Leviathans of Jupiter

DECOMPRESSION

This is worse than being in the ocean, Deirdre thought. She lay in the narrow decompression capsule, unable to move. It was like being in a coffin, an elaborate high-tech sarcophagus, too tight to shift her arms from her sides, its ridged plastic lid too low for her to lift her head. Worse than the bunks in Faraday, she grumbled to herself.

“Stay still,” the technicians had told her. “It’s best if you just lay absolutely still while we bring the pressure down.”

I have to stay still, she thought. There’s no room to move in here. She was still breathing perfluorocarbon, still bathed in the cold, slimy liquid. Eight hours, the technicians had said. Eight hours minimum.

“You’ll sleep through most of it,” one of the technicians had said. “Just relax and sleep.”

Wonderful advice, Deirdre thought. Just relax and sleep. Might as well, there’s nothing else to do while I’m in here. Sleep. They’re injecting a sedative into the perfluorocarbon, she knew. I wonder how they can determine the proper dosage? What if it’s not enough? Or too much?

Her thoughts drifted to the leviathans. Those enormous animals. The one in particular that had tried to communicate with them. I wonder what he’s doing now? I wonder if he’s thinking about us.

Without consciously realizing it Deirdre slipped into sleep, dreaming of the leviathans, floating deep in the Jovian ocean and talking with the leviathan as normally and easily as she would speak to Andy or Max. The leviathan was telling her about himself, what it was like to live in that deep, dark sea, all the secrets of life in—

“Are you awake, Dee?”

Deirdre’s eyes popped open and she saw Andy, Max, and Dorn leaning over the edge of her decompression capsule, beaming down at her. The capsule’s top had been swung back. And she was breathing normal air!

“I was dreaming,” she said.

“How do you feel?” Corvus asked.

Blinking, she replied, “Okay … I think.”

Dr. Mandrill’s dark, puffy face appeared between Yeager and Dorn. “Your life signs are quite good now, Ms. Ambrose,” he said, with a bright toothy smile.

“Now?” Deirdre caught his unsaid meaning. “You mean they weren’t before?”

Mandrill’s smile narrowed a bit. “There was some damage to the myocardium, very minor—”

“That’s the heart muscle,” Yeager interjected.

“My heart?”

“Very minor damage,” Mandrill emphasized. “Caused by the pressure, of course. Stem cell therapy is repairing the damage quite nicely.”

Without asking, Deirdre began to push herself up to a sitting position. Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn all reached into the capsule to help her.

“Do you feel strong enough to stand?” Dr. Mandrill asked her.

“I … think so.”

“How do you feel, Dee?” Corvus asked.

She thought a moment, then replied, “Hungry.”

Mandrill’s smile returned to full wattage. “That is a good sign! A very good sign!”

It took more than an hour of sensor scans and long lists of medical questionings, but at last Dr. Mandrill agreed that Deirdre could leave the clinic with her three friends.

“To the galley,” Yeager commanded, pointing like a general ordering a charge. “I want a real steak!”

Her legs felt a little wobbly, but Deirdre went with them toward the elevator that led up to the first wheel and the station’s galley. Corvus wrapped his arm around her waist as they strode along the passageway.

“How are you guys?” Deirdre asked. “Dorn, are you okay?”

The cyborg nodded gravely. “My systems are functioning properly.”

“Andy?”

“Fine. No more headache.”

“And you, Max?”

Yeager frowned. “Lumbar stenosis. I’ve had it for years, from what the medics say. Didn’t really bother me until we got squeezed by the pressure down there.”

“Is it all right now?” Deirdre asked.

“It aches. Mandrill says they can work it out with microsurgery.”

As they entered the elevator cab, Deirdre looked into each of their faces. “Then we’re all okay?”

“Yep.”

“Pretty much.”

“I’ll be fine,” Yeager said, “once I tear into that steak.”

DEBRIEFING

To Deirdre’s surprise, Grant Archer was standing in the passageway when the elevator doors opened at the top wheel.

With an expectant grin on his neatly bearded face, he asked the four of them, “Are you ready for your debriefing?”

“Debriefing?” Corvus asked. “Now?”

“Yes, it has to be now,” Archer said, starting along the passageway.

“Can’t we eat first?” Deirdre pleaded.

“Yeah,” said Yeager. “I’m hungry.”

Dorn said calmly, “Debriefing is best immediately after the mission, of course, but we haven’t had any solid food in days.”

Archer said, “Well, I don’t know…” But he was grinning even more widely than earlier, and Deirdre saw a twinkle in his eyes that she had never seen before.

Feeling confused, she walked with the men along the passageway and quickly realized that they were approaching the galley. Deirdre glanced at her wristwatch and saw that it was midafternoon; the galley would be closed. They’d have to settle for prepackaged snacks from the dispensers.

Andy Corvus said, “Let’s have a quick bite and then we can go through the debriefing. Okay?”

Archer broke into a laugh. “Why not?” he said, as he trotted up to the galley’s doors and slid them open.

Almost the entire station staff was jammed into the galley, all of them on their feet. They broke into applause as Archer led the four returning explorers into the galley. The assembled men and women roared and cheered, they clapped their hands together and pounded Deirdre, Corvus, Yeager, and Dorn on their backs as they stepped into the galley. There were still more people on the wall screens’ displays, all of them cheering ecstatically.

“I guess the debriefing will have to wait,” Archer hollered over the noise of their reception, laughing like a boy at a surprise party.

Deirdre felt tears of joy filling her eyes as Red Devlin came up to them, wearing a dazzling fresh white chef’s outfit, and led them to a table groaning with food and drink.

It was late. The party had simply gone on and on. Scientists from Michael Johansen down to the golden-skinned Dahlia came up to Deirdre and the others to express their happiness at the mission’s success. News reporters from Earth and the Moon asked for interviews. Even Deirdre’s father, gruff old George Ambrose, sent a message of congratulations from the rock rats’ habitat at Ceres.

“You’ve made the biggest breakthrough since the invention of writing,” Johansen told them, sloshing beer from the mug in his fist. “Meaningful contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species. This is history!”

Archer seemed to be floating on air. With his lovely, dark-haired wife beside him, he raised his voice above the din of the party and announced, “We owe these four volunteers a debt of gratitude that can never be fully repaid. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m willing to give them anything they want.”

The crowd roared its approval.

“Ms. Ambrose—Deirdre—what can we do for you?”

Deirdre gulped and thought swiftly. “You’ve already offered me a scholarship at the Sorbonne…”

“Right,” said Archer, smiling amiably.

“Could you keep a position open for me until I return? I’d like to work with the leviathans once I have my degree.”

“Don’t you think you’ll want to stay on Earth?”

It was Deirdre’s turn to smile. “I want to see Earth, of course. I want to experience it. But more than that I want to come back here and learn more about the leviathans.”

Archer’s face grew serious. “Fine. We’ll be waiting for your return.”

Then he turned to Andy. “Dr. Corvus? What about you?”

Without an instant’s hesitation, Corvus answered, “I need to develop sensors that can scan the leviathans’ bodies. We need to find out where their brains are, and how we can make contact with them with the DBS equipment.”

Nodding, Archer said, “You want to learn how their brains work.”

“More than that,” Andy said, “I want them to learn how our minds work. I want to show them the world that they live in, the solar system, the universe.”

With a puff of exhaled breath, Archer said, “That’s a lifetime’s work, Andy.”

“I know.”

Turning to Yeager, who had the petite blonde Linda Vishnevskaya clinging to his arm, Archer said, “I think I know what you’ll be doing, Max.”

“Building another compression shell for Faraday,” Yeager replied. “Now that we know how deep we have to go to be with the leviathans, I can make my baby safer—and add a few comforts for the crew, while I’m at it.”

“And get married, too,” said Vishnevskaya, beaming up at Yeager.

The engineer blushed, broke into an embarrassed grin, and nodded vigorously.

“What about you, Dorn?” Archer asked.

The cyborg hesitated. Looking around at the sea of expectant faces, Dorn finally answered, “My wish is to remain here and pilot the missions into the ocean.”

“Really? That’s all?”

“It’s quite enough,” Dorn said. “I’ve found a purpose in my life. Helping to make meaningful contact with an alien intelligence is more than I had ever hoped to achieve.”

Archer nodded slowly. “Me, too,” he said softly. “Me, too.”

FAREWELL

Andy Corvus walked alongside Deirdre down the passageway where their quarters stood a few doors apart. It was nearly midnight. They walked slowly, exhausted from the day’s excitement, his arm around her waist, her head tilted against his.

“You’re really going to Earth?” he asked, in a whisper.

“I’ll come back, Andy.”

He turned toward her and nuzzled her auburn hair. “I’m heading Earthside, too. Back to Dr. Carbo’s lab at Rome.”

They stopped at Deirdre’s door. “We’ll go on the same ship?”

With a nod, Corvus said, “No sense sending two separate ships out here.”

“No, of course not.”

Deirdre looked into Andy’s soft blue eyes and saw her future in them. Without a word, she took him by the hand and began leading him back up the passageway, along the way they had come, away from their compartments.

Puzzlement showed clearly on his slightly awry face. “You’re not going to … uh, sleep?”

“Not yet,” Deirdre said.

“Then where … where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

Katherine Westfall had not attended the party. She was in her suite, preparing to leave station Gold on the torch ship that the IAA had sent—at her demand.

Seething inwardly as she packed her toiletries in a hard-shelled travel bag, she tried to convince herself, All things considered, this trip has actually been rather successful. I can share the credit for sending the mission into the ocean. Archer has agreed not to compete against me for the IAA chairmanship. There’s plenty of glory to go around.

She realized that the memory of Elaine O’Hara, the half sister she had never known, had been a self-deluding subterfuge, an excuse to justify her action against Grant Archer. Once Archer had made it clear he would not challenge her for the chairmanship, her anger over Elaine evaporated.

But now it was replaced by another fury. Archer and that rat-faced Red Devil. They had tricked her. Embarrassed her. Humiliated her. What’s worse, Westfall realized, is that they had something over her that they could use any time they wished. That’s a danger, she knew. A danger that must be eliminated, sooner or later.

Sooner or later. The time will come. The time will come. Archer and Devlin both. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

“The observation blister?” Corvus blurted.

Deirdre smiled at him as she slid back the door. “The observation blister,” she said. “Just you and me, Andy. And the universe.”

They stepped in and closed the door. In the dim lighting they could see thousands of stars hanging against the everlasting night.

Andy slipped his arms around her waist and pulled Deirdre to him. “Are you sure?” he whispered. “Really certain?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Aren’t you?”

“Um … on the ship going back to Earth … I’m pretty sure the captain of a torch ship can perform a marriage.”

“Marriage?”

“I mean, it’d be legal, just like we got married in a church.”

Deirdre wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly. They made love slowly, languidly, as if they had all eternity to spend together, while mighty Jupiter rose and bathed their naked, glistening bodies in its majestic glowing splendor.

Leviathan swam with the Kin in the warm, rich waters of the Symmetry. The alien had gone, leaving in its place a thousand unanswered questions.

It will return, Leviathan told itself. It will come back. We have much to learn from it. We have much to look forward to.