by Ben Bova
“The trouble is on your shoulders, brightboy. Report to the security chief immediately for an extended briefing on proper handling of sensitive materials.”
“But I—”
“Immediately, I said! Don’t just sit there! Get to the security chiefs office. Understand me?”
Grant scrambled to his feet and headed for the door.
“You’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Archer,” the director called from his desk.
Turning, Grant saw that he had swung his chair away from the desk slightly. It was a powered wheelchair. Beneath his full-length tunic the director was wearing ridiculous-looking green plaid shorts, and Grant could see that Wo’s legs were pitifully thin, emaciated, scarred and twisted, dangling uselessly from his chair. He looked like a gnome or a troll from childhood tales.
If Dr. Wo was bothered by Grant’s shocked stare, he gave no hint of it.
“Get on the right track and stay on it,” he snapped. “Or else.”
“Yessir,” Grant said. “I will, sir.”
Once outside in the blessed cool of the corridor again, Grant realized that Wo gave him no chance to ask for a reassignment to Farside. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Feeling wretched, he wondered where the cursed security office might be. He knew it had to be along the corridor somewhere, there was only this one main passageway that went through the entire wheelshaped station, if he remembered the schematics correctly. But the station was so big, Grant realized he could be walking for an hour or more.
The corridor was still empty and silent; no one in sight to ask for directions. Then he spotted a videophone on the wall up ahead. He used it to pull up the station layout and found the office of the security chief, someone named Lane O’Hara.
The office was actually only a few dozen meters up the corridor. Grant hustled to it and rapped on the door, which bore O’Hara’s name.
“Come in.”
It was a much smaller room than the director’s. Grant saw that it must be an anteroom; nothing but a small desk and a single straightbacked chair in front of it. A pert young woman sat at the desk. An assistant, no doubt. There was an unmarked door on the far wall. That must be O’Hara’s office, he said to himself.
“I’m Grant Archer. The director sent me here to see Mr. O’Hara.”
“Miss O’Hara,” she corrected. “That’s me.” Rising from her chair, she extended her hand over the desk. She was at least two centimeters taller than Grant.
Surprised, Grant shook her hand as he blurted, “You’re the security chief?”
“Lane O’Hara … Elaine, if you look up my baptismal record.”
“Oh,” said Grant.
Lane O’Hara was no more than Grant’s own age, slim as a willow, her boyish figure clad in a loose slate-gray turtle-neck pullover and odd-looking shiny black leather leggings lined with rows of dull gray metal studs along the outside seams. Her face was elfin, with high cheekbones, a tilted nose, a slightly sharpish chin, and delicate lips that were curved into a pleasant smile. Her eyes were bright green, and they were smiling, too. She wore her chestnut hair tied into a tight bun at the back of her head.
“What were you expecting?” she asked. “Some great brute of a policeman, maybe?” There was a lilt in her voice that Grant had never heard before: charming, musical.
“I guess I was,” he said, smiling back at her as he followed her gesture and took the chair in front of her desk.
“Oh, we have them, too,” she said as she sat back in her little swivel chair. “On a station this size you need a few thumpers here and there, now and then.”
Grant pictured some of the stern-faced beefy security guards he d seen at school.
“Now then,” O’Hara said lightly, “the director’s all fussed about your prying into the station schematics, looking to find out what he’s got in the annex.”
“I was curious…”
“Of course you were. Everybody is. But the director is just a wee bit paranoid about the annex. It’s his special project, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” Grant said.
“How could you, seeing that you just arrived an hour or so ago?” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “Well, I’m required to put you through the standard security briefing and there’s nothing to it. I’ll try to run through it quickly enough so we can get finished with it before the cafeteria closes for the night.”
Grant asked, “What time is it here?”
O’Hara shook her head sorrowfully. “They didn’t even give you a chance to adjust your clock, did they?”
Grant realized he liked this security chief. In fact, he thought he was going to enjoy the briefing.
“OUR INTELLECTUAL COUSINS”
He didn’t. Once she got started on the station’s security regulations, O’Hara became strictly business. She called up on her wallscreen a bewildering set of rules and restrictions, then quizzed Grant about them mercilessly for what seemed like hours.
At last, with a reluctant, “I suppose that will have to do.” She dismissed Grant—but only after telling him that the cafeteria would stop serving dinner in fifteen minutes.
“I don’t know where the cafeteria is,” Grant bleated.
“Turn right outside my door and follow your nose,” O’Hara said.
Grant got up from the chair, aching slightly from having sat in it for so long.
“Better dash,” O’Hara said.
“What about you? Aren’t you going to eat?”
She sighed heavily. “I hope so. But I’ve got a bit of work to finish first. Scamper, now!”
Grant headed straight for the cafeteria, stopping only to use one of the wall phones to find its exact location.
He could have followed his ears, he realized as he approached the busy, crowded, clanging, clattering noisy cafeteria. For the first time since he’d left Earth, Grant found himself in a familiar environment. The odors of food, real cooked food instead of the microwaved packaged meals he’d had aboard Roberts, almost brought tears of joy to his eyes.
The cafeteria was a wide, busy open area on both sides of the station’s main corridor. Against the curving bulkheads on either side stood steam tables and automated dispensing machines, apparently the same on both sides. A few other latecomers were lined up there with trays in their hands, making their dinner selections. Tables were scattered across the carpeted floor, except for the cleared area of the corridor. People walked back and forth, picking tables, finding friends.
Grant realized that he didn’t know anyone in this crowd. Even though half the tables were empty, there must have been more than a hundred men and women there, chatting, eating, laughing noisily—and all of them were strangers to him.
Then he spotted Egon Karlstad sitting at a table with two women and a muscular-looking black man. But there were no empty chairs at that table. So Grant went through the line glumly, expecting to eat alone, or with strangers. His mood quickly changed, though, once he saw the quality and variety of the food available. The meats were undoubtedly soy derivatives or other synthetics, but the vegetables looked crisp and fresh, and the fruits seemed straight out of the Garden of Eden: luscious and tempting.
Those flowers on Wo’s desk are real, Grant told himself. They must have tremendous hydroponics farms here.
He loaded his tray, even taking the largest-sized cup of soymilk the machines offered, then wandered through the maze of tables, looking for a place to sit.
“Archer!” someone shouted. “Grant! Over here.”
He turned to see Karlstad standing and waving at him. Feeling immensely grateful, Grant headed toward his table.
“I don’t want to interrupt …” he said lamely as he reached the table. All four seats were still occupied.
“Nonsense,” Karlstad snapped as he pulled a chair from the next table, startling the couple who were hunched toward each other deep in intense conversation.
Grant carefully laid his tray on the table and sank into the proffered seat. “Thank you,” he sa
id.
He took his plates and cup off the tray, then—as he had seen others do—slid the tray under his chair. He started to say a swift, silent grace over his food, but Karlstad interrupted.
“Ursula van Neumann,” Karlstad said, pointing to the petulant-looking blond Valkyrie sitting on Grant’s left. She smiled as if it hurt her face. “Ursa’s one of our best computer docs. You have a problem with a simulation or an analysis, go see Ursula.”
She nodded somberly. “He tells that to so many that I am always swamped with work.”
Before Grant could reply, Karlstad turned to the other woman, a petite Oriental with a face as round and flat as a saucepan. “Tamiko Hideshi, physical chemist.”
“You come to see me,” Hideshi said, with a sparkle in her dark eyes, “if you have a problem understanding the chemistry going on in Europa’s ocean.”
Everyone at the table laughed, except Grant.
“I’m afraid I don’t get the joke,” he admitted.
Hideshi touched Grant’s arm gently. “The joke is that no one understands the chemistry going on under that damned ice. They’ve been splashing around in it for more than ten years now, with thirty years of automated probes before that, and the complexity is still beyond us.”
“Oh,” said Grant. “I see.”
“I wish I did,” Hideshi answered ruefully.
“This big bruiser here,” Karlstad said, jabbing a thumb toward the black man, “is Zareb Muzorawa. Fluid dynamics.”
“My friends call me Zeb,” said Muzorawa, in a slow, deliberate tone.
From the looks of him—muscular build, shaved scalp, a trim beard tracing his jawline, red-rimmed eyes of deepest brown—Grant expected his voice to be a powerful leonine rumble. Instead it came out soft, almost amiable, despite his grave attitude. Then he smiled and all the fierceness of his bearded face vanished in a warm friendliness.
Muzorawa was wearing a comfortably soft turtleneck pullover. Grant could see that his trousers were black, metal-studded leggings, the same as Lane O’Hara had worn. Van Neumann wore a sleeveless chemise, cut low enough to show how amply she was built. Hideshi was in frayed olive-drab coveralls.
Grant said, “I’m very happy to meet all of you.” He started to put his fork into the salad he’d selected, but Hideshi interrupted with:
“What’s your discipline?”
“I’m an astrophysicist.”
“Astrophysicist?”
With a nod, Grant added, “My special field of study is stellar collapse. You know, supernovas, pulsars, black holes … stuff like that.”
“What in the name of sanity are you doing here?”
van Neumann asked.
“Why did Dr. Wo pick you?” Karlstad added.
Grant could only shrug. “I’m doing my Public Service duty. I don’t think Dr. Wo asked for me in particular; I’m just the brightboy that the personnel board sent here.”
Karlstad nodded knowingly. “Just a warm body to fill an open slot.”
But Muzorawa countered, “I’m not so sure of that. The director is always very careful about his personnel selections. Very exact. No one comes to this station unless he wants that precise individual.”
Grant knew that was wrong. He’d been sent to this station to spy on Dr. Wo and the other scientists. Maybe Wo knows that, he thought suddenly. That’s why he’s so ticked at me.
Van Neumann’s brows knit into a worried frown. “Well, there’s no astrophysics work for you to do here, that’s for certain.”
Grant looked at each of his four companions: biophysics, computer engineering, physical chemistry, and fluid dynamics. What did it add up to? he wondered.
Aloud, he asked, “Just what is the work you’re doing here?”
Hideshi quickly answered, “Ursula and I are supporting the teams investigating the Galilean moons.”
Turning to Muzorawa, “And you?”
Muzorawa glanced at the ceiling, then replied guardedly, “I’m part of a different team, studying Jupiter.”
“The planet itself, not its moons?”
“That’s right.”
“Fluid dynamics,” Grant mused aloud. “Then you must be studying Jupiter’s atmosphere. The clouds—”
“And the life-forms,” Karlstad interrupted.
“Those big floating balloons,” said Grant. “Why are they called Clarke’s Medusas? They don’t look anything like medusas on Earth.”
“They’re about a thousand times larger,” van Neumann said.
“And they drift through the Jovian atmosphere,” added Hideshi. “Not the ocean.”
Muzorawa said, “There’s a fascinating ecology in the atmosphere. Soarbirds that nest on the Medusa balloons, for example. They live their entire life cycles aloft, never touching the surface of the ocean.”
“It’s a mutilated ecology,” Karlstad said. “It’s just starting to come back from the disaster of Shoemaker-Levy.”
Grant felt briefly confused, then remembered from high school that the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had struck Jupiter with the force of thousands of hydrogen bombs.
“That was almost a century ago,” he said. “Its effects are still being felt?”
Karlstad nodded, tight-lipped. “It must have wiped out god only knows how many species.”
“But it didn’t affect the manna,” said Hideshi.
“Manna?”
“The organic compounds that form in the clouds,”
Karlstad explained. “Carbon-chain molecules that drift down into the sea below.”
“Have you found any life-forms in the ocean?” Grant asked.
The four of them looked at one another. Then Karlstad answered, “Officially—no.”
Grant forgot his untouched dinner sitting in front of him. “But unofficially?” he asked.
Before he could answer, a short, bustling, red-haired man with a thick brick-red mustache stepped up to the table and grabbed Karlstad roughly by the shoulder. “How’s it goin’, mate? This th’ new bloke, is it?”
Karlstad grinned and nodded. “Grant Archer,” he said. “Grant, this is one of the most important men in the station: Rodney Devlin.”
“Better known as the Red Devil,” van Neumann added dryly.
“Pleased to meetcha, Grant,” said Devlin, sticking out his hand. “Just call me Red.”
From the food-stained white jacket Devlin was wearing, Grant guessed that he was a cook or some sort of cafeteria employee. He had one of those perpetually youthful faces, lean and lantern-jawed, with a big toothy grin beneath the bushy mustache.
“Red is the chef here,” Karlstad explained.
“An exaggerated job description, if I ever heard one,” jabbed Hideshi.
“More than that,” Karlstad went on, unperturbed, “Red is the man to see if you want anything—from toilet paper to sex VRs. Red actually runs this station, in reality.”
Muzorawa smiled pleasantly. “Dr. Wo doesn’t know that, of course.”
“Don’t be too sure o’ that, Zeb,” Devlin said jovially. “Grant, old sock, anything you need, you come see me. I’ll take good care o’ you. Right?”
The others all nodded or murmured agreement. Devlin banged Grant on the back, then made his way to the next table.
Grant turned back to his tablemates. “Is he really that important around here?”
Van Neumann muttered, “You’d better believe it.”
“He runs every thing!”
“Unofficially,” Muzorawa said. “Red is a kind of expeditor.”
“A facilitator,” Karlstad added.
“Every organization has one,” Muzorawa went on.
“Every organization needs one: a person who can get around the red tape, operate in between the formal lines of the organization chart.”
“A procurer,” van Neumann said flatly.
“Facilitator,” Karlstad insisted. “That’s a better word.”
Van Neumann shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her. She plainly did not like Devlin, Grant
could see.
Then he remembered their interrupted conversation. “Let’s get back to where we were … you said there’s life in Jupiter’s ocean?”
“Not so loud, please!” Muzorawa hissed.
Karlstad leaned across the table toward Grant. “The only thing we can tell you is that some of the deep probes have recorded things moving around down there,” he whispered.
“Things? Living things?”
“We don’t know,” said Muzorawa, his voice also low. With a glance at Karlstad he added, “And we are not permitted to talk about it unless you’ve been specially cleared for sensitive information.”
Grant slumped back in his chair. “All right,” he said. “I understand. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.”
“Or yourself,” said van Neumann.
“Hey, that’s right,” Karlstad said, brightening. “How’d your session with the Woeful Wo turn out?”
Grant jabbed at his salad. “He wasn’t very happy with me.”
“Why not?” Hideshi asked.
The others had all finished their dinners. Grant tried to eat as he talked.
“I was curious about that extension hanging off to one side of the station. Tried to look up its schematic in the computer system.”
“Uh-oh,” said van Neumann.
“You tripped an alarm,” Muzorawa said.
Grant nodded as he swallowed a mouthful of greens.
“So what did Old Woeful say?” Karlstad asked, grinning.
Before Grant could answer, Muzorawa nudged Karlstad in the ribs. “You should be more careful about the way you talk,” he said in a near whisper.
Karlstad’s grin faded. “He can’t have the whole cafeteria bugged.”
“You hope,” said the black man.
Turning back to Grant, Karlstad asked in a quieter, more guarded tone, “So what did the director say to you?”
“He told me to keep my nose out of sensitive areas and sent me to see the security chief.”
“No flogging?” van Neumann joked.
“Who’s on the security desk this week?” Hideshi wondered.
