Leviathans of Jupiter

RECOVERY

Deirdre was dreaming about the dolphins. She was a dolphin herself, swimming easily in a world filled with fish, sunlight streaming from above, water sparkling and warm.

“Ms. Ambrose? Can you hear me?”

The voice was gentle but annoying. She dived deeper into the sea, searching for the bottom where the tasty squid jetted among the rocks and coral formations.

“Ms. Ambrose. Open your eyes, please.”

Go away, Deirdre thought. Leave me alone, won’t you?

“Dee,” a different voice called. “It’s me, Andy. Can you wake up now?”

Andy. She pictured his boyish, grinning, slightly crooked face. Reluctantly Deirdre opened her eyes. It took an effort: Her lids were gummy, as if someone had pasted them together.

“Hey, that’s good! How d’you feel?”

Blinking, she made out a fuzzy form leaning over her. A few more quick flickers of her lids and Andy Corvus’s face came into focus. He was grinning in his lopsided, easygoing way.

“Hi! Welcome back.”

Dorn’s half-metal form came into view. “Welcome to station Gold.”

“We’re here?” Deirdre’s throat felt parched, her voice was scratchy.

“We are always here,” Dorn said gravely, “wherever that may be.”

Andy said, “What he means is—”

“Never mind what he means.” Max Yeager’s burly form pushed into view, behind the other two. “How are you, gorgeous? How do you feel?”

Swiftly taking stock, she said shakily, “Okay, I guess.” Then, stronger, “Fine, actually. I feel fine. Like I’ve had a good, long nap.”

“Nine days, just about,” said Corvus.

Deirdre pushed herself up on her elbows and the thin sheet covering her slipped away. With a shock, she realized she was wearing nothing. Corvus gulped as she grabbed the sheet and pulled it up to her chin. Dorn looked away. Yeager turned flame red.

A medical orderly, young and male, offered Deirdre a small cup of water. Clutching the sheet with one hand as she sat up on the bed, Deirdre accepted the water gratefully. The bed rose automatically to support her.

“We have fruit juices, if you prefer,” said the orderly.

“This will do, thank you.”

Glancing around as she drank, she saw that they were obviously no longer in Australia’s pocket-sized infirmary. This was an actual room, with walls instead of flimsy partitions and display screens that showed vivid swirls and streams of color. Those are Jupiter’s cloud tops, Deirdre recognized. They must be real-time views.

“So we’re on station Gold,” she said.

“It’s big,” Corvus replied, grinning widely. “A lot bigger than the torch ship. Got lots of labs, workshops, even an auditorium where they hold conferences and such.”

Yeager said, “The living quarters aren’t as spiffy as Australia’s, but they’re not all that bad.”

“Wait until you go out to the observation deck,” said Dorn, “and see Jupiter close-up. It’s overwhelming.”

Deirdre nodded. “You guys will have to show me around the station.”

All three of them nodded happily.

Sitting in a virtual reality chamber, her face masked by molecule-thin goggles and a speaker bud in one ear, Katherine Westfall was getting a tour of Gold from the station’s director, Grant Archer.

Archer had been at the arrival lounge’s airlock to welcome her aboard the station.

“We’ll take care of your staff, Mrs. Westfall,” he had told her. “Once you’re settled in, I’d like to give you a tour of the station.”

Except for his silvery little beard and close-cropped hair, Grant Archer appeared deceptively youthful. Good shoulders, Westfall saw, and steady brown eyes that looked as if they could be stubborn.

“My people will see to my luggage,” she had said. “Why don’t we start the tour right now?”

Archer had smiled at her, a warm, personable smile. “That will be fine.” He gestured down the passageway leading from the arrival lounge. “This way, then.”

She was surprised when he led her to a small, dimly lit chamber, empty except for a high-backed chair standing in its center. It looked to her more like an interrogation room than anything else. Except that its walls were covered with gauges and dials and there was a bulky electronics console in one corner.

“The station’s pretty big,” he said, leading her to the chair. “We’ve learned that going through it in virtual reality is a lot easier than actually walking into every nook and cranny.”

“Oh,” she said as she sat in the chair. It felt cold, hard.

“I’ll run the simulation myself,” Archer said, going to the console. She had to turn around in the chair to see him leaning over the console’s desk front and switching on the power. A row of green lights sprang up.

Archer opened a drawer and pulled out what looked to her like a limp cloth and a tiny blob of plastic.

“If you’ll slip the viewing screens over your eyes and put the speaker into one of your ears, we’ll be ready to go.”

Wordlessly Katherine did as he asked. A pang of alarm surged through her. Suddenly she was alone in darkness. She couldn’t see a thing.

But then she heard Archer’s calm tenor voice: “Okay, everything’s in the green. Here we go. Welcome to research station Thomas Gold.”

STATION GOLD

Colors swirled briefly before her eyes. They coalesced to show Katherine Westfall a view of the station as it orbited the giant planet Jupiter. She seemed to be hanging in space, yet she felt perfectly warm and comfortable; the solidity of the chair she was sitting upon felt reassuring.

She saw that the station consisted of three wheels, one on top of another, connected by a central spine. The outer skins of the wheels were studded with viewport bubbles, airlock hatches, antennas, sensors, and other paraphernalia that Katherine could not identify. As she drifted closer to the orbiting station she could see elevator cabs running up and down the central shaft. The entire station was spinning slowly. Of course, she told herself: That’s how they get a feeling of gravity inside, even though it’s only one-sixth of normal.

Archer’s calm, steady voice sounded in her ear. “Station Gold originally was just one wheel, the one on top. We’ve named that one after the station’s original director, Dr. Li Zhang Wo. The other two wheels are too new to have been named yet.”

That’s where most of his funding has been spent, Westfall said to herself. On construction.

Archer’s voice droned on, “The first wheel is now devoted completely to research operations. We have teams working on the four big moons of Jupiter, the Galilean satellites…”

And Westfall saw a building on the ice surface of Europa, built like a fortress in that frozen wilderness. The sky was dark and empty except for a scattering of stars. Archer’s voice explained that glare from sunlight reflecting off the ice blotted out all but the brightest of stars. The scene looked bleak and cold and somehow frightening to Katherine. She shuddered involuntarily.

“The surface structure has to be heavily insulated not only against the cold,” Archer was explaining, “but also against the tremendous radiation flux from Jupiter’s Van Allen belts.”

At that, she saw the immense multihued planet climbing above Europa’s ice-covered horizon, like a huge all-encompassing monster rising out of the black infinity. Jupiter was enormous, streaked with ribbons of color that eddied and swirled while she watched, suddenly gasping for breath.

“Of course,” Archer’s cool, unruffled voice continued, “the real work on Europa goes on beneath the ice mantle, in the buried ocean.”

Katherine watched submersibles nosing through the dark waters, their lights illuminating a nightmare world of long stringy swaying things, dead white, tentacle-like arms waving in the currents. Sheets of rubbery expanses floated into the light and out again, as if trying to flee to the safety of darkness.

“There’s plenty of life in the oceans of Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Most of it is comparable to terrestrial life-forms such as algae, plankton, kelp, and such. All the forms we’ve found so far are autotrophic, like green plants on Earth, although they don’t use sunlight as their energy source. They produce their own foodstuffs using the heat energy from the moon’s gravitational flexing as it orbits Jupiter.”

On and on Archer explained. Though she knew perfectly well that she was sitting safe and warm in the VR chamber, Katherine Westfall felt jittery, almost frightened at the frigid and utterly alien worlds she was experiencing. Even when the scene shifted to Io with its colorful volcanic eruptions of bright molten sulfur, she felt cold and frighteningly alone.

Abruptly the scene changed again to show an ugly, irregular, pockmarked chunk of rock floating in the emptiness of space.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INTELLECTUAL COUSINS

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dolphins?”

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

“But dolphins are from Earth.”

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

“Dolphins,” Westfall repeated.

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

“Scoopers? The people who run the scoopships?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Can you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I could help you.” Yeager leered.

Dorn took a menacing step toward the engineer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A message, she thought. Maybe from Dad?

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

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

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

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

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

KATHERINE WESTFALL’S QUARTERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s right.”

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

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

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

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

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

“But I—”

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Westfall reclined on the couch behind the coffee table, looking as if she were posing for a fashion ’zine.

Deirdre picked up an aroma of … flowers? There weren’t any flowers in the room. Deirdre thought there might not be any flowers anywhere aboard the research station. But when you’re rich, she understood, you can have the scent of flowers wherever you go. Or anything else you want.

“Deirdre Ambrose,” Westfall said, from the couch. “I am Katherine Westfall.”

“I recognized you from the news nets,” said Deirdre.

“Please do sit down. Would you like some juice? It’s a mix of orange and mango. Quiet nutritious, and very tasty.”

“Thank you.”

When Mrs. Westfall made no move to pour the juice, Deirdre picked up the pitcher and did it herself.

“I’ll join you,” said Westfall. Deirdre poured a cup for her.

Katherine Westfall took a measured sip of the juice, then said to Deirdre, “I’ve heard about your medical condition.”

“Oh?”

“Rabies. Very unusual. It could be troublesome if it’s not treated.”

“It could be fatal,” Deirdre said, in a low voice.

Westfall nodded. “Back on Earth there was some rumor about a biology laboratory that developed a genetically engineered form of rabies.”

Surprised, Deirdre asked, “Why would anyone do that?”

Westfall smiled thinly. “Scientists. They’re always into something. Like little boys digging in a mud puddle.”

Do I have a gengineered version of rabies? Deirdre wondered.

Westfall’s smile faded. “I understand that you accused Dr. Pohan of deliberately infecting you.”

“Oh! Well, I’m not sure it was deliberate. But the only way I could have contracted the infection was from the needle he used for my blood test, when I first came aboard the Australia.”

“The accusation upset him terribly.”

Not knowing what else to say, Deirdre murmured, “I’m sorry for that.”

More forcefully, Westfall said, “He’ll get over it. The question now is, how can we treat your condition? Especially if it’s an artificially mutated form of the virus?”

“I discussed that with the medical staff earlier today,” Deirdre said. “They’re developing the necessary vaccine. Dorn has volunteered his blood.”

“The cyborg,” Westfall said, with obvious distaste.

Deirdre nodded.

“Well,” Westfall said, “I want you to know that I am personally looking into your problem. If there’s anything you need, anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Why … that’s very kind of you.”

“Not at all.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Westfall.”

Katherine Westfall nodded graciously. Then she said, “Now tell me what your own work is all about.”

Thrown off-kilter by the sudden change of subject, Deirdre confessed, “I don’t really know. Not yet. I have a meeting with Dr. Archer in about an hour.…”

Her face hardening slightly, Westfall said, “Do you mean that you’ve come all this way without knowing what you are expected to do? Or why?”

“It seems strange, doesn’t it? We got a message that they needed a microbiologist here at station Gold and I was asked to fill the position.”

“But what will you be doing? Why does Archer want a microbiologist?”

Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t know. Not yet.”

Her flawless brow wrinkling, Westfall said, “I’d appreciate it if you told me about it, once you find out. As a member of the IAA council, I want to be kept informed about the work going on here.”

“I’m sure Dr. Archer will—”

“Not Dr. Archer,” Westfall said, steel in her voice. “You. I want you to keep me informed on what’s going on here. Fully informed.”

“Me?”

“You. And don’t let Archer know that you’re reporting to me.”

“But I—”

Westfall’s cobra smile returned. “Keep me informed and I’ll do everything I can to help cure your infection. Do we understand one another?”

GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE

Her mind still spinning from Katherine Westfall’s demand, Deirdre realized as she sat facing Dr. Archer that his beard made him appear older than the rest of his face suggested.

Grant Archer’s office looked more like a comfortable sitting room than an executive’s headquarters. No desk, just an eclectic scattering of chairs, two of them recliners—which Deirdre instinctively avoided. The walls were glowing, soft gray smart screens.

The station’s director was sitting in a slightly tattered old armchair, his feet propped on a round ottoman that looked to Deirdre as if it might originally have been a small oil drum. Now it was covered in putty-gray upholstered faux leather. A little table of clear plastic stood beside his chair; what looked like an electronic remote-control wand rested on it.

“I really appreciate your coming all the way out here on such short notice,” Archer was saying.

“The scholarship you’re offering is a very strong incentive,” she said.

Archer shrugged. “It’s the least we can do. We’re in something of a bind. We suddenly lost the microbiologist who was scheduled to join our staff and—”

“Frieda Nordstrum?” Deirdre asked.

He looked surprised. “From Selene University, yes. Did you know her?”

Deirdre hesitated, then said, “Only by reputation.”

“Her death was a surprise to us all,” Archer said.

“Rabies,” said Deirdre.

He nodded somberly.

“I’ve come down with it, too.”

“Yes. I saw your medical file. How in the world did you ever contract rabies?”

Deirdre hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said. That was the truth, she told herself. The rest is suspicion, guesses.

“Our people here will take care of you, don’t worry,” Archer said easily.

Deirdre wondered if she should ask him about Katherine Westfall’s mentioning a genetically engineered form of the virus.

Before she could make up her mind, though, Archer brightened and said, “Well now, we ought to talk about what you’ll be doing with our team.”

“I was wondering why you want a microbiologist.”

“To tell you the truth, Ms. Ambrose, I’m clutching at a straw. And I have an ulterior motive for asking specifically for you, as well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve done some work on Volvox, haven’t you?”

Deirdre replied, “Volvox aureus, yes. I did my master’s thesis on that.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Archer said. “One of the reasons, at least. Frieda Nordstrum was the world authority on Volvox.”

Blinking with surprise, Deirdre objected, “Volvox are colonies of single-celled algae. What makes you so interested in them?”

“The leviathans,” said Archer.

“Those giant whales in Jupiter’s ocean? I don’t see what they’ve got to do with Volvox.”

“Those giant whales,” Archer said, “are colonies of smaller units. It’s hard to believe, but they are actually like Volvox and the Portuguese man-of-war: creatures that are composed of specialized independent organisms, living together cooperatively. I believe it’s called symbiosis.”

It took Deirdre a moment to digest that idea. Archer was smiling at her. It makes him appear quite youthful, Deirdre thought, gray hair or no.

Mistaking her silence for disbelief, Archer said, “I’m not a biologist of any stripe, but I was hoping that you might use what you know of Volvox to help us understand the leviathans.”

Deirdre had to suppress a laugh. With a shake of her head, she replied, “A colony of fifty thousand Volvox algae might make a ball about half a millimeter in diameter. Those whales—”

“Leviathans,” Archer corrected.

“Those leviathans are kilometers across, aren’t they? The size of mountains?”

“And then some.”

“So where’s the connection?” Deirdre asked. “How can microscopic algae help you understand those enormous Jovian creatures?”

Archer’s face settled into a thoughtful pucker. “As I understand your little bugs—”

“Algae.”

“Algae,” he conceded, with a dip of his chin. “As I understand it, their colonies have some specialized cells: flagella for propulsion, eyespots that sense light, that sort of thing.”

“They have sexual cells, too,” said Deirdre.

“They do? I thought they reproduced by fissioning.”

“Also through sex. But alone. One colony can contain both sexes. They don’t have to find a partner.”

Archer rubbed at his beard. “We’ve seen the leviathans disassembling, coming apart into component units which then bud off new units. And then they all reunite to form two beasts where there’s been only one before.”

“You’ve observed that?”

Without answering, Archer picked up the remote control unit on the table beside his chair and pointed it at one of the wall screens.

“It’s very rare,” he said. “We’ve been studying the leviathans for more than twenty years and we’ve only seen this once. Of course, we can’t get down into that ocean and watch them continuously…”

The screen showed a murky expanse. Deirdre could barely make out several shadowy forms moving through the gloom.

“Leviathans,” Archer said, in a voice that was little short of awestruck.

A tiny red line appeared at the bottom of the screen, no more than three millimeters long, Deirdre judged.

“That scale line represents a hundred meters,” Archer said. “A little longer than the length of an American football field.”

Deirdre blinked. “Then the animals must be…”

“On the order of ten kilometers long. Roughly the size of Manhattan Island.”

“Oh my!”

Archer smiled tightly. “Indeed.”

The picture suddenly cleared considerably. Deirdre could see the nearest animal in some detail now.

“Switched sensors to the sonar. We get better imagery with sound than we do with any frequency of light.”

“How deep are they?”

“This is about seven hundred kilometers below the surface.”

“Seven hundred…” Deirdre began to understand the awe in Archer’s voice.

“This was recorded by one of our submersibles. Unmanned, of course.”

Seven hundred kilometers deep, Deirdre thought. No human being could survive at that depth, not even in the best submersible anyone could build. But then she remembered that Max Yeager boasted of designing a sub that could carry a human crew down to the depths where the leviathans swam.

As if he could read her thoughts, Archer said, “We’ve just about completed a new submersible that will be crewed. Five people, maximum.”

“Dr. Yeager designed it,” Deirdre said.

“That’s right. He’s come out here to check out the final details of the construction. He was on the ship coming in with you, wasn’t he?”

She nodded. On the screen, the massive leviathan seemed to be falling apart. As it swam through the dark sea it began to break up. Deirdre saw bits and pieces of the animal floating off independently. What looked like flippers slipped away first, then broad chunks of the beast’s hide and inner parts that she could not identify.

“Disassembling,” Archer said. “This is when they’re vulnerable to the sharks. Predators. They’re much smaller than the leviathans, but very fast. Big teeth.”

A trio of what had been fins floated closer. Suddenly they began to shudder; the shaking grew more and more violent.

“The waves they send through the water when they bud like that is what attracts the sharks,” Archer said.

They watched for more than an hour as the individual bits fissioned, dividing into two. And then began to unite again, to reassemble.

“Endosymbiosis,” Deirdre murmured.

She stared at the screen, fascinated, as the hundreds of separate units slowly linked together into two complete leviathans and finally swam off side by side into the murky distance. The screen went blank.

“That was a lucky one,” Archer said, sitting up straighter in his chair. “No sharks found them.”

“That’s how they reproduce,” Deirdre said.

“But how do they accomplish it?” Archer asked, staring intently at the empty screen. “How do they know when to dissociate? How do the separate units know how to get together to form a new animal? Do both of the new ones share the knowledge, the memories of the original?”

She shook her head. “I still don’t see how studying Volvox could help you. They’re so different.…”

With a smile that was almost shy, Archer admitted, “Well, now we come to my ulterior motive for picking you.”

“Your ulterior motive?” Deirdre asked.

“You have something of a reputation in Chrysalis II as a visual artist.”

She felt her jaw drop. “Visual artist? You mean those little murals I’ve painted?”

“And the digital imagery you’ve created,” Archer said. “I’ve seen those, too. You’re quite good.”

Confused, Deirdre asked, “You want me to decorate the station?”

“No, no.” Archer laughed. Hunching closer to her, he said, “You see, the leviathans apparently communicate in visual imagery. I thought a woman with your talents for visual imagery might be helpful to us.”

With that, Archer picked up the remote control again. The wall screens on both sides of the office suddenly were filled with images of the leviathans flashing colors at one another: cool green, bright yellow, intense red. It was like being in the dolphin tank again, Deirdre thought. They were surrounded by the immense leviathans, swimming placidly in Jupiter’s ocean, flashing colored lights back and forth.

“That’s how they communicate?” she heard herself ask as she stared at the screens.

Archer said, “It seems obvious. They’re not simply making displays. They’re communicating. Intelligent communications. The way we use speech, they use visual imagery.”

“And you want me to study their imagery and see if I can make any sense out of it,” she said, her eyes still fastened on the screens.

“That would be a good beginning,” Archer said. “We’ve recorded hundreds of hours’ worth of their imagery.”

Deirdre murmured, “You know that I’ve been working with Dr. Corvus and the dolphins. He wants to use DBS equipment to make contact with the leviathans.”

“I didn’t realize you were working with him,” Archer admitted. With a slight shrug, he added, “Well, that’s another avenue of approach to the problem.”

Deirdre saw the burning eagerness on his bearded face. He wants to understand those gigantic creatures, she recognized. He’s dying to know, she thought. And he’s willing to risk lives to find out. He’s willing to send people down into that alien ocean to find out, no matter how dangerous it is.

DINNER

Deirdre hesitated, then plunged, “I don’t know if I can do that for you, Dr. Archer.”

With a visible effort, the station director blanked the wall screens and turned to Deirdre. Smiling gently, he said, “Well, you think about it, Ms. Ambrose. It’s very important to us, to our understanding of these alien creatures. To our ability to make meaningful contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species.”

“You think they’re intelligent?”

“I’m certain of it.”

Deirdre’s mind was spinning. Intelligent. Communicate through visual images. He wants me to go down into the ocean.

“And don’t forget about little Volvox,” Archer added, less intensely. “Any ideas or information will be welcome. We’re pretty desperate for new ideas.”

“I’ll try,” she said, pulling herself to her feet.

Archer stood up, too. As he walked to the door with her he said, “I’m giving a little dinner this evening for the new arrivals. Nineteen hundred hours, in conference room C. I hope you haven’t already made other arrangements.”

Knowing that an invitation from the station director, even a casual one, was more like a command, Deirdre replied, “I’d be happy to come.”

“Good,” he said as he slid open the door to the passageway. “Nineteen hundred. Mrs. Westfall will be joining us, too.”

When Deirdre got back to her own compartment there was a message from Andy Corvus waiting.

“Hi there, Dee,” he said, his slightly mismatched face grinning boyishly from the wall screen. “We’re all invited to dinner with the station director tonight. Can I pick you up around eighteen forty-five?”

She returned his call immediately. Andy wasn’t in his quarters, so she left a message.

Precisely at eighteen forty-five she heard a rap on her door. Still wearing the flowered dress, she slid the door back and saw that Andy was accompanied by Yeager and Dorn. Yeager had obviously shaved; he smelled of cologne.

“The three musketeers,” she said, smiling brightly at them.

Yeager elbowed Corvus aside and offered his arm to her. “Then you must be the Queen of France,” he said grandly.

She politely stepped past Yeager and slipped her arm around Corvus’s. “Andy asked me first,” she said sweetly to Yeager.

“Yeah,” he grumbled, “but I’m better-looking.”

Dorn said, “And more modest, too.”

They all laughed, linked arms, and strode along the passageway toward conference room C.

It was a small room, almost intimate, its oblong central table set for eight. Grant Archer was already standing at the side table set up on the far end of the room with an array of bottles and glasses and a large silvery bucket of ice.

“The newbies!” Archer called out to them. “Welcome.”

He introduced the buxom dark-haired woman beside him as his wife, Marjorie. Deirdre quickly learned that she was a biochemist.

“Are you working on the leviathans?” Deirdre asked as she poured herself a glass of fruit juice.

Marjorie smiled tolerantly. “We’re all working on the leviathans, whether we want to or not.”

Deirdre felt her brows go up. But before she could think of anything to say, the double doors slid open and Katherine Westfall swept in, accompanied by a beefy-looking young man in a sky blue blazer and tight slacks. A boy toy! Deirdre said to herself. He was good-looking, in a muscular bodyguard way. At least he’s not that zombie I met earlier, Deirdre thought.

Archer went the length of the room to welcome Mrs. Westfall and her escort, then introduced them to each of the others. The boy toy claimed to be an accountant; he looked more like a security guard to Deirdre. Westfall gave no hint that she’d already met Deirdre.

“We don’t normally serve alcoholic drinks here,” Archer said, once he had led Mrs. Westfall to the makeshift bar, “but in honor of your presence, we’ve figured out how to make a dry martini.” He poured a clear liquid into a stemmed, wide-brimmed glass and handed it to her. “I hope it meets with your approval.”

“I’m sure it will,” Westfall said, the corners of her lips curving ever so slightly. She sipped, then pronounced, “Perfect! How did you ever do it?”

Archer looked almost sheepish. “Well, the head of our food service group claims that he once tended bar in Sydney, Australia. I’m not certain that I believe him, but Red is a very resourceful person.”

“He certainly knows how to mix a martini,” Westfall said. But Deirdre noticed she didn’t take another sip.

“Speak of the devil,” said Marjorie, as the double doors opened and a short, wiry red-haired man with a bushy red mustache and a bristling skull-hugging crew cut entered, leading a quartet of serving robots, their flat tops laden with covered dishes.

“Rodney Devlin,” Archer announced. “Our chief cook and bartender.”

Devlin was wearing a sparkling white chef’s jacket and a big grin on his lantern-jawed face. He made a little bow as the robots rolled along the side wall like a quartet of well-trained waiters, then stopped in unison.

“Greetings and salutations, folks,” said Devlin. “Who’s for steak and who’s for fish? It’s all soy-based, o’course, but I think I got the flavors right.”

Devlin disappeared once everyone sat at the table and began eating. By the time the diners were picking desserts off the robots that maneuvered slowly around the table, Archer said, “I’m looking forward to working with all of you and learning more about the leviathans.”

Andy Corvus, halfway down the table, replied, “I’m looking forward to making contact with the beasts.”

“Contact?” Marjorie Archer asked.

With his usual vigorous nod, Andy explained, “If they’re intelligent, we should be able to communicate with them.”

“If they’re intelligent,” Mrs. Westfall said.

“I’m sure that they are,” said Grant Archer.

“How so?” Westfall asked. Her voice was soft, but everyone turned toward her.

“Because they communicate with each other,” Archer replied. “They flash signals back and forth. They have language—”

“Flashing lights don’t necessarily mean language,” Westfall objected. “Fish in Earth’s oceans make luminescent glows and they’re certainly not intelligent.”

“The leviathans are,” Archer insisted. “I’m sure of it.”

Westfall smiled thinly, but said nothing.

PLANS

“Well,” said Yeager, loudly enough to make all heads along the table turn toward him, “I’m here to see that you can send a team of people down into that ocean with the leviathans, whether they’re intelligent or not.”

Westfall raised a brow. “Really?”

Archer cleared his throat, then started to explain, “I was going to tell you about that tomorrow, when we go through the station’s newest wheel.”

“The area that’s dedicated to studying the leviathans,” Westfall said. It was not a question.

“The area that’s dedicated to studying the planet Jupiter, including its indigenous life-forms,” Archer replied evenly.

“And you intend to send a human team into the ocean?”

“Yes, I do.”

“There hasn’t been a human probe into the ocean in twenty years,” Westfall said. “Not since you yourself went down there.”

“I’m quite aware of that.”

“You’ll need IAA approval for such a dangerous mission. I doubt that you’ll get it.”

Archer seemed to square his shoulders without moving from his chair at the head of the table. Deirdre noticed that his wife slid her hand over his.

“As I read the regulations,” Archer said, forcing a smile for Mrs. Westfall, “IAA approval is necessary for funding allocations, not for approving specific missions.”

“For such a dangerous mission—”

“It won’t be all that dangerous,” Yeager said.

Deirdre turned toward the engineer, who was sitting on her right. Everyone else looked at him, too.

“Not dangerous?” Westfall asked, clearly disbelieving him.

Yeager spread his hands grandly. “No more dangerous than working out on the surface of Europa. Or Io, with those volcanoes spouting off.”

“But you’ll have to dive hundreds of kilometers deep into that ocean. The pressures—”

“No problem,” said Yeager.

“But the earlier missions all suffered terrible damage. Casualties. People died!”

Yeager gave her a condescending grin. “The earlier missions were sent out before we had a firm understanding of just what the conditions are down there. We knew the pressure would be tremendous, but how tremendous? We didn’t have any firm numbers. You can’t design without firm numbers to work with.”

Still looking incredulous, Westfall said, “You’re saying that—”

“I’m saying that the past twenty years’ worth of uncrewed missions into the ocean have given us enough data about the pressures and other conditions down at that level so that we can design a vessel that can safely carry people there.”

Dorn spoke up. “Those pressures were calculated long before the first human mission went into the ocean, weren’t they?”

“Sure they were,” Yeager agreed. “But those calculations were based on theoretical work. Models that made a lot of assumptions. There wasn’t any actual data. Now we have real data and we know to several decimal places what the conditions are.” Before anyone could respond, the engineer went on, “And when you know what you’re working against you can design a vessel that will work in those conditions. Work just fine.”

Westfall turned to Grant Archer. “So you’ve built such a vessel, haven’t you?”

“It’s waiting for its final checkout,” Archer said. “It’s co-orbiting with this station. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

“I didn’t see it in the virtual reality tour you gave me,” Westfall said. Her voice was not accusing, not sharp, but Deirdre could hear the icy distrust in her tone.

For a couple of heartbeats Archer said nothing. Then, “No, the vessel hasn’t been included in the VR tour. Not yet.”

Deirdre imagined she could see the wheels spinning inside Westfall’s perfectly coiffed head.

At last Westfall said, “As a member of the IAA’s governing council, I could get the council to issue an order forbidding a human mission into the ocean.”

Taut-faced, Archer replied, “You couldn’t get the council to act before the mission is launched.”

Anger flared on Westfall’s face for an instant, but she immediately suppressed it. “I think you underestimate the speed with which the council can act—when properly motivated.”

Archer glanced at his wife, sitting beside him, then returned his focus to Westfall. “Mrs. Westfall,” he said with deliberate formality, “I intend to send that vessel into the ocean of Jupiter. You can fire me from my post afterward, but that’s what I intend to do.”

“I won’t allow it,” Westfall said.

Andy Corvus piped up. “Hey, wait a minute. I’ve got to get down into that ocean. I’ve got to make contact with those critters.”

“You’ve got to?” Westfall practically sneered the words.

“That’s right,” Corvus snapped back at her. “I’ve got to. I’m a neurophysiologist. I believe I can make a meaningful communications contact with an alien life-form. I might be wrong about that, but I’ll never know unless I get the chance to try.”

Marjorie Archer asked softly, “But why do you say you’ve got to do that?”

Corvus turned toward her. “You’re a scientist. You know why.”

“Please, tell me,” Westfall said.

Andy ran a hand through his thick red mop before saying, “I’m a scientist. I do science. That’s my life. Michelangelo carved statues. Beethoven wrote symphonies. I do science. If you prevent me from doing it, it’s like … well, it’s like chopping off my hands. You haven’t killed me, exactly, but you’ve put an end to my life.”

Westfall shook her head slightly.

Deirdre said, “It would be as if someone prevented you from doing the work you love. Stopped you from being who you are, turned you into a hollow shell.”

Looking slowly from face to face, Westfall asked, “Is that the way all of you feel? You’re all scientists, do all of you—”

“I’m an engineer,” Yeager interrupted. “But, yeah, that’s what it’s all about. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and once you get hooked into this kind of research, you’ve got to do it. Or life becomes meaningless.”

Westfall turned to Dorn. “You’re not a scientist, are you?”

“No, I’m not,” said the cyborg. Then he added, “Scientists are curious people. I’m merely a curiosity.”

Archer tapped a fork against his water glass and everyone turned toward him. “I didn’t intend for this dinner to turn into a confrontation.” With a grin, he added, “Or a symposium on the philosophy of science.”

Westfall allowed herself a slight smile.

Archer continued, “Tomorrow, Mrs. Westfall, I’d like to show you what we’re doing in our studies of Jupiter and its life-forms. Show you how far we’ve come—and how very far we still have to go.”

Westfall nodded regally. “Until tomorrow, then.”

CONTROL CENTER

Deirdre was awakened by the insistent buzzing of the phone. She sat up in bed, rubbed her eyes, and asked the communications system’s computer, “Who’s calling?”

G. MAXWELL YEAGER appeared on the screen above her desk. Deirdre saw that the time was only 0600.

“Voice only,” she commanded the phone.

“Dee!” Yeager’s voice sounded urgently. “You awake?”

“I am now, Max.”

“C’mon, get dressed and meet me in the galley. We’ll grab some breakfast and then go down to the third wheel and inspect Faraday before Archer brings Westfall down there.”

“I can’t,” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I have to be at the clinic at eleven hundred hours,” she said.

“I’ll have you back before then, don’t worry.”

“Who’s Faraday?” Deirdre asked.

“Not who. What. My ship. The baby that’s going to take Andy down to the leviathans.”

“Why do you want me to—”

“I’ve gotta give her the once-over before Westfall sees her,” Yeager explained, “and I’d really like you to see her.”

“But I—”

“I want to show off!” Yeager’s voice sounded eager, excited. “You’re the prettiest lady on this merry-go-round so I thought it’d be fun to show off to you. Okay?”

Grinning at his explanation, Deirdre said, “Okay. I’ll meet you in the galley in half an hour.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Yeager said.

“Thirty,” said Deirdre firmly. “It takes time to look beautiful.”

“Why did you name it Faraday?” Deirdre asked as she and Yeager rode the elevator down the station’s central shaft toward the third wheel.

For a moment Yeager didn’t reply. Deirdre thought he looked almost embarrassed. The only sound in the slightly swaying elevator cab was the swish of its rush down the tube.

At last Yeager explained, “Well, he’s always been a kind of hero of mine. Michael Faraday. Son of a cobbler, back early in the nineteenth century. Made himself into one of the great scientists. An experimenter. A hands-on guy.”

Deirdre nodded, beginning to understand.

“He invented the electric power generator. Called it the dynamo. Edison and the whole electric utility industry was based on his little contraption. Even the earliest nuclear power plants still used the kind of generator he invented.”

“I can see why you admire him,” Deirdre said.

Yeager broke into a grin. “There’s a story about Faraday. He gave a big public lecture in London about his little dynamo and after it was over a lady from the audience came up and asked him…” Yeager broke into a wavering falsetto, “ ‘Mr. Faraday, your invention seems very interesting, but tell me, of what use is it?’ Faraday answered her, ‘Madam, of what use is a newborn baby?’ ”

Deirdre said, “I’ve heard that story. In school, one of the professors told that story as an example of what scientific research is all about.”

“You betcha,” Yeager said. “But there’s a different version of the story, one that I like better.”

The elevator stopped with a ping! and its doors slid open. They stepped out into a passageway much like the main passageway up in the top wheel. But this one looked new, raw, almost unused to Deirdre’s eyes. Its deck was uncarpeted and it smelled of fresh paint.

Yeager fished his pocketphone from his tunic, then pointed toward their right. “This way,” he said.

“What’s the other version of the story?” Deirdre asked as they started along the sloping passageway. The doors along the corridor were unmarked, and Deirdre got the impression that the rooms behind them were empty.

“Oh, the other version,” Yeager said. “Well, it’s the same setup: Faraday gives his lecture to the public, but afterward it’s a member of Parliament who comes up and asks him what good his little dynamo might be. And Faraday tells him, ‘I don’t know, sir. But someday you will put a tax upon it.’ ”

Yeager laughed loudly. Deirdre smiled at him.

He stopped at a double door that was marked CONTROL CENTER—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“Are we authorized personnel?” Deirdre asked.

As he tapped on the door’s security pad Yeager said, “We are if I know the lock’s combination.”

“But I’m not—”

“You’re with me, kiddo.”

The door slid open and they stepped into what looked to Deirdre like a mission control chamber. A horseshoe of consoles ran around a central chair whose padded arms were studded with colored buttons. The walls were smart screens from floor to ceiling, all of them blank. Deirdre counted an even dozen consoles, their cushioned chairs all empty, their screens and dials all dead.

Without an instant’s hesitation, Yeager went to the central chair and settled himself in it. His fingers began playing along the buttons in the chair’s arms and, one by one, the consoles hummed to life. Deirdre stood to one side, half leaning against the chair’s padded back.

“Okay,” Yeager said, nodding as if satisfied with what he saw, “now watch the middle screen, right in front of us.”

The screen ran the entire length of the chamber’s front wall. It began to glow and then sharpened to show a curving metal surface with an airlock hatch in it. Closed.

“That’s Faraday,” Yeager said. “A slice of it, at least.”

“That’s the vessel that’s going to take people into the ocean?”

“Yep. That’s her. Him. Whatever.” Yeager was still pecking at the buttons on the control pads. The consoles’ screens were displaying graphs and images, the gauges were all alight.

“Ships are referred to as ‘she,’ ” Deirdre said, “no matter who they’re named after.”

“Because it costs so much to keep ’em in paint and powder,” Yeager wisecracked.

“That’s an old sexist cliché,” Deirdre said, with a disapproving click of her tongue.

But Yeager’s attention was totally focused on the vessel. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? This is the first time I’ve seen her. After all the drawings and plans and simulations, there she is. She’s gorgeous!”

“It looks big.”

Yeager grunted. “As big as this whole station, almost. So big we can’t attach it to the station, it’d throw the center of mass entirely out of whack and we’d start wobbling like a drunken sailor.”

“It’s not connected?”

“Co-orbits with the station. To get to it you have to get into a spacesuit and go EVA.”

“Goodness.”

Grinning tightly, Yeager said, “Goodness has nothing to do with it.” Looking up into her face, the engineer asked, “Want to go aboard her?”

RESEARCH VESSEL FARADAY

“Aboard your Faraday?” Deirdre asked. “I’ve never been in a spacesuit. I don’t know—”

“Not in actuality,” Yeager said, almost impatiently. “VR.”

“Virtual reality.”

“Yeah.” Pointing, “Take that console, the one on the end. You’ll find goggles and ear plugs in the top drawer. Should be feelie gloves in there, too.”

Deirdre sat at the humming console, wormed a plug into her ear, pulled on the fuzzy-looking tactile gloves, then slid the goggles over her eyes. The goggles made everything look slightly greenish.

“Okay,” Yeager’s voice muttered in her ear. “Just a minute now while I power up the system…”

The world went blank for a moment; Deirdre could see nothing. Abruptly she was hanging in space between the station and the gigantic sphere of Faraday. She gasped with surprise.

“It’s huge! Almost as big as the station!”

She heard Yeager chuckle. “Yep.”

“What are all those fins sticking out from it?”

“Steering vanes,” Yeager answered. “For maneuvering, either in Jupiter’s atmosphere or its ocean.”

Deirdre nodded silently.

“Now we activate your propulsion unit,” Yeager said.

Although she felt no force upon her, Deirdre saw that she was moving through empty space toward the airlock hatch on Faraday’s curving surface. She saw a nine-unit keyboard on the hull next to the airlock.

“Combination’s one-two-three,” Yeager told her. “I like to keep things simple.”

Reaching out with her gloved hand, Deirdre tapped out the combination. She could feel the solidity of the keys against her fingertip. The hatch slid open silently.

“Go right in, kiddo.”

Somewhat hesitantly, Deirdre stepped into the airlock. She waited while the outer hatch closed, the chamber filled with air, and finally the inner door opened. She saw a long tunnel made of gleaming metal, a tube, with a six-seated cart waiting empty.

“Sit down and strap in,” Yeager instructed her. “This buggy goes fast.”

It felt odd: Deirdre knew she was still sitting at the console in the control center, but like a dreamer she climbed into the cart’s front seat and clicked the safety belt across her lap. Without warning the cart shot down the tunnel like a bullet. The curving walls blurred, but Deirdre felt no sense of motion at all.

“You’re diving through an even dozen layers of reinforced compression shells,” Yeager explained as she whizzed through the tunnel, “down to the crew station at the vessel’s center.”

The cart slowed, then stopped at another hatch. Following Yeager’s instructions, Deirdre got out of the cart, opened the hatch, and stepped into a small, cramped chamber, packed tight with consoles and sensor screens.

“This is it?” she asked, feeling disappointed. The place was so small. Barely room for five people, cheek by jowl. I’ve seen bathrooms bigger than this, she thought. People are supposed to live and work in here?

“That’s it,” Yeager’s voice told her. “That’s the bridge. The crew will work there for two weeks—if everything goes according to plan. Which it won’t.”

“Where do they sleep? Eat?”

Yeager guided her past a tall, square unit that he identified as the galley; it looked like an oversized snack dispenser to Deirdre. Then she went through another hatch into the sleeping quarters, even smaller and more compact than the bridge. The individual bunks were mere drawers set in a metal bulkhead. It reminded Deirdre of videos she had seen of morgues, on Earth.

“You’d better test your crew for claustrophobia before you let them in here,” she said.

She could sense Yeager nodding. “Yeah, it’s kinda tight, isn’t it?”

“Not much privacy.”

She heard Yeager grunt. Then he said, “Okay. Seen enough?”

Deirdre nodded. Abruptly her vision went black, but before she could utter a sound she saw the control center aboard the station again, still tinted slightly green.

She pulled the goggles off her head, brushed a hand through her hair. “The vessel’s so big and the crew area is so small.”

“Gotta be that way,” Yeager said, still sitting in the command chair. “Pressure. The ship’s got to be able to take enormous pressure.”

“The crew, too,” Deirdre said.

“Guess so,” said Yeager.

It was nearly 1000 hours, Deirdre saw.

“I’ve got to get back,” she said to Yeager. “My appointment at the clinic.”

Sitting in the command chair, the engineer nodded without looking up from the buttons he was pecking at. “Okay. You can find your way, can’t you? I’ve gotta double-check all these systems before Archer brings Westfall down here.”

Deirdre said, “I’ll be fine.” She started for the hatch, then turned back to Yeager and said, “Thanks for the tour.”

“Uh-huh,” he said absently, still fiddling with his controls.

Deirdre saw that his attention was on his work. He had shown off to her and now he was all business. With an understanding shrug she left the control center and headed for the elevators. Max is in his element, she told herself. He wanted to impress me, but he wants to play with his gadgets even more.

The elevator doors slid open even before she reached for the call button, and Dr. Archer stepped out, with Mrs. Westfall a step behind him. Deirdre marveled again at how diminutive Westfall was. Small physically, she thought, but that little body of hers carries enormous power.

“Hello!” Archer said, surprised. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Dr. Yeager asked me here to see the vessel he’s designed. He’s inside, checking out its systems.”

Westfall said nothing, but she gave Deirdre the slightest of nods as she brushed past. As if she approves of my looking things over down here, Deirdre thought. As if she thinks I’m spying for her.

Deirdre felt nervous as she entered the clinic. It was much larger than the infirmary on Australia. Even the anteroom was bigger than Dr. Pohan’s cubbyhole of an office. A white-smocked receptionist sat at a desk that curved around her chair like the pseudopods of an amoeba reaching for its prey.The receptionist was a smiling, slightly overweight gray-haired woman. She glanced at her desktop screen and then looked up at Deirdre.

“Deirdre Ambrose. You’re scheduled to see Dr. Mandrill. Right on time. That’s good.”

Dr. Mandrill turned out to be a puffy-faced, laconic Kenyan. His office walls were covered with old-fashioned photographs of himself with adults and children whom Deirdre assumed were his family, back Earthside. His voice was a deep, rich baritone.

“Your condition is very serious,” he said, almost accusingly. Then he broke into a dazzling smile. “But we’ll take care of you, never fear.”

Deirdre expected to be put through more examinations and scans, but Dr. Mandrill apparently was satisfied with the file from Australia. He nodded and muttered to himself as he read Dr. Pohan’s report, then finally looked up at Deirdre.

“As long as your friend keeps volunteering his blood, you’ll be fine.”

“Dorn,” Deirdre breathed.

“Yes. He’s a cyborg, I understand. Interesting case.” Tapping his computer screen, the doctor added, “We’re running a series of experiments on him, I see.”

ULTRAHYPERBARIC CHAMBER

The pain was bearable. So far.

Dorn sat alone in the bare, metal-walled chamber. Benches ran along its curved walls, enough room to seat six people. But Dorn was in the chamber alone.

“How do you feel?” The technician’s voice coming through the speaker grill in the overhead sounded strangely deep, distorted. It must be the pressure, Dorn told himself.

Aloud, he reported, “Some discomfort in my chest and abdomen.”

His head and body were plastered with sensors, both his metal half and his flesh. Outside the chamber the technicians were monitoring his physical condition: heart rate, breathing, brain wave patterns, electrical conductivity of his wiring, lubrication levels of his servomotors, activity of the digital processors in his prosthetics.

“Can you stand up and walk a few paces, please?”

Dorn got stiffly to his feet and stepped along the narrow aisle between the benches, surprised at how much effort it took. His leg ached; even the prosthetic leg seemed stiff, arthritic.

“Very good. We’re going to notch up the pressure slowly. You tell us when you want us to stop.”

Dorn sat down again and gripped the edge of the bench with both his hands. His head began to thrum. It became difficult to draw a breath. The pain ramped upward, slowly but steadily, always worse. Closing his human eye, Dorn sat quietly and took it without complaint.

Suddenly the bench splintered beneath him with an oddly deep crunching noise. Dorn looked down and saw that his prosthetic hand had crushed the plastic.

“That’s enough!” the technician’s slurred voice bawled. “Take him down.”

They did it slowly, very slowly, but at last the pain eased away entirely. After nearly another hour of sitting alone in the bare, claustrophobic chamber, the hatch creaked open and the chief technician stuck his head in.

“You can come out now, Mr. Dorn. Test’s over.”

Dorn got slowly to his feet. He felt a little unsteady. His human leg tingled as if pins and needles were being jabbed into the flesh. Even the prosthetic leg felt balky, stiff, as if somehow its bearings had become infiltrated by grit.

He ducked through the hatch and stepped out onto the laboratory floor. Four technicians were bent over their console screens. Their chief, a round, ruddy-faced man with closely cropped blond hair, gazed at Dorn with unalloyed admiration.

“You took six times normal atmospheric pressure without a peep,” he said, smiling toothily.

“Is that good?” asked Dorn.

“Damned good. Damned good. And that’s in air, not the gunk.”

Dorn started to ask what “the gunk” might be, but the tech chief didn’t give him time to frame his question.

“Perfluorocarbon,” he explained, still smiling. “They immerse you in the stuff. You breathe it instead of air. Allows you to work in much higher pressures. Much higher.”

Dorn bit back a sardonic reply. Then he remembered that he was expected at the clinic to donate more blood to Deirdre.

Andy Corvus, meanwhile, was swimming lazily in the dolphin pool. Fish glided by him, all the colors of the rainbow, swishing their tails mindlessly. Turning his head slightly, Andy saw through his breathing mask two of the dolphins, big as moving vans, sleek and gray, their mouths curved in perpetual grins. Andy waved to them and they chattered and whistled as they effortlessly swooped past him.

Where’s Baby? he wondered. Baby and her parents had been transferred from Australia to this tank in the station. It was much bigger than the tank aboard the torch ship: It took Andy nearly a quarter of an hour to swim its full length.

At last he spotted Baby, down near the bottom, nosing among the artificial coral formations there. Got to think in three dimensions, he told himself. The world of humans is a flatland; dolphins live in three dimensions.

“Hello, Baby,” he said inside his mask. The chip-sized computer built into the mask translated his words into a series of high-pitched chirps.

Baby zoomed up toward him, then swam a circle around Corvus, chattering back at him.

“Hello, Andy,” the computer translated. “Good fishing?”

“I’m not hungry,” Corvus said.

“I am.” And Baby flashed away with a flick of her powerful flukes.

Corvus looked around for Baby’s parents. The youngster’s moving around without them now, he realized. She’s growing up. I wonder if dolphins have a teenaged phase, when they rebel against their parents. Or try to. He remembered his own teen years, how ancient and conservative his parents had seemed.

His wristwatch buzzed. The vibration told Corvus that he’d been in the water with the dolphins for three full hours. He sighed inwardly. Time to get out. Time to return to the dry world of his fellow humans.

Reluctantly he swam to the surface. Suddenly Baby was beside him, smoothly spouting and then sucking in a gulp of air. She chattered briefly.

“More fish?” the computer translated.

Corvus smiled inside his face mask. Yep, he replied silently, I’m going to get me some lunch. Maybe the cooks have made some pseudofish today, instead of the usual soyburgers.

Aloud, he said to the young dolphin, “Time to leave, Baby. I’ll be back soon.”

It took a moment for the computer to translate his words into clicks. Then Baby replied, “Good hunting, Andy.”

“Good hunting, Baby.”

Corvus was surprised at how physically tired he felt once he’d climbed out of the water and planted his feet on the solid deck that ran the circumference of the huge tank.

Lunch sounds like a good idea, he thought as he slowly pulled off his air tank and stowed it in the locker where he kept his swimming gear. The floor of the deck was porous: The water dripping from his body disappeared as the permeable tiles wicked it up. Corvus showered, toweled off, and pulled on his shapeless coveralls. Deirdre had told him they were olive green and didn’t go well with his red hair and fair complexion. The colors meant nothing to him.

He was closing his locker door when he heard voices drifting down the passageway from the direction of the elevators. A woman and a man, he recognized.

Around the curve of the passageway came Dr. Archer and that Mrs. Westfall. Andy instinctively distrusted Katherine Westfall. She had a superior air about her that raised his hackles. Like she thought herself better, more important, than anyone else. Shrugging to himself, he admitted, Well, she sure is more important. But does she have to throw it in your face?

“Ah, Dr. Corvus,” Archer called as they approached. Andy saw that three dark-suited young men trailed behind the pair of them. Westfall’s flunkies, he guessed.

“Dr. Archer,” Corvus replied. “And Mrs. Westfall. Hi. How are you?”

Westfall said, “Dr. Archer has been telling me that you can actually talk with the dolphins.” The tone of her voice clearly said she didn’t believe it.

“Um, to a limited extent, yes.”

“Really?”

Archer, standing slightly behind Westfall, raised his brows in an expression that looked almost beseeching to Andy. Corvus understood: Don’t start an argument with her. Don’t let her get under your skin.

Making himself smile for the IAA councilwoman, Corvus said genially, “Would you like to talk with them?”

DOLPHIN TANK

“Me?” Westfall’s hazel eyes went wide. “Talk with a dolphin?”

Corvus opened his locker and pulled out his breathing mask. “The translator’s built into the mask. You’ll have to put it on.”

As she accepted the mask from Corvus’s hand, Westfall asked guardedly, “How does it work?”

“We’ve built up a vocabulary of dolphin sounds and translated some of them into human language. The translator’s set for English, but we can switch it to something else, if you like. Spanish, Chinese, a few others.”

“English will be fine,” Westfall said.

“Just slip the mask over your head,” Corvus said, gesturing.

“But how does it work?” she insisted. “I mean, how can you translate the noises those fish make into meaningful human words?”

Corvus glanced at Archer, then focused again on Mrs. Westfall. “In the first place, ma’am, they’re not fish. They’re mammals, just like you and me. They breathe air. They have brains that are just as complex as our own; a little bigger than ours, actually.”

Archer stepped in. “Over many years we’ve built up a dictionary of dolphin vocalizations and correlated them with human words. It’s been very slow work. The two species live in very different environments.”

“But we’re able to talk back and forth,” Corvus said. “At least, a little bit.” With a little chuckle, he explained, “We don’t discuss philosophy or any abstract subjects. But we can talk about fish, heat and cold, solid objective things.”

Archer added, “This work goes all the way back to when Dr. Wo was running this station, more than twenty years ago. He believed that learning to communicate with the dolphins would help us learn how to communicate with a completely alien species, such as the Jovian leviathans.”

Westfall looked down at the breathing mask she held in her hands. It was still slightly wet, Corvus saw, but he decided not to take it back and wipe it off.

“Do you really believe that you can have a meaningful dialogue with dolphins?” she asked.

“They’re pretty darned smart,” Corvus said. “Of course, we’re dealing with tame ones, dolphins that have been raised in captivity. I’ll bet the wild ones are even smarter. I mean, they’ve got to deal with sharks and all, they have to navigate across whole oceans. Lots more problems for them to handle. And they live in bigger family groups, too.”

Westfall seemed to be trying to digest these new ideas. Corvus thought she looked like a kid facing a plate of spinach.

“You don’t have to try it if you don’t want to,” he said.

That moved her. Without another word Westfall slipped the mask over her tawny hair. Very carefully, Corvus noted. She doesn’t want to mess her ’do.

The mask was loose on her face, but Andy thought that it didn’t matter as long as she wasn’t actually going into the water.

“Now what?” she asked, her voice muffled somewhat by the mask.

Corvus beckoned her to the glassteel wall of the tank, where the fish were swimming by and the dolphins gliding sleekly among them.

“It’ll work best if you press the mask against the tank,” he said to Westfall. “That’ll conduct the sound better.”

Still looking uncertain, Westfall leaned forward until the mask was firmly against the glassteel. Corvus saw one of the adult dolphins swim toward her, curious. Then he caught sight of Baby, a dozen meters or so deeper.

“Say hello to Baby,” he prompted.

“Hello, Baby,” said Westfall.

The young dolphin chattered and Westfall flinched away from the tank.

“He answered me!” she exclaimed.

“She.”

“Yes. She’s a female, isn’t she?” Westfall pressed against the glassteel again and asked, “How old are you, Baby?”

Corvus knew that dolphins didn’t keep time the way humans did. Baby clicked and chattered.

Westfall said, “She asked me if I’ve eaten today.”

“Feeding’s important to them,” Andy said.

“Ask her where her mother is,” Archer suggested.

“Where’s your mother?”

More chattering, and an adult dolphin swam up beside Baby, clicking and whistling.

“That’s her mother,” said Westfall.

Corvus watched happily as Baby and Westfall exchanged a few more words. At last the woman stepped back from the tank and pulled the mask off.

“That was…” She seemed to search for a word. “… fascinating.”

Taking the mask from her hands, Andy said, “We’re trying to enlarge our vocabulary of dolphin speech. I wish we could get back to Earth and start talking to some of them in their natural habitat.”

“We?” Westfall asked.

With a self-deprecating little smile, Corvus said, “I’m just the tip of the iceberg in this. There’s a whole slew of people back at the University of Rome and a half-dozen other research institutions.”

Archer said, “Scripps, Woods Hole, several others.”

Westfall’s expression hardened slightly. “But how do you know you’re really communicating with them? Mightn’t your so-called vocabulary simply be words you’ve placed as definitions of their noises? Mightn’t you be fooling yourselves?”

Shaking his head, Andy countered, “We’ve done some pretty strict tests. Not just gabbing at each other, but asking the dolphins to find specific objects in the water, asking them to perform some acrobatics. It’s a real language and we’re getting the hang of it. It’s pretty slow, I admit, but we’re learning.”

Before Westfall could reply, Archer said, “This work goes back more than twenty years, as I said. Dr. O’Hara was really the pioneer in this area.”

“Elaine O’Hara.” Westfall’s expression suddenly turned glacial.

“Lane O’Hara,” Archer said. “She was a fine, wonderful person. Do you know her?”

“I never had the chance to meet her,” Westfall said, her tone dripping acid.

GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE

Max Yeager felt nervous.

“I appreciate your coming with me,” he said as he and Dorn headed along the passageway toward Dr. Archer’s office.

The cyborg replied gravely, “I have nothing to do this afternoon. The medics are reviewing the data on the pressure tests they ran on me.”

Yeager had his pocketphone in one hand and every few steps glanced at the colored map it displayed to make sure they were on the right path. They passed a solitary woman in drab coveralls walking in the other direction. Up ahead a pair of men in virtually identical dark blue tunics and slacks were heading in the same direction as they. Yeager guessed that they too were looking for Archer’s office.

The doors along the passageway bore small nameplates next to their keypads. This whole section of the station looked obviously older than the third wheel, worn, almost shabby. A quarter century of hard use, Yeager said to himself. It shows.

“May I ask why you want me to accompany you?”

Yeager was on Dorn’s mechanical side. There was no discernable expression on the etched metal of his face, but the engineer heard the curiosity in his tone.

Feeling more fidgety as they got closer to Archer’s office, Yeager admitted, “I … uh … I get kinda jumpy when a big shot like Archer calls me into a meeting. I’m a lot happier down in the labs, or getting my hands dirty on the hardware.”

“You want moral support,” Dorn said emotionlessly.

Yeager bobbed his head up and down. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Sure enough, the two suits ahead of them stopped at a door and tapped on it for entrance.

As the two of them stepped in, Yeager and Dorn got close enough to see Grant Archer standing inside, welcoming them.

Licking his lips nervously, Yeager said, “This is it.”

Dorn agreed with a solemn nod, and gestured with his human hand for Yeager to go in ahead of him.

The engineer hesitated. “Maybe we oughtta knock or something.”

Before Dorn could reply, Archer looked past the two arrivals and spotted Yeager just outside the doorway.

“Dr. Yeager,” he called. “Right on time. And you brought Dorn with you. Good!”

Archer came up and shook hands with Yeager, then with Dorn. Yeager saw there was no desk in the office, no hierarchical arrangement of any sort. Just an assortment of chairs that looked as if they’d been cribbed from a used furniture store.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Archer said, taking one of the recliners. He introduced the two other men as Michael Johansen, head of the station’s Jovian studies department, and Isaac Lowenstien, chief of the safety and life-support department.

Mike and Ike? Yeager asked himself. Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?

It wasn’t. Johansen was tall, his long legs stretching under the coffee table in the middle of their chairs. He had a long, narrow face with sharp, angular features and a scattering of freckles so pale they were almost yellow. His hair was the color of straw and baby-fine, wispy. His eyes were steel blue. A Viking’s eyes, Yeager thought. Piercing. No nonsense.

Lowenstien, on the other hand, was a small, swarthy, intense man with tightly curled midnight-dark hair, smoldering jet-black eyes and a six-pointed star tattooed on the back of his right hand. Refugee, Yeager recognized. Must be third generation: His grandparents probably got killed when Israel was wiped out. They never forget.

Both Mike and Ike were staring hard at Yeager, like a pair of police detectives about to grill a suspect. Yeager felt as if he were sitting on a hard cement block instead of a cushioned armchair. Perspiration trickled down his ribs. This is going to be an inquisition, he knew.

Archer was sitting straight up in his recliner. But he smiled easily as he said, “We’re here to review the status of the submersible and see if it’s ready for a crewed mission.”

Lowenstien immediately said, “The vehicle hasn’t been flown yet. You can’t risk a human crew in an untried vehicle.” His voice was sharp, cutting.

Before Yeager could object, Johansen clasped his bony hands around his knees and looked up at the ceiling as he said in a slow drawl, “We’ve obtained as much data as we can from uncrewed missions. If we’re to make any progress in understanding the leviathans we need a human mission.”

Archer scratched at his trim little beard. “I find that I agree with both of you.” He turned to Yeager. “Dr. Yeager, what do you have to say?”

Max had to swallow hard before he could find his voice. So what do I have to say?

“As you know,” he began, stalling for time to arrange his thoughts, “I’ve spent the past five years in Selene designing the Faraday and supervising its construction.”

“From four hundred million kilometers away,” said Lowenstien.

“The data’s the same, no matter what the distance,” Yeager shot back. “But, you’re right, yesterday was the first time I’ve seen the ship firsthand.”

“And?” Archer prompted.

“She’s a beauty,” said Yeager.

“Have you gone aboard it?” Lowenstien demanded.

“Not yet. But I checked out all her systems from the command center. She’s ready to fly.”

Johansen said, “Then we should start the procedures to pick a crew.”

Lowenstien objected. “We shouldn’t risk a crew until the vehicle has demonstrated that it’s safe to operate.”

Archer said, “There’s some urgency in this. We need to get a team down there before the IAA decides to hold us up.”

“For very valid safety reasons,” Lowenstien said.

“But if all the ship’s systems check out,” Archer countered, “then why should we hesitate? This isn’t the dark ages, when test pilots had to try out new aircraft because they didn’t have computers to simulate their performance.”

“Simulations,” Lowenstien said, “are not actualities.”

Yeager said, “Now wait a minute. The whole point of this exercise is to send a human team down to the level where those giant whales live.”

“And get them back alive,” Lowenstien added. Johansen nodded.

“And get them back alive,” Archer said, “before the IAA steps in and strangles us with red tape.”

Johansen looked worried. “Do you think they would really try to stop us? Why?”

“We’re risking human lives here,” Lowenstien said.

Archer said, “Mrs. Westfall seems to be afraid of that. She’s just as much as told me that she’ll do everything she can to stop us from sending a human team in.”

“May I say something?” Dorn asked.

They all turned toward the cyborg.

“I presume that I will be one of the crew,” he said.

“You don’t have any scientific training,” Johansen objected.

“Yes, but I’ve had considerable experience piloting spacecraft.”

“Not the same thing at all,” said Johansen.

“And,” Dorn added, “I apparently am better able than others to withstand the pressures that the crew will face.”

That stopped them. For several moments the office was dead quiet.

Then Archer asked, “What is it you want to say?”

“I’m willing to ride in Dr. Yeager’s vessel. I have confidence in his design.”

Johansen smiled palely at the cyborg. Lowenstien looked faintly disgusted.

“We appreciate your courage,” said Archer.

“Not courage,” Dorn corrected. “Curiosity. I want to learn about those gigantic creatures. I want to see them face to face.”

The discussion droned on for more than an hour. Johansen even began to argue that they should be spending more time on classifying the various species living in Jupiter’s atmosphere, rather than focusing all their efforts on the leviathans. Yeager decided to head them off before they got themselves too deeply involved in what he considered to be a sideline issue.

“All right,” he said, his nervousness gone now that he knew what had to be done. “We send the vessel into the ocean on an automated mission. No crew. We put her through the exact conditions she’ll have to face with a crew aboard. If she gets through that without a problem, then we’ll be ready for a human mission. Right?”

Archer turned from Yeager toward Johansen and Lowenstien. Each of them nodded agreement. Johansen seemed reasonably compliant about the idea, Yeager thought; Lowenstien wary, almost suspicious.

KATHERINE WESTFALL’S QUARTERS

“So they’re going to send the submersible down there unmanned?” Katherine Westfall asked.

Deirdre nodded. “That’s the plan.”

Westfall had draped herself across the sitting room’s chaise longue, clad in a skintight pair of glittering gold toreador pants topped by an emerald green silk jacket. Her sandals were crusted with gems: Deirdre wondered if they were real jewels. As usual, Westfall looked as if she had arranged herself to have her portrait snapped.

Sitting in an armchair facing her, Deirdre felt almost scruffy in her dark gray pullover blouse and lighter slacks. The coffee table between them was bare. Westfall had offered no refreshments of any kind for this midnight meeting.

“You’re certain of this?” Westfall asked, almost accusingly. “This information is reliable?”

“I got it from Dr. Yeager, the man who designed the vessel. He’ll be in charge of the mission.”

“I see,” said Westfall. A hint of a smile curled the corners of her mouth. “I presume you have Yeager suitably enamored of your charms.”

Deirdre almost laughed in her face, remembering how easy it had been to get information out of Max.

Dorn had told her about the meeting in Archer’s office when he’d met Deirdre in the clinic for her immunization therapy. The cyborg didn’t have to be there, the clinic had a sufficient sample of his blood on hand, but somehow he seemed to show up whenever Deirdre had to get her shots.

“I appreciate your moral support,” she’d said to him as they left the clinic.

“That seems to be my main function these days,” said Dorn. He told her about Max’s need for support in the meeting with Dr. Archer.

Once she was alone in her quarters Deirdre phoned Max.

“I hear you had a big meeting,” she said to the engineer’s image in her phone screen. “I hope it went well.”

Yeager put on a toothy smile. “I’ll tell you all about it over dinner.”

“Fine,” said Deirdre.

Yeager looked surprised, but he broke into his usual leering grin and replied happily, “I’ll pick you up at eighteen hundred hours. Okay?”

“Fine,” Deirdre repeated.

The station’s galley was hardly a romantic trysting place, but Yeager found a table for two and spent most of dinner talking about the meeting and the decision to send Faraday into the Jovian ocean without a crew aboard.

“Can you do that?” Deirdre asked. “I mean, can the ship function without a crew?”

Yeager popped a forkful of apple tart into his mouth and nodded wordlessly as he chewed it quickly and then swallowed it down.

“She’ll run fully automated,” he said at last. But his expression was far from happy.

“Is there something wrong with that?”

He looked down at his plate. Nothing there but crumbs. Without looking up at Deirdre he muttered, “I don’t like it.”

“Your dessert?” She giggled. “You didn’t leave much of it.”

“Not the dessert,” he said, meeting her eyes at last. “I don’t like sending her down there alone. Without a crew.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated a couple of heartbeats, then explained, “She’ll have to go down so deep we’ll lose contact with her. We won’t be able to run her remotely, from here in the station. She’ll have to run fully automated, completely on her own. She’ll be all alone down there!”

“But you said the ship’s designed to operate that way, if it has to.”

Shaking his head, Yeager said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Hell, I designed her! I know what she can do! I even set up a human analog file into her main program; silly thing to do, but I did it anyway.”

“A human analog program?”

“Yeah.” Yeager looked almost ashamed of himself. “Aphorism, adages … that sort of thing. So she wouldn’t feel all alone down there.”

Deirdre smiled at him. “Max, you’re just a big softie. That program isn’t going to make the computer feel better. Computers don’t have emotions.”

“I know. But I do.”

“The ship will do fine, Max.”

“I know. I know.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I just don’t like it. I worry about her. I’d feel a lot better if I was there with her.”

“Golly, Max, you sound as if you’re talking about a child of yours.”

“I am,” he said. “She’s my baby, Dee. I’m scared for her.”

Once they’d left the galley and walked along the passageway toward their living quarters, Yeager fell silent. Deirdre thought that all his bluster and loud confidence in his design was really a front. He was worried that his vessel might fail, that it might never return from its uncrewed mission into the Jovian ocean.

Are his insinuations about me nothing more than bravado, too? she wondered. She realized that she was going to find out.

“Well,” she said, once they’d reached her door, “thanks for an interesting dinner, Max.”

His familiar lecherous smirk returned. “The night is young, fair one.”

Deirdre decided to follow her hunch. “That’s true, it is.”

Yeager was a big, burly man, she realized. But his eyes were a meltingly soft brown. He stood before Deirdre, suddenly tongue-tied.

“Would you like to come in?” she asked, in a breathy whisper.

“I … uh…”

“I’m afraid I don’t have anything to drink.”

“Yeah, well…”

“We could just sit and talk for a while. Or watch videos.”

Yeager licked his lips, shifting slightly from one foot to the other, like a little boy.

Deirdre stepped so close to him that her body touched his. “Or whatever,” she whispered.

“Uh … Dee…” Something close to panic flashed in Yeager’s eyes. “I’m old enough to be your father, you know.”

“Do you want me to call you Daddy?”

He gulped hard. “I … I’ve got two kids your age … older,” he stuttered. “My ex-wife has custody of them. Back in Arizona.”

“That’s a long way from here,” Deirdre murmured.

“I gotta go!” Yeager said. “I gotta review the simulation data and get ready for a meeting tomorrow with the launch crew.”

“Do you have to?” Deirdre importuned.

“See you!” said Yeager. He turned and hurried down the passageway. Deirdre smiled knowingly as she watched him, a big hulking figure shambling along, running away from her. The more they talk, she knew, the less they act.

Katherine Westfall misunderstood her smile.

“You enjoyed your time with Dr. Yeager, it seems,” Westfall said.

Deirdre sighed. “He’s a dear man. A very dear man.”

Westfall eyed her carefully for several silent moments. Then, “How’s your therapy going?”

Startled by the sudden change of subject, Deirdre said, “Dr. Mandrill says my condition is under control.”

“That’s good. And as long as you continue to keep me informed about your colleagues’ progress, we’ll be able to keep your condition under control.”

Deirdre saw perfectly well what she really meant. She’ll be able to keep me under control.

LAUNCH

“You’re the launch director?” Max Yeager asked, his eyes wide with disbelief.

“I am,” said Linda Vishnevskaya, standing before Yeager and looking up at him with unflappable tenacity. She was a tiny woman, barely as tall as Yeager’s shoulder and elfin slim. Her curly golden hair was like a sunburst in the drab control center, her violet eyes calm and steady.

Almost truculently, Yeager asked, “How many launches have you directed?”

“Every one of them, since I first came to the station four years ago.”

Yeager blinked at her. This little pixie of a girl is the launch director? It was hard for him to accept.

“My team has a perfect record,” she said. “We haven’t lost a single craft. Not on launch. Several have disappeared down in the ocean, of course, but that was after they were out of contact with us, beyond our control.”

Nodding, Yeager admitted, “That’s what I’m worried about.”

Vishnevskaya’s steely expression warmed slightly. “Not to worry, Dr. Yeager. We will treat your vessel with great tenderness. We won’t hurt her, I promise you.”

Yeager almost smiled. “She’s a very valuable piece of equipment, you know. I’ve spent a lot of years working on her.”

“I know,” said the launch director. She reached for Yeager’s hand. “You care very much for your baby. But now it’s time for her to leave you and go out into the great big world.”

Tugging at Yeager’s arm like a toy doll pulling a big stuffed teddy bear, Vishnevskaya said gently, “Come, let me introduce you to my team.”

Yeager followed her dumbly.

Grant Archer escorted Katherine Westfall through the double doors and into the control center’s upper level. He showed her to one of the chairs built into the circular wall, several steps above the consoles arrayed along the center’s deck.

“Isn’t this rushing things?” Westfall asked once they were seated side by side. “Launching that enormous vessel on such short notice?”

Archer shook his head. “No, Mrs. Westfall. We’re not rushing anything. In fact, we’re slowing down from the plan I originally had in mind.”

“Really?”

“I had wanted to send a human crew as soon as we could.”

“Before I could get the IAA to stop you,” Westfall said.

Archer conceded the point with a dip of his bearded chin. “There is that. But our technical people insisted that we test the vehicle with an uncrewed mission.”

“Even so,” Westfall said, “it’s only been two days since you made that decision. And now you’re actually going to launch it? Into the ocean?”

Pointing to the petite golden-haired woman sitting at the central console, Archer said, “This isn’t like the old days, when it took weeks or even months to get a major launch under way. Our equipment is highly automated. And we have the best team in the solar system, if you ask me.”

Westfall said nothing, but the cynical expression on her sculpted face showed that she was unconvinced.

“Besides,” Archer went on, “we have the benefit of the scoopship operations. They launch vehicles into Jupiter’s atmosphere every week, just about. They’ve got launch procedures down to a routine.”

“The scoopships don’t go into the ocean,” Westfall pointed out.

“But the launch operations are pretty much the same,” Archer countered.

Westfall decided to let the matter rest there, thinking, Archer’s doing his damnedest to get his people down there with the leviathans before I can prevent him from doing it. The IAA governing council is taking its usual time about making a decision to prohibit a human mission. Two dozen windbags: It’s a miracle that they make any decisions about anything at all.

But if this test mission goes well, Archer will have the ammunition to make the council back his play. He doesn’t need the council’s permission for his human mission. All he needs is for the council not to prohibit it. Unless I can get the council to act, and act soon, he’ll send a human crew down there. And if the mission is successful, Archer will be handed the chairmanship of the governing council. I can’t let that happen! His mission has to be a failure. A terrible, tragic failure.

Yeager was sitting alone in the control center’s upper level across the circular chamber from Archer and Westfall. He barely noticed their presence. His attention was totally focused on the launch team as they began the countdown.

That little Russian kid seems to know what she’s doing, Yeager told himself. The rest of the team is experienced, too. Some of ’em do double duty with the scoopship operations. They know what they’re doing. They won’t screw it up.

Still, his stomach was in knots as the countdown proceeded. At first everything seemed to rush by at hyperkinetic speed: One instant they were an hour from launch and a breath later they were on the final ten seconds.

Time stretched like warm taffy now. Ten seconds. Nine. Yeager knew exactly what was going on in Faraday: internal power on; communications on; propulsion system activated.

Eight seconds. Seven. Six.

At five seconds Faraday became fully autonomous: The ship no longer needed directions from the launch team’s computers.

Four seconds. Three. Two.

Yeager unconsciously rose to his feet, his eyes fixed on the big screen that showed his vehicle, his baby, the pride of his career, hanging in the empty black of space.

One second. Launch.

For an instant nothing happened. Faraday just hung there, unmoving. Something’s gone wrong! Yeager screamed silently.

Then the gigantic sphere rotated half a turn and began to move away from the station. It pushed off slowly for the first few seconds, then flashed away like a child’s kite ripped into the blue by a sudden gust of wind.

She’s gone, Yeager said, standing there on trembling legs. I might never see her again.

PERFLUOROCARBON

“It’s not like the old days,” the technician was telling Dorn. “Back then they took off all your body hair and implanted electrodes in you surgically and whatnot. It was a real mess.”

The cyborg listened without comment, thinking, I have no body hair to remove. He had been instructed to wear nothing but swim trunks, but had found an emerald green hooded robe in the station’s quartermaster supplies and covered himself with it.

They were down in the third wheel. The technician was leading Dorn down a blank-walled corridor, toward a door marked IMMERSION CENTER. He looked like a teenager, almost Dorn’s own height but gawky, awkward, as if his body hadn’t yet become accustomed to his long limbs. His hair was sandy brown, his eyes sea green, his long face marked by prominent teeth in a narrow jaw.

“I mean,” he went on, “now all they have to do is dunk you in the gunk and let your body adjust to breathing it. Simple.”

“Have you tried it?” Dorn asked calmly.

The kid’s eyes flashed wide. “Me? Uh, no, they don’t need to dunk me.”

“I see.”

They pushed through the door and into the immersion center. It was a circular room with what looked like a large sunken bathtub in its center. Two more technicians were waiting by the railing that went around the tub’s perimeter. One was a dark-skinned, round-faced man with frown lines etching his forehead. He was short and stocky; his skin seemed to glow, as if sheened with perspiration. His partner was a rather good-looking brunette woman, her complexion the golden brown of Polynesia. Both wore tan coveralls.

The frowning man looked up from his palmcomp. “I’m Dr. Vavuniva, the chief technician here. You are Mr. Dorn?”

“Just Dorn.”

“Dorn,” the chief technician said. “No first name?”

“Not anymore.”

The tech’s brows shot up and he cast a questioning glance at the woman. She said, “It’s all right. We have his dossier. All the data we need is on file.”

Turning to Dorn, she said, “You’ve been briefed, I presume.”

“Fully,” he said. She was on the tall side, he noted, barely a couple of centimeters shorter than he. Oval face, with a discreet tattoo of a flower on her left cheekbone.

“Is that a dahlia?” Dorn asked her.

She smiled. “Yes. My given name is Dahlia.”

“I have no given name,” he said.

“So I see from your dossier.”

The chief tech said, “Well, let’s get on with it.” He turned to the younger technician. “You wait here. We might need you to help bring him back.”

The kid nodded. He looked nervous, Dorn thought.

The woman said, “You understand that you’re going to be immersed in liquid perfluorocarbon. You’ll be able to breathe it just as you breathe air.”

Dorn stepped to the railing at the edge of the tub. “I’ll be immersed in there? Fully immersed?”

Dahlia smiled at him. “It’s quite deep.”

The chief tech said, “The tank goes down twelve meters. You’ll be in over your head, don’t worry.”

Following their instructions, Dorn took off his robe while the youngster opened the gate in the railing. Dorn saw the three of them gazing at his body. They’re trying not to stare, he realized. But his half-metal body seemed to hold their eyes like a magnet holds iron filings.

The young tech wondered, “How will the gunk react with … uh, with his…”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Dr. Vavuniva said. “The perfluorocarbon won’t react with his metals, we checked that several times.”

Dahlia picked up a belt of weights from the deck and offered it to Dorn. “You’ll need this,” she said.

“You’ve got to go down to the bottom,” the chief tech explained, “and stay there for at least fifteen minutes.”

Dorn nodded and accepted the belt from Dahlia, with a murmured, “Thank you.” He fastened it around his waist.

“The belt has a built-in phone. Once you’re fully immersed you’ll be able to speak almost normally. And with the phone you can talk to us while you’re down there.”

Dorn thought, Call for help, she means. But she’s too kind to say it.

Vavuniva turned to a screen set into the chamber’s curving bulkhead. He touched it once, and a display of alphanumerics lit up.

Nodding as if satisfied, he turned back to Dorn and said, “Very well then, in you go.”

Dorn saw that there was a ladder built into the side of the tank. He stepped into the perfluorocarbon, prosthetic foot first.

Dahlia leaned over the rail. “You’ll gag on it. Everybody does, at first. It’s a reflex. Don’t panic.”

Dorn smiled at her as best as he could. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll try not to panic.”

He climbed slowly down the ladder. The liquid felt cold, slimy to the human half of his body. Up to his waist. Up to his shoulders. Another step and the liquid rose over his head. He held his breath automatically. Down another step. Immersed in the liquid, Dorn could hear the tiny whining of the servomotors that moved his mechanical half. But the noise sounded deeper, lower.

He couldn’t hold his breath any longer. His lung was burning. He couldn’t help himself, he sucked in a deep breath. And gagged. Don’t panic! he commanded himself.

For ageless moments he hung on the rungs of the ladder, feeling the cold oily fluid in his nose, sliding down into his lung. He closed his human eye, gripping the ladder, shuddering as he tried to breathe the liquid. His prosthetic hand bent the rung’s metal.

With dogged resolution Dorn pushed himself off the ladder completely and slowly sank deeper into the tubular tank. His feet touched bottom, his knees flexed slightly.

And he was breathing. It wasn’t pleasant, but Dorn found that he could breathe almost normally in the all-pervading liquid perfluorocarbon. The fluid was almost as transparent as air; he could see the welded seams of the tank’s metal walls quite clearly.

“I’m at the bottom,” he said, his voice sounding strangely deep and slow in his ears.

“Fifteen minutes,” came the chief tech’s voice, also distorted. “Starting now.”

Dorn waited, trying not to think about the past as the minutes ticked slowly by. When you go into Jupiter’s ocean in the submersible you’ll be immersed in this liquid, he thought. You’ll have to spend days breathing this slime.

Unbidden, memories of his past life surged to his consciousness. His first raid, when he was twelve, destroying the village, killing everyone, everything, even the cattle and dogs. Strange that the mangy, half-starved dog still stuck in his memory. He had tried to kill it cleanly, with one shot, but only crippled its hind legs. The mutt crawled painfully away, yowling until he emptied the whole clip of his assault rifle and blew it to bloody scraps.

Dorn’s pulse was thundering in his ears when at last the chief tech announced he could come back up.

Dahlia’s voice added, “Climb the ladder slowly. Don’t try to float to the surface, please.”

Dorn followed her orders, glad to have something, anything, that papered over the memories of his past. When he broke to the surface, he gagged again. He began to cough uncontrollably as the younger technician leaned over the railing to help him out of the tank. Dahlia reached out both her arms to help steady him. Dorn’s body spasmed. He bent over and coughed up oily, greenish liquid.

“You must lie down now,” the chief tech said sternly. “We have to pump the perfluorocarbon out of your lungs.”

Lung, Dorn replied silently, his body racked with coughing. I only have one lung.

The pumping procedure is worse than the immersion, Dorn thought. But at last it was finished and he was breathing air once again. His chest hurt, his head was spinning, but he was breathing normally at last.

As he got slowly to his feet the chief tech looked at him unhappily. “Good enough for the first time,” he said, as if it hurt him to admit it. “Tomorrow we start the high-pressure tests.”

Even Dahlia looked sorrowful at that.

FARADAY

Linda Vishnevskaya pushed herself wearily from the control center’s main console.

“That’s it,” she said, loudly enough for her six teammates to hear her even through the earbuds they were wearing. “The bird’s on automated programming now. She’s on her own.”

It had been another routine day, which somehow made her all the more tired. Sitting at the console yesterday while Faraday ran through its internal checks during its initial orbits of Jupiter had been stupefyingly dull. The bird behaved beautifully: everything on the tick. Vishnevskaya had been a little edgy earlier this morning when Faraday plunged into Jupiter’s thick swirling clouds, as programmed, but telemetry showed all systems were operating nominally.

Then came the entry into the ocean. Even that had been virtually letter perfect. And exactly as calculated, Faraday’s telemetry signals cut off. The bird was too deep in the ocean for electronics signals to reach station Gold; not even tight-beam laser communications could get through that depth of ocean, and the clouds that wreathed the giant planet perpetually.

“She’s on her own,” Vishnevskaya repeated, in a muttering whisper.

She looked across the chamber and up to the empty visitors’ gallery. Empty except for one person: G. Maxwell Yeager was still sitting up there as he had sat through all day yesterday, watching, listening, as the controllers monitored Faraday’s plunge into the sea.

Tiredly she plodded up the stairs toward Yeager. He looked as if he hadn’t moved a muscle in the past forty-eight hours. He was unshaven, pouchy-eyed, his tawny coveralls rumpled. Her nostrils twitched slightly as she neared him; obviously Yeager hadn’t bathed recently.

“There’s no sense staying here any longer. There’s nothing we can do for her until she comes back up out of the ocean.” She bit back the impulse to say “If she comes back.”

Yeager shook his head and sighed. “I know. I know. It’s just … I hate to leave her alone.”

“She’ll send up a data capsule tomorrow,” the launch director said, trying to sound cheerful. “You’ll see then that everything is going well.”

“If she pops the capsule on schedule,” Yeager replied morosely.

Vishnevskaya patted him on the shoulder. “Come with me, little father. I’ll buy you a drink. We both could use some vodka.”

Yeager slowly got to his feet.

“You’ve designed a good vehicle. She works beautifully. There’s nothing else for us to do until she sends that first data capsule to us, Dr. Yeager.”

Yeager admitted the truth of it with a rueful nod. “Well,” he said, “if you’re going to buy me a drink, at least you should call me Max.”

Deirdre watched as the nurse pressed the hypospray gun against the bared skin of her arm. She felt a slight tingling, nothing more.

“Dr. Mandrill wants to see you now,” the nurse said as Deirdre got up from the chair. She pointed toward the treatment room’s open door. “Take a left; he’s the third door on your right. His name is on the door.”

Deirdre nodded absently as she rolled her sleeve down and buttoned its cuff. Dr. Mandrill. Maybe he has good news.

One look at the doctor’s face showed that the news was not good. His dark eyes were rimmed with red, as if he’d been crying.

“Ms. Ambrose,” he said, once Deirdre had seated herself in front of his desk, “we seem to be fighting a losing battle.”

Trying to stay calm, Deirdre asked, “What do you mean?”

“The immunoglobulin therapy is holding your infection in check, but not making any progress in eliminating it.”

“Oh?”

“Ordinarily, after a week of treatments, the virus would be virtually eliminated from your system,” the doctor said, his fleshy dark face morose, his tone gloomy. “In your case, however, the virus shows no sign of decreasing. It is still in your nervous system, as strong as when you first came to me. Most puzzling. Most extremely puzzling.”

Fighting down the tide of fear edging up from the pit of her stomach, Deirdre asked, “What can we do?”

With a massive shrug of his heavy shoulders, Dr. Mandrill said, “Continue the immunization therapy. Without it your disease will grow and spread. Perhaps if we continue the therapy long enough the virus will succumb to it.”

“And if not?”

Another shrug. The doctor looked away from Deirdre as he said, “There is always the possibility that all we are doing is building up the virus’s immunity to the immunoglobulin injections. In that case, the disease will grow worse.”

“And there’s nothing else you can do?” Deirdre was surprised by how small, how childlike, how pathetic her voice sounded.

Forcing a toothy smile, Dr. Mandrill said, “I have put in a call to Massachusetts General Hospital, on Earth. Perhaps they can suggest something.”

Faraday reached the depth prescribed by its mission profile and adjusted its internal density to achieve neutral buoyancy.

Floating easily, the vessel’s sensors showed that the sea was teeming with life at this level. Faraday’s central computer reviewed the data flooding in from the ship’s sensors, checked them against earlier inputs from previous missions, and stored the new information in its capacious memory core.

Streams of organic matter flowed on turbulent currents that swept downward through the ammonia-laced water. Creatures of all sizes followed the currents, eating and being eaten. If a computer could feel excitement, Faraday’s central processor would have tingled with joy.

All the ship’s systems were performing within nominal limits. The main fusion drive had switched from internal propellant to intake mode, sucking in water from the surrounding ocean, boiling it plasma hot, and expelling the superheated steam through the propulsion jets.

Heterotrophic life, the computer’s biology program noted. No autotrophs at this depth, no creatures that manufacture foodstuffs for themselves, as green plants do on Earth. No, this ecosystem is based around the constant infall of organic particles from the clouds high above the ocean’s surface.

The computer’s primary assignment was to find one or more of the gigantic creatures defined as leviathans. These Jovian behemoths fed on the tiny organic particles sifting through the sea. They lived directly off the base of their food chain, like the largest animals of Earth, the great baleen whales.

Visual and even infrared sensors were pitifully limited in this deep, dark sea. Faraday depended on sensors that detected sound waves, like sonar, and pressure waves in the water made by the movements of living creatures. The most sophisticated transducers and display systems that the human mind could produce translated these waves into moving images that human eyes could see, human brains could interpret.

All the data streaming in from the sensors were being stored in Faraday’s memory on a picosecond-by-picosecond basis, to be transferred to the data capsules due to be sent back to the orbital research station, and finally to be uploaded once the vessel regained contact with the controllers aboard the station.

Faraday extended its sensors’ range to their limits, but there was no sign of the mammoth leviathans. Logic tree concluded that this meant that none of the creatures were at this depth. Mission protocol called for following the most abundant stream of organics, in the expectation that this would lead to one or more of the leviathans feeding.

Faraday activated its secondary propulsion system and began to follow the richest organic stream, diving deeper into the ocean, adjusting its buoyancy as it sank downward. Its external temperature sensors reported that the outer hull was rapidly becoming hotter, but internal monitors showed that the temperature rise was not threatening.

Not yet.

GALLEY

“I think they’re laughing at me,” Andy Corvus said disconsolately.

This late in the evening, the galley was nearly empty. The dinner hour was long past, and only a few of the neatly lined-up tables were occupied. The usual noise and clatter of the place had transformed into a scattering of quiet conversations as people finished their desserts or sipped synthetic coffee.

“Who’s laughing at you?” Deirdre asked.

“The dolphins,” said Corvus.

“Laughing at you?”

He exhaled an unhappy sigh. “I’ve been in that tank with them every day, just about all day. Trying to learn more of their language. They swim around me and chatter to each other and I can’t figure out what they’re saying. Even Baby isn’t as friendly as she used to be.”

Deirdre could see the wretchedness on his usually happy face.

Corvus went on, “I mean, they talk to each other but they’re not talking to me.”

“Not at all?”

“Aw, they say hello and good hunting and things like that. But they say a lot more to each other and they’re not letting me know what they’re talking about. I think they’re laughing at me: dumb two-legs trying to learn their language.”

Deirdre reached for her nearly empty teacup as she said, “I don’t think they’d behave that way, Andy. Maybe you’ve just reached a level that’s going to take more work, more effort.”

Suddenly insistent, Corvus asked urgently, “Dee, would you come back to the tank with me? You made contact with them so easily. They like you!”

“They don’t dislike you, Andy.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded, “but I’m up against a stone wall. Will you help me, Dee? Please?”

She saw the pleading in his wide blue eyes, but heard herself say, “I can’t, Andy. I’m working full time on the Volvox, trying to find the chemical signals that trigger their reproduction.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s important, too.”

“Dr. Grant himself gave me the assignment. I report directly to him.”

“What assignment?”

They looked up to see Max Yeager approaching their table. He pulled out a chair and sat between the two of them.

“Hope I’m not too late for dinner,” Yeager said as he sat down. He looked tired, rumpled, unshaven. He smelled unwashed.

“Where’ve you been?” Corvus asked the engineer. “Haven’t seen you for the past two days.”

Yeager scratched at his stubbled jaw. “Down in the control center, waiting for my baby to talk to me.”

“Faraday?” Deirdre asked.

Yeager nodded as a robot waiter glided to their table, the evening’s menu displayed on its touch screen.

“Who else?” he said. “She’s been on her own for more than fifty hours now. Too deep to maintain a link with us. She’s supposed to fire off a data capsule tomorrow.”

“So you’ll know then how she’s doing, right?” Corvus asked.

“Maybe,” Yeager replied. He methodically pecked out his dinner order and the robot trundled away.

“What assignment were you talking about, Dee?” the engineer asked.

“For Dr. Archer. I’m studying Volvox aureus. He thinks it might give us some insights into the way the leviathans reproduce.”

Yeager’s old leer reappeared. “I like the way we reproduce.”

“Oh, Max,” Deirdre said.

“I need Dee down in the dolphin tank,” Corvus told the engineer. “They’ve stopped talking to me.”

Still grinning, Yeager said, “Well, I don’t blame them for preferring our beautiful one to you, Andy.”

Deirdre looked past Yeager’s dark-jawed face and saw Dorn entering the galley. He walked slowly, as if utterly weary.

Corvus saw him too and waved the cyborg to their table.

“How are you?” Deirdre asked as he sat down.

“Fatigued,” Dorn said. “I have been many things in my life. Now I am an experimental animal.”

“Pressure tests?” Yeager guessed.

“Pressure tests,” Dorn acknowledged. “The scientists are very happy with me: I’ve withstood higher pressures than any other subject they’ve ever worked with.”

“They dunk you in that liquid?” Corvus asked.

“Perfluorocarbon. Yes.”

Deirdre suppressed a shudder as Corvus asked, “What’s it like?”

“Not comfortable,” said Dorn. “Not enjoyable at all.”

“I heard it’s cold and slimy,” Corvus said.

Nodding, Dorn added, “And then some.”

“Great,” Corvus said. “I’m going to have to live in that stuff for days on end when I go down on the crewed mission.”

“I’ll be with you, apparently,” said Dorn.

Yeager made a sour face. “First we’ve got to get Faraday back and check out how she performed.”

“Your vehicle is still in the ocean?” Dorn asked.

“Another two days,” Yeager answered.

The waiter came back with Yeager’s dinner tray. Dorn did not order anything.

“I’m too tired to eat,” he said.

“You ought to keep up your strength,” Deirdre said.

He made a noise that might have been a grunt. “The scientists check my physical condition at the start of each day. If they feel I lack sufficient nutrition they pump nutrients into me through an IV tube.”

“Yuck!” said Corvus.

Yeager picked up his fork, hesitated, then looked at each one of them in turn.

“We make quite a quartet,” the engineer said sardonically. “Andy can’t get his dolphins to talk to him. Dorn’s being used as a guinea pig. I’m hanging around like an expectant father in a maternity ward.” He turned to Deirdre. “You’re the only one without a problem, Dee.”

“I have my problem,” she said quietly.

“Anything I can do to help you?” Yeager asked, his usual smirk gone; his expression was almost fatherly.

“Or me?” Corvus said.

“Or me?” added Dorn.

Deirdre smiled at the three of them. “You’re all very kind. But my problem is medical. Rabies.”

“Aren’t the medics helping you?” Corvus asked.

With a slight shake of her head, Deirdre replied, “The immunization shots aren’t working the way they should. The virus is still infecting my nervous system.”

“You’re not showing any obvious symptoms,” said Dorn.

“Not yet,” Deirdre replied.

“Why aren’t the shots working?” Corvus wondered.

Deirdre started to answer, hesitated, then decided to plunge in. If I can’t trust my three friends I’m really all alone, she said to herself.

Aloud, she told them, “The virus might be genetically engineered. I think it is.”

COUNTERMOVE

“Genetically engineered?”

“By whom?”

“What do you mean?”

Deirdre raised both her hands and tried to calm them down, surprised at how angry and distressed all three of them seemed.

“Mrs. Westfall told me—”

“Katherine Westfall?” Corvus gaped at her. “What’s she got to do with it?”

“She’s the one who raised the possibility,” Deirdre said.

“I don’t get it,” said Yeager. “Why would a member of the IAA’s governing council be involved in something like this?”

Deirdre closed her eyes briefly, remembering Katherine Westfall’s exact words.

“She told me, quote, ‘Back on Earth there was some rumor about a biology laboratory that developed a genetically engineered form of rabies.’ ”

“She said that?” Yeager asked.

“Word for word.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

Deirdre interrupted, “Then she told me that she wants me to keep her informed on what Dr. Archer is doing. She particularly wants to know what’s going on with his plan to send a crewed mission into the ocean, Max.”

“Well, she would, wouldn’t she?”

“She wants me to spy on Dr. Archer for her.”

Yeager’s face showed clear disbelief. Andy looked doubtful, too. It was hard to read Dorn’s impassive features.

Deirdre went on, “She told me, quote, ‘I want you to keep me informed on what’s going on here. Fully informed. Keep me informed and I’ll do everything I can to help cure your infection. Do we understand one another?’ ”

The three men glanced at each other uneasily.

“That’s exactly what she said to me,” Deirdre assured them. “And you should have seen the expression on her face! Like a snake!”

“This is very serious,” said Dorn.

“Why would she do it?” Yeager wondered aloud.

“What should I do about it?” Deirdre asked.

“Not ‘I,’ ” said Dorn. “Us. What should we do about it?”

“We’ve got to do something,” Yeager said.

“Yes, but what?” asked Dorn.

“Use your head,” Corvus said, looking impatient. “Go to the top. Tell Archer about it. He’s the only one who can help us.”

First thing the next morning, the four of them trooped over to Grant Archer’s office. The station director looked surprised as they came in, unannounced, and asked for his attention.

Archer stroked his beard absently as he listened to Deirdre’s recital. When at last she finished, he leaned back in his recliner and was silent for several moments. Deirdre, Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn sat arrayed around him, waiting for the station director to say something.

At last Archer sat up straighter and murmured, “It never ends.”

Corvus blinked at him. “What never ends?”

Leaning his hands on his thighs, Archer said softly, “When I first came here, more than twenty years ago, I was asked to spy on the station director.”

“What?”

His light brown eyes focused on the past, Archer told them, “When I came to station Gold, I was a grad student working toward my doctorate in astrophysics. The New Morality sent me here as part of my public service obligation.”

“The New Morality?” Deirdre asked.

“They’re a religious outfit back in North America,” Yeager explained. “Fundamentalists.”

“They were a very powerful political force back then,” said Archer. “They thought that the studies of extraterrestrial life that were being conducted here on Gold conflicted with their views of the Bible. They sent me here to find out just what the scientists were doing and report back to them.”

“They thought that studying ET life contradicts the Bible?” Corvus said. “That’s nutty.”

“Not to them,” Archer replied. “They were very powerful in those days. They practically ran the government.”

Dorn said, “When a religious group gains political power, both the religion and the political system suffer.”

Archer shook his head, as if trying to clear his mind. “That was more than twenty years ago. Things have changed. For the better, I think.”

Yeager said, “There’re still lots of people back Earthside who believe all that fundamentalist bullshit.”

“But Mrs. Westfall isn’t one of them,” Deirdre pointed out.

Archer agreed. “No, I don’t believe she is.”

“Then why does she want Dee to spy on you?” Corvus asked.

Archer almost smiled. “Beats me. She must have her reasons. I’ve shown her everything we’re doing here. I’ve been quite open with her.”

Dorn said, “Conspiracy theory.”

“What?”

“People who believe in conspiracy theories are never satisfied with the information you give them—unless that information confirms their beliefs.”

“Like the UFO believers,” Yeager said.

“Well, the solar system really has been visited by intelligent extraterrestrials,” Corvus said. “We know that.”

“Millions of years ago, most likely,” Yeager countered.

“Maybe not,” said Deirdre, turning to Dorn.

The cyborg nodded to her, then told the others, “There is an artifact that seems quite beyond human capabilities, hidden out in the Asteroid Belt. I’ve seen it. It changed my life.”

“But we’ve got no idea how long it’s been there,” Yeager insisted.

“The point that I originally intended to make,” Dorn said, looking squarely at Archer, “is that no matter how much information you give to someone who believes in conspiracy theories, that person will remain convinced that you are hiding vital facts from him.”

“Or her,” Deirdre added.

Archer’s face showed he understood Dorn’s point. “So you think that Mrs. Westfall believes I’m hiding something from her.”

“And she’s enlisted Deirdre to pry that information out of you,” Dorn said.

“But I’m not hiding anything!”

“That means that Deirdre can’t tell her anything more than she’s already learned directly from you.”

Yeager said, “Which means she’ll think Deirdre’s holding out on her.”

Corvus picked up, “Which means she won’t let the medics cure the gengineered virus.”

They all turned toward Deirdre.

“I could die of rabies,” she said, in a choked whisper.

“No!” Corvus snapped. “Never!”

“We’ll get her to produce the cure,” Dorn said, folding his prosthetic hand into a tight fist.

“Maybe there isn’t a cure,” Yeager said. “Just because some lab manufactured an engineered virus doesn’t mean they’ve also made a way to kill it.”

Deirdre felt her insides simmer with sudden fear.

Archer saw the expression on her face and said gently, “Don’t worry. I’ll send all your medical files and a sample of your blood to the nanotech lab at Selene University. They’ll design a nanomachine specifically to track down that virus and tear it apart.”

“That…” Deirdre’s breath caught in her throat. “That would be very expensive, wouldn’t it?”

Archer smiled at her. “We’ve already paid for your passage here. And your scholarship. This would simply be protecting our investment in you.”

“And do you think that would work? The nanobugs could wipe out the virus?”

“Certainly. I’ll send the data today. Your current therapy is maintaining you; the virus isn’t spreading through your nervous system. Selene will produce the nanomachines to cure you.”

“And what do we do in the meantime?” Corvus asked. “Westfall will expect information from Dee.”

“We’ll give you information to feed her,” Archer said. “For example, Faraday’s first message capsule is due to pop out of the ocean later today. Isn’t that right, Dr. Yeager?”

“Max,” Yeager corrected automatically. Then he added, “You’re right. Data capsule’s due in”—he glanced at his wristwatch—“two and a half hours.”

“Make a copy of the capsule’s upload and give it to Deirdre,” Archer directed. “That should keep Mrs. Westfall happy for a while.”

Corvus grinned. Dorn nodded thoughtfully.

But Yeager said, “If the capsule comes up. If everything’s going right down there.”

FARADAY

Sensor data: No leviathans observed.

Central computer: Extend search to maximum sensor range.

Sensor data: No leviathans observed.

Program time line: Data capsule to be launched in 60.0000 seconds.

Central computer: Query logic tree. Launch data capsule despite lack of data?

Logic tree: Command protocol dictates data capsule launch according to preprogrammed schedule, regardless of contents of data storage.

Human analog subprogram: Aphorism, “No news is good news.” Aphorism, “It is always darkest before the dawn.”

Central computer: Launch data capsule on schedule.

Mission objectives program: Data capsule launched.

Sensor report: Pressure waves indicate presence of large organisms at extreme range of sensitivity.

Time line: 17.3318 seconds elapsed since launch of data capsule.

Sensor report: Detected organisms moving at depth deeper than mission profile cruise depth.

Central computer: Mission profile cruise depth can be exceeded if necessary.

Sensor report: Detected organisms’ depth estimated at 900 kilometers below ocean surface.

Central computer: Nine hundred kilometers is within nominal performance limits. Change course to dive to depth of detected organisms.

Navigation program: Course correction implemented. Diving.

Sensor report: Detected organisms not leviathans. Signature indicates organisms to be predators.

Memory bank: Sharklike predators attack and feed on leviathans. Voracious. Extremely dangerous. Have attacked research vessels from time to time.

Central computer: Query, How many predators have been detected?

Sensor report: Eighty-two.

Memory bank: No previous observation of more than fifteen predators at one sighting. Eighty-two predators an unprecedented number.

Central computer: Query decision tree: Launch additional data capsule?

Decision tree: Not enough data to determine if this is new behavior of predators or normal behavior not heretofore observed.

Logic program: Large assemblage of predators an indication that large assemblage of prey must be near enough to be attacked. Since predators prey on leviathans, conclusion is that leviathans must be within sensory range of predators.

Mission objectives priority: 1. Self-preservation. 2. Observation of leviathans. 3. Report accumulated data on schedule. 4. Report new phenomena immediately. 5. Observation of predators.

Central computer: Follow predator swarm, assuming that they will lead to leviathans.

Mission protocol program: WARNING. Predator swarm near mission profile depth limit. Leviathans may be below mission profile depth limit.

Central computer: Follow predator swarm to depth limit of mission profile.

“No leviathans?” Andy Corvus asked, wide-eyed with disbelief. “Not even one?”

Max Yeager shook his head. “Not even one.”

Corvus had dropped in at the control center after another disappointing swim with the dolphins. Only one of the consoles was manned; even the cute little Russian chief controller had taken off. Yeager sat at one of the consoles, looking weary and rumpled, his long hair tangled, his chin dark with several days’ growth of stubble.

“Where are they?” Corvus asked.

Irritated, Yeager jabbed a finger at the console’s central screen. “You see any? They’re not there! Nowhere in sight!”

Corvus stared at the screen as if he could make the leviathans appear by sheer willpower.

“I’ve checked all the data sixteen times from Sunday,” Yeager grumbled. “Faraday entered the ocean smack in the middle of their usual feeding grounds. But they aren’t there.” With a shake of his shaggy head he added, “They must be down lower, maybe too deep for her to reach them.”

“Maybe the ship scared them off?”

Yeager gave him a sour look. “My baby might look big to you, Andy, but to those damned whales it’s just a little minnow. She didn’t scare them.”

Frowning with puzzlement, Corvus muttered, “Maybe something else did, then.”

Faraday Central computer: Query core memory re attacks on submersible vessels by predators.

Core memory: Attacks by predators not unusual. Two earlier submersible vessels lost, presumably due to predator attacks.

Mission objectives priority: 1. Self-preservation. 2. Observation of leviathans. 3. Report accumulated data on schedule. 4. Report new phenomena immediately. 5. Observation of predators.

Mission protocol program: WARNING. Approaching depth limit of mission profile.

Systems check: All systems functioning within design parameters.

Central computer: Do not exceed depth limit of 1000 kilometers.

Logic tree: Prime directive of self-preservation can be achieved by maintaining sufficient distance from predators to forestall their attacks.

Central computer: Follow predators while maintaining existing distance from them.

Logic tree: Why do predators attack inanimate vessels? Possibility one: Predators do not have enough intelligence to recognize inanimate objects from potential edible prey. Possibility two: Predators behaving analogously to predators of Earth by staking out hunting territory and resisting encroachment by others.

Question: Are predator attacks simple reflex action or territorial behavior? Not enough data to decide.

Subsidiary question: If behavior is territorial, how do predators distinguish particular locations? Are there characteristics of the ocean environment undetected by ship’s sensors but clearly discernable to predators?

Central computer: Insufficient data to derive meaningful solution. Continue following predators; maintain existing distance; do not exceed depth limit.

Safety subprogram: WARNING. Increasing depth causing rising internal temperatures.

Query: Are rising internal temperatures causing system malfunctions?

Safety subprogram: All systems operating within nominal limits.

Central computer: Continue existing course.

Sensor report: Predator pack has divided into two segments. One is continuing on course. The other has reversed course and is heading toward this vessel.

OBSERVATION DECK

Deirdre felt her breath catch in her throat.

She had agreed to meet Mrs. Westfall in the observation deck of station Gold, a special section of the second wheel with a long window of glassteel looking out into space. The deck was empty and dark when Deirdre entered; like the observation blister aboard Australia, once she closed the hatch she seemed to be hanging in the middle of infinity, swarms of stars gleaming all about her, solemn and unblinking, stars of all colors blazing their light across the universe.

Deirdre took an unsteady step across the glassteel floor. It was like walking on the face of the deep. And then, as the station slowly rotated, massive Jupiter rose majestically into view. The planet loomed huge, immense, its varicolored clouds churning and whirling before Deirdre’s staring eyes. It filled her vision, engulfed her senses like a true god, encompassing everything. Deirdre felt herself trembling. Jupiter, king of the gods, mightiest of all the planets of the solar system.

She reached out her hand as the incredible swirling beauty of the planet slid unhurriedly before her amazed eyes. Her fingertips touched the cold solidity of the glassteel window. For long minutes she stood there, transfixed, watching the giant planet’s roiling, eddying clouds. Close enough to touch, she thought. Almost close enough to touch.

Then the station’s rotation swung Jupiter out of her view. She watched the curve of the planet’s limb, brilliant against the blackness of space, slowly swing out of sight. How pale the stars seemed! How distant and cold.

The hatch opened and the floor lights glowed faintly. Deirdre could see Katherine Westfall’s slim figure reflected in the window, outlined within the frame of the hatchway.

Reluctantly she turned to face Mrs. Westfall. The woman was only shoulder high to Deirdre, but her form-fitting metallic jumpsuit once again made Deirdre feel shabby in her everyday gray coveralls. Once the hatch closed and the lights dimmed again, she heard Westfall’s breath puff out of her.

“Goodness!” Westfall gasped.

Deirdre smiled knowingly. “It’s like being in outer space,” she said, extending a hand to Westfall.

Quickly recovering, Westfall disdained Deirdre’s hand as she stepped up beside her. “It is rather spectacular, isn’t it?”

“The universe,” Deirdre murmured.

“All those stars. Clouds of them. Oceans of them.”

“Yes.”

“Can you identify them?”

“Some,” Deirdre said. “That bright blue one is Sirius, I think. And over there, the yellowish one, that’s probably Canopus.”

Westfall said, “When we were children we always tried to find ‘Beetlejuice’.”

“You grew up in Australia?”

“The Outback. I thought we saw plenty of stars back there, but this … this is rather much, isn’t it?”

“Rather,” Deirdre agreed.

“Now then,” Westfall said, her tone turning businesslike, “what have you found out?”

Knowing that Dr. Archer would tell her about Faraday’s first data capsule within a few hours, Deirdre reported, “The vessel sent its first data capsule on schedule.”

“Data capsule,” Westfall repeated, uncertainly.

“The vessel is down so deep in the ocean that it can’t transmit messages by radio or laser, so it’s programmed to send capsules up into orbit.”

“Ah! I see. And the capsules contain information about what the ship has been doing.”

“Exactly. The first capsule came out of the clouds and established an equatorial orbit late yesterday.”

“And what information did it carry?”

Deirdre shrugged slightly. “All the ship’s systems are performing as designed. Faraday’s down at the depth where the leviathans are usually found.”

“And?”

“No leviathans yet. None of the creatures have been detected.”

“None? Not one?”

“Not one.”

“What do the scientists have to say about that?”

Hearing the impatience in her voice, Deirdre thought, She’d never be able to be a scientist; she wants results too soon.

“Well?” Westfall demanded.

“They’re sort of surprised. The vessel was sent to a region where there’s always been leviathans swimming and feeding. But right now there’s nothing.”

“How can that be?”

“That’s what they’re trying to figure out. The vessel’s following a stream of organics, the stuff the leviathans feed on. Sooner or later they’ll find some of the creatures, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless the creatures have gone so deep the vessel can’t follow them.”

Even in the starlit dimness Deirdre could see unalloyed anger twisting Westfall’s usually composed features.

“They’re hiding something!” she snapped.

“No, that’s what the data capsule showed,” said Deirdre.

“Either they’re hiding vital information from you or you’re hiding it from me. Either way, I want to know everything they’ve found. Everything! Do you understand me?”

“But that is everything!” Deirdre said.

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe any of you! You’re hiding the truth from me and—”

Westfall stopped in mid-sentence. Deirdre saw a reddish glow starting to light her face. Turning, she saw that Jupiter was sliding into view once again.

Westfall stood open-mouthed, staring.

“My god,” she whispered. “My god.”

Deirdre fought down the urge to snicker at Westfall’s sudden awe.

“It’s overpowering, isn’t it?” she whispered, extending her hand toward Westfall once more.

“Overwhelming,” Westfall said, in a little girl’s frightened voice. “As if it’s going to fall down on us, crush us…”

She turned and bolted for the hatch, fumbled with the keypad lock, and pushed out into the passageway as soon as the hatch clicked open.

Deirdre went after her. Westfall was standing pressed against the passageway bulkhead, eyes closed, breathing hard.

“Are you all right?” Deirdre asked.

With an obvious shuddering effort, Westfall pulled herself together. She took in a deep breath, opened her steel gray eyes, ran smoothing hands along the thighs of her metallic jumpsuit.

“I’m fine,” she said calmly. “I was merely … surprised. I’ve never seen Jupiter like that before. It seemed … so close … so … so immense.”

Deirdre nodded. “It’s a powerful experience.”

Straightening her spine, Westfall said, “Be that as it may, I expect you to find out what the scientists are hiding.”

“But they’re not—”

“They are,” Westfall snapped. “And if you value your life you will find what it is and report it immediately to me. Immediately!”

With that, Westfall turned and strode up the passageway, leaving Deirdre standing there, stunned and frightened.

ATTACK

Faraday watched as the group of predators split precisely in two. Half of the sharklike beasts continued on the course that the pack had been following; the other half was speeding directly toward Faraday.

Calculating their speed as they approached, Faraday’s central computer estimated that it could outrun the predators, if necessary. The beasts were big, several of them slightly longer than Faraday’s own diameter. The programming’s primary directive of self-preservation flared to the top of the computer’s priorities, replacing the directive to find and observe the leviathans. The human analog program pulled up another aphorism: “Those who fight and run away live to fight another day.”

Faraday awaited the predators’ attack.

The beasts swarmed all around Faraday, completely englobing the vessel as they swam sleekly in slowly tightening circles. Faraday made no effort to evade them; the vessel merely maintained its course heading and speed.

Closer and closer the predators glided. Faraday’s sensors studied them intently while the central computer ordered a fresh data capsule be prepared for launching.

Each of the predators had a row of glistening circular objects running the length of its body. Faraday assumed they were visual sensors. Checking its own auditory receivers, the central computer realized that the predators were sending out sound waves, possibly using them as sonar to measure Faraday’s size and distance.

Suddenly one of the beasts darted in toward Faraday on a collision course. It pulled up at the last instant and merely brushed against the vessel’s metal hull. Faraday’s sensors measured the force of the impact; internal monitors reported that no damage had been inflicted.

Another of the creatures bolted in and banged harder against the hull. Then a third, harder still. Internal monitors registered the jolt. Central computer’s decision tree showed that if the impacts increased in strength it would be necessary to initiate defensive maneuvers.

A human brain, awash with emotions, would have felt fear, and perhaps curiosity. Why were these predators banging into the vessel? What was their objective? It must be clear to them that the vessel is not edible: It can’t be prey. Why were they attacking?

Faraday’s central processor, though, merely recorded the attack so that the data capsule could send off the information once it was launched.

From several rungs down the priority directives came the conclusion that the other half of the predators, those that had continued on their original course, must still be tracking the leviathans. But that was of secondary interest now. Self-preservation was most important. That, and getting all this new data out on a capsule so that the human directors could benefit from it.

Another predator slammed into Faraday, hard enough to throw four internal pressure monitors off-line for 3.0025 seconds. Puzzling behavior. Checking the decision tree again, central computer found that it was time to test the theory that the predators were behaving territorially.

Faraday activated its secondary propulsion system, leaping upward on a jet of superheated steam. The predators bolted out of the vessel’s way and Faraday left them far behind, milling about, emitting sound waves on at least four different frequencies. They avoided the plume of steam that the vessel spurted out, sensors reported.

Faraday checked the data capsule, making certain that all these observations were filed in its memory core, then released the capsule.

At the extreme range of its sensors, Faraday saw that the predators who had attacked it had now re-formed into a group and were heading in the same direction as they had been before they broke off to attack. Their speed was much higher than before. If a computer could be surprised, Faraday’s central processor would have whistled with astonishment.

CONTROL CENTER

Linda Vishnevskaya twitched with surprise. She sat at her console in the control center, alone except for the forlorn figure of Max Yeager, dozing in one of the visitor’s chairs up by the curving bulkhead. The rest of her crew were not needed; no data capsule from Faraday was expected for another twelve hours. She could have left the center completely unattended; if anything happened the comm system would automatically alert her.

But she sat stubbornly for hours at the console, knowing that nothing was going to happen, but unwilling to take the chance that an emergency might arise that would need her immediate attention.

Yeager hovered around the consoles endlessly, taking only brief breaks. He even brought trays of food in, littering the area where he sat with crumbs and emptied cartons. Vishnevskaya at least had the good sense to take an hour for each mealtime and go to the galley before she hurried back to her console.

She was half drowsing when the message light began flashing and the audio pinged. Startled, she saw the main screen automatically power itself aglow and a list of alphanumerics began scrolling across it.

A data capsule! Unscheduled. Vishnevskaya realized something unusual must have happened down in that deep, dark ocean of Jupiter.

She started to turn to shout the news to Yeager, but saw that the burly engineer was already standing at her shoulder, peering intently at the symbols flashing across the screen.

“What’s gone wrong?” he demanded, his voice hoarse, growling.

Andy Corvus was swimming with the dolphins again. The aquarium was big, filled with fish that everybody said were bright and colorful, but to Andy they were merely varying shades of gray. And the sleek, grinning dolphins chattering to each other. The translator built into Andy’s face mask picked up only a few words:

“Squid below … warmer … fast current…”

Baby was growing fast, he realized. He almost failed to recognize her as the young dolphin glided up toward him.

“Hello, Andy.”

“Hello, Baby!” he said, happy that she was speaking to him.

“Race?”

Andy shook his head, not an easy thing to do in the water with the breathing mask. “You always win. You’re too fast for me.”

Something like mirth seemed to emanate from Baby’s whistling reply. The translator told him, “You’re slow, Andy.”

“I do the best I can.”

“Two legs not good.”

Andy thought for a moment, then replied, “My two legs work fine on land.”

Now Baby fell silent. Andy watched her circle around him, then go up to the surface for a gulp of air. When she came back she said, “Water better. No fish on land.”

Deirdre watched the display screen as the enlarged image of a Volvox aureus colony swam busily through a drop of simulated pond water. She had worked very hard to alter the purified water of station Gold’s drinking supply into the rich brew of pond scum that tiny Volvox thrived in.

The microscopically small green sphere was in the process of reproducing. Deirdre watched, fascinated as always, while the creature’s cells began to fission, splitting into specialized gonadal cells, male and female.

No privacy for you, she thought. It seemed silly to be studying these microscopic algae in hopes of learning more about the gigantic leviathans. Then she remembered that Dr. Archer had also asked her to look at the images that the leviathans displayed on their mammoth flanks. Pictures, Deirdre thought. He believes the leviathans communicate through pictures. And he wants me to interpret them for him.

With a resolute shake of her head she told herself, It’s crazy. He’s grasping at straws, just like he said. Looking back at the screen’s display of the reproducing Volvox, she thought, We’re all grasping at straws. Like the blind men and the elephant, we don’t really have the faintest idea of what we’re dealing with. But I promised him I’d look into the imagery and see if I can make any sense of it. I’ll have to fit that in, somehow. When I’m not talking with Andy’s dolphins or studying these little buggers.

The new cells were faithfully arranging themselves into a another colony, but—as usual—the cilia that propelled the colony through the water were on the inside of the newly created sphere. Deirdre leaned forward intently, watching as the spherical creature dutifully turned itself inside out, and the cilia began chugging away, moving the newcomer out of the microscope’s field of view.

Turning to the smaller readout screen beneath the main display, Deirdre saw that the sensors had acquired the data she needed: a detailed list of the chemicals that flooded the interior of the colony’s tiny sphere. Those chemicals were what triggered the reproductive phase, she knew. They guided the tiny creature’s creation of a new version of itself: the microbial analog of the pheromones that trigger human reproduction.

“Gotcha,” she murmured, with a satisfied smile.

The galley was crowded when Deirdre arrived, but none of her usual friends were in sight. She picked up a tray and took a salad and a mug of fruit juice, then found a table for herself. Before she could sit down, though, she saw Andy Corvus enter the galley, looking glum despite the garish orange slacks and emerald green pullover he was wearing.

She waved to him and waited while he packed his tray with a vegetarian lunch and sauntered over to her.

“How’s it going?” Deirdre asked as Andy sat down.

He made a loose-jointed shrug. “Baby talks to me, but I’m not getting any new information, really. Not adding to the vocabulary.”

“Maybe there’s nothing more to get,” she said. “Maybe you’ve got their entire language down.”

“I’d hate to think that. They’re smart, Dee. They must have more in their minds than just fish and water temperatures.”

She said nothing, stuck a fork into her salad.

Corvus’s phone jangled. Frowning, he pulled it from his shirt pocket. “This is Corvus.… Yes … yes, I did. Uh-huh…” Suddenly his eyes lit up. “You did? And the record shows it? No doubt about it? Wow!” He positively beamed at Deirdre. “Okay, thanks! Thanks a lot!”

“Good news,” Deirdre guessed.

“The report from Scripps, in California, just came in. Baby’s mother was culled from the Pacific Ocean by a research team when she was practically a newborn. Younger than Baby is now.”

“And?” Deirdre prodded.

“They pulled her out of the ocean because sharks were attacking her pod. One of the other young females had already been killed.”

“Her sister,” Deirdre said.

“Just like she told you!” Corvus was almost bouncing up and down on the chair in his enthusiasm. “Just like she told you! That’s the confirmation that we need! You made real contact with Baby and the rest of the dolphins!”

Corvus jumped to his feet. “You know what this means?”

Before Deirdre could reply he went on, “This means you really did make meaningful contact, Dee! We can prove it now!”

Deirdre had never seen a grown man look so excited. People at other tables were turning toward Corvus, staring. She half expected Andy to jump up on their table and dance a jig.

In the control center, Max Yeager was eagerly leaning over Vishnevskaya’s shoulder, staring at the multiple screens on her console.

“The bastards’re slamming into her!” he growled.

“No damage,” Vishnevskaya muttered.

The display screens showed Faraday’s sensor views of the predators and the reading of the internal monitors as, one by one, the big sharklike creatures banged into the vessel.

“No damage,” Vishnevskaya repeated each time one of the beasts attacked.

Yeager felt each lurch as a punch in his gut. Anger seethed inside him. Why are they assaulting her? What in the name of hell do they expect to get out of such a stupid, pointless attack?

Vishnevskaya tapped an enameled fingernail against the central computer display screen. “It’s making a decision to get away from them,” she said.

“About time,” said Yeager. “I didn’t design her to be a punching bag.”

“Propulsion activated…” Vishnevskaya leaned back in her chair and exhaled a relieved sigh. “Ah, she made it. She got away.”

“Stupid goddamned sharks,” Yeager grumbled. “Maybe I should’ve designed some defense weapons for the ship. Electric fields. A few megavolts would show those damned fish to back off.”

Vishnevskaya smiled up at him. “Not to worry, little father. Your baby took good care of herself. The danger is past.”

Yeager nodded. “Yeah, maybe. But if the sharks keep putting themselves between our baby and the leviathans, how’s she going to fulfill her primary directive? How’s she going to study the leviathans if the sharks stay so aggressive?”

CONFERENCE ROOM

Grant Archer took careful note of how the quartet of people arranged themselves around the conference table: Corvus sat on his right, with an unhappy crooked pout on his face. Deirdre Ambrose sat beside him, looking radiantly beautiful even in a casual white pullover and dark slacks. Corvus is color blind, Archer recalled. Is she wearing black and white because of that?

Max Yeager looked tired as he pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table, dark bags under his eyes and a two-day beard darkening his chin. His tan coveralls were wrinkled, as if he’d been sleeping in them. Archer’s nostrils twitched as he caught a whiff of stale, musky body odor. Yeager’s sour scent didn’t seem to bother Linda Vishnevskaya, though: The petite, intense chief of mission control sat beside the beefy engineer with a contented smile on her heart-shaped face.

“We’re all here,” Archer said, by way of starting the meeting. “Good.”

“Is this all of us?” Vishnevskaya asked, looking surprised. “Shouldn’t Dr. Johansen be here?”

Clasping his hands on the tabletop, Archer replied, “He’ll join us later. At the moment he’s showing Mrs. Westfall through the fluid dynamics lab down in wheel three.”

The four of them looked puzzled.

With a slightly guilty smile, Archer said, “I want to get the latest information you have directly from you, without Mrs. Westfall in the way. Johansen is serving as a decoy, for the moment.”

Deirdre said, “She’ll see through that soon enough.”

“I know.” Archer sighed. “But I do want to hear what you’ve accomplished without all the politics that Mrs. Westfall and the IAA carry with them.”

“Okay,” Yeager said crisply. “Faraday popped a data capsule earlier today. Those shark-things attacked her, banged into her repeatedly.”

“Any damage?”

“Nothing that her internal repair systems couldn’t handle.”

Vishnevskaya added, “The sharks positioned themselves between the vessel and the stream of organics that we believe would have led us to a herd of leviathans.”

Archer stared at her. “You’re sure of that?”

“You can review the data transmissions and see for yourself,” Vishnevskaya replied.

“We’ve never seen that kind of behavior before.”

Yeager suggested, “Maybe it’s because Faraday’s so much bigger than any other probe you’ve sent into the ocean. Maybe the earlier probes were too small for them to worry about.”

Nodding, Archer murmured, “That’s something to consider.”

“Unfortunately,” Vishnevskaya said, “Faraday has not found any leviathans yet. The creatures are not in their usual feeding territory.”

“Scared off by the sharks, do you think?” Archer mused.

Yeager shrugged. “Ask your behavioral specialists. We’re just engineers.”

“We don’t have any behavioral specialists,” Archer confessed. “Until now neither the leviathans nor the sharks have shown enough different kinds of behavior to call for specialists.”

Andy Corvus gave a humphing little grunt and said, “Exopsychologists. A new field of study.”

His brows rising, Archer said, “You might be right, Dr. Corvus.”

“Andy,” he said automatically.

Archer replied, “Well, if you expect me to call you Andy, I suppose you’ll have to call me Grant.”

“Deal,” said Corvus. “Grant.”

“I wonder who we could get to work as an exopsychologist?”

Corvus lifted his arm and jabbed a forefinger down at the crown of Deirdre’s auburn hair. “Here she is.”

“Me?” Deirdre blurted.

Archer asked, “What do you mean, Andy?”

Leaning forward slightly, his lopsided face totally serious, Corvus said, “Deirdre’s made really meaningful contact with the dolphins. She’s a natural. She’s found out more about them in a couple of swims than I’ve been able to get in weeks and weeks. I think, if anybody would be able to make contact with the leviathans, Deirdre’s the one who can do it.”

For a long silent moment they all looked at Deirdre, who was too surprised to say anything. She remembered that Dr. Archer had asked her to study the images that the leviathans displayed on their flanks and she hadn’t even started looking at them yet. She saw the unspoken question in Archer’s eyes and had to look away from him, feeling guilty about not doing what he’d asked.

It’s too much, Deirdre said to herself, apologizing silently to the station director. There’s just been too much happening all at once. I’m sorry …

Finally Archer turned toward Corvus and asked, “Andy, do you truly believe that any human being can make meaningful mental contact with the leviathans?”

“To be completely honest,” Corvus said, “I don’t know. There’s a lot of unknowns involved in this. But if I can get a probe into one of them, I think Deirdre’s more likely to establish contact with them than anyone else.”

“Ms. Ambrose, that means that you’ll have to go down into the ocean when we send Faraday out with a crew,” Archer said, staring into Deirdre’s troubled eyes. “Are you willing to do that?”

“I…” Deirdre hesitated, glanced at Corvus, then looked back at Archer. “I don’t know. This is all … kind of a surprise to me.”

“To us all,” Archer said. “But if Andy is right, you hold the key to making contact with an intelligent alien species.”

FLUID DYNAMICS LABORATORY

Katherine Westfall felt certain that they were trying to hypnotize her. She sat in a comfortably padded chair, her entire field of vision filled by wall screens that displayed swirling, shifting patterns of soft colors. Dr. Johansen’s calm, flat, slightly nasal voice droned:

“These are the currents flowing through the Jovian ocean. As you can see, the organic particles produced in the clouds above drift down into the sea and ride along on the currents, which are generated by Jupiter’s very high rate of spin. Coriolis forces predominate in this mechanism, especially since gravitational effects from Jupiter’s moons are almost completely negligible. The ocean is heated from below, of course, by the gravitational energy released by the planet’s ongoing contraction.”

Katherine watched the drifting, eddying patterns, thinking how pleasant it would be to close her eyes and sink off to sleep.

Johansen continued, “The currents are quite regular, considering all the possibilities for anomalies that arise in turbulent flow. In fact, the only major aberrations we’ve observed in the patterns of the organics’ flow have occurred when a sizeable impactor hits the Jovian atmosphere, such as the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, almost exactly a century ago. A major cometary impact occurred just a few weeks ago, in the northern hemisphere, and this has disrupted some of the currents of the infalling organics.”

It’s like being in church when I was a kid, Katherine was thinking. You have to sit there and listen and not squirm and try to stay awake.

“In actuality,” Johansen’s voice droned on, “we use the organic particles as handy markers to map out the currents, and the disturbances in them. Unless disturbed by a major impact, they generally tend to drift downward until thermal currents rising from deep below…”

Go to sleep, Katherine said to herself. Just close your eyes and take a little nap. But then a knife-sharp voice in her mind rang out, That’s just what they want! They want to bore you to sleep! They’re doing this to you on purpose, to get you out of the way while they’re busy doing god knows what behind your back!

Snapping her cold gray eyes wide open, she said brusquely, “Thank you very much, Dr. Johnson.”

Johansen flinched with surprise. “Er, it’s Johansen, Mrs. Westfall. My name is Johansen.”

“Of course it is.” Westfall got up from the chair. The screens still swirled their softly colored displays. “Excuse my error.”

“We’re not finished with the presentation, Mrs. Westfall. The work we’re showing you here represents two generations of observations and detailed fluid mechanics calculations. It goes all the way back to—”

“I’m certain it’s very important,” Westfall said, putting on a placating smile. “But the time is rushing by and I have so much to do. I’m sure you understand.” She made a show of checking her wristwatch.

“Of course,” Johansen said, looking defeated. He glanced at his wrist, too. “You’re a very busy woman.”

Westfall caught the hint of sullen resentment in his tone. And ignored it.

Johansen clicked the remote controller in his bony hand and the screens went dead gray. Westfall blinked as the overhead lights glowed to life.

“I appreciate your taking the time to show me all this work your people have been doing,” Westfall said as Johansen slid back the partition that had screened this corner of the fluid dynamics laboratory from the rest of the lab. He was so tall that she had to crane her neck when he was standing beside her.

“I hope it’s been helpful to you,” he said, pouting like a little boy who was disappointed with his birthday present.

Westfall allowed the scientist to lead her through the laboratory, past workbenches where younger men and women stood bent over their instruments, past apparatuses that were entirely meaningless to her, and out into the wheel’s circumferential passageway, where two of her aides were waiting for her.

“No need to escort me,” she said to Johansen. “I know you’re very busy and I can find my way. Thank you very much for such an interesting presentation.”

“You’re entirely welcome,” Johansen said, weakly.

With her two dark-suited young men dutifully trailing after her, Westfall headed briskly for the elevator that would take her back to the first wheel, where Archer’s offices were housed. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Johansen ducking back inside the laboratory.

He’s going to call Archer, she thought, and warn him that I’m on the loose.

In the conference room, Archer’s pocketphone buzzed softly. Deirdre was glad of the interruption. They want me to go down into the ocean, she was thinking. They want me to ride in Max’s vehicle, to live in that high-pressure liquid for days on end.

Looking across the table to the weary-eyed, unshaven Yeager, Deirdre asked, “Max, if you can’t find the leviathans, do you still intend to send a human crew down into the ocean?”

Yeager shrugged his husky shoulders. “That’s up to him,” he said, tilting his shaggy head toward Archer. “I’m just the guy who designed the ship.”

Archer snapped his phone shut and tucked it back into his tunic pocket. “Mrs. Westfall’s left the third wheel. She’ll probably burst in here in a few minutes.”

“Goodie,” said Andy, mirthlessly.

“All right,” Archer said, “we’d better wrap this up. What are our conclusions?”

“The whales have moved away from their usual feeding grounds,” Yeager said.

“And the sharks have gotten together in a bigger gang than we’ve ever seen before,” Vishnevskaya added.

“Could those two things be related?” Deirdre asked.

“Got to be,” Corvus said.

“There’s something else,” said Archer. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but two and a half weeks ago a sizeable comet smacked into Jupiter.”

“In the leviathans’ feeding grounds?” Corvus asked.

Shaking his head, Archer replied, “No, it was several thousand kilometers north of that area. And it never reached the ocean, it exploded in the clouds.”

“So?” Yeager asked.

“It disrupted the flow of organic particles out of the clouds at that latitude,” Archer said. “We sent a pair of small probes to map the changes in the flow pattern, but they didn’t get very much data before they were crushed by the pressure.”

Deirdre saw where he was heading. “You think that the flow of organics was disturbed so much that it forced the leviathans to leave their normal feeding grounds?”

“It’s a possibility,” Archer said.

“Then where the hell are they?” Yeager demanded.

Archer merely shook his head.

“How do we find them again?” Corvus wondered.

“Follow the sharks,” said Deirdre. “Let the sharks find them for us.”

Yeager shot a disapproving frown across the table. “The sharks don’t like having Faraday around them. They butted her until she left their area, remember?”

“Trail them at a distance,” Corvus said. “Keep Faraday as far away from the sharks as her sensors will allow.”

“Will that be far enough away so that the sharks won’t turn back and attack her?” Vishnevskaya asked.

Archer puffed out a sigh. “We’ll have to try it and see.”

Yeager’s chin sank down into his chest. He obviously did not like the idea of risking his vessel against the Jovian sharks.

At that moment the conference room door slid open and Katherine Westfall stepped in, smiling sweetly.

“Ah, this is where you are, Dr. Archer,” she said. “None of your aides seemed to know your whereabouts. You really should be more careful about keeping them informed.”

Archer shot to his feet. “Mrs. Westfall! Finished with your tour of the fluid dynamics lab already?”

She stood by the doorway, eying the four others seated around the conference table.

“Yes. It was very interesting, but much more than I could digest in one sitting.”

Archer walked around the table toward her. “Sensory overload. I’m afraid Dr. Johansen sometimes pours it on too heavily.”

“Indeed,” Westfall agreed thinly.

Extending his arm to her, Archer said, “We’ve just finished up here. Let me take you up to my office and we can discuss what you’d like to see next.”

Westfall took his offered arm. As she turned to allow Archer to lead her out of the conference room she said sweetly to Deirdre, “Oh, Ms. Ambrose. I’m looking forward to seeing you later this afternoon. Why don’t you pop over to my suite and have tea with me. Around fourish?”

Deirdre nodded dumbly, knowing it was not an invitation but a command.

IMMERSION CENTER

Dorn, meanwhile, was sitting on the bottom of the immersion center’s tank, breathing high-pressure perfluorocarbon liquid while he attempted to pilot a simulated spacecraft. The technicians had set up a simplified control console for him to operate. It was more like playing a child’s game than a really demanding simulation, Dorn thought, but he went through the motions without complaint.

“Rendezvous and docking maneuver,” the console’s speaker called out, its synthesized voice ominously deep in the thick liquid environment.

“Rendezvous and docking,” Dorn acknowledged.

A different voice said, “Notching up the pressure ten percent.”

“Ten percent,” Dorn said. Not that there’s anything I can do about it, he thought. Unless I want to stop this exercise altogether.

The pressure was bearable, so far. And Dorn was pleased that his skills as a spacecraft pilot returned to the forefront of his mind so easily.

“You’re doing fine, Dorn.” That was Dahlia’s voice. Even through the distortion caused by the high-pressure liquid Dorn recognized her easily. “All your readouts are well within normal range: respiration, heart rate, everything.”

All to the good, he thought. I’m showing them that I can pilot Max’s submersible when they’re ready to send in a crewed mission.

“Upping the pressure another five percent,” said the technician’s distorted voice.

“Five percent,” Dorn acknowledged, wondering how far they would go—how far he could take it.

Sitting in a comfortably upholstered chair in Archer’s office, Katherine Westfall watched the wall screen display with sheer fascination written clearly on her modeled features. The cyborg was sitting at some sort of console, manipulating keypads with his human hand and his artificial one. He appeared to be in a swimming tank of some sort: The watery light glimmered off the metal side of his face.

“He’s actually breathing that liquid?” she asked, in a voice filled with wonder.

“He is indeed,” said Archer, sitting next to her. “The liquid is loaded with oxygen, and he can breathe it just as normally as we breathe air … almost.”

Westfall shuddered inwardly at the thought of it. But she kept her voice even as she asked, “And all the crew members will have to breathe it?”

Archer nodded. “It’s because of the pressure down at the depths where the submersible will be operating. Immersing the crew in the perfluorocarbon allows them to withstand much greater pressures than if they were in air, even pressurized air. With the perfluorocarbon every cell in their bodies becomes pressurized. In air, their body cells would be crushed.”

With an effort, Westfall took her eyes from the screen and turned to Archer. “That’s rather inhuman, don’t you think?”

The scientist spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “It’s the only way we can get people down that deep. Lord knows we’ve searched for other possibilities. Prayed for them, even.”

Arching a pencil-thin brow, Westfall said, “The Lord hasn’t seen fit to answer your prayers.”

“He works in mysterious ways,” Archer replied softly.

“And you’re determined to send people down there again, after all these years.”

“We’ve learned as much as we can with robotic probes. If we’re going to make meaningful contact with the leviathans—”

“Why is that so important?” she demanded.

Archer clearly looked surprised. “Why? Because they’re an intelligent species.”

“You can’t honestly believe that those beasts are intelligent.”

“Why not? Do you think God isn’t big enough to create more than one intelligent species?”

“But … you don’t know it for certain. You’re assuming it. There’s no real evidence that they’re intelligent.”

A slow smile spread across Archer’s bearded face. “You’re perfectly right, Mrs. Westfall. I’m following a hunch. I have some reasons for my hunch, but they’re mostly subjective.”

“So?”

Still smiling, Archer said, “Mrs. Westfall, most people think that science is a strictly rational, unemotional business. All data and numbers, no human feelings at all. Well, that’s dead wrong. Do you want to know how science really works?”

Westfall smiled back at him, thinly. “Do tell.”

“A scientist gets a hunch. An insight. An idea that he knows how something works. He might spend the rest of his life trying to prove that he’s right. His best friends might spend the rest of their lives trying to prove that he’s wrong! It doesn’t matter, in the long run. In the long run, what they uncover—the guy with the hunch and the others who disbelieve him—what they uncover is new facts, new observations, new measurements. Everybody learns. In the long run it doesn’t matter if the fellow’s hunch was right or wrong. What matters is trying to prove it, or disprove it. That’s where the new understandings come from.”

Westfall stared at him for a long, silent moment, then said in a voice as sharp-edged as a stiletto, “And it doesn’t matter how many people you kill along the way.”

“It is uncomfortable at first,” Dorn admitted. “But you adapt to it quickly enough.”

Deirdre shook her head. She had met Dorn for dinner, after spending more than an hour in Westfall’s suite, telling her everything that had transpired in their meeting with Dr. Archer, answering her pointed questions as well as she could.

“They want me to go on the mission,” Deirdre said.

Dorn looked up from his cup of chilled soup. “You?”

“Andy thinks I could make contact with the leviathans,” she said.

Dorn said nothing. She couldn’t tell from his utterly blank expression what he was thinking, but she thought he might be trying to control a sudden anger.

Then she saw Corvus carrying a dinner tray toward them. “Here he comes now,” she told Dorn.

Corvus slid into the chair between the two of them and plunked his tray on the table. “Hi!”

Dorn rumbled, “Deirdre tells me that you want her to go with us in the submersible.”

“Right.” Corvus nodded happily. “Dee’s got the knack. She’s the best one to try to make contact—”

“No,” said Dorn. It sounded like a funeral bell tolling.

Corvus’s brows hiked up. “No?”

“You will not risk Deirdre’s life on this mission into the ocean.”

“Who made you mission commander?” Corvus replied, his face going serious. “You’re going, aren’t you? I’m certainly going. Why can’t Dee go along with us?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Wait a minute,” Deirdre interrupted. “I have something to say about this, you know.”

Dorn looked implacable. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

“But not for you?”

“What happens to me doesn’t matter. But you have your whole life ahead of you.”

“Dorn, you’re very sweet,” Deirdre said, placing a hand on his human arm, “but this is my decision to make, not yours.”

“Besides,” Corvus added, “it’s not all that dangerous. Uncomfortable, yeah, breathing that liquid gunk. But Max says the mission shouldn’t be really dangerous. His ship is perfectly safe … as long as we stay within its limits.”

Dorn looked from Corvus’s slightly unbalanced face to Deirdre’s calm beauty and then back to Corvus again.

“Then please explain to me,” he said, very firmly, “why Max is not here having dinner with us.”

MISSION CONTROL CENTER

Linda Vishnevskaya had allowed Max Yeager to sit at one of the consoles. It was better than having him hover over her, breathing down her neck.

The control center was deserted except for the two of them. Nothing had been heard from Faraday since the unexpected data capsule had popped out of the clouds the day before. Another capsule was expected at noon today.

Yeager sat impatiently at the console, reviewing all over again the data that the last capsule had carried. The sharks’ attacks had ended when Faraday backed away. The vessel was safe as long as it kept away from the predators.

How far away? Yeager asked himself. How close can she get before those damned monsters attack her again? They didn’t do any damage, but she’s not designed to be a punching bag for those monsters. She can take the g forces of flying through the atmosphere and dropping into the ocean, but that bludgeoning from the sharks is different. If they keep battering at her like that something’s going to shake loose sooner or later.

The sharks are looking for the leviathans, Yeager understood. Those big whales are the sharks’ food. So if we can just trail the sharks for a while, we ought to come upon the leviathans. Sooner or later. Better be sooner. She’s due to leave the ocean and fly back here in another thirty-two hours.

Yeager realized that Vishnevskaya was standing over him. He almost chuckled at the incongruity of their sizes. Standing, she was just about eye level with him while he was seated.

“When is the last time you had a decent meal?” she asked him.

Shrugging, “I dunno. I grabbed a sandwich a little bit ago.”

“That was this morning. It’s now almost dinner time.”

“I’m not hungry.”

She wrinkled her nose. “When’s the last time you took a shower?”

He frowned.

“Max,” she said, resting a hip on a corner of the console’s desktop, “it’s no use sitting here hour after hour. You can’t help your baby. She’s doing fine down there.”

“She might pop another capsule.”

Vishnevskaya leaned across the console’s keyboard and clicked its power switch. The screens went dark.

“Whattaya—”

“Max, little father, I am pulling rank on you. As director of flight operations I order you to get the hell out of here.”

Yeager blinked at her. This tiny golden-haired pixie, standing with her fists planted on her slim hips, her violet eyes steady, unwavering …

“You’re ordering me?”

“That’s right. Leave the control center. Get yourself a decent meal. If anything happens I will call you immediately.”

“You’re ordering me.” Max didn’t know whether to laugh or scream at her.

“Out. Now.” She pointed toward the doors. As Yeager pushed himself up from the console’s chair she added, “And take a shower!”

Faraday glided through the dark, turbulent sea, keeping as far from the pack of predators as it could while still observing their position with its longest-ranged sensors.

The predators were moving purposefully, steadily, in one direction, massed into a column. Central computer’s human analog program pulled up an image of an army of human soldiers marching along a barren, war-ravaged plain.

They could go faster, central computer concluded. In their attacks on Faraday itself they had certainly showed much more speed. But now they were coasting along almost leisurely as they moved ever deeper into the hotter depths. The safety program showed that the vessel was approaching the design limit on depth, but so far the increasing pressure and external temperature had not caused any problems. So far.

Suddenly the sharks veered off to the left. Sensors showed that a huge formation of leviathans was moving slowly out there, so far distant that it was difficult to discriminate individual bodies among the mass.

Why were the predators moving away from their prey? Central computer pondered this question for more than a full second, while simultaneously questioning the decision tree program about firing off another data capsule to report this unexpected behavior.

The decision tree concluded that the predators’ behavior did not in itself warrant launching a fresh data capsule. But the priority directive flared in central computer’s list of objectives: Observe the leviathans. With the predators distracted, even temporarily, Faraday obeyed its programming and sped toward the massive assemblage of leviathans. This was an opportunity that it could not resist.

Katherine Westfall tapped her foot impatiently on the plush carpeting of her sitting room. Those fools! She said to herself. Those doddering old fools!

The latest message from IAA headquarters on Earth had her seething with frustrated anger. The council was divided on the question of forbidding Dr. Archer to send a crewed mission into Jupiter’s ocean. Split almost evenly down the middle, nine in favor of banning the mission, seven against the motion. Westfall’s own vote would make it ten to seven, but the chairman of the council—a geriatric case who should have been put out to pasture long ago, in Westfall’s view—ruled that the vote fell one short of the two-thirds majority needed for such a critical decision.

Two-thirds majority! Westfall wanted to throw something, she was so angry. She actually picked up a small decorative vase from the end table by the couch and raised her hand, but stopped herself.

The chairman was a scientist, she knew. Undoubtedly a friend of Archer’s, or at least he’s in sympathy with a fellow scientist’s aim. Westfall shook her head. They don’t care about who has to risk her life. Who might get killed. They’re blind to the risks: All they want is to learn new knowledge, regardless of the costs.

She carefully replaced the vase on the end table and sat herself on the couch, trying to relax the tension that was knotting her like a rope.

And what do you want? she asked herself. Retribution for your sister’s death? Don’t kid yourself. You never really knew her. She’s an excuse, not a reason. Why do you want to stop Archer? The answer flashed in her mind immediately: Because Grant Archer is in line for membership on the governing council. And once he’s on the council he could swiftly rise to the chairmanship. He’s that kind of person: quiet, unassuming, friendly—and single-minded in his determination to put science ahead of everything else. He won’t seem to want the chairmanship, Westfall knew. He’ll act surprised when they offer it to him. But he’ll take it. Oh yes, he’ll take it and run the council his way and I’ll be just another member out in the cold, without any real power.

Westfall felt a pang of fear clutching at her innards. She remembered her mother telling her over and over, You’re not really safe unless you’re on top. You’ve got to be in command, otherwise they can walk all over you. Clenching her tiny fists, she told herself, I’ve got to stop Archer, one way or another.

She stared at the empty armchair across the coffee table. Only a few hours ago Deirdre Ambrose had sat in that chair and dutifully reported that Archer was encouraging her to become part of the crew that was going down into the ocean.

Westfall could see that Deirdre was clearly afraid of the idea. But they’ll cajole her into going, she knew. They’ll make it clear that if she wants any kind of a career in scientific research she’ll have to do what they tell her. They’ll kill her, just like they killed Elaine.

Suddenly Westfall broke into a smile. Of course! What a fool I’ve been, she said to herself. I’ve been battering at them to no avail. Archer is determined to send a crew into the ocean. He has his friends on the IAA council and elsewhere in the scientific community; they’ll let him get away with it.

And when the mission fails, when those people in the crew are maimed or killed, Archer will be blamed for it. Of course! Westfall almost laughed aloud at the simplicity of it. Let him send them! He’ll be writing his own resignation. They’ll be killed and it will be easy to see that I’ve been right all along. Then they’ll cancel all this nonsense of human missions into Jupiter’s ocean. Then Archer will resign in disgrace—or be fired by the IAA council. Then I can cut their research budget down to where it should be and stop all this nonsense of trying to talk with those alien monsters.

Then I can be elected chairman of the council, as I should be.

She actually did laugh out loud. “And then I can purge the obstructionists off the IAA council! I’ll fill the board with my own people and make those scientists dance to my tune!”

LEVIATHAN

Leviathan’s sensor parts saw the lights flashing back and forth among the Elders, deep in the core of the Kin’s spherical formation. None of its nearby companions lit up; whatever the Elders were discussing was not being transmitted to the others of the Kin.

The darters were still out there, trailing the Kin at a long distance, just barely within sensor range. They wouldn’t attack the entire family of us, Leviathan thought. We could crush them if they tried to.

But hunger is a powerful force. Leviathan felt it gnawing at its own parts. If the Elders don’t lead us to a new stream of food soon, Leviathan knew, members of the Kin will begin to dissociate, unable to control their starving parts. And once that begins the darters will swoop in and feast.

A message was flashing from one member of the Kin to another, making its way outward from the Elders toward the edge of their formation. When at last Leviathan saw the message glaring from the flank of its nearest fellow, it felt stunned.

The Eldest had decided to leave the group and go off alone to dissociate. Suicide, Leviathan knew. The darters would swarm all over it as soon as it separated itself from the Kin. But the Eldest was firm in its decision. It was willing to sacrifice itself so that the Kin could get away from the darters; willing to allow the predators to devour its parts while the rest of the Kin fled to safety.

Nothing like this had ever happened within Leviathan’s memory. Leviathan protested, flashing a message urging the Elders to turn on the darters and drive them away. We are much stronger than they! Leviathan signaled. We can fight them without sacrificing any of our members.

But the Eldest signaled back, No. Better that one dies and the rest of the Kin survive. There must be new currents of food nearby. Find them while the darters are busy feasting. Grow strong and have many buddings.

Leviathan felt helpless in the face of the Eldest’s decision. Suddenly its sensor parts shrilled an alarm. An alien! Leviathan’s brain recognized what the sensors had detected. One of the strange, cold alien creatures was approaching the Kin. But this one was much larger than any of the previous aliens. Almost as big as a full-grown darter.

Leviathan flashed the information inward toward the Elders. Quickly their reply came back: Ignore the alien. It cannot help us or change what must be.

But Leviathan wondered, Is the alien helping the darters? Is the alien the reason why the food stream disappeared and the darters have grown so bold?