth among themselves fascinated Grant. What can it mean? Are they signaling to one another? Could it be a language of some sort, a visual language? Or is it just some kind of display, like a peacock showing off his feathers?

“They don’t seem to be using sound for communications,” Muzorawa reported aloud. “Our audiophones are not picking up anything except the slight turbulence caused by their rowing motions.”

“They swim stealthily,” Krebs observed.

“Yes,” Muzorawa agreed, nodding. “They hardly make a sound.”

“That could be to keep them from being noticed by predators,” Karlstad said.

“Who would even think of preying on some great huge creature like them?” O’Hara asked.

Karlstad snickered. “You’ve got predators in your bloodstream right now, Lane. We’re thousands of times bigger than bacteria.”

“Less talk, Dr. Karlstad,” Krebs grumbled. “Get that data capsule prepared.”

“It’s almost ready, Captain,” said Karlstad, tapping at his console’s touchscreens.

Grant asked, “Could they be talking to each other at sound frequencies that the phones don’t pick up?”

“They go down to ultralow frequency,” Muzorawa answered, “less than ten cycles per second.”

“What’s the upper limit?” asked Karlstad.

“Nearly a hundred kilohertz, far beyond the range of human hearing.”

“We should have brought a dog aboard,” Karlstad muttered.

“Or a few of the dolphins,” said O’Hara.

“Sound waves of that intensity,” said Krebs, “can destroy living tissue.”

“Or crack this submersible like an eggshell, if they have enough power behind them,” Muzorawa said.

“Happy thought,” Karlstad groused.

“My point is,” Krebs said, “that those creatures would not use such a high frequency to communicate. It would hurt them.”

“But they might use it as a weapon,” Karlstad said.

“If they’re communicating with each other,” Muzorawa said slowly, “I would think it would be visually.”

“They light up like signboards, don’t they?” O’Hara said.

“Like those airships that hovered over football matches when I was a child,” Karlstad agreed.

The lights flickered on and off so quickly that Grant couldn’t tell if they were forming patterns of any sort.

They were almost as fast as strobe lights.

“Where is my data capsule?” Krebs demanded.

“I was just about to tell you, Captain. The capsule is ready for your input.”

Scowling, Krebs pushed off the overhead and settled next to Karlstad like a bulky log sinking down beside a willowy undersea reed. Karlstad tapped one of his touchscreens and the yellow communications light winked on.

“Data capsule number two,” she said, her harsh voice flat, emotionless. “We have encountered a group of very large organisms. They appear to be ingesting the organic particles that drift through the sea. We are following them and will continue to do so until our life-support supplies go critical.”

Krebs touched the screen and the light went off.

“Is that all you’ll be saying?” O’Hara blurted. “Won’t you tell them about their signaling lights?”

“They’ll be able to see the lights as well as we do,” Krebs said. “They can draw their own conclusions as to whether they are signals or not.”

“But they’ve got to be!” O’Hara said. “What else could they be?”

“Launch the capsule,” Krebs said to Karlstad. Giving O’Hara a sour look, she retorted, “They could be almost anything, anything at all. Don’t leap to conclusions.”

Karlstad launched the capsule with the touch of a fingertip against a screen. Grant felt it as a slight shudder.

“The lights flicker on and off so fast,” Muzorawa said, “that it’s impossible to tell what they are.”

“Can’t we slow them down?” Grant asked. “I mean, run our imagery of them at a reduced speed.”

“Slow motion?”

“Yes.”

Muzorawa thought it over for a moment, then said, “Yes, that’s a good idea. Captain?”

“Do it,” Krebs snapped.

It took several minutes for Muzorawa to program the imagery stored in the sensors’ computer memory. Finally he told them he was ready.

“Put it on the main screen,” Krebs ordered.

The ache in Grant’s back was returning. He could not see anything wrong in the display screens of his console, but the ache warned him that the thruster was starting to decay again.

Looking up, he saw on the wallscreen what appeared to be a still picture of one of the Jovians. No, its flippers were moving, but so slowly that Grant could see little silvery particles in the water tumbling in the wake of those powerful paddles of flesh. Diamonds, he realized anew. They’re swimming through a cloud of diamonds —and food.

Though the beasts were still some fifty kilometers distant, the cameras’ magnification showed them in some detail: Their skins looked gray, rubbery, but mottled with rough lumps and knobs and—eyes. Those things had to be eyes; rows of them, hundreds of them staring out into the hot, dark sea. Grant shuddered. For a moment he felt as if those eyes were looking at him, watching him, appraising the intruding aliens from another world.

They’re so huge, Grant thought. How could any creature grow to such enormous size? How does its nervous system control those flippers? Where is the brain located? Lord, one of those flippers could crush us with just a flick.

He saw patches of different colors here and there on the skin of the beasts. Parasites? There’s a whole biosphere in this ocean, with plenty of ecological niches for all sorts of creatures. The organics from the clouds are at the bottom of the food chain and these gigantic superwhales must be at the top. What else are we going to find?

Red and orange lights glowed along the huge flanks of the massive creatures, strange puzzling designs that lit the ocean with their eerie glow. They made no sense to Grant, they gave no hint of meaning.

“Well, at least they’re not saying ‘Earthlings go home,”’ Karlstad wisecracked.

“But look,” Muzorawa pointed toward the wallscreen, “they are all repeating the same set of symbols.”

“Is it writing?” O’Hara asked.

“Impossible,” spat Krebs.

“And yet…”

“It must mean something,” Karlstad said.

“It means something to them, I should think,” Muzorawa murmured.

Krebs started to say, “Do not leap to—”

She stopped, open-mouthed. Grant saw it, too. So did all the others.

One of the Jovians displayed an image of a round, saucer-shaped object with a single row of lights dotting its forward side. The saucer was in deep red, the lights a bright orange. Almost immediately, the others began to show the same picture.

“That’s us!” Karlstad yelped.

The same picture flashed back and forth among each of the Jovians in the screen’s display.

“They’ve seen us,” O’Hara said in an awed whisper.

“They know we’re here,” Krebs agreed, her own voice hushed with astonishment.

“My God,” said Grant, “they are intelligent.”

LEVIATHAN

Gulping down the streaming food greedily, Leviathan realized it had been congratulating itself too soon. A lone member of the Kin was always prey to the Darters, and it was too far from the giant storm to use the same tactics that had saved it from the earlier pack.

Speed. Speed was Leviathan’s only hope. If it could get back to its own Kin, rejoin the others, then the Darters would not dare to attack. Even if they were foolish or desperate enough to try, an entire gathering of Kin could crush the Darters with ease. Darters almost always broke off their attacks when they saw a whole gathering swinging into a defensive sphere. They preferred to attack lone members, waiting until one of the Kin moved off by itself to dissociate and begin budding.

But the Kin were still far, far off. And the Darters were moving in fast. It was going to be a race, Leviathan knew, urging its flagella members to their utmost speed. A race against time. A race against death.

PURSUIT

“Nonsense!” Krebs snarled. “Just because they can mimic what they see doesn’t make them intelligent.”

“It doesn’t make them stupid,” Karlstad quipped.

“Parrots can mimic human speech,” Krebs said.

“Dogs, horses, many animals can respond to human commands. Does that make them intelligent?”

“Dolphins speak with us,” O’Hara said.

Krebs shook her head stubbornly. “Intelligence requires culture, technology. Dolphins have none.”

How could they, Grant wondered, living underwater, without hands to manipulate their environment, without the ability to make fire? They’re stuck with their own muscle power, and that’s a dead end.

“Ants have culture and technology,” Karlstad said.

Before Krebs could respond, O’Hara countered, “The mark of intelligence is the ability to communicate abstract ideas among others of your species. The dolphins do that.”

“Abstract ideas?” Muzorawa asked.

“Yes,” O’Hara replied firmly. “They can understand friendship and loyalty. They have family ties.”

Krebs, still looking utterly unconvinced, said, “We are not here for philosophical debates. Maintain the same course and speed as the whales. The more data we get on them, the better.”

The pain in his back was getting worse. Grant closed his eyes and visualized the faulty thruster. The pain told him that it was sputtering again.

Before he could call out the problem, Krebs complained, “I need full power from all the thrusters, Mr. Archer.”

“Number two is failing again,” he said.

“I can see that. Fix it!”

“If I could shut it down … just for half an hour…”

Krebs seemed to consider the possibility. Then she shook her head. “No. We will lose the whales.”

Muzorawa spoke up. “Captain, we know the herd’s course and speed. We could catch up with them once the thruster is repaired.”

“We are barely keeping pace with them now,” Krebs growled. “Once they move away from us we’ll never catch them.”

“The stream of organics that they are grazing on follows a curving path,” Muzorawa said, calmly reasonable, displaying Grant’s map of the ocean currents with the organics’ course highlighted. “We could cut across the current, once the thruster is repaired, and intercept the herd.”

Krebs closed her eyes. She’s visualizing Zeb’s map, Grant thought, using the implants to give her a picture that her eyes can’t see. The pressure must be affecting her optic nerves, not her visual cortex.

Krebs opened her eyes, but they stared blankly. “Very well,” she said reluctantly. “O’Hara, reduce speed to minimum cruise. Archer, shut down number-two thruster for repair.”

As Grant began to bubble out a sigh of relief, Krebs added, “And get the repair finished in thirty minutes! Not one second more!”

“Yes, Captain!”

Twenty-eight minutes later Grant surveyed the relined plasma tube. Through his implanted chips he felt the ceramic lining as if he were caressing it, running his hands along its smooth length, still warm from the star-hot stream of ionized gas that had been flowing through it. Yes, he told himself, it’s the proper thickness and surface smoothness. All within the specifications. The liquid nitrogen coolant was refrigerating the superconducting coils on the other side of the tube. The coils were well below their critical temperature.

“Well?” Krebs demanded. “Are you finished?”

With a single small nod, Grant said, “Yes, Dr. Krebs.

Thruster number two is ready to go back on-line.”

“Good,” she said, and Grant realized that this would be as close to a pat on the back as he would ever get from this dour, hard-driven woman.

As the thrusters roared up to full power, Grant fought to pull his attention away from the impulses his chips were sending through his nervous system. It took an effort, but through clenched teeth he asked Muzorawa, standing next to him: “Have we lost them?”

The wallscreen showed nothing but empty darkness.

It took a moment for Zeb to reply. “They’ve moved off beyond our sensor range,” he answered, rubbing his eyes, “but if they are still following the organics, we should intercept them in about one hour.”

And if they’ve changed course we’ve probably lost them forever, Grant thought. And it will be my fault. At least Krebs will blame me for it.

Then he asked himself, Are there other herds in the ocean? There must be. There couldn’t be just one group of a few dozen of these creatures. There must be others of their kind… and other kinds of creatures in the sea, as well. We have a whole world to explore, a whole ecology, an ocean thousands of times bigger than Earth.

If the thrusters hold out, he reminded himself. They’re working fine now, but you’ve used up all the reserve ceramic. If anything goes wrong again, we either head back for the station or die here. There’s nothing left to repair them with. And we’re running them full-out. If one of them fails, we’re gone.

Grant glanced at Muzorawa, then at O’Hara and Karlstad, all at their consoles, all straining their senses to find the herd of Jovian whales. They’re not whales, Grant chided himself. They’re nothing like whales. They make whales look like minnows, for God’s sake.

None of the others seemed to know that the thrusters were in critical condition. Looking over his shoulder at Krebs, though, Grant felt that she knew. Those blind eyes notwithstanding, she knows that the thrusters are on the knife-edge of breakdown. And she doesn’t care. She’d rather die than give up this quest.

“I see one!” Muzorawa sang out. It reminded Grant of old stories about whalers, iron men in wooden ships, and their cry of “Thar she blows! ”

Everyone tried to tap into the sensor data at once. Grant got a sensation of a faint, trembling touch along his arms, as if someone were stroking his skin, gently, very gently.

“Give me visual imagery,” Krebs snapped.

“It’s too far off for anything but sonar right now,” Zeb replied.

“Let me see it!” Krebs demanded.

“In a few minutes,” Muzorawa said. “Ah! It’s lighting up the water! Can you see the glow?”

Grant saw a faint deep red shimmering in the otherwise black visual imagery.

“It seems to be alone,” Muzorawa said, sounding puzzled. “I can’t detect any other creatures near it.”

O’Hara chimed in, “It’s not on the same course that the herd should be following. And it’s moving at much greater speed.”

“It’s an intercept course,” Krebs said. “But it’s coming from a different direction than we are.”

“I’m starting to get visual imagery,” Muzorawa said.

“Yes, I see,” said Krebs.

“It’s alone,” Karlstad said.

“Yes,” Muzorawa agreed. Then: “No, I don’t think it is—there are others coming with it. Two… six … ten and more! They’re smaller, though. Different in shape.”

Grant saw them, faint and fuzzy at this distance. But the scene made a dreadful kind of sense to him.

“They’re chasing him!” Grant yelped. “The smaller ones are chasing the big one.”

“The smaller ones are five times the size of this ship,” Karlstad pointed out.

“Predators,” said Krebs. “Archer is right. They are chasing the whale. We’re seeing a hunt in progress.”

“What can we do?” O’Hara asked.

“Get closer,” Krebs snapped.

“Closer?”

“Yes! Before it runs away from us.”

The thrusters were running at full power, straining to cut across the Jovian’s path and close the gap between them. Grant felt as if he were running a marathon; every muscle in his body ached.

“It’s going too fast,” O’Hara shouted. “We’ll never catch up with it.”

Tapping into the sensor net, Grant saw the mammoth Jovian streaking through the depths, pursued by the ten smaller beasts.

“Get closer!” Krebs demanded. “Muzorawa, are the sensors getting all this?”

Zeb did not reply immediately.

“Muzorawa!”

“Yes, Captain,” Zeb said, his voice shaking. “The sensors … I…”

Grant pulled out of the sensor imagery and turned toward Zeb. Muzorawa just stood blankly at his console, his legs bent slightly at the knees, his feet held down by the floor loops, his arms floating chest-high, his head lolling to one side.

“I… can’t… breathe …” he gasped. “Pressure …”

“We’re too deep!” Karlstad yelled.

“What’s wrong with him?” Krebs demanded.

Karlstad stared frantically at his console. Grant could see a string of baleful red lights glowering along its screens. “His breathing rate’s gone sky-high. Something wrong with his lungs. Capacity is down, still sinking—”

“Archer,” Krebs ordered, “disengage Dr. Muzorawa and get him back to his berth.”

Grant quickly began to yank the optic fibers loose from Zeb’s legs.

“I’m sorry …” Muzorawa panted. “Too much … can’t…”

“Don’t talk,” Grant said, trying to sound soothing. “Save your strength.”

Muzorawa’s eyes closed. His head rolled slightly, then slumped down, chin on chest. He’s unconscious, Grant realized. Or dead.

“You’re the life-support specialist,” Krebs was snarling at Karlstad. “What should we do?”

“Get the hell out of this pressure!” Egon snapped.

“No!” she shot back. “Not yet. Not now, with those animals so close.”

“You’ll kill him!” Karlstad insisted. “You’ll kill us all!”

Turning back toward Grant, Krebs said, “Take him back to his berth. Lower the pressure in the chamber there.”

Feeling helpless, confused, Grant began to ask, “How do I lower—”

Krebs said, “Seal the hatch once you get him into his berth. I’ll take care of depressurizing.”

“You can’t depressurize it enough to help him,” Karlstad wailed. “Not unless we go back up toward the surface.”

Krebs turned toward him, looking as if she were ready to commit murder.

“I make the decisions here,” she said to Karlstad, her voice venomously low. Turning back to Grant: “Get him back to his berth! Now!”

“Yes’m.” Grant began pulling his own optical fibers free.

Suddenly the ship lurched as if it had been hit by a torpedo. Grant was torn loose from his foot restraints and went sailing across the bridge, optic fibers popping loose. He banged painfully against the far bulkhead as all the lights went out.

ATTACK

The emergency lamps came on, dim, scary. Grant blinked in the shadowy lighting. Everything looked tilted, askew. Then he realized that he was floating sideways next to the food dispenser, his right shoulder and side afire with pain. Red lights blinked demandingly on all the consoles.

“… back on-line!” Krebs was shouting. “The auxiliaries can’t power the thrusters for more than a few minutes.”

Muzorawa was floating in the middle of the bridge, a haze of blood leaking from his open mouth. Krebs bumped into him and pushed him aside, in the general direction of the sleeping quarters. O’Hara was at her console, but doubled over as if in overwhelming pain. Only Karlstad seemed to be unhurt, but he looked bewildered as Krebs rattled off commands rapid-fire.

“Get back to your console,” she said to Grant, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and shoving him toward the console. Grant’s shoulder and ribs were thundering with pain. I must have hit the bulkhead there, he realized.

“What happened?” he asked dazedly as he fumbled with his optical fibers.

“No time for linking,” Krebs snapped. “Go to manual control. Get the generator back on-line.”

“But Zeb—”

“There’s nothing you can do for him now. Get the generator back on-line!”

Grant saw that the same floor loop that had torn loose earlier was flapping again, held only by one remaining bolt. He slid his foot into the other and scanned the glowering red lights of his console.

“O’Hara!” Krebs barked. “Disengage and take care of Dr. Muzorawa.”

Lane looked sick, positively green in the eerie light of the emergency lamps. She nodded and began pulling off her optical fibers.

“I’ll handle the ship,” Krebs went on. “Karlstad, take over the sensors. Archer, why isn’t the generator back online?”

“I’m working on it,” Grant said, fingers racing across the console touchscreens.

The bridge seemed to be rising and sinking, twisting as if on a roller-coaster ride. Glancing to his right, Grant saw Krebs at O’Hara’s console, moving her fingers along the touchscreens, her mouth a thin, grim, bloodless line.

The ship lurched again, and this time Grant heard a definite thump, as if they had banged into an undersea mountain.

“Those sharks are attacking us,” Krebs said, her voice strangely low, controlled. “They think we are food.”

Karlstad screeched, “The hull can’t take this kind of pounding! It’ll crack!”

“I am trying to get away from them,” Krebs agreed. Turning to Grant she bellowed, “For that, we need power!”

“It’s not the generator,” Grant reported. “The generator’s working fine. It’s the power bus; it shorted out from the first concussion.”

Another thump. The bridge tilted crazily. Even the emergency lamps blinked.

Hanging onto one of the console’s handgrips, Grant worked madly to reboot the power bus. One by one the circuit breakers clicked on. One by one the red lights on his console flicked to amber or green. The thrusters came back on-line, although Grant saw that their telltale lights were amber. There must be a lot of damage, he thought. Maybe the tubes have been dented by the sharks. He wished he had time to link with the ship, then he’d know immediately what was wrong.

“Here comes another one!” Karlstad yelped.

“Thrusters to max!” Krebs said. She didn’t need Grant to turn them on, she did it herself from O’Hara’s console.

Even immersed in the thick liquid that filled the bridge Grant felt the surge of thrust. Another thump, but this time it was a glancing blow. Still, it set the ship spinning.

“I don’t know how long the thrusters can maintain full power,” Grant yelled.

“We have to get away from them,” Karlstad shouted back.

Krebs shook her head. “They’re faster than we are. They’re racing ahead of us.”

“If only we had a weapon,” Karlstad muttered, “something to defend ourselves with.”

Grant heard himself say, “What about the plasma exhaust?”

“What?”

“The exhaust from the thrusters. It’s over ten thousand degrees when it leaves the nozzles. It boils the water behind us. They mustn’t like that.”

Krebs seemed to think it over for a moment. “If they stayed behind us…”

“They’re not,” Karlstad said, his closed eyes seeing what the ship’s sensors showed. “They’re forming up in front of us again.”

“We’re moving at top speed and they race past us,” said Krebs, sounding defeated.

“They’re too fucking stupid to realize we’re not food,” Karlstad grumbled.

“By the time they discover that fact, we will be dead.”

Grant said, “Can’t we spin the ship? Or turn in a tight circle? Spray our exhaust in all directions?”

“What good would that do?”

“It might discourage them.”

Karlstad laughed bitterly. “Brilliant! You want to circle the wagons when we only have one wagon. Absolutely brilliant.”

“It’s worth a try,” Grant urged.

“We have nothing else,” said Krebs. “We have nothing to lose.”

With the power back on, Grant grabbed for the loose optical fibers and slapped them onto the chips in his legs. Pain! Sharp, hard needles of pain jabbed at him. The thrusters were running full-out but they were damaged, their tubes dented from the battering by the sharks.

At least the sharks were not attacking now. Krebs was turning the sub in tight circles, spinning a helix of superheated steam around them, keeping the predators at bay.

For how long? Grant asked himself. He knew the answer: Until the thrusters give out. Then it won’t matter if they renew their attacks or not; it won’t matter if they think we’re food or not. We’ll be dead, drifting in this alien ocean, without the power to climb back to the surface and leave. We’ll sink until this eggshell is crushed by the pressure. We’ll die here.

LEVIATHAN

Leviathan could scarcely believe what its sensing members were telling it. The Darters had broken off their pursuit to chase—Leviathan did not know what to call the tiny round, flat thing that had caught the Darters’ hungry attention. It was unlike anything the Kin had seen before, except for the tale that had been flashed among them about a strange cold alien that had appeared briefly and then vanished into the abyss above.

Leviathan remembered sensing something like this stranger, when it had been in the barren cold region on the other side of the eternal storm. It was not one of the Kin, not even a member unit that had broken away to bud.

Whatever it was, the Darters were swarming around it and the stranger—whatever it was—was spinning madly, squirting hot jets of steam that boiled the sea into wild bubbling froth.

Where are the Kin? Leviathan wondered. How far from here could they be? Leviathan considered calling to them but feared that its distress signal would rekindle the Darters’ attention.

The Darters had forgotten about Leviathan in their blind hunger for this small, almost defenseless creature. The stranger was giving Leviathan a chance to race away, unnoticed by the instinct-driven Darters.

That would mean leaving the stranger to the predators. It did not seem able to get away from them. Every time it tried to climb higher, to head back toward the cold abyss above, the Darters drove it back down again. One of them came close to the hot steam and twisted away in agony, howling so loudly that Leviathan’s sound sensors shut down for several moments. Two of the Darters immediately attacked their wounded companion, silencing it forever with a few voracious bites.

But the others kept circling the stranger, holding it at bay, waiting for it to exhaust itself.

TRAPPED

“You’ve got to get higher!” Karlstad demanded, his voice almost a hysterical shriek. “We’ve got to get away from them!”

Krebs shot him a venomous glance. “Every time I try to lift, they swarm above me and batter us down again.”

“We can’t take much more pounding,” Karlstad said. “Hull integrity…”

Grant was awash with pain. His console lights were flickering from amber to red. The thrusters were close to failure and there was nothing he could do about it.

Krebs seemed to be fully aware of the situation. Grimly she muttered, “Full thruster power. We break loose from them or we die here and now.”

Vision blurring, his whole body spasming with agony, Grant felt the thrusters strain as he diverted all available power to them. The lights went out again as the bridge tilted dizzily, the emergency lamps glowed feebly. Grant reached for the handgrips on his console.

“Look out!” Karlstad screamed.

Something hit the ship with the power of an avalanche. If Grant hadn’t been hanging on he would have been flung across the bridge again. Krebs went sailing, banged against the food dispenser with a solid, sickening thud of flesh against metal. Karlstad was holding on to both his console’s handgrips, his feet torn free of the floor loops and flailing wildly.

“We’re sinking!” Karlstad yelled. “Hull’s been breached!”

Grant saw that Krebs was unconscious. Or dead. An ugly gash across her forehead was streaming a fog of blood into the fluid they were breathing. The optical fibers had been torn loose from her legs.

“What can we do?” Karlstad screeched. “What can we do?”

Grant tried to ignore his pain as he tapped at his console’s touchscreens, calling up all the ship’s systems. The sudden rush of information boggled his mind and body. Everything—every chip, every wire, every square centimeter of structure, all the sensors, the ship’s steering controls, the thrusters, the power generator, the auxiliaries, all the life-support systems, the medical monitors, the lights, the wiring, the welds along the hull—every molecule of the ship, every bit of data flowing through all its systems, all flooded in on Grant like a huge overpowering tidal wave. He was flung into a maelstrom, mind spinning madly as he desperately tried to cling to some vestige of himself, some trace of his own soul in this deluge of sensations, some thread of control.

He could no longer feel his own body. That reality had been flung aside, left far behind in this new reality of—power. That’s what it is, Grant told himself. Power. I am the ship. I have all its power, all its pain, all its destiny within me.

Godlike, he expanded his senses. He saw, sensed, felt every part of the ship. The crack in the outermost hull was like the sharp slash of a knife wound; the labored straining of the thrusters like the excruciating knotting of cramped, overworked muscles.

Zheng He was losing buoyancy, maintaining its position only by dint of the thrusters’ full-throated push against the ever-present power of Jupiter’s pervasive gravity.

And he saw the sharklike creatures, more than a dozen of them, swarming above and on both sides of the slowly sinking submersible.

Karlstad was babbling, but it was a faint jabbering noise far in the background of Grant’s consciousness. I am the ship, he told himself. I’m wounded, badly hurt. How can I get out of this? How can I get away? When Krebs tried to climb out of this they battered us so hard the hull cracked. What should I do? What can I do?

Go inert, he heard a voice in his mind say. Shut down the thrusters. Let the sharks think you’re dead. Let them find out that you’re metal, not flesh; an alien, not food.

You’ll sink. You’ll sink deeper, the outside pressure will increase, the crack in the hull will get worse, you’ll be torn apart, crushed, before you can get the thrusters started again.

Maybe. All this flashed through Grant’s mind in less than a second. Through it all, the one—only—hope he had was the fusion generator. It purred along as if nothing outside its alloy shell mattered in the slightest. That little artificial star kept on fusing atomic nuclei, transforming matter into energy, oblivious to the wants or needs of the humans who had built it, those whose lives depended on it. Grant felt its warmth like the fire in a hearth, comforting, protecting against the raging storms outside.

He shut down the thrusters. He turned off the outside lights. The ocean out there went black, sunless, a blind oblivion. Except that Grant could see; through the ship’s infrared sensors and sonar he could see the imagery of the huge sharks gliding around and above him.

“We’re sinking!” Karlstad repeated, his voice high and shaking, even in their fluid environment.

“Take care of Krebs,” Grant said evenly. “See how Lane and Zeb are doing.”

“But we’re sinking!”

“We’ll be all right,” Grant said, hoping it was true. “I’ve got her under control,” he lied.

The sharks were coming closer, nosing around the slowly settling Zheng He. Can’t you sense that we’re metal? Grant asked them silently. Are you too stupid to see that we’re not food?

One of the huge creatures brushed against the sub, knocking it sideways. Grant saw it coming, held on to his console.

“Jesus!” Karlstad yelped. “Jesus. Jesus.”

Grant almost smiled. We could use His help, he thought. Does God see us this far down in this alien sea?

A low rumbling sound, so low-pitched that Grant felt it along his aching bones rather than heard it. Long, like the rumble of distant thunder, but so powerful that it made the bridge vibrate. An earthquake sound, here where there was no ground to shake, not a solid clump of soil or a rock for tens of thousands of kilometers.

The sonar was tingling along Grant’s nerves. He closed his eyes and saw the imagery: Something was heading their way, something superhuman, a huge power streaking through the water toward him, and it was emitting this low, thunderous profundo note as steadily as an avalanche roars down a mountainside.

The sharks pulled away, turning in unison so fast that Grant felt the sharp waves they made as a single unified pulse in the water. The infrared sensors kicked in and showed what was approaching: that immense solitary whale. It was rushing toward the sharks like a huge cannonball fired at supersonic velocity.

The sharks seemed to be gathering themselves into a battle formation, facing the onrushing whale. They’ve forgotten about me, Grant saw. They’re ready to confront the whale. Maybe I can slip away…

Cautiously he lit the thrusters again. Minimum thrust. Don’t call attention to yourself. Balance your sink rate. Maintain buoyancy by using thrust to balance the leak.

Zheng He rose a little. Grant watched through the ship’s sensors as the gigantic beast raced straight toward the waiting delta-shaped sharks. He edged the thrusters slightly higher and maneuvered the battered submersible away from the predators. All the while the ocean reverberated with that lone, sustained, low-pitched note, like the melancholy howl of a solitary wolf in a snowy wilderness, but many, many octaves lower and enormously more powerful and sustained far longer than Earthly lungs could ever achieve.

The gigantic creature barreled into the sharks. Instead of fleeing from it, as Grant had expected, the sharks spread their formation into a wide-space net and surrounded the whale. They’re not running away from it, Grant saw. They’re attacking it!

LEVIATHAN

Leviathan knew it was a foolish gesture, most likely a fatal one. The alien creature seemed to be dead, gone dark, sinking slowly toward the hot abyss below.

Still, the stranger had diverted the Darters and saved Leviathan from them. It was too late now to turn back. Once Leviathan had sounded its distress call to the Kin, the Darters left the stranger and rediscovered it, alone and near enough to attack.

Leviathan did not wait for the predators to strike. It roared in toward them, urging all its members to their utmost effort, desperately hoping to confuse the Darters and scatter them before they could form their attack pattern.

But they were too fast, too agile for that forlorn hope. Even as Leviathan rushed toward them, the Darters spread themselves into a screen, above, below, and on both sides of Leviathan’s charge.

Bellowing its distress call, Leviathan barely had time to notice that the stranger was not yet dead. Even though it had gone dark and a trail of bubbles showed that its shell had been cracked, it began to emit a jet of heated water—not as vigorously as before, but still it was a sign of life.

And then the Darters were upon Leviathan, nipping at its flanks, tearing at its flagella members. Cripple the flagella and Leviathan was helpless. But the mindless flagella were weapons as well as propulsion members. Leviathan clubbed at the Darters, felt bone snap and flesh rupture, madly hoping that if it killed a few of them, the rest would begin feeding on their own and leave Leviathan alone.

But the Darters would never leave a lone and wounded prey. In a growing frenzy they would attack and feed, ripping through Leviathan’s protective armor to get at the vital organ-members, while the vibrations of their furious struggle would signal others from far away to join the battle and the inevitable feasting.

Still Leviathan fought. There was nothing else to do.

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

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

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

The Kin.

RESCUE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sharks stopped their attack. Every one of them pulled away from the whale and seemed to freeze in place, some of them with gobbets of the whale’s flesh clenched in their teeth.

The sound was painful. Grant felt as if hot needles were being jabbed in his ears. Louder and louder it rose, until he could hear nothing at all. The excruciating pain lanced through him as if a drill were driving through his skull. Touchscreens on the consoles began to shatter, bursting into showers of plastic shards and electrical sparks. The bridge vibrated as if some immense beast was shaking it in its jaws the way a terrier shakes a rat to death.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zheng He plunged deeper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His eyes showing sheer terror, Karlstad pushed himself over to the console on Grant’s left and tapped on its keyboard. Its one intact screen wrote in glowing orange letters:

GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE.

Grant shrugged helplessly.

GET US UP!!! Karlstad typed.

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

TOO MCH PRESSURE! Karlstad typed.

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

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

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

NOW, Grant insisted. SEND TWO.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mimicry or intelligence? Grant asked himself.

Karlstad’s nudge against his shoulder startled Grant.

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

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

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

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

LEVIATHAN

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

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

It is hurt, Leviathan flashed to the Kin.

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

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

It will die, he said to the Elders.

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

It is too small to bud, Leviathan said.

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

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

Help it? How?

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

What good would that do?

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

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

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

SALVATION

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

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

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

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

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

The ship shuddered.

Instinctively Grant looked up, then turned toward Karlstad. Egon blinked, stirred.

The bridge seemed to tilt, then righted itself. Grant floated free of his one intact floor loop, then his feet touched the deck once more.

Closing his eyes, he tried to see outside through the few sensors still working. Nothing. Only a mottled gray —the ship quivered again, swayed. One of the glowering red lights on Grant’s console suddenly turned amber and then green.

Peering through the ship’s sensors, Grant realized that what he was seeing was the immense stretch of a Jovian, so close that it was actually touching the sub, nudging it gently, like an elephant delicately balancing a baby carriage on its back.

Grant could hardly breathe. Glancing at his battered console, he saw that the green light was the attitude indicator. Zheng He was no longer spiraling downward.

He reached across and shook Karlstad by the shoulder, then typed, SENSORS.

Egon licked his lips, purely a reflex in their liquid surroundings, then tapped into the sensors.

Grant squeezed his eyes shut and saw that the sub was resting on the gigantic back of one of the whales. No, not just any of them; it was the Jovian who’d been attacked by the sharks. Grant could see wide swaths of raw flesh where the sharks had ripped away its skin.

WE RISING? Karlstad asked.

YES!!!! Grant’s heart was hammering beneath his ribs. A guardian angel! A million-ton, ten-kilometer-long Jovian guardian angel is carrying us up and out—

His elation snapped off. The Jovian can’t carry us out of the ocean. It can’t fly us home.

The thrusters. Grant checked the entire power and propulsion systems. The fusion generator was undamaged, working normally. The thrusters—could they last long enough to push them out of the ocean, through the atmosphere and clouds, out into orbit?

DATA CAPSULES, Grant typed. Even if we don’t make it, we have to give them all our information. He banged away on his keyboard as Karlstad prepared the last pair of the data capsules.

They were rising swiftly now. Through the ship’s sensors Grant could see the entire community of Jovians swimming around them, sleek and smooth, making hardly a ripple as they propelled themselves through the sea far faster than Zheng He could have gone on its own. The Jovians flashed signals back and forth among themselves; pictures, Grant was certain, hoping that the ship’s cameras were still working well enough to record it all.

The thrusters were still shut down. Can I power them up without causing them to fail? Then a new thought struck him: I can’t power them up while we’re riding on the Jovian’s back. The superheated steam would hurt him.

Would it? Yes, of course it would, Grant told himself. The Jovian’s made of flesh, its skin isn’t a heat shield. You killed a couple of the sharks with the thrusters’ exhaust, of course it’ll hurt the Jovian.

But if I don’t light them up we won’t get out of here. The whale can carry us only so far. The rest of the way we’ll need the thrusters.

Grant turned toward Karlstad, but he would be no help, he saw. Egon was standing rigidly now, fists clenched at his sides, eyes squeezed shut, watching the scene outside through the ship’s sensors.

Decide, decide! Grant raged at himself.

He called up the flight program, then instructed the computer to plug in their current velocity. The screen went blank for a heartstopping instant, then displayed a graph with a green curve showing the thrust vector needed to achieve orbit. The computer can hear my voice, Grant marveled, even though I can’t.

The numbers showed that he had a very small window of opportunity to ignite the thrusters. It would open in twelve seconds and close half a minute later.

Without further debate, Grant started the thrusters. Low, just minimum power, he told himself. Give the Jovian a warning of what’s to come. In the back of his mind he realized that the giant creature was performing as a first-stage booster, giving Zheng He an initial burst of energy in the long battle to break free of Jupiter’s massive gravity and achieve orbit.

Not a nice way to treat someone who’s saved your life, Grant said to himself. Sorry, my Jovian friend.

He edged the thrusters to one-quarter power.

Even through its thickly armored hide, Leviathan felt the heat. Its sensor-members shrilled an alarm. The others of the Kin, swimming with Leviathan, flashed their warnings, also.

Leviathan hesitated only for a moment, then plunged down, leaving the stranger to itself.

The Elders flashed superior wisdom: The alien rewards you with pain.

Its ways are different from ours, Leviathan answered.

It is just as well, the Elders pictured as one. We could not have climbed much farther into the cold. Come, let us return to our home region and resume the Symmetry.

Leviathan agreed reluctantly. But it took one last look at the tiny, frail stranger. It was shooting up through the water now, driven by the hot steam emerging from its vents, heading upward into the cold abyss.

The steam pushes it through the water! Leviathan marveled. Like the Darters, it uses jets instead of flagella!

And it is racing up into the cold abyss. It must want to be there. That must be its home region.

How could anything live up there? Leviathan wondered. There is so much that we don’t know, so much to be learned.

One moment they were riding the Jovian’s back, climbing smoothly through the ocean. Then, when Grant edged the thrusters’ power higher, the Jovian flicked them off its massive back and dove downward, returning to the warmer layers of the ocean. Grant pushed full power and Zheng He climbed, rattling, its cracked and battered hull shaking like an ancient fragile airplane caught in a storm.

Even in the viscous liquid Grant could feel the growing acceleration as he watched the one working screen on his console. A red blip showed the ship’s position along the green curve of the orbital injection trajectory. They were close to the curve, not exactly on it, but close.

Close enough?

Maybe, he decided. If the ship holds together long enough. Then he remembered the rest of the crew. He reached for Karlstad’s shoulder again, shook him out of his concentration on the sensors’ view.

He typed on his keyboard: ZEB? LANE? KREBS?

Karlstad shrugged helplessly.

TAKE A LOOK, Grant commanded.

Slowly Karlstad disconnected his optical fibers and swam back to the hatch. It was sealed shut; Egon had to punch in the emergency code to get it to slide open. It must have closed automatically when we were in all that turbulence, Grant thought.

He stood alone on the wrecked bridge, feeling the ship straining against the jealous pull of Jupiter’s gravity, struggling to climb through the thick heavy ocean, through the deep turbulent atmosphere with its swirling, slashing deck of clouds, and out into the calm emptiness of orbital space.

Karlstad swam back beside him. Without bothering to link his biochips he typed, I STRAPPED THM IN.

HOW ARE THEY? Grant asked.

ALL UNCONSCIOUS. ZEB BLEEDING INTERNALLY. KREBS CONCUSSION, MAYBE WORSE. LAINIE IN COMA, NO PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS I CAN DETECT GET US OUT OF HERE!!!

TRYING, Grant wrote.

WHAT ABOUT CAPSULES?

Grant thought it over swiftly, then typed, WAIT.

The seconds ticked by slowly as the ship rose, shuddering, buffeted by swift currents. Through the sensors Grant peered into unending darkness, broken only by an occasional glimmer of light so faint that it was gone when he turned his full attention to it. Luminescent creatures out there? he asked himself. Optical illusions? Or maybe just flickers of nerve impulses; maybe my brain cells are starting to break down in this pressure.

He felt the power of the thrusters as an animal roar in his mind, a mighty beast screaming in mingled strength and pain. Keep going, Grant pleaded silently to the thrusters. Only a few more minutes, not even half an hour. You can do it. Just keep on going. Yet the pain was growing worse. The thrusters were heading for catastrophic failure; the only question was how soon.

The view outside seemed to brighten somewhat. The utter darkness gave way grudgingly to a slightly lighter tone. Yes, it was definitely getting gray out there, Grant saw, like the sullen dawn of a midwinter morning.

He felt a pressure on his arm, turned to see Karlstad squeezing his shoulder.

GETTING OUT OF IT, Karlstad had typed on his screen.

Yes, Grant thought. If the thrusters hold up.

Definitely lighter outside. They were climbing through the murky haze of the region between Jupiter’s planet-wide sea and its hydrogen-helium atmosphere.

CAPSULES READY? Grant asked.

YES!!!

Grant touched his communications screen. Nothing. It remained dark inert.

YOUR COMM SCREEN WORKING? he asked Karlstad.

Egon tapped his screen and it lit up.

“This is Research Vessel Zheng He,” Grant said, even though he could not hear his own voice. He hoped the comm system could. “We are lifting up, out of Jupiter’s ocean, hoping to reach orbit and return to Research Station Gold. ”

On and on Grant talked, unable to hear a syllable of his own recitation, as the badly damaged submersible climbed into the clear air above the ocean, shaking and shrieking, rising on its plume of star-hot plasma toward the racing jet streams of Jupiter’s cloud deck. Karlstad stood silently by his console, fully linked to what remained of the ship’s systems now, unable to hear any of Grant’s long speech.

At last Grant finished. Zheng He was climbing through clear atmosphere now. Far off in the vast distance Grant could see a cluster of colorful balloonlike medusas floating placidly through the air.

He typed, SET CAPSULE TRANSMITTERS FOR WIDEST POSSIBLE FREQUENCIES—FULL SPECTRUM.

Karlstad looked puzzled. NOT NECE—

Grant slapped his hand away from his keyboard. DO IT, he insisted.

With a shrug, Karlstad did as Grant commanded.

READY TO GO, he typed.

RELEASE BOTH CAPSULES.

DONE.

The thrusters were close to failure now. Grant felt their pain flaming across his shoulders and down his back. The underside of the cloud deck was inching nearer, nearer. The graph on his one working screen showed that they had almost achieved orbital velocity, but if the thrusters failed while they were below the clouds or even in them, atmospheric drag would pull them down to a final, fiery plunge back into the ocean.

Lightning flashed across the underside of the clouds. Grant could hear through the ship’s microphones the rumble of thunder. The audio centers in my brain still function, he realized. It’s my ears that are damaged.

Winds began to buffet the ship. Doggedly Grant watched the tiny red blip on his screen crawling along the green curve. Almost there. Almost. Almost.

They plunged into the clouds, shaking and rattling. The thrusters’ pain was making Grant’s eyes blur.

Everything went dark. For a moment Grant thought the lights had gone down again, but then he realized he was giddy with pain, awash in agony. The view outside was black; they were in the clouds. Hold on! he commanded himself. Just a few more minutes. Hold on!

He couldn’t hear it, but he knew he was screaming. The thrusters were breaking down, whole chunks of their jet tubes ripping apart. The superconducting coils exploded, dumping all their pent-up energy into a blast that shredded the rear half of the ship’s outermost hull. Grant felt as if he were being flayed alive, his skin and the flesh beneath it torn away by the claws of a giant, vicious beast.

He squeezed his eyes shut. The pain disappeared, yet its memory echoed brutally. Every muscle in Grant’s body was sore, stiff, aching horribly.

He floated into near oblivion. Eyes still closed, he saw tiny bright unblinking points of stars scattered across the darkness.

Something, someone was shaking him. Opening his eyes, he saw it was Karlstad, floating beside him. Egon was laughing hysterically, although Grant could not hear anything at all.

Karlstad gesticulated, pointing to one of the screens on the unoccupied console on Grant’s right. It showed the same view Grant had seen when his eyes were shut: the view that the ship’s sensors were seeing.

The stars.

The serene black infinity of space. Off to one side, the curve of a mottled red-orange moon. Io, Grant realized. And then the massive flank of mighty Jupiter slid into view, wildly tinted clouds hurtling by far below them.

“We made it!” Karlstad mouthed.

Grant closed his eyes and saw the same view that the screen showed, only clearer, in sharper detail. We’ve made it, he realized. We’re in orbit.