by Ben Bova
Grant flushed with shock. He’d never heard Muzorawa use indecent language before.
“I’ve got to get some sleep,” Zeb said. “Dr. Wo’s been driving us all very hard.” He struggled to his feet, then added, almost as an afterthought, “And the Old Man is pushing himself harder than any of us.”
Grant got out of his chair. “Wo’s driving himself? Why?”
With a weary smile, Muzorawa explained, “He intends to lead the mission. Didn’t you know?”
“You mean he’s going to go with you?”
“That is his intention.”
“But he can’t walk! He can’t even get out of his chair.”
“Yes, he can. The therapies are beginning to help him, at last. He can stand up by himself now—with braces on his legs.”
“He can’t lead a mission into the ocean in that condition.”
Muzorawa started for the lab door, and Grant saw that he himself was not walking very well. With a shake of his head, the Sudanese replied, “He claims it doesn’t matter. We really don’t need our legs inside the craft.”
“You don’t?”
“We’ll all be immersed in pressurized PFCL. It’s the only way to survive the gravity pull and the pressure of a deep dive.”
“What’s PFCL?” Grant asked.
“Perfluorocarbon liquid. It carries oxygen to the lungs and removes carbon dioxide. We’ll be breathing in a pressurized liquid.”
“You’ll be floating, then,” Grant said.
“Correct. It’s something like zero gee. That’s why we’re training for the mission in the dolphin tank.”
“I didn’t know.”
Muzorawa placed a finger over his Ups, the sign for silence. “Now you do, my friend.”
SIMULATIONS
Grant wanted to ask Lane about the dolphin tank, but he had forced himself to stay clear of her since the evening he’d spent in her quarters. Avoid temptation, he kept telling himself sternly. He spent his evenings sending long, rambling messages back to Marjorie and rereading hers to him.
Somewhat to his surprise, there had been no repercussions over his stained trousers. Either the guards who’d seen him that night hadn’t thought enough of the incident to repeat it to anyone else, or the station’s gossip-mongers didn’t consider it worth their notice. Whenever he bumped into O’Hara she was cordial and polite, businesslike but friendly at the same time. No mention of the brief kiss that bothered Grant so much. No personal emotions at all that he could discern.
You’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Grant told himself time and again. But he dreamed about O’Hara, despite his strenuous efforts not to. How do you not think about something? he demanded of himself. Take no pleasure in it, he heard the advice of his moral counselor from his teen years. If you rigorously reject any thought that’s pleasurable, then there’s no sin to it.
He prayed for strength to resist temptation. Yet the more he prayed, the more he thought about Lane. Neutered, she had said. The electronic biochips somehow block out the sex drive. Is that a side effect, an accident? Or did Wo make it that way on purpose?
Each message he got from Marjorie he read over and over again, like a rare treasure, like a drowning man clutching at a lifebuoy. Until…
Marjorie was sitting at a desk in some sort of office, or perhaps it was a hospital. Grant couldn’t see enough of the background to tell. Besides, his attention was focused on Marjorie, on her soulful brown eyes and beautiful dark hair. She’d clipped her hair short; it framed her face in thick, luxuriant curls.
“I guess that’s all the news from here in Bolivia,” she said cheerfully. “They’re sending me back home for a month’s R&R. I’ll take a trip to see your parents.”
Before Grant could even think about that, she added, “Oh, and Mr. Beech called to say he hasn’t heard from you. He’d like you to send him a call when you get a chance.”
Ellis Beech.
“That’s all for now, darling. I’ll send you a ’gram when I’m at your folks’ house. Bye! I love you!”
The display screen went blank as Grant sagged back in his chair. Beech wanted to hear from him. I’ll bet he does, Grant thought. But I don’t have anything to tell him.
So far, the New Morality had exerted no pressure at all on Grant; they hadn’t even tried to communicate with him, until now. And all Grant could report to them is that one crewed probe into the ocean failed disastrously and Dr. Wo was readying another mission. They already know that, Grant said to himself. I’ve been here for months now and I don’t know more than they knew when they sent me here.
In a way, though, he felt almost glad of that. He resented being ordered to spy on the scientists, resented being shipped out to Jupiter to suit the prying whims of a man like Beech and his unseen but powerful superiors. You’ve got to decide which side you’re on, Grant remembered Beech telling him. Why do there have to be opposing sides? Why can’t we study Jupiter without the New Morality poking their noses into it?
Confused, miserable, Grant sat up for hours watching and rewatching all of Marjorie’s messages to him. He found that he couldn’t picture her face if he didn’t study her videos.
Sleep just would not come. He was too upset, too resentful. His mind kept spinning the same thoughts over and over again. At last he pulled on a pair of coveralls and trudged barefoot down to the cafeteria for some hot chocolate. The place was empty, the overhead lights turned down to a dim nighttime setting.
As he stood before the dispensing machine, wondering if a cup of tea wouldn’t be better for him, he noticed Red Devlin making his way through the empty, shadowed tables.
“Up late, eh?” Devlin said cheerfully as he approached.
Grant nodded. “I can’t seem to get to sleep tonight.”
Devlin cocked his head to one side, like a red-crested woodpecker. Jabbing a finger toward the dispensing machine, he said, “Nothing in there will help much, y’know.”
Grant replied, “Maybe some hot chocolate …”
Devlin shook his head. “I’ve got just what you need. A couple pops o’ these”—he pulled a palmful of pills out of his trousers pocket—“and you’ll sleep like a baby.”
“Drugs?” Grant yelped.
With a laugh and a shake of his head, Devlin countered, “And whattaya think chocolate is? Or caffeine?”
“They’re not narcotics.”
Devlin put the pills back in his pocket. “Against your religion, eh?”
Nodding, Grant bit back the reply he wanted to make. A man who sells narcotics is evil personified, he knew. Yet Devlin seemed only to be trying to help—in his own benighted way.
“Maybe what you really need is some stimulation,” the Red Devil mused. “A VR program. I’ve got some real hot ones: fireballs, y’know.”
Before Grant could answer Devlin laughed and said, “But that’d be against your religion, too, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would,” Grant said stiffly.
“Well, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for you, then,” Devlin said good-naturedly. “But if you ever need me, you know where to find me.” He strolled off down the shadowy corridor, whistling a tune that Grant didn’t recognize.
Dr. Wo shouldn’t let him stay on this station, Grant told himself. What he sells is wrong, sinful. Still, he found himself wondering what virtual reality sex might be like. Would it really be a sin? Maybe if he could imagine himself with Marjorie …
Grant spent almost all his waking hours in the fluid dynamics lab, doggedly working out a point-by-point map of the turbulent currents in the Jovian ocean based on the scant data returned by the automated probes. The course work sent by the University of Cairo remained in his computer, untouched, ignored.
Late one afternoon Karlstad mosied into the lab, a knowing, superior grin on his pallid face. Grant was alone among the humming computers and silent experimental equipment.
“You do tend to make a hermit out of yourself, don’t you?” he asked, pulling up the wheeled c
hair next to Grant’s.
Looking up from the graphs displayed on his screen, Grant muttered, “The work doesn’t do itself, Egon.”
“It’s a shame you’re not into biology, then,” Karlstad said easily. “Like, right now I’m helping the bio team from Callisto to culture some of their subzero foraminifera.”
“Are you?” Grant turned back to his screen.
“Damned right,” said Karlstad, leaning back in the chair and clasping his hands behind his head. “Helpful little creatures. The forams are multiplying all by themselves in the rig I built for them. It simulates the ice-covered sea on Callisto very nicely. The fora do all the work and I roam around the station—”
“Interrupting people who’re trying to get their work done,” Grant finished for him.
Karlstad pretended to be wounded. “Is that any way to treat a fellow scooter?”
Grant admitted, “No, I suppose it wasn’t polite.”
“I’m not here to interrupt you. I’m here to offer you a learning experience.”
“What?”
Karlstad leaned closer. “Zeb and Lainie are going into the tank together.”
Grant felt his jaw drop open. “What do you mean?”
Laughing, Karlstad said, “Relax. Put your eyes back in your head.”
His face reddening, Grant tried to erase his mental image of O’Hara and Muzorawa together in the dolphin tank. They can’t do anything! He told himself. They’re both implanted with biochips. Still he saw her sleek and naked, gliding through the water.
“They’re going into the simulation tank,” Karlsad said, obviously enjoying Grant’s unmistakable consternation.
Before Grant could reply, he added, “And Old Woeful is going to join them.”
“The simulation tank,” Grant said dully.
Nodding, Karlstad said, “The test is supposed to be strictly off-limits to everybody except the technicians running the sim.”
The way he said that convinced Grant that Karlstad had an ace up his sleeve. Sure enough, Karlstad went on, “But I have a direct pipeline to the cameras recording the test.”
“You do? How?”
Raising one hand in a gesture of patience, the biophysicist said, “I cannot reveal my sources. But if you’ll allow me…”
He turned to the computer console next to Grant’s and pulled out the keyboard. Blowing dust from the keys, he booted up the machine manually and then tapped in a long, complex string of alphanumerics. Grant watched, fascinated despite himself, as the desktop display screen flickered and glowed.
And there was O’Hara standing in the narrow corridor outside one of the dolphin tanks in a sleek white skintight suit that glistened as if it were already wet. They seemed to be looking down at her from above. Grant realized they were watching the view from a camera set into the ceiling panels in the corridor.
“Shall we put it on the wallscreen?” Karlstad asked.
“What if someone walks in?”
He shrugged. “I’ll wipe the screen before they have a chance to figure out what we’re watching.”
“All right,” Grand said, nodding.
The wallscreen image was life size but a little grainy. He must be using a microcamera, Grant thought, with a fiberoptic link. O’Hara’s slick white wetsuit clung to her like her own skin. She doesn’t have that much of a figure, Grant told himself. Slim, almost boyish. Almost.
Muzorawa stepped into view. His suit was bright green but left his powerful looking legs bare. They were studded with implants, his skin thick with them, like a leper’s sores. No wonder they wear long trousers all the time, Grant thought, recoiling inwardly at the ugliness of it.
Half a dozen technicians in gray coveralls milled around. Karlstad clicked at the keyboard and the view abruptly shifted. Now they were looking into the dolphin tank, over Muzorawa’s shoulder. But there were no dolphins in sight. Instead, the tank contained what looked like a mockup of a control panel, a broad curving expanse of display screens and rows of lights and buttons.
Grant said, “I hope Sheena doesn’t burst in on them.”
“No, no,” Karlstad assured him. “Little Sheena’s safe in her pen, sedated up to her bony brow ridges. She’s sleeping like a three-hundred-kilo baby.”
Two technicians in dark-gray wetsuits clambered up the ladder built into the partition between tanks and cannon-balled into the water with huge splashes, one after the other.
Grant watched them settle down to the bottom of the tank, trailing bubbles from their face masks.
“Can’t you fugheads get into the tank without sloshing half the water outta it?” groused a scornful nasal voice caustically. The test controller, Grant thought, monitoring everything from some central location.
The pair of techs waved cheerfully as they sat on the bottom of the tank.
“Okay,” came the voice of the controller, slightly scratchy from static. “Let’s get this sim percolating.”
O’Hara nodded and pulled the hood of her suit over her bald scalp, then slipped on a transparent visor that covered her entire face. Two of the technicians helped her work her arms through the shoulder straps of what appeared to be an air tank, then connected a slim hose from the top of the tank to her face mask. They slid a belt of weights around her slender hips. O’Hara clicked its clasp shut.
Two other techs were doing the same for Muzorawa. Finally they checked that the air was getting through properly.
“I’m okay,” O’Hara said, her voice muffled by the mask.
Muzorawa asked for a slightly stronger air flow, and a tech adjusted a knob on the back of his tank. Then he nodded and made a circle with his right thumb and forefinger.
O’Hara turned and scampered lithely up the ladder to the top of the tank. Grant saw that her feet were bare.
“Radio check,” said a disembodied voice.
“O’Hara on freak one,” she said. It sounded somewhat fuzzy to Grant. He realized there must be a small radio built into the full-face mask.
But the controller’s voice said, “In the green. Go ahead and dunk.”
O’Hara swung her long legs over the edge of the tank and slipped into the water with hardly a ripple.
“Now that’s the way you get into the pool.” The controller’s voice was admiring.
The two techs already in the tank made exaggerated motions of applause.
Muzorawa climbed the ladder, considerably slower and more ponderous than O’Hara. It seemed to Grant that Zeb had some trouble getting his legs to work right. But he made it to the top, swinging both legs together almost as if they were inert lengths of lumber, and dropped gracelessly into the water.
“Now comes the boring part,” Karlstad murmured.
“What’s that?”
With a smirk, Karlstad answered, “The work, of course.”
O’Hara and Muzorawa, with the two technicians hovering behind them, glided to the control panel and slid their bare feet into loops set into the floor.
“Sim one-a,” the controller’s voice announced. “Separation and systems checkout. Manual procedure.”
The panel was chest high, Grant realized. The two scooters stood at it, anchored by the floor loops, and began working their way through a long countdown, punctuated by the controller’s check-off of each action they took. It was boring, Grant agreed. Repetitious and dull.
“You said Dr. Wo was going to be part of this,” Grant said to Karlstad.
“He’ll show up.”
“When?”
“When the dull routine stuff is finished Old Woeful will make his dramatic entrance, never fear.”
I ought to be working, Grant thought. I ought to be inserting the data points from last month’s probes into the equations to see how they affect the flow maps. But instead he watched O’Hara and Muzorawa as they patiently, methodically, went through the simulation.
“This is the separation procedure,” Karlstad said. “This is what they’ll have to do to disconnect the saucer from the station.”<
br />
“It takes so long?” Grant wondered aloud.
Karlstad grunted. “You don’t want to fire your jets and find that there’s still an umbilical linking you to the station proper. Could ruin your whole afternoon.”
“But still, can’t these procedures be automated? I mean, launch crews have automated—”
“Hold it!” Karlstad snapped. “Here he comes.”
All that Grant could see was the technicians outside the tank turning to look down the corridor at something beyond the camera’s view. He heard Karlstad clicking on the computer keys again, and the view shifted to show Dr. Wo rolling toward the test tank in his powered chair. He was wearing a bright red wetsuit, with shining metal braces over the lower half of his pitifully thin, weak legs.
Wo rolled up to the tank and the technicians made a reverential half circle around his chair.
“Dr. Wo,” said the controller’s disembodied voice. “We’ve completed the separation procedure. Ready to start ignition and entry simulation.”
“Good,” said Wo. “I will join the crew now.”
No one said a word. No one moved. Wo pushed himself to his feet and stood unsteadily on his steel-braced legs for a long, breathless moment. Then he took a step toward the ladder. Another step. My god, Grant thought, he’s clunking along like Frankenstein’s monster. He’ll never make it up that ladder without their help.
As if he could read Grant’s thoughts, Karlstad said, “The deal our woeful master made with the test controller is that if he could get up the ladder unassisted, he could go into the tank and participate in the sim. Otherwise, no.”
“As if the simulation controller could say no to him,” Grant sneered.
“During the sim, the controller is god almighty. If he says no, it’s no. Doesn’t matter who he’s talking to. He’s the absolute boss during the simulation.”
“And afterward?”
Karlstad shrugged.
Wo stood uncertainly at the base of the ladder and took a deep breath. Grant felt almost sorry for the man. It had taken all his energy to make the few steps from his chair to the ladder. Surely he won’t be able—
