Jupiter gt-10

by Ben Bova

  Godlike, he expanded his senses. He saw, sensed, felt every part of the ship. The crack in the outermost hull was like the sharp slash of a knife wound; the labored straining of the thrusters like the excruciating knotting of cramped, overworked muscles.

  Zheng He was losing buoyancy, maintaining its position only by dint of the thrusters’ full-throated push against the ever-present power of Jupiter’s pervasive gravity.

  And he saw the sharklike creatures, more than a dozen of them, swarming above and on both sides of the slowly sinking submersible.

  Karlstad was babbling, but it was a faint jabbering noise far in the background of Grant’s consciousness. I am the ship, he told himself. I’m wounded, badly hurt. How can I get out of this? How can I get away? When Krebs tried to climb out of this they battered us so hard the hull cracked. What should I do? What can I do?

  Go inert, he heard a voice in his mind say. Shut down the thrusters. Let the sharks think you’re dead. Let them find out that you’re metal, not flesh; an alien, not food.

  You’ll sink. You’ll sink deeper, the outside pressure will increase, the crack in the hull will get worse, you’ll be torn apart, crushed, before you can get the thrusters started again.

  Maybe. All this flashed through Grant’s mind in less than a second. Through it all, the one—only—hope he had was the fusion generator. It purred along as if nothing outside its alloy shell mattered in the slightest. That little artificial star kept on fusing atomic nuclei, transforming matter into energy, oblivious to the wants or needs of the humans who had built it, those whose lives depended on it. Grant felt its warmth like the fire in a hearth, comforting, protecting against the raging storms outside.

  He shut down the thrusters. He turned off the outside lights. The ocean out there went black, sunless, a blind oblivion. Except that Grant could see; through the ship’s infrared sensors and sonar he could see the imagery of the huge sharks gliding around and above him.

  “We’re sinking!” Karlstad repeated, his voice high and shaking, even in their fluid environment.

  “Take care of Krebs,” Grant said evenly. “See how Lane and Zeb are doing.”

  “But we’re sinking!”

  “We’ll be all right,” Grant said, hoping it was true. “I’ve got her under control,” he lied.

  The sharks were coming closer, nosing around the slowly settling Zheng He. Can’t you sense that we’re metal? Grant asked them silently. Are you too stupid to see that we’re not food?

  One of the huge creatures brushed against the sub, knocking it sideways. Grant saw it coming, held on to his console.

  “Jesus!” Karlstad yelped. “Jesus. Jesus.”

  Grant almost smiled. We could use His help, he thought. Does God see us this far down in this alien sea?

  A low rumbling sound, so low-pitched that Grant felt it along his aching bones rather than heard it. Long, like the rumble of distant thunder, but so powerful that it made the bridge vibrate. An earthquake sound, here where there was no ground to shake, not a solid clump of soil or a rock for tens of thousands of kilometers.

  The sonar was tingling along Grant’s nerves. He closed his eyes and saw the imagery: Something was heading their way, something superhuman, a huge power streaking through the water toward him, and it was emitting this low, thunderous profundo note as steadily as an avalanche roars down a mountainside.

  The sharks pulled away, turning in unison so fast that Grant felt the sharp waves they made as a single unified pulse in the water. The infrared sensors kicked in and showed what was approaching: that immense solitary whale. It was rushing toward the sharks like a huge cannonball fired at supersonic velocity.

  The sharks seemed to be gathering themselves into a battle formation, facing the onrushing whale. They’ve forgotten about me, Grant saw. They’re ready to confront the whale. Maybe I can slip away…

  Cautiously he lit the thrusters again. Minimum thrust. Don’t call attention to yourself. Balance your sink rate. Maintain buoyancy by using thrust to balance the leak.

  Zheng He rose a little. Grant watched through the ship’s sensors as the gigantic beast raced straight toward the waiting delta-shaped sharks. He edged the thrusters slightly higher and maneuvered the battered submersible away from the predators. All the while the ocean reverberated with that lone, sustained, low-pitched note, like the melancholy howl of a solitary wolf in a snowy wilderness, but many, many octaves lower and enormously more powerful and sustained far longer than Earthly lungs could ever achieve.

  The gigantic creature barreled into the sharks. Instead of fleeing from it, as Grant had expected, the sharks spread their formation into a wide-space net and surrounded the whale. They’re not running away from it, Grant saw. They’re attacking it!

  LEVIATHAN

  Leviathan knew it was a foolish gesture, most likely a fatal one. The alien creature seemed to be dead, gone dark, sinking slowly toward the hot abyss below.

  Still, the stranger had diverted the Darters and saved Leviathan from them. It was too late now to turn back. Once Leviathan had sounded its distress call to the Kin, the Darters left the stranger and rediscovered it, alone and near enough to attack.

  Leviathan did not wait for the predators to strike. It roared in toward them, urging all its members to their utmost effort, desperately hoping to confuse the Darters and scatter them before they could form their attack pattern.

  But they were too fast, too agile for that forlorn hope. Even as Leviathan rushed toward them, the Darters spread themselves into a screen, above, below, and on both sides of Leviathan’s charge.

  Bellowing its distress call, Leviathan barely had time to notice that the stranger was not yet dead. Even though it had gone dark and a trail of bubbles showed that its shell had been cracked, it began to emit a jet of heated water—not as vigorously as before, but still it was a sign of life.

  And then the Darters were upon Leviathan, nipping at its flanks, tearing at its flagella members. Cripple the flagella and Leviathan was helpless. But the mindless flagella were weapons as well as propulsion members. Leviathan clubbed at the Darters, felt bone snap and flesh rupture, madly hoping that if it killed a few of them, the rest would begin feeding on their own and leave Leviathan alone.

  But the Darters would never leave a lone and wounded prey. In a growing frenzy they would attack and feed, ripping through Leviathan’s protective armor to get at the vital organ-members, while the vibrations of their furious struggle would signal others from far away to join the battle and the inevitable feasting.

  Still Leviathan fought. There was nothing else to do.

  The sharks on one side suddenly scattered away from Leviathan, swooping off in rapid retreat. Leviathan wondered why, even as it fought with all its waning strength against the others. The stranger! That alien creature from the cold abyss had charged in alongside Leviathan, spraying painfully hot steam into the midst of the attacking Darters.

  But it was not enough. There were too many of the Darters, and more were coming. All the stranger had accomplished was to make certain it would be killed alongside Leviathan.

  Then the water quivered with a new vibration: a chorus of undulating notes that rose and fell in perfect unison.

  The Kin.

  RESCUE

  Grant watched, awed, fascinated, rapt so completely that he forgot the pain that racked his body, forgot even the pains that the ship suffered. That enormous, magnificent creature was battling the sharks, fighting them in a struggle that shook tiny little Zheng He like a dead leaf in a hurricane.

  The sub rattled and tossed in the wild waves thrashing through the ocean. Grant saw that the sharks were tearing at the big whale, ripping away acres of flesh with teeth the size of buzz saws. The whale was fighting back, but it seemed a hopeless, one-sided battle. Here and there a shark drifted aimlessly, broken, oozing its internal fluids. But the others kept on attacking, their frenzy growing by the minute.

  Get away! Grant told himself. While they’re busy kill
ing each other, get the hell away from here!

  But he couldn’t. No matter how his rational mind insisted that these creatures fought each other all the time, that this was their world and he had no place in it, that there was nothing he could do to help—still Grant lingered off to one side of the titanic struggle.

  Maybe there is something I can do, Grant said as he powered up the thrusters and moved toward the flank of the enormous creature. It was like driving along a mountain range, or coming toward a big city whose towers loomed before you tall and powerful. Feeling like an insect approaching an elephant, Grant drove Zheng He into the battle, hoping that the thrusters’ exhaust would boil some of the sharks or at least frighten them away.

  It worked—but it wasn’t enough. The sharks didn’t like the superheated steam; they raced away from the sub’s exhaust plume. But Grant saw that they merely jetted farther up along the great whale’s flank and resumed their attack there.

  The whale’s oarlike flippers were just about the size of Zheng He itself. Rows and rows of them, by the hundreds. And eyes just above them. It was eerie, uncanny, to see hundreds of eyes, all turned toward him, watching him, staring at him.

  Grant was accomplishing almost nothing. The sharks simply avoided the sub. The whale was so big that there were plenty of other places for them to attack. It would have taken a fleet of submersibles to protect this one creature. An armada.

  Get away, Grant told himself again. There’s nothing you can do to help here. Get away while you can.

  The sub suddenly began to reverberate with an eerie, undulating sound. Up and down, it rose and fell like a police siren, only deeper, lower, so profound that it sounded almost like the bottom bass note on the most tremendous church organ in the universe. God’s own chorus, a call to arms that might have been trumpeted by Gabriel himself. It grew swiftly louder, painfully louder, rattling the bridge, thundering in Grant’s ears, cracking his eardrums with its tremendous, frightening, awesome overpowering resonance.

  The sharks stopped their attack. Every one of them pulled away from the whale and seemed to freeze in place, some of them with gobbets of the whale’s flesh clenched in their teeth.

  The sound was painful. Grant felt as if hot needles were being jabbed in his ears. Louder and louder it rose, until he could hear nothing at all. The excruciating pain lanced through him as if a drill were driving through his skull. Touchscreens on the consoles began to shatter, bursting into showers of plastic shards and electrical sparks. The bridge vibrated as if some immense beast was shaking it in its jaws the way a terrier shakes a rat to death.

  Grant hung on, vision clouding as one by one the ship’s sensors went out. The main wallscreen shattered, blowing sparks and broken pieces across the bridge. Grant ducked and cringed as plastic shards sliced through the fluid past him, tumbling slowly in the thick perfluorocarbon liquid. He could feel the sub’s multiple hulls quivering, reverberating like bells struck by a giant iron fist.

  Like a school of minnows suddenly darting in unison, the sharks turned as one and fled away. One instant they were hovering everywhere, all pointed toward the source of the sound, the next they were gone, leaving nothing but bubbles in their wake.

  The sudden turbulence of their swift departure tossed Zheng He fitfully, flipped the submersible upside down. Grant held on to his console with one hand, teeth gritting in pain. He couldn’t tell whether the agonies were his own body’s or the ship’s. What does it matter? What does anything matter now?

  The sub was beyond his control. The turbulence left by the sharks had overpowered Grant’s ability to keep the vessel on an even keel. The thrusters were actually powering the ship downward now, spinning in a lazy uncontrollable spiral like a plane heading for a crash in slow motion. The thought flashed through Grant’s mind that the nearest solid ground must be tens of thousands of kilometers down, deep in Jupiter’s hot, dense core. We’ll be crushed and boiled long before we hit anything solid, he told himself.

  With growing terror he tried to work the controls, running his hands madly across the touchscreens. Not even the thrusters responded to his commands. Everything must be so badly damaged, Grant said to himself. We’re going to die. We’re going to die. If only Krebs were conscious, he thought, she might be able to handle the controls and get us out of this. Or even Zeb.

  I don’t know what to do! I can’t get her straightened out.

  Zheng He plunged deeper.

  Grant was totally deaf now, as if his ears were wrapped in thick towels or layers of insulation. Dimly, through the few sensors still working, he saw a sight that shook him to his soul. Dozens of the immense Jovians, scores of them, maybe a hundred or more were speeding through the water toward their wounded, exhausted comrade.

  My God, Grant thought as the gigantic creatures neared, we had only glimpsed a small portion of the herd. There’s so many of them! And they’re so huge!

  Many of them dwarfed the one that had fought the sharks. All of them were flashing lights, signaling each other in hues of brilliant red, flashing yellow, and that bright piercing green. The water was alight with their signals.

  But Zheng He was sinking away from them, spinning slowly, revolving over and over again despite Grant’s frantic efforts to regain control.

  A tap on his shoulder made Grant jump. Whirling, he saw it was Karlstad, wide-eyed, frightened. The man’s mouth moved, but Grant could hear nothing. When Grant tried to speak, he couldn’t hear his own voice.

  Karlstad frantically jabbed both forefingers toward his ears. He’s been deafened, too, Grant understood.

  The bridge was a mess. Most of the screens had blown out. Splinters of plastic and optical fibers from the unoccupied consoles floated uselessly in the dim emergency lighting.

  His eyes showing sheer terror, Karlstad pushed himself over to the console on Grant’s left and tapped on its keyboard. Its one intact screen wrote in glowing orange letters:

  GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE.

  Grant shrugged helplessly.

  GET US UP!!! Karlstad typed.

  Grant ran his fingers along the touchscreens. The thrusters were running at a fraction of their full power, but with the sub out of control he was afraid to run them up higher, afraid that they would simply drive the vessel deeper into the dark hot sea. What should I do? What can I do? In desperation, he shut down the thrusters completely.

  TOO MCH PRESSURE! Karlstad typed.

  Suddenly Grant understood what he must do. Get all this information back to the station. We’re not going to make it, he thought, but this information has got to get to Dr. Wo and the others.

  Reaching for the keyboard on his console, Grant wrote, DATA CAPSULE.

  Karlstad’s fingers flew across his keyboard. NOT NOW. GET US CLOSER TO SURFACE.

  NOW, Grant insisted. SEND TWO.

  Karlstad stared at Grant, finally understanding what he was trying to say. We’re as good as dead; there’s nothing left for us to do except this gesture of sending data back to the station.

  Grant grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard, banging on his keyboard with his other hand. DO IT. TWO.

  Karlstad blinked, then nodded his agreement. Bending over his console, he replied, TWO NOT NECESSARY. DATA COMPRESSION.

  Grant tapped him on the arm. SEND TWO, he repeated. REDUNDANCY.

  Even though one capsule could hold all the data they had recorded, Grant wanted to take no chances of that lone capsule failing. Briefly he thought about sending all four of the remaining capsules, but he decided two would be sufficient. Keep recording data with the few sensors still working. Send the final two when the last moment comes.

  Turning his attention back to the sensors, Grant saw that the whales were some distance above them now. The Jovians were hovering around their wounded comrade, flashing lights back and forth with blinding speed. Grant got the impression they were jabbering to each other.

  Two of them glided downward, lights flashing along their mountainous flanks.

  Are the
y trying to communicate with us? The thought startled Grant.

  Zheng He was still sinking slowly into the depths, despite Grant’s feeble efforts to get the submersible under control once again. The ship’s systems were not responding to his commands. No matter how he worked the touchscreens, the submersible continued to spiral slowly deeper. Backups, Grant thought. There are supposed to be backups for each of the main systems. But most of them were out of action, too, he saw.

  Several more Jovians coasted down toward the sub, Grant saw, swimming in gigantic circles around the wounded little submersible, flashing their lights in endless complex patterns.

  Are they trying to communicate with us? Grant asked himself again. Almost without thinking consciously about it, he turned on the sub’s outside lights. Only two of them still worked, and one of them flickered dimly.

  And the whales matched its flicker rate exactly, in less than a heartbeat. Grant gasped with awe. The pictures running along the whales’ immense flanks were far too complex for him to understand, but they were flashing on and off at the same rate as the damaged lamp’s flicker.

  Mimicry or intelligence? Grant asked himself.

  Karlstad’s nudge against his shoulder startled Grant.

  GET US UP!!! Egon had typed on his console screen.

  I can’t, Grant confessed silently. I can’t. But his fingers typed, TRYING.

  Grant ran a quick diagnostic. His heart sank as the results flashed across his closed eyelids. The thrusters were close to catastrophic failure. The crack in the outer hull was spreading, branching like a crack in an ice-covered pond. The inner hulls were still intact, but the pressure was building. It was only a matter of minutes before they started to break up. Worst of all, the sub was still spiraling downward, its steering vanes useless, its control jets too weak to stop its sinking spin.

  “We’re finished,” Grant said. He couldn’t hear the words. Neither could Karlstad, a meter away, who launched both the data capsules at that precise moment.