2061: Odyssey Three (9 page)

Before the detonation of Jupiter, Io had been second only to Venus as the best approximation to Hell in the Solar System. Now that Lucifer had raised its surface temperature another couple of hundred degrees, even Venus could no longer compete.

The sulphur volcanoes and geysers had multiplied their activity, now reshaping the features of the tormented satellite in years rather than decades. The planetologists had given up any attempt at mapmaking, and contented themselves with taking orbital photographs every few days. From these, they had constructed awe-inspiring time-lapse movies of inferno in action.

Lloyd’s of London had charged a stiff premium for this leg of the mission, but Io posed no real danger to a ship doing a flyby at a minimum range of ten thousand kilometres - and over the relatively quiescent nightside at that.

As he watched the approaching yellow and orange globe - the most improbably garish object in the entire Solar System - Second Officer Chris Floyd could not help recalling the time, now half a century ago, when his grandfather had come this way. Here, Leonov had made its rendezvous with the abandoned Discovery, and here Dr Chandra had reawakened the dormant computer Hal. Then both ships had flown on to survey the enormous black monolith hovering at L1, the Inner Lagrange Point between Io and Jupiter.

Now the monolith was gone - and so was Jupiter. The minisun that had risen like a phoenix from the implosion of the giant planet had turned its satellites into what was virtually another Solar System, though only on Ganymede and Europa were there regions with Earthlike temperatures. How long that would continue to be the case, no-one knew. Estimates of Lucifer’s life-span ranged from a thousand to a million years.

Galaxy’s science team looked wistfully at the L1 point, but it was now far too dangerous to approach. There had always been a river of electrical energy - the Io ‘flux tube’ - flowing between Jupiter and its inner satellite, and the creation of Lucifer had increased its strength several hundredfold. Sometimes the river of power could even be seen by the naked eye, glowing yellow with the characteristic light of ionized sodium. Some engineers on Ganymede had talked hopefully about tapping the gigawatts going to waste next door, but no-one could think of a plausible way of doing so.

The first penetrometer was launched, with vulgar comments from the crew, and two hours later drove like a hypodermic needle into the festering satellite. It continued to operate for almost five seconds - ten times its designed lifetime - broadcasting thousands of chemical, physical and rheological measurements, before Io demolished it.

The scientists were ecstatic; van der Berg was merely pleased. He had expected the probe to work; Io was an absurdly easy target. But if he was right about Europa, the second penetrometer would surely fail.

Yet that would prove nothing; it might fail for a dozen good reasons. And when it did, there would be no alternative but a landing.

Which, of course, was totally prohibited - not only by the laws of man.

ASTROPOL - which, despite its grandiose title, had disappointingly little business off Earth - would not admit that SHAKA really existed. The USSA took exactly the same position, and its diplomats became embarrassed or indignant when anyone was tactless enough to mention the name.

But Newton’s Third Law applies in politics, as in everything else. The Bund had its extremists -though it tried, sometimes not very hard, to disown them - continually plotting against the USSA. Usually they confined themselves to attempts at commercial sabotage, but there were occasional explosions, disappearances and even assassinations.

Needless to say, the South Africans did not take this lightly. They reacted by establishing their own official counter-intelligence services, which also had a rather free-wheeling range of operations - and likewise claimed to know nothing about SHAKA. Perhaps they were employing the useful CIA invention of ‘plausible deniability’. It is even possible that they were telling the truth.

According to one theory, SHAKA started as a codeword, and then - rather like Prokofiev’s ‘Lieutenant Kije’ - had acquired a life of its own, because it was useful to various clandestine bureaucracies. This would certainly account for the fact that none of its members had ever defected, or even been arrested.

But there was another, somewhat far-fetched explanation for this, according to those who believed that SHAKA really did exist. All its agents had been psychologically conditioned to self-destruct before there was any possibility of interrogation.

Whatever the truth, no-one could seriously imagine that, more than two centuries after his death, the legend of the great Zulu tyrant would cast its shadow across worlds he never knew.

During the decade after the ignition of Jupiter, and the spreading of the Great Thaw across its satellite system, Europa had been left strictly alone. Then the Chinese had made a swift flyby, probing the clouds with radar in an attempt to locate the wreck of the Tsien. They had been unsuccessful, but their maps of dayside were the first to show the new continents now emerging as the ice-cover melted.

They had also discovered a perfectly straight two-kilometre-long feature which looked so artificial that it was christened the Great Wall. Because of its shape and size it was assumed to be the Monolith -or a monolith, since millions had been replicated in the hours before the creation of Lucifer.

However, there had been no reaction, or any hint of an intelligent signal, from below the steadily thickening clouds. So a few years later, survey satellites were placed in permanent orbit, and high-altitude balloons were dropped into the atmosphere to study its wind patterns. Terrestrial meteorologists found these of absorbing interest, because Europa - with a central ocean, and a sun that never set - presented a beautifully simplified model for their text-books.

So had begun the game of ‘Europan Roulette’, as the administrators were fond of calling it whenever the scientists proposed getting closer to the satellite.

After fifty uneventful years, it had become somewhat boring. Captain Laplace hoped it would remain that way, and had required considerable reassurance from Dr Anderson.

‘Personally,’ he had told the scientist, ‘I would regard it as a slightly unfriendly act, to have a ton of armour-piercing hardware dropped on me at a thousand kilometres an hour. I’m quite surprised the World Council gave you permission.’

Dr Anderson was also a little surprised, though he might not have been had he known that the project was the last item on a long agenda of a Science SubCommittee late on a Friday afternoon. Of such trifles history is made.

‘I agree, Captain. But we are operating under very strict limitations, and there’s no possibility of interfering with the - ah - Europans, whoever they are. We’re aiming at a target five kilometres above sea level.’

‘So I understand. What’s so interesting about Mount Zeus?’

‘It’s a total mystery. It wasn’t even there, only a few years ago. So you can understand why it drives the geologists crazy.’

‘And your gadget will analyse it when it goes in.’

‘Exactly. And - I really shouldn’t be telling you this - but I’ve been asked to keep the results confidential, and to send them back to Earth encrypted. Obviously, someone’s on the track of a major discovery, and wants to make quite sure they’re not beaten to a publication. Would you believe that scientists could be so petty?’

Captain Laplace could well believe it, but did not want to disillusion his passenger. Dr Anderson seemed touchingly naïve; whatever was going on - and the Captain was now quite certain there was much more to this mission than met the eye - Anderson knew nothing about it.

‘I can only hope, Doctor, that the Europans don’t go in for mountain climbing. I’d hate to interrupt any attempt to put a flag on their local Everest.’

There was a feeling of unusual excitement aboard Galaxy when the penetrometer was launched - and even the inevitable jokes were muted. During the two hours of the probe’s long fall towards Europa, virtually every member of the crew found some perfectly legitimate excuse to visit the bridge and watch the guidance operation. Fifteen minutes before impact, Captain Laplace declared it out of bounds to all visitors, except the ship’s new steward Rosie; without her endless supply of squeezebulbs full of excellent coffee, the operation could not have continued.

Everything went perfectly. Soon after atmospheric entry, the air-brakes were deployed, slowing the penetrometer to an acceptable impact velocity. The radar image of the target - featureless, with no indication of scale - grew steadily on the screen. At minus one second, all the recorders switched automatically to high speed…

But there was nothing to record. ‘Now I know,’ said Dr Anderson sadly, ‘just how they felt at the Jet Propulsion Lab, when those first Rangers crashed into the Moon - with their cameras blind.’

Only time is universal; night and day are merely quaint local customs, found on those planets which tidal forces have not yet robbed of their rotation. But however far they travel from their native world, human beings can never escape the diurnal rhythm, set ages ago by its cycle of light and darkness.

So at 01.05, Universal Time, Second Officer Chang was alone on the bridge, while the ship was sleeping around him. There was no real need for him to be awake either, since Galaxy’s electronic senses would detect any malfunction far sooner than he could possibly do. But a century of cybernetics had proved that human beings were still slightly better than machines at dealing with the unexpected; and sooner or later, the unexpected always happened.

‘Where’s my coffee?’ thought Chang grumpily. ‘It’s not like Rosie to be late.’ He wondered if the steward had been affected by the same malaise that had overtaken both scientists and space crew, after the disasters of the last twenty-four hours.

Following the failure of the first penetrometer, there had been a hasty conference to decide the next step. One unit was left; it had been intended for Callisto, but it could be used just as easily here.

‘And anyway,’ Dr Anderson had argued, ‘we’ve landed on Callisto - there’s nothing there except assorted varieties of cracked ice.’

There had been no disagreement. After a twelve-hour delay for modification and testing, Pen No. 3 was launched into the Europan cloudscape, following the invisible track of its precursor.

This time, the ship’s recorders did get some data - for about half a millisecond. The accelerometer on the probe, which was calibrated to operate up to 20,000 gee, gave one brief pulse before going off-scale. Everything must have been destroyed in very much less than the twinkling of an eye.

After a second, and even gloomier, post-mortem, it was decided to report to Earth, and wait in high orbit round Europa for any further instructions, before proceeding to Callisto and the outer moons,

‘Sorry to be late, Sir,’ said Rose McCullen (one would never guess from her name that she was slightly darker than the coffee she was carrying) ‘but I must have set the alarm wrong.’

‘Lucky for us,’ chuckled the Officer of the Watch, ‘that you’re not running the ship.’

‘I don’t understand how anyone could run it,’ answered Rose. ‘It all looks so complicated.’

‘Oh, it’s not as bad as it looks,’ said Chang. ‘And don’t they give you basic space theory in your training course?’

‘Er - yes. But I never understood much of it. Orbits and all that nonsense.’

Second Officer Chang was bored, and felt it would be a kindness to enlighten his audience. And although Rose was not exactly his type, she was undoubtedly attractive; a little effort now might be a worthwhile investment. It never occurred to him that, having performed her duty, Rose might like to go back to sleep.

Twenty minutes later, Second Officer Chang waved at the navigation console and concluded expansively: ‘So you see, it’s really almost automatic. You only have to punch in a few numbers and the ship takes care of the rest.’

Rose seemed to be getting tired; she kept looking at her watch.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the suddenly contrite Chang. ‘I shouldn’t have kept you up.’

‘Oh no - it’s extremely interesting. Please go on.’

‘Definitely not. Maybe some other time. Goodnight, Rosie - and thanks for the coffee.’

‘Goodnight, Sir.’

Steward Third Class Rose McCullen glided (not too skilfully) towards the still open door. Chang did not bother to look back when he heard it close.

It was thus a considerable shock when, a few seconds later, he was addressed by a completely unfamiliar female voice.

‘Mr Chang - don’t bother to touch the alarm button - it’s disconnected. Here are the landing coordinates. Take the ship down.’

Slowly, wondering if he had somehow dozed off and was having a nightmare, Chang rotated his chair.

The person who had been Rose McCullen was floating beside the oval hatchway, steadying herself by holding on to the locking lever of the door. Everything about her seemed to have changed; in a moment of time, their roles had been reversed. The shy steward - who had never before looked at him directly - was now regarding Chang with a cold, merciless stare that made him feel like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake. The small but deadly-looking gun nestling in her free hand seemed an unnecessary adornment; Chang had not the slightest doubt that she could very efficiently kill him without it.

Nevertheless, both his self-respect and his professional honour demanded that he should not surrender without some sort of a struggle. At the very least, he might be able to gain time.

‘Rose,’ he said - and now his lips had difficulty in forming a name which had become suddenly inappropriate - ‘this is perfectly ridiculous. What I told you just now - it’s simply not true. I couldn’t possibly land the ship by myself. It would take hours to compute the correct orbit, and I’d need someone to help me. A co-pilot, at least.’

The gun did not waver.

‘I’m not a fool, Mr Chang. This ship isn’t energy-limited, like the old chemical rockets. The escape velocity of Europa is only three kilometres a second. Part of your training is an emergency landing with the main computer down. Now you can put it into practice: the window for an optimum touchdown at the coordinates I will give you opens in five minutes.’

‘That type of abort,’ said Chang, now beginning to sweat profusely, ‘has an estimated twenty-five per cent failure rate’ - the true figure was ten per cent, but in the circumstances he felt that a little exaggeration was justified - ‘and it’s years since I checked out on it.’

‘In that case,’ answered Rose McCullen, ‘I’ll have to eliminate you and ask the Captain to send me someone more qualified. Annoying, because we’ll miss this window and have to wait a couple of hours for the next one. Four minutes left.’

Second Officer Chang knew when he was beaten; but at least he had tried.

‘Let me have those coordinates,’ he said.