Jupiter gt-10

by Ben Bova

  Wo suddenly seized the rungs of the ladder and pulled himself up, hand over hand, his legs dangling uselessly. Grant could see sweat break out on the man’s face, see his snarling, teeth-gritted determination. He made it to the top of the ladder and swung his legs over the edge, letting his feet dangle in the water.

  Two of the technicians swarmed up the ladder behind him, carrying his face mask, air tank, and weights. In minutes they had Wo properly rigged. He pushed himself off the edge of the tank and splashed awkwardly into the water. One of the technicians started to applaud, but when he saw he was alone he froze in midclap, a mortified look on his face.

  Wo sank to the bottom of the pool and swam easily to the control panel, taking his station between O’Hara and Muzorawa.

  “You’ve got to admit that he’s got guts,” Karlstad said reluctantly.

  Grant agreed with a nod.

  “You’ll never see me getting into that fish tank,” Karlstad went on.

  “But aren’t you part of the mission?”

  “Me? Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “But I thought…”

  “Wo put me on the team, yes,” Karlstad admitted. “I’ll be one of the monitors in the control center when they go. But that’s all! They couldn’t get me into that death trap unless they put a gun to my head. Maybe not even then.”

  THE WRATH OF WO

  It was boring and fascinating at the same time, watching the three of them going through the simulation. Grant kept telling himself that he should get back to his work, he shouldn’t be wasting his time this way, but he could not take his eyes from the wallscreen.

  Wo was clearly in charge, and enjoying it. Instead of remaining anchored at the instrument panel as O’Hara and Muzorawa did, he pulled his feet free of the floor loops and floated easily, almost lazily in the big tank. Hovering over the other two, drifting slightly from one side to the other, Wo gave orders and did all the talking with the test controller.

  “He’s enjoying himself, isn’t he?” Grant asked rhetorically.

  Karlstad hmmphed. “First time he’s been able to get around without his chair since the accident.”

  “No wonder he likes it.”

  “He also likes the feeling of power, don’t forget that.”

  “He gets that all the time,” Grant countered. “He’s got more power around here than God… just about.”

  “There are different kinds of power, Grant. Right now, in that tank, he feels physically strong. I’ll bet he’s thinking in the back of his mind that he could grab Lainie and pop her and she’d welcome the thrill.”

  Grant felt his face flush again and Karlstad snickered at him. “Hit a nerve, did I?”

  “You can be pretty crude sometimes.”

  With a tilt of his head, Karlstad replied, “Why not? Sticks and stones, you know. Words can’t hurt you.”

  “I thought the biochips short-circuited the sex drive,” Grant said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Lane.”

  Karlstad’s knowing grin turned into a smirk. “The chips don’t do anything about the drive: That’s in the head, in the brain.”

  “But—”

  “They apparently shut down all the sensory nerves in the groin, though,” Karlstad went on. “That must’ve been Wo’s brilliant idea.”

  “Why would he do that?” Grant wondered.

  “The crew on the deep mission will be cooped up in that saucer for weeks. Wo doesn’t want any of them distracted by human frailties.”

  Grant nodded, thinking, He’s taken away the sensations but left the desire. That must be as close to hell as a man can get.

  “I’ve got to get back to my work,” Grant said, surprised to hear his own words.

  “You don’t want to watch the rest of this?”

  “It’s not all that interesting.”

  “Watching luscious Lainie in that skintight suit? That’s not interesting?”

  Grant turned back to his desktop and commanded the computer to bring up its active screen again. The screen saver’s fractal pattern disappeared, replaced by the same graph Grant had been working on when Karlstad had interrupted him.

  “Or maybe,” Karlstad said with a wolfish grin, “watching Lainie is too interesting for you. Is that it?”

  Grant snapped, “I have too much work to do to sit around watching—”

  “Hold one!” the simulation controller’s voice called out. “Medical hold.”

  The three people in the tank looked up reflexively, bubbles rising from their masks.

  “Dr. Wo,” said the controller, “we’re getting a sharp rise in your blood pressure readings. Your pulse is starting to spike, as well.”

  “It’s temporary. Monitor and—”

  “Test procedures call for a halt when a subject exceeds the preset medical parameters, sir,” the controller said, his tone respectful but firm.

  “It’s temporary, I say!”

  O’Hara and Muzorawa had stopped their work at the instrument panel. Glaring red lights were blinking along the panel, casting shimmering highlights in the water.

  Even more reasonably, the controller said, “Dr. Wo, I have no choice but to shut down the simulation.”

  “Not necessary!” Wo snapped, flailing his arms.

  “But the safety protocols—”

  “This is the medical officer,” a woman’s voice broke in. “This simulation is terminated.”

  Karlstad, still sitting beside Grant, broke into a low chuckle.

  “What’s funny?” Grant asked.

  “Several things. First, seeing Wo’s macho act collapse around his tiny little ears.”

  Wo was still arguing with both the controller and the medical officer. But now all the lights on the panel were a steady glowering red.

  “Second, knowing that his blood pressure is going up even higher because he can’t get his way.”

  Grant didn’t think it was funny.

  “But the funniest thing of all is the medic,” Karlstad went on. “Old Woeful can’t muscle her.”

  “The medical officer can’t be overruled?”

  “Not this one. She’s due to ship out on the next supply craft. And she’s got a full residence at the university hospital in Basel. Wo can’t do a thing to her.”

  “She’s shut down the sim.”

  “She certainly has. And I imagine she’s shut down Wo’s plan to head up the deep mission, as well.”

  * * *

  The next few weeks were quickly dubbed “the Wrath of Wo.”

  Frustrated in his desire to command the upcoming deep mission, the station director turned his fury on everyone and anyone who crossed his path. Dozens of scooters were summarily banished from the station, sent out to the frozen wastes of Europa and the other Jovian moons, exposed to Jupiter’s intense radiation bombardment, forced to live for weeks on end inside armored pressure suits while grappling on the ice with drilling equipment like common oilfield roughnecks.

  All the technicians who worked the ill-starred simulation were relocated. Several were sent packing back to Earth, with the worst possible job ratings that Wo could write. The simulation controller was shipped off to Selene, with a stinging evaluation inserted into his dossier. Even so, they were all glad to get away with their skin still intact.

  “He can’t do anything about Lainie and Zeb,” Karlstad said confidently to Grant in the midst of the weeks-long rampage. But he whispered now, and spoke of the director only when the two of them were alone. “He needs them for the mission.”

  “Who’s going to command the mission?” Grant whispered back.

  “Zeb will, if Wo’s got any shred of common sense left in him. Zeb’s the most capable person on the team.”

  Grant wondered. He stayed as far away from Dr. Wo as he could, working steadily in the fluid dynamics lab, keeping his nose clean—and on the grindstone. He even tried to avoid being seen with O’Hara and Muzorawa, on the theory that although Wo could not directly punish them for witn
essing his humiliation, he might very well punish their friends.

  “He can’t let the mission drift into limbo,” Karlstad said, still whispering even though they were alone in his quarters, well after the cafeteria had closed for the night. “He’s got to appoint a new commander and realign the crew assignments.”

  “There’s a vacancy on the crew” said Grant. “Doesn’t that mean that one of the backups will be put on the active list?”

  Karlstad’s eyes went round. “There’s only three backups.”

  “And you’re one of them.”

  “He won’t pick me,” Karlstad said, shaking his head as if to get rid of the very idea of it. “Irene and Frankovich are much better qualified.”

  Grant had barely met the other two; Irene Pascal was a medical specialist in neurophysiology, Bernard Frankovich was a biochemist.

  “But you’re one of the available backups,” Grant said, surprised at how much he was enjoying the look of sheer terror in Karlstad’s normally ice-calm eyes.

  “He won’t pick me,” Karlstad muttered again. “He won’t. He can’t!”

  Several days later all of the Jovian team were called into a meeting by Dr. Wo. To his surprise, Grant was included in the summons. Why me? he asked himself. But he made certain to show up at the conference room next to the director’s office several minutes ahead of the appointed time.

  Nine men and women crowded into the small, austere conference room, four of them in the black studded leggings that marked them as crew or backup. They milled around for several minutes, talking in guarded whispers until the moment for the meeting arrived.

  Precisely at that second, the door from Dr. Wo’s office slid open. Everyone froze in place as the director wheeled himself to the head of the conference table, the faint hum of his chair’s electric motor the only sound in the room. Suddenly they all scrambled for seats at the far end of the table, away from the director. It was like a brief, intense game of musical chairs. Faster than most of the others, Grant grabbed one toward the end of the table and sat down, flanked by O’Hara on his right and Pascal, the neurophysiologist. Karlstad sat exactly opposite him.

  Without preamble Wo began, “The medical people have scrubbed me from the mission.”

  He paused. Everyone around the conference table made sympathetic noises.

  “Therefore,” the director went on, “it is necessary to appoint a new mission commander.”

  He looked toward the open door to his office, and a woman stepped hesitantly through, limping noticeably. A sigh of recognition wafted through the room, almost a moan, Grant thought. The woman was a stranger to him, but obviously most of the others knew her. Grant glanced across the table at Karlstad; his long, pallid face looked aghast.

  “Most of you already know Dr. Krebs,” said Wo. “She will be commander of the next mission and deputy director of the station, with the specific duty of preparing for the crewed flight.”

  Grant got an eerie feeling, a strange tingling at the base of his neck. The aura around the table was tense, almost terrified. If most of the people here know Dr. Krebs, he thought, they certainly don’t like her.

  Krebs was short and stocky, barely taller than the seated Dr. Wo, her arms thick and heavy. Her legs were already encased in the studded leggings that told Grant she’d been implanted with biochips. Her face was square, blocky, her deeply black hair obviously a wig cut in a short Dutch boy style with bangs that came down to where her eyebrows should be. The complexion of her face was a pasty gray, as if she hadn’t seen sunlight or a UV lamp in many years. The expression on that face was granite-hard: square jaw thrust out pugnaciously, pale-blue eyes surveying all the faces turned toward her, peering at each individual in the room for a few seconds and then turning to the next. She seemed to be saying, I know you don’t like me; the feeling is thoroughly mutual.

  Those accusing eyes focused on Grant for a moment, freezing him even though he wanted to turn away.

  At last she turned her attention to the next person. Grant felt as if he’d just been freed from a police interrogation.

  “You,” she said, pointing at Karlstad.

  “Me?” he asked, his voice squeaking slightly.

  “Karlstad,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You will join the crew. Prepare for the surgery immediately.”

  Grant stared across the table at Karlstad. He looked like a man who had just seen his own death.

  KREBS

  “Christel Krebs,” Frankovich said, hunching forward gloomily over the cafeteria table. “She’s Wo’s ultimate revenge on us.”

  Muzorawa nodded glumly. Even O’Hara looked worried. The four of them unconsciously leaned their heads together and whispered like conspirators. The cafeteria was only half filled, yet echoing with the noise and clatter of other dinner conversations. Still, they whispered to one another.

  Frankovich was a short, roundish, balding man. Grant had seen the biochemist often enough in his days as a lab technician, but the man had hardly spoken six words to him before this.

  “What are they doing to Egon?” Grant asked. “What’s the surgery that Krebs spoke of?”

  “Wiring the biochips into his legs,” Muzorawa said.

  “And teaching him to breathe underwater,” added Frankovich, with a shudder.

  Grant knew that the crew would be immersed in a thick perfluorocarbon liquid during the mission. It was the only way they could withstand the enormous pressures of the Jovian ocean. They would be living in their own high-pressure liquid environment, breathing oxygen from the perfluorocarbon, hoping that the pressure inside the cells of their bodies could be raised high enough to balance the pressure outside their ship. It worked in theory. It worked in tests. During the first mission into Jupiter’s ocean, though, one crew member had been killed and the others injured. Wo had never recovered from his mangling; Grant wondered if Krebs was fully recuperated.

  “Poor Egon,” O’Hara said. “He was terrified of having this happen to him.”

  “Couldn’t he refuse?” Grant asked. “I mean, we’ve still got our legal rights.”

  With a shake of his head, Muzorawa replied, “Egon doesn’t. Technically, he’s a convicted felon, serving out his sentence here.”

  “That’s why Krebs picked him. He can’t refuse.”

  “I’m just glad it wasn’t me,” Frankovich said fervently.

  “It’s not that bad,” said O’Hara. “Once you get over the surgery, once you’re connected to the ship.”

  “Connected?” Grant wondered aloud.

  “The biochips link you to the ship’s systems,” Muzorawa explained. “Instead of using keypads or voice commands, your nervous system and the ship’s systems are directly linked.”

  Grant felt his eyebrows hike up.

  “It’s … different,” O’Hara said. “Sort of a feeling of power, you know. You feel the ship’s machinery. You and the ship become one.”

  Muzorawa nodded. “I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s …” He groped for a word.

  “Intimate,” said O’Hara.

  “Yes. A sort of out-of-body experience, yet it’s happening within your own skull.”

  “Almost like sex,” O’Hara said.

  “Better,” said Muzorawa.

  “Better, is it?” she challenged.

  Muzorawa smiled knowingly. “It lasts longer.”

  Grant changed the subject. “But what about Krebs? Who is she? Where did she come from?”

  “She was on the first mission,” Zeb answered. “She was Wo’s second-in-command.”

  “She actually piloted the mission craft,” said O’Hara, “and she got pretty badly smashed up in the accident.”

  “Some people claim she caused the accident,” said Frankovich. “And now Wo’s put her in command.”

  “I thought she was at Selene,” Grant said.

  “She was,” O’Hara replied. “Recuperating from the accident, don’t you know.”

  “She
must be fully recovered,” Muzorawa offered.

  Frankovich shook his head. “Physically, perhaps. But did you get a look at her eyes? Like a homicidal maniac.”

  Neither Muzorawa nor O’Hara replied.

  Another question rose in Grant’s mind. “If you were linked with the submersible’s systems when the accident happened, what did it feel like? Did you feel pain? What?”

  Muzorawa closed his eyes briefly. “Lane and I were off duty when it happened.”

  “Thank the saints in heaven,” O’Hara whispered.

  “Jorge Lavestra was killed. Krebs and Dr. Wo were badly injured.”

  Frankovich hunched forward in his chair and clasped his hands on the tabletop. “From what I hear, Lavestra had just plugged into the ship’s systems. He wasn’t physically injured. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage.”

  “A stroke?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” said O’Hara. “Being linked to the ship at the wrong time can be fatal.”

  NEW ASSIGNMENTS

  Grant woke up the next morning soaked in a cold sweat, his bedsheet twisted and tangled around his legs. Vaguely he remembered a dream, a nightmare, about strangers pinning him down and slicing away his flesh with sharp scalpels while he struggled and screamed for mercy.

  It was early, he saw. He phoned Karlstad, but there was no answer. Recovering from his surgery, Grant guessed as he showered, then pulled on his slacks and shirt and headed for the cafeteria. It was nearly empty at this hour, although Red Devlin was laughing and chatting with a few of the early birds. He must sleep behind the counters, Grant thought.

  It wasn’t until the next evening, at dinner, that he saw Karlstad again. Egon entered the cafeteria, walking uncertainly, his legs sheathed in the same kind of studded black leggings, wearing the same kind of turtleneck pullover that O’Hara and Muzorawa always wore, his head completely hairless.

  Grant left his half-finished dinner and rushed to Karlstad.

  Egon smiled halfheartedly as Grant came up to him.

  “Well,” he said shakily, “I survived the surgery, at least.”