Jupiter (44 page)

Instinctively, Grant looked up, then turned toward Karlstad. Egon blinked, stirred.

The bridge seemed to tilt, then righted itself. Grant floated free of his one intact floor loop, then his feet touched the deck once more.

Closing his eyes, he tried to see outside through the few sensors still working. Nothing. Only a mottled gray — the ship quivered again, swayed. One of the glowering red lights on Grant's console suddenly turned amber, and then green.

Peering through the ship's sensors, Grant realized that what he was seeing was the immense stretch of a Jovian, so close that it was actually touching the sub, nudging it gently, like an elephant delicately balancing a baby carriage on its back.

Grant could hardly breathe. Glancing at his battered console, he saw that the green light was the attitude indicator.
Zheng He
was no longer spiraling downward.

He reached across and shook Karlstad by the shoulder, then typed, SENSORS.

Egon licked his lips, purely a reflex in their liquid surroundings, then tapped into the sensors.

Grant squeezed his eyes shut and saw that the sub was resting on the gigantic back of one of the whales. No, not just any one of them; it was the Jovian who'd been attacked by the sharks. Grant could see wide swaths of raw flesh where the sharks had ripped away its skin.

WE RISING? Karlstad asked.

YES!!! Grant's heart was hammering beneath his ribs. A guardian angel! A million-ton, ten-kilometer-long Jovian guardian angel is carrying us up and out—

His elation snapped off. The Jovian can't carry us out of the ocean. It can't fly us home.

The thrusters. Grant checked the entire power and propulsion systems. The fusion generator was undamaged, working normally. The thrusters — could they last long enough to push them out of the ocean, through the atmosphere and clouds, out into orbit?

DATA CAPSULES, Grant typed. Even if we don't make it, we have to give them all our information. He banged away on his keyboard as Karlstad prepared the last pair of the data capsules.

They were rising swiftly now. Through the ship's sensors Grant could see the entire community of Jovians swimming around them, sleek and smooth, making hardly a ripple as they propelled themselves through the sea far faster than
Zheng

He
could have gone on its own. The Jovians flashed signals back and forth among themselves; pictures, Grant was certain, hoping that the ship's cameras were still working well enough to record it all.

The thrusters were still shut down. Can I power them up without causing them to fail? Then a new thought struck him: I can't power them up while we're riding on the Jovian's back. The superheated steam would hurt him.

Would it? Yes, of course it would, Grant told himself. The Jovian's made of flesh; its skin isn't a heat shield. You killed a couple of the sharks with the thrusters' exhaust, of course it'll hurt the Jovian.

But if I don't light them up we won't get out of here. The whale can only carry us so far. The rest of the way we'll need the thrusters.

Grant turned toward Karlstad, but he would be no help, he saw. Egon was standing rigidly now, fists clenched at his sides, eyes squeezed shut, watching the scene outside through the ship's sensors.

Decide, decide! Grant raged at himself. He called up the flight program, then instructed the computer to plug in their current velocity. The screen went blank for a heart-stopping instant, then displayed a graph with a green curve showing the thrust vector needed to achieve orbit. The computer can hear my voice, Grant marveled, even though I can't.

The numbers showed that he had a very small window of opportunity to ignite the thrusters. It would open in twelve seconds and close half a minute later.

Without further debate, Grant started the thrusters. Low, just minimum power, he told himself. Give the Jovian a warning of what's to come. In the back of his mind he realized that the giant creature was performing as a first-stage booster, giving
Zheng He
an initial burst of energy in the long battle to break free of Jupiter's massive gravity and achieve orbit.

Not a nice way to treat someone who's saved your life, Grant said to himself. Sorry, my Jovian friend. He edged the thrusters to one-quarter power.

Even through its thickly-armored hide, Leviathan felt the heat. Its sensor-members shrilled an alarm. The others of the Kin, swimming with Leviathan, flashed their warnings, also.

Leviathan hesitated only for a moment, then plunged down, leaving the stranger to itself.

The Elders flashed superior wisdom: The alien rewards you with pain.

Its ways are different from ours, Leviathan answered.

It is just as well, the Elders pictured as one. We could not have climbed much farther into the cold. Come, let us return to our home region and resume the Symmetry.

Leviathan agreed reluctantly. But it took one last look at the tiny, frail stranger. It was shooting up through the water now, driven by the hot steam emerging from its vents, heading upward into the cold abyss.

The steam pushes it through the water! Leviathan marveled. Like the darters, it uses jets instead of flagella!

And it is racing up into the cold abyss. It must want to be there. That must be its home region.

How could anything live up there? Leviathan wondered. There is so much that we don't know, so much to be learned.

One moment they were riding the Jovian's back, climbing smoothly through the ocean. Then, when Grant edged the thrusters' power higher, the Jovian flicked them off its massive back and dove downward, returning to the warmer layers of the ocean. Grant pushed full power and
Zheng He
climbed, rattling, its cracked and battered hull shaking like an ancient fragile airplane caught in a storm.

Even in the viscous liquid Grant could feel the growing acceleration as he watched the one working screen on his console. A red blip showed the ship's position along the green curve of the orbital injection trajectory. They were close to the curve, not exactly on it, but close.

Close enough?

Maybe, he decided. If the ship holds together long enough. Then he remembered the rest of the crew. He reached for Karlstad's shoulder again, shook him out of his concentration on the sensors' view.

He typed on his keyboard: ZEB? LANE? KREBS? Karlstad shrugged helplessly. TAKE A LOOK, Grant commanded. Slowly Karlstad disconnected his optical fibers and swam back to the hatch. It was sealed shut; Egon had to punch in the emergency code to get it to slide open. It must have closed automatically when we were in all that turbulence, Grant thought.

He stood alone on the wrecked bridge, feeling the ship straining against the jealous pull of Jupiter's gravity, struggling to climb through the thick heavy ocean, through the deep turbulent atmosphere with its swirling, slashing deck of clouds, and out into the calm emptiness of orbital space.

Karlstad swam back beside him. Without bothering to link his biochips he typed, I STRAPPED THEM IN. HOW ARE THEY? Grant asked.

ALL UNCONSCIOUS. ZEB BLEEDING INTERNALLY. KREBS CONCUSSION, MAYBE WORSE. LAYNIE IN COMA, NO PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS I CAN DETECT. GET US OUT OF HERE!!! TRYING, Grant wrote. WHAT ABOUT CAPSULES? Grant thought it over swiftly, then typed, WAIT. The seconds ticked by slowly as the ship rose, shuddering, buffeted by swift currents. Through the sensors Grant peered into unending darkness, broken only by an occasional glimmer of light so faint that it was gone when Grant turned his full attention to it. Luminescent creatures out there? he asked himself. Optical illusions? Or maybe just flickers of nerve impulses; maybe my brain cells are starting to break down in this pressure.

He felt the power of the thrusters as an animal roar in his mind, a mighty beast screaming in mingled strength and pain. Keep going, Grant pleaded silently to the thrusters. Only a few more minutes, not even half an hour. You can do it. Just keep on going. Yet the pain was growing worse. The thrusters were heading for catastrophic failure; the only question was how soon.

The view outside seemed to brighten somewhat. The utter darkness gave way grudgingly to a slightly lighter tone. Yes, it was definitely getting gray out there, Grant saw, like the sullen dawn of a midwinter morning.

He felt a pressure on his arm, turned to see Karlstad squeezing his shoulder.

GETTING OUT OF IT, Karlstad had typed on his screen.

Yes, Grant though. If the thrusters hold up.

Definitely lighter outside. They were climbing through the murky haze of the region between Jupiter's planet-wide sea and its hydrogen-helium atmosphere.

CAPSULES READY? Grant asked.

YES!!!

Grant touched his communications screen. Nothing. It remained dark, inert.

YOUR COMM SCREEN WORKING? he asked Karlstad

Egon tapped his screen and it lit up.

'This is research vessel
Zheng He
,' Grant said, even though he could not hear his own voice. He hoped the comm system could. 'We are lifting up, out of Jupiter's ocean, hoping to reach orbit and return to Research Station
Gold
.'

On and on Grant talked, unable to hear a syllable of his own recitation, as the badly damaged submersible climbed into the clear air above the ocean, shaking and shrieking, rising on its plume of star-hot plasma toward the racing jet streams of Jupiter's cloud deck. Karlstad stood silently by his console, fully linked to what remained of the ship's systems now, unable to hear any of Grant's long speech.

At last Grant finished.
Zheng He
was climbing through clear atmosphere now. Far off in the vast distance Grant could see a cluster of colorful balloon-like Medusas floating placidly through the air.

He typed, SET CAPSULE TRANSMITTERS FOR WIDEST POSSIBLE FREQUENCIES - FULL SPECTRUM.

Karlstad looked puzzled. NOT NECE— Grant slapped his hand away from his keyboard. DO IT, he insisted.

With a shrug, Karlstad did as Grant commanded. READY TO GO, he typed. RELEASE BOTH CAPSULES. DONE.

The thrusters were close to failure now. Grant felt their pain flaming across his shoulders and down his back. The underside of the cloud deck was inching nearer, nearer. The graph on his one working screen showed that they had almost achieved orbital velocity, but if the thrusters failed while they were below the clouds or even in them, atmospheric drag would pull them down to a final, fiery plunge back into the ocean.

Lightning flashed across the underside of the clouds. Grant could hear, through the ship's microphones, the rumble of thunder. The audio centers in my brain still function, he realized. It's my ears that are damaged.

Winds began to buffet the ship. Doggedly, Grant watched the tiny red blip on his screen crawling along the green curve. Almost there. Almost. Almost.

They plunged into the clouds, shaking and rattling. The thrusters' pain was making Grant's eyes blur.

Everything went dark. For a moment Grant thought the lights had gone down again, but then he realized he was giddy with pain, awash in agony. The view outside was black; they were in the clouds. Hold on! he commanded himself. Just a few more minutes. Hold on!

. He couldn't hear it, but he knew he was screaming. The thrusters were breaking down, whole chunks of their jet tubes ripping apart. The superconducting coils exploded, dumping all their pent-up energy into a blast that tore away a wide swath of the ship's outermost hull. Grant felt as if he were being flayed alive, his skin and the flesh beneath it torn away by the claws of a giant, vicious beast.

He squeezed his eyes shut. The pain disappeared, yet its memory echoed brutally. Every muscle in Grant's body was sore, stiff, aching horribly.

He floated into near-oblivion. Eyes still closed, he saw tiny bright unblinking points of stars scattered across the darkness.

Something, someone was shaking him. Opening his eyes, he saw it was Karlstad, floating beside him. Egon was laughing hysterically, although Grant could not hear anything at all.

Karlstad gesticulated, pointing to one of the screens on the unoccupied console on Grant's right. It showed the same view Grant had seen when his eyes were shut: the view that the ship's sensors were seeing.

The stars.

The serene black infinity of space. Off to one side, the curve of a mottled red-orange moon. Io, Grant realized. And then the massive flank of mighty Jupiter slid into view, multi-hued clouds hurtling by far below them.

'We made it!' Karlstad mouthed.

Grant closed his eyes and saw the same view that the screen showed, only clearer, in sharper detail. We've made it, he realized. We're in orbit.

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator

Romans, 1:25

The thin whine of a medical monitor woke Grant from a deep, dreamless sleep.

His first thought was, I can hear!

Opening his eyes, he saw he was in the infirmary, his bed screened off by thin plastic partitions. He ached from head to foot, but the pain that had throbbed behind his eyes for so long was gone now. His head felt clear, not even dizzy.

The memories came tumbling back, all in a rush. Climbing out of the ocean in the battered, barely functioning
Zheng He
. Achieving orbit. The frantic messages from the station, all displayed on his one working console screen because his hearing was still gone. Too hurt and exhausted to do more than float numbly in the bridge, Grant had engaged the ship's automated rendezvous system to get them back to the station. It worked well enough for the controllers aboard the station to bring the ship in and dock it successfully.

They had rushed the whole crew to the infirmary. Grant remembered fuzzily Dr Wo wheeling along beside him as a medical team hurried him through the station corridor, the director's mouth moving in what must have been a thousand questions, but Grant unable to hear a word.

How long have I been here? he wondered. Lane, Zeb — Krebs. How are they? Did they make it? Did they survive?

Gingerly, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. The bed adjusted automatically, rising to support his back. The tone of the medical monitors changed subtly.