Jupiter Project jp-1

by Gregory Benford

  “Ummm,” Jenny murmured in the way that meant she wasn’t convinced.

  “So go ahead, get on out there,” Dr. Matonin said brightly, gently taking each of us by the elbow and steering us onto the dance floor. “And enjoy yourselves.”

  I’m no smoothie, but I can negotiate a simple box step without breaking an ankle. I took Jenny in my arms and we danced through several numbers. It wasn’t bad. I liked the smell of her, a kind of rich fragrance that blotted out the rec room and the clumps of guys and the syrupy music. Jenny smiled and I held her closer and it was not bad at all. It still felt phony, but I managed to forget about that part of it.

  We talked some more about what Dr. Matonin said. Jenny didn’t think any of the girls really liked the Socials, despite Dr. Matonin’s theory.

  Jenny and I danced on. I saw Zak wandering around the place, cup in hand. When we all took a break Jenny went off to the john. I wandered over to where Zak was leaning in a corner. He’s the Can’s Number One word magician in ordinary conversation, but I’ve noticed that he doesn’t stand out much at the Socials. He hardly ever dances and he doesn’t say much.

  “What’re you doing hiding over here?” I asked.

  “Passing the time.”

  “Eyeing the girls, you mean. Why not ask one to dance? They don’t bite. Not often, anyway.”

  “I’m sizing them up. Picking out the target.”

  “Target for what?”

  “Remember Ishi’s Lady X?”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s got to be in this room. Right in front of us.” He gestured dramatically.

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybes, she’s here. Unless she was some twenty-year-old.” His eyes widened at the implications. “Say, you don’t suppose he might’ve—”

  “Look, who can tell? That information’s lost.”

  “Ah. my friend, but the Lady X is not. All I have to do is find her.”

  “I think you’re looking at this the wrong way.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s not a rabbit hunt. I mean, you don’t just put her in your sights and whammo, there you are.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well…” I wasn’t sure quite what I did mean. “Look, it’s got to mean something more than that.”

  He smirked. “Old romantic Matt.”

  “Maybe I’ve just got higher standards, huh?” I growled.

  Zak shrugged. “We were discussing technique, not principles.”

  “No, look, I don’t even think your approach will work. If you zoom in on some poor girl, right away she’s going to suspect what you’re after. She’ll turn off, fast.”

  Zak shrugged again. “We’ll see, we’ll see.”

  I pitied the girl Zak came on with. He’d stand offshore and try the familiar verbal barrage to soften her up. Then he’d follow it with a vigorous assault on the beaches. She’d push him right back into the sea, I was pretty sure of that. Still… I looked around at the hundred or so kids in the rec hall. Somewhere in here was Lady X, Zak was probably right about that. Which one? Even if I figured out who she was, there were always some goddam chaperones around. It did make you think, though…

  I shook myself. Come on Matt.

  “Hey, isn’t that—hot damn, it is!” Zak cried, and then chuckled.

  I looked toward the door. Yuri was standing there, halfway in. He was wearing some breeches that looked like leather, and a flowery, ruffled shirt, with cuffs that flared open. “Geez, what’s that?” I said in wonder.

  Then I noticed that a slightly shorter man was gesturing for Yuri to come on in. Yuri’s father. I’d seen him around.

  Zak said, “Looks like some costume from the Middle Ages.”

  Yuri’s father called, “Dr. Matonin, I propose a new event for these Socials.” He smiled broadly and tugged Yuri through the hatchway. By now everybody had noticed Yuri’s getup and the whole room was quiet. “A traditional Ukrainian dance, the sava-bodnaya. I think the children will enjoy it just as much as your more western dances.”

  Dr. Sagdaeff looked a little red in the nose and he was perspiring freely. I guessed maybe he’d had a little bit to drink. Yuri stood beside him, looking like he’d rather be a thousand klicks away. In fact, being dead wouldn’t be a bad alternative, either.

  “Well, I suppose later we can try a few steps,” Dr, Matonin said diplomatically. “This is a social dancing occasion, but…”

  “Yuri here, I had him put on the traditional costume. Brought all the way from the Ukraine, it is.”

  “So I see.”

  “It will help to get in the mood. Show her, Yuri.”

  Yuri bit his lip. He stood frozen, the breeches too tight for him. His eyes raced around the room and his face was red. “Papa. I…”

  “Yuri! Dance!” His father’s voice was suddenly harsh.

  “Papa—”

  “Come!” Dr. Sagdaeff began clapping loudly and stomping one foot a quarter-note off the claps. It made a pleasant contrapuntal effect. “Come!”

  Yuri started to do a little jogging dance. The steps were intricate. The rhythm picked you up, though. It was a good dancing beat. I found my own foot tapping along.

  It was fine as long as you didn’t look at Yuri. The big lug bounced around, feet busy, face rigid. You could tell he was embarrassed. On somebody smaller the costume would’ve looked odd, but interesting, and maybe exotic. On Yuri it just looked funny.

  Jenny came over and gave me a sidelong glance, grimacing.

  Zak whispered, “Good grief, it’s agonizing to watch.”

  “Yes,” Jenny said. “How can a father make a public exhibit of his son that way?”

  “He must have Yuri on pretty tight reins.” I murmured.

  “Looks like it,” Jenny agreed. “That might explain a lot.”

  I said, “Like what?”

  “What makes Yuri run, Matt-o,” Zak put in.

  “You mean his father?”

  “Might be,” Jenny said. “Something’s driving Yuri to compete. A father who can force you to, well—”

  Zak supplied, “Make a fool of yourself in public.”

  “Yes. Well, a father like that can egg you on to succeed, win every contest, be the best on every test. This certainly fits the pattern and helps explain it.”

  “Shrewd analysis,” Zak said.

  I thought about it. It didn’t make Yuri any more likable, but maybe it did clear up some mystery about why he was always such a dorp. Parents can do you a lot of damage.

  By now Yuri was grimacing and glaring around at everybody, as if daring them to say something. His father was gaily clapping and stomping, oblivious to it all. He probably was remembering some childhood dance of his own, back in the sunny-speckled wheat fields of the Ukraine. It didn’t seem to matter to him that Yuri didn’t share his fondness.

  Jenny murmured, “That’s part of the Yuri riddle, all right. But, y’know, sometimes I think guys who are big bruisers act that way because that’s what we expect of them. There’s some truth to that, too.”

  I frowned, trying to puzzle that one out. Jenny sees these things clearer than I do. Hell, I was beginning to think everybody did.

  Dr. Matonin raised her voice. “Dr. Sagdaeff? Dr. Sagdaeff!” The clapping slowed and stopped. Yuri quit dancing with obvious relief. “I’m sure we would all be interested in learning such a dance…later, after we have had some social dancing. We thank you very much for the demonstration. If you could help us learn it later?” Then she smoothly guided some couples into a Latin American number as the canned music swelled up again.

  Jenny said reflectively, “Actually, it is an interesting looking dance.”

  “Kind of like square dancing,” I said, “but harder.”

  “Ummmm,” she mused. “Look at Yuri. Does he look awkward.”

  Yuri was standing around, looking at the couples. His peasant costume or whatever it was had looked okay while he danced and while he moved around. Standing still, he just looked sill
y. “Yeah,” I said.

  “You know,” she said, “your smirk doesn’t have to be that superior.”

  “C’mon, let’s dance,” I said. But she was right. It did feel good to gloat.

  Chapter 11

  I got up early the next day and beat Jenny down to the vehicle bay. I fooled around, poking my nose into some other ships moored nearby, until I got a call over suit radio. I turned and saw her kicking off from the lock.

  “My Captain cometh,” I said.

  “Not me, kid. You’re in charge on this one.”

  “What about Roadhog? Is she fueled? He, I mean.”

  “Don’t fight it. The Roadhog is a she. And of course she’s fueled. I’m not sloppy at maintenance.”

  We coasted into Berth G, freed the lines, and Jenny gracefully swung into the pilot’s couch. She called in to the bridge and had an updated flight plan transmitted to the shuttle computer’s memory. Then I took over. I ran quickly through the standard checklist. Jenny sat on the flat bench next to the couch, buckled herself in and gave me the high sign.

  I backed us cautiously out of the berth and brought the nose up to a point at the “top” of the Can. We still carried the angular velocity of the Can, so I gave the lateral jets a burst. We backed away from the Can’s inner wall. The Can appeared to spin faster and faster and I thumbed in more side thrust.

  I gave Roadhog one burst of LOX through the rear jets and we coasted for the top of the Can in one long, clean line. We glided by the shadowy shapes of parked craft, safety neons splashing pools of light over them. The Can pinwheeled about us. Viewports passed, glowing softly. In one a woman looked up at her skylight and saw us. She waved. Jenny waved back. The interior of the Can, with its soft yellow glow, already seemed far away.

  We passed the Sagan. Thick hoses sprouted from her water tanks and snaked into sockets on the Can’s axis. Above, the pancake sac of water reflected Jove’s amber light on its mottled plastic skin. As we reached the top of the Can I bled out a stream of air from the decelerating jets and we came to a halt.

  The water shields are held by a few mooring lines, stationary above the Can itself. There’s about fifty meters clearance between the Can top and the pancake, enough for us to slip out. The shields are only moved to let out a big cruiser ship like the Sagan; otherwise they sit there, blocking high energy electrons. I turned us so we pointed out, between the Can and the gray water-shield. Jupiter peeked over the rim as we cleared the top of the Can. It was a crescent; the Can was moving sunward in its orbit.

  The shuttle shifted and murmured under me. The computer program was taking over. I punched the release button on the small control board and instantly felt a slight thrust. The ion engine had cut in. It made no noise; it’s a low-impulse system.

  We went straight up, away from the Lab, as though the Can was a cannon and we had been shot out of it. I was looking at Jupiter through the spaces in the Roadhog’s floor.

  “Hey,” I said, “we’re heading due north.”

  “Most observant. We’re going into a polar orbit.”

  “Satellite Fourteen is in a polar orbit?”

  “Nearly. Monitoring and Astrophysics are making it pretty popular. Satellite Fourteen is in an eccentric orbit that takes it in close to Jupiter’s poles.”

  “So it gets the best data on the storms?”

  “That’s what I hear. I just fix ’em, I don’t try to understand ’em. Look, you can see the storms now.”

  I followed her pointing finger. Near the north pole of Jupiter the bands broke and eddied and lost some of their bright orange color. I could make out tiny whirlpools that churned up the edges of the bands.

  “Is a storm brewing?” I said.

  “No, we’re seeing the last gasp of one that peaked five days ago. Astrophysics said they didn’t think another would come along for a while yet. but that’s only a guess.”

  “What’s the radiation level like during the storm?”

  “High. Higher than they’ve ever seen before, Astrophysics says. Why, worried?”

  “Yup. I’m too young to be broiled in an electron shower. Are the shielding fields on?” I looked at my control panel. Everything glowed green.

  “Yes, they went on automatically when we left the Lab. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t mind me. I’m a natural worrier,” I looked around at the superconducting bars that ring the Roadhog, though of course you can’t see the magnetic fields they produce. Those bars were all that kept Jupiter’s Van Allen belts from frying us alive.

  Radiation is a subtle thing. You can’t see it or taste it, but those little electrons and protons can fry you in an hour. They are why the Lab wasn’t orbited in close to Jupiter.

  Earth and Jupiter have one big thing in common: radiation belts. A man named Van Allen discovered them back in the early Space Age, around Earth. A little later Jupiter turned out to have them, too. Mars doesn’t, nor Venus, nor Mercury. Reason: no magnetic fields. Earth and Jupiter generate big magnetic fields around them, and those fields trap high-energy particles that the Sun throws out.

  They’re called belts because that’s what they look like—big doughnuts around Jupiter and Earth, many planetary radii in diameter. The Lab had to be located out beyond the worst part of that doughnut or we’d be cooked with radiation. Even so, the Lab has water tanks that line the outside of the Can and stop incoming particles before they can reach the living quarters.

  The Roadhog hasn’t got that mass. It’s a shuttle, engineered for speed and economy. So you don’t go out in it during radiation storms.

  Extra mass might have stopped the pellet that killed Ishi. Maybe there was an argument for putting shielding around the shuttles. Magnetic fields don’t affect pieces of rock, because the rock is electrically neutral; only encasing a shuttle in heavy walls would make it really safe.

  But I wasn’t planning on applying for an insurance policy, anyway. I stopped brooding about Ishi and turned to Jenny.

  “What’s wrong with Satellite Fourteen, anyway?”

  “Here.” she said, handing me a clipboard with a maze of circuit diagrams on it. “A problem for the student.”

  I found the circuit component that was fouling up pretty fast. The tough part was the Faraday cup.

  The cup on most satellites, including Fourteen, is a simple affair. It has an electrostatically-charged grid open to the space around the satellite. Any charged particle that wanders by can be attracted by the grid. When it is, it picks up some added velocity and overshoots the grid—goes right through it—and runs smack into a collector. The process builds up a voltage across a capacitor. Every so often a watch officer in Monitoring—somebody like me—will call for a count from the satellite. The capacitor will be discharged, the voltage measured, and a little arithmetic gives the number of particles (usually electrons) the cup captured.

  Satellite Fourteen’s cup wasn’t working. I had my own idea why. I didn’t think they were well designed.

  “Hey, look,” Jenny said. I looked down, through the Roadhog’s floor. A brownish whirlpool, thick with blotches of red, was churning in the clouds below.

  “That one reminds me of the Red Spot,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it before. Odd color.”

  “There are some funny things going on in that atmosphere. Old Jove is putting on a show for us.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “Come back in ten years. Maybe we’ll know then.”

  The nice thing about having somebody along on a trip is the reassurance you get. It’s easy, out in space, to get swallowed up in the vastness of everything. Being able to talk to somebody brings things back into perspective.

  So we chattered away. I’d never spent that much time alone with Jenny, and I found out a lot of things about her I didn’t know. What I saw, I liked.

  That’s the way it went, for six hours. Yes, six. Jupiter is big. The Roadhog pushed steadily at our backs and took us upward, toward the north pole, so we could match
orbits with Satellite Fourteen.

  We spotted a tiny glimmering dot on our left while the Roadhog was making final adjustments with its maneuvering jets. It grew rapidly: a silvery ball sprouting antennas and small attitude jets. It was one of the older satellites, which probably explained why it failed.

  Jenny stayed in the shuttle while I coasted across to the satellite. It was basketball-sized, its shiny skin pitted. I pulled out several shelves of circuitry, disconnected the Faraday cup and went back to Jenny.

  We both looked over the parts and discussed what to do about them. That’s the advantage of sending out a human being, rather than relying on multiple backup systems—the space around Jupiter is unknown, and no engineer back on Earth can predict what will happen to his pet gadget after a few years of pounding from high-energy electrons, dust and micrometeorites. In jargonese they call it “failure to allow for contingencies.”

  We made some repairs on the circuitry. Working in gloves is awkward and even slipping microchip decks snugly into place can be difficult. We both had modified our suits for the work. We had a big flap on the chest that pulled down, revealing a big adhesive patch. Pull the flap down, stick the securing tab on a knee, and there you have half a square meter of microhooks. They’ll hang onto anything until you give it a good tug. If you’ve ever chased a lost thermocouple over a cubic klick of space, because you let go of it for a nanosecond or two, you’d appreciate an adhesive patch. Some techs have them on their arms, legs, every place they can see and reach.

  After the standard repairs, I looked at the cup. It was a mess. Intermittent shorts, crappy signal characteristics. I didn’t think much of the design, either. Looked like ancient history. “Maybe we should keep it as it is,” I suggested. “For a museum piece.” Under Jenny’s schoolmarm eye I took it out, worked the replacement in, checked connections, and then ran a few tests on the rest of the oversized silver basketball. Everything looked okay. I coasted back.

  “Not bad,” Jenny said. “You only took fifty-three minutes.”