Leviathans of Jupiter

IMMERSION CAPSULE

This is it, Deirdre said to herself as she ducked through the small round hatch and sat herself on the padded bench that ran around the interior of the circular chamber.

She waited for one of the men to make a comment about her skinned scalp. The buzz cut was hardly a centimeter long; Deirdre felt almost naked. She had nearly cried when she saw her beautiful auburn curls piling up on the floor as they cut her hair away.

Andy Corvus, already seated, extended a hand to help her. Dorn had gone in first; he was sitting by the control panel of blinking lights and keypads set into the capsule’s curving bulkhead. If Andy noticed her haircut he said nothing about it.

Max Yeager came through the hatch behind Deirdre, looking serious, almost grim. She thought that he must be reconsidering his decision to come on the mission. Not even Max said anything about her hair. Maybe being bald has made him more thoughtful, Deirdre surmised.

“Hope none of us are prone to claustrophobia,” Corvus said. It was an attempt at humor, but it fell flat.

“Helluva time to think of that,” Yeager grumbled.

All four of them wore nothing more than black elastane tights that hugged their bodies like second skins, lined inside with medical sensors that reported their heart and breathing rates, body temperatures, and blood pressures. Arms and legs bare except for a few more sensors plastered to the skin. Necklines low enough to allow easy access to the feeding ports in their necks. Deirdre was surprised at how buff Andy looked: lean but sinewy. She tried not to stare at Dorn’s half-metal body. She realized how uptight they all were when no one commented on how she looked in her revealing maillot, not even Max.

Dorn said gravely, “If anyone has second thoughts, now is the time to act on them.”

Deirdre felt a sudden impulse to get up and squeeze back through the hatch. But one look at Andy’s expectant face froze her in place. He’s depending on me, she thought. I can’t leave, not now.

Nodding, Dorn said, “Very well. We begin the mission.”

He touched a keypad and the hatch swung noiselessly shut.

“Here we go,” Deirdre heard herself say.

“Initiating immersion,” Dorn said into the tiny microphone built into the control panel.

“Initiating immersion,” a voice crackled from the grillwork of the speaker. Deirdre thought it sounded like that little blond woman who was the chief of the mission control team.

Thick oily perfluorocarbon liquid began to flow across the capsule’s deck, quickly covering their bare feet and rising toward their knees.

“Why do they have to keep it so cold?” Yeager groused. “They ought to warm it up a little.”

“Like soup,” Corvus said.

“Yeah. Gazpacho.”

Deirdre said, “I prefer lobster bisque.”

“Where’d you ever get lobster bisque?” Yeager demanded.

“We imported it from Selene,” Deirdre explained as the chilly liquid reached her hips. “It’s expensive, but we bring it in at least once a year, for the holidays.”

“Lobster bisque,” Yeager muttered, with a shake of his head.

The perfluorocarbon had climbed to their waists. Deirdre realized she was biting her lip. Andy was smiling nervously, Max staring down at the rising liquid. Dorn was turned slightly away from her, focusing on the control panel; she could only see the etched metal side of his face.

Deirdre tried to steady her breathing as the liquid rose to her breasts, then her shoulders, and up to her chin. Relax! she commanded herself. You’ve been through this before, several times. Just relax and try to breathe normally.

She couldn’t, of course. None of them could. Deirdre closed her eyes as her body spasmed and her lungs began to burn from holding her breath. She could sense the others struggling also, but kept her eyes shut tight. She didn’t want to see them, it would only make things worse.

At last she sucked in a breath and gagged on the cold, slimy liquid. Her body told her she was drowning even while the rational part of her brain insisted that it was all right, she’d be perfectly fine, just try to relax and breathe normally.

Breathe normally, she repeated to herself. As if this is normal.

After a few year-long seconds of coughing and nearly retching she began to breathe almost naturally. Opening her eyes, she saw that the three men were also gasping, shuddering, looking terribly afraid, as if each breath would be their last. Their breathing slowly steadied, though, and soon enough they were all breathing the perfluorocarbon. Just as she was herself.

Her lungs felt raw, and there was a cold knot in the pit of her stomach, but she was breathing.

“Immersion complete,” Dorn said, his voice strangely low, reverberating like a moan from hell.

“Copy immersion complete,” came the voice of the mission controller, also low now, distorted.

Looking squarely at Deirdre, Dorn asked, “Is everyone all right? Any pains? Any problems?”

“I’m … all right,” Deirdre said, her own voice sounding like a bassoon in her ears.

“Okay,” said Corvus.

“No problems,” Yeager said. Deirdre thought it sounded grudging.

“Very well,” said Dorn. “Now we ratchet up the pressure.”

Deirdre knew it would take precisely three hours to increase the perfluorocarbon pressure to the point where it was designed to be. Three hours of sitting in this cramped little metal womb and doing nothing except waiting for your body to break down, your internal cells to implode, your brain to go berserk.

None of that happened. They talked to one another, meaningless chatter to pass the time. Corvus made a few pathetically weak jokes. Yeager kept telling them that “all things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” No one laughed.

Deirdre thought she felt a dull pain in her abdomen, but it was so slight she didn’t mention it. Psychosomatic, she told herself.

Then she remembered her conversation with Katherine Westfall, at the party Dr. Archer had given them a few nights earlier.

After her toast with the faux champagne, Westfall had pulled Deirdre to one side of the crowded conference room and smiled coldly at her.

“I understand that your case of rabies has been cured,” she said.

Deirdre nodded happily, the champagne tickling her nose. “Yes. Dr. Mandrill says there’s no trace of the virus in my blood now.”

“Thanks to nanotherapy,” Westfall said.

Deirdre nodded again, uncertainly this time. She didn’t know how much she should admit to.

“You’re a very fortunate young woman. Dr. Archer went to great lengths to help you,” Westfall said. It wasn’t a question.

“I’m very grateful.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Now I can go on the mission without any worries … about my health, that is.”

Westfall said nothing, merely maintaining her sphinxlike smile.

A little hesitantly, Deirdre asked, “Do you still want me to keep you informed? Once we come back, I mean.”

With the slightest shake of her head Westfall replied, “That won’t be necessary. Not at all. I’m fully satisfied with my other sources of help.”

Deirdre’s blood had run cold at the sight of Westfall’s eyes. Although her lips were smiling, Katherine Westfall’s eyes were like a pair of razors, like the eyes of a poisonous snake.

“Full pressure,” Dorn announced.

Deirdre snapped out of her memory. The capsule was fully pressurized. Time for the next step of the mission.

“Now we separate from the station and rendezvous with Faraday,” said Yeager, needlessly. They all knew the procedure. Max is talking because he’s nervous, she thought.

Indeed, Yeager chattered every step of the way, his voice basso deep in the perfluorocarbon, as the capsule left station Gold and glided the short distance to Faraday, co-orbiting with the station. While Yeager told them all how cleverly he had designed the system, the capsule locked onto Faraday’s main hatch. Led by Dorn, the four of them swam down the long metal-walled tunnel that penetrated through the twelve pressure spheres of the ship and ended at the ship’s bridge, in the vessel’s core.

Deirdre floated into the spherical chamber and looked around at the consoles and display screens studding the bulkheads. It was just like the simulators that they had trained on, back in the immersion center aboard Gold’s third wheel.

“Well,” said Yeager, “here we are.”

“Home sweet home,” Corvus said, with a lopsided grin. Even his voice sounded weirdly deep, distorted.

Then Yeager leaned toward her and said, in a near whisper, “By the way, you look sexier than ever in that buzz cut.”

Deirdre smiled with relief.

LAUNCH

Standing in Faraday’s cramped bridge with little to do while the ship swung in orbit around massive Jupiter, Deirdre felt a dull ache in her stomach, as if she had eaten something that disagreed with her. It’s the pressure, she thought. We’ll all have aches and pains from the pressure. They warned us about it, about how the diaphragm will feel sore from working in high pressure. But in the back of her mind she saw Katherine Westfall’s reptilian eyes glittering at her.

Deirdre’s assignment was to monitor the ship’s sensor displays—unless or until Corvus made contact with the leviathans. Her station was to the right of Dorn, who stood at the bridge’s central console and handled the ship’s controls. Dorn also stayed in contact with the mission controller. Sure enough, Deirdre saw on the display screen built into Dorn’s main console that the controller was the little blond Russian woman who had seemed so friendly with Max.

There were no chairs in the ship’s bridge: none were needed as they floated weightlessly in the perfluorocarbon liquid. Yeager had slid his feet into the restraining loops beside Dorn, and was busily tapping out commands on the auxiliary keyboard of the central control console, at the cyborg’s elbow. If Dorn was annoyed by the engineer’s behavior, he gave no sign of it.

Corvus’s job was devoted exclusively to the deep brain stimulation equipment. He had run his console, on Dorn’s left, through a perfunctory systems check as soon as they had departed from station Gold. Now, with nothing to do while Faraday orbited Jupiter, Andy had floated over to stand beside Deirdre.

“What’s Max doing?” Deirdre asked Corvus as he hovered beside her. She tried to whisper but her voice still sounded like a moaning foghorn.

“Checking out the ship’s systems, I guess,” Corvus answered. “He wants to make sure everything’s working right before we go diving into the clouds.”

Deirdre remembered that the mission control chief had teasingly called Max “little father” at the party. Now she saw how apt the label was. She watched as Yeager methodically called up every one of the ship’s systems and subsystems, ticking off the green lights with a tap of his finger against the console display’s touchscreen.

At last Yeager turned toward her with a half smile and said, “Everything’s in the green.”

“Isn’t that what you expected, Max?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sure.” His smile widened. “But it’s good to see my baby’s working the way she should.”

Dorn turned slightly from his post at the control console and announced, “Time line indicates we should take a meal.”

“Already?” Deirdre asked.

“We’ve been aboard for nearly eight hours,” said Dorn.

“That long?”

“Twelve hours since breakfast,” Corvus said.

“I don’t feel hungry,” said Yeager.

“That’s because your stomach is filled with perfluorocarbon,” Dorn said. “We won’t feel normal hunger pangs.”

Corvus said, “Yeah, the medics told us about that, didn’t they?”

“We must take meals on schedule,” Dorn said, very seriously. “Otherwise our performances will deteriorate.”

“Wouldn’t want to deteriorate,” Yeager said, heading for the food dispenser. Then he added, “Could be dangerous.”

Deirdre watched Max as he floated over to the dispenser. It looked like a tall, oblong vending machine, except that its face was blank metal with a single square display screen built into it, and it had a slim hose hooked to one side.

“I think I’ll have a filet mignon, medium rare, smothered with onions,” Yeager joked as he unlimbered the hose.

“And ketchup,” Corvus added.

Yeager shot him a disapproving glare.

Deirdre watched, half fascinated, half in dread, as Max clamped the end of the hose to the feeding port in the base of his neck. His expression was strange: He seemed to be trying to smile, but the revulsion he felt was clearly etched on his face.

The dispenser’s screen lit up briefly, showing what looked like a pie chart, all cherry red except for a tiny sliver of gray. That must represent Max’s meal, she thought.

Within a minute the dispenser gave out a tone that would have been a bell’s ding in normal air. In the perfluorocarbon it sounded more like a metallic clunk. Max disconnected the hose and held it out for Corvus.

“Delicious!” he announced. “The steak was a little underdone, though.”

Corvus took the hose from his hand. “What’s for dessert?” he wisecracked.

One by one the men went to the dispenser and hooked the feeding hose to their ports. Yeager took over at the control board when Dorn went for his meal. Deirdre hung back, wondering what it felt like.

Dorn held out the hose to her. “It’s your turn, Dee,” he said, almost solemnly.

Taking a deep breath, Deirdre accepted the hose from Dorn’s prosthetic hand.

“You need any help with that?” Yeager asked, with his old leer.

Deirdre felt grateful for it. Max breaks the tension, she thought.

Aloud, she replied, “Keep your distance, Max. I can do this for myself, thank you.”

She pushed the end of the hose against her feeding port and felt a sharp, brief sting as its hyperfine needle penetrated the port’s protruding shell. Her teeth clenched, Deirdre watched the dispenser’s display until it dinged and the screen said FEEDING COMPLETE.

She felt no different, but was glad when she disconnected the hose and hung it up in its slot on the dispenser’s side. What an awful way to have a meal, she thought.

Dorn, back at his control post, said into the built-in microphone, “Atmospheric entry retroburn in one minute.”

The blond woman’s image in his display screen nodded. “Retroburn in sixty seconds, on my mark.… Mark!”

Deirdre slid her feet into a pair of restraining loops set into the deck. We’re going into the clouds, she said to herself. We’re going into Jupiter.

LEVIATHAN

Leviathan signaled to the nearest member that it must soon leave the Kin for budding. The message flashed inward, toward the Elders, glimmers of blue and green flickering through the vast formation.

Once again Leviathan pondered why the Elders insisted that members go off alone to bud. That makes us vulnerable to the darters, Leviathan reasoned. It would be better to stay within the formation, protected against their slashing insatiable teeth.

Many members of the Kin never returned from their buddings, Leviathan knew. Why do the Elders insist on risking our members so? They say the Symmetry demands it. They say that it has always been so, thus it must always remain so.

Leviathan wondered why. Could it be that those members who budded successfully, who fought off the darters and returned to the Kin, made the Kin stronger? The weak fed the darters, the strong returned to the Kin.

But of what good is that? Leviathan asked itself. Once a member returns to the Kin it is safe from the darters. The predators never attack the Kin in all its strength. They would be destroyed if they tried.

The Symmetry. Everything we do is intended to maintain the Symmetry. That must mean that the darters are part of the Symmetry. A new realization shocked Leviathan’s consciousness. Does the Symmetry require that we offer ourselves to feed the darters? Does the Symmetry demand that we sacrifice members of the Kin to keep the darters among us?

How could this be? Leviathan wondered. Why don’t we protect our own members against the darters? Why do we allow them to kill our own kind?

Is it to make the Kin stronger? To get rid of the weak ones? Sacrifice individuals for the good of the group?

Leviathan considered that possibility with loathing. Why don’t we attack the darters? Why do we allow them to feed on us? We could kill them all and then the world would be safe for the Kin. We could bud in peace and safety, once the darters are eliminated.

That would alter the Symmetry, it is true. But what’s wrong with that? We could make the Symmetry better, safer, stronger.

Leviathan wished it were close enough to the Elders to show them this idea. At its present station, out on the periphery of the Kin’s formation, messages had to be relayed inward from one member to another before they reached the Elders. And then the Elders’ answer had to be relayed back.

If we could show them my thoughts directly, display my ideas to their eyes without others in between, perhaps we could convince them. Perhaps we could make them see the rightness of our concept. A world without darters! A world without fear, where we could bud in safety and grow in numbers without limit.

Leviathan wanted to break free of its station on the Kin’s periphery and swim deep into the formation and confront the Elders directly. But such insolence was unthinkable. The Elders would have nothing to do with such an upstart.

And besides, the urge to bud was building within Leviathan’s member parts. Soon it would be irresistible, a blind unreasoning urge that would blot out all other thoughts, all other needs. Instead of swimming inward toward the Elders, Leviathan knew that very soon it would have to leave the Kin and face the ravening darters. Alone.

KATHERINE WESTFALL’S QUARTERS

Rodney Devlin looked properly humble as he was ushered into Westfall’s sitting room by the cadaverous, dark-suited aide who served as her personal secretary. His shaved scalp gleamed as if it were polished with oil, while Devlin’s lean, lantern-jawed face seemed somehow to be almost mocking behind his red mustache, despite his lowered eyes.

Westfall nodded to the aide and he silently left the sitting room, sliding the door shut without a sound. She was wearing simple lounging pajamas as she sat on the room’s comfortably upholstered sofa. Devlin was in his usual white working clothes, rumpled and stained, looking altogether scruffy.

“They’re off on their journey into the ocean,” she said as the erstwhile cook crossed the carpeted floor toward her.

“You fed her the nanos?” he asked, his voice low and respectful, his chef’s floppy hat clutched in his hands.

“At the party, when you gave them to me,” Westfall said. “They should start to work on her within a few hours, from what you told me.”

Devlin nodded mutely.

“And then they’ll go to work on the others,” Westfall added. “Which will be the end of their mission and the destruction of Dr. Grant Archer and his scientific minions.”

A puzzled expression on his mustachioed face, Devlin asked, “Why’re you doin’ this? What’ve you got against Archer and those people in the submersible?”

“That’s my business,” Westfall said coldly. “You can be glad that you’re not going to jail. That’s enough for you to know.”

“Yes’m.”

For several heartbeats the room was silent, Westfall eyeing Devlin like a cat watching a mouse, Devlin standing there waiting for her next words.

At last she said, “Tell me about this man Muzorewa.”

“Zeb?” Devlin’s face showed surprise. “He useta be director of this station.”

“I know that. He’s been something of a mentor to Archer, over the years, hasn’t he?”

Shrugging, Devlin replied, “I s’pose so. Kinda like a father figure to him, almost. Grant was just a young pup when he first came here, y’know. Zeb took him under ’is wing, so to speak.”

“If Archer is relieved of his position as director of this station, would Muzorewa take the job again?”

Devlin puzzled over that question for a moment. Tricky one, that, he said to himself. Why’s she asking? What’s she after?

“Well?” Westfall demanded.

“I don’t think so,” Devlin answered. “Zeb’s got an endowed chair at the university in Cairo. And he’s a high mucky-muck at Selene University. I don’t see him comin’ back here.”

Westfall nodded, satisfied. Devlin got the feeling he had just saved Zeb Muzorewa’s career. Or maybe his life.

Linda Vishnevskaya checked the mission profile displayed on the leftmost screen of her console against the actual performance of Faraday. The two curves overlapped almost perfectly.

To the image of Dorn in her central screen she said, “You should be breaking through the clouds in six minutes.”

The cyborg nodded solemnly. “Six minutes,” he repeated. “All systems are performing within nominal limits.”

Vishnevskaya glanced at the color-coded lights running along the right side of her console. All green.

“The ship is running smoothly,” she agreed. “Please congratulate Dr. Yeager for me.”

Dorn asked, “Would you like to speak with him?”

Fighting down the impulse to smile happily, Vishnevskaya said tautly, “Yes. For a moment.”

Dorn turned away from the screen and called to Yeager, who slid into view on the display.

“Everything is going well, little father,” she said, dimpling into a smile despite herself.

Yeager looked slightly embarrassed. “So far, so good,” he muttered.

“How do you feel?” she asked, quickly adding, “The medical team is monitoring your physical conditions, of course.”

“I feel okay,” Yeager said. “Kind of chilly in this soup, but I guess we’ll get warmer as we dive deeper into the ocean.”

“Yes.” Vishnevskaya studied Yeager’s face. He seemed normal, despite the perfluorocarbon he was immersed in. Perhaps his face was a little puffy, but the medics claimed that was to be expected.

“Well,” she said, “I just wanted to wish you good luck before communications cut off.”

He nodded. A little warily, she thought. As if he were afraid of saying something he didn’t want the others to hear.

“Thanks. We’ll be okay.”

“Of course. You designed the vessel well.”

“See you when we get back.”

“Of course,” she repeated.

“So long, kid.”

“Good luck,” she said again, feeling inane, frustrated.

Yeager slid out of the display screen’s field of view and Dorn came back. “We’re on trajectory,” he said. “Time line is on the tick.”

Vishnevskaya nodded at the cyborg. But she was thinking, Max, don’t get hurt. Make your ship perform as it should and come back safe. Come back to me.

Grant Archer sat alone in the gallery that circled the mission control center. As he looked down at the handful of men and women working the consoles he thought, I should have gone on this mission. I should have gone with them.

A cold, almost sneering voice in his head ridiculed the thought. Gone with them? At your age? What would you do down there in that cold blackness? You’d be useless.

Archer nodded to himself, his eyes fastened on the big wall screens that displayed data from Faraday’s systems.

I’d be a burden to them, he admitted silently. But I’d be with them. I’d be facing the same risks that I’ve asked them to face. I’d share their fate.

Totally alone in his melancholy, Archer bowed his head and prayed silently, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …

To his alarm, he found that he could not speak the next line, not even to himself. He did fear evil. He feared for the people he had sent into Jupiter’s dark, alien sea.

He feared the malice of Katherine Westfall.

THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE

“We’ll break through the clouds in two minutes,” Dorn said, his eyes focused on the mission profile curve.

Yeager was standing behind him, his feet anchored in floor loops as he swayed slightly in their liquid world. Deirdre thought of the undersea plants she had seen in vids of Earth.

“Shouldn’t you power up the sensor screens?” Corvus asked. He was at his station, to the left of Dorn in the cramped compartment.

The cyborg nodded toward Deirdre. “Powering the sensor screens,” he said as he touched an icon on the control panel’s master screen.

All the screens on Deirdre’s console lit up, but Deirdre saw nothing except swirling waves of color racing past.

“Wow!” Corvus blurted. “We’re really moving!”

“Diving like a falcon,” Yeager agreed.

“It doesn’t feel as if we’re diving,” Deirdre said.

“That’s because we’re inside,” Yeager explained. “We share the same relative motion as the ship.”

Dorn intoned, “Breakout in one minute.”

“The flight engineers call this a hypersonic descent,” Yeager went on, perfectly serious. “We’re gliding through the atmosphere at Mach 12.”

“Gliding?” Deirdre asked. “At Mach 12?”

Yeager nodded tightly. “Gliding. Saves on the propellants we’ll need to launch ourselves back out of here when the mission’s finished.”

“That’s why we have those aerodynamic fins attached to the ship’s exterior,” Dorn said.

“Right,” Yeager agreed. “And once we’re in the ocean they’ll serve as steering vanes.”

The ship was definitely shaking now, buffeting seriously.

“And the atmosphere’s ten thousand kilometers deep?” Deirdre asked, remembering the figure from their briefings.

Without turning from his control panel displays, Dorn nodded. “Ten thousand kilometers, roughly. Just about as deep as the Earth’s diameter. It’s—”

“Look!” Deirdre shouted.

The display screens suddenly cleared and showed a vast panorama of steel gray ocean stretching far below them. The horizon was far, far away, much more distant than the horizon on Earth. Enormous, Deirdre realized. This is an enormous world. The sky was blanketed with soft pastel clouds, bulbous and billowing as far as the eye could see.

“We’re below the clouds,” Deirdre breathed. It sounded silly, even to herself. The buffeting was getting worse, but no one seemed to take any notice of it. Am I the only one who’s frightened? she asked herself.

“Look over there,” Corvus said, pointing.

Little puffs of greenish clouds floated low across the ocean’s rippled surface, and other, darker smudges dotted the view.

“I’ll focus the telescopes on them,” Deirdre said, glad to have something to occupy her hands. The smudges grew into an armada of iridescent balloons sailing majestically across the boundless ocean, glittering in the pale light that filtered through the clouds.

“Look at them,” Deirdre gasped, pointing. “They’re beautiful!”

“Clarke’s Medusas,” Corvus murmured. “Completely adapted to living airborne. They never land anywhere.”

“There isn’t any land to land on,” Yeager said. “Nothing down there but a seven-thousand-klick-deep ocean.”

“They spend their whole lives aloft,” Deirdre said.

“They’re just sailing along,” Yeager said, a hint of awe creeping into his voice, “on winds that must be at least four hundred knots.”

“It’s home to them,” Corvus said.

Deirdre watched the medusas, fascinated. Long tendrils trailed from their colorful main bodies. Sensors, she recalled from her briefings.

“What’s that?” Yeager asked, pointing a trembling finger at a thin, flat ghostly figure that glided past the medusas.

“Spider-kite,” said Corvus. “They eat the organic particles raining out of the clouds.”

“So do the medusas,” said Deirdre. “No predators have been found among the organisms living in the atmosphere,” she quoted from memory. “They all feed on the particles coming down from the clouds. Like manna from heaven.”

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t any predators,” Corvus said.

Yeager countered, “Been popping probes into this atmosphere for almost half a century. No predators have been identified.”

Corvus remained unconvinced. “Still…”

“A world without predators,” Deirdre said. “Like heaven. Every creature is safe, content.”

Without looking up from his screens, Dorn said dryly, “Let’s hope there aren’t any predators that like to eat little round metal ships.”

If he had meant it to be lighthearted, the humor fell flat. Nobody laughed.

INTO THE OCEAN

“We’d better strap down now,” said Dorn. “We’ll be entering the ocean in five minutes.”

Deirdre was still watching the panorama of medusas and spider-kites and long-winged birds that glided effortlessly through Jupiter’s clear hydrogen atmosphere. Endlessly fascinating, she thought. A whole extraterrestrial ecology adapted to living in this wild, airborne environment. She had expected the medusas to be big, and they were, dwarfing the puny Faraday. But the spider-kites were almost as big, wide expanses of gossamer floating out there on winds that were shaking this ship like a leaf in a hurricane.

Faraday was buffeting heavily now. The four of them swayed and lurched in their liquid surroundings. Deirdre thought that if they hadn’t secured themselves to the deck with the foot loops they would all be bouncing off the bridge’s spherical bulkhead.

Corvus touched her shoulder. “Come on, Dee, time to strap in.”

Andy looks tense, she thought. I suppose I do, too. But she gazed once again at the shimmering, coruscating medusas gliding placidly through the hurricane winds, their long slender tendrils swaying gently, almost hypnotically. They’re so beautiful, Deirdre thought.

She pulled her bare feet free of the deck loops and floated to the bulkhead. It took an effort; the ship was shaking so hard that she missed the safety harness attached to the bulkhead and bumped painfully against the curving metal instead.

“Are you okay?” Corvus asked.

Nodding, Deirdre muttered, “Clumsy.” She clutched the safety harness and pulled it over her shoulders, then reached down for the straps that secured her thighs.

Looking up, she saw that Andy and Max were doing the same. For once Max was strictly business: no leering innuendos, no offer to help her with her straps. Deirdre smiled inwardly. Max is just as uptight as the rest of us, she realized.

Dorn’s harness was different, looser, dangling from the overhead so that he could remain facing the control panel. He turned his head and checked the rest of them.

“Ocean entry in three minutes,” he announced.

Deirdre was still watching the medusas on the display screens that circled the bridge.

“The cameras are saving this imagery, aren’t they?” she asked, knowing that it was so but wanting Dorn or Max to confirm it.

“Everything’s being recorded,” Yeager said.

“Good,” Deirdre murmured. Those medusas are works of art, she thought. When we get back I’m going to beam this imagery to every art museum in the Earth/Moon system. They’re too beautiful for only the scientists to look at.

“Two minutes to entry,” said Dorn.

The ship’s buffeting was getting worse. Deirdre felt the harness straps cutting into her as Faraday shuddered and jittered down through the lowest levels of the atmosphere.

“What’s that?” Corvus yelped, pointing a shaking finger at the display screens on Deirdre’s console.

She turned and saw one of those huge birdlike creatures, its wings outstretched, its long sword-thin beak dipping into the frothing surface of the ocean.

“Skimmer,” Yeager hollered. “Like on Earth.”

“Look at the numbers on the data bar!” Corvus cried. “It’s big enough to wrap us up in its wings.”

“They grow ’em big on this planet,” Yeager said, with grudging admiration.

As if it could hear them, the skimmer lifted its beak out of the water and seemed to look straight into the camera. Then, with a single flap of its enormous wings, it soared up and out of the camera’s view.

“Had its fill of fish,” Yeager muttered.

“It doesn’t eat the manna,” Dorn said. “There are predators in this world after all.”

“I’m glad it doesn’t eat round metal objects,” said Corvus, remembering Dorn’s earlier attempt at humor.

“Didn’t show any curiosity about us.”

Deirdre said, “Maybe we frightened it.”

Corvus grinned and replied, “Well, it sure as hell frightened me.”

“There are bugs that eat metal in the clouds of Venus,” Yeager said.

“Not here, though,” Corvus said.

“Thank goodness,” said Deirdre.

“One minute,” Dorn announced.

The view outside grew misty as they neared the surface of the ocean. Spray from the waves, Deirdre realized. The boundary between atmosphere and ocean isn’t as distinct as it is on Earth. She wondered if Jupiter’s incredible spin rate had something to do with that. The planet’s more than ten times bigger than Earth, yet its day is less than ten hours long. That must whip up tremendous currents in the ocean.

“Retroburn in ten seconds,” Dorn called out.

Deirdre felt her body surge against the restraining harness, but it was a gentle push, more like being pressed forward by a partner on a dance floor than being slammed by a hard blast of retrorockets.

The display screens went blank, then turned dark. She felt another jolt, harder this time, and then the ship’s buffeting eased into a soft rocking motion, like a baby’s cradle. It was soothing, almost, after the hard bumps through the atmosphere.

“We are in the ocean,” Dorn told them. “Thirty meters deep and heading deeper.”

“Great entry,” Yeager congratulated. “Smooth as a baby’s butt.”

“Thank you,” said Dorn. “Your control systems did most of the work.”

“Can we unstrap now?” Corvus asked.

“What happened to the screens?” Deirdre asked.

“Not much visible light penetrates the water,” Yeager replied before Dorn could. “It gets a lot darker as we go deeper.”

“Switching to infrared,” Dorn said.

It wasn’t much better. Deirdre couldn’t make out much of anything on the screens. Just darkness, with the vague hint of wavering forms that might have been simply her imagination. But then she saw something drifting by.

“Snow?” she called out.

“Manna,” said Yeager.

Corvus explained needlessly, “It’s a stream of organic particles. They form in the clouds and fall down into the ocean. The leviathans feed on them.”

We know that, Deirdre thought. Andy’s just reciting facts to hide his nervousness.

“We have entered the ocean approximately twelve kilometers from the spot that the mission plan called for,” said Dorn. “Now we follow this stream of organic particles down to the level where the leviathans feed.”

For once, the cyborg’s deep voice sounded satisfied, almost pleased.

We’re where we ought to be, Deirdre said to herself. Close enough, anyway. Now all we’ve got to do is find those giant creatures.

SEARCHING

Deirdre began to feel bored. The display screens remained dark. There was nothing for her to see, nothing for her to do. They had unstrapped from their restraining harnesses: Faraday swayed gently in the ocean’s surging current.

Corvus had gone to his console to check the status of his DBS equipment. He seemed quite content to run his tests, checking and rechecking the gadgetry. Yeager stood beside him, swaying easily with his feet in the deck loops, running equally incomprehensible diagnostic checks on the ship’s systems.

Deirdre looked over Dorn’s shoulder at the screens of his control panel, trying to make out what the blinking lights and colored curves meant.

As if he sensed her behind him, Dorn said softly, “All systems are performing well.”

“We’re going deeper?” she asked.

“Yes. Following the stream of organics. We’ve passed the three-hundred-kilometer mark.”

“And there’s still nothing out there.”

Dorn made a noise that might have been a chuckle. “I’ll put the sonar returns on-screen.”

The display screens lit up with ghostly images, strange, alien shapes.

“Activating the visual subprogram,” Dorn said, touching a key on his control panel.

The vague grayish shapes suddenly sharpened into clear imagery, brightly colored creatures, some sleek and swift, others that looked misshapen and horribly ugly to Deirdre’s eyes.

“Fish!” she exclaimed.

“The Jovian equivalent,” said Dorn. “The ocean is teeming with them at this level.”

Deirdre watched them, fascinated.

“The colors are added by the visual subprogram,” Dorn explained. “The actual creatures probably don’t look this way.”

That didn’t matter to Deirdre. She watched the Jovian fish flicking across the sensor screens. In the distance she saw an undulating, flattened thing that trailed a set of wavering tentacles. The data bar running across the screen’s bottom said it was nearly three kilometers across.

“It’s like a big, floating bedsheet,” Deirdre said, awestruck.

“With tentacles,” Dorn added.

As they watched, the flat undulating creature moved closer. It seemed to slither through the water, its tentacles wavering as it moved. Deirdre thought it looked monstrous, horrible. It made her blood run cold.

Suddenly one of its tentacles shot out and seized one of the fat, slow-moving fish. Before Deirdre could even gasp it pulled the fish in and shoved it, still wriggling and struggling, into a round mouth on its underside. Deirdre saw that the mouth was ringed with flashing teeth. The fish disappeared into that maw.

“It’s a predator!” Corvus said, sounding surprised. “We didn’t know there were predators at this level. Nobody ever saw one of those before.”

“A discovery,” Dorn said evenly.

Yeager glided up beside Corvus. “The bio guys thought all the critters at this level lived off the manna.”

“That’s what they told us at the briefings,” Deirdre recalled.

“Well, they were wrong, weren’t they,” said Corvus.

“That’s what science is all about,” Yeager said, a little pompously. “Busting up somebody’s pet theory.”

Dorn tapped the time line display with a prosthetic finger. “Time for Dee and Andy to take their rest period.”

Deirdre felt surprised. Six hours already? We’ve been in the ocean six hours?

Yeager turned to her with his old leering smile. “You need somebody to tuck you in, honey?”

“No thank you, Max,” Deirdre replied sweetly. “I can do it myself. I’m a big girl.”

“In all the right places,” Yeager retorted.

With Corvus trailing behind her, Deirdre swam to the narrow hatch that led to the bunks. She pulled out a fresh set of tights from the storage drawer beneath her coffin-sized bunk, then ducked into the lavatory briefly. The toilet had been adapted from zero-gravity systems developed for spacecraft: It clamped Deirdre’s bottom firmly. She wondered what would happen if she couldn’t pull free of it once she was finished.

But the collar unclamped easily enough. Deirdre stood up and changed into the fresh tights, then pushed through the doorway to the cramped space where the bunks were stacked, three on one side, two on the other. They were little more than long narrow shelves. While Corvus ducked into the lavatory Deirdre grasped the handbar atop the opening to her bunk and slid her body in.

She thought she’d be too tense to sleep, but her eyes closed as soon as she lay her head down. She dreamed of that slithering, devouring monster seizing her in its tentacles and pulling her toward its slashing teeth. But at the last moment of her dream the monster suddenly was Andy Corvus, and he was holding her tenderly in his arms.

RESEARCH STATION GOLD

Grant Archer came back to the control center and walked down its central aisle to stand behind the mission control chief as the screens on her console suddenly went blank, every one of them. Looking around, he saw that all the other consoles had gone dark, as well, together with the big wall screens.

Linda Vishnevskaya half turned in her chair and looked up at Archer. “That’s it,” she said. “They’re out of contact now. They’re into the sea.”

Archer nodded. “They’re on their own.”

Vishnevskaya got slowly, tiredly to her feet. Her tousled blond curls barely reached Archer’s shoulder. “On their own,” she murmured.

The other controllers were getting up from their consoles, stretching, working out the kinks in their bodies after sitting at their posts for so long. The whole mission control center seemed quiet, subdued, as if something had gone wrong.

“You’ll maintain a skeleton crew here, just in case?” Archer asked the chief controller.

She nodded. “One person. That’s enough to notify me and get everyone back here if something unexpected happens.”

“And if all goes as planned?” he prompted.

“Then we’ll hear from them in exactly one hundred and fourteen hours,” Vishnevskaya said, with a weary smile. “Of course, they will be sending up data capsules on schedule.”

“Good,” said Archer. He slowly climbed the stairs to the top level of the control center, where Katherine Westfall sat in one of the spectator’s seats, flanked on either side by a pair of blank-faced young men in dark tunics and slacks.

Trying to sound cheerful, Archer said to her, “They’re in the ocean, right on schedule. For the next five days they’ll be out of contact with us.”

Westfall stood up, and her two aides rose like automatons beside her. In her deceptively soft voice she said, “If something should happen while they’re in the ocean…” She left the rest unsaid.

Archer thought she looked almost … expectant. As if she wants something to go wrong. But he told himself he was being paranoid. Why would she want them to have trouble down there?

Linda Vishnevskaya left the control center reluctantly. She couldn’t overcome the feeling that nothing bad would happen to the mission as long as she stayed at her post. She knew it was stupid. Sheer emotion. Still she lingered, climbing the steps toward the exit as slowly as a child heading for a dentist’s chair.

Max, she thought. I know you have children my age and you don’t even know I exist except as a fellow technician. But I love you, Max. Come back to me. Don’t get yourself killed down there.

LEVIATHAN

The urge to dissociate was growing stronger. Leviathan swam upward toward the cooler waters above, hoping that the darters would be less likely to seek their prey there. Its sensor parts could not detect darters within their range of observation, but Leviathan knew how swiftly the predators could swarm in and overwhelm a lone member of the Kin, especially when it was in the process of dissociating.

Already some of the flagella members were shuddering with the desire to split away and begin budding.

Not yet, Leviathan insisted. Not yet. Be faithful. The time is coming but it’s not yet here.

Leviathan had purposely steered away from the current of downfalling food, reasoning that the darters would lurk near it in hopes of trapping a solitary member of the Kin. There is safety in doing the unexpected, Leviathan thought.

Hunger gnawed dully in Leviathan’s inner organ parts. Even the sensor parts and faithful dull-witted flagella began to send hunger signals to Leviathan’s central brain.

Wait, Leviathan told its members. Better to be hungry than to be eaten by darters.

The water was cooler at this level, which made the hunger pangs all the more insistent. No darters in range, the sensor parts reported. Leviathan could feel the trembling urge to dissociate growing stronger, stronger, rising toward an irresistible convulsion. In a few more moments the craving would be unstoppable and Leviathan would begin to disconnect into its separate components.

One of the flagella members detached from Leviathan’s body, shuddering uncontrollably as it drifted away. Still no darters within sight, the sensor parts reported.

But wait! Something was moving out in the cold darkness, coming closer. Leviathan desperately commanded its member parts to resist the craving to dissociate. Its brain studied the image the sensor parts were observing.

Not darters. Something strange. Almost as large as a full-grown darter, but misshapen, round, spherical, cold, and hard-shelled.

Something alien.

FARADAY

“Something’s out there,” Dorn muttered as he stared at the central display on his console.

Corvus floated to his side and peered at the screen. “I don’t see anything.”

Deirdre and Yeager came up, too, floating high enough in the perfluorocarbon liquid so they could look over the shoulders of the two men.

Dorn said, “Pressure sensors are showing that something is moving out there, sending an irregular pattern of waves through the ocean.”

“Fish?” Yeager suggested.

“Switching to active sonar,” said Dorn.

Faraday’s sonar system used sound waves at too low a register for human ears to detect. But almost immediately Deirdre saw a shape appear on Dorn’s central screen. Glancing at her own console, she saw the same image.

“Seventy-three kilometers away,” Dorn muttered.

Corvus nodded. “At that distance the thing must be at least ten klicks across.”

“We got one!” Yeager hooted.

A leviathan, Deirdre realized, peering more intently at the screen. The image was gray and grainy but she could make out the beast’s streamlined shape, studded with what looked to her like little pods. No, she remembered from her earlier briefings, those are fins, hundreds of fins that propel the animal through the water.

Yeager asked, “Any of those shark things around?”

“None in sight,” Dorn replied.

“So far, so good,” the engineer muttered.

“We’ve got to get closer,” Corvus said. “Closer.”

Without glancing away from the screens, Dorn said, “Slowly. We’ll approach slowly. We don’t want to alarm the creature.”

Alarm it? Deirdre asked silently. How could we frighten something that big? That powerful. We’re like a little child’s toy compared to it.

Then Corvus said, “Hey! It’s coming apart!”

Katherine Westfall stood alone in the observation deck staring out at the hard, unblinking myriads of stars blazing their light against the infinite blackness of the universe. Like people, she thought. We each shine with our own light, struggling against the darkness of inevitable death.

But is death truly inevitable? With rejuvenation therapies one can live for hundreds of years, she told herself. And in another century or two we’ll know even more and be able to extend our lifespans even further. Death needn’t be inevitable, not if you have access to the latest medical techniques.

And to have access to the latest medical techniques you need money, Westfall reminded herself. Money and power. She thought back to her childhood, when she had neither. To her mother drudging away in restaurant kitchens night after night, year after year, coming home exhausted, throwing herself on her bed only to get up again the next day and go back to work.

For what? For me, Mother always said. So that I could have a better life. Yes, I found a better life. I married it. I saw my chance and I took it. I’ll never be poor again, never be powerless, never have to worry that if I don’t please this one or that one I’ll be thrown out into the street.

She remembered her mother’s death, wretched and shriveled from the tumors that fed on her body. The best medical care in the world couldn’t save Mother. All they could do was to ease her pain at the end. And Elaine, the sister she never knew, the scientists couldn’t save her. They killed her, really. If it wasn’t for men like Grant Archer and that Muzorewa person, my sister would still be alive today.

The stars were slowly moving across the glassteel window of the observation deck. Westfall smiled inwardly as she imagined herself the center of the universe, with all the stars of heaven revolving around her. A pleasant thought, she felt. That’s the kind of power that could keep you safe forever.

And then the stars began to dim as Jupiter’s mighty radiance flooded the observation deck. Even before the body of the massive planet swung into view, its powerful glow dimmed the stars themselves. Westfall felt the warmth of that glow touching her cheek, making her suddenly nervous, frightened.

Stand your ground, she told herself. Face your fears.

Jupiter rose from beneath her feet, a mammoth overwhelming presence, a true god, streaked with whirling, racing clouds, dotted with storms, powerful and all-engulfing.

Katherine felt the terror she’d known when strange men would come home with her mother, laughing powerful men who patted her on the head and shooed her off to her own corner of the room.

She hated those men. And she hated her mother for needing them. I don’t need anyone, she told herself. I destroy anyone who stands between me and safety. I’ll destroy Archer. He’ll never become chairman of the IAA. I will.

Face your fears, she said to herself as she squared her shoulders and stared into Jupiter’s swirling, seething clouds. You think you can conquer me? Giant planet, king of the gods, you’re nothing but a tool for me to use. I’m not frightened of you. I’m not. I’m not.

She laughed aloud at the sight of mighty Jupiter. Archer’s destruction will begin down there, Katherine Westfall told herself, with the destruction of that ship he sent into those clouds, with the death of the people he sent into that ocean.

DISSOCIATION

The ache in her midsection had grown into a knot that throbbed in her chest, but Deirdre tried to ignore it as she stood by her sensor console watching the leviathan. Andy swayed in the perfluorocarbon liquid beside her. Dorn was watching the sensor display on a screen of his control console, Yeager beside him, bending forward eagerly.

“It’s coming apart, all right!” Corvus said. “Look!” He was excited, but in the perfluorocarbon his voice still sounded deep, almost sonorous.

“We’ve caught it in the act of reproducing,” said Dorn.

“Jovian pornography,” Yeager cracked. Deirdre shook her head at him.

“Get closer,” Corvus urged.

“No,” Deirdre said, surprising herself. “Stay back.”

Dorn half turned, a questioning expression on the human side of his face.

“If it’s reproducing we should give it as much privacy as we can,” Deirdre said.

“It’s just an animal,” Yeager argued. “It doesn’t have any feelings of modesty.”

“How do you know?” Corvus asked.

“Animals have feelings,” said Deirdre. “They can get very annoyed when you bother them at the wrong time.”

“You wouldn’t want to annoy something that big,” Corvus added.

Dorn said, “I think discretion is the better part of valor in this case.”

Deirdre smiled to herself, thinking, Henry IV, Part I, act five, scene three.

She asked Dorn, “Can the spectrograph laser work at this range?”

“It should pick up something,” Dorn replied.

“Could you activate it for me, please?”

“On console two.”

Deirdre floated over to the console built into the compartment’s curved bulkhead and slipped into the foot loops there. On its screen she saw the spectrograph’s deep green laser beam lancing through the dark water. She touched the electronic keyboard and the visual display was immediately replaced by a string of alphanumerics. Plenty of chemical species in the water around the creature, Deirdre saw. The water’s saturated with the Jovian equivalent of pheromones and sex hormones.

She heard Yeager sneer, “Exoporn.” Max was still watching Dorn’s main screen and the leviathan shaking itself apart. “We could sell this footage to some of the freaks back Earthside.”

“Oh Max,” Deirdre chided.

Dorn said, “We can stay at this distance and observe without—” Suddenly he stiffened. “Sharks approaching.”

Leviathan saw the alien clearly, hovering in the distance. Stay together, it commanded its member parts. We can’t dissociate while a stranger is near.

But several of the mindless flagella had already broken free and were floating off. Leviathan tried to resist the mounting urge to dissociate. It would be too dangerous with the alien so close. We must stay together.

Sensor parts were drifting away. Deep within its armored hide, Leviathan’s vital organs were pulsing with the need to disassemble, to end their unity and begin the ancient passion of dissociation and recombination.

With stunning swiftness the need overpowered Leviathan. Everything else dwindled into nothingness. Nothing else mattered. The gigantic creature surrendered to the impulse, to the shuddering ecstasy of dissociating. The presence of the alien was overwhelmed in the driving compulsion to reproduce, the insistent orgasmic irresistible joy of release.

But as it at last surrendered to its primitive need, Leviathan’s brain registered a sudden terrified warning from the last of its functioning sensor parts. Darters!

That was the last thing Leviathan recognized. Its mind went blank. Its final thought was that death and rebirth are forever intertwined.

“Sharks?” Yeager barked. “Where?”

Dorn ran his fingers across the console’s electronic keyboard and the main display screen shifted to show a half-dozen sleek, dangerous shapes hurtling toward the cloud of pieces that had been a single leviathan only moments earlier.

“They’ll attack while the leviathan’s helpless,” Deirdre said.

“Predators,” Yeager muttered scornfully.

“We’ve got to do something to help!” said Corvus.

“Do what?” Yeager snapped.

“Drive them away,” said Deirdre.

Dorn shook his head solemnly. “Should we try to interfere in the natural processes of their world?”

Impatiently, Corvus insisted, “I came down here to try to make contact with the leviathans. I don’t want to stand here and watch it served up for lunch!”

“It’s helpless,” Deirdre said.

“It’ll be a massacre,” Corvus added.

Dorn looked up at Yeager. “Do you think we could discourage the sharks?”

Yeager made a sound that might have been a grunt. In the perfluorocarbon it sounded more like a moan.

“I attached a couple of electron guns to the outer hull. We could shock ’em if we can get close enough.”

“How close?” Dorn asked. But he was already activating the ship’s propulsion system, steering toward the approaching sharks.

“Fifty meters,” Yeager said, clearly unhappy. “Closer.”

Dorn nodded. Deirdre could hear the hissing rumble of the propulsion jets and felt the surge of acceleration. In the display screen the charging sharks’ images began to grow larger.

“The charge of the light brigade,” Yeager murmured.

Deirdre remembered a line from the poem: “All in the valley of death rode the six hundred.” Then she thought, We don’t have six hundred. There’s only the four of us.

“So how’s the sim?” Devlin asked.

Franklin Torre glanced over his shoulder before whispering, “Terrific. It’s like being with her.”

Devlin nodded. It had been simple enough to take a standard VR simulation and dub Deirdre Ambrose’s face in place of the porn star. It was a pretty ragged job of dubbing, but apparently Torre didn’t mind.

The two men were standing in a corner of the busy galley, slightly away from the lines of chattering people who were filling their dinner trays. Torre seemed to be worried that his sister would see him, Devlin thought.

“So you’re happy, then?” he asked, with his impish grin. “No complaints?”

“Uh … can you get one that’s a sort of Arabian Nights setting?” Torre asked, his cheeks reddening slightly.

“Harem scene? Sure. How many girls do you want?”

His face flaming hotter, Torre said, “Doesn’t matter, as long as one of them’s Dee.”

“Can do, Frankie old chum. No problem.”

As Devlin began to move back toward the kitchen, Torre clutched at the sleeve of his stained chef’s jacket.

“Those nanos I gave you … what did you do with them?”

Putting on an innocent expression, Devlin said, “Oh, them? I took ’em myself.”

“Yourself?”

“Yeah. They’re harmless, aren’t they?”

“Well, not altogether…”

“You mean they’re not harmless?”

Torre whispered harshly, “I told you they can act on the gastric juices in the stomach.”

“Yeah, yeah, but it’d take them forty-eight hours to show any symptoms.”

“They’re not symptoms!” Torre snapped. “Not unless something goes wrong.”

Devlin patted him on the shoulder. “Now what could possibly go wrong, chum? Huh?”

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Deirdre watched, wide eyed, as the sharks seemed to leap closer in her console’s central screen. She tapped at the keypad symbols and slaved her sensor display to one of the screens on Dorn’s console so he could watch what she was viewing without turning to look at her console.

Andy was frozen in place behind Yeager, who was bending slightly forward, just to Dorn’s left.

“Hold on,” Dorn said calmly. “This might get violent.”

Deirdre wormed her bare feet more firmly into the deck loops and grasped the handgrips on her console.

Faraday was hurtling toward the band of sharks. Deirdre counted six of them on her console screen, bulleting single-mindedly toward the remnants of what had been a huge leviathan.

That’s their food, she thought. We’re trying to stop them from eating. We’re interfering in the natural order of this world. But then she looked again at Andy’s face, his soft blue eyes wide, his cute lopsided grin replaced by open-mouthed anxiety. Andy’s here to study the leviathans, Deirdre told herself. If we let the sharks eat this one we’ll have to go deeper and try to find another.

Max growled, “Get ’em, Dorn. Blast right into them.”

Instead of being wary of attacking the sharks, Max was suddenly belligerent, aggressive.

“Bang into my baby, will you?” Yeager snarled, his voice deepening into an oath of vengeance. “We’ll show you!”

Dorn glanced over his shoulder at Yeager and shook his head.

The sharks suddenly seemed to become aware of Faraday charging at them. They veered from their course and split up, heading in all directions. Several of them raced out of the screen’s view. Faraday zoomed past them, then Dorn swerved the ship into a tight turn. Deirdre swayed so hard one of her hands slipped free of the grip on the console’s face.

They were heading back toward the sharks, which appeared to be milling about confusedly. Then a pair of them turned toward Faraday.

“They’re going to ram us!” Corvus yelped.

“The hell they are,” Yeager growled, leaning over Dorn’s shoulder, his finger extended, ready to press one of the console’s keypads.

Dorn slapped his hand away. “I’ll handle it,” he said, without looking up from his screen.

The sharks were on a collision course, so close their streamlined bodies filled the screen. Deirdre braced for a crash.

“Now!” Yeager bellowed, and Dorn mashed his prosthetic hand on the keypad that fired the electron guns.

Deirdre’s screen filled with a blue-white flash that almost blinded her. Blinking tears away, she saw both sharks thrashing, convulsing.

“That got ’em,” Yeager exulted.

But not for long. The sharks writhed and flailed erratically for a few minutes, then straightened out and began to swim normally again.

“Where are the others?” Corvus asked.

The screen’s view widened to show the other sharks gobbling at the dismembered pieces of the leviathan. Deirdre noticed that several of the pieces had come together; the creature was already rebuilding itself.

Without a word Dorn arrowed the ship toward the greedily feeding sharks. They sensed the danger and broke off, splitting up into separate pairs. They run in pairs, Deirdre thought. They never move alone.

Again Faraday charged at the confused sharks. This time all four of them converged on the ship, hurtling toward it at frightening speed.

Dorn waited until Deirdre was certain they would collide with the sharks, then hit the electron gun button again. Again the blue-white flash and again the sharks twisted away, dazed.

But only temporarily. Within minutes the six of them had reorganized and were swimming normally once more. Dorn maneuvered Faraday between their formation and the reassembling pieces of the leviathan.

Consciousness returned to Leviathan slowly. At first it could sense nothing but the unutterable pleasure of fissioning. No organized thoughts, no memories, no fears: nothing but the sensual delight of creating two from one.

Then recombination. The ancient rhythm of joining, of coming together, of connecting. Brain and gills. Mouth parts and inner organs. Sensor members and strong, steadfast flagella.

Almost complete. Leviathan remembered who it was, remembered the Symmetry and the Kin and—the darters.

Another member of the Kin swam nearby. It was Leviathan also. They flashed recognition images to each other, orange and pale yellow. The Symmetry had been preserved. The budding was complete. Now there were two where only one had existed before.

But what of the darters?

Like awakening from a dream, Leviathan began to search about itself. The darters were moving in when the dissociation began. We were in danger. How…?

Leviathan and its replicate sensed the darters out there, close enough to stir the water with their thrashing. And something else.

The alien. That strange spherical hard-shelled alien was charging at the darters. At them! It was between the pack of darters and the Leviathan and its replicate, attacking the predators. Or were the darters attacking the alien? Leviathan saw harsh blue-white sparks flash in the water and the darters raced away from the alien, one of them convulsing wildly as the others backed off.

The alien is protecting us! Leviathan realized. But now the darters were attacking it. The alien needed protection now.

Without needing to communicate with its replicate, Leviathan drove straight at the darters, its replicate at its side. Simultaneously they bawled the undulating note that rose and fell in perfect unison, the bellowing overpowering profoundly deep bass note that reverberated through the water like the voice of doom.

CONTACT

“What the hell is that?” Yeager bellowed as the deep thrumming sound reverberated through Faraday’s cramped bridge.

Deirdre clapped her hands over her ears. The sound was painful.

Dorn ran his fingers across the electronic keyboard of his main console. “Turning off the sonar and the exterior microphones,” he muttered.

Deirdre could barely hear him through the overwhelming blare. The sound undulated through the bridge, rising and falling, an impossibly deep bass pulsation that rattled the bones and shook the insides of the four humans. Deirdre felt as if her lungs were about to burst.

Corvus pointed a quavering finger at Dorn’s central screen. Deirdre saw his lips moving but she couldn’t make out his words. Looking at the screen, she saw that the sharks were swimming away as fast as they could, fleeing the overpowering sound.

“It’s coming from the leviathans,” Deirdre said, barely able to hear her own voice. She felt as if her head was stuffed with thick goo, as if she were going deaf.

Max was wincing with pain, Andy had clamped his hands over his ears and was shaking his head in misery. Dorn remained stolidly at his post before the main control console. The noise didn’t seem to be affecting him as much as the others, Deirdre thought.

Abruptly the sound shut off. Deirdre felt it rather than heard it. The pressure inside her head suddenly disappeared, although her ears were throbbing with the pain of it.

“They’re gone,” Dorn said. She heard his perfluorocarbon-deepened voice as if through a pair of pillows stuffed against her ears.

The sharks had left the area. Dorn’s central screen showed no sign of them, only the two massive leviathans. Deirdre read the numbers from the ranging laser displayed across the bottom of the screen: The creatures were twelve kilometers away, but still so huge that they loomed like a pair of giant monsters.

“They drove the sharks away,” Corvus said, with awe in his voice.

Max Yeager rubbed at the bridge of his nose with both index fingers. “Damned near split my skull,” he muttered.

Their voices were still muffled in Deirdre’s ears, but she could hear them well enough now.

Dorn said, “They’re coming closer.”

Leviathan and its replicate edged closer to the alien. Strange, thought Leviathan, the replicate does exactly what we do. Then it thought, Of course. It is us. A duplicate of us. Or are we a duplicate of it? Which of us is the original, which the replicate?

It didn’t matter. In time the two leviathans would change as they faced different life experiences. It is all part of the Symmetry, Leviathan told itself. We begin as a unity but diverge as we learn and grow.

The alien seemed quiescent now. It floated before them, inert and seeming almost dead except for the narrow beam of light that lanced from its skin and splashed against the hides of the two leviathans, first one and then the other.

It’s not dead, Leviathan realized. But it is strangely dark.

It was perfectly spherical, although studded with finlike appendages, Leviathan’s sensor parts reported. Its skin was hard, unyielding; it echoed back the sound waves the sensors beamed at it with no absorption at all.

It must be intelligent, Leviathan thought. It attacked the darters when we were dissociated and vulnerable. It protected us. Why?

Leviathan flashed questions to the alien. Who are you? Why are you here?

The alien remained dark, except for that one narrow beam of light.

“I wish we had bigger screens,” Deirdre said.

Yeager nodded, his eyes fastened on Dorn’s central display as the leviathans swam closer. “I should have plastered the whole interior bulkhead with screens,” he said.

The gigantic creatures were coming so close that the screens could no longer show all of their enormous bulk. Deirdre saw that their massive bodies were studded with oarlike appendages. And eyes! Those must be eyes, she realized. Hundreds of them running the length of their bodies. And all of them looking at us. It made her blood run cold.

Suddenly the flanks of both leviathans lit up with a display of bright colors: red, yellow, green, bright periwinkle blue.

“Wow!” Corvus goggled at their display.

“That’s not false color from the visual subprogram,” Yeager shouted. “That’s real!”

“Activating the visual cameras,” Dorn said. Even his voice trembled a little.

The images shifted, changed, colors coming and going, shapes altering, transforming before their staring eyes.

“They’re showing off for us,” Corvus said.

Deirdre suddenly understood what was happening. “No,” she said, feeling a trembling excitement. “They’re trying to talk to us!”

COMMUNICATION

“Talk to us?” Yeager asked, incredulous.

“That’s the way they communicate with each other,” Deirdre said. “Visually. Through images.”

“That’s why we have the display panels on the outer hull, isn’t it?” Corvus said.

“Yeah,” Yeager admitted. Somewhat grudgingly, Deirdre thought. “But are those images supposed to mean something? They look like gibberish to me.”

“You don’t speak Jovian, Max,” said Corvus.

“Should I light up the panels?” Dorn asked.

“Yes,” said Deirdre. “And could you give me control of them on my console? Please?”

“Done.”

Deirdre had to enlarge the view from the outside cameras to see the entire display flashing from the leviathans’ flanks. With trembling fingers she traced an outline of the huge creatures and displayed it on the ship’s light panels.

Both leviathans immediately changed the images they were displaying. The colored shapes flickering across their flanks turned to a mixture of various shades of yellow and pale lavender.

“Look!” Deirdre shouted. “We’ve made contact with them!”

Max Yeager, leaning over her shoulder, said sourly, “Contact my hairy butt. They’re just flashing colors, that’s all.”

“But it must mean something!” Deirdre insisted.

“Yes,” said Dorn. “But what?”

Leviathan could see that the alien was flashing images, but they made no sense. Mere gibberish. Its replicate swam around the strange spherical creature, asking it where it came from, why had it come to their domain. Leviathan was trying to thank it for keeping the darters at bay while it was budding.

The alien obviously was trying to picture something for them, but its images made no sense. Splashes of color without form, without inner structure, without meaning.

Bring it to the Elders, the replicate suggested just as Leviathan itself thought of that possibility. But how can we make it understand that it should follow us back to the Kin? Leviathan wondered.

“It’s nothing but gibberish,” Yeager said, still standing so close behind Deirdre that she could feel the ripples in the perfluorocarbon when he moved. Andy had come up at her other side, staring intently at her screen.

“I’ve displayed an image of the two of them,” Deirdre said, feeling frustrated. Her chest was beginning to knot again.

“Maybe the color has something to do with it,” Max suggested. “Maybe they can’t see that shade of blue.”

“But that’s the color of their hides,” Deirdre said.

Yeager shrugged. “Maybe they’re into abstracts. Like Picasso or some of those other painters. Try changing the color.”

Deirdre shifted from blue to green, and when that got no response from the leviathans, she went to bright red, then a softer pink.

“Nothing,” Yeager mumbled.

“Not exactly nothing,” said Dorn, from his console. “Their images are changing.”

“It’s all gibberish,” Yeager said. “They’re just making dumb displays, like octopi do back Earthside. They change colors all the time; it doesn’t mean diddly-squat.”

Deirdre asked, “Dorn, are we recording all this?”

“Yes,” he replied. “And copying it for the data capsule we’re scheduled to launch in … two hours and seventeen minutes.”

“Maybe the scientists at the station can make some sense out of this,” she murmured.

It’s all so frustrating, Deirdre thought. They’re trying to communicate with us, I know they are. But what do those splotches of colors mean? How can we speak to them? How can we understand them? The knot in her chest twisted tighter. She grimaced from the pain.

CATS AND MOUSE

I should’ve seen this coming, Rodney Devlin said to himself as he hurried along the dimly lit passageway. I should’ve known she’d want to shut me up for good.

Devlin knew every nook and cranny of station Gold. Seldom seen outside the galley and its kitchen, the Red Devil still managed to roam through the whole station, every level, every passageway, every office and laboratory and workshop—usually late at night when almost everyone else was asleep.

No virtual reality tours of the station for him. Devlin walked the passageways, poked into compartments, tapped out security codes to unlock doors, and examined everything from Grant Archer’s office to the immersion tank down in the third wheel. In person, in real time. More than once, over the years, he had slipped into someone’s compartment, like a sneak thief. More than once he had stayed when the sleeper was a desirable and willing woman.

This night he knew he needed every scrap of knowledge he possessed about the station’s layout. Three of Katherine Westfall’s bully boys were looking for him. Devlin felt like a frightened little mouse being chased by three very large and determined cats.

He had been finishing up his menus for the coming day, shortly after midnight, when he saw them come into the kitchen from the galley, three muscular young men in dark suits with faces made of granite. They’re not here to invite you to a party, Devlin told himself. As the three hunters searched along the kitchen’s counters, stoves, ovens, Devlin slipped behind the silent row of oversized food processors and out the back door.

Once in the passageway that ran behind the kitchen, he hesitated briefly. Where to go? It’ll take them a few minutes to search the kitchen and figure out that I’m not there. Then they’ll try my quarters. In the meantime I’ve got to find a safe hideout.

Where? And for how long? Till morning, at least, he realized as he started jogging down the passageway, his softboots making practically no sound on the tiles of the deck.

Once they see I’m not in the kitchen, they’ll probably go to the comm center and check the surveillance screens. Crikey! Maybe they’ve already got somebody at the comm center who can see me right now!

He hurried along the passageway, glancing at the tiny red lights of the surveillance cameras set up near the overhead every fifty meters or so. It’s no good, he said to himself. They can run the surveillance chips and see wherever I go. There’s no place to hide. Unless …

Nikki Gregorian sat tensely at her desk in the station’s communications center. Chewing on her lip, she stared at the digital clock on the wall. It seemed to be stopped. Time was standing still. All the surveillance screens were dark. None of the station’s cameras was functioning, and they would not come on-line again for another two hours. She was alone in the center, halfway through her duty shift, and all the screens were as dark and dead as corpses.

It was a risk, deliberately turning off the cameras, but the money was worth it. A breathtaking amount of money. Keep the cameras off for three hours, the handsome young man had told her. No one will know. And even if they figure it out and fire you, you’ll have enough money to return to Earth and retire.

She didn’t ask why he wanted the cameras off. She knew he worked for Katherine Westfall and the money he was willing to transfer to her account back Earthside was enough to allow her to retire comfortably before the year was out. Good-bye to station Gold and its cramped, sterile confines. Back to Earth to live in style.

Still, she wondered what they were up to. What were they doing, that they wanted all the station’s surveillance cameras turned off?

Katherine Westfall could not sleep. She lay on the king-sized waterbed of her suite, dressed in lounging pajamas of emerald green, trimmed with gold, wide awake, waiting for her security team to report.

They should have found him by now. This station isn’t that large that he can hide from them. They’ve shut down the surveillance cameras, of course; there will be no record of what happened to Rodney Devlin. But even without the cameras, they should be able to find the man. Why haven’t they reported to me?

It seemed simple enough to her. Find Devlin and toss him out an airlock. Neat and clean. In the morning he’ll have disappeared. Archer and his people can search the station from top to bottom and they won’t find him. Devlin won’t be able to tell anyone about the nanomachines.

Then when the Faraday doesn’t come back from its mission, Archer will be disgraced, and Devlin’s disappearance forgotten. Four people killed, and it will be all his fault. Devlin, too. That will end Archer’s career. He’ll never be able to challenge me for the IAA chairmanship. He’ll be finished.

But why haven’t they reported? she asked herself for the hundredth time. They should have found Devlin by now and gotten rid of him.

She realized that she was perspiring slightly. And her stomach hurt. Nerves, she said to herself. You’ve got to get rid of Devlin. You can’t have him here, knowing about the nanomachines. He’ll hold that over your head. He’s the type who’d blackmail you, threaten you, bring you down. Once they don’t come back from the ocean, once he realizes what I’ve done, he’ll have that over me for the rest of my life.

I can’t let him do that. It’s either him or me. And it’s not going to be me!

Still, her stomach ached. A dull, sullen pain, as if she’d eaten too many sweets. Nerves, Westfall told herself. Steady on. They’ll find Devlin and deal with him. Then you’ll be safe. Then there will be no one who can threaten you.

But the pain in her gut was getting worse.

FARADAY

Deirdre stared in open-mouthed awe at the two leviathans. The enormous creatures were swimming on either side of Faraday, flashing messages—she knew they had to be messages—along the lengths of their flanks.

Those hundreds of eyes looking at us, she said to herself. Those hundreds of fins paddling along. And the colors! Spectacular splashes of reds and greens, yellows, blues, and phosphorescent white. They mean something. They’ve got to mean something. They can’t just be simple displays. They’re trying to speak to us.

Dorn’s deep voice reverberated through the perfluorocarbon. “I have programmed the computer to repeat the shapes and colors that the leviathans are displaying.”

“Monkey see, monkey do,” Yeager muttered.

Corvus said, “Good. They’ll see that we’ve received their messages and we’re acknowledging them.”

“But what do they mean?” Deirdre wondered aloud.

With a wistful smile, Andy said, “You’re the artist, Dee. You tell us.”

She shook her head. “I wish I could.”

“We’re scheduled to send out a data capsule in fifty-three minutes,” said Dorn. “All of these images will be included.”

“But what do they mean?” Deirdre repeated.

Leviathan saw that the alien was repeating the images it was flashing. For more than a hundred beats of the flagella Leviathan and its replicate had been picturing to the alien the beauties of the Symmetry, explaining to this strange, cold, uncommunicative creature how the Kin dwelled in harmony with the world, feeding on the streams of food that came from the cold abyss above, staying well away from the hot abyss below, avoiding the darters that preyed on individual leviathans when they separated from the Kin to duplicate.

Nothing. The alien simply glided along, dark and silent, its hard round shape as uncommunicative as the tiny swimmers that also followed the food streams. To its replicate Leviathan flashed an image of the alien, a blank spherical shape. The replicate replied with the same.

Why doesn’t it answer us? Leviathan wondered. The replicate drew an image of one of the tiny swimmers. Its meaning was clear: The alien may be a living creature, but it is clearly not intelligent. It doesn’t picture images to us because it can’t. It is dumb, mindless.

But if that is so, Leviathan thought, then how did the alien suddenly appear here, in the world of the Kin? How did it get here? Why is it—

Wait! The alien’s spherical flank suddenly lit up with colors! It can communicate! Or at least it’s trying to.

Nothing but gibberish, flashed the replicate. There is no structure in its images, no meaning.

But it’s trying to say something, Leviathan pointed out. It’s displaying the same colors that we have used.

Imitation, pictured the replicate. That’s not intelligence, it’s merely mimicry. The lowliest swimmers can mimic images better than this hard-shell.

But it’s trying, Leviathan insisted. It’s trying.

“We’re scheduled to release a data capsule in ten minutes,” Dorn announced.

“Well, it’ll have something to show them,” Yeager said.

Deirdre noticed that Andy hadn’t spoken a word in nearly an hour. He merely stood beside her, his feet anchored in deck loops, swaying slightly in their all-encompassing liquid like a strand of kelp on the floor of the sea on Earth, staring raptly at Deirdre’s display screen. But every few minutes he kneaded the bridge of his freckled nose.

“Are you all right?” she asked him softly.

“Huh?”

“Do you feel okay?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, then blinked, as if coming out of a trance. “Okay? Yeah, sure.”

“No aches or pains?” Deirdre pressed.

He shrugged crookedly. “Got a helluva headache, that’s all.”

She nodded. “It’s the pressure. I’ve got an ache in my chest. It started in my gut but it’s settled in my chest.”

“Yeah,” he said absently, his attention back on the screen.

Deirdre looked at the display again. The leviathans were flashing colors so quickly she could hardly follow them. It was like watching a fireworks display speeded up to a wildly supersonic pace.

She turned slightly and saw that Max was checking out the data capsule on the console beside Dorn. The cyborg had both hands on his control keyboard. Keeping up with the leviathans wasn’t easy: Dorn had to keep the main propulsion system running at nearly full power merely to stay even with them, and the currents generated by their flippers bounced their vessel like a cork in a typhoon.

“The data capsule’s ready,” Max said.

Dorn nodded, then tapped a prosthetic finger on the screen to his left. “Ejection in three minutes.”

Deirdre murmured to Andy, “If only we could make some sense of their messages.”

Corvus said nothing, still riveted to the display screen.

“Nothing but splotches of color,” Deirdre said.

“I don’t see colors,” Andy said, his voice low, his eyes not moving from the screen.

“I forgot,” said Deirdre. “This must be more pointless to you than to the rest of us.”

“Pointless?” Corvus seemed genuinely surprised. “You mean you can’t see the pictures they’re showing us?”

IMAGES

“Pictures?” Deirdre asked.

Corvus nodded and pointed at the screen. “In those gray splotches. Can’t you see the pictures?”

“No…”

“They’re showing images of themselves again. Now it’s changed to an image of us. Round little circle next to the two leviathan shapes.”

“You can see images?” Deirdre strained her eyes, staring at the rapidly shifting contours of color splashed along the sides of the two leviathans.

“Yep,” Andy replied.

“Capsule launch in one minute,” Dorn intoned.

“Wait!” Deirdre shouted. “Don’t send the capsule!”

Yeager turned toward her. “We’ve gotta send the capsule, Dee. It’s on the mission assignment list.”

“Wait,” she insisted. “Andy says he sees images in the leviathans’ displays. They’re sending messages to us!”

Dorn turned halfway from his post to look at her and then focused both his eyes on Corvus. “You see images?”

Andy nodded vigorously. “Don’t you?”

Linda Vishnevskaya stared at the screen in the center of her control console. Blank. She glanced at the digital clock display to the right of the screen: 0600 hours.

They’re launching the first data capsule, she said to herself. We should pick up its radio beacon in half an hour, as soon as it breaks out of the ocean.

She waited impatiently, fingers fidgeting in her lap. This early in the morning, the mission control center was manned only by Vishnevskaya herself. She didn’t need any of her team simply to monitor the emergence of a data capsule. The capsule was programmed to climb out of Jupiter’s atmosphere and establish itself in a circular equatorial orbit. From there it would beam the contents of its memory core to the communications satellites in stationary orbit around Jupiter, which would relay the data to the receivers aboard station Gold. In less than two minutes after the capsule popped out of the ocean they would begin receiving its signal.

Vishnevskaya sensed someone entering the visitors’ gallery up along the top of the control center’s circular chamber. She didn’t bother to turn around, but instead moved her head slightly so she could see the newcomer’s reflection in the dark screen on her console.

It looked like Katherine Westfall. Vishnevskaya felt surprised. Why would Mrs. Westfall show up this early in the morning for something as routine as a data capsule?

“The mission time line calls for launching the capsule now,” said Dorn. “If we don’t—”

“You can delay the launch for a few minutes, can’t you?” Deirdre pleaded.

“Why?” Yeager demanded.

“Take out the color from the images the leviathans are showing,” she said.

“Take out—”

“I’m seeing images,” Corvus explained, his voice high with excitement even in the sound-deepening liquid perfluorocarbon.

Yeager frowned at him.

“I can’t see colors, but I’m seeing pictures,” Corvus insisted. “Drawings. Like stick figures, almost.”

Dorn’s face was impassive, but he muttered, “Canceling capsule launch.” His human hand reached for an orange-glowing button on his console.

Deirdre stared at her display screen while Dorn and Yeager leaned toward the central screen on the cyborg’s control console.

Pointing over Deirdre’s shoulder, Corvus said, “See? Can’t you see the images?”

The swaths of color along the leviathans’ flanks were now gray on the display screen. And Deirdre saw … pictures! Shapes. They were crude, almost like stick figures. But definitely shapes.

“That’s the two of them!” she yelped.

“With us in between,” Dorn said. “That round figure must be us.”

“God damn,” Yeager breathed.

“And there,” Corvus said, “that must be a stream of organics coming down from up above.”

Now the displays on both leviathans’ flanks showed many more creatures, a whole herd of them.

“They’re telling us that they eat the organics,” Deirdre said.

“And there’s lots of them!” Corvus added. “Dozens.”

“A hundred or so,” said Dorn.

As they watched, the leviathans’ displays changed so rapidly they couldn’t follow them. It was like watching a speeded-up video.

“The computer can slow it down,” Yeager said.

“Not yet,” Corvus snapped. “Let’s get it in real time first.”

“Is all this being recorded in the data capsule?” Deirdre asked.

“Yes,” Dorn replied. “Automatically.”

Deirdre felt her whole body quivering with excitement. The pain in her chest was still there, she could still feel it, but it was nothing but a minor annoyance now. The leviathans are speaking to us! She could see the meaning in their imagery!

“That looks like those sharks,” Andy said.

“And that’s us, rushing toward them,” Deirdre added.

Yeager muttered, “The charge of the frigging light brigade.”

“They’re replaying our little battle,” Dorn said.

“But they don’t show themselves splitting up, reproducing,” said Corvus.

“They don’t do leviathan porn,” Yeager said, with the barest hint of a chuckle.

It was difficult to make sense of the images, they flickered on and off so rapidly. It looked like the two leviathans charging at the sharks, but it was too swift for Deirdre to be certain, the images of the sharks flicked off so quickly. Then at last she saw the circular image of their own ship and the two leviathans on either side of it. The sharks were gone.

“They’ve replayed our battle, all right,” Corvus said.

The leviathans’ displays went blank. The enormous creatures swam on either side of Faraday in silence.

“What now?” Yeager asked.

“Maybe they’re waiting for us to reply,” Corvus suggested.

“So what do we say?” Yeager demanded, “ ‘Greetings from planet Earth?’ ”

“Replay what they just showed us,” Deirdre said.

“Replay their imagery?” asked Dorn.

Nodding, Deirdre said, “Show them that we received their message and we understand it.”

“We think we understand it,” Yeager corrected.

“At least show them that we received it,” said Deirdre.

“Very well,” Dorn agreed, turning back to his keyboard panel.

Andy’s lopsided grin went from ear to ear. “Well, they’re intelligent, all right. We’ve established that much.”

Dorn glanced at the mission time line displayed on the auxiliary screen on the left side of his console.

“We should have launched the data capsule ten minutes ago,” he said.

“Pop it now,” Yeager urged. “It oughtta make Archer and the rest of the scooters pretty damned happy.”

Linda Vishnevskaya stared at the digital clock display. Ten minutes, she realized. They should have launched the data capsule ten minutes ago. She felt a cold hollow in the pit of her stomach. Something’s gone wrong, she knew. Something’s gone terribly wrong.

Behind her, up in the otherwise empty visitors’ gallery, Katherine Westfall got to her feet and quietly stole out of the mission control center. She couldn’t suppress the victorious grin that curled her lips, despite the ache in her gut that still gnawed at her.

GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE

Archer was shocked when he slid back the door to his office and saw Rodney Devlin sound asleep in one of his recliners. The Red Devil was snoring lightly; he was in his usual white chef’s uniform, stained and wrinkled from use. Even in sleep his face looked lined with worry, his mustache bedraggled. In his right hand he tightly clutched his pocketphone. Glancing at his wristwatch, Archer confirmed that information from the first data capsule should be coming in within a few minutes. But what’s Red doing in my office? he wondered. And how did he get in here?

Archer almost smiled at that last question. Red can go anywhere he wants to, the station director realized. He’s got the combination to every lock in the station. Probably memorized every last one of them.

He made a polite little cough and Devlin snapped awake, sitting up so abruptly Archer feared he’d pop some vertebrae.

“Grant!” Devlin said, his voice slightly hoarse.

“What are you doing here, Red?”

With a slightly hangdog look, Devlin answered, “Hidin’ out.”

“Hiding out? From whom?”

“Westfall’s goons. They came after me last night. I think they were out t’ kill me.”

Archer sank into the faux-leather armchair next to the recliner. “You’d better explain all this to me, Red. Slowly.”

His expression turning rueful, Devlin said, “Westfall wanted me t’ provide her with some gobblers so’s—”

“Gobblers? Nanomachines?”

“Right. She wanted—”

“And you got them for her? Gobblers?” Archer felt his insides begin to shake with fear. And anger.

“Relax, mate,” Devlin said, holding up both hands as if to shield himself from attack. “I told you I wouldn’t do anything to harm the station. Remember?”

“But you provided her with gobblers!”

His old sly grin spreading slowly over his face, Devlin said, “I provided her with nanos, I did. But not what she wanted.”

“Then just what in blazes did you do?”

Linda Vishnevskaya drummed her fingers on the edge of the console. Nothing. No data capsule. They should have launched it fifteen minutes ago. We should be getting its beacon signal by now.

But there was nothing. No beacon from a data capsule. Nothing but silence in the nearly empty mission control center.

Vishnevskaya stared at the blank display screen as if she could make the capsule appear by sheer willpower. Nothing. Silence.

She waited another ten minutes. Then ten more, each second of the time stretching her nerves agonizingly.

Max, she thought. What’s happened to you? Why haven’t you sent out the capsule? What’s going on down there in that damned ocean?

At last she could stand it no longer. With the reluctance of a woman facing a firing squad, standing on a gallows, staring death in the face, she clicked the intercom switch on her console and said in a low, choked voice, “Mission report: The first data capsule scheduled to be released from Faraday has failed to appear. Reason unknown.”

She heard her own words: Faraday has failed. Oh Max, Max, she thought, fighting down the sobs that rose in her throat. Max, has Jupiter killed you?

Devlin was still explaining himself when the phone on the serving table next Archer’s recliner chimed. Glancing at the screen’s data bar he saw that it was Katherine Westfall calling.

Archer leaned close to the phone’s camera eye so that his image filled its field of view and commanded, “Answer.”

Mrs. Westfall’s face looked positively haughty. Without a greeting or a preamble of any kind she said in an almost sneering voice, “I suppose you know that they’ve failed to send their data capsule.”

Archer stiffened. “No, I didn’t know.”

“You realize what this means, don’t you?” Westfall demanded. “Something’s gone wrong down there.”

“Possibly,” Archer replied.

Westfall’s face hardened. “Not merely possibly. They were scheduled to release a data capsule and they haven’t done it. Something’s gone wrong. They could be dead. If they are, it’s your responsibility.”

Grant Archer pulled in a deep breath before replying. Then, “Perhaps you should come to my office. We can discuss this more fully here.”

“Yes,” Westfall agreed. “We need to discuss this disaster more fully, don’t we?”

The phone screen went blank. Archer turned back toward Devlin, who was still sitting upright on the recliner.

“I’d better get outta here,” Devlin said.

“No, Red. You stay right where you are. I want you here when she comes in.”

Devlin’s russet eyebrows rose toward his scalp. “I’d rather not, y’know.”

“I’m not asking you, Red,” Archer said, with steel in his voice. “I’m ordering you.”

Katherine Westfall didn’t bother to summon any of her aides or security guards as she strode down the passageway toward Grant Archer’s office. No need, she told herself. I’ll have this moment all to myself. I want to savor the look on his face when he realizes that his career has been shattered.

Should I tell him that Elaine O’Hara was my half sister? No, she said to herself. That’s none of his business. Keep the family connection out of it. But maybe I’ll hint that the IAA will launch an investigation into his criminally negligent leadership that led to the death of four people. Once I’m chairperson of the governing council that’s just what I’ll do. I’ll pay him back for my sister and make certain he’ll never hold a scientific post anywhere in the solar system.

She looked forward to reaching Archer’s office. Westfall felt strong, confident. If it weren’t for the nervous twinge in her stomach, she thought, she’d feel absolutely perfect.

Red Devlin was fidgeting nervously as they waited for Westfall’s arrival.

“You’re certain that they were out to murder you?” Archer asked, still sitting on the little desk chair.

Devlin gave him a sour look. “They pop into my kitchen after midnight. Three of ’em. They weren’t lookin’ for my recipe for lemon meringue pie.”

“And why did you hide out here, in my office?”

Devlin brushed at his bristly hair. “Couldn’t think of anyplace better. Figured they’d be watchin’ the security cameras so they’d know where I went. I was hopin’ that they wouldn’t bust into your office. If they did, I was gonna phone you, send you a panic SOS.”

Archer nodded. “According to the security log, all the passageway cameras were turned off for a couple of hours, starting at midnight.”

Whistling between his teeth, Devlin said, “So there wouldn’t be any evidence of them shovin’ me out an airlock.”

“She got to the technician on the midnight shift,” Archer said, clear distaste on his bearded face.

“She can get to just about anybody, one way or th’ other.”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” said Grant Archer.

He tapped his phone console’s miniature keyboard and saw Katherine Westfall marching along the passageway like a conquering empress. At least the surveillance cameras are back on, he thought.

Turning back to Devlin, Archer pointed as he said, “Red, get into the lavatory there. I’ll call you when I want you.”

The Red Devil looked positively grateful as he hurried to the little room. He’s frightened of confronting Westfall, Archer thought. Can’t blame him; I’m not looking forward to this myself.

DEEPER

Andy Corvus glided over to Dorn’s side. “Can you send them a picture about my DBS probe?”

The cyborg looked up from his console screens. “If you draw the picture for me I’m sure that I can run it on the outer hull’s display lights.”

Nodding somewhat nervously, Corvus slid through the perfluorocarbon liquid to the console built into the curving bulkhead on Dorn’s left. Deirdre disengaged her feet from the floor loops at her console and made her way past Max Yeager to stand at Andy’s side.

“Can I help you?” she asked softly.

Corvus nodded without taking his eyes from his console’s central screen. His attempt to draw a picture looked ragged to Deirdre, childish and uncertain.

“Here,” she said. “Let me.” She leaned across his lanky frame and poised her fingers above the arrow keys on his board. “What do you want to show?”

“I want them to understand that we’re going to fire a probe into the hide of one of them.”

“A harpoon.” Yeager snickered. “They’ll love that.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Corvus said, with some heat. “That’s what this mission is all about. Remember?”

“We’ve already made contact with them,” Yeager countered. “We don’t need your brain probe.”

“We sure do! If it works we can get inside their minds and really start to understand them.”

“If it works.”

Dorn said mildly, “If the leviathans accept being harpooned.”

And if the DBS actually records their brain functions, Deirdre added silently. She didn’t say it aloud because Andy had enough opposition to deal with from Max.

“There,” she said, nodding toward Andy’s screen. “Does that show what you want them to see?”

Leviathan saw that the alien was repeating the message it had flashed. Deep in its central brain Leviathan pondered the meaning of this. Could this alien be intelligent? It signaled the replicant, asking its opinion.

The replicant signed the same sort of puzzlement that Leviathan itself felt. Of course, Leviathan reasoned. The replicant has not had enough experiences to deviate much from our own thoughts.

Leviathan reviewed what it knew about the alien. It was larger than any of the other aliens that had invaded their domain. It gave no sign of feeding on the particles drifting down from the cold abyss above. It had attacked the darters when Leviathan was replicating and helpless. That is a sign of intelligence, the willingness to help another.

Leviathan remembered another alien it had encountered, long ago. It too had fought a pack of darters and been hurt in the battle. When it was sinking into the hot abyss below, Leviathan had tried to help it, actually carried it on its own back upward, away from the cruel heat and crushing pressure of the depths. The alien had repaid this kindness by scalding Leviathan’s wounded hide with searing heat. Then it fled up into the cold abyss, never to be seen again.

Now this new alien had appeared. It was much larger than the earlier one, but like it, this alien was hard-shelled, cold, unlike any of the Kin or the darters or any other creature Leviathan had seen in the ocean.

And it is trying to communicate, Leviathan saw. At least it is repeating the message I showed to it. Mimicry? Not true intelligence but dumb mimicry?

The alien had gone dark. It glided through the waters between Leviathan and its replicant, silent, cold, and dark.

Suddenly its flank lit up. Brilliant red, shifting to orange and then green. The colors must mean something to it, but they were nothing but empty displays to Leviathan.

Then pictures began to form. Leviathan saw itself and its replicant displayed, with the alien between them.

Now the imagery showed an arm growing out of the alien’s curving hide. Thin and undulating, like the tentacles of the filmy beast Leviathan once encountered in the chill waters high above.

It’s trying to speak to us, the replicant signaled.

Leviathan flashed a swatch of yellow to show it agreed.

In the alien’s imagery the thin, flexible arm reached out from its own hide and touched Leviathan’s. There it remained, while pulses of color raced along the arm, running from Leviathan to the alien.

It wants to feed on us! the replicant signed, in agitated hot white.

Leviathan watched, fascinated and horrified, as the alien clearly showed that it wanted to attach a feeding arm to its hide and devour some of Leviathan’s flesh.

No! blazed the replicant.

Leviathan, too, felt the instinctive fear and revulsion. A part of its mind wondered why the alien seemed to be asking permission to feed off its flesh. Because it is so small and weak? Leviathan asked itself. The alien showed no teeth, no mouth parts at all. Its hide was smooth and hard.

And then a small mouthlike opening appeared in that hard smooth hide and a feeding arm began to emerge from it, snaking toward Leviathan.

Without another thought, Leviathan and its replicant both dived down toward the warmer, safer waters where the Kin dwelled in all their numbers.

“They’re going away!” Corvus yelped.

“Diving deeper,” said Dorn.

“Your probe scared them, Andy,” Deirdre said, feeling almost heartbroken with disappointment. “We were so close…”

Yeager simply shook his head and asked, “So what do we do now?”

Dorn replied, “Release the data capsule. And then go down after them.”

“Deeper?”

“Deeper.”

“How far down can we go?” Corvus asked.

“The ship’s designed for a thousand klicks,” Yeager replied. “Deeper than that and the pressure could become a problem.”

“A problem?” asked Deirdre.

“He means it could crush us,” Corvus said.

Deirdre looked at Yeager and saw that that was exactly what he meant.

Dorn’s hands were already playing across his controls. “Data capsule released,” he announced. “Following those leviathans now.”

Deirdre glanced at Andy, who was muttering unhappily as he reeled his DBS probe back into the hull. Her chest ached and she wondered how deep they could go before the pressure began to really hurt.

GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE

Katherine Westfall swept into the office without even a tap on the door. Red Devlin was hiding in the lavatory and Archer was on his feet, standing between his favorite armchair and the little serving table that held the phone console. He put down the handset and made a tight little bow to Mrs. Westfall.

“What have you to say for yourself?” she demanded.

Instead of the apprehension he’d felt only moments earlier, Archer barely suppressed a smile as he replied, “About what?”

Westfall blazed, “About the failure of the vessel you sent into the ocean! About the death of four volunteers aboard that vessel! About your criminal indifference to the danger you exposed them to!”

He let the smile show as he gestured to one of the armchairs. “Let’s talk this over calmly, shall we?”

“Four deaths,” Westfall said as she sat down on the edge of the chair. “Four murders.”

Sitting on the chair facing her, Archer said, “I just received a call from the mission control chief. The data capsule has shown up. It was a half hour late, but it’s in orbit around Jupiter now.”

Westfall’s mouth opened, but no words came out. She clamped it shut so tight that Archer heard the click of her teeth.

“Four murders,” Archer said coldly. “The question is, who tried to murder whom?”

“The capsule arrived in orbit?” she asked. “That means that…”

Archer said, “That means that they’re not dead. Something delayed their launch of the capsule, that’s all.”

“They could still be in trouble. Does the capsule say what’s happening down there?”

“Dr. Johansen and his people are looking at the data,” Archer said. “He’ll phone me with their preliminary findings in a few minutes.”

“I see.”

“If anything’s gone wrong with the mission … if the crew is in any kind of difficulty, Johansen will call me immediately, of course.”

“Of course,” Westfall said, in her little-girl whisper.

Almost casually, Archer asked, “Why did you assume they had died? Why did you assume the worst?”

Westfall blinked several times before replying, “When they failed to launch their data capsule on time, naturally I thought—”

“You thought they were dead.”

Her chin went up a notch. “Dead. Yes. That’s right.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Westfall snapped.

Archer turned toward the closed door of the lavatory. “Red,” he called. “Come on out here.”

For a moment nothing happened. Archer said to himself, He couldn’t have gotten out of the lav. There’s only the one door to the room.

Slowly the door slid back and Rodney Devlin stepped hesitantly into the office. Archer noticed that Red had cleaned himself up a bit. His spiky hair was brushed relatively smooth, his white outfit looked neater, if not cleaner. But the expression on his face was clearly uneasy, apprehensive.

Westfall stiffened for a moment, but she recovered enough to ask, “What’s he got to do with anything?”

“He’s the one who got the nanomachines for you,” said Archer.

With some of her old haughtiness, Westfall replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nanomachines,” Archer repeated. “Gobblers. Murder weapons.”

Fixing Devlin with a steely gaze, Westfall said, “I don’t know what this criminal may have told you, but he’s a born liar. Everyone knows that.”

Devlin pointed a finger at her as he said, “You told me you’d chuck me in jail if I didn’t get a sample of gobblers for you.”

“Which you wanted to feed to Deirdre Ambrose at the launch party, just before she left with the others on the mission,” Archer said to Westfall.

“I did no such thing!”

“I can get Franklin Torre to testify that he gave Devlin a sample of nanomachines.”

“What of it? That doesn’t prove that I asked him to do it,” Westfall countered. “This man is a known procurer, a smuggler, a thief, and a liar. No one in his right mind would take his word over mine.”

“That’s right,” Devlin said, clenching his hands in front of himself. “Nobody would take my word against yours. I knew that. That’s why I did what I did.”

“You obtained gobblers and fed them to Ms. Ambrose at the party,” Westfall said to Devlin.

“I got nanos, all right,” Devlin said. “But I fed ’em to you, not her.”

Westfall’s face went white.

“You’ve got those nanos in you right now, lady. You drank ’em down at the party.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You…” Suddenly Westfall launched herself at Devlin, screeching wildly, her clawed fingers seeking his face, his eyes. The Red Devil threw his arms up to defend himself, and Archer, startled by her fury, jumped out of his chair and wrapped his arms around her middle and dragged her away from Red.

“I’ll kill you!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you!”

Archer pushed her down onto one of the recliners. Westfall fell back onto it, her chest heaving, her face contorting wildly. Suddenly she burst into racking sobs.

“You’ve killed me,” she blubbered in her high, thin voice. “You’ve murdered me.”

FARADAY

“Your medical readouts are all within acceptable limits,” Dorn said, without taking his eyes from the data screens of his console. “How do you feel? Any problems?”

The cyborg was still standing at his post before the ship’s controls, his feet locked into the deck loops that kept him from drifting in the perfluorocarbon liquid. Yeager stood behind him, Corvus was at the console on his left. Deirdre looked up from the empty sensor screens toward Dorn’s control console.

She could see from the screen at Dorn’s right that they were diving deeper. The curve that showed the ocean’s pressure against the outer hull was rising steeply.

“How do you feel?” Dorn repeated.

Andy Corvus pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve got a headache.”

“My back hurts,” said Yeager, clamping both hands just above his hips and arching his spine slightly.

Dorn said, “There’s nothing indicating physical problems on your data readouts.”

“It’s not serious,” Yeager said. “Just tension, most likely.”

Corvus turned toward Deirdre. “Dee, what about you?”

“I have a sort of tightness in my chest,” she answered.

“Maybe a massage would help.” Yeager leered.

“Oh, Max,” said Deirdre. She tried to scowl at him but couldn’t work up the mood.

“Internal pressure is rising as we descend deeper into the ocean,” Dorn said coolly. “Please report any increased discomfort immediately.”

“What about you, Dorn?” asked Deirdre. “How do you feel?”

The cyborg flexed his prosthetic arm. “A slight stiffness in my shoulder. I don’t think it’s related to the pressure increase.”

“You need a lube job,” Yeager joked.

Tapping the mission time line display with a finger of his human hand, Dorn said, “Feeding time for Deirdre and Max. Then sleep.”

Yeager’s usual leer reappeared on his beefy face. “I wonder if the two of us would fit in one of those sleeping slots.”

Smiling sweetly back at him, Deirdre said, “You’ll never know, Max.”

He grumbled but disengaged his feet from the deck loops and drifted over to the food dispenser. “Let’s see,” he muttered as he picked up the feeding hose, “I think I’ll have lamb chops, Caesar salad, and peach pie à la mode.”

Despite herself Deirdre chuckled at Max’s inanity. “Me, too,” she said. But she shuddered inwardly when Yeager offered the feeding hose to her.

“Ladies first,” he said, with a gallant little bow.

Trying to hide her revulsion, Deirdre plugged the hose into the feeding port at the base of her neck. Max turned his face away. He’s as grossed out by this as I am, Deirdre realized, but he’s too macho to admit it. Then she saw that Andy was staring at her, the expression on his strangely mismatched face a mixture of sadness and heart-melting compassion. My goodness, Deirdre thought, Andy looks as if he’s going to break down and cry.

As it dove deeper alongside its replicant, Leviathan wondered if they had run away too soon. Maybe we should go back, it signaled to the replicant.

And let it feed on us? came the reply.

Maybe it’s starving and needs to feed, Leviathan signed.

Not on us! the replicant signaled, in fierce blue.

Leviathan thought that the replicant was right. And yet …

You return to the Kin, it signaled. We will go back and observe the alien.

Observe it? What for?

To try to communicate with it. To try to tell it that we cannot allow it to feed on us.

It must know that already, signed the replicant.

Perhaps, Leviathan replied. We will see.

With that, Leviathan turned back toward the upper level where the alien was, its flagella members beating strenuously against the down-welling current.

Her feeding finished, Deirdre floated into the sleeping compartment. Once again the five shelves built into the bulkhead reminded her of the slots into which corpses are slid in a mortuary.

Pulling the hatch to the bridge firmly shut she quickly stripped off her maillot and pulled another from the slim storage locker beneath her bunk. Got to get this on before Max bursts in here, she told herself. If he sees me undressed he’d probably pop a blood vessel. She almost giggled at the thought of it. Max was all bluster, she thought. He’d be embarrassed if he saw me nude. She remembered Max’s reaction when she had awakened in the station’s infirmary after being frozen aboard the torch ship. Just the fleeting sight of her bare breasts had turned his face scarlet.

No sense embarrassing him again, Deirdre told herself. Then she added, No sense taking the risk that he’d be more aroused than embarrassed, either.

She slid into her coffinlike bunk just as Yeager tapped on the hatch and pulled it back.

“Are you decent?” he asked gruffly. “I hope not!”

“I’m already in bed, Max,” she said, staring at the metal overhead a few centimeters above her nose.

“Want some company?”

“No, thank you.”

“Um … I’m gonna peel off this swimsuit and get a fresh one,” Yeager said. “No peeking.”

Deirdre smiled to herself and echoed, “No peeking.”

After a few moments she heard Yeager slither into his narrow bunk and mutter, “Cripes, there’s not even room to turn around in here.”

Deirdre said nothing. The pain in her chest was still there, throbbing dully, and she felt unusually tired. Weary. As if the weight of the world were pressing in on her.

Of course, she said to herself. It’s the pressure. The pressure’s going up as we dive lower. It’s going to get worse. A lot worse.

She closed her eyes and commanded herself to sleep. You’ve got to rest, she thought. Relax. Think of something pleasant and just drift off to sleep.

She found herself thinking of what it would be like to have Andy in this tight narrow space with her. What it would be like to feel his body pressing against her. She fell asleep smiling.

GRANT ARCHER’S OFFICE

Archer had never seen the Red Devil look so shaken. Devlin was staring at Katherine Westfall as she lay across the recliner, blubbering uncontrollably. A bloodred scratch streaked Devlin’s left cheek, his hands were still raised to defend himself.

“You’ve killed me,” Westfall was sobbing. “You’ve murdered me.”

“It would be a primitive kind of justice,” Archer said. “An eye for an eye, as it says in the Old Testament. You tried to murder the crew of Faraday.”

She looked up at Archer in a cold fury, her eyes blazing, her tears turned off just as abruptly as they had started.

“You can’t prove that,” she said, her voice murderously low. “It’s my word against his.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Archer. “This is never going to a court of law.”

Westfall suddenly clutched at her midsection. “The gobblers! They’re tearing me apart!”

Archer turned to Devlin. “Tell her the truth, Red.”

Devlin was clearly nervous; when he looked down at Westfall he seemed positively frightened.

“W-well,” he stammered, “the, uh … the truth is—”

The phone chimed. Archer glanced at the screen and saw Michael Johansen’s name on the data bar.

“Hold it,” he snapped. To the phone he called, “Answer.”

Johansen’s narrow, angular face was alight with a big toothy grin and eyes crinkled with joy.

“They did it!” he fairly shouted. “Grant, they’ve made contact with one of the beasts. That’s why they delayed sending up the capsule. They’ve communicated with the leviathans! They are intelligent. Those gigantic creatures are intelligent!”

Archer felt his knees go weak. He sank down onto one of the armchairs, suddenly breathless, overpowered.

“You … you’re sure?” he gasped.

“I’m piping the raw data to you,” Johansen said, beaming. Archer had never seen the big Norwegian so riotously happy, his normal stiff self-control thrown to the winds. Behind Johansen other scientists were pounding each other’s backs, hugging and kissing and almost dancing with excitement.

“It’s true, then,” Archer breathed. “The leviathans are intelligent.”

“Intelligent enough to communicate with us!” Johansen exulted.

“And the crew? They’re all right?”

“They’re fine! They simply delayed sending the capsule because they were getting such terrific data.”

Archer nodded weakly. “Thanks, Michael. I’ll look at the data and then call you back.”

The phone screen went blank, but the data download light beneath it flickered madly.

“What about me?” Westfall cried. “I’m dying!”

“Red, tell her the truth.”

Devlin brushed nervously at his ragged mustache while Westfall stared at him with her whole life in her eyes.

“Red,” Archer insisted.

“They’re not gobblers,” Devlin said, his voice low, almost apologetic. “Torre wouldn’t give me gobblers and I wouldn’t ask for ’em.”

“Then what’s eating me up?” Westfall demanded.

Looking even more flustered, Devlin said, “Torre gave me a batch of assemblers … the kind o’ nanos that build new molecules outta atoms they find around ’em.”

Westfall sat up in the recliner, her tear-streaked face going hard, angry. “New molecules?”

Devlin nodded. “They’re buildin’ up in your stomach and intestines right now. They’ll keep on buildin’ up for a hundred hours or so. Then the nanos are programmed to shut down.”

“What are they building?” she demanded.

“Some carbon dioxide,” Devlin answered, almost mumbling. “Mostly methane.”

“Carbon dioxide? Methane?” She pronounced it meethane.

Archer said, “You’re feeling pressure in your abdomen, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“It’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” Devlin said. “You’re gonna be burpin’ a lot, and … uh…”

“Flatulence,” said Archer.

Westfall leaped to her feet. “Flatulence?” she screamed.

“You’re not gonna be very good company for the next few days,” Devlin said.

“It’s harmless,” Archer added quickly. “Embarrassing, but harmless. Apparently Franklin Torre has a juvenile sense of humor.”

Some of the old deviltry returned to Devlin’s face. “Gas attack,” he muttered.

“You bastards!”

Archer raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I had nothing to do with it, Mrs. Westfall. You ordered Red here to provide you with gobblers. You intended to feed them to Deirdre Ambrose, to kill her, to kill the whole crew of the submersible. That’s attempted murder, four counts.”

She stared at the two men, open mouthed, eyes blazing. For a long moment the three of them stood in the center of Archer’s office, facing each other. Then Westfall’s expression changed, her eyes became wary, calculating.

“You can’t prove a thing,” she said, her voice coldly furious. “It’s my word against his.”

“And Dr. Torre’s,” Archer added.

“There’s no proof.”

Archer conceded the point with a curt nod. Then, “The IAA’s governing council is very sensitive to scandal. Members of the council must be above reproach.”

“So that’s what your scheme is,” Westfall said. “To kick me off the council. To get yourself elected chairman.”

Archer shook his head. “God forbid. All I want is to continue our work here. You saw what Johansen said: They’ve made contact with the leviathans. The creatures are intelligent! Compared to that, your little power game is child’s play.”

“Then what do you want?”

“The freedom to continue our work here. To study the first intelligent alien species humankind has encountered.”

“And what about me?”

“You can go back to the council and get yourself elected chairman—as long as you don’t try to slash the research budget.”

“Ahh.” Westfall looked almost pleased. “I knew you were after something.”

“I’m after knowledge,” Archer said. “I want to study an alien intelligent species. Learn about them. Teach them about us.”

“No matter who it kills.”

“No one’s gotten killed,” he said, his voice steel-cold. “No thanks to you.”

“Your crew hasn’t returned yet. They could still die down there.”

Archer started to reply, thought better of it, and said merely, “We’re all in God’s hands, Mrs. Westfall. Those who choose to seek out more knowledge about His universe might be risking their lives, but it’s in the best cause of all.”

Westfall nearly sneered. “Religious claptrap.”

“Maybe,” Archer conceded. “But seeking knowledge has always been to the benefit of the human race, no matter what the risks.”

Drawing herself up to her full height, almost up to Archer’s shoulder, Westfall said, “Very well. Continue your little games. I’ll return to Earth and get myself elected chairman of the council.”

Archer smiled. “That’s your little game. And you’re welcome to it.”

She swept out of the office, almost as haughtily as she had entered it.

Devlin let out a low whistle. “You’ve made yourself a real enemy there, mate.”

“She was an enemy before she ever came here, Red. But we’ve got some control over her now, thanks to you—and her own blind ambition.”

Suddenly Devlin broke into a big grin. “Well, leastways, she’s gonna be holed up in her quarters for the next few days, belchin’ and fartin’ to beat the band.”

Archer grinned tightly at the Red Devil. “Get back to work, Red. I’ve got to see what that data capsule’s told us.”

LEVIATHAN

Its flagella working hard against the downward current, Leviathan’s sensor members at last reported that the alien was close enough to observe.

It’s a strange creature, Leviathan thought. Featureless, almost. Perfectly spherical. Its shell is hard, not like flesh. Even Leviathan’s own armored hide members were not as stiff and inflexible as the alien’s shell.

It’s moving toward us, Leviathan realized. The alien was coming lower, following the downward current but slowly, agonizingly slowly. A trail of heated water emerged from its rear. Leviathan remembered the alien it had met so long ago, how it had sprayed scalding heat while Leviathan was carrying it on its back up toward the cold abyss from which it had appeared.

Studying the alien, Leviathan wondered, Can that hot jet be the way it propels itself? There were no flagella members on the alien. Perhaps it pushes itself through the water like the tiny squid do, squirting water through their nozzles.

The alien wasn’t eating the food particles that drifted downward on the current. It doesn’t graze, as we do, it realized. That arm that it wanted to connect to us must be for feeding. What else could it be?

Keeping its distance, Leviathan observed the alien as it slowly, painfully, pushed its way deeper into the realm of the Kin.

Deirdre awoke slowly. Blinking her gummy eyes, she heard Max humming to himself and realized he must be up and out of his bunk already. He’s humming to let me know he’s awake and I shouldn’t slide out of my bed until he goes back to the bridge.

She lay there silently until she heard Max slide back the hatch to the bridge and then push it shut again. Then Deirdre slithered out of her bunk and floated to her feet. There was no need for washing, nor for a toilet. The liquid nourishment they took went directly into the bloodstream; the digestive system was inactive. They hardly had to use the complicated, sealed toilet, much to her relief. Running a hand over her scalp Deirdre remembered that there wasn’t any point in brushing her hair; it had been cut too short to matter.

So, taking in a deep breath of perfluorocarbon, she went to the hatch that opened onto the bridge. Her chest still hurt, a dull sullen ache like a bruise inside her lungs.

The instant she slid the hatch back Yeager beamed at her and said loudly, “Ah, sleeping beauty is back among us.”

Deirdre smiled and glided to her station, to the right of Dorn. The cyborg disengaged his feet from the deck loops and said, “Time for Andy and me to sleep.”

“Eat first,” Corvus said, grinning.

Yeager nodded and took up Dorn’s usual station at the control console.

“One of the beasts has returned,” Dorn told Yeager. “It’s hovering out there, at the limit of our sensor range. It appears to be watching us.”

“Maybe it’s hungry,” Yeager cracked.

Corvus shook his head. “It eats the organic particles. It’s not interested in us.”

“Not for food,” Dorn said.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” said Yeager.

“Call me if anything changes,” Dorn said. “Anything at all.”

“Aye-aye, skipper,” Yeager replied, making a sloppy military salute.

Dorn grunted and turned toward the hatch to the sleeping area. Corvus trailed behind him. As he passed Deirdre, Andy asked in a near-whisper, “You okay, Dee?”

She nodded, despite the pain in her chest. “And you?”

“Can’t seem to shake this headache.”

“Is it getting worse?”

He shrugged. “I’ve had it so long now it’s hard to tell.”

“Maybe some sleep will make it better.”

“Maybe,” he said. Then he pushed away and swam through the hatch, leaving Deirdre alone with Yeager.

Why is the alien here? Leviathan asked itself for the hundredth time. What does it want?

The aliens that had appeared earlier were smaller, and shaped differently. They were silent, for the most part, and when they did try to communicate the signals they flashed were nothing but meaningless gibberish. But this alien is different: bigger, more intelligent. It can speak meaningfully.

Perhaps it is lost, Leviathan reasoned. This is not its usual domain. It doesn’t live here, it comes from the cold abyss above. Why doesn’t it return there? Why has it invaded the realm of the Kin? Why is it upsetting the Symmetry?

And it is moving deeper. Soon it will be at the level where the Kin are. Perhaps the Elders will know how to deal with it.

Leviathan pondered these questions as it accompanied the alien deeper, down to the warm and pleasant depth where the Kin thrived. Then a new thought occurred to it: The alien wanted to feed off us. Perhaps it is lost and starving.

Leviathan remembered when itself had been lost and hungry, high up on the edges of the cold abyss above. It had battled darters and been caught in the vicious swirling currents of a mammoth storm, thrown far from the realm of the Kin. Starving to the point where its members began spontaneously dissociating, Leviathan had been stalked by a filmy, tentacled monster. In a desperate fight, Leviathan had killed the beast and devoured it.

Perhaps this alien is in the same frantic need, far from its own kind, lost and starving. Perhaps it will dissociate and never be able to recombine again.

KATHERINE WESTFALL’S SUITE

A trick! Katherine Westfall fumed. He tricked me! The two of them, standing there so pompous and self-righteous.

She strode past the startled secretary in the anteroom, through the empty sitting room, and on into her bedroom, seething with fury. The pain in her abdomen was worse, sharper. She stopped before the full-length mirror. Her stomach looked bloated. Not much, not enough to notice, really. As if I’m pregnant, she thought. As if that smug-faced Archer’s knocked me up.

Her fists clenched with helpless frustration, Westfall felt a lump in her stomach working its way up her chest. She belched, surprising herself with the violence of it, the disgusting sound, the crudity. Devlin’s done this to me, she growled silently. Him and that psalm-quoting Archer.

She realized that she felt better. A little. Got rid of some gas, she told herself. How much more will there be? How much longer? A couple of days, from what Devlin said. I’ll have to stay locked away from everyone else until the nanos disable themselves. I can’t have anyone see me like this. Or smell me.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Westfall thought, I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them both. They can’t do this to me. Not without paying for it. I’ll destroy them!

But then she realized, Archer’s no fool. He’ll have Devlin on video, telling the whole story. And that nanotech person, Torre, he’ll back up Devlin’s story. Archer will keep their testimony hanging over me. If anything happens to either one of them the whole story will come out. I’ll be ruined.

Worse than that, I’ll look stupid. Duped by a damned cook! The council will demand my resignation in a hot second.

She drew in a deep breath, trying to calm herself. And burped again. Damn them! she screamed silently. Damn them both.

Time. I’ll have to bide my time. Give Archer what he wants, it’s little enough. Get myself elected council chair. Then wait. Sooner or later an opportunity will come up. I’ll get Archer and that rat-faced cook. Both of them.

Westfall nodded to herself, satisfied. Patience is a virtue, she remembered her mother telling her. Time heals all wounds. As long as Archer doesn’t oppose me for the chairmanship I can afford to be patient.

Then she thought, Of course, if those creatures actually are intelligent, Archer will be the darling of the scientific world. He’ll be unassailable. For years to come. Patience, she told herself. Patience. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Suddenly her innards cramped painfully and she practically hobbled toward the lavatory.

DECISION

Leviathan saw that the alien was moving deeper, although it was painfully slow. It is a creature of the cold abyss above, Leviathan reasoned. The warmer regions are not its natural domain.

Then why is it pushing downward? it asked itself. What is it seeking?

It isn’t feeding, Leviathan saw. The plentiful stream of food particles drifted down past the alien, who ignored them. It is pitifully small, it thought. It must be hungry. If we offered to let it feed off us, how much could it eat? Not enough to weaken us, surely.

But such a thought stirred revulsion in Leviathan’s mind. To let another creature feed off our flesh! Even if it merely devours some of our hide, the inert armor members of our outermost layer, it would be … monstrous.

Leviathan pondered the situation while watching the alien slowly, slowly forcing its way down toward the realm of the Kin, trailing a stream of hot bubbles behind it.

What does it want? Leviathan asked itself again and again. Why is it here?

Dorn floated through the hatch from the sleeping area, flexing his prosthetic hand slowly.

“Max, you may be right,” the cyborg said. “My arm needs lubrication. I think the perfluorocarbon is reacting with the joints.”

Standing before the control console, Yeager shook his head. “Those joints are sealed, aren’t they? The gunk can’t get into them. Besides, perfluorocarbon is pretty much nonreactive, that’s why we chose to use it.”

“Then what is making my arm feel so stiff?”

“Pressure,” Yeager said, tapping the data screen on the right side of the console. “Look at that pressure curve. We’re getting damned near our design depth limit.”

Dorn made a sound that might have been a grunt. “Eight hundred and thirty-eight kilometers deep. We still have a long way to go.”

Corvus emerged from the sleep area, a dejected frown on his unbalanced face.

“Your headache?” Deirdre asked.

“Sleeping didn’t help,” he said. “If anything, it’s worse now than before.”

Taking up his place at the control console, Dorn said, “We are all suffering from the increased pressure. This will get worse as we go deeper.”

“I’m all right,” Corvus said, trying to grin.

“Dee?” the cyborg asked. “How do you feel?”

“I’m all right,” she echoed. In truth, Deirdre’s chest pain seemed worse than before. Not a lot worse, she told herself. It’s bearable. I can stand it.

“Max,” asked Dorn, “how is your back?”

Yeager grimaced slightly. “I wouldn’t want to play handball right now, but it’s okay … just kind of stiff.”

“Like my arm,” Dorn said.

“We could both use a lube job,” Yeager muttered.

The four of them stood at their posts. Deirdre slipped her feet into the deck loops in front of the sensor display console, Corvus took his place on Dorn’s other side at the DBS station. Yeager floated slightly behind Dorn, scanning the systems status board.

“All systems in the green,” he said to no one in particular. “No, wait. One of the thruster jets just went yellow. Self-repair initiated automatically.”

Anchoring his feet before the control console, Dorn scanned the displays. “Our medical readouts are all within acceptable limits,” he announced.

Yeager quipped, “Acceptable to who?”

“Whom,” Deirdre corrected.

Yeager shot her a mock scowl.

Looking back at her screens, Deirdre blurted, “One of the leviathans is approaching us!”

Corvus twisted around to look at the sensor screens. “Yeah! Look at it!”

Dorn had the same image on his center screen. “It’s flashing signals at us.”

“How do you know it’s signaling at us?” Yeager demanded.

“Nobody else around,” said Corvus. “The other critter isn’t in sight.”

“I think it’s trying to tell us something,” said Deirdre.

Leviathan felt maddeningly frustrated. It had swum back to the alien and clearly signed that it would allow the strange little creature to feed off it. But the alien made no response.

It was as if the alien were blind and senseless, as if it were as stupid as the fish that swam dumbly unaware of anything except feeding and reproducing.

No, wait. Leviathan’s sensor members saw that the alien was signaling back. Perhaps it isn’t stupid after all, Leviathan thought, merely unutterably slow.

But the alien’s signals meant nothing. It seemed to be repeating Leviathan’s own message, a dull-witted repetition that seemed to be mere mimicry, not true intelligence.

Or is this the way it communicates? Leviathan asked itself. Through mimicry? Could that be possible?

It wasn’t mimicking anything we showed it when it displayed that it wanted to feed off us, Leviathan remembered. That wasn’t mimicry. It was more like a request. Or perhaps a demand?

Play its game, Leviathan thought. Meet mimicry with mimicry. But go one step farther.

“It’s coming awfully close,” Deirdre said, trying to keep her voice calm, keep the fear out of it.

The huge creature was moving nearer, so close that the ship’s cameras could no longer display the beast in its entirety. So close that she could feel their ship dipping and jouncing in the currents surging around them from the huge creature’s motion. Her sensor screens showed its mountainous flank gliding closer and closer, row upon row of flippers working tirelessly, hundreds of unblinking eyes staring at her, bright splashes of color flickering along its hide.

“It’s signaling again,” Corvus called out, needlessly.

Deirdre adjusted the display to remove all color and once again the intricate line drawings appeared, like the blueprints of some vast alien building, huge and bewildering.

“What’s it trying to say to us?” Dorn asked.

“Earthling go home,” said Yeager.

“I’ve got the computer slowing down the imagery,” Deirdre said. “It flashes its pictures so fast I can hardly tell one image from another.”

Her central screen began to display the leviathan’s pictures at a slowed pace.

“Earthling go home,” Yeager repeated.

“No! Look!” Corvus wrenched himself free from his foot loops and surged over to Deirdre. Slipping one hand across her shoulders, he pointed with the other. “Look! That’s the image we sent out before!”

Deirdre nodded. The leviathan was repeating the picture they had displayed, the image showing the DBS probe emerging from their vessel.

“That’s when they took off,” Yeager commented.

“But now one of them’s come back,” said Deirdre.

As they watched, the screen displaying the drawings along the leviathan’s flank showed the DBS probe connecting with its hide.

“It’s telling us it’ll let us probe it!” Corvus yelped. In the sound-deepening perflourocarbon his yelp sounded more like the coughing grunt of a stalking lion.

Corvus launched himself back to the DBS console as he cried, “Dorn, reel out the probe! Do it now, before he changes his mind!”

It’s not a him, Deirdre thought. Nor a her. The leviathans are asexual. No genders. They’re all neuters. Or maybe they’re like the Volvox, hermaphrodites.

She stayed silent as she watched her screens. The thin fiber-optic line of the DBS probe snaked out toward the huge, all-encompassing flank of the leviathan.

“This is it!” Corvus said.

Turning from her screens, Deirdre saw that Andy had already settled the optronic sensor circlet on his shaved head. It looked a little too loose for him, ridiculous, almost, pushing down on his ears. But the expression on his face was taut concentration, eyes wide, mouth a thin slash of a line, hands hovering over his keyboard.

“This is it,” he repeated, in a grim murmur.

Deirdre realized that Andy’s entire life was bound up in this moment. His reason for existence was about to come to fruition.

MISCOMMUNICATION

Leviathan watched in growing dread as the alien’s feeding arm slowly, slowly snaked toward its flank. Several of the flagella members shuddered involuntarily, ready to dissociate. We must stay together, Leviathan commanded. If the alien’s contact is painful, we will move away from it.

The sensor members on that side of Leviathan showed that the alien’s feeding arm ended in a small circular mouth. But they could see no teeth in the mouth, only a set of minuscule flat squares arranged in orderly rows.

It took all of Leviathan’s self-control to allow that alien mouth to touch its flesh. It made contact with the thick armor of Leviathan’s hide, between two of the sensor members. The nearest flagellum froze for a moment, but Leviathan’s central brain commanded it to resume stroking, and it did, obedient despite its naked fear.

Leviathan waited for some sensation: pain, discomfort at least. Nothing. The hide members were armored and deadened against sensation, that was their function, their part of the Symmetry, to protect the inner members against the slashing attacks of darters. The alien can’t get through our hide, Leviathan realized. It can’t feed on us.

Corvus floated in a half crouch, his arms bobbing buoyantly at chest level, his eyes closed. The optronic ring was slightly askew on his head.

“Is he conscious?” Yeager asked.

Deirdre shushed him, but in the perfluorocarbon it came out as a gargling stream of bubbles.

Corvus’s soft blue eyes snapped open. “I’m conscious,” he said tightly. “I’m not getting a thing. Not a damned thing.”

“Nothing?” Deirdre asked.

“Nothing!” he cried. “To come all this way, to actually make physical contact with the beast, and then … nothing!” His face showed bitter disappointment, almost despair.

Deirdre suggested gently, “Maybe if I tried…”

Corvus shook his head. “It won’t do any good. There’s no contact at all.”

“Perhaps your probe is placed in a poor spot,” Dorn said.

“Yeah,” Yeager added. “That critter’s brain must be pretty deep inside its body someplace. Your probe doesn’t penetrate deep enough, most likely.”

Corvus’s face went from anguish to anger to misery, all in a moment. He looked close to tears. Bleakly, he asked, “So what do you want me to do, burrow through the bastard, skewer him like Captain Ahab harpooning Moby Dick?”

Yeager started to reply, thought better of it, and simply shook his head. Dorn stared at Corvus wordlessly. Deirdre wondered what she could say, what she might do, to help Andy.

“It’s a failure,” Corvus moaned. “A complete flop. The creature’s too big. We can’t make contact with its brain.”

Out of the corner of her eye Deirdre saw her screens flickering. Turning, she saw images flashing across the leviathan’s enormous flank.

“It’s signaling again!” she said.

The alien’s arm is not for feeding, Leviathan decided. It isn’t cutting at our hide member. It has no teeth to cut with.

Then what is the purpose of its arm? If not for feeding, then what?

A possible answer formed in Leviathan’s brain. The alien is slow and weak, yet it was pushing its way deeper, trying to get closer to the domain of the Kin. But its progress is pitifully slow. Perhaps it is asking our help in going lower. Perhaps it wants us to tow it down to the Kin.

Leviathan remembered the other alien, long ago, who had helped it fight off a pack of darters and been grievously hurt in the battle. Leviathan had lifted that smaller alien on its back and helped it to return to the cold abyss above, from which it had come.

Of course! Leviathan felt that it understood the alien’s request. It has come down from the cold abyss to meet with the Kin, to communicate in its limited way with the Elders. Why else would it be here? It doesn’t feed on the particle streams. It doesn’t feed on our flesh. It isn’t seeking food, it’s seeking contact, communication.

We can’t understand it, Leviathan thought, but perhaps the Elders can.

With that revelation, Leviathan turned and headed deeper, down toward the realm of the Kin, with the strange, hard-shelled alien in tow behind it.

Faraday suddenly lurched like a tiny dog being tugged hard by a brutal master. The bridge tilted so suddenly that all four of the crew were jostled against one another. Deirdre’s feet were wrenched out of their deck loops and she banged painfully against her console.

“What the hell was that?” Yeager shouted, steadying himself by grabbing Dorn’s broad shoulders.

“It’s dragging us deeper,” the cyborg said, his normally impassive voice edged with surprise, even fear.

“Disengage,” Yeager snapped.

“No!” said Corvus.

They all turned to Corvus, who was hanging on to the handgrips of his console as the vessel plunged steeply downward. Deirdre saw something close to panic in Max’s wide eyes; even the human side of Dorn’s face looked pasty, unsure. They’re as frightened as I am, she realized. But Andy looked—indomitable, doggedly determined, like a man refusing to back down against impossible odds.

“We came here to communicate with them,” Corvus said, grim as death. “That’s what we’re here to do. Ride it out.”

“But it’s dragging us deeper,” Yeager said, his voice almost cracking.

“Good,” said Corvus.

“How deep can we go?” Deirdre asked.

Regaining his self-control, Dorn said, “We’re nearing our performance limits. Pressure is rising steeply.”

“Can we disengage when we have to?” Yeager asked.

Corvus’s pale blue eyes snapped at the engineer. “The problem is, Max, will the connection to the beast hold? He’s putting a lot of strain on the connection.”

“Where’s it taking us?” Deirdre asked.

“To the rest of its kind, I hope,” said Corvus.

Deirdre felt the pain in her chest burning. Don’t take us too deep, Andy, she begged silently. Don’t follow that beast down so far that we can’t get back.

“Temperature rising,” Dorn called.

“Pressure, too,” added Yeager.

Corvus’s lips curved slightly into a tight smile. “We’re here to make contact with the leviathans. Well, that’s what we’re doing. Not the way we planned, but we’ll have to settle for this.”

“If it doesn’t kill us,” Yeager muttered.

Deirdre recalled a line from her classes in ancient history. Spartan mothers told their sons as they headed off to war, “Come back with your shield or on it.” Victory or death.

Which will it be, she wondered.

CONFERENCE ROOM

Michael Johansen sat at the head of the long conference table, but he knew that wherever Grant Archer sat was the true power center of the meeting. Each of the younger scientists who had made presentations on the data returned from Faraday’s capsule had addressed his or her remarks to Archer, seated halfway down the table’s length, not to him.

So be it, Johansen thought, sighing inwardly. Grant’s a natural leader. He’s the one who pushed for this crewed mission, he took all the heat from Westfall and the IAA council, he’s facing all the risks if anything goes wrong with the mission. He’s earned everyone’s respect. Besides, Grant doesn’t play power games, he doesn’t need to boost his own ego at the expense of others.

More important, Johansen told himself, this mission has already succeeded. They’ve made contact with one of the leviathans. They’ve communicated with an alien creature, an extraterrestrial! Those gigantic animals actually are intelligent!

Despite his years Johansen felt a quiver of excitement racing through him. What a discovery! Contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species. Of course, this first attempt at communicating with them was very limited, but it’s just the beginning. They’ll be giving out Nobels for this.

He barely listened to the presentation being made by one of the younger biologists as she earnestly plodded through the video imagery sent by the data capsule.

This is what science is all about, Johansen thought. The thrill of discovery. Opening new frontiers. The excitement of new knowledge. The prestige that comes from breaking through into a new world. My reputation is made. Even if those four amateurs in the submersible don’t come back, this has been a successful mission. Groundbreaking. Historic.

Nobels, Johansen thought, seeing himself in Stockholm, mentally preparing his acceptance speech. If they die down there, he told himself, I’ll throw in a few lines about how scientific exploration requires sacrifices. Martyrs, that’s what they’ll be. Martyrs to humankind’s unending quest for knowledge.

We’ve already succeeded, he repeated to himself. Whatever happens down there doesn’t really matter: We’ve made contact with an extraterrestrial species, proved that they’re intelligent. The rest is just a footnote.

WILD RIDE

Faraday was shaking brutally as it plunged deeper, towed by the massive leviathan like a cork floater on a fishing line that had been seized by a sounding whale. Even in the thick liquid perfluorocarbon Deirdre could feel the shuddering that rattled every bone in her body.

“How deep are we gonna go?” Yeager asked. He was still standing behind Dorn, but he was pressing both his hands against the overhead to keep himself in place.

“We are still within design limits,” said Dorn, his eyes on the control console’s screens.

Yeager pointed out, “But we’re approaching those limits pretty damned fast.”

Deirdre had wormed her feet back into the deck loops, but she still hung on to one of the handgrips on her console as Faraday arrowed down, down, deeper into the dark and hotter depths. Beyond the shaking that rattled the bridge she could feel the vessel tossing up and down, like a raft in heavy surf, lurching and yawing. There’s a rhythm to it, she realized as she tried to fight down the pain that burned inside her. It must be the rhythm of the leviathan’s flippers, like the oars of an ancient galley.

“Only minor problems so far,” Dorn said. “Structural integrity is still sound. Temperature within acceptable limits. Life-support systems performing nominally.” Still, his voice sounded strained to Deirdre.

“My back pain is worse,” said Yeager. “And I’m getting seasick.”

Deirdre nodded in sympathy. She felt it, too. Nausea. And pain. The tightness in her chest was a hot burning knot that was growing worse each minute. It’s the pressure, she told herself. How much can I stand?

She glanced across toward Andy. He was rubbing the bridge of his nose again. His headache must be getting worse, she thought. We’re all suffering from the pressure buildup. But the expression on Andy’s face was far from misery. He was smiling faintly, that absurd lopsided smile of his.

“How far down is this critter taking us?” Yeager demanded.

“As far as it wants to,” Corvus snapped.

Dorn said, “We’re approaching one thousand kilometers’ depth. That’s the vessel’s nominal limit. If we exceed design limits we’ll have to disengage and return to a safer depth.”

Corvus shot him an annoyed look. To Yeager, he said, “Max, that design limit isn’t absolute, is it? You built a safety factor into it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Yeager said, halfheartedly.

“How deep can we really go?”

Yeager growled, “How high is up?”

“Fifteen hundred klicks?” Corvus demanded. “Can we go that deep?”

Yeager shook his head.

Deirdre thought, Andy’s changed. He was crushed when his DBS equipment didn’t work, but now he’s taken charge. He’s determined to communicate with the leviathans, one way or another.

The pounding was getting worse. The bridge was rattling so hard now that the displays on Deirdre’s console screens were blurring. Are the electronics failing or is it just my eyesight? she wondered.

She called to Dorn, “Are your screens blurry?”

The cyborg turned his head toward her, its human side set in a grim rictus that almost matched the metal half. “You’re having a problem with your vision?”

Squinting at the fuzzy screens, Deirdre said, “I … I don’t know if it’s me or the displays.”

“The system monitors show no indications of failure,” said Dorn.

“It must be my eyesight, then,” Deirdre replied.

“Vibration’s getting worse,” Yeager said, pointing a shaking finger at the monitor screens.

“Everything is still within design limits,” Dorn insisted. Then he added, “Barely.”

“The equipment’s within design limits,” Yeager countered. “But we’re not.”

Leviathan swam deeper, seeking the Kin but being careful not to dive too swiftly. Leviathan thought that the alien was probably fragile, so it had to descend slowly, gently. After all, the alien is a creature of the cold abyss above, Leviathan reasoned. This region is foreign to it.

What if it can’t live in the warm domain of the Symmetry? Leviathan wondered. It doesn’t belong in our region. It isn’t part of the Symmetry, it’s an alien.

Then a new thought: Does the alien have a Symmetry of its own? It must have! It comes from the cold abyss above; there must be an alien Symmetry up there somewhere, a region where the alien lives with its own kind.

This was something to think about: another Symmetry. An alien Symmetry. Why would the alien leave its own place and invade ours?

Leviathan had no answer. It hoped that the Elders would know—or at least learn what the answer might be.

We must bring the alien to the Elders. Leviathan confirmed its earlier decision. The Elders must see this creature, signal with it, learn from it.

Fighting down its inner impatience, Leviathan swam still deeper, cautiously moving slowly, gently, so that the alien would not be harmed. Or frightened.

“Andy, are you all right?” Yeager asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” Corvus replied as he swayed in the foot loops, his eyes closed, both hands massaging his forehead.

“You don’t look so good,” said Yeager.

“I’ve got the mother of all sinus headaches, that’s all.”

Yeager nodded, then clasped Dorn’s metal shoulder. “The crew’s going to hit failure mode before the equipment does, pal.”

Dorn said nothing; the cyborg didn’t take his eyes from the screens of his control console.

“Did you hear me, robot?” Yeager snapped. “We can’t go much deeper. We’re all gonna crack up!”

Deirdre saw the fear in Yeager’s face and understood what he was trying to do. Max is scared, she realized. He wants to turn back but he’s too timid to say it, so he’s blaming it on our physical condition.

Corvus said tightly, “I can take it. I’m not going to crack.”

“Not till your head explodes,” Yeager growled. He turned toward Deirdre. “Dee, how are you?”

The pain in her chest was like a knife twisting inside her, but Deirdre said, “I’m okay.” She was surprised at what an effort it took to gasp out the two words.

Corvus slid over to her. Bobbing in the liquid before her he asked in a near whisper, “Are you really okay, Dee?”

“Yes,” she said tightly.

“If it’s too much for you we can go back up.”

“And leave the leviathan?” Deirdre asked. “Quit the mission?”

Andy’s gentle blue eyes looked sad, but he said, “There’ll be other missions, Dee. You’re more important than anything else.”

“But Andy,” she said, panting from the pain, “we’ve come … all this way…”

Corvus turned toward Dorn. “Take us up.”

The cyborg looked over his shoulder at Corvus.

“Up! Disengage and get us the hell out of here!”

“Are you certain—”

Hunched over from the pain in her chest, Deirdre caught a glimmer from her sensor screens.

“Look!” she gasped. “More of them!”

OBSERVATION BLISTER

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Grant Archer turned and saw Zareb Muzorewa stepping into the glassteel bubble of station Gold’s observation blister.

“Hello, Zeb,” Archer said softly.

The transparent compartment was flooded with light from Jupiter. The planet was so large that it encompassed their view, a mammoth swath of gleaming colors spreading as far as their eyes could see, many-hued clouds racing along in turbulent ribbons, a wide circular storm system spiraling far off to their right.

“Come to see it for yourself, have you?” Muzorewa stood several centimeters taller than Archer, a broad-shouldered, muscular figure next to the compactly built station director.

“This is as close as I can get.”

Muzorewa nodded. “We’ve been closer.”

“And we’ve got the scars to prove it,” Archer said, tapping his thigh.

Muzorewa took in a deep breath. “Well, you’ve done it. You’ve proved that they’re intelligent. The data from the capsule shows that the leviathans can communicate.”

“I haven’t done it,” Archer said. “I just helped to set things up so that they could do it.”

“You’ll get a Nobel out of this.”

“Not me. Them.”

That brought a smile to Muzorewa’s deeply black face. Archer smiled back at the scientist, both men basking in the glow from the giant planet.

“Well,” Muzorewa said, “at least you’ll be named chairman of the IAA governing council.”

“God forbid!” Archer blurted, shaking his head. “What would I want that for? Go back Earthside to sit at a desk and spend my life in conference rooms? No thanks. I’ll stay right here.”

“But everyone thinks—”

“Zeb, I was never interested in the IAA position, no matter what others may have said. Why would I leave here, just when things are getting really interesting?”

Muzorewa fell silent for several moments. Then, his eyes on the swirling splendor of the giant world, he murmured, “I wonder what they’re seeing now, at this moment. What are they doing right this instant?”

THE KIN

“More of them!” Deirdre repeated.

Andy Corvus gaped at the screens of her console. Wordlessly, Dorn put the sensor views on his control console’s screens.

“Look … at … that,” Yeager breathed, drawing out each word.

The screens were filled with leviathans; the huge, massive creatures were surrounding Faraday, gliding up on all sides. Deirdre stared at them, feeling like a little child in the midst of fairy-tale giants. They were truly enormous, their immense bodies decked with rows of eyes that all seemed to be looking straight at her. Bright splashes of color flashed across their flanks: vivid blues and greens, hot reds and oranges, brilliant whites.

“God almighty,” Corvus whispered.

Unbidden, the words of an old poem rang in Deirdre’s mind: “And we are here as on a darkling plain … where ignorant armies clash by night.”

As they stared at the leviathans they barely noticed that the vessel’s shaking, jarring ride had smoothed. Faraday was still riding up and down, still shuddering, but the vibrations were much gentler now, almost pleasant.

“There’s dozens of ’em,” Yeager said, his voice filled with awe.

“More like a hundred,” said Corvus, staring at the screens. “Look at the size of them!”

Checking the data bars on her screens, Deirdre saw that even the smallest of the leviathans was more than ten times bigger than their vessel.

“They’re talking to each other,” she said as the gigantic creatures flashed multicolored signals to each other. The images changed so rapidly that she could make no sense of them.

“Maybe they’re talking to us,” said Corvus.

Yeager shook his head. “How can we make sense out of it?”

“The computer will slow down the imagery,” said Dorn. “Perhaps enough for us to understand them.”

“Should we signal back to them?” Deirdre asked.

“Replay their images,” Corvus said. “Show them that we’re receiving their messages, even though we don’t understand them.”

Leviathan signed that it had brought the alien for the Elders to see. And explain, if they could.

Its message flashed inward through the Kin to the core where the Elders dwelled. Leviathan saw that the alien was flashing, too, repeating its own message, but much slower. Mimicry again. Is that all it can do? It’s so weak, Leviathan thought. Weak and slow.

Dozens of the Kin gathered closer to Leviathan, flashing a myriad of questions. Where did the alien come from? Why is it attached to you? Is it feeding on you? Does it hurt? What does it want? Why is it here?

Leviathan signaled back to them as much as it knew, but that merely raised the Kin’s curiosity.

At last the Elders’ response came flashing through the Kin to the periphery where Leviathan waited, with the alien still attached to it. The other members of the Kin saw the message and made way for Leviathan to take the alien inward, to the waiting Elders.

“We’re a lot deeper than we ought to be,” Yeager said, pointing to the graphs on Dorn’s screens. It showed that Faraday was nearly fourteen hundred kilometers below the ocean’s surface.

“Well, this is where the leviathans are,” said Corvus, “and we came here to contact them.”

“Should we detach the probe?” Deirdre asked, leaving unsaid “So we can get away quickly if we have to?”

Dorn flicked his eyes up and down the system status screens. “We’ve trimmed out at neutral buoyancy for this depth. The compression support arms are handling the stresses and all systems are functioning close to normal.”

“So far,” Yeager muttered.

“So far,” Dorn agreed.

“What about life support?” Deirdre asked.

“No apparent problems,” Dorn said, his eyes on the screens. The curves on the life-support displays were near their redlines. Before anyone could respond, he asked, “How do you feel?”

“Rotten,” Yeager snapped.

“I’m okay,” Corvus said quickly. Then he turned to Deirdre, “Dee, what about you?”

In the excitement of being surrounded by the leviathans Deirdre had forgotten the pain in her chest. It was still there, worse than ever. But I can deal with it, she told herself.

With a brief little nod, she said, “I’ll be all right.”

“Very well, then,” Dorn said. “The question remains, should we detach the probe or not?”

“Wait a sec,” Yeager protested. “What about you, pal? How do you feel?”

The cyborg hesitated, as if thinking over the question. Then, “Stiff. Sluggish. This pressure is degrading the performance of my prosthetics.”

“But not enough for us to leave,” Corvus prompted.

Dorn made a weary smile with the human side of his face. “No, Andy. It’s not bad enough to force us to leave.”

Corvus said, “I’ve been thinking. If we detach from the beast, then we’ll have to move on our own power.”

Yeager said, “That’s what the fusion propulsion system is for.”

“Yeah, but if we activate the fusion drive we’ll be squirting out hot steam. Our friends out there might not like that.”

Dorn nodded slowly. “They would not understand that we eject the steam to propel ourselves.”

“Would they think we’re deliberately trying to hurt them?” Deirdre wondered aloud.

Suddenly the bridge seemed to wrench sideways. All four of them lurched and grabbed for supports.

“Doesn’t matter now,” Yeager said, wedging his hands against the overhead once more. “The big guy’s towing us again.”

THE ELDERS

Through the herd of leviathans they moved, towed by the one that had brought them down to this depth. Deirdre watched in silence as they glided through the massive formation of the majestic creatures. They seemed to move away from Faraday, making an avenue for their vessel and the enormous animal that was towing it. The ride was fairly smooth, nothing like the shaking, violent dive earlier.

Deirdre’s chest still hurt, but the pain seemed no worse than before. I can stand it, she told herself as she stared at the screens’ displays. I can put up with it.

“Where’s he taking us?” Yeager asked.

“Deeper into the herd,” said Corvus.

“Into the center of their formation,” Dorn added.

“Why?” Yeager demanded. “What’s he up to?”

With the fragile alien in tow, Leviathan moved slowly, carefully, through the Kin. Ahead, at the core of their formation, waited the Elders.

There were five of them. Always five. When the Eldest had left the Kin to sacrifice itself to the waiting darters, another member of the Kin became an Elder. There had to be five. Why, Leviathan did not know. But it had been so for longer than the memory of the eldest among them.

The Elders hovered around Leviathan and the strange hard-shelled creature in its tow.

Here is the alien, Leviathan signed to them.

In unison, all five of the Elders signaled, Your replicant told us that you had gone back to find it.

It appears to be intelligent, Leviathan flashed. It is slow, but it is capable of mimicry. Perhaps it can communicate with us, tell us of its world.

For long moments the Elders remained dark. Then the new Eldest asked, Why is it attached to you?

Leviathan replied, It is small and weak. We allowed it to attach itself so that we could bring it to you.

It could not find us on its own? asked another of the Elders.

Perhaps it could, but towing it seemed better, more certain.

Again the Elders went dark. Without waiting for them to ask, Leviathan showed them how the alien helped fight off the darters when it was budding.

Instead of showing gratitude, one of the Elders signaled hotly, It interfered with the Symmetry!

It saved our life, Leviathan flashed back. It allowed us and our replicant to add to the Kin.

Darters are a part of the Symmetry, signed the disgruntled Elder. For all of existence we of the Kin have lived with the darters.

And died with the darters, Leviathan shot back.

Thus it has always been. Thus it must always be. That is the Symmetry.

Why must it always be? Leviathan demanded. Perhaps the alien is showing us a better way.

Destroying the Symmetry is a better way? the Elder signaled in glaring blue.

The darters are changing their ways, Leviathan pointed out. They are coming against us in larger numbers than ever. They cut us off from a stream of food. We should change our ways to meet this new challenge.

The Eldest lit up in solemn green: It is the alien that poses a challenge to us. Why is it here? What does it want of us? How will it affect the Symmetry?

Andy Corvus pinched two fingers over the bridge of his nose as he studied the slowed-down replay of the leviathans’ colorful displays.

“Even in slow motion I can’t make much sense of it,” he admitted. Pointing to his screen, he continued, “I mean, that circle there has got to represent us. See, it’s attached to one of the beasts, just like we are.”

Deirdre nodded. She too had put the computer’s slowed imagery on the central screen of her console. “And those look like those shark things.”

Nodding back at her, Corvus said, “I think he’s telling those others about how we fought off the sharks when he was attacked.”

“Could be,” Deirdre said.

Dorn and Yeager were still watching the real-time displays.

“They’re jabbering away at one another,” Yeager said. “Looks like a fireworks display.”

“Perhaps we should try to get their attention,” Dorn suggested. “Show them that we can communicate.”

“How?” Yeager demanded.

“Show them where we come from,” said Dorn. “Draw pictures of the planet, then the solar system. Point out that we come from Earth—”

“That wouldn’t make any sense to them,” Corvus objected. “They have no idea that they exist in a planet, I betcha. All they know is this enormous ocean.”

Deirdre said, “We could at least show them that we come from outside the ocean.”

Still looking doubtful, Corvus replied, “And how are you going to do that, Dee?”

She smiled tightly at him. “Let me draw something. Maybe I can get a visual image across to them.”

Yeager tapped a finger against the mission time line display on Dorn’s console. “We’re due to pop another data capsule in half an hour. How do you think they’ll react to that?”

KATHERINE WESTFALL

She was in misery, her stomach bloated, gas expelling itself in loud, obscene outbursts.

Her comfortably furnished bedroom had become a prison cell. I can’t let anyone see me like this, Katherine Westfall told herself for the hundredth time that hour. I’m a prisoner, an exile, until this horror passes—if it ever does.

She had ripped off her clothes and now wore nothing but a floor-length dressing gown of pure silk, pale dawn pink, decorated with muted oriental scenes of graceful gardens and languid women in kimonos.

She broke wind again, and ground her teeth at the shamefulness of it. The stench. If I ever get the chance to destroy Archer …

The phone chimed.

“Who’s calling?” she asked. The data bar at the bottom of the screen spelled out DR. GRANT ARCHER.

Westfall went to the desk and sat primly on its cushioned little chair. “Answer,” she said, huddling close to the screen so that the phone’s camera could see little more than her face and shoulders.

Archer’s dead-serious face filled the screen, strangely boyish despite the fringe of iron-gray beard.

“I’ve reviewed the data from their capsule,” he said without preamble. “They’ve definitely established meaningful contact. The leviathans communicate visually; they produce pictures on their flanks.”

“Congratulations,” Westfall said acidly.

“I thought you’d like to know.”

“Thank you.”

For a moment Archer fell silent. Then, “Actually, I called to ask you a question.”

“Did you?”

“Why?” Archer’s expression became almost pleading. “Why did you want to stop the mission so badly that you were willing to kill those four people?”

“You scientists have killed lots of people,” she said, all the old anger and hatred simmering anew inside her.

“People have died in the pursuit of knowledge, that’s true,” Archer admitted. “But we’ve never set out to deliberately murder anyone.”

“Those missions into the ocean. How many have been killed on them?”

Archer’s expression hardened. “I was on one of those missions. We stopped sending people down there for more than twenty years.”

“But you’ve started again.”

“On a much safer vessel. There are risks, of course, but now we—”

“You murdered my sister!” Westfall blurted.

“Your sister?”

“Elaine O’Hara. She was my sister.”

“Lane is dead?” He looked shocked by the news.

“She’s dead. She never recovered from that death ride you sent her on.”

“But I didn’t send her,” Archer said. “I was one of the crew, I wasn’t in command.”

“You would have sent her if you were in charge. You would have killed her.”

Archer seemed confused, unsure. “I … I had no idea she was your sister. I thought the world of Lane … we … she and I … she was a truly lovely woman.”

“And now she’s dead. Thanks to your pursuit of knowledge.” Westfall put a venomous accent on her last three words.

For long moments Archer was silent. At last he lifted his chin a notch and said, “I think you need help, Mrs. Westfall. I hope you seek psychiatric therapy.”

She allowed herself a cold, thin smile. “The last refuge of a scoundrel,” she said. Then she clicked off the connection.

THE SYMMETRY

The new Eldest showed how troubled it was about the invading alien with a display of pulsating greens and yellows. Since time immemorial we have lived with the Symmetry, it signaled. This alien creature is outside the Symmetry. It cannot be anything but a threat to our way of life.

Leviathan flashed back, It has not harmed us in any way. It saved our replicant and us from the darters—

That in itself is a violation of the Symmetry, two of the Elders glared simultaneously.

But why must we allow the darters to feed on us? Leviathan demanded. Why must we always follow the old ways?

That is the Symmetry, all five Elders replied in unison. We must all accept the Symmetry. Without the Symmetry we will be lost.

Leviathan began to reply, but then saw that the alien was trying to speak to them. Look! Leviathan flashed. The alien is signaling!

The Elders went dark. Leviathan realized that all five of them edged slightly closer to the alien, which was flashing pictures slowly, painfully slowly.

Leviathan had plenty of time to inspect the alien’s images and think about what they meant. It showed itself, an unmistakable small round object, attached to Leviathan, surrounded by the Elders. Then a confused series of images flickered from its rounded hide, changing so slowly that Leviathan wondered if the alien thought the Elders were unintelligent, dim-witted.

The alien pictured its encounter with Leviathan during its budding, and the fight with the darters. This could be mere mimicry, Leviathan thought, repeating what I showed to the Elders earlier.

But then the alien’s pictures showed it rising above Leviathan and the darters, upwards into the cold abyss from which it had come. The pictures became strange, unintelligible. The alien seemed to be showing other creatures, weird slim-snouted things with long thin flagella members that flapped slowly. And bulbous, many-colored things that seemed to hang motionless, hardly alive, with long sinuous tentacles dangling from their globular bodies.

Slowly, slowly, the pictures continued to change. The little round image of the alien rose above the strange creatures, through a smear of blurry colors, and then out into a darkness that was speckled with tiny points of white. As it rose, the blurred colors below it bent into a curve and the curve became another round thing, streaked with colors, while the alien itself became little more than a dot.

The alien went dark.

What does it mean? Leviathan asked.

It’s nonsense, replied one of the Elders. Senseless jibbering, the product of an unintelligent mind.

Perhaps not, signed the Eldest. Perhaps it is a different kind of mind, not unintelligent, but different.

But what does it mean? Leviathan repeated.

It is not of the Symmetry, signed the newest Elder, therefore it has no meaning. It has nothing to tell us. We should ignore it.

We can’t ignore it! Leviathan insisted. It is here. It exists.

It has no meaning, the Elder insisted.

It is not part of the Symmetry, signaled another. It will destroy the Symmetry if we pay any heed to it.

All the Elders went dark, fearful of the threat to the Symmetry. The alien bobbed on its tether, dark also.

Then Leviathan thought, What if the alien has come not to destroy the Symmetry, but to enlarge it?

“That’s the best I could do,” Deirdre said.

“Looked good to me,” Corvus replied. “You showed them where we come from, showed them they live in a planet. Showed them that we come from outside their world.”

His eyes still fixed on the control console’s screens, Dorn said slowly, “I wonder if they can grasp that idea. It must be entirely foreign to them.”

Yeager said, “Well, they’re going to see something else that’s entirely new to them when we pop the next data capsule.”

Dorn nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would be best if we disconnected the DBS probe before we fire the capsule.”

“Yeah,” Corvus agreed. “I wouldn’t want to be tethered to that beast if it gets scared and decides to dive deeper.”

Deirdre nodded, but she said, “I’d like to show them what we look like.”

“You can show me what you look like anytime,” Yeager said, breaking into his old leering grin.

“Time line calls for data capsule launch in eight minutes,” Dorn said.

“Disconnect us first,” said Corvus.

“Disconnecting.”

The alien has removed its arm from you, the Eldest pictured.

Leviathan flashed a soft orange sign of agreement. It had hardly felt the alien’s attachment to its hide. The disengagement was even less noticeable. Leviathan saw that the alien remained in the midst of the Elders as its arm slowly withdrew into its spherical body. It is not trying to flee from us, it thought.

New pictures began to glow on the alien’s hide. Leviathan’s sensor parts focused on them while its brain tried to understand what the alien was showing.

First it showed the circle that Leviathan thought represented the alien itself. Then the circle grew larger and shapes took form inside it. Four strange shapes, elongated, with things like tentacles extending from their bodies. But they looked too thick and short to be tentacles. And there was a rounded knob at one end of each body.

What are they depicting? the Eldest asked.

None of the Elders replied; they were all studying the strange images.

Leviathan guessed, Those could be members of the alien’s body, like our own inner organ members.

But they seem to move about inside its body, one of the Elders pointed out.

Strange.

It is alien, Leviathan pictured. Of course it is strange.

The images inside the picture of the alien faded away. For maddeningly long moments the alien showed nothing but the circle representing its own body.

Has it nothing more to tell us? the Eldest asked.

The newest Elder signed, It’s not intelligent enough to show us anything meaningful.

Suddenly the alien’s imagery showed a tubular object leaving its body and speeding upward, toward the cold abyss above.

Leviathan immediately understood. It is telling us that it will dissociate!

The Eldest flared in blue distaste, Dissociate? Here, amongst us?

Revolting, flashed another of the Elders.

Obviously, signaled the Elder next to it, the alien is of a low mentality. Its ways are crude and disgusting.

It is alien, Leviathan insisted. Its ways are different from ours.

It is feeble-minded, signed the newest Elder. Slow and feeble-minded.

Leviathan countered, Then how is it that the alien has come into our realm? How could it be feeble-minded if it left its own region in the cold abyss above and came down here to find us?

DECISIONS

“Capsule launch in one minute,” Dorn called out.

Yeager said, “Better hang on tight. If those beasties out there start thrashing around we’re gonna get battered but good.”

“We’ve told them we’re going to launch the capsule,” Corvus said. “They won’t be frightened.”

“You hope,” Yeager snapped, as he wormed his feet firmly into the deck loops and wedged both hands against the overhead.

Deirdre reached for the handholds on her console, noting that Andy and Dorn were doing the same. Her arms felt heavy, weary; every movement she made caused the pain in her chest to flare hotly.

Dorn flexed his prosthetic hand slowly as he said, “Our life-support readouts are nearly touching the redlines. We’ll have to cut our mission short.”

“No,” Corvus snapped immediately. Even in the sound-deepening perfluorocarbon his voice was a high-pitched yelp. “We’re communicating with the leviathans! We’re talking with intelligent aliens!”

“Do we want to die down here?” Yeager growled.

“We haven’t hit any redlines yet, have we?” Deirdre asked. “Can’t we stay until we actually reach the limits?”

Dorn seemed to take a deep breath, then replied, “Capsule launch in thirty seconds.”

Leviathan watched the alien begin dissociating, but it was unlike any dissociation it had ever known or heard of. A solid chunk of the alien shot out of its body like a miniature darter, heading straight up toward the cold abyss above. Then—nothing. Leviathan waited with the Elders, but the alien did not detach any more of its members.

After a seeming eternity of waiting, the Eldest signaled, It merely separated one member.

And the member did not bud, pictured another of the Elders.

Does it understand that the Symmetry demands that we bud alone, away from the Kin?

And feed the darters, Leviathan thought; but it remained dark.

The alien apparently has some sense of decency, said the newest Elder. At least, the member it detached does. It goes off to bud alone, as is proper.

It fled away from us, flashed the Eldest.

Perhaps, Leviathan signed, it is frightened of us. Perhaps it is not budding. Perhaps it has merely sent one of its members back to its own realm.

For what purpose? asked the Eldest.

Leviathan hesitated before answering, knowing that the Elders would not be pleased at its thought. To tell them about the Kin, it answered at last. To tell its fellow aliens that we exist.

All five of the Elders glared hot white. Yes, Leviathan realized, that frightens them.

“Rest period for Dee and Max,” said Dorn.

Deirdre grimaced inwardly at the thought of feeding herself again through the port in her throat.

Yeager said, “Why don’t we just get the hell out of here? What can we accomplish by stooging around with these critters?”

“We’re talking with them!” Corvus fairly shouted. “We’re learning about them.”

“And getting sicker every minute,” Yeager countered. “I don’t know about you, pal, but my back is killing me. I feel like I’m two hundred years old and I’m carrying a six-hundred-kilo gorilla on my back.”

Hotly, Corvus said, “We came down here to communicate with the leviathans—”

“Which we’ve done. Now let’s haul ass and get back where we belong.”

“We belong here!”

“Even if it kills us?”

“We’re not dead yet, Max. Far from it.”

Dorn interjected, “Our physical condition is deteriorating. At the present rate we will not be able to stay at this depth for the scheduled length of the mission.”

Corvus glared at the cyborg. Deirdre could see anger smoldering in his normally placid eyes. And Yeager was staring defiantly at Corvus. Andy wants to communicate with them so badly, she thought. He’s willing to risk his own life for this. He’s willing to fight Max and even Dorn. I can’t let him carry this to the point where they’ll be enemies.

She reached out and touched Yeager’s shoulder. “Come on, Max. It’s dinnertime.”

Yeager blinked at her, then made a forced little grin. “Yeah. Let’s have the blue plate special.”

Deirdre saw some of the angry tension ease out of Andy’s body. Dorn looked slowly from Corvus to Yeager and then to Deirdre. He dipped his chin a bare centimeter at her and Deirdre understood that Dorn recognized what she had just defused.

The alien is dark, signed the Eldest.

Leviathan signed, It told us that it would dissociate one member only, and that is what it has done.

Now it says nothing.

The newest Elder maintained, If it is intelligent, its intelligence must be of a low order. It has nothing to tell us; we should ignore it.

The Eldest disagreed: Its presence among us is a change in the Symmetry. We must protect ourselves against any disruption.

It seems peaceful enough, Leviathan signed. Even helpful, when it protected us against the darters.

But that is not part of the Symmetry! another of the Elders flashed in urgent blue. We have always faced the darters alone. The alien disrupts the Symmetry.

The alien enlarges the Symmetry, Leviathan countered. The alien shows us that our understanding of the Symmetry has been limited.

All of the Elders went dark, pondering this new thought. Leviathan waited, hoping that the alien would light up again and prove that it was intelligent—and beneficial.

At last the Eldest decided. It signed to Leviathan, You will take the alien to the edge of the Kin and remain there with it. Whatever it tells you, you will report through the Kin to us. Try to learn from it, but do not allow it to interfere with the Kin in any way.

Leviathan realized that the Eldest was choosing the wisest path, and flashed its agreement in muted tones of orange and yellow.

Then Leviathan wondered, How do I tell the alien what it must do?

TROUBLE

Deirdre awoke from her sleep period feeling far from rested. Her entire body felt sluggish, weary. The pain in her chest seemed worse than before, she thought, a hot throbbing that sent waves of agony through her whole body. It’s the pressure, she knew. We’re down deeper than we ever planned to be.

She saw that Max was still asleep, tucked into his cramped shelf like a corpse on a slab. His breathing was a labored gurgle, as if he were half strangling. Should I tell Dorn? Deirdre wondered. Max’s physical condition is displayed on the life-support readouts, she told herself. If he’s in any trouble Dorn would know it right away.

She felt too tired to change into a fresh maillot. We’ll be leaving soon anyway, she thought. She hoped.

The alarm buzzer that signaled the end of their sleep period stirred Max. He banged his head as he forgot where he was and tried to sit up. Muttering curses, he slid out of the bunk, rubbing his forehead.

“Whoever designed this bucket ought to have his head examined,” Yeager said, grinning sheepishly.

“Yes, Max,” said Deirdre. “And you should allow more room for crew comforts on the next model.”

“I’ll make a note of that.”

Deirdre slid back the door to the bridge and gasped. Dorn was floating a meter or so above the deck, Andy fluttering helplessly over him.

“He just passed out,” Corvus said, his voice shaking. “Half a minute ago he was fine, then he just slumped over, unconscious.”

Yeager pushed past Deirdre and rushed to the cyborg’s inert body. Deirdre went to her console, but glanced at the life-support readouts on Dorn’s screens. A row of glaring red lights. Flicking to the readouts for the rest of them, Deirdre saw that several of the curves had crossed their redline limits. We’re dying! she realized. The pressure is killing us.

Yeager glanced at the displays, too. “He’s in trouble.”

Corvus said, “I can see that!”

“We’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with him, and fast.”

Stating the obvious, Corvus said, “We’re just down too damned deep.”

“Helluva time for you to admit that,” Yeager growled.

Deirdre saw in her central screen, “The leviathan is lighting up again.”

She was certain it was the one they had met and attached themselves to. It was hard to tell any differences among the mountain-sized creatures, but Deirdre thought the one they had attached to was slightly smaller and sleeker than the others that had gathered around their vessel.

It was lighting up, flashing a set of images against a background of red and yellow. What does it mean? she wondered. What is it trying to tell us?

Patiently, Leviathan showed the alien that it was going to take its usual place at the outer rim of the Kin, and the alien must come along with it.

The alien remained dark, mute.

How can I make it understand? Leviathan wondered.

“He’s got a pulse,” Corvus said, gripping the unconscious cyborg’s human wrist.

Yeager squinted at the medical readouts. “Pulse steady but weak. Breathing rate going down. What the hell’s wrong with him?”

Deirdre was feeding the leviathan’s signals through the computer program that slowed them, trying to ignore the pain that was radiating through her body. Maybe I can figure out what it’s trying to tell us if I can look at the images at a slower rate. But she couldn’t help turning away from her screens to glance at Dorn’s unconscious body.

The Eldest flashed to Leviathan, The alien does not respond.

It’s gone dark, Leviathan agreed.

It doesn’t understand what you are trying to tell it, signaled one of the Elders.

Or it doesn’t want to understand, signed another.

No, it’s too stupid to understand. It’s not truly intelligent, it merely mimics what we tell it.

Leviathan thought otherwise, but kept its opinion to itself. Remembering its encounter with the other alien, long ago, Leviathan decided that there was one way to get the alien to move, whether it acknowledged its message or not.

“We have to get back up to the station,” Corvus said. “Get medical attention for Dorn.”

For all of us, Deirdre added silently.

Still scanning the medical readouts, Yeager muttered, “Or at least up to a higher level, where the pressure isn’t so bad.”

“Back to the station!” Corvus snapped.

Deirdre saw that Dorn was floating gently in the perfluorocarbon, unconscious, his arms bobbing in the liquid. His breathing seemed deep and slow; his human eye was closed, the prosthetic camera dark instead of its usual red gleam.

“His artificial eye,” she blurted. “It’s off.”

“So what?” Yeager said.

“It never goes off,” she said. “Not even when he sleeps.”

Corvus grasped her meaning. “Maybe it’s the mechanical side of him that’s failed?”

Yeager looked from Corvus to Deirdre and then down at the unconscious Dorn. “Sounds nutty.”

“The medical readouts don’t cover his robotic systems,” Deirdre said. Then she added, “Do they?”

“No, you’re right,” said Yeager. “I’ll pull up the diagnostic program for his prosthetics. Andy, we’ll have to plug him into the main computer. Find the connector cable.”

But as Corvus launched himself toward the hatch of their sleeping area the vessel suddenly lurched and tilted wildly.

“What the hell?” Yeager shouted as he slammed painfully against the main console. Dorn’s inert body glided across the bridge’s narrow confines and buckled against the food dispenser. Deirdre’s feet were wedged into the deck loops but still she swayed so hard that she banged her shoulder against her console. Corvus missed the hatch and rammed into the bulkhead alongside it.

“What’s happening?” Deirdre whimpered.

As gently as it could Leviathan slid beneath the alien and pushed against it with its back. Once before it had lifted an alien up to safety as it sank down into the hot abyss below. That had been easier, because that alien’s body was flat. Circular, hard-shelled, but flat. It could ride easily enough on Leviathan’s back.

But this alien was round, spherical. It bounced off Leviathan’s back instead of riding smoothly.

Doggedly, Leviathan nudged the alien outward toward the edge of the Kin’s formation, in obedience to the Elders’ decision. The alien bounced along as Leviathan’s flagella members patiently propelled it onward.

Leviathan remembered that the earlier alien had repaid its piggyback rescue by spraying scalding heat against its hide. Then it had shot upward, into the cold abyss above, never to return.

What will this alien do? How will it react to being pushed back to the edge of the Kin?

Holding on for dear life to her console’s handgrips, Deirdre tried to make sense of the leviathan’s slowed-down message while Yeager and Corvus analyzed Dorn’s cybernetic systems. Yeager was muttering a continuous string of swearing as Faraday lurched and bounced madly.

“Sonofabitch is battering us to death,” Yeager growled, in between choice curses and words Deirdre had never heard before.

“It’s pushing us,” Deirdre said, trying to focus on the display in her central screen.

Corvus had connected the cable that linked Dorn’s mechanical side with the vessel’s main computer. Yeager was trying to trace the cyborg’s systems, but the constant banging and jarring made it almost impossibly difficult.

Between lurches, Deirdre saw that the leviathan had signaled to them that it was going to move away from the core of the creatures’ massive spherical formation, out toward the edge, and they should follow along with it.

“It’s pushing us outward,” Deirdre said. “It wants us to move out to the rim of their formation.”

“Helluva way to make us move,” Yeager rumbled.

“Maybe if we light up our propulsion system we could go more smoothly,” Corvus suggested.

“Maybe,” Yeager agreed.

The alien suddenly moved off on its own, squirting a spray of heated water behind it. Leviathan was glad that the alien was not resting on its back, remembering the other alien that had scalded its hide.

Swimming alongside the alien, Leviathan again flashed its message that they were heading out to the edge of the Kin. Other leviathans in the formation swung wide of the alien, allowing them to pass through without hindrance.

It does understand, Leviathan realized. It’s just so excruciatingly slow. Leviathan flashed that message to be passed inward to the Elders.

QUESTIONS

Their ride smoothed out and Yeager stopped his cursing. Corvus hovered over Dorn’s unconscious body while Deirdre reluctantly turned back to her console to examine the messages from the leviathan in the computer’s slowed playback.

Nodding, she reaffirmed, “It wants us to stay here with it.”

Without taking his eyes from the screen showing Dorn’s diagnostics, Yeager asked, “Where’s ‘here’?”

“We’re on the periphery of the leviathans’ formation. They travel in a sort of ragged spherical grouping, it looks like.”

Corvus muttered, “They took us in to the center and now they’ve put us out on the edge. That’s weird.”

“Maybe they’re willing to allow us to stay with them,” Deirdre suggested.

“Not for long,” said Yeager, grimly. “Dorn’s dying.”

Leviathan had a thousand questions that it wanted to ask the alien. Where did you come from? Why are you here? Do you eat the food that drifts down to us, or something else? Why do you spew out scalding hot water when you move? What is your hard shell made of?

Knowing that the alien’s mind worked very slowly, Leviathan decided to ask one question at a time and repeat it as often as necessary until the alien finally understood and pictured an answer. Then it would go on to the next question.

First question: Where do you come from?

“He’s dying?” Deirdre was shocked. “But you said his medical readouts…”

“They’re sinking,” Yeager said. “It’s slow, but he’s going downhill.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

“The pressure. It’s got to be something connected to the pressure.”

Corvus said, “We’ve got to get him back to the station. Quick.”

“Too bad we can’t send him back in one of the data capsules,” said Deirdre.

Yeager gave her an odd look. “That’s something I should’ve thought of,” he muttered. “Have to add it to the next version of this bucket.”

“But what’s wrong with him?” Deirdre repeated.

Corvus waved a hand at the diagnostic screen. “His mechanical systems have shut down for some reason. Without them functioning, his human side can’t function either, not for long.”

“It must be something in his central computer system,” Yeager said, eyeing the screens as if he could force them to tell their secrets by staring at them hard enough.

“Can you access his computer?” Corvus asked.

With a shrug, Yeager said, “I can try.”

Deirdre turned back to her console and saw that the leviathan was flashing signals again.

Where do you come from? Leviathan asked patiently, over and over again.

As it asked, it realized that the alien proved that the world was much larger than even the Eldest had realized. Larger and more complex, with strange hard-shelled alien creatures in it. Who knew what else might be in the farther reaches of the world?

Leviathan felt a thrill of curiosity. How big is the world? What other strange creatures might be in it?

Deirdre frowned with puzzlement as she studied the computer’s playback of the leviathan’s message. The same line drawings, repeated endlessly. The computer display automatically washed out the colorful splashes of pale yellow and brighter orange that made the line drawings difficult to distinguish.

It showed a small circle next to a sketch of a many-flippered leviathan. The circle must be us, Deirdre thought, and the leviathan figure must be him. Then the circle rose above the image of the leviathan, slowly heading away until the leviathan’s image dwindled and dropped out of the picture.

It knows we come from higher up in the ocean, Deirdre reasoned. But then the image of the circle faded gradually until it disappeared altogether. What’s that supposed to mean? she wondered.

“I’ll be damned!” Yeager snapped. “Look at that!”

Turning from her screens, Deirdre saw Max pointing at one of the diagnostic displays on Dorn’s control console.

“Sleep mode?” Andy said, peering at the printout. “What’s that mean?”

“His central computer’s shut down,” said Max.

“Shut down?”

“It’s an old computer programming trick. When the CPU inputs exceed the program’s design limits, the damned computer shuts down its active functions. The geeks used to call that ‘sleep mode.’ It’s from a dozen programming generations ago.”

“Why does it do that?” Corvus asked.

“To protect the core programs, keep them from getting infected or overstressed.”

Deirdre said, “But it’s harming Dorn.”

With a bleak nod, Yeager said, “His human half needs the mechanical systems. He’s got pumps inside him that run his endocrine system and servomotors that power his mechanical parts. His heart is mechanical; its function depends on those systems, too.”

“His heart’s shutting down?”

“It’s slowing,” Yeager replied. “The blood flow to his brain is too little to let him stay conscious.”

“But why’s the computer doing this?” Corvus demanded. “It’s killing him.”

Yeager shook his head. “Goddam bucket of chips is protecting itself and letting his human half die.”

“You’ve got to do something, Max!” Deirdre insisted.

“Yeah, I know. We’ve got to get out of here. But how? Dorn’s our pilot. I’m just his backup. You expect me to run this bucket while he’s unconscious?”

Leviathan began to wonder if the Elders had been right. Perhaps the alien isn’t really intelligent at all: It merely mimics the images we flash at it.

The vision Leviathan had idealized began to fade from his hopes for the future. The world might be much bigger than we had thought, it told itself, but there are no truly intelligent creatures in it, no one that we can communicate with, no one that we can learn from.

RESPONSIBILITIES

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Corvus repeated.

“I know,” Yeager agreed. His tone sounded tense, almost angry.

“Can’t you pilot this ship?”

Yeager hesitated, then answered, “In theory.”

“In theory?” Corvus yelped.

Grudgingly, Yeager explained, “I designed this bucket, all its systems. But that doesn’t mean I have the reflexes, the skills to actually pilot her.”

“You said it was highly automated,” Corvus said, almost accusingly.

Deirdre piped up, “The ship ran completely automated, all by itself, didn’t it?”

Looking miserable, Yeager said, “Yeah, but to set it up that way means reprogramming its central computer. That could take hours.”

“We don’t have hours,” said Corvus. “We’ve got to get Dorn out of here now. At least up to a higher level, where the pressure isn’t so bad.”

Yeager seemed frozen with indecision. “I know,” he muttered. “I know. But … piloting … suppose I screw it up? I could kill us all.”

“We need Dorn?”

“We need Dorn.”

Deirdre listened to the two men while still focusing her eyes on the figures that the leviathan drew, again and again.

“Andy,” she called, “could you wake Dorn up with your DBS equipment?”

“He’s in a coma, almost.”

“But couldn’t you make contact with his mind?” Deirdre asked. “Get him to wake up? Maybe if he were conscious he could override his computer.”

Corvus bit his lip, glanced at Yeager, then said tightly, “It’s worth a try.”

Leviathan saw that a message was flashing toward it from the Elders, lighting up the waters in stern blue as it passed outward from one member of the Kin to the next.

Finally the member next to Leviathan transmitted the Elders’ question: If the alien is truly intelligent it would communicate freely with you. Has it done so?

Fighting down its first instinct to admit that the alien’s intelligence was limited to mimicry, Leviathan replied carefully, Its mind works very slowly. We have asked it where it comes from and are waiting for a reply to our question.

Leviathan could foresee the Elders’ next response, their sneering disdain for this slow, dull alien creature. They are afraid of the alien, Leviathan thought. Behind their scornful belittling is the fear that the alien will upset the Symmetry.

Wondering how it could communicate meaningfully with the alien before the Elders decided to drive the stranger away, Leviathan saw with a flash of grateful joy that the alien was lighting up again.

It’s trying to communicate! Leviathan thought hopefully.

Deirdre saw out of the corner of her eye that Andy was fitting one of his DBS circlets onto Dorn’s head. Maybe that will work, she thought. Max looks terribly nervous, frightened. If they can’t wake Dorn, Max is going to have to try to fly us back to the station.

It took an effort of will for her to concentrate on the message the leviathan was drawing. The same imagery again. A picture of the leviathan with us beside it. Then it shows us rising above the leviathan, going up farther and farther, until we fade out and dis—

Of course! Deirdre realized. It’s asking where we come from! It knows we came down to this level of the ocean from up above. It wants to know where we originated!

Deirdre worked her keyboard swiftly, calling up the earlier imagery she had shown the leviathan. She patched it together with the leviathan’s question and transmitted it to the lights on the vessel’s hull.

Her imagery showed the leviathan’s original picture of itself with Faraday beside it, then the vessel rising until the leviathan figure dwindled and disappeared. But now, instead of fading away—Deirdre figured that was the leviathan’s way of asking its question—the imagery of their vessel continued upward, out of the ocean, through the clear atmosphere populated by spider-kites and Clarke’s Medusas, on through the wide smear of clouds and out into space. The tiny sphere that represented Faraday moved on away from the planet until the imagery showed Jupiter as seen from space, a flattened sphere streaked with many-colored clouds.

Smiling with satisfaction, Deirdre wondered if the leviathan could possibly understand what she was trying to tell it.

The pictures made no sense to Leviathan. The alien seemed to rise up into the cold abyss above, and then moved on to realms that became stranger and stranger.

Gibberish? Leviathan asked itself. No, it decided. The alien is trying to tell us something, trying to explain where it comes from. Of course it would all seem strange, even senseless, to us. It comes from a different part of the Symmetry. Naturally its realm would seem strange, totally unlike anything the Kin has experienced before.

We were right! Leviathan told itself. The alien is intelligent—and the Symmetry is much larger and more complex than we had ever thought.

It began to signal these new thoughts inward through the Kin, toward the Elders.

“It’s working!” Yeager said. Then he added, “I think.”

Corvus was linked to Dorn: Both of them had DBS circlets on their heads. Yeager was peering eagerly at the readouts on the diagnostic screens.

“I’m talking with the leviathan,” Deirdre called to them, then added, “I think.”

Dorn’s prosthetic eye began to glow red, feebly, then his human eye slowly opened.

“Dorn!” Corvus said eagerly. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Your central computer’s shutting down. Can you override it?”

“No.”

“But it’s killing you!”

Slowly, obviously in pain, Dorn replied, “It is following its programming.”

“But it’s killing you!” Corvus repeated.

Dorn said, “The prosthetics are protecting themselves. The fact that the flesh is dying is an unfortunate side effect.”

Corvus looked up at Yeager. “Max, you’ll have to pilot us out of here. It’s up to you.”

Yeager uttered a heartfelt “Shit.”

ESCAPE

Deirdre could see that Max was clearly frightened as he orally set up the command console’s navigation program.

“It’s up to you, Max,” she whispered to herself. “Dorn’s life depends on you.” Then she realized that all their lives depended on Max’s ability to pilot their vessel.

The leviathan was flashing signals at them again, the flickering of its glowing hide lighting up her communications screen.

Dorn seemed conscious, but barely so. Floating lethargically in the perfluorocarbon, the cyborg watched in silence as Yeager set up the navigation program.

Corvus unconsciously touched the optronic circlet crowning his head and said to Yeager, “Dorn’s thinking that you’ve got to cancel the buoyancy program. You have to do something called ‘blow negative’ before the vessel can start to rise above this level.”

“Right,” said Yeager, and he resumed murmuring instructions to the central computer’s voice-recognition system.

Deirdre shook her head, wondering if they were going to get out of this alive. Dorn’s too weak to speak now, but Andy’s picking up his conscious thoughts through the DBS link. Max is learning the difference between designing the ship and making it work.

“Dee,” Andy called to her, “you’d better keep your eyes on your screens. Looks like the creature’s signaling again.”

Turning back to her console, Deirdre saw that the leviathan was flashing a different image. She hunched forward slightly, leaning against the deck loops her feet were wedged into. The leviathan was picturing several of its own kind, with a broad swath of tiny dots flowing down toward them. Then the picture abruptly changed to show Faraday in the middle of the little dots, all alone.

Even slowed by the computer, the imagery made little sense to Deirdre. The dots probably represent the organic particles that drift down out of the clouds, she thought. That’s what they eat. But why does he put us into the stream? What’s he trying to say?

“Better tell our friend that we’re going to be heading up,” Andy told her.

Deirdre nodded and began drawing a picture on her touch-sensitive screen with her outstretched finger.

Leviathan’s sensor members studied the message the alien was drawing. It made no sense.

Leviathan was patiently asking the alien what it ate, but the alien seemed to be ignoring the question and instead showing that it came from higher in the Symmetry, from the cold abyss above.

We know that, Leviathan thought. The alien is stating the obvious. Why won’t it answer our question about its food? Is it refusing to answer? Is it hiding something from us?

“I’ve got it set to fire up,” Yeager announced, a shaky grin on his drawn face.

“Then go,” Corvus said, without hesitation.

“Ten-second countdown,” said Yeager. “Ten…”

“Wait,” Corvus interrupted. “We ought to get Dorn strapped in before we start jouncing around.”

Yeager nodded. “Yeah, right. Slide him into his sleep compartment.”

“I’ll help,” Deirdre offered.

Together, she and Corvus pushed Dorn’s barely conscious body into the sleep chamber and slid him into his coffinlike bunk.

“He’ll be okay in there,” Corvus said as he fastened the safety web at the foot of the enclosure. Deirdre heard the uncertainty quavering in his voice.

“It’s the best we can do,” she said.

With an abrupt gesture, Corvus waved Deirdre through the hatch back onto the bridge, then followed her. They both slid their feet into the deck loops.

“Fire away, Max,” said Corvus. Then he turned toward Deirdre and winked.

Surprised, she smiled back at him. Andy’s trying to reassure me, she thought. In the middle of all this, he’s trying to tell me not to be afraid. But she was afraid. And so was Andy, she knew. And Max.

“Ten seconds,” Max said stiffly. “Nine … eight…”

The alien suddenly spurted up on a spray of heated water, heading for the cold abyss above. That’s what it was trying to tell us! Leviathan realized. It’s leaving us. It’s heading home.

For several moments Leviathan considered what it should do. Follow the alien, or remain here with the Kin? Leviathan knew it should ask the Elders for their decision, but there was no time to wait for their deliberation. Without further thought, without asking the Elders for their guidance, Leviathan followed the alien, remaining far enough from it to avoid being scalded by the heat it was pouring out. Like a squid, Leviathan thought. It propels itself with jets of heated water. Of course. How else could it move? It has no flagella members.

The alien was ascending rapidly but Leviathan easily kept pace with it.

How high will it go? Leviathan wondered. How far can we accompany it? Will it have anything else to tell us?

Pointing to the diagnostics screen, Yeager sang out, “His readouts are picking up! His prosthetics are coming back on-line!”

Deirdre glanced at Max and saw the absolutely joyous look on his face. Andy was grinning, too. Then she turned back to her sensor screens. The leviathan was still alongside them, keeping pace with their ascent, staying off to one side to remain clear of their exhaust of superheated steam.

“All systems in the green,” Max said, with pride in his voice.

“You’re doing it,” Andy said, his grin nearly splitting his face. “We’ll have to start calling you Captain Max.”

The leviathan was signaling to them again, Deirdre saw. She repeated the message she’d been sending: We’re leaving. We’re going home.

How far into the cold abyss will the alien go? Leviathan wondered, flashing that question as it swam alongside the ascending hard-shelled creature. Fish and squid and other creatures teemed through the chilly waters of this level. No darters in sight, Leviathan’s sensor members reported. We’re too high for darters, Leviathan thought. Still, it’s good to be on the alert for them. They will attack a solitary leviathan if given the chance.

Still the alien rose.

The hatch to the sleeping area slid back and Dorn floated onto the bridge.

“Look who’s here,” Yeager announced.

Deirdre thought that Dorn looked weary, strained. Even the metal half of his face seemed somehow haggard, dulled.

“I apologize for my collapse,” the cyborg said.

“No apology needed,” said Corvus. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“My prosthetics are programmed to shut down when they are in danger of exceeding their design limits.”

Yeager nodded. “Don’t worry, pal. We’re getting out of this pressure cooker as fast as we can.”

“The mission?” Dorn asked.

“We’ve got enough data to keep the scooters happy for years,” said Yeager. “Now’s the time to go home.”

Dorn glided to the command console. Bobbing alongside Yeager, he said, “I can take the con now, if you don’t mind.”

Yeager made an exaggerated bow. “You’re welcome to it!”

Deirdre heard herself say, “Do we have to leave right away?”

All three men turned toward her.

Surprised at her own reaction, Deirdre asked, “Can’t we stay at this level, at least for a little bit?”

“Why?” Yeager demanded.

Glancing at her sensor screens, Deirdre replied, “To say good-bye.”

DEPARTURE

Several of Leviathan’s flagella members were quivering with the anticipation of dissociating. We are too high, Leviathan realized, too close to the cold abyss above. If we go higher we will dissociate involuntarily.

But the alien was still rising, still climbing upward. How high will it go?

“It’s sending another message,” Deirdre said, staring at the flickering images on her central screen. The computer was washing out the colors and slowing down the rapidly blinking drawings.

“Leveling off,” said Dorn, with something like the old strength in his voice.

“We can’t stay here for long,” Yeager warned.

“Why not?” Corvus snapped as he tucked the DBS circlets back into their container bin.

Yeager scowled at him. “We’ll run out of supplies. We’re only fitted out for four days—”

“And we’ve only been here for less than three,” Corvus countered, pointing at the mission time line chart.

“And damned near killed ourselves,” Yeager snapped.

Dorn raised his human hand. “I’m feeling much better now that we’re up at a lower pressure.”

“I’m not,” Yeager growled. “I say we get the hell out of here as fast as we can. Take our data and go home!”

“So we take our winnings and leave the game?” Corvus challenged.

Yeager gave him a tight smile. “You gotta know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em.”

The human side of Dorn’s face frowned. “What does that mean?”

Deirdre said, “The leviathan’s trying to tell us something. Look.”

The alien understands! Leviathan thought. The strange hard-shelled creature stopped its ascent and hovered in the chill waters, still far from the normal realm of the Kin but at least it wasn’t heading farther into the cold abyss above.

It understands.

“What’s it trying to tell us?” Corvus asked, hovering beside Deirdre in the perfluorocarbon liquid.

The computer-slowed imagery showed the leviathan rising. At least it seemed to be rising past the tiny shapes and dots sprinkled across the picture displayed on its flank.

“Those must be fish and other smaller creatures,” Deirdre said, pointing. “And that stream of dots, maybe that represents the organic particles flowing downward.”

“Maybe.” Corvus nodded uncertainly.

“And there’s the leviathan himself.” Deirdre pointed. “And us, alongside him.”

“Both rising.”

“Yes.”

Abruptly, the image of the leviathan began breaking apart. Deirdre and Corvus watched as the creature’s image disassembled into hundreds of separate pieces.

“It’s going to dissociate again?” she wondered.

Corvus shook his head. “It just did that a day and a half ago, when we first came down to this level.”

“That was deeper than we are now.”

“But now it’s saying that it’s going to break up again? Does that make sense?”

Deirdre thought she understood. “Maybe it’s saying that it can’t stay up at this level without breaking up! It’s telling us that it’s got to go back to its own level.”

“And we’ve got to go back to ours,” Yeager insisted.

Deirdre stared at the screen. The leviathan was still flashing the same imagery. It’s so huge! she thought. Like a mountain floating loose in the ocean. But it’s got to return to its own place. And Max is right, we’ve got to return to ours.

Reluctantly, she reached out to the touch screen and began drawing a farewell message.

Holding its members together with sheer willpower, Leviathan saw that the alien was signaling again.

It showed the image of Leviathan itself, diving downward until it disappeared past the lower edge of the image. And the alien, rising upward until it too disappeared from view.

The message was clear. The alien was leaving, returning to its own realm in the cold abyss above, leaving Leviathan to return to the Kin and the Symmetry.

But then the picture changed. It showed the alien returning, with more round little hard-shelled spheres just like itself, all of them swimming amid the Kin down where the Symmetry prevailed.

Leviathan understood the alien’s message. It must leave now, but it will return—with more of its kind.

Leviathan duplicated the alien’s message along its own flank, to show that it understood. You will return, Leviathan acknowledged. And we will be here waiting for you.

“It’s repeating our message,” Deirdre told the others. “It understands what we’re trying to say.”

“Maybe,” Yeager said. “Maybe it’s just mimicking what you drew.”

Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t think so, Max. It understands us.”

Dorn called out, “Increasing buoyancy. Heading for the surface.”

Corvus stood beside Deirdre and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Heading for home,” he murmured.

Deirdre nodded, her eyes on the sensor screens watching the enormous leviathan swim in a brief circle, then bend its broad back and plunge downward, deep into the depths of the globe-girdling ocean, heading back to its own domain.

“Good-bye,” she whispered, surprised at how sad she was, how downcast she felt to be leaving the magnificent creature. “We’ll come back,” she said, knowing it was a promise she was making to herself as much as the leviathan. “We’ll come back.”

As Faraday rose smoothly through the ocean Deirdre felt the pain in her chest easing. Maybe it’s psychosomatic, she thought. But no, the medical readouts had shown her heart laboring, her lungs straining down at the depths where they had been.

“Broaching surface in thirty seconds,” Dorn announced.

The vessel jolted and shuddered as it bulled its way out of the ocean. Deirdre felt as if the sea was trying to keep them, hold them back, prevent them from getting away.

And then they were soaring through Jupiter’s wide, clear atmosphere, the curve of the planet’s vast bulk barely noticeable even when they were halfway to the clouds. Her eyes glued to the screens’ displays, Deirdre saw a clutch of Clarke’s Medusas drifting placidly off in the distance, colorful as old-fashioned hot-air balloons.

“Entering cloud deck,” said Dorn. The displays showed a dizzying swirl of colors and the vessel buffeted and jittered in the typhoon winds of Jupiter’s racing clouds. Andy gripped her tighter as Deirdre clung to him with one arm and reached for the console handgrips with the other. She saw that Max and Dorn were also grasping safety holds.

Suddenly the shaking and vibration stopped, as abruptly as a switch turning off, and the display screens showed the eternal black of space. Deirdre told the computer to increase its brightness gain and pinpoints of stars gleamed against the darkness.

“We’re in orbit,” Yeager said, his voice almost breathless with relief.

The curving bulk of Jupiter slid into view, huge, glowing with broad swaths of color. Just above its limb a single bright star glowed.

“That’s the station,” Andy said, relaxing his grip on her just a little. “We’re almost home.”

“But we’ll go back to them, won’t we?” said Deirdre, feeling as if she wanted to cry.